Jenny's Books Added September 2014

September was a great month for books I actually spent real money on, buying first editions of books just as they were released.  Actually TOO many authors I like came out with new books in September, so I didn't even get to them all.

I have been waiting for new books from David Mitchell and Darin Bradley for what seems like years. And then I read the hardcover of Chimpanzee and the author sent me the audio play that he handed out at his release party.  (It is now available on the publisher site, and should be on Audible soon too.) I am saving it for my trip to Tennessee on Friday. SOON.

Blameless, Book Lust, and Siddhartha all come from Paperbackswap, although Book 2 of the Parasol Protectorate was lost in the mail and I need to find another copy of it before I can read Blameless.  Book Lust I've read before but this is part of my attempt to create a "books on books" collection. Librarian? Guilty. Siddhartha is just one of the many titles from Penguin Classics that I only want because they are pretty. Surely it is also a reputable book that I would like to read.

The Vietnamese Market Cookbook is a review copy, and I'm looking forward to trying some of the recipes in there (although I need to go to my local Asian market first!).  The two Burroughs and the Bloom were $1 each at a local thrift store.  I'm thinking I'll read them and trade them as they are in good shape!

I have a few other digital review copies up my sleeve so I'll list them below as well.

Blameless by Gail Carriger
Book Lust by Nancy Pearl
Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom
Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs
Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Chimpanzee by Darin Bradley
Chimpanzee by Darin Bradley (audio version)
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
The Vietnamese Market Cookbook by Tran and Vu

Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood (audio)
The Dog by Joseph O'Neill (audio)
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Speed Dating Round Four

I haven't done a round of speed-dating my books since November 2013.  I decided it was time.  Instead of picking books from my online to-read list (which I would have to gather), I limited myself to books on my shelves.

Speed-dating books is where you read the first 50 pages to decide if you still think you want to read them.  Some books might need more patience than that, but most of the time gut reactions hold true.

 

The books of round four:

Hammered (Jenny Casey #1) by Elizabeth Bear

One of those authors I hear about and haven't read, so I'll give it a try.  I'm not sure I'll be able to read it because it's a mass market paperback. My brain hates those.

 

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

I really enjoyed Huston's book "Sleepless" but this book is along a different style, more true to his other series.  Not sure it will be my thing!

 

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

Loved Super Sad True Love Story but this is an earlier book. Will it be as charming?

 

Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh

One of the books I had collected for my Around the World reading, the only book I have set in Palestine.  I felt like reading it might be timely.

Speedboat by Renata Adler

I have no idea what this book is about, but one of the friends whose reading opinions I rely on ordered me to buy it.  So I did.  This is a reprint through NYRB.

 

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux

This was in my original speed-dating list, but I traded it out for The Great Railway Bazaar. This book is the same trip 30 years later, so it made sense to start with the other. But since this includes Turkey and I'm still reading and studying Turkish, why not!?

 

The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness

I missed when my World Literature group in GoodReads read this, and want to at least try it.  I've already read a few books by Laxness, but he seems to be the Icelandic author of the last fifty years.

 

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

This book actually is on the first page of my to-read list.  It's been a while, so I should try it.  I've read Never Let Me Go by the same author.

 

Light by M. John Harrison

This author is on my 2014 Reading Goals, but so far I've only read a short story by him, "Cave & Julia."  

 

Virtual Light by William Gibson

I own two of the three books in this trilogy, and I need to find out if I want to read them or not.  I've read a lot of Gibson, and love the Sprawl trilogy more than almost anything in science fiction, but I haven't loved his newer stuff as much.  Where will this fall?

 

Deception by Philip Roth

Another one from my 2014 Reading Goals.  Philip Roth has a large body of work, and I have three of the books at home.  I should at least figure out if I want to keep reading him!

Any thoughts on these books to share with me?  I'll report back when I've tried them all out! 

A Very Special Book Stack

What would you do if it had been ten years since you had been "home?"
And you are headed there for three weeks?
And "home" does not include internet access?

Well, my strategy is to ship books to myself ahead of time.  Growing up in my family I could read as many books as I could carry and play the piano as many hours as I wanted, but television had to be educational and no more than thirty minutes a day.  I understandably didn't watch a lot of tv.

It is fitting that I need to first plan the books I'll bring. I haven't even considered any other part of the trip.  But books, I'll have.

