bibliotonic

August stats

2011-08-31T16:31:00.000-07:00

Filling up the tank before school starts! I read six books this month.

Tolstoy and thePurple Chair (Nina Sankovitch)

Author Nina Sankovitch spends a year reading a book a day. Thereis something simultaneously self-absorbed and enviable in the premise of her project. I mean, really, who can afford to carve out enough time in the day to read an entire book? Isn't there laundry to do, kids to care for, cans to open for dinner? First read about her book a day project in the NYT, which profiled her atthe close of her project. Enjoyed the book, especially learning about her tight-knit family and how reading shaped each member. But more so, I have enjoyed reading her project blog and observing her writing style and opinions develop.

The Island (Elin Hilderbrand)

Back in the day, when I was a publisher's rep for St. Martin's Press and before chick lit was a fiction subgenre, we called these books "smart-women's fiction." Not much of a ring, I know, but a term that was meant to summarize this sort of more-than-romance, character- and relationship-driven fiction. Hilderbrand does this really well, plus she manages to transport the reader to Nantucket, which is where most, if not all, of her books are set. The Island continues a theme begun in Tolstoy, perhaps,about chucking responsibility (jobs, family) to recover or find oneself. Clearly a fantasy state!

Throne of Fire (Rick Riordan)

Read-aloud with my boys, one of who believes the author walks on water. Throne of Fire is book #2 in Rick Riordan’s Kane Chronicles.Don’t remember much of the story, b/c lately, during reading time, I have had to marshal the boysthrough skirmishes, which are very, very distracting to me. But, I think Rick Riordan does a fine jobwith pacing. Characters are pretty one-dimensional. Story alternates betweeneach sibling’s voice and, except for their romantic crushes, one absolutelycannot tell the difference between each. Since Riordan is writing volume three currently, I suspect we'll be at this same place a year from now.

From the Mixed-UpFiles of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg)

Another read-aloud to the boys. This one conducted on a four-hour car drive fromPrinceton, NJ, to Lake George in the Adirondacks. Classic story of two siblings who run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Adventurous. Lovedit. Will read more Konigsburg.

The Tortoise andthe Hare (Elizabeth Jenkins)

Impeccably written. Gentle. Tweedy. British women’s fiction. Set post-World War 2.Explores women’s roles in relationships. Easily one of the best novels I have read this year. Sad to learn that Jenkins, who was quite a prolific author (12 novels, 12 biographies), only has this one novel in print [at least that I can see]. I would easily read another book from her.

The New YorkFour (Brian Wood)

This graphic novel, a compilation of four stand-alone comic books, follows four classmates, soon to become roommates,through their first semester of freshman year at NYU. Singles of New York Five:second semester await.

July statistics

2011-07-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

My highest personal [reading] achievement came earlier this monthwhen I (finally) finished reading Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. I have been reading this book intermittently since the dayit was published back in January. The lack of proper, manageable chapters wasreally frustrating, especially since I never had long chunks of time to devoteto the long sections that formed the only natural break in the narrative. Tenyears ago, I was a champion for The Corrections(I proudly own a pre-Oprah book club 1^st edition). When a follow-upwas announced, I could hardly wait for the pub date. When I bought Freedom, I was stoked to learn that itwas set in St. Paul, involving a somewhat stereotypical couple that was agigantic composite of nearly every St. Paul couple I know. Ultimately, the maincharacters were colossally ugly and while they each find their redemption atthe novel’s conclusion, by that point, I so didn’t care what happened to them.Franzen’s dripping hostility was uncomfortably present in every sentence.Seriously, dude, if that’s your “voice,” then I am so over you.

Midnight Riotprovided a wonderful antidote to the bad taste that Freedom left. The author, Ben Aaronovitch (who was a writer for classicDr. Who), has written a mysteryreplete with well-developed characters, impeccable pacing, and an excellentsetting (London). Peter Grant is a Probationary Constable (police officer) whodreams of being a detective. While investigating a crime scene, Grant encountersan unusual witness to the crime—a ghost. Quickly, Grant is taken under thetutelage of Chief Inspector Nightingale for wizard training. If you find yourselfabove reading the Twilight series or any of the myriad vampire/werewolf/whateverbooks, you might find Aaronovitch’s series smart and funny.

Over the course of two long car trips, I read Born to Run aloud to John and the boys. My book group had chosen itto discuss last September (2010), but I was unable to attend that meeting and,as often happens, I didn’t read the book. But, I hung onto it with everyintention of diving in at some point because I love this type of nonfiction,which, in this book is a pleasing combination of sport, culture, and travel. Also,I knew John, a former cross-country runner, would be interested. I wasn’twrong. Author Christopher explores the Tarahumara tribe, which dwells in Mexico’sCopper Canyons. The Tarahumara run barefoot over long distances. Born to Run culminates with an epiclong-distance run involving the Tarahumara and some of the U.S.’s best extremeathletes.

City of Spies: This charming graphic novel features a young girlwho is abandoned by her father to live with her Bohemian but rich aunt in NYCcity for the summer. To cope, Evelyn draws a superhero comic and casts herselfas the sidekick. On the side, she hunts for spies with her real-life sidekick, Tony,the super’s son. I loved the illustrations for their bright, vintage feel, aswell as Evelyn’s sense of adventure, which makes this graphic novel perfect forfans of Tintin and Nancy Drew.

currently reading

2011-07-25T22:06:00.000-07:00

Cruising through Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, which has a rich setting (the Amazon), well-drawn characters, and a pleasantly complex but not dense plot. Perfect summer read for fans of Bel Canto.

Also started reading Unfamiliar Fishes, which is Sarah Vowell's latest book. I've never read Vowell (her radio voice and smugness annoy me), but I find the subjects she tackles to be interesting. This book is about Hawaii. I like the history interspersed with personal stories and laced with humor.

I'm about to add Ben Aaronovitch's Moon over Soho to the mix. This is his follow up to Midnight Riot, which I found such a treat.

summer reading program

2011-07-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, the best thing about summer was participating in the summer reading program at the local Carnegie library. As with most of these programs, you were required to read a minimal number of books to earn a prize. My library asked for a short oral report, to be given to a librarian, which was fine. I never minded talking about the books I was reading. I remember the librarian filling an index card with the titles I read. It would be fun to have those cards now.

My childhood library is pictured above. It's one of my favorite places in the world. I learned to love books here. The stacks and every volume they offered were such comfort to me. The entry is new. I think its really attractive and welcoming. The clerestory windows undoubtedly provide a clean, well-lit place, which seems oh so fitting.

The prize each summer was a bus trip. Most of the destinations were frontier-oriented, but I’m fairly sure that’s what you get in eastern SoDak. One year we visited Ft. Sisseton, which was a defense for the eastern Dakota Territory. Another year we traveled to Prairie Village, a living museum near Madison. And, for this prairie girl and #1 Laura Ingalls Wilder fan, the piece de resistance was a visit to the Ingalls Homestead in DeSmet. Regardless of destination, the trips were fantastic opportunities to run around without parental supervision and to see cool corners of the state. I feel super fortunate that my mother enrolled me and that she allowed me to take the end-of-summer trip.

