Library Books Mid-April Edition

Here are the books that have followed me home in the past thirty days (and I promise this is the last picture I'll take with the creepy bunny):

What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics by Adrienne Rich
Walking into the Night by Olaf Olafsson
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
Slow Lightning by Eduardo C. Corral
The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
Aerial by Bin Ramke
Summer's End by Adalet Ağaoğlu
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Left Handed by Jonathan Galassi
Amiri Baraka & Edward Dorn: The Collected Letters
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Can you tell it is National Poetry Month?  There are two more that I got from the library but had to return (or had to read in Special Collections) - Fifteen Iraqi Poets and The Open Door joined Rich, Corral, Duffy, Ramke, Galassi, and another pile of books owned and purchased, in a poetry reading binge that will continue up until April 30. 

Olafsson, Kent, and Ağaoğlu are for various world literature reading challenges, although the Kent is also shortlisted for the Baileys' Women's Prize for Fiction this year, so I want to read it for two reasons.

I've never read The Giver.  Every once in a while I'll happen across a book I probably should have read long ago but never did.  And now they're making a movie, so the time is now.  It is actually book 1 of a quartet.

Relish is a book I've wanted to read for a while and I know it won't take long once I sit down to look through it.  It has the cutest cover ever and I'll probably have to own it.  It is a foodie graphic novel.  Has that been done before?  Not that I know of.

Speaking of graphic novels, I picked up the Bechdel after it was a central figure in a major defunding/censorship case in my state.  We discussed it at length on the 4th episode of the Reading Envy podcast if you are interested/disgusted by censorship the way I am!  I had previously read the sequel to Fun Home, so I was thrilled to finally get to this one.

Geek Love is the last book I brought home, just this afternoon - it is the May pick for a book club I participate in online.  The book is from 1999 but lately has come up in numerous places, so the stars are aligned to read this book (if there are reading stars.)


There were a few more that never left the library, in the sense that my office is inside a library and they were work-reading:
Tackling Depression at Work by Kerrie Eyers and Gordon Parker
But you Look Just Fine: Unmasking Depression, Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder and Seasonal Affective Disorder by Sahar Abdulaziz and Carol Sveilich
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
Topkapi Palace: Milestones in Ottoman History by İlber Ortaylı

Topkapi Palace wasn't really work reading but it's a heavy coffee table type book that I didn't want to lug home.  Otherwise I have a goal this year to better understand depression, so I've been doing some reading when I have a few spare minutes at work.  Since this doesn't happen often, The Noonday Demon remains unopened.

Reading Envy 004: Home, Frightening and Banned

For our fourth episode, we brought in Jenny's friend Karen, a reading friend she made through an online book club in a virtual world. Karen teaches Spanish at a university in the south. We had a great conversation!

Do you know what month it is?

Scott brought three books that he managed to read while flying to and fro:

• Pavane by Keith Roberts
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
• Aimless Love by Billy Collins

Karen collected three books to discuss:

• Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz
• “Casa Tomada” from Bestiario by Julio Cortázar 
• Fables Vol. 9: Sons of Empire by Bill Willingham

Jenny pulled three books from her recently read list:



Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
The Book of Goodbyes by Jillian Weise


A few links from our discussion:

Alison Bechdel revisits her childhood home twenty years later
A three-year-old recites Litany by Billy Collins
Google image search for Fables art


Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 004: Home, Frightening and Banned

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Or subscribe via iTunes by clicking: Subscribe.

Review of Under Magnolia by Frances Mayes

"Memory - a rebel force, a synaesthesia that storms the senses."

Frances Mayes, after her relocation to Tuscany, makes a impulsive move back to the south.  She grew up in Georgia and moved to North Carolina, but just the same, it triggered a wave of memories and emotions that she turned into this memoir of her childhood.

I connected with this book from multiple perspectives.  As someone who has been away from "home" for almost ten years and is returning home this summer (although not the south and not permanently), I definitely identified with how the feeling of a place can practically change you back into the person you were.  She captures the memories of the place triggered by certain trees, foods, even poems.  There are little details that I still see present in the very southern university where I work, such as Saturday classes to keep people out of trouble (which we had in the 1960s too!).