I wandered my room of unread books, I asked friends for advice, and put the box together tonight.  I discovered that I could easily pick a majority of ironic or not-so-ironic titles, and so I have.  At the very least, seeing them will make me smile.

 

I don't know, do I need to explain them?  The Journey Home? Homeland? My Family and Other Animals? Small World? In the Woods?  Heh.  

Some are for other reasons but the Crux of the pile is home and family. Oh yeah and my Dad is from Yamhill.

I have a bunch of books on my iPad too.  I think I might be okay for three weeks.  I'll be an hour from Powell's if things get desperate.

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.

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.

Library Books Mid-March Edition

This pile of books makes me wonder if I am getting too caught up in the Reading Shoulds again.  What are the Shoulds?  Any time you are doing something because you feel you should, of course.  I kick the Shoulds to the curb on a regular basis in many areas of my life, but it is more difficult with reading.  Of course I want to read the books everyone is reading.  I joined book clubs with themes that interested me so that I could read more books along those topics.  But too many of those and my reading list becomes cluttered with books I need to read for those groups!  There are only three books on this pile that did not originate as a Should.  I may feel less overwhelmed by the others once I have tried them, but in this moment I am feeling a strong feeling of "Why did I do this to myself again?"

This weekend I will be reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, all 477 pages of it, because my only in-person book club meets Monday evening to discuss it.  I was not planning to read this book, not because I don't enjoy Adichie (I do!) but because I have read multiple books set in Nigeria and want to expand my African horizons if I spend time reading authors from that continent.  As of this writing I have pushed through 100 pages, and it is good, but it is not the book I'm in the mood to read.

Dreams in a Time of War, The Sand Child, and Dead Aid are all from my Great African Reads group in GoodReads.  I don't tend to read along with every selection, so I will probably try these out and only read what grabs me.  Dead Aid is non-fiction and short, and might be interesting.  Altered Carbon is this month's pick for the Sword and Laser group, and it has been a while since I've read along.  I started that book and liked it but it was getting mixed up in my head with the audiobook I was listening to at the time, so I put it aside for later. 

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia was the last book I read for the Tournament of Books, and I already discussed it earlier this week.

The book on the top of the pile, Palimpsest, is actually one of my favorite books from one of my favorite authors, Catherynne M. Valente.  I loaned my paper copy to a former student and I was thinking about how much I love the language, and thought it might be nice to hear in audio.  On a whim I searched the catalog of my local library and voila! 

The last two books are not Shoulds but I have not yet tried them.  We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a book I've been circling for a while, thinking about checking it out, knowing I have enjoyed previous books of her stories (What I Didn't See.)  Then a friend e-mailed me to reassert that I should definitely read it, and I checked it out.  Ironically I'm not reading it because it is on the list of Nebula nominees, as I'm not pushing myself to read everything Nebula and Hugo as I have done in years past. Nearby I found the Diaries of George Orwell, and I just couldn't help myself.  I hope they are slightly paranoid and obsessive or I will be disappointed!

Jenny's Books Added - January 2014

In true meta-librarian fashion, one of the books on this list inspired this list.  Nick Hornby (the author I first knew from High Fidelity) writes a monthly column for The Believer called "Stuff I've Been Reading," which starts with a list of books bought and read each month. The three Hornby books on this pile are basically collections of previous columns, and I was inspired by the very first chapter of The Polysyllabic Spree. In hopes that imitation can still be the sincerest form of flattery, and with full credit given to Mr. Hornby, I'd like to start posting about the books I've added to my collection each month.  This will not include library books I've brought home, although if I can restrain myself from returning books immediately after reading them, I'd like to post about that too.  (This month, it is far too late for that, as I've read and returned at least a handful.) 

Books added to my collection may not stay, in fact probably won't.  I only keep books I can see myself re-reading or referring to.  These books will include used bookstore finds, gifts, swaps, and the rare new book purchase (oh hey, this pile actually has one of those!)  I thought it would be fun to give a brief narrative of why these books ended up with me.