For the past few summers, I have been participating in a reading challenge that is part of my favorite online community. I set my own goal. It’s always the same—20 books. I have only hit this goal once, and to do it, I read three books over Labor Day weekend. That was fun. The summer is just past the halfway point between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and I have read twelve books. Currently, I’m looking for a few good, quick reads to get me closer to my goal. Of course there is great satisfaction in reaching 20, but perhaps I should treat myself to a Minnesota literary road trip—Sauk Center (Sinclair Lewis), Walnut Grove (LIW), Mankato (Maud Hart Lovelace), or here in St. Paul (F. Scott Fitzgerald).

books on display

2011-07-11T11:36:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, I read about Thatcher Wine in the New York Times. His business, Juniper Books, embraces two of my favorite pursuits: books and design. Wine specializes in creating libraries for customers, often covering books to emphasize a theme or a color. From a reader's point of view, the books aren't necessarily pick-up-able, but from a design perspective, the effect is crisp and organized and very appealing. I find his work very inspiring.

Books were wrapped in orange paper, then stamped with letters that define the theme. Imagine cookbooks or travel books or mysteries done this way.

Books wrapped in complementary colors could enliven a shelf.

The potential for themes is endless. Here is a sports car; below is wine.

currently reading

2011-07-08T11:03:00.000-07:00

Finally, I have finished Freedom, Jonathan Franzen's overly long novel of an epically dysfunctional family. I am relieved to have that monkey off my back. I started reading Freedom on the September day it was published, and I paid full price. For the most part, I found the characters ugly and nearly nonredeemable. I was never sure where the story was going, and yet found myself blown away that Franzen could pull off nearly 600 pages of dense writing, moving his novel along at a snail's pace and that it would be a bestseller and critically acclaimed. Baffling. BTW, I adored The Corrections.

Still working on Ben Aaronovitch's Midnight Riot, which is the first mystery in a funny supernatural series. I haven't read much in this subgenre, so I may not be the best judge, but I do think it's super fun and has been the perfect anecdote to bloated literary fiction.

We took another trip to SoDak over the July 4th weekend and so had another opportunity for a read-aloud--Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, the story of ultra-marathon runners and the Tarahumara, a super secret Mexican tribe of ultrarunners. We're enjoying the book. The author is a sports journalist and the writing is easy-going.

June statistics

2011-06-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

June has been a great month for reading! I have had glorious swathes of time to sink my teeth into books, particularly during those two glorious weeks when the boys were still in school. Finishing five books in a month is an accomplishment, to be sure, but I also managed to pick up Freedom right at the place where I left off in April. At the rate I am going, I may actually finish this door-stopper--608 pages, feels like 1,200--before the pub year is over.

Sojourn was covered here. The only thing I’d like to say about it now is that it is still one of the leading candidates for Favorite of 2011.

A couple of short reads improved my overall statistics. On son Simon's recommendation, and in anticipation of attending a Neil Gaiman event, I read Odd and the Frost Giant. This is folklore at its best. For one, it’s not updated in some ridiculous contemporary way meant to capture the short attention spans of the modern child. Brett Helquist's woodcut illustrations ground the story so it is approachable and transporting.This beautiful story pays homage to Norse gods and giants in a very pleasing way. I cannot wait to re-read.

Wither is a first novel, and the first book in the Chemical Garden Trilogy, by Lauren DeStafano. As a YA novel, this book was a quick read, which was, perhaps, the best thing about it. I didn’t connect with any characters, and I’m only mildly curious about what happens to them. Catastrophic illnesses have been bred out of the gene pool, but the trade-off is that people don’t live into adulthood. Girls—some as young as 13 years old (which I found disturbing)—are plucked off the street and forced to marry and reproduce. Rhine Ellery, an orphan, is the victim of such a kidnapping. Her husband is wealthy and young. He falls in love with Rhine after his first wife expires from a very messy death. Rhine may have feelings for husband, but she has stronger feelings for Gabriel the servant boy. Mostly she’s plotting her escape from the mansion-prison in which she’s held so she may be reunited with her twin brother. The plot follows predictably as well as makes allusions to experiments conducted in the creepy basement by the scary father-in-law. Yeah, the stereotypes are heavy. It seems as if the publisher—and author—are trying to capture the Hunger Games audience, but I think Wither falls far short. I think I can predict the progression of each of the three books. Also, I found a lot of inconsistencies with the circumstances under which the world has gone to hell and couldn’t suspend enough disgust for the child brides and trafficking. Not recommended.

Foiled, however, was a delightful read. Jane Yolen wrote the story and Mike Cavallaro illustrated this sweet graphic novel about a teen girl who fences. There’s romance and magic (of the fantastical sort). Our lead character is feisty and passionate and competitive and trying to figure out life. I wish more books like this had been in print when I was 14.

The most transporting book I read this month was An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof. This travel memoir details the epic year (plus) that the author and her husband spent sailing from their home in Toronto to the Caribbean. They quit their day jobs in publishing, rented their house, bought a 42-foot sailboat, and set off for points south, covering 47 individual islands. I loved reading about the water, the sand, the sun, the food, and the people (cruisers and islanders, alike) that the couple met along the way. And, I fantasized constantly about taking a leave from my studies, renting the house, pulling the kids out of school, and having an unforgettable adventure. I also have a wicked craving for conch fritters.

Sadly, I was forced to abandon Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which I had been listening to in the car. Half of the story focuses on Daniel Burnham, the architect who designed the grounds for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The other half of the story focuses on a serial killer in Chicago who was active during that same period. Clearly, the character's lives intersect. This past semester, my architectural history class spent a lot of time on international expositions and on Chicago’s post-Great Fire growth so this book has been high on my list for summer reading. No sooner had I returned the book than I learned a friend was reading it and another is searching for a copy. Ah, the power of backlist (Larson has a newhardcover out). Try, try again.

the sojourn

2011-06-03T20:44:00.000-07:00

When I’m feeling up to it, but more likely as time permits, I like to write quick and dirty reviews of the books I read. More typically, though, I let book review posts slide until the end of the month. But I just read a book that I can’t stop thinking about. In fact, I’m becoming an evangelist for it. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I read a book that moved me this much.

Last night, my book group met and discussed The Sojourn, a first novel by Andrew Krivak. We all loved it. This elegant, taut novel (191 pages!) is a first-person reflection from a Czech sharpshooter in WW1. The novel has a rather dramatic beginning, but I think it sets up the story nicely. I found that I really cared about the main character and most of the minor characters, which is more than I can say for the other novel I am currently reading. Unlike other war stories, there are minimal battle scenes. Blood and gore and heavy-handed moralizing are also missing. It was, in a word, amazing, and I highly recommend it.

The Sojourn is currently available in trade paperback. It will be the best $15 you spend this week. Remember, the book is only 191 pages. Really, not a big commitment, at all. If you’d like further convincing, read this review.

may stats

2011-05-31T21:26:00.000-07:00

Finished:

Crunch Time, Left for Dead, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

Abandoned:

At Home

May has been quite an epic month. Pardon the drama, but I can find no other way to encapsulate a long month that encompassed final projects, tests, and papers. In fact one of those final projects involved a 96-hours stretch in which I got only 10 hours of sleep and three meals. Plus, it culminated in a mondo work session of 24 consecutive hours. I strove all semester to avoid getting myself into this situation, but, in the end, found it unavoidable. And, now, I am working toward acceptance that design school is insane that way—overly detail oriented and not enough time to attend to everything. So all I can do this summer is recover and reposition myself for fall. I’m digging deep to make myself smarter, faster, more confident than ever.

