Entomology of a Bookworm

Guilty As Charged

2012-01-27T10:14:00.000-05:00

The End

2012-01-25T07:34:00.000-05:00

I remember clearly my middle-school lessons on literary devices. These were the classes in which we learned to pick apart the writing in front of us. We identified similes, metaphors, and hyperbole, metonymy, synecdoche, and litotes. I found it fascinating, wonderful, exploratory. I’ve dissected my reading ever since, often unconsciously. Foreshadowing, though, proved a sticking point to my eleven-year-old mind:

foreshadow: to indicate, represent, or typify beforehand: PREFIGURE (Merriam-Webster)

To me, this meant one thing: giving away the ending before it happened. But what I could not grasp was why an author would do such a thing -- and intentionally, no less. Or, perhaps more crucial to my argument, why a reader would continue to read if they had been told how things would turn out.

I’m sure the fact that I spent my days reading the like of The Babysitter’s Club and Redwall has something to do with this opinion. While both series remain near and dear to me, neither rests on the laurels of its writing alone, instead being driven by plot and conclusions. Perhaps most middle-school grade reading is like that, or maybe it was just my tastes at the time.

As I work my way through Stephen King’s latest masterpiece, 11/22/63, I find my thoughts frequently returning to these days of learning literary devices. King, a master of foreshadowing, is connecting the dots for me. He frequently lets slip just enough of what is to come to make it purely impossible not to turn the page. Look what’s going to happen, he seems to be whispering. Don’t you want to find out how we get there?

And while the plot of 11/22/63 is engaging and enticing, it is this “how we get there” that proves the best part of King’s writing. Because in between each crucial event, each twist and unexpected turn, King reflects on the nature of 1960s America, on the differences between the recent past and today, on the nuances and difficulties of time travel. These are the morsels of his writing most worthy of devouring.

There are books where foreshadowing makes what follows all the more powerful. The final, heartwrenching scene of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is not necessarily built on foreshadowing alone, but it is made all the more emotional because we, the reader, know what George must do. We know why he leads Lennie on in believing in the farm, and the rabbits, and their peaceful future together. It cuts to the quick, that knowledge. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s aptly named Chronicle of a Death Foretold opens with the announcement of a murder: “On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on.” What follows in the next 120 pages is an account of how we got to this murder, this death we’ve known about all along. As a reader, we are curious: how do we move from a bishop to a murder? But knowing that it all ends in a death, we also see each mundane, everyday action tinged with the darkness of finality.

Knowing the ending, I’ve realized, does nothing to spoil the beginning and the middle. It changes the experience of reading, of course, but not necessarily for the worse. After all, what of re-reading? Readers tend to fall into two camps on this subject: there are those who do, and those who don’t. Those of us who do certainly do not do so in order to find out what happens. Presumably, we already know. We re-read to re-discover the beauty of the writing, the love we have for a story, the joy of immersing ourselves in something we already know we love.

I no longer read such plot-driven work as I did in my middle school years, preferring instead the slow and steady pace of literature crafted with as much mind for sentence construction and imagery as for the plot itself. The Night Circus, criticized by many as meandering and slow, was just such a book. And Pete Hamill’s North River, a book of Depression-era New York City, is a gripping story, but as delightful for its setting as its outcome.

Perhaps this is why I find myself now more amenable to foreshadowing in a work. Or perhaps it is part of the art of learning to read--learning to appreciate the act of being in the story, rather than The End.

Why I Love BookRiot, and Also the Classics

2012-01-24T16:22:00.001-05:00

... and also Dead White Guys: An Irreverent Guide to Classic Literature:

"The classics are not irrelevant. They offer insight into our shared past- they show us how far we’ve come and, at the same time, how humanity has hung on to certain aspects of itself throughout civilization’s recorded history. The classics have shaped the course of literature, outlasted literary fads, and added value to the whole of human thought. Assuming that the modern reader doesn’t want to experience that (or worse, that they can’t because it involves too much effort) is unfair. Readers don’t need profanity and iPods to understand themes concerning racism, poverty, compassion, love, and family. Do we really think the modern reader is so lazy that s/he can’t read the classics because they’re too hard?"

From the BookRiot post Riot Response: In Defense of the Classics, which is absolutely worth reading in full.

Book Review: A Study in Sherlock, ed. by Laurie King & Leslie Klinger

2012-01-23T08:48:00.000-05:00

Originally written for Shelf Awareness for Readers.Reprinted here with permission. Receive bi-weekly Shelf Awareness for Readers in your inbox by registering here.

Even as Arthur Conan Doyle was writing the original stories of Sherlock Holmes, other writers began to take their turn with the famous detective; by now "the canon" (as Doyle's stories are known) has inspired too many stories, fan fictions and spin-offs to count. Laurie King, author of the Mary Russel and Sherlock Holmes series, and Leslie Klinger, editor of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, have set out to add yet another volume to this library--and have done so successfully. Their latest title, A Study in Sherlock, proves to be an exciting anthology of all-new Holmesian tales both whimsical and factual, inspired and inspiring.

Some of the stories in A Study in Sherlock retell a canonical tale from a different perspective, while others venture into the mythos that surrounds Holmes' life as described by Doyle--some even take on the rumor that he is still alive. Some dive wholeheartedly into Holmes' character, while others take inspiration from something as trivial as his hat; some are told in classic narrative, while others are illustrated, or written as blog posts. There's even a Twitter conversation.

A Study in Sherlock succeeds precisely because of this variety, and due credit should be given both to the editors who allowed such inspiration and to the authors who rose to the challenge. With contributions from the likes of Neil Gaiman, Laura Lippman and Jacqueline Winspear, A Study in Sherlock offers readers a healthy dose of well-crafted fiction that proves downright fun to read. If you weren't intrigued by Holmes before you read this, trust that you will be afterwards.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
A Walk With a Book
The Baker Street Journal
Publisher's Weekly

---

You might also like:
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie King
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Vol 1, ed. by Leslie Klinger (see also Vol. 2 & Vol. 3)
The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

---

I Won't Say I Told You So

2012-01-19T10:12:00.000-05:00

(via GraphJam)

Stop SOPA & PIPA

2012-01-18T09:40:00.003-05:00

The Oatmeal summed this all up quite nicely:

Take a minute today to tell Congress not to censor the web. We're all against piracy, but not when it involves barbecuing kittens, yes?

And if you're looking to learn more about SOPA, PIPA and how these bills can and will affect you and your use of the internet, check out this video at A Home Between the Pages, or this Wikipedia page on the bills (one of the only non-blacked out pages to be found today on Wikipedia).

Book Review: Crazy Enough, by Storm Large

2012-01-17T11:42:00.000-05:00

Originally published January 17, 2012 in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission. Get a bi-weekly dose of Shelf Awareness news & reviews in your inbox by registering here.

Portland, Ore., musician Storm Large has spent decades carefully cultivating her image as "a killer, a badass, a dangerous woman." But, as we learn in her gripping memoir, Crazy Enough, this is merely a facade, behind which lurks an emotional, somewhat insecure woman borne of an unstable childhood and an uncertain relationship with sanity.

Large's complex identity is inextricably tied up in her relationship with her mother, a woman she recalls mostly in the context of one mental hospital after another. Amid a litany of tests, medications and diagnoses, one doctor casually mentioned to Large that because her mother's condition was hereditary, she would one day grow up to be just like her mother. This offhand comment formed the basis of Large's life, leading to the downward spiral we experience firsthand in Crazy Enough. If I'm going to go crazy eventually, she seems to ask, why not just go for it now? From losing her virginity at the tender age of 13 to her estrangement from her mother, from her fleeting heroin addiction to her blossoming career as a New York City actress, Large spares readers no detail in recounting her precarious hold on sanity.

The result is a memoir that reads like an in-your-face mashup of Augusten Burroughs and Chelsea Handler, combining raw humor and an understandable bitterness with more than than a few oversexed anecdotes. Though not for the faint of heart, Crazy Enough proves to be a readable account of one woman's descent into madness--and back out again--in the context of friendship, family and the terrible trio of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
Williamette Week
Publisher's Weekly

---

You might also like:
Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs
My Horizontal Life, by Chelsea Handler

---

Crazy Enough | Storm Large | Free Press | 9781439192405 | $25 Hardcover | 288 pages | January 2012 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

Book Review: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

2012-01-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

I might be the only person I know to have read American Gods and not adored it with my whole heart. This was my second foray into the much-touted Gaiman territory (the first being Good Omens, which Gaiman co-authored with fantasy author Terry Pratchett, and which I did adore), and while I did like the book, I certainly did not love the book. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

American Gods, which won both a Hugo and Nebula award, is most often categorized as a fantasy novel, though it in fact draws more heavily on mythology, religion, and history than on the classic tropes of the fantasy genre (magic, spells, dragons, the like) in its execution. Which is not to say that it is not a fantasy novel, for it is, but that it is not what one might initially expect.

From what little I've read of Gaiman, I'm thinking he has a bit of a thing for religious history. And really, I can't say I blame him -- the stuff fascinates me. The variations on central themes, the myriad attempts to explain our existence, our place in the world, our importance: this is interesting stuff, and Gaiman uses it well. American Gods centers on the idea that the gods we believe in, or anyone has ever believed in, walk among us. But as religion falls by the wayside and Americans begin to worship money, television, power, and the like, the old gods find themselves threatened, falling by the wayside, no longer thriving as they once had.

This contest between old and new sparks a war in which -- you guessed it -- the old gods of war, of love, of luck, of Spring, of moons, of stars, of night, of day battle the new gods of shiny objects and fads and trends and money and power. Caught up in the middle of all of this is Shadow, our seemingly normal protagonist, who finds, upon completing his three-year prison sentence, that his wife is not only dead, but had been cheating on him. With his best friend.

Shadow, then, is out of jail, out of luck, out one wife, and out of a job. He is out of reasons to live. So perhaps it makes sense that he falls in with the gods that come to him, accepting in stride the oddity of the requests, the strangeness of swearing fealty over three glasses of mead, the bizarre night in which he pulls a coin from the air, the inevitability of battle. But in the end, I struggled to understand Shadow, who is, in effect, the crux of the novel. Though Gaiman's writing is deft and skillful, and the story here is complex, engaging, and interesting, this lack of connection with our assumed protagonist proved a sticking point for me. Because in the end, if I cannot believe that Shadow would act as he does, or react as he does, can I believe anything I am reading?

Despite this, however, American Gods is what one might call a thoughtful -- and thought-provoking -- novel, and in this, it redeems itself. Although Gaiman is not the first to work from an assumption that gods walk among us (who sang that obnoxious song about god riding the bus as one of us, again?), he has done so in his own unique, convoluted, and often dark way, giving us a novel that is both powerful and understandable, if not entirely believable.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

Bermudaonion's Weblog
Cecilia Bedelia (reviewing on At Home With Books)
January Magazine

---

You might also like:
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

---

American Gods | Neil Gaiman | HarperTorch | 9780380789030 | $7.99 Mass Market Paperback | 624 pages | May 2002 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

Not Just for the Young, but the Young at Heart

2012-01-13T11:59:00.000-05:00

Seen in Orca Books, in Olympia, Washington

via Book Slut's Tumblr

#IndieThursday: Spotlight on The Annapolis Bookstore

2012-01-12T08:15:00.000-05:00

#IndieThursday is a weekly meme hosted by Jenn at Jenn's Bookshelves, in which participants tweet/blog about recent purchases made at an independent bookstore.

There are certain bookstores that will forever have my heart in their hands. Titcomb's, on Cape Cod. And Shakespeare and Co, in Paris. And of course, Strand, in New York. I've been fortunate enough to travel around the world, and have discovered bookstores in every town I've visited.

But there is something even more special about bookstores at home, a shop to which you can return, over and over again, each time finding some new treasure, some new delight. For me, that has recently become The Annapolis Bookstore, located in its (relatively) new location on Maryland Avenue, in the heart of downtown Annapolis. Nestled on a road of antique shops, coffee houses and gift boutiques, The Annapolis Bookstore is the perfect draw for any booklover, with a collection of new, used and antique titles.

The beauty of this store lies in its imperfections, in its oddities, in the miscellany of its mismatched shelves, out-of-place piano (with sheet music for sale across its stand), its lavishly decorated children's section (with a sign for Ollivander's, a lit tree, and a giant stuffed lion atop its shelves).

The disarrayed shelves are a browser's delight. The cozy chairs, including some in miniature for the little ones, are an invitation to stay awhile. So is the coffee shop in the back.

I'm not sure how I lived in Annapolis for as many years as I did without truly appreciating the splendor of this place, and how lucky I am to have access to such a spot. But I do know that from now on, all my #IndieThursday purchases -- hell, all my Indie purchases -- will be made here. Unless, that is, I'm travelling again, in which case I'll be on the lookout for the next great shelved nook.

To find an independent bookstore near you, check out Indiebound.

ZOMG THE SEQUEL TO THE PASSAGE

2012-01-11T16:47:00.001-05:00

And now, we interrupt our normal broadcasting schedule to announce that the sequel to The Passage, which you really, really should read, titled The Twelve, also known as one of my most anticipated books of 2012 has an official publication date of August 28, 2012. That's just 229 days away, folks!

Think I can find a bookstore that will be open at midnight to sell it? Are bookstores expecting it to be that big? Am I jumping the gun? Anyone else as excited as I am? I've been agonizing over this sequel since 2010, so it's about damn time, really.

Now, if we could just have a cover, please?

There Really Is Nothing Quite Like a Real Book

2012-01-11T07:16:00.000-05:00

This is just... just... well, beautiful. Lovely. Wondrous. Watch it. Love it. Share it.

(Many thanks to my wonderful Aunt Linda for sharing this with her two bookish nieces!)

The Magic of Libraries

2012-01-10T12:46:00.000-05:00

Have you ever wandered into a library and wondered at the sheer magic of it all? The fact that it exists, and that it exists with one purpose in mind: to share the opportunity of reading and of learning with anyone, and everyone, of any and every age, race, class, and gender. At times, I leave the library with a stack of books and think to myself, "Did that really just happen?" A small, irrational part of me is worried that one day I will meet my quota, that the kindly librarians with glasses perched at the ends of their noses will tut-tut at me and say, very quietly, and though it is not the worst news in the world, that I can no longer take books out.

Because really, it's all too good to be true. And while I recognize that the library is not, in fact, free, that it is supported by our tax dollars and by donations and by library sales, it is, in fact, providing everyone in its vicinity with the opportunity to learn and to grow--and to read.

I'm not out to start a political diatribe, really, I'm not. I don't consider myself a particularly political person. But I do consider myself a fan of libraries, and of the opportunities they afford, and it is painful to watch them suffer, and to hurt, and to lose their financing, and to think that others cannot see how detrimental this is for our communities. Dickens himself, the great mastermind of fiction and advocate for justice, argued that the more a man learns,

"the better, gentler, kind man he must become. When he knows how much great minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time... he will become more tolerant of other men's beliefs in all matters, and will incline more leniently to their sentiments when they chance to differ from his own." (Dickens, as quoted in The Man Who Invented Christmas, by Les Standiford)

Is it true? Perhaps. Perhaps it is an overstatement. Perhaps an exaggeration. But does reading open one's mind to new things, new ideas? Of course. And do libraries allow those who could not otherwise afford books an opportunity to read? Of course. Now, if only that were enough.

Audiobook Review: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

2012-01-09T12:16:00.000-05:00

Good Omens professes itself to be "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch," the only accurate prophecy out there, and the only prophecy not taken seriously by any who read it. It is the tale of the final battle between Heaven and Hell, the coming of the apocalypse, etc, etc, etc. There's the son of the Devil and everything. Except that in the thousands of years they have spent on Earth in preparation for the battle, our angel and our demon have sort of become fast friends, drinking and dining and reading together in the back room of a small bookshop. And they also happen to be completely incompetent, and lose the Devil's son, and thereby create a whole lot of chaos and angry beings of religion.

It sounds a bit dopey, I know, but it works. And the audiobook, narrated by Martin Jarvis, is spot-on, stupendous, and outright hilarious, with Jarvis hitting the humorous notes in all the right ways. And because the story relies so heavily on snark and wit, this timing, this intonation, is crucial.

Though not the best book I read last year, Good Omens was a good first foray into both Neil Gaiman's work and Terry Pratchett's, and as a self-proclaimed fantasy reader, I was ashamed to have to admit I hadn't read either. Though perhaps I took a shortcut in tackling both at once, I'm glad I did: the combination is relatively seamless, and the author's voices blend almost as though they were meant to be, and I was left with a good laugh, some thoughtful commentary on religion as a whole (a topic Gaiman seems to explore on more than one occasion across his canon), and a desire to explore more of both writers.

---

You might also like:
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
The Literary Omnivore
Melody and Words

---

Good Omens | Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, nar. Martin Jarvis | HarperAudio | 9780061735813 | $39.99 Audio CD | 12 hrs, 32 min. | November 2009 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

Friday Laugh: Facebook vs. Real Books

2012-01-06T10:07:00.000-05:00

(via Failblog)

Happy Friday! Here's to reading all those TBR books this weekend, instead of all those atrociously dull Facebook statuses we seem so interested in, yes?

Thoughts for a New Year

2012-01-05T07:41:00.000-05:00

As we turn to a new year, and embark on those impossible I-will-only-eat-healthy-foods resolutions we made in the midst of the glut of the holidays, let us remember what Muriel Barbery first put so simply:

It would all be so much better if we could share our insecurity. If we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and Vitamin C, no matter how much they may nurture us, cannot save lives nor sustain our souls. (From The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I absolutely adored.)

