Polysyllabic Spree - April 2008

So Many Books, So Little Time is a book that many members of Rory's Book Club have read and enjoyed. I'm not sure why it took me so long to read it, because I love books about reading. I found a hardcover at Strand for $6, and once I had it I wanted to read it immediately. It was a good book to read while my family was visiting; it was nice and light and did not require too much concentration. If you like reading about reading as well, it's very likely that you'll also enjoy this one. I related to Sara's thoughts about what reading can do for you, and wrote down many titles that I want to read too.  (See Heartburn below.)

I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley has been on the receiving end of an incredible amount of buzz lately. This was a book I picked up because of the wonderful title and cover. Flipping through it and reading the first few pages confirmed that it needed to be purchased, taken to my home, and read immediately. A few links: Sloane's website  is pretty great, and includes dioramas. Amazon's book blog has a Q&A with Sloane. (I Was Told There'd Be Cake does not appear in either of my photos this month because it was so good I lent it to my friend right away.)

I read The Gathering for the first meeting of a book club I joined. We had a very spirited discussion about it. I enjoyed Anne Enright's writing, and way the book was structured was impressive and unique. The the plot is about a family that comes together for a funeral, but to me the book is about memory. The reader is inside the narrator's memory, and she can't quite remember if certain things actually happened, or the exact way that they happened. In other words, exactly like real memory. Also, the memories are not in order, much the way certain memories might come randomly back to you in an emotional situation like a funeral. I enjoyed the writing and the structure more than I enjoyed the actual novel, all together.

I decided I wanted to re-read the Alice books, my favorite series when I was younger. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is still writing the Alice series too, so there are new ones I haven't read yet. I started randomly in the middle, with Simply Alice. I then read Patiently Alice, Including Alice, and Alice on Her Way. You'll see more Alice books on the list next month.

I previously posted about A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs and The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart, so I won't go on about them more here.

I read about Heartburn in So Many Book, So Little Time. I've never read any Nora Ephron, and this one sounded amusing. Sara Nelson said she and her friends read it over and over again when it came out in the 80s. It was interesting to read a book for women that was written before the rise of chick lit. And it's so much better than chick lit too. It's hard to find books like this now because the few good ones that come out probably get slapped with pink covers and a single cover illustration that looks exactly like every other cover of all the hundreds of crappy books. In fact, the latest edition of Heartburn is pink with this very type of illustration on it. I'm glad I found a first edition that has the original artwork. (Here are links to images of the first edition, and the current edition.)

I started reading I Am American (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert when it came out back in October 2007. I read most of it, but got distracted and never read the last 50 or so pages. I finished them this month. It's a very funny book, and I highly recommend it to fans of Stephen Colbert. (This book also has a great site.)

As always, my complete Polysyllabic Spree list can be found here.