Naturally, part of my self-improvement will involve reading as much as I possibly can, for pleasure and for learning. As soon as finals were done, but before I’d caught up fully on lost sleep, I made a trip to the library. Then I hefted a thick mystery—Diane Mott Davidson’s Crunch Time—for pure entertainment. Crunch Time is the sixteenth novel in Davidson’s series, which features caterer-sleuth Goldy Schulz. I find that these mysteries (or novels of suspense as the jacket proclaims) are becoming increasingly overplotted. In fact, this book is over 400 pages, and I thought it was a little long. I know that the fictitious Colorado town where these stories are set is small and that Goldy must know everyone, but the relationships, particularly to the victim, are becoming more convoluted. It is clear, however, that Davidson intends to write more mysteries in this series—she dropped a bit of intrigue into Goldy and Tom’s personal life with a definite cliffhanger. Here’s more about the plot.

Over Memorial Day weekend, John and I took the boys to my parents’ house, which is a four-hour drive. We used to listen to audio books but now I read aloud, which I really enjoy. On this trip, we read Beck Weathers’ Left for Dead, which had been a recent Mother’s Day present. My dear husband has done his best to keep my adventure book section stocked with climbing dramas.

Weathers’ story, for the most part, was satisfying. He was a member of the 1996 season on Mt. Everest during which there was a record number of deaths. This is the climb that Jon Krakauer captured in Into Thin Air. Weathers didn’t summit because he was having unexpected side effects from a radial keratotomy and lost his ability to see. His limited vision also made it difficult for him to make it back to camp during a snowstorm so he hunkered down with a fellow stranded climbers and waited to be rescued or die. When his rescuers arrived, they left Weathers for dead since he was in a hypothermic coma and there was little perceived chance for survival.Who knew that Weathers would become conscious, pry his frozen body out of the snowfall, and walk back into camp.

In Left for Dead, Weathers tells the story of the clinical depression he “treated” with the physical exertion and with the ego boost of success that comes from climbing tall mountains. He tells about how the depression, his absences, and the excessive risks he took as a father and husband nearly destroyed his marriage. And, Weathers describes the injuries that he suffered from Everest and the long, long road to physical recovery. But, he doesn’t spend much time addressing how he worked on his marriage. Still, enough of the book appeased my craving for adventure writing that I enjoyed it.

Finally, I listened to David Sedaris’ latest book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. I truly believe his books are best on audio. Sure, I can hear his voice in my imagination when I read, but it’s so much more satisfying. Sedaris is a performer and listening to him on audio is like having him in the car, telling me a story. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk is a delightful and wickedly funny, modern set of Aesop’s-like fables, some of which don’t have happy endings. My favorite story was “The Parenting Storks” in which two sisters dispel myths about where babies come from and discuss parenting philosophy.Very, very funny stuff.

kids reading

2011-05-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

Simon recently finished D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. Yay! After seeing Thor, he expressed an interest in Norse myths and is now reading D'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants. Also, from time to time, he dips into The Hobbit. And, as always, he feeds his comic book obsession, currently with Mouse Guard. Simon is writing a fan letter and including his own mouse guard drawing to the author, David Petersen.

Winston has been avoiding reading. He has re-read the Wimpy Kid books because nothing that anyone (me) suggests to him seems to be what he's looking for. I know that feeling all too well...so many books, none grabbing your attention. On Monday, he picked up Weird Club: The Search for the New Jersey Devil and devoured it in three days. One evening, when asked to come to the dinner table, he said, "Mom, I'd really rather just read." I almost let him. Now he wants anything related to the unexplained. I'm going to pick up Scary States of America and Kid vs. Squid from the library, and I need to do some more research to find comparable books for him.

may update

2011-05-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

Summer break has begun!!! I'm super excited to be able to read for pleasure without being distracted by homework.

Recently I read and loved Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. This intricately woven novel of interlinked stories is engaging from the first sentence. I marveled at the way the author was able to pull off the transitions to new time and character points of view. Egan is completely deserving of the all the accolades and awards heaped upon her this past year. I'd love to revisit some of her earlier novels, particularly Look at Me, which I haven't yet read.

currently reading

2011-03-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

This semester has unexpectedly offered many good opportunities for pleasure reading. My class load feels a whole lot lighter, for one. I have had fewer assignments due, to date, and most of the assignments I have had felt pretty manageable. But the biggest boon to my reading has been the time I have spent as a commuter. I have a class on the Minneapolis campus but I have a parking contract on the St. Paul campus. Thanks to logistics, I end up riding the Campus Connector from St. Paul to East Bank, which takes about 15 to 20 minutes. And, all that time is spent reading, as long as I don’t get motion sickness, which has happened.

I have been able to make a greater dent in As Always, Julia, the marvelous correspondence between Julia Child and her friend Avis Devoto. I started this book in Princeton over Christmas when my mother-in-law received it as a gift. But since I have been home, I have had to content myself with checking out the book from the library. Numerous times. Because other people want to read it, too. The biggest surprise about this book was learning that I haven’t read everything about Child. Her letters to Avis, which were recently made public, pleasantly fill in the gaps—that I didn’t even know existed—in all the bios I have read.

Gabrielle Hamilton’s long anticipated memoir, Blood, Bones, and Butter, was released last week, and I treated myself to a hardcover copy. The library hasn’t ordered it yet, and, quite frankly, I don’t want to wait. The first 25 pages were richly detailed and well written, but not too well written. Hamilton has an MFA in writing so I feared her book might be overly polished and workshopped to death. But she’s a gritty chick, accustomed to holding her own in the testosterone-driven world of professional kitchens.

Since Tuesday morning, the Morning News’ Tournament of Books has captured my attention. Freedom is the only book in this year’s contest that I’ve come closest to reading. I love reading the judging and the commentary even though it’s all a bit much, and I know that I’ll eventually lose interest. Until then, l am inspired, once again, to pick up Freedom, which is hefty and, in hardcover, is not such a commuter-friendly book.

Spring break began in earnest yesterday. I intend to read a lot in the next week.

bookcase or sculpture?

2011-01-14T19:45:00.000-08:00

Earlier today I went through a pile of Dwell magazines in an earnest endeavor to recycle. I'm so glad I peeked in the pages of a few of the older issues. One from 2004 revealed this amazing, limited edition display shelf that comes artfully loaded with seven of the most seminal books on power and how it helped shape society. I'd love a set for myself. I'm particularly enamored of the way the books fit into the shelf (see below).

11 for '11

2011-01-12T19:57:00.000-08:00

For the past FIVE years, I have created a reading challenge for myself. The challenge is to read from a list of books, one for each year of my life. So, beginning with the year I turned 39, I had 39 books on my list. Realistically, my goal is to read up to a third of the books on the list, which becomes more difficult as the list grows exponentially. Not to mention that I am easily distracted from the list. Not because it’s a bad list or a difficult list, after all, each title represents a book I actually want to read. Rather, I drift toward brand-spanking new books or books that are gaining word of mouth.

Mostly I’m in it for the list-making.

So this year, I’ve shifted my schedule a bit, from the start of my birthday year (October) to the start of the calendar year (January). And, I have decided to pare the list down from forty-something to eleven for ’11. And they are, in no particular order:

Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
Recently I read aloud The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on a car trip, and I was wowed by the storytelling. Then I remembered that I first read this books when I was in the fifth grade, the same age as Simon. Miss Otto, my English teacher, encouraged me to make a list of words I was encountering for the first time and to look up the definitions in the dictionary. it was here that I learned dais. Anyway, I never finished reading the seven-book series and vow to in '11.