There's more to 2012, really, than fruits and vegetables. And those of us who eat fruits and vegetables and chicken year-round find it INCREDIBLY OBNOXIOUS that when we try to grocery shop the first week of January, THERE IS NO PRODUCE LEFT because all the one-timers have bought twenty-seven pounds of bananas that will all go brown before they get eaten anyway and didn't leave any for me. Hmph.

Book Review: Spousonomics, by Jenny Anderson & Paula Szuchman

2012-01-04T07:32:00.000-05:00

Spousonomics is the ultimate marriage book for nerds: one part econ, one part marriage advice. Wait, don't stop there, please. Both of those words make the book sounds boring and stuffy. Econ? Blah. Marriage advice? Gag me.

But no. It's not like that. Spousonomics is witty and fun, and even though some of the econ-to-real-life-in-your-marriage examples can be a stretch, the principles (both the econ ones and the marriage ones) are absolutely understandable. At times, in fact, the book can actually be too simple, boiling down complex economic theory into vocabulary less stimulating than that to be found in the "For Dummies" series.

Despite the tendency to over-simplify, though, and the subject's predisposition to be dull or unexciting, Spousonomics is, actually, engaging, at times funny, and mostly relevant. Of course, the recommendations would be more applicable if my husband read the book too, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. Regardless, Spousonomics is a quick read, the kind that can be taken chapter by chapter or bit by bit, and while the advice contained within is not life-altering, it is, at the very least, eye-opening to know that I am not alone in any or all of the insanities that make up a marriage.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
5 Minutes of Books
Devourer of Books
2 Kids and Tired Books

---

You might also like:
The Spousonomics Blog

---

Note: Spousonomics is being re-published in paperback as It's Not You, It's the Dishes in May 2012.

---

Spousonomics | Jenny Anderson & Paula Szuchman| Random House | 9780385343947 | $26.00 Hardcover | 352 pgs. | February 2011 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

Bookshelf + To-Read List = Best Shelving Ever

2012-01-03T08:04:00.000-05:00

For the hyper-organized bookworm in us all. Of course, I'd need about six dozen of these to even begin to hold my to-read and read collections, but still. These are awesome.

Courtesy of my loving husband, image via Imgur.

2012 Reading Goals

2012-01-01T09:16:00.000-05:00

2011 marked the first year in which I set myself some readerly goals: read more books I already own, read more non-fiction, read more of authors I love, read more classics. These were broad, open-ended, numberless assignments, and overall, I was pretty pleased with the results. I read 84 books in 2011, of which:

9 I left unfinished
8 were re-reads
57 were fiction and 27 non-fiction
36 were published in 2011
A mere 6 were classics
16 were re-visits to authors I know and love
29 were books I already owned and/or had were on my list in 2010

Twenty-nine books I already own wasn't so bad. And 27 non-fiction felt decent to me. But this year, I'm going for balance. I am going to attempt (attempt being the operative word, here), to read a balance of literary fiction, genre fiction, non-fiction and classics. In order to prevent myself from going absolutely insane, I will not be counting review assignments towards these numbers. The definitions of these categories may be a bit fluid, but it will have to do. This is, after all, my own challenge to my own self. I suspect I will have the most difficulty with the non-fiction, as I really have yet to find my groove with what kinds of non-fiction books I adore, and which ones I slog through. Tips and advice always welcome on that.

It's probably worth noting, too, that I have challenged myself to read everything Hemingway has written and War and Peace before my 26th birthday, so I will be attempting to chip away at that in the coming year.

Wish me luck, I say.

An Impatient Reader: 2012 Titles I Can't WAIT to Read

2011-12-31T09:01:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't know me personally, I am not a particularly patient person. For those that do know me... well, you know. I have a tendency to get overexcited about the things I love, including, but not limited to: baby giraffes at the Bronx Zoo, baby lions at the National Zoo, Christmas, getting the cupcakes out of the oven, seeing my niece, and books. Not necessarily in that order.

But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that I am currently anxiously awaiting each of the following books, scheduled to be published in 2012, and when I saw "anxiously," I mean "if I talk about these any more my husband is going to buy soundproofing headphones and tune me out."

The Twelve by Justin Cronin (final cover not available): I have been dying - DYING - to read this since I read The Passage in 2010. Two years, we've waited! I posted about my eagerness to read this sequel once, twice, three times a charm. July 2012, here we come.

A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (final cover not available): I'm sensing a series theme here, I know, but I've read all of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books twice in preparation for the final volumes of the now-fourteen-book series (it was originally slated to be twelve, but Jordan passed away, and the final book became three volumes because of the mass of content to include). It will be bittersweet to finish the series, and know that there is no more coming, but I have waited my entire teenage and adult life for this book. Impatience doesn't even begin to describe my anticipation. No pressure, Brandon Sanderson. No pressure.

Girl Reading by Katie Ward: Debuting in the US next year, this one is said to be similar to The Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I listened to earlier this year and really enjoyed. I'm intrigued by the title here, of course, and also the praise it has already received in the UK.

In One Person by John Irving: I'm ashamed to say I've read only one Irving novel (The World According to Garp), and never even reviewed it. But I loved it, with a big piece of my readerly heart, so much so that I'm right there on the bandwagon in itching to get my hands on his new novel, a first-person narrative of a 60-year-old bisexual man. And since it's out in May, I have five months to catch up on some more of his backlist.

So, that's what I have on my mind as I look at the year of reading ahead of me. Want to take bets on how many I'll read? What about you, what are you excited for in 2012?

A Poem a Day, Inspired by NPR

2011-12-30T21:22:00.000-05:00

NPR has done it again: inspired me to do something I never thought I'd do. This time: read poetry. Alan Heathcock, author of Volt, wrote recently on NPR about his impulsive decision to start reading a poem a day. With breakfast. At Jiffy Lube. Wherever. They are "portable, peaceful, perfect."

While I know myself better than to expect that I will be able to sit quietly with a cup of tea and a poem every morning (I'm too likely to oversleep for that), I own several poetry anthologies and have access to the internet almost every waking minute of my life, so I am going to do my best to read 365 poems this year. I've always wanted to learn to read poetry, to learn to appreciate it, to actually open the anthologies I own. Hopefully, like Heathcock, this exercise will prove to be a "poem each morning, to sustain me through my days with the faith of an egret stepping over every dark thing." At the very least, I know I won't run out of poems.

Who's with me?

Audiobook Review: 11/22/63, by Stephen King

2011-12-29T09:13:00.000-05:00

It took me nearly a month to listen to all 30+ hours of Stephen King's latest novel, 11/22/63, but I firmly believe that every single minute of this epic novel was worth it. King has masterfully recreated the "the Land of Ago," as our narrator, a schoolteacher in Maine named Jake Epping, fondly refers to it. Epping's first-person narration is captured on the audio version of this title by the impeccable Craig Wasson, whose skillful narration is steady throughout the text, though charged with emotion as appropriate. And it is often appropriate.

See, it all starts like this: Jake goes to his Al's Diner to celebrate the end of a school year, and one thing leads to another, and just like that, poof!, Al has lung cancer and his dying wish is that Jake go back in time to 1958 to stop the assassination of JFK. Sounds impossible, but a handy little rabbit hole that links modern times to September of 1958 makes it all possible.

And so, not to spoil anything, because it's pretty obvious, Jake goes. He tinkers, he tampers, he checks back on 2011 to see how his changes are holding up in the future. Or the present. Whatever it is. And he sets off to do just what Al asked him to: prevent the assassination of JFK on that fateful date, 11/22/63, in Dealey Plaza.

Jake lives in the Land of Ago for five years -- between the rabbit hole entrance of 1958 and that memorable date in 1963 -- and he has, to put it mildly, time to kill. This life he leads becomes as much the story of 11/22/63 as the mission to save Kennedy, as Jake finds himself pulled further and further into the obdurate past.

King explores the once-upon-a-time land of mid-century America in full detail, recounting a time in which the root beer is rootier, the milk is creamier, the people are more trusting, and the gender norms are vastly different. But 11/22/63 is about more than the past, encompassing territories that cannot be defined by any one time period: love, and loss, and fear, and knowledge, and community.

Given, too, that this is a novel of time travel, both King and Jake struggle with the implications of time travel, of how the past influences the future, how delicately the future is woven, and how important even the smallest of actions may be. These concepts, though not groundbreaking, are thought-provoking; if the butterfly effect is as real as we can imagine, 11/22/63 forces us to consider, what am I influencing right now by doing exactly what I am doing? Is there an alternate version of this reality in which I made different choices? Or took a fateful step one fateful second later, and changed the course of history?

I could go on and on about the subjects King explores here, but I won't, because unlike King, I lack the ability to ramble on in detailed sidepaths without losing my readers. And that's assuming you've even made it this far. So I'll sum up: King, in short, is a master of his craft. 11/22/63 is long, but never lengthy, detailed, but never tedious. Subplots and side stories abound, but each one is relevant in its own way.

King's clever use of foreshadowing throughout all the twists and turns of this complex story make him one sneaky bastard in my book, but this trick is successful in keeping the pages turning: each hint of what is to come, each delicate implication of how things might net out sent my heart a-palpitatin'. Maybe that's something King is known for; as this is my first King novel, I wouldn't know. But I do know that despite the 30+ hours (or 900+ pages, for those reading in print), I was sad to hear (or see, as the case may be) this one end, and I'll certainly be looking out for more King in the future.

---

Thanks to Simon & Schuster Audio for providing a copy of this title for my review, which, by the way, includes King himself reading the afterword.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
January Magazine
Jenn's Bookshelves
The Book Case

---

11/22/63 | Stephen King, nar. Craig Wasson | Simon & Schuster Audio| 9781442344280 | $75.00 Audio CD | 30 CDs, 31 hrs | November 2011 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

Audiobook Review: Freddy & Fredericka, by Mark Helprin

2011-12-28T08:37:00.000-05:00

Ask me what my favorite book is, and I will attempt to avoid the question. Press me, and I will most likely answer One Hundred Years of Solitude or Winter's Tale, depending on my mood. The latter, considered by many to be a modern classic, was the sophomore novel of Mark Helprin, written in 1983. I've read it twice. It's fantastic. It's one of those books I could not begin to review, because all that would follow would be gushing, gushing, gushing. If you disagree, go away.

Given my love for Helprin's most famous novel, I've recently attempted to explore some of his others. Freddy and Fredericka was a re-read for me, but as it is the most recent of his novels (originally published in 2005), I decided to return to it on audio this summer.

Let me just start with this: I. Love. This. Book. I love Mark Helprin. I love his writing, his wit, his genius at crafting a sentence, a paragraph, a novel. And that's all an understatement.

Here, Helprin tells the tale of the Prince and Princess of Wales, sent to the United States to reclaim it as a territory of Britain in order to prove their worth for the throne. There's a lot more to it than that, but summed up in one sentence, there's the plot.

Along the way, of course, they learn a lot: about themselves, about life outside of royalty, about life and living in general. Their naivety becomes a cloak that they wear with pride, and as they gradually learn to live without the cloak, they begin to truly understand the meaning of life.

A careful balance of magical realism and an incredible sense of humor prevents Helprin's work from becoming too transparent in its mission to educate, and though the story can be uneven at times, the characters are a delight to come to know, and Helprin's sneaky sense of humor has a way of sneaking in to save the day.

With Freddy and Fredericka, Helprin has crafted a collection of sentences, stories and ideas and drawn together into one absurd but cohesive plot structure, all perfectly narrated by Ian MacKenzie, whose charming British accent is the icing on this novel's swoon-worthy cake. And as a particular bonus, the conversation between Freddy and his charmingly ditzy wife often capitalizes on word play and misunderstanding, making the audio even more laugh-inducing than the print.

Though not as good as Winter's Tale (and really, nothing ever will be), fans of Helprin, well-crafted sentences, and delightfully absurd stories will enjoy this foray into British-cum-American culture.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
The Captive Reader
Red Hot Eyebrows
January Magazine

---

You may also like:
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin (bet you didn't see that one coming, didja!?)
An Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet

---

Note: Many thanks to the AACPL for having an audio copy of this for my listening pleasure, especially since good friend JMOW has permanently borrowed my paper copy of this book, with all its precious underlines.

---

Freddy & Fredericka | Mark Helprin, nar. Ian MacKenzie | Recorded Books | 9781419335914 | $49.99 CD | 25 hrs, 35 min | July 2005 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

2011 in Review: Books I Wish I'd Read

2011-12-27T18:18:00.000-05:00

Last week, I posted my favorite 2011 reads (of books published in 2011). This week, I'm still working on some older titles that I've been eying for far too long (American Gods, I'm talking about you), but I'm close enough to the end of the year to catalog those precious 2011 releases that I wish I'd read... but haven't. Yet. Consider this a rough guideline of must-reads for 2012. Of course, that doesn't include all the backlist titles I want to read, the classics, and the assigned books that I will review for Shelf Awareness. But it's a start:

Hemingway's Boat, by Paul Hendrickson: One of the goals on my 26 by 26 list is to read everything that Hemingway has ever written. I'm beginning to sense that I might fail in that regard (he's written a lot of books, and I have less than 2 years on this clock), but I'm still hoping to read this recent biography.

The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach: I've heard from every corner of the blogosphere that this book is amazing. Greg at New Dork Review of Books loved it, and cheered when Rachel at a home between pages read it. Brenna at Literary Musings raved, and Michael listed it as one of his best of 2011 on the year-end podcast for Books on the Nightstand. I have a copy on my shelf. How have I not read this yet!?

Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray: This is a bit of a cop-out, as Skippy Dies technically came out in 2010. But the paperback released in 2011, so I'm counting it. I've had my eye on this for two years now. Come on, self. Get on it.

Bossypants, by Tina Fey: I've heard that the only way to read this one is to listen to the audio. That way I can laugh while driving to work, and hope that I can still see the road ahead of me as I do so.

---

There are lots, lots more that I could add to this list, but at least it's a start. What were your favorites of 2011 that I haven't read? And what 2011 reads are you wishing you'd had time for this year?

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T08:51:00.002-05:00

For my family, Christmas begins today with a feast of seven fishes, in the Italian tradition. I should warn everyone to stay far away for the next day or two - we've already peeled & chopped 100+ cloves of garlic in preparation, so we'll be stinking up Maryland until we get that out of our systems.

I'll be offline this weekend, for the most part, but wanted to leave you all with a little taste of Christmas humor from the other side of my family -- my very, very talented sister-in-law singing a very, very hysterical Christmas tune. And I don't just say that because we're related. Trust me, you'll be laughing out loud:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Book Review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery

2011-12-21T07:38:00.000-05:00

There are certain books that require a slow reading, that cry out to be savored, to be loved, to be underlined. These are the kinds of books that prove the most difficult test of self-control: one part of our readerly brains cries out to go faster, yearning for more, because it is just so damn good, while the other part, the rational part, the conservative part, tells you to slow down, to appreciate, to take your time. Because once it's over, it's over. And once you know the ending, no re-read will ever be the same.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is exactly that book. This is one that has sat on my shelf for nearly two years, after good friend and fellow blogger Emily sent me a copy as a birthday gift. And I'll admit, rather sheepishly, that I started the book on more than one occasion. I could tell immediately that it was the kind of book I would love, that I would lose myself in, that I would long to devour. And so I did not read it, because the timing was not right, and because it needed to be perfect.

When I finally sat down to open the first chapter for the tenth or eleventh time, it clicked. There it was, a full 325 pages of reading bliss that lay before me. It took me two days to read, and that was forcing myself to slow down.

What Muriel Barbery has presented with The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated from the French by Alison Anderson, is a rich, complex story of two seemingly unrelated women: Renee, a concierge in an upscale apartment building, who cradles her secret intellectual life in quiet, and Paloma, a precocious, eminently unlikable 12-year-old who is preparing to kill herself in order to avoid the tedium of adulthood. She argues, "“People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.”

As their stories come together, as stories inevitably do, Paloma muses that Renee “has the elegance of a hedgehog: on the outside, she’s covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary – and terribly elegant.”

Both characters, though not particularly likeable at first, are rich and extraordinary, and their disjointed stories are captivating and moving. With these two women, varied in everything from upbringing to age, Barbery forces readers to question what it is that lies beneath our assumptions of class, of intellect, of knowledge, and of love.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a book of slow-moving parts, of philosophical musings, of tangents and asides, and given its construction (alternating first-person narrative and journal entries), it is susceptible to lengthy monologues. But these are no a detraction or distraction; instead, they are some of the best parts. The slow pace and bittersweet nature of the story itself don't make for entirely uplifting reading, but the story itself is both hopeful and fulfilling. Just be sure to read with pen in hand, because there are innumerable passages here you'll want to remember.

“I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.”

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

The Boston Bibliophile
A Book Blog. Period.
The Novel Word
Man of la Book
Vulpes Libris

---

You might also like:
Enough About Love by Henre le Tellier
13, Rue Therese by Elena Shapiro

---

The Elegance of the Hedgehog | Muriel Barbery, trans. Alison Anderson | Europa Editions | 9781933372600 | $15.00 Trade Paper | 325 pages | September 2008 (orig. published 2006) | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

Book Review: The Man Who Invented Christmas, by Les Standiford

2011-12-20T19:54:00.001-05:00

Last December, I sat down and read A Christmas Carol. For the first time. Throughout the reading, I found myself musing on the familiarity of the text, the love I felt for Dickens' words before ever having read them, my new appreciation for the myriad film adaptations*. This year, I continued my newly-founded holiday tradition, and once again broke out my gorgeous edition of A Christmas Carol, a beautiful red leather-bound edition with gold-edged pages, and paper as smooth as velvet (which is sadly out of print).