Just In:
The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
The Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun
Dear Exile: The True Story of Two Friends Separated (for a Year) by an Ocean by Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery
The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson
Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt by Nick Hornby
Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
No Soap, No Pay, Diarrhea, Dysentery & Desertion by Jeff Toalson
Last Last Chance by Fiona Maazel

Some of it has to do with reading goals - Indiridason for my year of reading Iceland; Liftin & Montgomery, the anonymous Portuguese nun, and Toalson for reading more letters; Zelazny as one of the authors I'd pledged to read in 2014.  I read The Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun right away.  It was short, I was intrigued, and I reviewed it a week or so ago.  The Toalson is the book I paid full price for, at the very site where the General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the north, signifying the beginning of the end of the War Between the States (aka the Civil War.)  Sometimes a book can be the best souvenir!

One category of books I actually seem to keep around is books about books.  I even have a shelf devoted to them in GoodReads! The Mattison was 50c at the used book store, so how could I resist?  The Hornby books were a gift from the second friend to insist that I would love them and must read them.  All four of these fit the category of books on books.

The other books demand more of an explanation.  I claim not to buy books I don't want to read.  Well, I had a hint that the Moran might be coming up for one of my book clubs.  The Macfarlane strokes my cold weather island obsession, the DeLillo was $2 and I really wanted to buy one book from each bookstore on Main Street in Charlottesville, VA.  I had read Sister Mine by Hopkinson earlier this year and was happy to find another book by her, and I had read and not really enjoyed the Maazel I read this month.  I guess you could say I'm giving her a last last chance. 

There you have it!  Will I read any of them right away? Nope. Why do I buy books when I work in a library?  That's a story for another day. 

Tell me about the books you brought home in January!

Bringing NaNoReadMo 2013 to a Close

It is just past midnight on December 1, so that means my National Novel Reading Month is over! I have 44 books listed on my NaNoReadMo shelf (where you will find my reviews of these titles), but not all of them are books I've finished reading. My original list for NaNoReadMo has been updated with the books I finished crossed off. I read the first 50 pages or so of even more books in my third round of speed dating.

But it is SO much more glorious to see a picture of a pile!  This shows everything I read cover to cover except Rivers by Michael Farris Smith (audiobook), Goslings by J.D. Beresford (audiobook), and Herland (eBook) (and the cookbooks I finished reviewing that I didn't bring upstairs.)

Not too shabby for a month!  I also got 2/3 of the way into The Brothers K by David James Duncan but won't finish it until my reading group does. 

Thanks to all of you who joined me for the month of reading more! Let me know in the comments what you read during NaNoReadMo, if you'd like. 

Book Speed Dating Round Three

I came up with the idea of speed dating my books when my GoodReads "To-Read" Shelf passed six hundred items.  I remembered Nancy Pearl's advice that you should give a book 50 pages, and decided to try doing so with a pile of books from the earliest items on my to-read list (started in 2009.)  I did two successful speed dating projects - one in June of 2011 and one in April earlier this year in 2013.  They are getting closer together, and for good reason.  This is a great way to get the books I don't actually want to read out of my house!  I spent some time compiling a third pile and decided to tackle it as part of NaNoReadMo.

There is no rhyme or reason to this pile other than the date they were added to my to-read list.  I accidentally gathered more than I intended, but it worked out okay.  Some I finished right away, and others I discarded without even giving them 50 pages.  I'll explain why in the list below.  If you want more detailed reviews, please see my GoodReads profile.  Copying and pasting it all here seemed redundant.

Books finished right away:

• Emiko Superstar by Mariko Tamaki (graphic novel, from a now closed publisher in Toronto)
• Lying Awake by Mark Salzman
• Cleaving by Julie Powell
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Books Still Listed as To-Read, because I like them enough to continue:

• Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani
• Mirrorshades by Bruce Sterling
• The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
• The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
• Glasshouse by Charles Stross
• Shards by Ismet Prcic
• In the Woods by Tana French

Books I'm Uncertain About Only 50 Pages In, but I'll keep reading (they deserve a second date at the very least):

• Atlas of Unknowns by Tania James
• The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
• The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermoût

Books I've Abandoned Officially
(Please note these are my own impressions, and they might just not be my thing! That's the point of a speed date - gut reaction, decision MADE. I'm rather proud of how many I've rejected, actually.  I need the space!)

• Spooner by Pete Dexter
  Not my thing, and by page 4, I had already grown weary of his use of racial slurs.
• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
  You say precocious, I say obnoxious.
• Lit by Mary Karr
  Because I'm not very interested in reading about someone ruining their life.
• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
  Just not compelling, no idea why it's on the list to begin with.
• Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony by Lewis Thomas
  A book of essays that is probably out of date at this point.
• The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
  It made me feel impatient.
• It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive by Evan Handler
  While he has had major setbacks with cancer, I wasn't that interested in what he had to say.
• Ariel by Steven R. Boyett
  I was all in until the talking unicorn showed up.
• The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa
  Seems more like a summary of a plot than an actual story.