As Always, Julia (Julia Child and Avis DeVoto)

The letter of Avis DeVoto have recently been made public, and, combined with Julia Child's, they flesh out a remarkable story. I read the first 100 pages during Christmas vacation in Princeton, NJ, and look forward to finishing the book when it becomes available in the library.

Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)
Not long ago, I read a reference to this book, which had been assigned reading in the 19th and 20th Century English and Irish Lit class I took during my JYA in London. I never finished reading Mrs. Dalloway then, but figure it's about time.

Life on the Mississippi (Mark Twain)
I live on the Mississippi River. And, I've long been remiss for never having read Mark Twain. Need I say more?

Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
This fat novel has been recommended to me over and over again. Also, I have had it on my TBR list for the past four years. I will read it this year.

Pearl Buck in China: Journey to the Good Earth (Hilary Spurling)
This biography is on my alma mater's 2011 Conversation with Books list, and I am hoping to read it before then.

The Good Earth (Pearl Buck)
See above.

Freedom (Jonathan Franzen)
Big, fat book of the year. I'm 100 pages into it, which is only 100 pages from the point where, I hear, the novel clicks.

Salt: A History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
Soon, I will have read every book Mark Kurlansky, a modern-day John McPhee, has written.

Art of Eating (M.F.K. Fisher)
Actually, five short books. I've always wanted to read each of them. Plus, I'm trying to get more culinary essays onto my reading list.

Cloud Nine (David Mitchell)
I have owned this book for a long time and recently read a synopsis of it, which pushed the book up my list.

So, 11 for '11 is a mix of fiction and nonfiction, short volumes and long, classics and new releases, children's books and adult, shelf-sitters and books I have started but never finished. I think it's going to be a good reading year.

the year (2010) in books

2010-12-31T12:06:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!! It has been so long since I have blogged that I’ve forgotten how to do it (nearly). 2010 was a good reading year even though I read far fewer books—34—than I had hoped to. Again, I blame school. During spring semester, I attempted frantically to keep up with school assignments and prepare for portfolio review, which I passed (definitely a high point of the year!). This past fall semester was spent trying to keep up with a full course load and attendant work. But it’s all good. I love design and designing. Perhaps I can include more design books on my 2011 reading list.

In a nutshell, I focused on quality rather than quantity this year, choosing to read more classics and literary books when I could. In June we traveled to England. Fiction and nonfiction related to the trip figured prominently on my list. To set the mood before our trip, I read Kingdom by the Sea, Paul Theroux’s classic account of walking around Great Britain’s coast. Upon our return home, I read Hound of the Baskervilles to cement my memories. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s chilling depiction of the Grimspound in Dartmoor National Park transported me to the very ground I had walked mere weeks earlier.

Time spent waiting in airports and on planes and trains gave me many opportunities to read aloud to the boys. We read some fantastic books, including The Hobbit, which I realized, once again, is about the most perfect adventure story ever. A recent read of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has inspired us to finish the epic C.S. Lewis series in the new year.

Another way I made up for lost time reading was to listen to audio books on my commute to school. For the most part, I listened to mysteries and thrillers, which I find more forgiving on my attention span, especially when practicing presentations or reviewing for tests on same drive. I also listened to a few books that were in the Tournament of Books, which I knew I wouldn’t otherwise get to. Both were disappointments, and I’m glad not to have gotten bogged down in their pages.

Herewith is a list of the thirty-four books I read in 2010. A small list of statistics follows.

1. Whiteout (Rucka and Lieber), graphic novel

2. Nicholas (Goscinny and Sempe)

3. The Girl Who Played with Fire (Steig Larsson)

4. The Vintage Caper (Peter Mayle) audio

5. Chronic City (Jonathan Lethem), book group, 42 for 42

6. The Unnamed (Joshua Ferris), 42 for 42

7. A Gate at the Stairs (Lorrie Moore) audio, 42 for 42, TOB

8. When You Reach Me (Rebecca Stead)

9. That Old Cape Magic (Richard Russo) audio, TOB

10. Committed (Elizabeth Gilbert) audio

11. Fatal Remedies (Donna Leon)

12. Man from Beijing (Henning Mankell) audio

13. The Sea of Monsters (Rick Riordan)

14. Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Steig Larsson)

15. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Alan Bradley)

16. Kingdom by the Sea (Paul Theroux)

17. Red Pyramid (Rick Riordan)

18. My Love Affair with England (Susan Allen Toth)

19. Lost on Planet China (J. Maarten Troost) audio

20. Life as We Knew It (Susan Pfeffer)

21. Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle)

22. Remarkable Creatures (Tracy Chevalier)

23. Cricket in Times Square (George Selden)

24. Red Hook Road (Ayelet Waldman)

25. Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer (John Grisham)

26. Day for Night (Frederick Reiken), my favorite of 2010

27. Friends in High Places (Donna Leon)

28. Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins)

29. 84, Charing Cross Road (Helene Hanff)

30. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkein)

31. Yarn: Remembering the Way Home (Kyoko Mori)

32. Viognier Vendetta (Ellen Crosby), audio

33. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling)

34. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)

Statistics
Fiction: 30
Nonfiction: 4
Books written by women: 14
Books written by men: 20
42 for 42 challenge: 5 (last year: 11)
Mystery/thrillers: 10
Travel essays: 3
Culinary essays: 0 (no way!)
Donna Leon: 2
Children’s: 10
Story collections: 0
Audio: 7
Classics: 5
Graphic novels/memoirs: 1
First novels: 0

Off to get a jump on 2011 reading!

happy merry to all!

2010-12-25T09:11:00.000-08:00

It’s Merry Chaos here in Princeton. Has a year gone by already? This fall has been very busy. I took four interior design classes, two of which were studio classes and another that had a lab. More on this later. For now, a comment on the day. As anticipated, there is no snow here in New Jersey, which is fine by me. It's a blessed relief from the two feet of snow that blankets my neighborhood. I don't need a white Christmas to be happy, just surrounded by family. Lots of squeals of delight over plastic crappies (Scarlett and Sophia, 4 and 5, respectively) as well as more subdued gratitude for much desired cell phones (Simon and Winston).

I feel like a kid myself after consuming half a pound of grapefruit gelees in lieu of breakfast. But, a 23-pound turkey with Southern cornbread stuffing--straight out of the Columbus, GA, Junior League Cookbook--and bourbon sweet potatoes are in my immediate future. So all is right in the world.

No matter where you are and what you believe, I hope that your day is filled with peace and glad tidings!

checking in

2010-10-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

It's mid October and midterm so I thought I'd check in quickly. Since school started eight weeks ago, I have finished reading exactly one book—Yarn by Kyoko Mori. The author, who is a poet, novelist, and writing professor, analogizes the fabric of her life with knitting. She writes about being a foreigner in small-town Wisconsin, struggles in her marriage and its eventual dissolution, her mother who committed suicide when the author was a teenager, her estrangement from her family (her abusive father, her father's mistress who became her stepmother, and her brother who was closer to their stepmother than their birth mother), and the friendships she values. She learns to knit and to spin and weave, and she raises angora rabbits for their fur, which she cards and spins. The analogies are lovely, which matters since the emotion feels heavy. The palpable weight of sadness hangs on this woman like a wet blanket. But there's a redemptive quality in the life she makes for herself. Ultimately I enjoyed the book well enough but can't offer a strong endorsement.