Given my long-lasting and yet new love for Dickens' text, it seemed only natural that this December, I would turn my attention to the story behind the story, found in Les Standiford's slim history, The Man Who Invented Christmas, aptly subtitled How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits.

What Standiford has done--and done quite well, I might add--is provide a history of Dickens' most beloved work within the context of his life as an author. Starting with Dickens' troubled childhood, and moving into his struggling career as an author, Standiford leaves no stone unturned in seeking motivations for Dickens' writing of A Christmas Carol. And once we've learned of its publishing, fans of the Victorian novelist are treated to insight into Dickens' pride over his work, his struggles to maintain its copyright, and its long-lasting impact on the Western world and our holiday traditions.

All of Dickens' feelings about iniquity, injustice, poverty, charity and a need for a shared sense of responsibility for those less fortunate than ourselves have flooded into A Christmas Carol, a book that Standiford maintains transformed a little-celebrated Christmas holiday into the full-fledged giving-fest that it is today. And as times today get tougher and tougher, and streets of occupiers cry for change, Dickens' messages of charity and goodwill become even more meaningful and important.

The Man Who Invented Christmas is one of the more successful literary histories I've read, though I cannot claim to have read many. The work is eminently readable and likeable, fact-filled but never dry; Standiford has a knack for color that many historians and biographers seem to lack, perfectly placing his quotes, trivia facts, and anecdotes in a way that keeps the story engaging. And its short length--just 220 or so pages--make it easy to fit in during the holiday season, even coupled with a re-read (or first read, as the case may be) of A Christmas Carol. Plus, now that I've re-read Dickens' original work and read The Man Who Invented Christmas, I figure I'm a pro at Dickens' Christmas writings,** and can flounce off to any literary party and show off with my new-found literary trivia tidbits.***

---

* I said it last year, and I'll say it again: the George C. Scott version of the movie is hands-down the best version ever made. Although lately The Muppet Christmas Carol has started making an appearance in this house as well.

**Not true, actually. Included in my lovely, out-of-print, gushworthy edition of A Christmas Carol are Dickens' two subsequent Christmas novels (he originally aimed to publish one each year): The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth. While I've read these two, I have yet to read The Battle of Life or The Haunted Man.

*** Did you know, for example, that Dickens essentially self-published A Christmas Carol? Or that one of Mark Twain's first dates with his eventual wife was to a Dickens reading in the United States? See? Literary trivia tidbits abound.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

Season's Readings
Books on the Nightstand
The LA Times Book Review

---

The Man Who Invented Christmas | Les Standiford | Crown Publishers | 9780307405784 | $19.95 Hardcover | 241 pages | November 2008 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

Bookish Gift Bows

2011-12-18T14:13:00.000-05:00

Just in time for the holidays! Because we all know that no matter how early we finish our shopping (or how late we start it), there's always the wrapping to follow. Modified from original instructions in Playing With Books, I've been trying my hand at some handmade bows made out of book pages:

Let me begin by saying this: I am not a particularly crafty person. I do not have a lot of patience for small, difficult things. Like knitting. I hate knitting. And anything that involves threading a needle. I like shortcuts. I like crafts that involve minimal steps, minimal supplies, minimal tools. If I can do this, you can do this.

To start, you'll need:

- Tape (preferably double-sided tape, but you can use single sided if that's what you have on hand. I did, and it worked fine. Just be prepared to roll lots of little tape circles so you can mimic double-sided tape.)
- Scissors
- A book you are willing to cut up (this is the hardest part, I promise).

Step 0: Take a deep breath. You are about to cut pages out of a book. My only recommendation for making this easier is to go to your local library and buy a book out front that you intend to cut up, which prevents forming any attachment to it. I chose The Naming of Names, a book about the history of plant names, because it had nice typesetting and a luscious, creamy paper stock, and is a subject about which I have zero interest. So.

Step 1: Cut 9-12 strips of book pages, approximately 3/4 in x 7-9 inches (you can be flexible in the size of your strips, but you'll definitely want them all to be consistent). If you cut longer strips, you'll most likely need more strips to fill in the bow. Longer strips = taller bow. Shorter strips = less required, but smaller final product.

Step 2: Place a small piece of double-sided sticky tape (or a small circle of single-sided sticky tape) in the center of the strip. Fold one end down, and twist end 180 degrees before affixing to the tape. Think of the twist in the Breast Cancer Awareness ribbons. Do that. Make sure that when you do this, you don't cover up all of the tape, as you need some to stick down the other end, too.

Step 3: Do the same thing on the other side. Note: If you don't think in 3 dimensions, as I don't, you might have to twist it a few different ways to figure out how to get the ends to align in the middle like this. You're not alone.

Step 4: Repeat step 3 over and over and over again.

Step 5: Place a small square of tape in the center of one of the loops, and place another inside it perpendicular to the first one. Place another piece of tape inside this next one, and keep layering loops on top of each other, varying the angle of the strips. They'll naturally push themselves up into a bow shape as you get taller and taller.

Presto digito! You have a book bow. Happy Wrapping!

---

As an aside, I'm counting this as one of my 100 lovely things on my 26 by 26 list.

A Bookworm's Pick: Top 2011 Reads

2011-12-14T07:16:00.000-05:00

Everyone's doing it, and I'm a big fan of the bandwagon, so what follows is my (first ever, I might note!) attempt to pick out my top 2011 reads. Note that these are my top ten new reads - all were published in 2011 (unless I made a mistake, in which case, let me amend that sentence to read "Most were published in 2011."). I'm comfortable posting this now because I know that in the next three weeks, I will be reading books with publication dates in 2012, or be working on those shelves and shelves of TBR books that are mocking me from the shelves.

13, rue Thérèse by Elena Mauli Shapiro: This unexpected little gem showed up at my door early this year from the publisher, and proved an absolute delight to read. Very French, very fun, very thoughful. Very recommended. Includes some steamy bedroom scenes, as an added bonus.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman: I fell head-over-heels in love with The Magicians in January, and eagerly anticipated its sequel. Luckily, Grossman did not disappoint. A healthy dose of teenage angst, and post-college life angst, and magic, and back story made for the perfect follow-up to what others have called "Harry Potter for grown-ups," and what I call "Harry Potter if he was a loner stoner who went to magic college and did a lot of drugs and fell in love and discovered Narnia." But I also hate the fact that we constantly compare all fantasy books to Harry Potter, and believe that both The Magicians and The Magician King stand wonderfully on their own two feet.

Among Others by Jo Walton: This one was a gift from my husband, who read about its release on io9, and promptly pre-ordered me a copy, believing it would be right up my alley. It was. It still is. Walton perfectly captures the magic of books and of belief in magic, and Among Others proves as much a fantasy novel in its own right as it is a love letter to fantasy books. Read with pen in hand, because there are multiple quotes you'll want to recall later on, and the books mentioned will have the holds shelf on your local library exploding before you're done.

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell: I love anything and everything by Sarah Vowell, including things she writes on subjects about which I previously had no interest. Case in point: this book. I can't profess to have cared much about Hawaiian history until I heard Vowell was writing about it, but Unfamiliar Fishes was a worthwhile jaunt into the history of a collection of islands that sort of accidentally on purpose happen to be a state. Vowell has a special knack for making me feel educated and entertained at the same time, and that's saying something.

11/22/63 by Stephen King: I haven't even finished this yet, and I'm saving it a spot on my list. King is a master at storytelling, I'm learning (this is my first King novel, I confess in shame), and I am totally, completely hooked on this story. If I keep writing, I'm just going to descend into downright gushing. So. Read it. I want to talk about it with you, I promise. Time-travelling, after all, is a brain teaser.

Among the Missing by Morag Joss: I am probably just as surprised as anyone to find this on my list. The novel's cover suggests... I don't know what it suggests, actually, but it proves to be something other than what you'd think. A probing, intellectual exploration of the emotional turmoil that comes from a collapsed bridge, and what it means to be the one missing, the one left behind, and the one who finds excitement in the terror. This story has stayed with me for months -- hence the inclusion on the top 2011 reads. Because, as I've always said, the kind of book that lingers past its final page is the kind of book worth reading.

Enough About Love by Herve le Tellier: I guess I had a French thing going on this year. Who knew? Le Tellier's book is beautiful, gripping, and, as with so many others on this list, unforgettable. Enough About Love is a very French novel about the power of love, and fidelity, and what it means to fall out of love, and infidelity. Complex but never complicated. Not uplifting, but not quite depressing. Just... thought-provoking.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: This one has caught a lot of flack from other reviewers (and a lot of praise, too!), but I can't help but include it here. Yes, the plot is a bit slow, and there were times when I questioned the development of the characters. But Morgenstern's perfectly captured world, of a circus, of magic, of love, of mystery, is inescapable, and I'm a sucker for description, and imagery, and magic, magic, magic. Done well, that is, which it is here.

Christmas Spirit

2011-12-13T08:44:00.000-05:00

"It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death." - A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Paper or...?

2011-12-11T08:05:00.001-05:00

At the grocery store, or at my grocery store at least, they have stopped asking me if I prefer paper or plastic. We default to plastic unless I remember to say something before the groceries start their interminable beep, beep, beep across the register. I never remember.

Which is really too bad, because I do prefer paper. While plastic grocery bags are good for one thing (bagging kitty litter), paper grocery bags are multi-functional. And recyclable. In the world of groceries, as in so many other places, paper is just... better. And yet we fail to give it its due.

Take planners as another example. The most 21st-century of us can decide between our do-it-all, know-it-all phones for calendar purposes, or our tablets (I don't actually have one of those), or our computers. Most computers come with some kind of calendar program, and if not, there is always the all-knowing, all-seeing Google.

I have both a know-it-all phone (which I like) and an all-knowing Google account (which I love), but I am successful in using neither to keep track of my life. When I finally upgraded to my current phone from my dumbphone, I decided to make an effort to consolidate: I stopped carrying around my annual Moleskine planner. I always had the double-spread weekly view, with one page showing the days of the week and the other a blank lined page for my listmaking activities. Now I have iCal. And Evernote. I have synced my work calendar with my personal calendar (a depressing thought, actually), and my work to-dos have their own notebook within the Evernote app, while my personal to-dos have yet another, and so on.

And I hate it. I have been doing this for over six months because this is the generation we live in, this generation of consolidating, of tools that can do anything and everything, of combining our work lives and our personal lives. But I cannot catalog my life on a screen. I cannot relate to it, I do not complete my lists, and I never check for appointments before making a new one.

I am now actively searching for a new paper planner for 2012, one in which I can scribble notes to myself, and make weekend honey-do lists, and keep a copy of my 26 by 26 list on hand. I will continue to use my smartphone for work, where I live in a world of technology and ever-changing schedules, calendars, and due dates, but for me, and my own life, I will remain on paper until they stop printing paper planners.

My To-Read List Is Mocking Me

2011-12-09T12:45:00.001-05:00

I own hundreds of books.

On top of that, there are hundreds -- or actually, probably thousands -- of books I want to read. Goodreads alone tells me that I have marked nearly 300 titles as to-read, and I'm not a particularly thorough user of this to-read functionality. Plus what about the 189 books I have read and reviewed on Goodreads that I might want to re-read? And what about the hundreds of books I have read and not reviewed on Goodreads (that happens, too) that I might want to re-read?

I could do extensive math problems to prove that I will never be able to read them all. If I read fifty books a year, and live for another 50 years (I hope), that means I have another 2,500 books in my lifetime. If I stop adding to my to-read list right this very instant, I might stand a shot of finishing them all. Maybe. Possibly. But probably not.

I'm sure you can relate. This is the classic conundrum of bookworms everywhere: there are so very many books, and such precious little time.

I could, theoretically, try to slow the growth of my to-read list to a point where it is more in line with my actual reading speed. I could be choosier about my books. I could commit to not adding a new book to my collection until I have read an existing one in it (actually, I kind of like that idea). But I don't. I continue to see books around me, whether it be on blogs, in print, or on shelves of bookstores, libraries, and others' houses, and I continue to add to the non-existent list.

Take, for example, Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It. I'd really like to read this book. So much so that I checked it out from the library. And renewed it three times. And returned it. And then checked it out again. And renewed it. And returned it. But I never actually read it. The same, or similar, can be said of Understanding Comics. The Art of Fielding has been mocking me on my shelf since its release. So has Marilyn Robinson's Home -- which came out in 2008.

I have grand ideals of reading more, reading wider, reading broader. Reading current events, so that I understand what the hell is happening in this crazy, mixed up, bizarre-o world. Reading books about happiness, and slowing down, and living fully, so that I can make sense of this crazy, mixed up, bizarre-o world. Reading fiction that takes me to a place I've never been. Or a place I'd never even have imagined. Or a new time period. Or all of the above.

I keep expanding my list against all odds because I believe in the power of books to help me understand, cope with, and explore the world. To enrich my life, and to make me see things differently. Perhaps even better. Even the un-read books that grace my shelves are a part of this, reminding me every day of the possibilities that surround me.

Audiobook Review: The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories, by Don DeLillo

2011-12-07T12:36:00.001-05:00

You know those times when you're craving the literary high-life, but lack the ability to commit to something as dense as War and Peace? The days that you want some thought-provoking, snobbish sounding literature to move you, but you don't have the time - or the attention span - to tackle something too daunting? I find that this is where short story collections fit the bill, and Don DeLillo's first collection, The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories, is no exception.

All nine of DeLillo's stories, written between 1979 and 2011, take everyday events and reveal the unsettling sense of dread that lines even the most mundane of actions. In "Creation," a couple heads to the airport to catch a flight home from the West Indies, only to find that they did not check in often enough, their plane is oversold, no seats until the next day, must stay another night and wait for the next flight out. It is a simple case of the agony of long-distance travel, and all of the hassles of flying, but in DeLillo's hands, this morphs into an exotic, neverending saga of abandonment and uncertainty. In "The Ivory Acrobat," a woman must struggle with the anxieties of everyday in a Greece riddled with earthquakes and aftershocks. What does it matter what we eat for breakfast if our entire kitchen may fail to exist at the end of the day? What power do we have to stop Mother Nature?

This underlying theme of dread and anxiety does not make for particularly uplifting reading (or, in the case of the audiobook, listening), but DeLillo's fine writing coupled with superb narration by a cast of voices is gripping in a way that won't let you stop once you start. DeLillo captures the world around us - or the imagined world of our possible futures - with such precision and detail that it is impossible not to believe him, or his narrators, and think about how our own lives might look when cast under such a detailed eye. What anxieties run through our everyday that seem mundane, but truly impact the outcome of each of our days? Our months? Our entire lives?

The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories is a short collection, amounting to just six hours on audio, and easily digested, but has the one-two punch impact that short stories often carry. The collection functioned as the perfect dose of short story literature, an ideal introduction to DeLillo (though, having read of his other works, I might not be the best reader to make that particular call), and the kind of book that I believe will live with me for a while. And those, I find, are the best kinds.

---

A note on the audio: The narrators chosen for each of these nine stories vary from one to the next, but each proves perfect for their selections. The narration is clear and concise, and easy to understand. My only complaint would be the length of the tracks, which I believe is a trait of S&S audiobooks - I'm not into 20-minute tracks, which makes it hard to skip back if needed, or move a disc, say, from the car to the house without losing the place.

---

Note: Thanks to the publisher, Simon and Schuster Audio, for providing me with an audio copy of this title to review.

---

Book Review: War Room by Michael Holley

2011-11-28T08:28:00.000-05:00

In which I read my first ever sports book - and love it! This review was originally published in the November 18, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers . Reprinted here with permission. If you don't already receive bi-weekly issues of Shelf Awareness in your inbox, fix that by registering here.

Most football fans are aware that Bill Belichick does things a little differently--the head coach of the New England Patriots is known for his one-word press conferences and sleeveless hoodies. Behind this seemingly uncommunicative character, however, lies a man passionate about football and the art of team-building. In War Room, sportswriter Michael Holley (Patriot Reign) gives readers a glimpse of his character and the legacy he has begun to create.

As early as 1991, while working with the Cleveland Browns, Belichick had a revolutionary vision for scouting players. As he advanced in his career, he refined a system of scouting and drafting unlike any other, aided by two young protégés, Thomas Dimitroff and Scott Pioli (now head coaches of the Atlanta Falcons and Kansas City Chiefs, respectively). War Room explores the details of that scouting system, as well as the lives, relationships and careers of the three men, all of whom live and breathe football, football, football.

Though War Room tends to be overburdened by facts, names and dates that can prove challenging to a novice football fan, the passion for the sport evident in Holley's writing, mirroring that of his subjects, is a saving grace. In understanding the heart of the game--the team, and the art of building it--fans at every level of intensity will come to appreciate the careful thought and execution it takes to create the teams we root for year after year. And next year, we’ll all have a bit more strategy for our fantasy drafts.

Give Bookish Thanks

2011-11-22T07:58:00.000-05:00

This year, I am thankful for our bookish community. For finding a place online -- or rather, several places -- that share in my love for books, reading, and the printed word. I am thankful that there are teams of intelligent, passionate people who aim to make the world of the printed word jive with the era of the backlit screen.

I am thankful there are people who are able to dedicate themselves full-time to these tasks of sharing and loving and promoting books, whether it be in a publishing house, at a bookstore, or by creating a small company that promotes books online. I am thankful that there are others who are willing to spend their free time, their me-time, doing the same. I am thankful that through the combined efforts of authors, editors, agents, publishers, bookstores, bloggers, publications, and so many more, I have a house full of books waiting to be read, a world of stories I have yet to discover.

I don't care who makes money doing this, or who complains too much, or who reads what books when, or who gets reviewed where. What I really care about is that we are all passionate about one thing: books. And together, we can be thankful that that passion still exists, in all forms, despite all of the things that threaten it.