What's next?  Well, I'm trying to decide between getting another speed dating pile together or finishing some of what I started!  Probably both.  I have some time off coming in December which would be perfect for another pile.

Speed Dating Report #2

As promised, my report on the second speed-dating project of 2013 has arrived!  The books I tested include everything from that original pile* plus Lionel Shriver's Post-Birthday World, since it came in the mail the next day.  (Paperbackswap.com is such a great website, highly recommend for getting used books!)  Last time, I put a brief thought under each title.  Today I will report on the date with that book - at least 50 pages, most of the time.

Fernando Baez - A Universal History of the Destruction of Books
This book is excellent, well-researched and written by the Director of the National Library of Venezuela after he had personally experienced locations where books and libraries had been destroyed, either from political or weather disasters.  It got to me more than I expected, and I actually wiped away a few tears.  Successful date!

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Strange Pilgrims
I ended up reading one story each night before bed.  All of the stories were about people from Latin America in Europe, and there were more instances of ghosts and magical realism than I expected, even considering it is Marquez.  In his longer fiction, those elements are present but not as prominent; in his short stories he can really explore the weird.  I loved it! 

Doris Lessing - The Grass is Singing
I promised myself I wouldn't feel bad for not calling a book back, no matter the reputation or the reason I was going to read it in the beginning.  This one didn't grab me, I've already read a book set in Rhodesia in the past year, and I've had better experiences with Lessing's later novels.  I will let this book find a new girl.

Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
I've put this one off for years, expecting it to be difficult or dense to read.  Instead I found myself enjoying it and even the tiny print flew by.  I might put it on hold until I'm done with Infinite Jest (I'm not sure how many books of density I can handle at once) but I'll definitely read this one.

*Paul Theroux - Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
I swapped this one out for The Great Railway Bazaar, the predecessor of Ghost Train.  I didn't want to put it aside for other dates!  I only got as far as his stop in Istanbul, and considering my Turkish focus this year, that was a great moment.  He also talks so much about writers and food that I'm going to have to start over and take notes.  I had put off reading Theroux for a while and now I'm kicking myself, if he's someone you either love or hate, you can mark me down for LOVE.  I can't wait to get back to this.  Maybe tomorrow!

Curtis Sittenfeld - American Wife
Yeah, I abandoned this one although I did make it through 50 pages.  I saw a review that described the main character (based on Laura Bush) as "limp lettuce" and that's pretty accurate.  I'd be making excuses to leave this date early.

Eckhart Tolle - A New Earth
A quick read, not as good as The Power of Now, but because I knew it'd be quick I've already finished it.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Shadow of the Wind
<3 <3 <3
I'm not going to wait to read another book I'm sure I'll love.  What was I thinking?

Ellen Gilchrist - The Writing Life
This isn't what I expected.  Somehow Gilchrist has escaped my knowing, but she is a prolific southern writer who studied with Eudora Welty.  The small chapters are individual essays.  She didn't really become a serious writer until she was grandmother-aged, so her perspective is pretty unique.  I enjoy hearing her story even if I don't always identify with it.  And since this comes from the library, I'll be finishing it soon.

E. L. Doctorow - Ragtime
I'm not sure what to say about this book.  It is the most likely to become a book I abandon despite not saying it failed my speed-dating exactly.  The style is the hardest part - short sentences abound, which makes it feel abrupt the entire time.  He throws in a lot of famous people, but some of them were interesting (Emma Goldman was my favorite so far!).  One review describes it as American History told in the lens of 1970s radicalism.  Okay, maybe I'll go out with him again.  :)

Speed-dating books is fun, although I didn't discard many!  I'm already gathering books for the next round, so stay tuned!

Book Speed Dating #2 - The Pile

Back in April, I made a pile of most of the first page of my to-read list, and worked through until I had tasted each one. From there I decided whether or not to keep reading, to put on hold but to read later, or to discard. I was able to weed out a few, and ended up finishing three completely. The mightiest tome on the list, Infinite Jest, I am halfway through as of yesterday, so even that book got dipped into.