Also since school started, I have tried to pack my SRS in the hope of squeezing in some pleasure reading. One of the biggest benefits of the e-reader is that its slim size and light weight make it very portable, which makes a difference to the heavy load of my backpack. You should see how many huge textbooks I carry on a daily basis! I have need for a chiropractic adjustment. The other plus for me is that I can load a bunch of books onto the device so I have choices. I'd like to finish Anthropology of an American Girl, which I started on the flight to London in May. Alas, the downside of an e-reader is battery life. My device is dead at the moment, and I rarely remember to charge it. That said, I do have a goal to finish up this loose end before the end of the year. Fingers crossed.

I'm currently reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. One morning a few weeks ago, I decided to treat myself to some pleasure reading before I started my homework. Mistake! I couldn't stop reading. The first fifty pages of Freedom were fantastic. The novel is set in St. Paul, and the places and stereotypes are very real. Sometimes I think if John and I were 10 years older, we would have been the main characters. I haven't touched the book since that day, except to move it from my reading corner in the den to my bedside table. And, I fear that with my current workload I may not have an opportunity to pick it up until finals are over. In December. And, at that point, I'll be debating whether to shlep it on a flight or take my SRS. It's a perpetual cycle.

I am listening to audiobooks on my drive to school, which makes the endeavor a little less stressful. At the moment, I have in rotation Harlan Coben's Long Lost, which takes sports agent/sleuth Myron Bolitar to Paris. Yay, transporting! The book is read by Steven Weber, who is spot-on as an "affable, horny fool." I now imagine that Myron Bolitar looks like Steven Weber instead of the author.

In the meantime, I have read half of a textbook on environmentally responsible interior design, one-quarter of a textile textbook, and an entire AUTOCAD manual. So, it's not like I haven't been reading...

booker prize shortlist

2010-09-07T06:23:00.000-07:00

Whittled down from 13 titles, here are the 2010 Booker Prize finalists:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue Room (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books - Grove Atlantic)
Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Review - Headline Publishing Group)
Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape - Random House)
I haven't read any of these books nor heard much buzz, which isn't unusual since many of the books nominated for the Booker haven't been published yet in the states. Peter Carey has won the Booker twice, and, if he wins again, he will be the first author to have won three times. Whee. The winners will be announced on October 12.

back to school books

2010-09-06T06:14:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I return to school as a full-time design student. I’m pretty excited, but also a little nervous. Last year, school was challenging, especially the shift from working primarily with words to art and creating things. The constant projects and deadlines were dizzying. But, I got good grades and did good work and passed portfolio review—and I cannot forget that. There is no time or room for self-doubt in this program.

It’s hard to say how much pleasure reading I’ll do over the next 16 weeks. Over the long weekend I finished reading The Hobbit aloud to the boys. My friend Caryl brought me a gift from Kansas City—An Expert in Murder: A Josephine Tey mystery, which I’m pretty excited to start. And, I recently picked up Jonathan Franzen’s latest, Freedom, which is set in St. Paul.

Nor do I think I’ll have many opportunities to blog here. I’m not going dark, however, because I remain just deluded enough to picture myself keeping up with everything.

Hold tight until mid December and happy reading!

Persephone Books

2010-09-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

Earlier this summer, while on vacation in London, I made a pilgrimage to Persephone Books. My friend Caryl introduced me to Persephone a few years ago, and I have been a huge fan since. Thank you, Caryl!!

Stateside, Persephone isn’t widely known, sadly. They’ve published 88 books ranging from serious fare, such as Etty Hillum’s Holocaust journals, to unique selections, such as Miss Ranskill Comes Home, a novel about a woman who was swept overboard and lived on a desert island for three years. But, Persephone published Winnifred Watson’s Mrs. Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which is even more delightful than the movie version with Amy Adams and Frances McDormand.

There is so much to love about Persephone.

~The packaging: French flaps and hefty high-quality paper make these books more substantial than most paperbacks. Dove gray covers look like a classics library when you have multiple books lined up on the shelf. But, the real treat is the beautiful endpapers and matching bookmark, which are inspired by vintage textiles that mirror the mood of each title.

~The content: “neglected” and rediscovered 20^th century fiction, mostly by women, for women. They also publish select nonfiction, such as short memoirs and cookbooks. I groove on the nostalgia factor. Persephone describes their choices as not too literary but not commercial and definitely unforgettable.

~The catalog: the Biannually, which Persephone mails to me free. It doesn’t only have the newest books, wonderfully described, but the catalog also has articles so it’s meaty.

Not surprising, I loved the store. It’s located in my old stomping grounds, Bloomsbury, just on the other side of Russell Square from the British Museum. The store is tiny and softly lit and brimming with books. This is also the location from which Persephone ships books so all around the store tidy piles were waiting to be packaged. I thought about all the lucky recipients. My favorite feature of the store was a display table with piles of books and a sign that read: Books We Wished We Had Published.

Naturally I bought a few souvenirs. I had a hard time choosing just one so I took advantage of Persephone’s special—three books for a flat, slightly discounted rate—and picked up Good Food on the Aga, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, and, for Caryl, Dimanche and Other Stories (Irene Nemirovsky).

august statistics

2010-08-31T07:35:00.000-07:00

Finished:

Red Hook Road (Ayelet Waldman), Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer (John Grisham), Friends in High Places (Donna Leon), Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins)

Purchased:

Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins), Packing for Mars (Mary Roach), Hangover Square (Patrick Hamilton)

On my radar:

The Island (Elin Hildenbrand), The Snack Thief (Andrea Camilleri), A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan)

at the moment

2010-08-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

~trying to finish up John Grisham's novel for middle readers, Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer. Theo is hard not to like. He's passionate about the law (both parents are lawyers; one of his best friends is a judge) and hopes to practice one day. In the meantime, he dispenses legal advice (“I don’t take money”) whenever his peers solicit it. The novel hinges on his interest in a high-profile murder trial. The defendant, Mr. Duffy, stands accused of murdering his wife. The defendant seems guilty, but all the evidence is circumstantial. No doubt, Theo Boone will find that key piece of evidence that neither lawyer nor investigators have been able to dredge up. So far, it’s enjoyable read—quick and compelling with explanations of legal terms and processes.

~starting Frederick Reiken’s third novel, Day for Night, which is exactly the book I was looking for. After completing Red Hook Road, nothing I picked up felt right. Actually, the novels I started, including Allegra Goodman’s Cookbook Collector, all had the same feel when I was hoping to find something fresh. Day for Night first came to my attention on Facebook, where some bookseller friends raved their early reads. Then my friend Suzanne, whose personal library resembles mine, recommended it as one of the most unique novels she had read recently. Plus, it got good industry buzz as one of the books from Reagan Arthur’s inaugural list at Little, Brown. So I checked it out and quickly came to my last three-week renewal. To my surprise, there’s no waiting list in the St. Paul Public Library system. People, that status has to change—read this book. Until I find an adequate way to talk about the book without giving away the plot, suffice to say the novel has linked stories. But not really stories, rather chapters with shifting points of view—because there is one story running through the disparate parts. I hope I’m not ruining it. Reiken is an insanely talented writer.

