kids reading

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

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

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?

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

~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

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

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.