---

I'm off visiting family, stuffing my face, and sticking my nose in a book or six for the rest of the week. Back on Monday. Safe travels, and happy Thanksgiving!

Book Review: Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, by Ben Loory

2011-11-21T19:39:00.001-05:00

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is one of those books that hits you like a tube of Pringles. You're not even sure that this is really what you're in the mood for, but then you find yourself dipping in for more, and then still more... until suddenly there is nothing left.

Ben Loory is a master of his craft, although his craft is somewhat undefinable. The stories here, ranging from a mere page long to a whopping ten at most, are a collection of the terrific, the fantastic, the horrific, and the mundane, assembling themselves into a truly addictive collection of modern-day fairy tales. Loory has an imagination that must be the size of the Atlantic Ocean that proves a delight to explore. Though brief, these stories pack punch, leaving me with a tingling spine and a sense of adventure and an indescribable inability to stop reading.

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is a delight, though I am finding now that it is hard to explain why, exactly. In many ways, that is the charm of this collection--its refusal to fit into any one genre, to mold to any one set of expectations. If you find yourself with an afternoon to spare, suffice it to say that Loory will make it worth your while.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
Estella's Revenge
Book Banter

---

Many thanks to Penguin for providing a digital galley of this book for review via NetGalley.

---

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day | Ben Loory | Penguin | 9780143119500 | $15.00 Trade Paper | 224 pages | July 2011 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

Reading with Author Blinders On

2011-11-20T09:52:00.001-05:00

Remember that kerfuffle last summer over certain female authors complaining that certain male authors got more publicity than them? Or, in fact, that in major news outlets, male authors are consistently favored over female authors? Remember last week when said kerfuffle made a re-appearance?

I'm not out to voice opinions on one side of said kerfuffle or the other. I think both sides have merit, and I think one of the beauties of social media and the blogging network is that everyone gets to have--and voice--an opinion. (I do wish we could all play nice, however, as said kerfuffle sometimes gets hackles raised.)

While I am no major literary news outlet, said kerfuffle got me thinking about my own reading preferences. Do I read more male authors than female? I'd never really thought about it. Turns out I do: in 2011, I read 43 books written by male authors compared to just 29 written by females.

In order to know that number, I had to create the worlds nerdiest spreadsheet to tally my reading statistics. (In case you're interested, I also read 49 print books and 3 e-books and listened to 21 audio. I started 8 books that I did not finish, and 7 of the books on my list this year were re-reads.) The fact that I had to look at cold hard statistics in order to glean the fact that I trend toward male writers says one very important thing to me: that these decisions were not conscious. At no point in time did I stop and think to myself, "That book is written by a female. I should read it." (Or the inverse, of course).

Naturally, when I read a book like Gilead, which was written by a woman but narrated by an aging male priest, or Letter to My Daughter, which was written by a man but narrated by a mother, I often comment on the skill of the author in pulling off so completely a voice so foreign from their own experience. But these are observations on completed books, rather than deciding factors in what to read.

I select books by the cover, by word-of-mouth, by subject, by back-cover blurb, by captivation of the first chapter, or by opening the book at random and selecting 10 pages to read. I read books that are recommended to me, whether by fellow bloggers or by friends and family, books that are given to me, and books that are loaned to me. Rarely, if ever, does the gender of an author play a part in my decision to read a book. I think about my next read in terms of the language it will present, the subjects and themes I will encounter, the setting and the experience of reading it. These things, of course, are shaped by the author, but examples like Gilead and Letter to My Daughter are written proof that the author's gender and own life experience are not limitations for a book. The book, ultimately, stands on its own, apart from the author that created it.

I know I may be alone in this sentiment. I know there are bloggers out there who make a point to read more female writers, or non-white authors, or authors who are not from the United States, in order to keep their reading well-rounded. I commend that dedication. Really, with such a wealth of literature to choose from, selecting books by a set of specifications is challenging (just look at the long list of books that didn't meet my 2011 reading goals and you'll see what I mean).

So what about you? Do you read based on author attributes? Do you have reading goals or participate in challenges to meet these goals? Am I the only one who reads with author blinders on, or are there others out there like me?

With that, I'm off to spend Sunday morning with a new book. I haven't yet decided what it will be, but I will be picking based on the book, not the gender of the author that wrote it. At least consciously--I'll leave it to Freud to analyze what all of this says about my subconscious.

Audiobook Review: The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

2011-11-16T18:18:00.001-05:00

When I was eleven years old, I received Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for Christmas. Since then, I have been waiting for an owl to perch on my windowsill and deliver an invitation to attend school at Hogwarts. Even after I was long past the age of Hogwarts invitations, a piece of me still held on to the hope that one day I would discover that behind the veil of the "real" world, there lay a world of magic and wizards and spells and wonder.

Not since I was eleven have I read a book that has had me longing to enter the world about which I read, yearning for some tip, some clue, some hint of a world of secret things and objects of amazement lying in wait. Until The Night Circus.

The circus arrives without warning.

No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.

But it is not open for business. Not just yet.

These opening lines of Erin Morgenstern's debut novel set the tone for the entire book, inviting a sense of wonder, mystery, and an element of whimsy onto the page from the outset. Jim Dale's narration of the passage will send chills down any magic-lovers spine, and leave listeners tingling for more.

As the story develops, we learn that the circus itself is the public stage for a challenge between two magicians, both of whom display wonder after wonder to a wide-eyed and disbelieving audience. Here, then, is a place where magic is on display for all to see, but in a world where magic is believed to be the stuff of myth, the displays are thought to be nothing more than illusion, put on for the entertainment of a paying crowd.

What are the consequences of such actions? What happens when the illusion of illusions can no longer be maintained? What price must one pay to win? To love?

The Night Circus has not been as well-loved by all as it was by me, and perhaps that is because I listened to, rather than read, the story. Because in fact, it is not about the story. Just as the circus is a mere backdrop against which two illusionists can throw their challenge, the book is a backdrop against which Morgenstern can exercise her power of descriptive language and powerful imagery. It is a means for whisking readers (or listeners) away from one world and into one similar but slightly altered, carried along by a desire to discover this world rather than merely find out what happens in it.

Some of this reviewer disappointment I attribute to that dreaded hype machine, which has made this wonderful little skirmish of a book sound like something it is not. Though there are spells and duels and romance and love triangles and even a semi-evil magician, this is not what makes The Night Circus special. No, instead its power lies in the fact that is a book of setting and description, touched with a small but helpful dose of plotlines, wrapped in striped paper and tied with a flourishing black-and-white bow.

Set aside any expectations but that you will discover something new, and The Night Circus will deliver. Not surprisingly, Dale proves to be the perfect narrator for the novel, bringing Morgenstern's elegantly imagined world to life, coloring characters with unique voices, tones, and attitudes, enveloping listeners in the melodic sounds of whimsy.

And for those of you who have always had an inkling that Harry Potter really could be real, prepare to find yourself waiting for the sudden appearance of black-and-white tents, an elaborate clock, and a faint breeze carrying the hint of caramel on its back.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
Jenny's Books
books i done read
Literary Musings

---

Thanks to the Anne Arundel County Public Library, as always, for continuing to stock amazing - and current! - audiobooks for my listening pleasure.

---

The Night Circus | Erin Morgenstern, nar. Jim Dale | Random House Audio | 978-0-307-93890-9 | $45.00 Compact Disc | 11 discs, 13 hrs 39 min | September 2011 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

Back to the Classics Challenge

2011-11-12T13:43:00.001-05:00

This year, one of my reading goals was to read more classics. Of the 73 books I have read to date, 5 were classics. Not the best showing, really. The problem is not that I do not like classics, just that I don't seem to pick them up. But I'm going to do better next year, and in order to motivate myself, I've signed up for my first official challenge - Back to the Classics. Here's what I'm thinking of reading:

Any 19th Century Classic:
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Any 20th Century Classic
Anything by Fitzgerald
Anything by Hemingway (also part of my 26 by 26 list)
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Reread a classic of your choice
Dubliners by James Joyce
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene
The Aeneid by Virgil

A Classic Play
Shakespeare. Shakespeare. Shakespeare.

Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arther Conan Doyle

Classic Romance
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Read a Classic that has been translated from its original language to your language
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (also on my 26 by 26 list)
The Illiad or The Odyssey by Homer

Classic Award Winner
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (Pulitzer, 1947)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Pulitzer, 1940)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre (Edgar, 1965)

Read a Classic set in a Country that you will not visit during your lifetime
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

I'm sure my list will change as the year progresses, but at least it's a starting point. As an added bonus, I own the majority of these titles already, so I can at least work on my continued to goal to read books I already own.

What classics are you hoping to read next year? Will you participate in a challenge to reach your goal?

A Bookish Journal to a Future Reader

2011-11-09T12:46:00.001-05:00

Several weeks ago, Greg at The New Dork Review of Books posted about his aversion to e-books (and Greg, if you're reading this, my apologies in advance for summarizing your rationale in less eloquent terms than you did). His reasons, however, were not the standard protestations of needing the physical feel of a book in hand, the smell of the binding, etc, etc (although I think I could safely argue that most bookworms harbor some love for the look and feel and smell of a physical book).

No, instead of the standard reasons, Greg did not want to give up his paper books because of the "book memory phenomenon" associated with them, the recollection of the time and place in which they were read that was associated with their physical presence on their shelves.

I feel the same way about my bookshelves (though I've never articulated it as well), and this is one of the reasons that my living room is not decorated with art, but instead several teetering versions of the infamous Billy Bookcase from IKEA. As I sit in my spectacularly recovered reading chair, I can scan the titles on the shelves, thinking of the last time I read them, or when I purchased them, or who gifted them to me, or kick myself for not reading them yet, whatever the case may be.

But my love of paper books as memory vessels goes even further than that, I think, due in large part to the fact that I write in my books. Yes, that divisive subject again. I'm not going to get into the whys of my writing in books - I've done that already - but suffice it to say that I do. (I also dog-ear the pages, if you're wondering. Top corners and bottom corners.) What I'm left with is a cohesive unit that contains both the content of the book (duh) and my experience with it. I've underlined the passages I like, circled words I didn't understand, written definitions and thoughts in the margins. I've most likely broken the binding (page 141-142 fell out of my copy of The Elegance of the Hedgehog this weekend), and there's even a risk of coffee stains on the pages (or tea, as the case may be).

What I love most about this process is not the cathartic nature of underlining or commenting as I read, though I do love that. It is that when I re-read, or turn back to a passage, a page, a sentence, I am recalling the exact experience I had when I last read the book. I am essentially reading a journal of my reading experience, overlayed atop the reading material itself.

Most often, when I re-read a book, or dip back into it for whatever reason, I find that what stands out to me has changed. Perhaps it is because I know the outcome, and therefore events take on a new meaning. Or perhaps it is because it has been several years and my perspective has changed. Or maybe it's as simple as forgetting the definition of a word I used to know (or thought I knew).

My bookcases, then, are physical reminders of a place, a setting, a story, as they are to Greg. But my books are journal entries to a future reader, especially when that future reader is myself. I have an e-reader, and I will read books on it, but the experience of revisiting my book experience will never be the same in e-ink.

Audiobook Review: The Privileges by Jonathan Dee

2011-11-08T13:20:00.004-05:00

Occupy. Occupy. Occupy. Otherwise understood as a case of them vs. us. The top 1% vs. the 99%. The elite vs. the rest of us. The rich vs. the poor. Hell, the rich vs. the middle class, the upper middle class, and even the upper-upper middle class. These are the headlines that dominate our newscasts, our blogs, our magazines, our newspapers. However you feel about the protests themselves, or the motivations behind them, the undeniable fact that threads through every debate around the Occupiers is the fact that the richest among us are getting richer. And richer. And still yet richer.

I look at the incomes of the top 1% - the very same incomes that have risen 275% since 1975 - and wonder how on earth one person, or even one family, could spend so much money in a lifetime. The Kardashian wedding comes to mind: a showcase in absurd overspending. But don't you wonder? What is it like to live with no concept of excess? With no concern for overspending? With no fear of debt, or loss, or sacrifice? How does privilege change a person? For better? For worse? And if the 99% ask these questions of the 1%, what questions do the 1% ask of the 99%?

These are the kinds of questions addressed by Jonathan Dee's The Privileges. Although the story is in no way associated with the Occupy movements, the 1%, or any other current events, it proved a timely selection in a world of economic headline.

The Privileges is an aptly-named novel about a wealthy family in Manhattan. Adam and Cynthia Morey are a pure exemplification of the American Dream. Married at 22, fresh out of college, they return from their honeymoon expecting their first child. Adam works for a hedge fund, Cynthia a fashion magazine. Adam gets a raise. Cynthia stops working to raise children. They settle into modest apartment in Manhattan, then move to a larger one when their children are too old to share a bedroom. Adam deals in insider trading, Cynthia questions her purpose in life. They move to a townhouse. Adam gets a 6-figure bonus, Cynthia gets involved in charities. The kids go to prep school, experiment with sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, and spend their parents' money.

Throughout it all, Adam and Cynthia remain fiercely loyal to one another, basing every action on its ability to make the other, or their family, happier than in the past. And page by page, we watch each member of the family, and even the family as a whole, struggle to define what life is all about if it is not about overcoming challenges - for in truth, they really don't have challenges to overcome in their little bubble of a world. Is it about leaving a mark on the world? Helping others? Making more money? Finding Art? And if they are such a wonderfully perfect family, led by a couple so wildly in love, why do they seem so lonely?

The prose throughout Dee's novel is stark but emotional, captured perfectly by David Aaron Baker's narration in the audio version. Though several reviews have complained of the static nature of the storyline, or the flatness of the characters, and these complaints are not entirely unfounded, I found that this bare-bones approach to storytelling actually complimented Dee's novel. Dee is not out to judge his characters, or even make you like them. He's just telling you about them, in all their selfish, wealthy glory. The story is, in fact, really not much of a story at all, moving to no specific culmination or conclusion, but instead a profile of a family, flawed and perhaps unlikeable, but ultimately understandable.

The Privileges proves to be a treatise on how wealth and greed and power and love and loyalty and determination can shape not only our own lives, but the lives of those around us. It is melancholy, bitter, but ultimately not depressing. It is an attempt to answer the question of how to leave a mark on the world, how to keep from disappearing, how to make an impact.

Like Gossip Girl, the Kardashian wedding, and the 1% headlines, The Privileges will prove captivating to anyone slightly obsessed with the world of the wealthy (and don't deny it, you know you're intrigued). Though the characters here may not be likeable or relatable, the novel itself gripping and insightful, and, given the backdrop of Occupy protests, jobs acts, and economic reform, incredibly timely.

As a final thought: Those turned off by the episodic nature of the plot should at least invest in the first chapter (focusing solely on Adam and Cynthia's wedding), which could easily stand alone as a short story.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
The Book Case
Bookpage
Books on the Nightstand

---

Note: Many thanks to the Anne Arundel County Public Library for (as always) keeping an excellent stock of audiobooks on hand for my browsing pleasure. You guys rock.

Book Review: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

2011-11-01T13:54:00.002-04:00

Or, the post in which I admit that I read a YA-bestseller that wasn't Harry Potter and actually liked it.

You'd have to have been living under a rock for the last few years to not have heard of The Hunger Games trilogy at this point. It's so ubiquitous that it is even making appearances in the #Occupy movements. At least it did this one time, at any rate. Because it is so everywhere-and-in-your-face-and-read-me-read-me-read-me, I did the only natural thing a book snob like myself could do: I avoided it.

That is, until a good friend and fellow blogger sent me a copy and insisted - yes, insisted - that despite all the things I thought I knew about it, I had to read it. She coupled this argument with the fact that I would be able to finish it in an afternoon. Figuring I had nothing to lose but a few hours and some of my pride at insisting that it wasn't for me, I took a stab.

What I found between the unsuspecting pages of The Hunger Games was a fast-paced, imaginative and creepy in that this-is-all-too-possible kind of way story. I won't go into the details of the plot, because in all likelihood, anyone reading this has already read the whole trilogy anyway, but for those who don't know the premise:

In the country of Panem, which sounds shockingly like a country that used to be known as the United States, The Capitol dominates. And, somewhat inevitably, there is an attempted revolution. And also inevitably, in a world of dictatorships and dominatrixes, The Capitol thinks up a twisted punishment for this revolt, which doubles as a constant reminder of their power and control: The Hunger Games. Each district must send one boy and one girl to compete in the games each year, in which children are pitted against a series of man-made challenges - and each other - in a fight to survive. Last child standing wins. All the others... well, they are dead, and thereby have not won.

See? I told you it was twisted. I can understand some of the parental objections over the book (although I maintain that attempting to ban a book because it gave your child nightmares is just outrageous), for there is some heavy stuff in there: the importance of family, the concept of sacrifice, the making and breaking of allies. And death. There's all that stuff about death.

Ultimately, Collins' imagination is the savior of the book -- her writing is not. Conversations feel stilted and forced, and characters develop unevenly at best. And don't get me started on the sentences that aren't really sentences.

Despite all of the flaws, though, I'll go back for seconds and thirds with the next two books in the trilogy. Collins has succeeded in creating a masterful world, a world of centralized power and dictator-ship like rule that is all too possible to consider, and a world to which I'd like to return. I'm eager to find out what happens of the whirlwind media storm created by the Games featured in this first installment, and I really do want to know what happens to certain characters-who-shall-not-be-named-but-if-you-read-the-book-you-know-what-I'm-talking-about.

So. To sum up. Maybe not the most well-written book I've read, and certainly not my favorite of ever or even the year, but I've got a soft spot for imagined futures (see my recent review Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood), and The Hunger Games fit right in there. Thanks to Emily for the recommendation, the insistence, and then going so far as to send me my own copy of the book -- and for proving that sometimes I don't know what's best for my own reading tastes.