~contemplating dipping into another book. Contenders include Color: A Natural History by Victoria Finley, which is on my 42 list, or an armchair mystery, such as Donna Leon’s Friends in High Places, or a high-brow beach read, such as Elin Hildebrand’s Castaways. Thoughts?

july statistics

2010-07-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

Finished

Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle), Life as We Knew It (Susan Pfeffer), Remarkable Creatures (Tracy Chevalier), Cricket in Times Square (George Selden), Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs (Ursula Vernon)

Purchased

Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916 (Michael Cappuzo)

On my radar

Allegra Goodman's Cookbook Collector, Frederick Reiken's Day for Night

vacation

2010-07-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

Recently I spent a sun-, sand-, and taffy-filled Jersey Shore vacation. I didn't get much work done, but I managed the following:

~finished Hound of the Baskervilles, which I had picked up to prolong our June trip to England, during which we spent a glorious day exploring Dartmoor National Park. While attempting to find Hound Tor, an enormous granite outcropping, we got lost. The roads in Dartmoor aren’t very well marked. But, we did spot another tor, which we hiked. At the top we saw a stone circle with smaller stone circles within and recognized it as a Bronze Age settlement. As we poked around in the stone circle, we met two women walking their dogs and learned from them that we were in the Grimspound, the exact location where Arthur Conan Doyle set portions of Hound of the Baskervilles. One woman said, “You should be reading it right here, right now.” Indeed. Hound is a fantastic ghost story driven by setting. The moor was really spooky. And, I found Sherlock Holmes to have a fantastic sense of humor. My future reading lists will include more Holmes adventures.

~read Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures. Set in Lyme Regis, England, this novel features real-life, mid-19th century fossil hunters, Elizabeth Philpot and Mary Anning. Like Girl with the Pearl Earring, Remarkable Creatures is light fare with rich details of time and place, which made it perfect, in so many ways, for the beach. In addition to discovery, Chevalier explores women’s rights and friendship. My little family visited Lyme Regis in June. We went there for the boys so they could fossil hunt. Fossils are, 150 years after Remarkable Creatures, still incredibly abundant, and you can bring home what you find. Needless to say, we found nothing because we were on the beach at the wrong time—high tide. Who knew? In one scene, Mary Anning is digging out an ichthyosaur from the cliffs facing the English Channel when she’s caught in a landslide. Paul Theroux When I think about this book, I will remember sprawling on the bed, with its faded green gingham bedspread, in Cape May.

~continued with Anthropology of an American Girl. Slow-going b/c I'm reading it on my e-reader, which I only pick up sporadically. I read it on the airplane and in the car as we drove from Princeton to Cape May and back again. Other people read their e-readers on the beach, but I couldn’t manage to keep sand out of mine. At 150 pages into this 600 page novel, I hope to finish it this summer. Nonetheless, it is a fantastic coming of age that feels somewhat retro 70s, like reading a more grown-up version of Judy Blume. I hope the ending for Evie is uplifting but I get the sense she may be tragic.

~blasted through Cricket in Times Square with the boys, which was charming. I loved Chester Cricket and his friends Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat. The boys looked forward to listening every night, even though it felt like a slightly old-fashioned story, especially when compared to the insanity of Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs. I read the latter, in its entirety, in the ninety minutes it took for our return flight to take off (yikes). In hindsight, I could have finished one of my own books in those ninety minutes. Reading aloud to the boys helped me feel connected to them during a time when I was experiencing intense anxiety. I had to apologize to the hipsters ahead of us, who kept peeking through their seat backs to see what I was reading.

June statistics

2010-06-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

Finished

Fiction: Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Alan Bradley) and The Red Pyramid (Rick Riordan)

Nonfiction: Kingdom by the Sea (Paul Theroux), Lost on Planet China (J. Maarten Troost), My Love Affair with England (Susan Allen Toth)

Purchased

The Boat (Nam Le), Yarn (Kyoko Mori), Busman’s Honeymoon (Dorothy L. Sayers), Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle), 84, Charing Cross (Helene Hanff), Eating Air (Pauline Melville), Burning Land (Bernard Cornwell)

June was a “gift” reading month in which I felt like I made up for time lost to textbooks over the past academic year. Studying was worthwhile, to be sure, but I missed my pleasure reading.

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

One of the first books I dove into was Alan Bradley’s Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which my friend Sarah pressed upon me. I know this is a popular book and has a precocious protagonist, both of which made me leery initially. But once I started Sweetness, I was immediately charmed by the main character’s voice, as well as the author’s style.

Life for eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce is starting to get interesting. First she finds a dead bird, with a postage stamp stuck to its beak, on her front doorstep. Then she stumbles upon the body of a man about to take his final breath. When Flavia’s father becomes the prime suspect, she takes on the task on solving the mystery and is often a few steps ahead of the police.

If you like traditional, locked room mysteries or interesting characters, then I highly recommend this book. Flavia is a budding chemist with two annoying older sisters, all of whom are left to raise themselves after their mother’s death. Her family lives in a decaying English manor house, which lends its own character. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie had similar charms to those I found in Alan Bennett’s Uncommon Reader and Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie mysteries. I am looking forward to reading The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag.

Kingdom by the Sea

Just in time for my first return to England since 1988, I read Kingdom by the Sea.

Initially I thought Theroux was a horrible snob, not at all open to the spirit of the place. He painted every seaside town on the southern coast of England as a hellhole. Initially, I thought, maybe they are, but having paid a recent visit I realize Theroux was unnecessarily harsh or dismissive, even though the year was 1982 and England wasn’t in a good place economically. Most of England was depressed. Unemployment rates were high. Even though British Rail was on strike, it had long since stopped running to many of the places Theroux would visit. Northern Ireland was thick in the Troubles. Scotland was imbued with irrepressible rugged beauty. The eastern coast of England was fading into the sea.

Many times through the course of the book, I found Theroux dispirited, lacking the excitement of discovery, and it often felt as if he was fulfilling a publishing contract. Susan Allen Toth even alludes to this crankiness in her memoir, My Love Affair with England. In the end, Theroux creates lasting memories of the coast and a particular time in British history. Quite frankly, I found Lyme Regis rather agreeable, neither run down nor overly touristy, while catering clearly to a summer crowd.

The Red Pyramid

Also this month I read aloud The Red Pyramid to the boys. This book is the first in Rick Riordan's newest series, which chronicles siblings Sadie and Carter Kane's adventures in the world of Egyptian mythology. The book sucked. Yes, I know it's a middle reader book. Even so, I think it's a travesty that Riordan was able to write a sloppy story for page count. The story is marred by too many side adventures. As in Riordan's Percy Jackson series, I enjoyed the mythology. The boys' recent visit to the British Museum was even more rich for knowing about the Rosetta Stone and assorted Egyptian gods (the baboon Thoth, for example) and accoutrement (such as shabti, or clay figurines). Still, I expect a lot more from book two. Better, I would like the boys to read these books on their own and report back to me.

retail therapy

2010-06-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

Feeling a little at loose ends without pressing deadlines, and having starved myself of frivolous book purchases these past five months, I tore myself from launderess duties and headed for St. Anthony Village, that charming St. Paul neighborhood. I had a short list of a titles that I’ve read about recently and have become obsessed with. There's no more perfect a place to shop than a local independent bookstore. Thank goddess we still have two in St. Paul.