Another point of interest is seeing the south through the eyes of one of its children, after returning back to it.  I only know the south as an "outsider," and the mention of the Lane Cake "which no northerner could ever hope to emulate" made me want to run to the kitchen just to try.  Actually I wish this memoir came with recipes because of how much time is spent on the food memories!

Frances grew up in the south during a very interesting time, and she explores the changing landscape as it pertains to civil rights and birth control, but then also how it changed her life.  The coda in particular puts a lot of the south into perspective for me - what remains after all the change, and what remains in the author after leaving where she grew up and forging her own life. She even seemed to let go of trying to be who she wasn't, after all the "south always has enjoyed its eccentric people."

I received a copy of this book in print from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Jenny's Books Added in March 2014

They followed me home!  It's a good thing I have a Room of Requirement.

These are the books that came into my house in the month of March.  See the digital, eBook and audio, later in the post.

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
Crown of Stars by James Tiptree Jr.
Alice's Tea Cup by Haley Fox
Libby by Betty John
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson


The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott
The Revolutions by Felix Gilman

The Gilman is a review copy, something about time travel which seems to be a theme in my reading lately.  I picked up the Tiptree, Fox, Alcott, and Stephenson at a used book store trip (paid for with store credit from trade-ins!).  Alice's Tea Cup has the strange distinction of being the only cookbook to make me cry, and I can count the number of books that have made me cry as an adult on one hand.  It's just so much like the restaurant I can see myself owning that it was too much to bear.  When I saw it on the shelf of the used bookstore, I couldn't leave it there.  I have a love/hate relationship with Neal Stephenson - he has written some of my favorite books (Snow Crash, Anathem) and some of my most frustrating books (Quicksilver!).  Still I feel I should try this one, it's the last big outlier of his works.  The Alcott fits under my epistolary goal for the year, and Tiptree fits under the author goal, but I've already read one volume of Tiptree stories in 2014 so I'll put that one aside for a bit.

I got the John and the Fielding from Paperbackswap.com.  I'm considering adding journals as a goal for 2015, and both of them fit under that category.  But the real reason for the Fielding is the specific imprint. I ended up going through and adding all the Penguin Ink, Penguin Threads, and Penguin Deluxe Classics titles to my wishlist.  I don't usually buy books for the cover but just look at this! 

Okay I'm a sucker! Guilty!

The other books coming into my collection this past month have been intangible yet substantial.

Audiobooks (digital downloads)
Veronica Mars: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham, read by Kristen Bell
To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer, read by Paul Hecht
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, read by Anna Fields
And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass, read by Mark Deakins
Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace, read by Peter Altschuler
The Ecstasy of Surrender by Judith Orloff, M.D., read by Judith Orloff
The Blazing World by Suri Hustvedt, read by Patricia Rodriguez and Eric Meyers
Call to Action by Jimmy Carter, read by Jimmy Carter

The Veronica Mars book was irresistable after seeing the movie, and the book continues the story after the time of the movie.  I've already devoured it.  I picked up the Farmer and Wilhelm from a BOGO Audible sale, where I have a monthly subscription.  The rest of the audiobooks were review copies that I have not yet listened to.

eBooks
Slices of Life: A Food Writer Cooks through Many a Conundrum by Leah Eskin
Sous Chef by Michael Gibney
Sleep Donation by Karen Russell
Divergent by Veronica Roth
The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire (graphic novel version) by Denise Mina and Andrea Mutti

Except for Divergent, which my husband had purchased in iBooks and read months ago, these titles were review copies from NetGalley.  I've finished all but the Graedon, but I'm really excited about that one!  I do see a fair number of food related books coming through my house - cookbooks and memoirs - because I have a longstanding food blog (jennybakes.com) and I spent several years in various restaurant jobs.  Sous Chef was a particularly accurate capture of one day in the life of anyone working in the kitchen of a fine dining restaurant, and really gets the energy and exhaustion on the page.  The day I'm writing this draft, we went to see the movie of Divergent, which is pretty true to the book!

I didn't want to take the space to indicate my feelings of each book on this list.  Please come find me in GoodReads and friend me there.  That is where I keep track of all the books I want to read (which is now over 2k!) and review the books I've read.