---

It seems I'm on a dystopian, re-imagined future kind of kick. What should I look for next?

---

Thoughts from other bookworms (sharing the same I-read-this-and-SURPRISE!-I-actually-kinda-liked-it feelings):
another cookie crumbles
Dead White Guys
Frederation

---

You might also like:
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
The Hunger Games Companion by Lois Gresh

To My Best Friend

2011-10-30T12:10:00.000-04:00

One year ago today, I put on the most fabulous dress of my life and walked down the aisle to look into the eyes of my best friend and say "I do." We piled books on tables under bunches of blue flowers and ate rockfish covered in crab meat and danced until our feet hurt and drank champagne until we were giggly with exhaustion. We've spent a year building a life together, and a home, and quite the collection of books. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I love you, darling. Happy Anniversary, and here's to many more.

A New Reading Nook

2011-10-22T09:10:00.001-04:00

Last week, I posted about my grandmother's chair and the crazy, bizarre, meant-to-be-path that it took to get to my living room. This week, the chair came back to me again, reborn this time as a piece that not only matches my living room (which, surprisingly, does not contain anything pink) and almost looks like a piece out of the Pottery Barn catalog:

Before: Pink and Ugly and Very Cozy

After: Khaki and Pretty and Still Very Cozy

I'm looking for many more years spent curled up here with a book. Thanks, Grandma. Love you.

Audiobook Review: North River, by Pete Hamill

2011-10-20T08:11:00.000-04:00

I made my first foray into Pete Hamill's work nearly ten years ago (a number that makes me feel old, as young as I am), when I picked up Forever at a local bookstore. I knew nothing about it at the time, beyond the fact that it had a striking cover and was set in New York - a city that I was moving to just months later. I did not know that Hamill is known for writing love letters to his home city into each of his novels, or that Forever would take me through Manhattan's history, from the Dutch to September 11. I certainly did not know that ten years later, it would still be a book that resonated with me.

But that is why we read, is it not? To find the gems that call to us from their bookstore shelves? To find the perfect cover with the perfect subject for this perfect moment? It's all about timing.

Perhaps the timing issue is why it has taken me nearly ten years to return to Pete Hamill, despite my infatuation with Forever. Now that I have spent more than a year away from the city that I called home for all of my college and post-grad years, I find myself returning to the literature of New York -- of which there is no scarce amount. Hamill's North River is just such a novel, this time taking readers (or listeners, as the case may be) back to the grips of the Great Depression in New York.

Dr. James Delaney is our compassionate and kindly and downright likeable protagonist, spending his days caring for the sick of Manhattan's West Village--regardless of their ability to pay him for his services. At home, however, he is both lonely and alone, left by both his wife, who disappeared over two years earlier, and his daughter, who ran off to Mexico with her exotic husband and infant son. When that grandson, now three years old, shows up on his doorstep one snowy night, Delaney's world shifts -- he is no longer alone, he is no longer the center of his own universe, and he must once again learn to show compassion, and even love, to those close to him as well as to his neighbors.

It is this subtle shift in Delaney's character that makes North River as compelling as it is. As Delaney faces down mob bosses, toddler's tantrums and the haunting memories of his own past, the hard core he has built up in himself begins to melt, replaced by a new kind of core, this time built on a new definition of family. These subtleties are perfectly captured by Henry Strozier's smooth and understated narrative, which is at once plodding and mesmerizing. Though North River is not told in the first person, Strozier's narration is perfectly representative of Delaney's even-keeled temperament, his thawing, and his deep-seated compassion for those around him, regardless of the costs to himself.

And as with all of Hamill's novels, North River could not exist without its setting. Delaney interacts with New York as though she was a character herself, and Hamill captures the intricate details of a New York that he knows and loves in a time period in which he can only imagine. Hamill's is the story of the winter winds whipping from the East River into the tenement buildings of SoHo, and the tale of the small but quaint houses that still decorate the twisting, turning streets of the West Village. It is the story of struggling immigrants in 1930s Manhattan, of brothels and whores, of mobs and gangsters and boozing and all of the dangers and thrills and wonders of a city like New York. Those looking for historical fiction will be satisified; those looking for a tale of families and what it is to be loved will be pleased; and those with any interest in the history of New York will be thrilled.

---

You might also like:
Forever by Pete Hamill
Tabloid City by Pete Hamill
Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

---

Many thanks to the Anne Arundel County Public Library for (as always) having such an excellent collection of audiobooks for my perusal and reading pleasure.

Do you Goodreads?

2011-10-18T08:27:00.000-04:00

After a few months hibernating from the interwebs, I'm back with a gusto. And suddenly I find that all these sites I thought I knew... well, turns out I don't know them so well after all. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. Or maybe every bookish site I know decided to launch and/or redesign itself in the weeks I was hibernating. Even Blogger looks different now than it did before (which is a good thing, Googs!).

So now Goodreads, which I have always loved, is more dynamic than ever. Suddenly I am seeing regular updates of what my friends are reading. And Goodreads is making recommendations for me based on books I've read (because that's just what I needed - more books to read). And I can see my bookish stats. I've rated 158 books so far, and I'm currently reading 6 (6! I hadn't realized I was multitasking so badly).

So, do you Goodreads? If so, have I just been missing all of this for years, or is this new? Are we friends?

Inheriting My Reading Spot: A Saga of an Armchair

2011-10-12T13:29:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, my dad's cat ran away. Because the cat had a tendency to do this and not return for days and days, we trekked through the neighborhood with flashlights in hand, making absurd mewing noises and shaking bags of treats.

When this did not turn up one Very Sly and Sneaky Cat That I Thought Deserved to Spend the Night Out in the Cold, we checked our neighbors houses. At one of these houses, a bundle of items for Purple Heart stood perched on the stoop, awaiting the next-day arrival of the truck. Amidst this bundle was buried one Very Ugly and Very Pink but Very Cozy Looking Armchair.

This wasn't just any armchair. This was my grandmother's armchair. Why, you ask, were my neighbors donating a family heirloom to the Purple Heart? See, years earlier, they had bought it from a Goodwill nearly 20 miles away, intending to have it recovered in not-so-ugly fabric. When the re-upholstery proved to be too expensive, it sat in their basement. When no one bought it at a yardsale, it was destined for Purple Heart.

And how did it end up in a Goodwill in the first place? My Very Helpful Uncle donated it, along with the rest of my grandmother's furniture, after she died. Little did he know that the chair, no matter how very ugly and very pink it was, was well-loved. My grandmother had sat in the overstuffed armchair everyday for as long as I could remember - first when she lived with us, then when she moved with my dad when my parents split up, and then when she moved in with my uncle later on. It was her center, her spot, her comfort zone. It gave her a wingback to lean on while she cried through Days of Our Lives, and it held her in its comfy cushions while she read romance novels plastered with Fabio covers.

It broke my heart when we lost that chair. Luckily, though, the chair never lost us.

Three families, two houses, and several NYC apartments later, the chair has returned to its rightful home in my living room. It has become my rock, my nook, my reading center. And until a week ago, it was still Very Pink and Very Ugly (though also Very Cozy):

Now it has left again, this for a stint in a reupholstery shop. The chair will now be Very Khaki Colored and Very Plain and Still Very Cozy. It will always be my grandmother's chair, but in recovering it, it will continue in its journey to become my chair, too. The upcoming chairless weeks will be a trial. I'm not sure where to rest my feet when settling in with a new book. My library books have no cushion creases in which to lose themselves. My reading lamp shines on an empty corner. But when the chair returns to me, as I know it always will, I will curl into its oversized arms, open a book on my lap, and read with thoughts of my grandmother to keep me company.

Book Review: The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

2011-10-05T08:04:00.000-04:00

Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind has been called the best next read for fans of Game of Thrones*; a Harry Potter for grown-ups; this generation's Lord of the Rings; and the default go-to when an avid fantasy reader finishes (or rather, runs out of) Wheel of Time books to read.

I get it. We can't read modern fantasy novels without comparing them to the lates and greats of our childhood (or adult) reading. Tolkien owns the world of sorcery. Harry Potter owns the world of magical universities. But why must every new(-ish) fantasy novel be the "new" this or the "new" that? Why can't these novels stand on their own, amidst their predecessors, their betters, and their lessers, as novels of other genres do? Am I just imagining that this affliction strikes at my precious fantasy novels more viciously than in other genres?

Ultimately, though, I believe calling The Name of the Wind "the next Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter for grown-ups" only serves to set the book up for failure, because it is neither of those things. It is its own novel, an excellent addition to the fantasy genre, and a downright good book. Plus, it's full of tavern brawls and bawdy songs and clever schemes and awesome legendary evildoers. So there.

The Name of the Wind is the first book of The Kingkiller Chronicle, a trilogy in which the legendary Kvothe the Bloodless recalls his story for a traveling scribe. The book is long, coming in at 650+ pages, and the story takes enough twists and turns that it would only do it a disservice to try to capture the plot for you. Suffice it to say that Kvothe, orphaned son of two traveling troupe-members, finds himself alone in a world that he no longer understands, a world in which he owns nothing more than the clothes on his back and the knowledge that the stuff of childhood tales is walking the streets.

The lonely young boy struggles with poverty, homelessness, hunger, but a thirst for knowledge keeps him moving forward. In his journey to understand where mythology ends and history begins, Kvothe churns up secrets long left dormant, making a few fast friends and a more than a few staunch enemies along the way. He also turns himself into a legend. No big deal for a teenager.

Rothfuss was smart to construct this novel as he has, with Kvothe narrating his own tale. The structure allows for present-day interludes within the narration of the past, and in these, Rothfuss reveals crucial details well before their occurrence in the storyline. The heightened drama only adds to Kvothe's re-telling, as the novel is as much a discovery of a new story as it is a means of filling in the blanks, understanding how the Kvothe of the story becomes the Kvothe of the storytelling.

Both Rothfuss and Kvothe show a profound love of stories and storytelling, in its many forms, and The Name of the Wind is the first of three novels that raise storytelling to a new height, with expertly crafted characters and the comprehensive world-building that is crucial to successful fantasy. While I won't sit here and compare the book to any other work of fantasy, I will say this: if you enjoy a good story and a solid adventure and a little myth and and a lot of magic, you'll enjoy this. But if you try to tell me Kvothe is the "new Harry Potter", expect to have a book thrown at your head.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

books i done read
Capricious Reader

---

The sequel to Name of the Wind is now out in hardcover and e-book: The Wise Man's Fear.

Let the Rioting Begin!

2011-10-04T09:30:00.000-04:00

I'm in love. I'm in love with a website. A new, collaborative website with a mind to collecting bookish news, stories, reviews, features, and articles. In short, a site in which the greatest minds of the book blogging world come together and do just what us bookish types do when you put us all together -- talk about books.

Book Riot officially launched yesterday (Happy Belated Birthday, Book Riot!) and is already booming with activity (both in articles and in comments). I can particularly recommend Greg's review of A Visit from the Goon Squad and the pitting of book blogger Rachel (a home between the pages) against the Amazon algorithm for a book recommendation.

Get rioting today -- check out Bookriot.com, or follow Book Riot on Twitter. Just don't be surprised when you find yourself sucked in to one witty, engaging article after the next. It's a veritable rabbithole of bookish goodies. Enjoy!

Pseudo-Review: A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

2011-10-03T07:11:00.000-04:00

Hemingway has always had a sort of magnetic force around him; he is an author that any literate person has heard of, and if you weren't required to read The Old Man and the Sea in school, consider yourself in the minority. Interestingly, I've found (through nothing more quantifiable than anecdotal research) that he is one of the few authors that people can actually recognize in a photo - and not just a photo on the dust jacket of one of his books. Known as much for his drinking habits as his lasting influence on modern literature, Hemingway is an icon of our time. And beyond the assigned reading of The Old Man and the Sea in middle school, he is an icon with which I am sadly unfamiliar.

In order to remedy this, I included on my list of 26 things to accomplish before my 26th birthday a challenge to read all of Hemingway's works -- from well-known fictions to treatise on bullfighting and everything in between. I began with A Moveable Feast, a collection of vignettes in which Hemingway writes of his time as a struggling writer in Paris in the 1920s. The stories combine to provide a profile what it was to be young and in love and hungry and happy in a foreign country. Hemingway recalls his encounters with other ex-pat writers of the time, his romance with Shakespeare and Co (the greatest bookstore of all time), and his touch-and-go relationship with his writing.

As an introduction to Hemingway, A Moveable Feast is an easy-to-digest glimpse as much into Hemingway's writing as into his life and experiences. It is a love song to a Paris we wish we could have experienced ourselves; a remembrance of his fellow writers, back when the times were good; and his nod to an important, formative, romantic period in his life. It is, in short, excellent.

What Is Important to You?

2011-10-02T12:12:00.000-04:00

Earlier this summer, I had a meet-and-greet type meeting with a new client, and on the way to the lunch, the CEO of my company warned me that this particular client contact liked to ask difficult questions on first meetings. The question she told me to be prepared to answer: What's important to you?

The question never came up at the meeting, but it also never really left the back corner of my mind where nagging, unanswered questions reside. How would I answer that? There are obvious answers, of course. My husband is important to me. My family. My friends. But these are givens, in my mind. If my husband was not important to me, he would not be my husband. And though the same can't truly be said of family, I don't think family is the kind of answer this question was meant to extract. Perhaps, because of the way I was raised, I can't imagine not listing family and friends at the top of the important-to-me list. And that's probably not fair, and not a valid assumption to make about others, but for the sake of argument, let's leave off significant others, family members, and friends.

What, then, is important to me?

The first thing that came to mind, naturally, was books. Reading them, sharing them, talking about them, collecting them. Smelling them, holding them, writing in them. Publishing them, editing them, thinking about them, analyzing them. Ensuring that they continue as a form of both education and entertainment well into the future, in whatever form they may take.

But then, I thought, what about the other things I do? I work in advertising, and try to stay on top of trends in marketing and communications. I am learning to cook - that is, to cook without panicking, pouting, and generally being dissatisfied with everything that comes out of my kitchen. I am also learning to sail (slowly, because I am apparently incapable of thinking in three dimensions). I recently flew an airplane, part of my 26 by 26 list, and that list is also important to me.

At the risk of sounding like a walking cliché, then, I would amend my gut-reaction statement from books to learning. Books, after all, are a natural extension of my innate curiosity. I read books to learn, to see things differently, or to understand inspiration. I obsessively look for better ways to organize myself, my life, and my to-do list in order to give myself time to do the life-expanding kinds of activities in which I want to spend the majority of my time. I want to learn to cook in order to be able to better understand and appreciate food. I made my list of 26 things in order to push myself to expand my horizons.

I've spent the summer reorganizing, resituating, and rethinking, and I'm diving into the fall with a re-ordered set of priorities, a set in which family and friends come first, my list of activities comes next, and work and organizing and household chores are (hopefully) structured in a way that support the priorities, rather than impede upon them. It's an ongoing experiment, and I am learning to adapt. I am young enough to think that I can find my path already, but also young enough to recognize that my answer to the question of what is important to me will continue to evolve.

Perhaps it's part of growing up. Perhaps there is a book or twenty that can help me answer the question.

The Most Accomodating Bookshelf Imaginable

2011-09-30T12:22:00.000-04:00

HOLY GUACAMOLE! If you are like me, and you organize your books by anything other than size and/or the day you put it on the shelf, these will be your new favorite bookshelves ever, because now it no longer matters if you have a book about sailboats whose author's name starts with an S and is oversized, because the oversized books will now fit on your rubber bookshelves. Oh yeah, I'm going to need those. Because god knows I don't have enough bookshelves in my house already.

via Gizmodo (via my lovely husband via Google+)

Audiobook Review: The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Attwood

2011-09-29T06:57:00.000-04:00

The best part about alternate reality or alternate future type books is the realness of them; a successful author will lure readers into a world that feels very much like an extension of our own, and then drop bricks on them. Having read only two of her works, The Handmaid's Tale and The Year of the Flood, I am prepared to declare Margaret Atwood a master of this world-creation, and highly recommend her any works.

That's the short of it. The long of it follows after the break.

[break]

With Year of the Flood, Atwood has imagined a post-plague world in which only a few humans survive, and must learn to fend for themselves in a land devoid of resources and overrun by mutant animals. But really, it's completely believable. Though the novel begins with the years after the flood, readers are quickly filled in on the events preceding it: the consolidation of corporations across the globe into a conglomeration known as the CorpSeCorps; the rise of "compounds," run by said CorpSeCorps, in which people lived with all resources provided to them; the privatization of the nation's armed forces, and then, the government; and the growth of pocket cells of street gangs, terrorists, pacifists, and religious cults.

Year of the Flood switches back and forth between two perspectives: Toby, a veteran Gardener, former victim of one of the most vicious gang leaders in town, and inveterate tough-gal, who finds herself quarantined in a ladies' spa after the plague; and Ren, a naive child of a Gardener convert whose lift is uprooted when she and her mother are returned to their compound, who is locked away in a high-end sex club with excellent benefits and plenty of prepackaged food to tide her over. Both find themselves survivors of the plague through luck and miracle, and are left in a friendless, lonely world of death and destruction.

Atwood has imagined a careful, calculating world that is a clear extension of our own; much like The Handmaid's Tale, which is also excellent, Year of the Flood suggests our destination, should we continue on the path we are on at the moment. In that, Atwood has succeeded in laying the groundwork for a captivating, engaging storyline.