Owners Tom and Hans—who are friends from my book rep days when I called on them at Hungry Mind/Ruminator—resurrected dusty Micawber’s, in 2003. In almost no time at all, the two bookselling pros cleared out all the old books (I swear Norton, the previous owner and a friend, never pulled a return) and loaded shelves and display tables with the latest handpicked titles.

Micawber’s, consequently, is one of my favorite bookstores to browse. Inevitably, in the course of a visit, I pick up far too many books to purchase. On this visit, even though I didn’t find the books I was looking for, I also didn’t walk out of the store empty-handed. I picked up a remaindered hardcover copy of The Boat, Nam Le’s critically acclaimed debut story collection. While I was browsing, Hans kindly loaded my arms with a few advanced reading copies of spring titles. He suggested leaving them behind on my travels. Planting the seeds, as it were.

Of these books, I’m most excited about Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth, which is her follow up to The Book of Salt. And, I’m prepared to be pleasantly surprised by Michelle Hoover’s first novel The Quickening, which is published by small Other Press and got a strong Margot Livesey cover quote. But Deirdre Madden’s Molly Fox’s Birthday, a finalist for the Orange Prize, is also promising. It’s a Picador paperback original, and I happen to know a thing or two about these, having worked for Picador as it was started up.

Overall, a wonderful visit for the books in hand as well as those added to my TBR list. Plus, it was really good to share some chit-chat with Hans and Karen, with whom I worked at Odegard’s, twenty years ago…gadzooks.

I love what this store is doing and hope that it will be around for a long time. Please support Micawber’s!

May stats

2010-05-31T22:10:00.000-07:00

Finished:

Sea of Monsters (Rick Riordan), Man from Beijing (Henning Mankell), The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (Stieg Larssen)

Abandoned:

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (Roald Dahl)

Purchased:

Spring-Summer 2010 Salmagundi for The Island, a novella by Andrea Barrett novella

By mid-May, I finished spring semester of school and threw myself back into reading for pleasure. The first change up in my reading came when I shifted from almost exclusively listening to audiobooks (thank goodness for audiobooks!!) to holding a book in my hands, which feels so good.

I finished the second book in the Percy Jackson and the Last Olympians series, The Sea of Monsters, which I read aloud to Winston. It was neither as satisfying nor as memorable as the first book in the series, but Winston found it exciting. His ability to hang onto details is amazing, even when a week has gone by without hearing the story, so often I ask him for a recap before beginning a session.

I also finished reading the third book in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (GWKtHN). Lizbeth Salander might be one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. She’s feisty and a little gritty, socially awkward, and a survivor. The trilogy encompasses a couple thousand pages of novel, carved into three books. Book three begins right where book two left off. In fact, book two (Girl Who Played with Fire) ended with such a colossal cliffhanger that Mr. Bibliotonic decided he needed to read the next book immediately. Since we live in a global economy, we could indulge in instant gratification with an order placed to amazon.uk. So I started reading GWKtHN during spring break in March but didn’t finish before school started up again. The book and I were reunited just after portfolio review. But this is the conclusion to Lisbeth’s story and her quest to prove her innocence in three murders.

If I were editor, I would have lopped at least 150 pages, including those with Ericka Berger’s harassment story, which did absolutely nothing to advance the plot. It was horrible filler. But ultimately I found GWKtHN to be very satisfying. I loved the trial scene, particularly Lisbeth’s defense lawyer, who is journalist and main character Michael Blomqvist’s sister. The trial was the saving grace of the last 300 pages and Giannini really socks it to the system that has screwed over Lisbeth since she was a child.

The books are far from perfect. For one, they suffer from translation problems, an opinion which I’m going to put out there without benefit of examples. Also, the plot could have been more taut. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed reading all three books. At best, they were well paced, which is more than can be said for many books being passed off as thrillers these days. Dan Brown, I’m looking at you. If you were wondering, Girl Who Played with Fire was my favorite book of the trilogy. This is the book that fleshes out Lisbeth, especially as she creates a new life for herself. Also, it was the first book I read on my e-reader and will, thus, always have a special place in my reader’s heart.

This month, I officially abandoned Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. I remember reading John Hanken's copy as a kid, but what I don't remember was how utterly odd this follow-up to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was. Perhaps I found it entertaining because, without doubt, at 10, I had a greater tolerance for silliness. But reading aloud now, ack! Knowing what I do about publishing, I'm guessing that Dahl had a contract to fulfill. Winston and I have loved other Dahl novels, such as BFG and The Twits and James and the Giant Peach.

I'm back

2010-05-12T14:29:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, I presented my interior design portfolio to a committee. My very best work from the academic year was pinned to a 4'-0" x 8'-0"display board. I had ten minutes to encapsulate the objectives as well as the design decisions I made to achieve those goals. The anticipation leading up to the presentation was nerve-wracking, but I spent the preceding hour practicing my speech. And, to quote the kids, "I killed." Next week I will have the results that hopefully seal my fate for the next three years*.

A very intense academic year has precluded reading for pleasure. If you look at my stats, I have read 13 books, a third of which have been audiobooks. Thank goodness for audiobooks! My daily commute is forty minutes roundtrip, which isn't horrible and certainly has been much improved by being able to listen to books. Recently I listened to Henning Mankell's most newest book, Man from Beijing. Quite frankly, the novel was a huge disappointment. Two story lines are meant to converge but never do successfully. As a result, at many points, I wondered what the book was really about: the brutal crime committed in a small Swedish village or the story of one of China's new captains of industry, who has a devious plan. Perhaps the problem was listening to the audio version. I think there are inherent problems with "reading" audiobooks while driving, especially during moments of attention deficit in favor of traffic. Nonetheless, I have a Kurt Wallender mystery on my current reading list and will give Mankell another try.

After portfolio review, I rode the bus home from campus (my car is dead, unexpectedly), which gave me an opportunity to dip into Kingdom by the Sea, Paul Theroux's classic account of traveling around the coast of England. I love Paul Theroux and have read both his fiction and nonfiction. Last year I read the novellas in Elephanta Suite, which were stunning and dark. But his travel accounts, which appear in publications such as Architecture Digest and Conde Nast Traveller, blow my skirt up most. Something about the way he captures a place that is simultaneously repellent and desirable. His full-blown travel accounts are genre defining.

I'm reading Kingdom by the Sea in anticipation of my summer vacation. It's 1982 and England is waging war in the Falklands, which becomes the backdrop for the prose. After living in London for over ten years, Theroux realizes he hasn't really been out of the city. He jokes about towns like Lyme Regis and Chipping Camden but has never been to any of them, so he takes a trip, circling the the perimeter of the UK and Ireland. I'm reading a copy of the book that I bought in 1988, after returning from my London year abroad. When I picked the book up again, I found a bookmark (my younger brother's "calling" card from his year in Loudun) at the spot where I stopped reading—page 77.

I hope to do better this time round, but it may be a challenge. Theroux is cranky; every town is a pit. He's nearly to the southwest counties, where I will be spending my summer vacation in three short weeks. He better not crap on my anticipation. Maybe I should stop reading now.

But it feels so good to be reading for pleasure again. Writing for pleasure does not suck either.

*If not, I hope there is a place for me somewhere in the publishing world.