It is time to do it again, namely because I have run out of room on my bookshelves and something's gotta give!   I also can't stand to read Infinite Jest every day, and I've been pulling that back to once a week.  I had to wade through two pages of my to-read list to come up with a significant pile, but here it is. I'm going to have dated all of these books (read 50 pages minimum) by August 1. In the meantime, please tell me what you think! Have you read any of these titles?  Any you would steer me away from or encourage me toward?  I'll list the author, title, and brief thoughts on each below.

Fernando Baez - A Universal History of the Destruction of Books
I've read Double Fold by Nicholson Baker twice, where he focuses on libraries' recent roles in book destruction.  This seems like a much longer and international history, and will look great on the shelf in my office, even if I don't decide to read it all.  Ha!

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Strange Pilgrims
Slim volume, short stories, I imagine it will go quickly.  But I thought that of the Borges stories that I keep starting and not finishing.

Doris Lessing - The Grass is Singing
This is a better known work of Lessing; I have read lesser known Lessings.  I predict I'll like it.

Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
I've just never read this classic and I know it was very scandalous when it was published.  The challenge will be the prose of the translation.

Paul Theroux - Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
I have several Theroux on my shelves and wonder if this is really the best place to start.  It is a revisit by Theroux to a journey he took and chronicled in The Great Railway Bazaar.  I might swap them out since I own both.  Shhhhhh. (Or does it matter?)

Curtis Sittenfeld - American Wife
I've read other books by Sittenfeld, and intended to read this book for my DC pick this year.  Might as well get to it.

Eckhart Tolle - A New Earth
I had such intentions to read this that I ended up with two copies.  I liked The Power of Now, so maybe this will have some good stuff in it.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Shadow of the Wind
I've been saving this because I so loved The Angel's Game.  But now that Zafon has other books coming out translated in English, I don't have to save this one any longer.  And why am I waiting? I expect to love it; the setting and the topic are both right up my narrow Spanish alley.  :)

Ellen Gilchrist - The Writing Life
I tend to enjoy books on writing, and have been intending to read this for a while.  It ended up on the leisure reading shelves at work, so no time like the present.

E. L. Doctorow - Ragtime
I have two Doctorow books at home that I've been intending to read... no three.  Ack!  I don't even know if I like him!  Nathaniel asked me if this is what the musical is based on, and I have no idea.  I guess I'll find out.

Book Speed-Dating Report

Last Sunday, I took a picture of all the books I had on hand from the first/earliest page of my GoodReads To-Read list.  I pledged to speed-date all of them before May 1 and report back.  I sat and read 30-50 pages of each one* and I'm ready to delete a few from my to-read list!

First of all, the date that surprised me the most - The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing.  I have had a copy of this for at least four years, probably longer, and kept not even trying it because of its heft.  The 50 pages went quickly and I actually hated to stop reading - the female characters are strong and pass the Bechdel Test (I know that's a film concept, but it stuck out enough to me even in a novel to make note of it).  They talk to each other in a similar way to how I talk to my friends.  I immediately told a few of them to find a copy so we could read it together.  This book is definitely the equivalent to a girls night out, at least so far.  And when a man comes along, there isn't any moving over or backing down.  Consider this retort, which has a lot of retaliation embedded in it:

"Or perhaps what it is you don't like is that I do know what I want, have always been prepared to experiment, never pretend to myself the second rate is more than it is, and know when to refuse. Hmmmm?"  

Haha, this will be a fun read.  I will definitely be calling this one back.

Other good dates included Matrimony by Joshua Henkin, which looks to be an easy read; Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, and Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks.  Oliver Sacks is like the lonely guy who hasn't had anyone to talk to for a while, but has a lot of trivia to entertain his dates with, and hey, I'll bite.  Loving Frank is a compelling mixture of historical figure and fictional memoir that is easy to read.  I feel like I'll finish it feeling I learned something about Frank Lloyd Wright while simultaneously questioning everything I've learned, and that it will make me want to read even more about him.

I did have a few books I will not be calling back.  I feel the need to say that this is not exactly a judgment on the book, but that it is not a match for me.  Some reader out there will be much happier with it, and I release it back into the dating *cough* reading pool. 