And the storyline does not disappoint. As we come to know both Toby and Ren, both in their present state and in their individual histories, we learn of their differences, their strengths, their weaknesses. Though the Gardeners at first come off as cult-ish and didactic and slightly absurd -- and they are all of those things -- it is not difficult to understand how they came to be, or why people are continually drawn to them. As more and more characters crawl out of the woodwork - sometimes literally - readers are treated to the joy of experiencing human bonds, a kind of love and reliance that is most often depicted in literature only in immediate families.

In this land without families, then, Atwood suggests that there is an alternative. In a land without government, public programs, or really any social structure, there is an alternative. In a land without resources, there is an alternative. These alternatives lie in banding together, and in redefining our sense of community, family and independence, but they do exist.

A note on the audio: The audio version of Year of the Flood is narrated by two women, Bernadette Dunn and Katie MacNichol, capturing the alternating voices of Ren and Toby, who each narrate their own tale. Interspersed between the narrative are sermons from the Gardeners, read by Adam One (Mark Bramhall) and accompanied by a musical score written to represent the hymns of the Gardeners. The sermons and music are slightly long-winded at times, but then, most of us have sat through a religious ceremony of some sort in our lives, and I'll be the first to raise my hand and admit that my mind has wandered. Ultimately, then, the musical score adds little to the story, but the careful variety of voices - all of whom recreate their characters perfectly - only add to Atwood's already captivating and engrossing story.

A note on the prequel: Like Ben at Learning to Read (link below), I did not realize before embarking on Year of the Flood that it was in fact a sequel to Atwood's earlier novel, Oryx and Crake. The Gardeners, mentioned in passing in Oryx and Crake, take on the central role of the sequel; Oryx and Crake are both characters mentioned in passing in Year of the Flood who apparently form the central storyline of Oryx and Crake. Although I've read them out of order, I am intrigued enough by both the concept and the set-up of the pair and by Atwood's imagination to go back and visit Oryx and Crake.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

Learning to Read
Page Turners
Literary Musings

---

You might also like:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

---

Note: Thanks to the Anne Arundel County Public Library for a copy of this audiobook, and for continually stocking such an excellent selection of audiobooks.

Audiobook Review: The Girl with a Pearl Earring

2011-09-27T11:53:00.000-04:00

Some people read with the story in mind. Others read with an eye toward language. Still others read to befriend the characters they come to know and love - or know and hate. I read in all of these ways, often depending on the book in my hands, but lately I find myself reading with a mind to inspiration. Where did this story come from? What spark of inspiration set this particular author to writing?

Perhaps it is because I've started to have fantasies of picking up fiction again (or for the first time, depending on your definition) myself, and find that despite a well of words within me, I am lacking that elusive spark, that subject, that object or person or era or passion in which I can submerse myself, lose myself, and meet my story.

In light of this new slant to my reading, it is no wonder that I found myself drawn to Tracy Chevalier's Girl with the Pearl Earring, a novel so clearly rooted in the famous yet inexplicable painting. Who is this girl, who at one glance appears to be smiling, at the next, pouting? Who does not fit in with the subjects of Vermeer's other painting? Who is neither wealthy nor famous? Who does not show her hair, but wears a band of fabric not customary to any of Vermeer's contemporaries? And why, on a girl so obviously of the working class, does she wear a large, glistening pearl in her ear?

Chevalier's novel explores the life of this mystery girl, who, it turns out, is a maid in Vermeer's household, and a maid with an eye for color and paints. As she begins to work more closely with Vermeer, we find her in a situation rife with unspoken tension, fluttering eye contact, and beautiful paintings.

Chevalier masters the world in which Griet and Vermeer live, from the details of their small Dutch town to the exquisite descriptions of Vermeer's tools, paints, and final pieces. Girl with the Pearl Earring is a perfect balance of history and fiction, a novel in which Chevalier's imaginative retelling of this famous painting support, rather than detracts from, the story of the painting itself. It is the kind of masterful novel that succeeds in reshaping our definition of a thing; in this case, Vermeer's painting, but for me, the story behind paintings in general.

I have visited the great museums of the world (or of my little world, anyone), from the Met to the Louvre, and appreciated paintings for their intricate brushstrokes, the careful lines and balance, the vibrant, or not-so-vibrant, colors of the work. But never before have I applied my "Why did the author write this book? Where did the idea come from?" tack to paintings. Though I could not begin to explain why literature and art insist on residing in separate parts of my brain, I can thank Chevalier for helping me bridge the gap between the two, and compliment her on an exquisite work of art, beauty, love, color, and history.

---

A note on the audio: I listened to the Recorded Books edition of Girl with a Pearl Earring, narrated by Ruth Ann Phimister. Though I have not heard Jenna Lamia's narration, and so have no basis of comparison, I can say that Phimister's treatment of Griet is spot-on. Though never affecting a Dutch accent, a hint of an accent suggests it; though narrating the story of a girl forced to grow up earlier than would be expected, and told from a perspective many years down the line, her voice suggests the persistence of youth; though never venturing into sadness or regret, her narration implies a sense of curiosity over what could have been. Phimister's voice and Griet's story have, in my mind, become inextricable -- when I think back to this novel, I hear her narration in my head.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

The Book Nook Club
Blog Critics

---

You might also like:

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostovo
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

---

Note: Thanks to the Anne Arundel County Public Library for the audio copy of this book, and for generally maintaining an amazing collection of audiobooks for me to peruse.

Celebrate Banned Books Week!

2011-09-26T10:33:00.000-04:00

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." -Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, February 24, 1959

This week marks the 30th annual celebration of Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of the freedom to read. This week, readers across the world take a hard look at the list of books challenged or banned across history, holding firmly to the belief that while individuals may choose what they (or their children, as the case may be) will read, they do not have the right to call for government action to prevent others from reading or viewing said material.

William Brennan, US Supreme Court Justice, said in his ruling on Texas v. Johnson, "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable." In other words, if you write something no one wants to read about it, your book should theoretically ban itself -- we don't need to do the work for you. And if even just one person wants to read your offensive or disagreeable idea... well, who are we to dictate bad taste?

In reviewing the list of books challenged, burned,* removed from schools and/or libraries, or outright banned in 2010 and 2011 alone (download the PDF of the list here), the list of objections to titles ranges from "it gave my daughter nightmares" (The Hunger Games, challenged in New Hampshire in 2010) to labeling books "pervasively vulgar, obscene and inappropriate (Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology, which was named one of the best adult books for high school students by SLJ in 2001).

I've read a few of the books on the 2010-2011 list, and I plan to celebrate this week by going back to a much earlier banned book - To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm ashamed to say that I have not read this since middle school.

Personally, I think this is the best part of the attempts to ban books: in attempting to ban a book, all censors do is succeed in calling more attention to it -- which in turns, means more people want to read it. Just look at what happened to Laurie Anderson's Speak last year; calling rape "pornographic" is a good way to piss off a lot of readers, women, teens, and advocates... and an even better way to make Speak's sales sky-rocket.

So what are you reading this week? What books have you read that have been challenged or banned? Are you more interested in a challenged book after it has been challenged?

---

* It's the 21st century... do we really need to burn things we don't like anymore? Isn't that a little Salem-ish of us? Can't we just de-friend it on Facebook and call it a day?

Thanks to the National Banned Books Week program (download PDF) for the data seen above. Image from www.bannedbooksweek.org.

National Book Festival

2011-09-25T18:35:00.000-04:00

We've all seen the headlines lately -- Borders closing, publisher lay-offs, downsizing, cutting costs, etc. Couple the bad news with the fear of the e-book trend, and it's really no wonder that the cries of "The book is dead! The book is dying!" continue to sound. But then I spent a day at the National Book Festival, wandering around the masses and masses of people that had come to hear authors speak, get books signed, and generally partake in an orgy of book love. Despite the rain, and the oh-my-god-it's-like-walking-through-pudding-humidity, and the broken escalators on the Metro, thousands upon thousands of people attended the free-to-all show.

There are those that will argue that any free entertainment will draw crowds, and I agree. But the fact that, free or no, people of all ages flocked to the Mall to celebrate the book tells me that there is still an indelible love for books in all of us. Children were excited to make their own bookmarks and hear authors in the storytelling tent, and adults in crowds ten-deep behind the seated areas of author-speaking tents. I sat for 45 minutes stalking open seats to score three together for Sarah Vowell's talk (I love her).

To me, it doesn't matter how we read, or really even what we read, so long as we continue to read. The National Book Festival was an event seemingly born of this ideal, celebrating the book, its authors, the institutions that support it, and the people who consume it. Well done, Library of Congress.

So It's Not Like Riding a Bicycle, After All

2011-09-25T09:26:00.002-04:00

There are some things that are just like riding a bicycle - easy to pick back up after a long break. It turns out blogging is not like that. I've been staring at a blank screen (in the new Blogger template, WHOA WHAT IS UP) for two days, trying to decide where to start. The list of books I've read and haven't written about is long, and some of the books I read as long ago as February. But I will persevere...
expect a boatload of reviews and a return to semi-regular posting this week! Just in time for Banned Books Week.

In the meantime, I leave you with this excellent thought, originally shared by Out of Print (follow them on Facebook).

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” -William Faulkner (and it's his birthday, no less)

Checking In

2011-09-13T21:38:00.003-04:00

Wow. I'm ashamed to look at my posting history over the last few months -- it's been a ghost town around here. To anyone that is still following me, thanks! That's some true dedication. To those that used to and have since stopped checking... well, I probably shouldn't bother writing to you, as you've stopped checking.

Which is all just a really long way of saying that I'm still here, I'm still blogging (sort of), I'm still reading (a lot!) and I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things in the coming weeks. I'm in the process of changing jobs, which I'm hoping will leave me with a more normal schedule. And though I have not crossed off any more Hemingway books on my list, or read War and Peace, I did fly an airplane, which was on my 26 by 26 list.

I've read a lot of great books lately, and will have reviews coming shortly of the following of Exley, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, The Year of the Flood, North River, and a few others. In the meantime, I've been reviewing titles for Shelf Awareness for Readers -- if you're short on book recommendations, hop on over and browse the latest reviews there. And be sure to subscribe for a twice-weekly dose of bookish love.

I've also been out of the loop on book news and other book blogs, so let me know what I've been missing!

Colin Meloy (of The Decemberists) Writes a Book

2011-08-31T14:52:00.002-04:00

Colin Meloy, perhaps most well known as the frontman for the hit indie band The Decemberists, has just released his first novel. The musician has always been a bibliophile* -- just listen to any one of his songs for proof -- and now he has taken that love to a new level. Wildwood, the first in a planned trilogy, is a 600-page YA novel, with illustrations provided by Meloy's wife, Carson Ellis.

Clearly, I have to read this book. I love The Decemberists. I love artists trying out new things, new mediums, new adventures. I love fantasy novels. And the blurb has me thinking - or perhaps hoping? - that this could be the kind of YA novel that adults fall in love with, too. "Original and fresh yet steeped in classic fantasy"? Sign me up. "Warring creatures" and "peacable mystics"? Must. Read.

See for yourself:

Prue McKeel’s life is ordinary. At least until her baby brother is abducted by a murder of crows. And then things get really weird.

You see, on every map of Portland, Oregon, there is a big splotch of green on the edge of the city labeled “I.W.” This stands for “Impassable Wilderness.” No one’s ever gone in—or at least returned to tell of it.

And this is where the crows take her brother.

So begins an adventure that will take Prue and her friend Curtis deep into the Impassable Wilderness. There they uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval, a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much bigger as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness.

A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.

Wildwood is a spellbinding tale full of wonder, danger, and magic that juxtaposes the thrill of a secret world and modern city life. Original and fresh yet steeped in classic fantasy, this is a novel that could have only come from the imagination of Colin Meloy, celebrated for his inventive and fantastic storytelling as the lead singer of the Decemberists. With dozens of intricate and beautiful illustrations by award-winning artist Carson Ellis, Wildwood is truly a new classic for the twenty-first century.

What do you think? Will you read it? Any other lovers of The Decemberists out there?

*For more about Meloy's love of literature, and how it has influenced his music, and how this book is clearly really awesome, check out Paste Magazine's review of Wildwood, which is the kind of well done contextual review I wish I wrote more of in my life.

Book Review: The Missing of the Somme, by Geoff Dyer

2011-08-26T10:35:00.004-04:00

This review originally ran in the August 19th issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. If you don't already subscribe to this awesome collection of book news and reviews, click here to fix that. You'll receive two awesome emails each week (Tuesday and Friday).

There are countless books on World War I, and countless more on the wars following it, but The Missing of the Somme stands out among the crowd because instead of discussing strategy, timelines and numbers of the war, author Geoff Dyer (But Beautiful; Out of Sheer Rage) focuses on the remembrance of World War I.

Though short, Dyer's treatise is incredibly thorough--he draws on his experience traveling to the cemeteries and monuments across Europe; surviving photographs, films, letters and journals; and his own family history to craft a story about the impact of war on the generations that followed it. In doing so, he covers most, if not all, of the many ways we use both to remember and memorialize the war and the losses in which it resulted. Ultimately, The Missing of the Somme shows us how much our need to commemorate an event is capable of shaping our memories of it, even as the event is still in progress.

Originally published in the U.K. in 1994, this new edition is the first time The Missing of the Somme is being published in the U.S. As we approach the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, and lose the last remaining veterans of the war itself, it proves a timely and important look at both the memory and memorial of the war so terrible as to be named The Great War.

---

Note: Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy of this book to Shelf Awareness, and to Shelf Awareness for providing a copy of the book to me for review.

Edible Books

2011-08-21T09:09:00.002-04:00

I'm sort of in love with this idea, even though I don't like white chocolate and I'm not sure if I would actually be able to make mine look as pretty.

(Image from Hungry Happenings)

Full directions at Hungry Happenings, complete with recipe for white molding chocolate. It actually appears to be a pretty simple recipe, so don't let my lack of confience in my chocolate molding skills deter you. Perfect for your next book-themed party, yes?

Another Internet Addiction, This Time Known as Pinterest

2011-08-13T08:42:00.003-04:00

A note to the interwebs: Please stop throwing things at me that insist that I drop everything that I am doing and immediately go look at pictures of pretty things. Yes, that means you, Pinterest.

That said, now that I'm on Pinterest, why not join me? Then we can all spend our otherwise productive time looking at pictures of pretty things together. And you can follow my board full of bookish pins, which pretty much adds up to one big page of pictures of book love. Trust me on this. It's a lot of fun.

Bookfessions Tumblr

2011-08-10T13:16:00.002-04:00

Maybe I'm way late to this party, but have you seen the Bookfessions tumblr? The self-professed purpose of the site is so completely right up my (and I'd imagine your, if you are reading this) alley:

"These are confessions and/or thoughts of a book lover, bibliophile, book addict, reader, lover of literature, nerd...call me what you will, but here they are."

The current confession count is at 702, and still climbing. Some are more fun than others, of course, but they are all gems in their own ways. A few of my favorites:

Book Review: The Magician King, by Lev Grossman

2011-08-08T13:10:00.004-04:00

The Magician King is available tomorrow, August 9, from Viking. $26.95 / Hardcover. 978-0-670-02231-1. Preorder now from a bookstore near you via Indiebound.

Back in January, I read The Magicians for a book club meeting that never happened. Nevertheless, I loved it. Critics have argued that it relies too heavily on themes and plots from Harry Potter and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - and yes, it's true, it does - but I argue that pries the fantastical world of magical academies out of its previously fixed position in children's literature and launches it into a world of pseudo-grown-ups. Including the drugs, the drinking, the sex, and the rock-and-roll. No joke.

With the long-awaited sequel, The Magician King, Lev Grossman shows fans of The Magicians into the not-so-happily-ever-after of the first novel; Quentin, Julia, Elliot and Janet rule over Fillory as the kings and queens of the magical realm. Despite living a life of luxury, pampered in decadent rooms of an even more decadent castle, Quentin finds himself restless, itching for something bigger, something more. This restlessness, coupled with a growing concern over the ever-less-human seeming Julia, finds the two of them on a not-so-epic adventure to collect forgotten taxes the outskirts of his realm.

One thing leads to another (as it so often does), and soon they are chasing down a mythical golden key straight out of a fairy tale. Needless to say, things do not go as planned. Quentin gets his adventure - and so much more - as he finds himself on a quest to save himself, his world, his friend, and even magic itself.

The Magician King takes us back to the world of Fillory we came to love in The Magicians. Quentin and the others have grown, and learned, and become the people they were just breaking into in the first book. The Quentin of The Magicians is a tad unlikeable. Or maybe more than a tad. But watching him grow up and really become someone mostly redeems the unlikeable bits. And though the two storylines present here - one of Quentin and Julia's questing and one of Julia's past - don't always fit together neatly, Grossman manages to make it work, Tim-Gunn-style.

More importantly, the growth of these characters brings the hard questions that we all must face about growing up: What do we want to be? Who do we want to be? How do we want to be perceived? How can we find out where we belong? What does it take to be content? To be happy, even? The questions themselves, as much as the answers, prove that Grossman's most recent novel is as successful a fantasy novel as any: his is a fantasy that is eminently relevant to the real world dilemmas we all must face.

Grossman's writing is a treat to read, coupling masterful prose with the perfect touch of witticisms, humor, and pop-culture references. This is a fantasy novel of the 21st-century, and Grossman is not afraid to embrace that. Grossman gives credit where credit is due , and the characters of The Magician King often reference the worlds of Tolkien, Potter and Lewis in their own storylines. In embracing his inspirations, rather than hiding from them, Grossman has succeeded in moving the fantasy genre forward a notch, creating a world that is as uniquely his own as much as it is derived from the fantasy novels we've all already read and cherished.