Tournament of Books 2010

2010-03-15T10:25:00.000-07:00

Week two of the Morning News' annual March madness, the Tournament of Books, began this morning. I wanted to post some quick comments before I read the results of today's match between Logicomix (a graphic "novel" about Bertrand Russell) and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (the thick novel about Henry VIII, which won the most recent Booker and the National Book Critics Circle awards). The battle hardly seems fair. I mean, really, when you consider how utterly incomparable these two books are, how do you pick a winner?

This very question, though, is why I'm so fond of the ToB. The contestants are all so mismatched, but the judges decisions are often very arbitrary. Historically, some judges never finish reading their books and declare a winner nonetheless. Some judges are suspicious of books because of the hype heaped on them from established literary reviews and will, out of spite, choose the underdog.

It's really anyone's guess who will prevail today. I started reading Logicomix yesterday, and I'm enjoying it though I'm not far enough into it to have a sense of how this book would stand up to a culty literary star such as Hilary Mantel. I've never read Mantel, but came very close in the mid- to late-90s when I worked at Holtzbrinck (now Macmillan USA). Mantel was published by Henry Holt and even then was a darling who had enjoyed countless accolades from UK reviewers and had been nominated for Whitbread and Orange prizes but was, by no means, a household name stateside. I imagine that Wolf Hall will be a formidable challenge for a graphic novel about a logician, even if the judge doesn't manage to finish the 532-page novel. I predict Wolf Hall will win today.

Anyway, I filled out the brackets before the tournament began. I want to go on the record to say that I think Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver will duke it out in the final round. Talk about a literary cat fight. And so far, for the first time in the six years I have been following this contest, I called the winners of last week's battles with 100% accuracy.

books of the decade

2010-01-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

I’ve been fighting the urge to post a list so close on the heels of another list. That said, January is a “listy” time of year, what with making resolutions and refreshing the “to-do” lists. But, here we go: At some point during my vacation in Princeton, I realized that we were upon the end of a decade. Yes, I’m late to the “close out the aughts” party, but I’ve been hunkered down as an art student with nary a moment to come up for breath. A breath that would allow me to see what I’m missing while mired in deadlines and revisions. Yes, I missed all those fun end-of-the-decade lists of best music, best books, best movies. And I think it’s okay because, as an inveterate list-maker, those round-ups would have driven me to the brink of insanity, if I wasn’t there already. Yet I decided to make my own favorite books of the decade, which was relatively easy to do. I just dipped into the black Filofax where I have recorded my reading habits since 1993. Someday, I’d like to marry this list with the one I started in 1984.

Between the dawn of the millennium until the last day of 2009, I finished close to 400 books (395, to be precise). I don’t keep track of abandoned books, even if I almost finished reading them. Imposing a little discipline to my crazy is sometimes necessary. I love maintaining these lists because they are a great reminder of what I was up to. In the last decade, I had four jobs, one of which had a book group that met over the lunch hour. I had two babies in 2000 and distinctly remember cradling Simon while he napped, reading Mark Kurlansky’s A Basque History of the World. After I left Holtzbrinck in 2000, freeing me to read whatever book struck my fancy but obligating me to purchase my own books, I got the first library card of my adult life. When I see Linda Greenlaw’s fabulous Lobster Chronicles on the list, I’m transported to our first magical trip to Maine. Likewise, Alan Bennett’s subversive Uncommon Reader was devoured on a plane to New York City for a whirlwind weekend of museums and food, while Vincent Lam’s quiet Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures was read in a bright window at Vesuvio’s in San Francisco, channeling the ghosts of Kerouac and Ginsburg. Tony Bourdain’s Cook’s Tour (2002) began an obsession with Thomas Keller and The French Laundry. And the countless books that I have read with the Storknet gals or with my book group trigger warm feelings of community that share the love of reading.

A few statistics:

First book finished in the decade: Galileo’s Daughter (Dava Sobel, read for book group)

Last book of the decade: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Steig Larsson)

First book checked out on the first library card of my adult life: Two Moons (Thomas Mallon)

Books by men: 179

Books by women: 216

Nonfiction: 113

Fiction: 182

And now, my favorite books, by year, in no particular order. What constitutes a favorite books? Anything I'd press on someone else to read or that I would re-read in a heartbeat. Clearly, some years were better reading years than others!

2000: Catfish and Mandala (Pham), Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri), Bee Season (Myla Goldberg), The Fig Eater (Shields)

2001: Operating Instructions (Anne Lamott), Being Dead (Jim Crace), A Walk in the Woods (Bill Bryson), In a Sunburned Country (Bill Bryson), The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen), White Teeth (Zadie Smith), Up in the Air (Walter Kirn), Personal History (Katherine Graham), Lecturer's Tale (James Hynes)

2002: The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien), A Beautiful Mind (Sylvia Nasar), Atonement (Ian McKewn), Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

2003: Empire Falls (Richard Russo), The Quiet American (Graham Green), The Two Towers (JRR Tolkien), Soul of a Chef (Michael Ruhlman), The Singular Pilgrim (Rosemary Mahoney), Eyre Affair (Jasper Fforde), Lobster Chronicles (Liinda Greenlaw), Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi), Bel Canto (Ann Patchett), Don’t Let’s go to the Dogs (Alexandra Fuller), Saul and Patsy (Baxter)

2004: Naked from Baghdad (Paul Auster), Long Quiet Highway (Goldberg), The Photography (Penelope lively), Miles from Nowhere (Savage), Three Junes (Glass), Candyfreak (Steve Almond), Cook’s Tour (Tony Bourdain), Bangkok 8 (John Burdett), Swimming to Antarctica (Lynne Cox), Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)

2005: Gilead (Marilynne Robinson), Polysyllabic Spree (Nick Hornby), Man Walks into a Room (Nicola Krauss), Saturday (Ian McKewn), Nice, Big American Baby (Judy Budnitz)

2006: The World to Come (Dara Horn), Toast (Nigel Slater), Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton), Calcutta Chromosome (Amitav Ghosh), Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Iishiguro), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark), My Life in France (Julia Child), The Big Oyster (Mark Kurlansky), Housekeeping vs. The Dirt (Nick Hornby), Girl in Landscape (Jonathan Lethem)

2007: Shadow of the Wind (Zafon), Henry Huggins (Beverly Cleary), Fieldwork (Mischa Berlinski), Girls of Slender Means (Muriel Spark), Astrid and Veronika (Linda Olsson), Brief History of the Dead (Kevin Brockmeier), Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert), The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Michael Chabon), The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion), The Places in Between (Arthur Phillips), Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Sherman Alexie), Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett), Feeding a Yen (Calvin Trillin)

2008: What Is the What (Dave Eggers), Service Included (Pheobe Damrosch), Sunday Philospher’s Club (Alexander McCall Smith), Omnivore’s Dilemma (Michael Pollan), Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (Winifred Watson), Death at La Fenice (Donna Leon), Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper (Fuchsia Dunlop), Then We Came to the End (Joshua Ferris), Hens Dancing (Raffaella Barker), Homer Price (Robert McCloskey), Invention of Hugo Cabret (Brian Selznick), Gumbo Tales (Sara Roahen), French Milk (Lucy Knisley)

2009: Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris), Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates), Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman), Script and Scribble (Kittey Burns Florey), Acqua Alta (Donna Leon), Beat the Reaper (Josh Bazell), Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz), Case Histories (Kate Atkinson), How I Live Now (Meg Rosoff), Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons), Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John leCarre), Elephanta Suite (Paul Theroux), Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins), Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Michael Chabon), Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Steig Larsson)