My only other qualm is that the majority of what I'm rejecting is all books of short stories, and perhaps I'm just not in the mood for short stories.  Maybe I will be someday! Maybe I should hold on to - NO.  The entire point is to clean out the list.  So the books I'm rejecting completely are only three out of the fourteen.  Not the best odds if my only goal was to delete a book from the list, but not too shabby when you consider their careful consideration.  Those books include The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue - this is the second book I've tried from Donoghue's earlier period, and it just goes soundly under the category of "not my thing."  The time period feels too forced to me, and I don't like lengthy descriptions of ribbons.  The subject matter of the first story didn't settle very well with me either, so it was an easy one to put aside.  I'm also rejecting Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin because I didn't connect with it, and Rabbit, Run by John Updike because I KNOW THIS IS A CLASSIC BUT I JUST CAN'T MAKE MYSELF READ IT.  Feel free to try to talk me down.  This is the second time I've tried this book, basically I told him to go home and shower and get a haircut, and tried a trade paperback as an upgrade from my previous mass market paperback.  It didn't help. I can't stand the main character, ugh.

The rest of the books from the previous pile, I'm going to keep reading.*  I might postpone Children of God for a bit because it was too intense for where I am at the moment.

*Okay one book I cancelled the date with.  I have read the first few pages before, I remember a tennis match, but I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to see him again so soon.  So his mother continues to guilt trip me when he sees me at the laundromat.  "We're perfect for each other," she insists. 

Maybe someday.

Bookfessions: The To-Read List

I have a confession to make.  I have somehow become a book hoarder.  I didn't set out to add this to my list of qualities, but I have an entire room full of books, most I've never read, a bin downstairs full of books I've never read, and a to-do list that has been over 1k for at least a year.

I decided to take action.  Okay, it's a slow action, and will only address thirteen of the books on my to-read list, but it is a start.  If I can do this more regularly, I might actually tackle the list instead of just adding to it.

When I log into Goodreads and look at my to-read shelf, the same twenty books stare me in the face until I search or sort them - the earliest twenty that I added as "to-read" and haven't switched over to "read" or "abandoned" yet. 

I had nine of them on hand already, and requested another six from Paperbackswap.com.  If the math seems wonky to make 13, well, I made the mistake of knowing I needed to read Mothers and Sons by Colm Tóibín but not realizing I already had a copy, so now I have two.  I also have another from that first page on its way to me via media mail, but didn't want to wait to take the picture.

Here's why: by the end of April, in nine days, I will have read at least the first chapter of every book you see in this pile.  I will decide at that point whether the book will be removed from my to-read list and traded off to someone else, or if I do indeed wish to read it.  Nancy Pearl says to give a book 50 pages, so if I'm feeling guilty I may go that far, but I have other books I want to get through this month.

Preliminary thoughts? I had planned to read Loving Frank for my Illinois pick this year, and doubt I'll decide not to continue.  Musicophilia was always a well-intentioned music/neuroscience read, but I don't tend to choose non-fiction when confronted with a stack.  The Hunting and Gathering book has no remembered pre-conceived notions, nor does Mothers and Sons, The Indian Clerk, or The Secret of Lost Things.  These I'm likely to easily discard if they don't grab me, because at this point I no longer remember why I wanted them in the first place.

Infinite Jest and Rabbit, Run are on my shoulds list so it will be harder to talk myself out of those, as well as The Golden Notebook.  Still, that doesn't mean I'll return to them right away.  I've already read the first chapter in Infinite Jest at least twice, and always end up deciding I'll wait until I have more time.  I never do.  I need to buck up and read it!  I think I've started The Little Stranger before too, and it was slow, but man is it on a lot of lists.  Perhaps people who have read farther know something I don't.

Beggars in Spain should be interesting.  I read the novella and liked it and then had a discussion-gone-wrong about it.  This might make reading it a bit cringe-worthy.  I haven't read Children of God yet because I loved The Sparrow so much, too much, and don't want to be done with that experience.  Silly reason not to read a book, liking something too much!

I am pledging to you to report back before I leave for Nashville on March 1!  Check back to see which of these books get second dates and which I don't return their phone calls....

April is Poetry Month

"Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.

There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry...."

-Mark Strand, Eating Poetry

(read the poem at its entirety at the Poetry Foundation or hear the poet read it himself!) 

I've been hoarding poetry since the beginning of the year.  This pile is what I hope to get through this month at minimum.  I'm going to have to track down a working cassette player for the Rilke.  

 

Who is your favorite poem? Will you be reading any poetry during April?