While The Magician King might not be the best fit for a reader not predisposed to enjoy stories of magic, dragons, spells and secret worlds, it is an epic fantasy novel that will prove a joy to any fan of the fantasy genre -- especially those that have been waiting not-so-patiently (such as yours truly) for it since completing The Magicians. And in the style of the true great works of fantasy, the lessons here reverberate well past the magical world of Fillory and into the very real world in which we all live.

---

It's worth noting that if you haven't read The Magicians, the bulk of The Magician King will still be understandable. It's also worth nothing that if you haven't read The Magicians, you probably should.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

Jenny's Books
Jenn's Bookshelves

---

You might also like:

The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Among Others by Jo Walton
Mr. Toppit by Charles Elton

---

Note: Thanks to Viking for an advance copy of this book for review.

Reader Charms

2011-08-04T19:27:00.003-04:00

The necklace that just about says it all:

(BookishCharm Etsy Shop, $14)

I'm kind of loving this one, too:

(BookishCharm Etsy Shop, $14.50)

Book Review: The Alienist, by Caleb Carr

2011-07-28T08:59:00.001-04:00

There are certain books that warrant little more in a review than a pure and simple statement: "Trust me. Read this." The Alienist is one of those books. Trust me. Read it.

If you need more than that, read on.

Set in New York City in 1896, The Alienist centers on the hunt for the murderer of several young child prostitutes. Theodore Roosevelt, then of the NYPD and not yet of the politics, assemables a ragtag group of "detectives" for the case, which has been cast aside by the NYPD proper. And so we find ourselves following a psychiatrist, a journalist, a woman, and two Jews on a quest to solve a rash of child killings that no one seems to give a damn about.

They may be a ragtag group, but they are a smart group, and through their eyes, Carr takes us back to the very early days of crime-solving, before fingerprints are admissible in court, before forensics exist outside of a small realm of ostracized doctors, and before psychiatry played a role in any murder investigation. We take these things for granted now, with CSI and NCIS and SVU and Bones and Criminal Minds and the like, and a walk down the path of what used to be is at one enlightening and haunting.

The Alienist marked Caleb Carr's first foray into fiction, and so entrenched was he in his role as a non-fiction author that he pitched it to both his agent and publisher as a non-fiction title. The mere fact that he managed to pull off such a stunt is evident on each and every page of the gripping suspense he's written there. His characters ooze authenticity, their actions reek of history and the city of New York persists in the realism of well-researched facts.

I have always loved a good mystery, and the heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed, furious page turning that goes with it. The Alienist proves the best kind of mystery to be had, one whose elegant prose forces readers to slow down as the plot forces reader to move faster. Couple such dueling motivations with the kind of historical detail that has me constantly wishing for an encyclopedia, and I'm sold. I can only hope you might be too. And let me just repeat: Trust me. Read it.

---

Many, many thanks to Emily for both the recommendation of the book, and my very own copy of it to boot.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

A Little Bookish
Bibliofreakblog
Books on the Nightstand (podcast)

2011 Man Booker Longlist

2011-07-26T20:45:00.004-04:00

The 2011 Man Booker Longlist was just announced, and - surprise! - I've read exactly 0 of the books on the list. Ok, not a surprise. I generally find that I haven't read many books on lists, because my reading tends towards books assigned to me for review and backlist titles that I'm still trying desperately to catch up on. But it was a surprise (to me, at least) that though I am familiar with a few of the authors on the list, I knew only 1 of the titles on the list: Jamrach's Menagerie.

So... have I just been living under a rock, or are these titles more obscure than those on past lists?

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry
Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards
The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness
Snowdrops by A.D. Miller
Far to Go by Alison Pick
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
Derby Day by D.J. Taylor

Note: The last two aren't even listed in Indiebound, so clearly I'm not the only one who hasn't heard of them, right?

Pseudo-Review: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2011-07-20T08:48:00.000-04:00

I read The Great Gatsby in high school. I think. I must have, because I remember clearly the green light at the end of the dock, but then I think I must not have, because I do not remember it being sad or melancholy or anything but jazzy and full of parties. Maybe I only read the first few chapters. It's odd how we remember books, isn't it?

Regardless, I've read it now. And really, here is little I can say here to add to the body of criticism surrounding Fitzgerald's most known and treasured novel. I can say that it was shorter than I had expected (on audio, it was only about 4 hours long). I can say that it is a striking novel of love and romance and hope and dreams and friendship and betrayal and loneliness and shallowness and money and power and greed and lust. I can say that it walks a fine line between hope and melancholy.

Most importantly, I can say that it is powerful and that it is meaningful and that within all of its careful contradictions lies some important idea that all readers should mull over in their own way.

"It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment." (Ch. 6)

As for the audio, I listened to the Record Books edition, narrated by the now-deceased Frank Muller. Muller's voice is near perfect for this novel; he embodies Nick Caraway in the most believable of ways, a narrator at one empassioned and dispassionate. I rarely follow narrators, but I'll be looking for more narrated by Frank Muller.

---

Did you know they are making a movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby , starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan? Current release is scheduled for November 2012.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

5 minutes for books
Fizzy Thoughts
The Blue Bookcase

Book Review: Among the Missing by Morag Joss

2011-07-18T09:40:00.000-04:00

Originally published June 24, 2011 in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission. Receive bi-weekly Shelf Awareness for Readers in your inbox by registering here.

"Of course I have wondered if you are dead, but you aren't. It isn't possible. I need you too much for you to be gone forever."

This all-too-human sentiment weaves together the lives of three otherwise unrelated characters in Morag Joss's (Half-Broken Things) most recent novel, Among the Missing. Joss explores the aftermath of a bridge collapse in a small tourist town in Scotland; with several people dead and still more unaccounted for, those left behind have to deal with a story that has pieces missing.

Each of Joss's three main characters brings a different perspective to the events surrounding the collapse. Silva, the one left behind, clings to the hope that her family is still alive; Annabel is one of the missing, a confused, lonely woman who has used the tragedy to start anew; and Ron, struggling to find direction for his life, who suddenly finds himself with a sense of purpose derived from the tragedy of the bridge victims.

The novel is slow but steady, a mystery that strolls through events rather than rushing them. It is this subtlety that makes the novel successful; though the collapse of the bridge is dramatic in its own right, it is what follows that allows Joss to delve into the very human side of grief and loss. Among the Missing achieves the remarkable feat of allowing us to know both what it is to be left behind and what it is to be the one leaving.

The Good of a Book (Quote of the Day)

2011-07-17T10:34:00.000-04:00

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. -Umberto Eco

26 by 26: Because you asked for it...

2011-07-14T09:56:00.000-04:00

I posted last week about two of the bookish goals on my list of 26 things I plan to accomplish before I turn 26, and several people asked to see the whole list. Here it is, in all its glory. I'll post now and again as I (hopefully!) check things off the list. 2 years, 4 months and 2 days left.

Juggle three bean bags.
Make 100 lovely things
Throw a first-annual dinner party - and second, and third...
Write thank-yous to my teachers
Read all of Hemingway's works
Plant a garden. Plant flowers.
~~Open champagne with a knife~~
Make a soufflé
Buy a house. With a porch. And, therefore, a porch swing.
Do a victory kneel at the end of my first completed 5K
Eat an extra large popcorn at the circus
Read (gulp) War and Peace
~~Fire a gun.~~
Sing "Buona Sera, Signorina" in Italy
Sail on the Chesapeake in the fall
Take myself on vacation
Make a habit of sending cards
Make a book stack lamp
Spend the night in a bookstore
Write a book (or at least a story)
Decorate a house I am excited to come home to
Fly an airplane
Celebrate every week with a toast
Make a new friend & reconnect with an old one
Smell a book at the Library of Congress
Make apple pie from hand-picked apples

E-Readers, Travelling, and a Plea for Nook Advice

2011-07-13T09:54:00.004-04:00

I'm going to Italy in the fall. 10 days of winey (not whiny) foreign goodness. We're planning on jumping around a lot, renting a car and driving through Tuscany, and a train ride (or two!). Still working on the itinerary. BUT. This poses a colossal problem. Because I do not travel with less than one book per day. No that's not a typo. One book per day of travel.* So that means 10 books.

You see the problem? That's a whole suitcase. And so I have decided to purchase an e-reader. I already have a Sony Pocket Reader, but this will not do because a) I do not like it and b) I want a new gadget and c) I cannot underline or highlight or take notes on books in it and d) it is a few years old already (shocking, I know) and the battery life is leaving something to be desired.

Couple this with the fact that I have a $100 gift card to B&N, and I am leaning towards a Nook. BUT (Always the "but"). Which one? The Nook Color? Or the new e-ink Nook? The latter is definitely a more attractive price... but the former has apps! And email! And color! BUT (there it is again) maybe that is not such a good thing, all that distraction?

Alternatively, I could just buy $100 worth of really long, lightweight paperbacks.

Help, please?

---

*This method of counting the number of books needed for a trip is tried and true. I took 7 books with me on my 8-day honeymoon and had to purchase a paperback in the Mexican airport. I took 5 books with me on my 5-day trip to Cape Cod and read 3 of them, and I ended up working remotely for a solid day of that 5-day trip.

Driving in Reading Style

2011-07-12T10:28:00.005-04:00

I'm not a bumper sticker person, really, but I do flaunt my reading love with one and only one bumper sticker on the back of my car:

CafePress ($4)

What about you? Do you decorate your car? Or would you, with any of these?

CafePress ($5)

ALA Store ($17 for set of 5)

Buy Olympia ($0.85)

Entomology of a Bookworm Goes Mobile

2011-07-11T11:25:00.003-04:00

Apparently Blogger now has settings for mobile devices. To be fair, they have probably had said settings for some time now, but yours truly just discovered them. So Entomology of a Bookworm is now mobile-friendly. Check it out, smartphoners.

Defining a Good Book

2011-07-06T09:18:00.000-04:00

I have a good friend who recently abandoned her "I only read non-fiction" stance and accepted a few book recommendations from me, lover of fiction that I am. Based on her tastes, I ended up lending her The Thirteenth Tale, Shadow of the Wind and The Alienist*. When she asked why I had chosen these three, I went on at length about how all three are smart, intelligent stories, but are stories nonetheless - plot-based, fact-paced, etc. All have an incredible sense of time and place. All have characters that you can love and hate and envy and pity, and all are believable without ever being mundane.

But more importantly, all three are the kinds of books that do not end upon turning the last page. They demand that you flip back through, refer to passages, re-read sections, re-read the whole book.

To me, that is the greatest compliment that can be paid a book, whether fiction or non. The best books are those that do not end; they are the ones that linger on, infusing and interrupting your thoughts at the best and worst of times.

26 by 26: Reading all of Ernest Hemingway & Completing War and Peace.

2011-07-05T09:37:00.000-04:00

Confession: I'm one of those annoying people that always has to have a plan. I don't do well with spontaneous. I like to have a goal and be working towards it. I like to have a milestone in mind and moving in that direction.

And so when I woke up this winter and realized that I lacked a goal - or goals, even - I decided to make some up. Taking inspiration from my dear friend Emily and the wonderful blogger Mighty Girl, I formulated a list of 26 things to do before I turn 26. I now have 2 years, 3 months and 11 days to figure out how I'm going to fly an airplane, learn how to sabre open a bottle of champagne (check!), make 100 lovely things, and make a successful souffle, among other things.

Of course, I am a bookworm. My list could not exist without some bookish goals. I contemplated selecting a list of the "Great Books" and completing all of them, but given my distaste for reading lists, I balked at my own suggestion. Instead, I netted out with two bookish items on my list of 26: one to complete a daunting, challenging novel, and one to read one author's entire body of work.

The first was a quick decision: War and Peace. I purchased a copy of this title in January intending to participate in the year-long War and Peace readalong hosted by Kalen and Ann. I haven't cracked the spine yet. I figure I can manage this sometime in the next few years, right?

The second took some deliberating, though. I definitely wanted an author who had written multiple books, and preferably in different mediums (short stories, perhaps?). I wanted an author that interested me. I did not want an author with such a dauntingly large library as to prove cumbersome or impossible. After much deliberating, and input from my husband and my father, I landed on Ernest Hemingway. I'm halfway through my first book in this endeavor - A Moveable Feast - and so far, I'm not disappointed.

What about you? If you were to pick one author to read from start to finish, who would it be? How do you feel about Hemingway? Any suggestions for which Hemingway title I should pick up next?

Fiction Personalizes History (Quote of the Day)

2011-07-03T09:42:00.002-04:00

"Fiction personalizes history and injects humor, tragedy, romance, and peril." - William Dietrich, in his recent Huffington Post article on educating children on history via historical fiction. (article via Reading the Past.)

Audiobook Review: West of Here by Jonathan Evison

2011-07-01T08:08:00.000-04:00

This was one of those books that has teased at the edge of my reading consciousness for months now. This was one of those books I picked up on a whim, thinking somewhere in the back of my head that I had heard good things. This was one of those books that immediately grabbed me, gave me a lesson or three or four or twelve about myself and others and the world we live in and how it got here. This was one of those books I read and has continued to tease the edge of my reading consciousness, existing now as a story in its own right and not merely as an impression of one.

In short, this is the kind of book I can recommend wholeheartedly to all of those other readers out there who have seen the fleeting bits of hype or heard a passing word on the title.

West of Here is a big, generous novel, taking in multiple generations of settlers in Port Bonita, a small town on Washington's coast (the state, not The District). Whether focused on the aspiring woman journalist, a struggling adventurer, an ex-con looking for direction, or a pothead kid living on an Indian reservation, the cast of characters in West of Here are all inspiring in that they are seeking to be inspired. They are open to the world, waiting for direction, looking for direction, knowing nothing more but that that direction must be onward. They start with promise, and do not disappoint.

Jonathan Evison has succeeded here in creating the kind of dense novel that readers love, full of the important ideas of history, love, the environment, Big Foot, and loyalty. With West of Here, he has brought readers a palate of characters that are intimately recognizable, and in doing so, he has created a work of fiction that succeeds in the best of ways: it lingers on, proving important in understanding both our history and our present.

A dose of reality with a touch of mysticism, West of Here is at times witty, at times funny, and at other times rather sad. But throughout it all, there is an underlying feeling of hope, that we, like the characters we come to know so well, have some element of potential within us, if only we can identify it, and therefore move onward.

---

A note on the audio: This narrator rocks it. 'Nough said.

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

The Book Lady's Blog
Large Hearted Boy
Beth Fish Reads
a home between the pages
Bermuda Onion

---

More from Jonathan Evison:

All About Lulu

Kindle With Special Offers... Wait, What?

2011-06-30T22:36:00.003-04:00

Ok, I know I'm way late to the game on this one. Amazon's Kindle with Special Offers has been on the market for several weeks (months?) but as any of my regular followers will note, I've been living under a rock made of work lately and have been missing out on all the bookish conversation surrounding such things as the release of the Kindle with Special Offers.

And let me tell you, from what Amazon is saying, this thing is a real gem. Now you can get a Kindle for less money and receive special offers shipped directly to your device! It's like, win-win, right? Totally... for Amazon.

First off, these aren't "special offers." They are ads. Sure, ads often include "special offers" (i.e. Click here for 10% coupon! or Find out how to make thousands as a stay-at-home mom!), but those are merely hooks to get customers to click through. So. Special offer = ad. Sponsored screensaver = ad.

Hell, we're already smacking advertising on school lockers, state license plates, and yes, even sheep... why not books, too, right? But maybe there's a side to this I'm not seeing, in my stubborn refusal to a) like the Kindle and b) like the concept of putting ads anywhere near my reading materials (this from someone who works in advertising, too). Let me know what you think. I'm sure there's flip side here.

Book Review and Giveaway: Johnny One-Eye by Jerome Charyn

2011-06-27T20:17:00.001-04:00

Johnny One-Eye is a rollicking novel of the Revolutionary War, following the oft confusing but always entertaining adventures of one John Stocking, son of a whore from New York. Stocking, who earns the nickname Johnny One-Eye after losing - you guessed it! - an eye, finds himself an unwitting double-agent in the American Revolution, caught between loyalty to his Crown and a growing respect for both the American cause and its leader, George Washington.

Johnny's adventures take readers from the whorehouses of 18th-century Manhattan to the prison ships on the East River, from New Jersey to Canada, from schoolyard to battlefield. As Johnny takes beatings both literal and figurative from friends and foes on both sides of the fighting, we find him discovering his own path, making decisions based on his own values rather than those imposed upon him by the debts he feels he owes to others.

With Johnny One-Eye, Charyn has shown his wit and charm in a way that lay buried beneath the surface of his biography, Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil. The novel is unique not only because it is one of few recent works of fiction to center on the era of the Revolutionary War (although I'd be thrilled to hear I was wrong in that statement!), but because he tackles the narrative through the point of view of one who is not merely undecided in which side he will choose, but rather loyal to both. In revealing all of the contradictions of this predicament, Johnny One-Eye is an enlightening glimpse into the politically charged atmosphere of 18th-century America. Though confusing at times and slightly jumpy, Johnny One-Eye is ultimately a success, and bound to be enjoyed by those with a love for American history (read: people like me).

---

The giveaway! Courtesy of Nicole at Tribute Books, I have one copy to offer in a giveaway. Simply leave a comment to enter. Retweet, post on your blog, share on Facebook, etc, for an additional entry. Winner will be selected randomly. Open to US residents only, sorry.

Entries due by 8PM 6/29. Winner will need to send address by 6/30. Please be sure to leave a valid email address with your entry!

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:

Tribute Books June Book Tour

---

More from Jerome Charyn:

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson
Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil

---

I received a copy of this book from Tribute Book Tours, though that did not sway my opinion of the book. You can tell because Tribute Book Tours also supplied a copy of Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil, and I didn't really like that one. That's proof positive.

The Borrowers Arrive on BBC

2011-06-23T10:22:00.000-04:00

Does anyone else remember The Borrowers, that darling book in which little people live in the walls of a house and borrow items from the owners? I'd say it offers a perfectly plausible explanation for all those items that seem to disappear from my house for no apparent reason: an earring back, one sock, the tweezers, that rubber band band you know you left on your desk. Seriously, borrowers. Where is my rubber band ball?

I loved this book when I was a kid, and I vaguely remember loving the 1997 movie version featuring John Goodman. And now BBC is bringing the stories to the little screen with a 90-minute adaptation of The Borrowers set to air this Christmas season. Who's excited!?

Reading Outside Is Better For You, Anyway

2011-06-22T10:11:00.003-04:00

This week, the New York Times ran an article on the effects of too much time spent indoors (and therefore with artificial indoor lighting) on myopia. In short, it argued, scientists believe that too much time spent with artificial light, and therefore not enough spent in natural outdoor light, results in higher rates of nearsightedness.*

The suggestion, therefore? A recommendation to "satisfy tiger and soccer moms alike: if your child is going to stick his nose in a book this summer, get him to do it outdoors."

Personally, I love this recommendation. Though Shelf Awareness Pro suggested that instructions to spend more time reading outdoors could mean a higher demand for e-readers than can be read outdoors, I find that my good, ol'-fashioned p-books work just as well indoors as out, and I aim to spend as much time as possible sitting outside reading this summer. Of course, I can't see more than 5 feet away from me without glasses anyway, so maybe it's too late to avoid myopia. But I'll be outdoors with my book(s!) regardless.

What about you? Do you read outdoors when weather permits? Do you have specific books that are better for reading outdoors?

---

*In which "eyes fail to grow correctly and the distance between the lens and retina becomes too long, causing far-away objects to look blurry"

The Oh-My-God-It's-the-Best-Bookcase-Ever Bookcase

2011-06-21T07:18:00.000-04:00

A bookcase that spells words. Modular. Customizable. = Must. Have. Now.

(By Saporiti, price unlisted - though as my mother-in-law says, "If you have to ask how much it costs, it costs too much.")

So... if price were no object, what would your bookcase say?

Audiobook Review: Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

2011-06-20T07:32:00.000-04:00

This is how things in Burroughs' teenage life seem: crazy, fucked up, strange, twisted, bizarre, strange, screwy, abnormal, difficult... (I'm running out of an internal thesaurus on words to replace "just plain weird.").

All of these words and more can be used to describe Burroughs' teenage life, and his accounting of those experiences in his first memoir (which I am totally late to the game in finally reading), Running with Scissors. Seriously, how has it taken me ten years to discover this little gem of an essay collection-cum-memoir?

Running with Scissors recounts Burroughs' bizarre tale, in which his mother goes off the deep end and gives him to her therapist, where Burroughs then lives out his teenage years in a school-less, rule-less anarchy, befriending the doctor's children, sabotaging the pink Victorian house in which the doctor lives, exploring his sexuality (with the aid of a 30+-year-old), and living an all-out chaotic existence while pondering the future and his path.

Burroughs jumps from one tale to another, reminding me of an essay collection more than a straight memoir. His stories are straight (though he is very openly not) and true (not to mention funny, touching, and at times even thoughtful). He attacks the wildness of his past with a satirical gusto; his tone throughout says, "I know this is crazy, and you're tempted to feel bad for me. But don't. Let's all just have a little laugh about how surreal this all sounds. Because really, who lets a 14-year-old knock a hole in the kitchen ceiling in order to self-construct a skylight?"

And because Burroughs refuses to pity himself in his reflections, the stories in Running with Scissors are not overwrought or dripping with emotional goop. They are straight and witty and funny and telling; but because this is one of the most bizarre teenage experiences I've heard about (seriously, Holden, you got nothing on this kid), the stories also give pause and force the reader (or in my case, listener) to think about friendships, family, and belonging - not to mention mental illness and its impact on both the patient and his or her loved ones.

Bottom line: Running with Scissors is a rip-roaring success; I'm just ten years late in realizing it. The audio version, narrated by Augusten Burroughs himself, is excellent; Burroughs' dry tone shines through, and (not surprisingly, because he's narrating his own writing), is the perfect fit for the stories he recounts.

Pottermore, Pottermore, Pottermore

2011-06-19T08:47:00.000-04:00

It's everywhere. Pottermore chatter. Pottermore tweeting. Pottermore website. And a JK Rowling Youtube announcement.

Anyone? Bueller? Anyone? What is it?

My Library was Dukedom Large Enough (Quote of the Day)

2011-06-18T07:56:00.001-04:00

"My library / Was dukedom large enough." - Shakespeare, The Tempest

Shelf Awareness launches "Enlightenment for the Book Trade"

2011-06-17T19:08:00.002-04:00

Fellow book bloggers, I know you are all avid Shelf Awareness readers. Who isn't really? A daily newsletter full of bookish gems, industry news and book reviews? What more could we possibly ask for?

You guessed it: an edition of Shelf Awareness targeted for the general reading public. Check out the very first episode (today's!) and be sure to sign up for future mailings (sent twice a week). Edited by Bethanne Patrick, and book reviews edited by Marilyn Dahl, and even the occasional book review from yours truly -- I promise it won't disappoint.

Promoting Summer Reading With Movie Rewards

2011-06-16T08:59:00.000-04:00

National Amusements, "a motion picture exhibition company," has announced its 13th summer of Bookworm Wednesdays, a program designed to promote summer reading for children by rewarding them (and their parents) with free movies every Wednesday at 10 throughout the summer. Children are required to present a book report on what they have been reading. If they are not at the reading/writing age, they are encouraged to draw a picture about a book that an adult has recently read to them.

Part of me loves this idea; after all, it is promoting summer reading (as well as writing about said reading), and demonstrating to kids that there is a reward for this reading. But another part of me (albeit a small part) balks a bit at rewarding reading with a movie. Not that I don't love movies, and recognize that kids love movies, but it seems like a fine line between encouraging reading as a habit and promoting the idea that once you get your reading done, you can move onto to the really fun things in life (like movies).

Maybe I'm being overly critical. And like I said, it's only a small part. And I should add that I do not have children and I naively insist on believing that the future little McHughs that run around my house will like to read more than anything else, so I've never faced the issue of encouraging children to read first-hand. I'd like to see what you all think.

So... what do you all think?

E-Reader Courtesies

2011-06-14T08:38:00.002-04:00

So I'm sitting on an airplane yesterday, flying to Chicago (hello, Chicago!), and the man sitting next to me (and too close to me, if you want my opinion) pulls out an iPad and opens his Kindle reader. The angle at which he holds the device allows me to see that he is reading Matterhorn, a book I've had my eye on for some time.

Now, if this were a print book, I would not have hesitated to make a bit of small talk and ask about the book. But if this had been a print book, I would have recognized the book by its cover, not by looking over the man's shoulder (I guess I'm nosy like that). And I would have been able to see how far into the book he was - if only five pages, I wouldn't ask how it he liked the book, you know?

In the spirit of not being that obnoxious person that talks too much on an airplane and snoops into others' business, I let the matter go. But it left me thinking: what is acceptable in this (or similar) situations? Is it ok to admit that I can see your iPad screen perfectly clearly and am interested in what you are reading? Is it rude to peek in the first place?

Elsewhere on the Blogosphere: Reading Outside Ourselves

2011-06-06T11:54:00.002-04:00

I haven't been doing much writing lately, but I have been keeping up with others' blogs. Steph at Bella's Bookshelves (a blogger I sometimes think is reading my mind and writing my thoughts in another blog) recently wrote an amazing, excellent, well-written, thoughtful, wonderful, very good post about reading outside our comfort zones, saying yes to books we don't think we'll like, and all that jazz: Reading Outside Ourselves.

"This is what I mean: if we can get past our assumptions, our fears, even our preferences, often we find ourselves with something more to talk about. We go from reading whatever everyone else is reading to cutting our own path, to telling people what awesome new things we’ve discovered... Now we understand our fellow readers with different tastes, interests, viewpoints."

I've posted in the past about books as a form of social currency in trying to argue why reading is important; Steph has developed the idea even further (and with better wording) in arguing not for reading but for reading outside our comfort zones. In light of the lack of inspiring content here, take a stroll through Steph's full post, and be sure to follow her too - everything she writes is excellent.

The New York Times Illustrates On-the-Ground Book Reviews

2011-06-05T12:38:00.002-04:00

Check it out: A fully illustrated NYT article, in which Central Park readers give "on-the-ground" book reviews. Loving it.

The Books We Read Outdoors

Book Review: Into My Father's Wake by Eric Best

2011-06-01T09:06:00.001-04:00

Into My Father's Wake records Eric Best's solo, 5,000 mile journey across the Pacific in a 47-foot ketch. Written years after the voyage was completed, Best reflects not only on his navigational abilities - or, at times, lack thereof - but the meaning of the undertaking, his standing with his family, and, perhaps most important in motivating him, his relationship with his father.

Best's memoir is at time hard to follow, alternating between recaps of his struggles with celestial navigation to recalling past conversations with an unidentified therapist, but as the pages progress, this bouncing between subjects becomes easier to follow, just as it becomes clear that this scattered recounting is actually an accurate representation of the journey itself. The back-and-forth also has the added benefit of preventing the memoir from ever becoming dull with detail or didactic in meaning-of-life-type reflections.

Overall, Into My Father's Wake is an engaging tale of a daring attempt to sail solo across the Pacific. Best has succeeded in capturing the details of his journey - from his trials with navigating by sextant to his woes attempting to make casserole during a violent storm - and placing those details within an overarching search for meaning. He reflects on his journey, his own attempts to understand his journey, and in doing so, comes to terms with his relationship with his overbearing and hard-to-please father.

While bordering on cliché, Into My Father's Wake succeeds in avoiding the over-trodden waters of father-son relationships with a healthy peppering of sailing lore. All in all, it's worth the read, especially if you have even a passing interest in sailing.

On My Radar: Beach Reading

2011-05-31T07:42:00.000-04:00

I don't know about other bookworms, but this particular one reads seasonally. I don't believe in reading winter-laden, snow-drifty books in July, or vampire novels in April, or beach-based stories in December. There is a time and a place for every book, and they must match.

And this weekend unofficially kicks off summer, which means I'm officially lusting after new summer reads. Here's what I have my eye on for the beach this year - some old, some new, but all on my radar. Some are probably "summer" reads only in my own little head, but so be it. What am I missing? What are you reading this summer?

Audiobook Review: An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

2011-05-29T14:38:00.003-04:00

At first glance, Steve Martin's latest novel, An Object of Beauty, is a portrait of one Ms. Lacey Yeager, an up-and-coming art dealer in New York City. Our narrator, Daniel Franks, tells us that he is writing down her story only to remove it from his head; the book begins,

"I am tired, so very tired of thinking about Lacey Yeager, yet I worry that unless I write her story down, and see it bound and tidy on my bookshelf, I will be unable to ever write about anything else." (p. 3)

Lacey is captivating, enthralling, ensnaring, and yet, at the same time, she is elusive and secretive and mysterious. Daniel, like so many others, is caught in orbit around her, brought close when needed but never allowed more than fleeting access to her true self. She manipulates unsparingly, both people and events, bending plotlines to her will. She seeks drama. She insists on being needed and not needing. She is always the center of attention, continuing to draw people in while simultaneously pushing them away.

Which is not to say that she is unlikable. Quite the opposite, in fact. Perhaps she has the same effect on readers (or listeners) as she does on those around her. Or perhaps Martin is telling us something, in showing us that we, like others, want her to succeed despite her shortcomings. Or maybe it is that they are not shortcomings at all, but characteristics we can recognize in ourselves. After all, isn't that what makes a strong character?

Bottom line: Upon closer inspection, or perhaps closer reflection, it becomes clear that Lacey's story is much bigger than herself; it is a story of New York, of art, and of the constant overlapping and intertwining of the two. Overall, Martin has presented us with a powerful and meaningful story of a person, a place, and an industry, all in one go. It is a story that lingers long after it ends, with threads of ideas and philosophies persisting past the final pages - a story of the very best sort.

A note on the audio: The audio production of An Object of Beauty is excellent. Though not narrated by Steve Martin, the narrator often sounds like him. It's a nice touch. The print edition, however, includes images of the paintings and installations being discussed throughout the story, which definitely adds something to the reading experience (though the audio stands perfectly fine without them).

---

Thoughts from other bookworms:
She Is Too Fond of Books
Unputdownables

---

More from Steve Martin:
Born Standing Up
Shopgirl
The Pleasure of My Company

---

Many thanks to the Anne Arundel County Public Library for providing both the audiobook and hardcover editions of this book for review. My apologies for needing to renew twice before actually getting around to reviewing.

Books Are Not Made for Furniture (Quote of the Day)

2011-05-28T14:37:00.000-04:00

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. - Henry Ward Beecher

Book Love for Your Fridge (or Other Magnetic Surface)

2011-05-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

Bottlecap booklover magnets from PendantLicious, $6.95 on Etsy

Oh Magic Hour (Quote of the Day)

2011-05-18T20:58:00.000-04:00

"Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words!" -A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Entomology of a Bookworm

2011-05-12T08:35:00.000-04:00

In short, no, my blog's title is not a mistake. Yes, I know that entomology is the study of bugs, and etymology is the study of words. And yes, I know that people often mix the two up. And no, I will not be posting about bugs, worms, butterflies, creepy crawlers, spiders, ants, dragonflies, slugs, snails, or any other icky multi-legged things.

It's entomology (as in study of the bug) of a bookworm (as in the slang term for someone who reads a lot of books).

It's a study of a self-proclaimed (as in I announced myself) bookworm (still the slang term for someone who reads a lot of books), devouring (a metaphor for reading really quickly) the world (as in all of it) of the published (both in p-books and e-books) word (you know what words are, right?).

And here I thought I was so clever, really.

Ok, snark over. Lots of love to all of my bookworm-y readers, and sincere apologies for all the disappointed entomologists that stumble into this page.

Audiobook Review: How I Paid for College by Marc Acito

2011-05-11T08:42:00.000-04:00

Props to the author/agent/editor/publisher of How I Paid for College for coming up with a subtitle that really encapsulates the entire novel in one breath: "A novel of sex, theft, friendship and musical theater." That's really what it is. No, really.

When Edward finds himself screwed by a new stepmother, overbearing businessman father and no way to pay for his lifelong dream of attending acting school with the best young actors of America, he turns to his friends for support. His friends from his lifelong love of musical theater. Who happen to have a flair for the dramatic, so what?

And they may or may not try some not-so-legal methods of obtaining money for Edward's college tuition. And being a male high school senior, Edward may or may not - ok, definitely may - think about sex a lot. And being narrated by Edward, How I Paid for College may include a lot of Edward's thoughts about sex (and sexuality). And being narrated by Edward, it also may include a lot of references to musicals and a lot of disdain for his parents and a lot of "oh-my-god-I-have-the-worst-life-ever-of-any-talented-young-actor-ever."

It's actually a completely accurate (sometimes shockingly so) account of what I think a tuition-starved, desperate, neglected talented young high-school age singer and actor might think, and that is what makes Acito's novel a success. Though it may be overbearing at times (I'll admit to wanting to just slap Edward more than once), it is overbearing in an authentic, I-totally-know-high-schoolers-who-act-like-that kind of way. And though audio may include clips of Edward breaking into song, it's authentic in that musical-theater-nuts-totally-do-that-all-the-time kind of way.

Bottom line (and some notes on the audio): It took me some time to warm up to the narrator's voice, but a few CDs in, he was a convincing Edward, carrying on about the joys of entering senior year and the difficulties of parents who just don't understand. Though Edward is obnoxious, he is also understandable. How I Paid for College is a coming-of-age novel that truly follows Edward come of age and grow into himself; as he comes to understand himself, we come to understand him, too.

The audio is well done, with aforementioned musical clips minor enough so as to be entertaining instead of distracting.

---

Many thanks to the Anne Arundel County Public Library for providing a review copy of this title, as well as so many other wonderful audio books. You rock.

Read Forever

2011-05-10T20:05:00.003-04:00

Barnes & Noble launched their new Read Forever ad campaign at the end of April, with TV spots and print ads emphasizing the notion of reading forever. According to a New York Times article on the campaign, the ads feature a hopeful message: "Reading is changing, but it’s not going away."

The article also posits that the lack of images of any Barnes & Noble stores in the ads is an accurate reflection of the current transition in the publishing marketplace: brick-and-mortar foot traffic is down, online purchases are up.

And Barnes & Noble wants the Nook (specifically, the Nook Color) to take a cut of those online purchases. Hence, the campaign. Duh.

To this marketer's mind, Barnes & Noble had two main challenges to overcome in the marketplace. First, the resistance to e-books and e-readers that has been displayed by many tried-and-true bookworms (like yours truly). Second, the simple fact that the Kindle beat them to it, and "Kindle" has, to many, become synonymous with "e-reader," just as we've abandoned "self-adhesive bandage" (too many words) in favor of "Band-Aid" (the first of its kind, you kn0w).

And to this bookworm's mind, the campaign hits it out of the park on both accounts. It hits the emotional nail on its proverbial head. By focusing on books instead of readers, the ads succeed in not driving e-book hesistants away at first glance; by scattering the Nook among images of people reading real, old-fashioned p-books, the ads successfully (I think) position the Nook as just one among many ways to read.

In short, it celebrates the act of reading rather than the way in which we choose to do it. What better way to celebrate a new way to read the books we already cherish?