30 posts tagged “polysyllabic spree”

Books Acquired:

Graceling by Kristin Cashore  
Pilgrims by Garrison Keillor
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The Most Beautiful Book in the World by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
For Grace Received by Valeria Parrella
Best American Non-Required Reading 2009 edited by Dave Eggers
The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones (present)
Time Was Soft There by Jeremy Mercer (present)
A Spy on the Bus by Margean Gladysz (present)
Making Mischief: A Maurice Sendak Appreciation by Gregory Maguire  (present)
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson (present)
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

This month's "books purchased" pile is really a "books acquired" pile, because I got many great books as birthday presents. This stack makes me joyful.
 
Books Read:

Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut (re-read)
The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
Margherita Dolce Vita by Stefano Benni
I Love You More Than You Know by Jonathan Ames
The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones

Previously reviewed: Gourmet Rhapsody, Graceling, The Dud Avocado, Margherita Dolce Vita, and The Tenth Muse.

I re-read A Man Without a Country in September. I like to re-read this collection of essays by Kurt Vonnegut at least once a year. It makes me happy.

The Day the Falls Stood Still is a new novel that was selected for Barnes and Noble's "BN Recommends" program. It was interesting to read a novel set around Niagara Falls. It's a great example of how a well-researched historical novel can help you learn a lot about a place or subject, even if the specific story told is fiction. The falls were a thrilling and dangerous place at the turn of the 20th century, I really enjoyed learning more about what daily life was like living near them. The love story at the heart of this novel was beautiful. 

I've been meaning to read something by Jonathan Ames for a long time. He's frequently compared to several other essayists I enjoy, so I wanted to give him a shot. I picked up a copy of I Love You More Than You Know for $1 at the KPL Friends of the Library book sale. A blurb on the book's cover says that he's a "darker David Sedaris," which I think is an accurate assessment. I enjoyed this collection, but it's not for the squeamish, prudish, or faint of heart. 

Books Purchased:
Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy 
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
The Impostor's Daughter by Laurie Sandell
A Room With a View by E. M. Forster
Margherita Dolce Vita by Stefano Benni
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy
Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery

Another month where I bought fewer books than I read. :) I found a lot of great books this month, most of them at Strand. Two of these were purchased because I read a book that I loved so much I needed to buy the author’s other book (The Secret Lives of People in Love and Gourmet Rhapsody).

My book group is reading The Graveyard Book for October, so I’ll be re-reading it to prepare. Before I read it again, I want to read the book that inspired Neil Gaiman, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. I got the new extremely cute (and affordable) Puffin Classics edition.

I’m really loving Europa Editions - a publisher that translates popular books in Europe and makes them available in the US. (The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery are both Europa Editions.) Last year I was painfully aware of how my list of books read was lacking much diversity. It’s nice to see a publisher dedicated to bringing the best books in Europe into the US with great translations. So when I read a review Amanda posted of another Europa book, Margherita Dolce Vita, I was interested right away. Strand had a copy for 50% off, and I plan on starting it soon.

I’m also adoring Vintage Classics' new editions - their covers are gorgeous. I have all their Jane Austen editions, and also Villette by Charlotte Bronte. So when I saw A Room With a View by E. M. Forster was out in a new Vintage Classics edition, I had to get it.

Books Read:
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling (re-read)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (re-read)
Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
The Impostor's Daughter by Laurie Sandall
Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
Blankets by Craig Thompson
George, Being George edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr.
(Odd and the Frost Giants is not pictured because I read a digital advanced reading copy of it.)

Previously reviewed:
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
When You Reach Me
Odd and the Frost Giants
George, Being George

After re-reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and seeing the movie three times in the theater in July, I felt seriously unresolved. (Despite the fact that I’ve read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows twice and thus definitely know what happens.) So, soon after, I decided to open up book 7 for the third time. I think it really says something about the HP books that even though it was my third time through in three years, I still couldn’t put the book down. I think I’m going to end up re-reading all or most of the series every year. I can’t stay away from Hogwarts for too long.

Another book that was a re-read this month was The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I read it two years ago, and enjoyed it then. I probably would not have re-read it again so soon, but my friends and I selected it as the first book for our newly formed book group. It was an incredible novel to discuss together. We talked about the book for three full hours, and had an amazing conversation. This book is a great novel on its own, and I highly recommend it for book groups.

I adored Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy. It’s a collection of five short stories. The stories are wonderful, mainly because of Simon Van Booy’s writing...it’s absolutely beautiful. Immediately after I finished it I had to buy The Secret Lives of People in Love, his first book of short stories.

And lastly, I read two graphic novel memoirs. Blankets is the story of Craig Thompon’s first love, and his growing up in general. It’s a beautiful graphic novel. The illustrations are lovely. I loved his story and felt the heartbreak and hopefulness of his experiences. The Impostor’s Daughter is about Laurie Sandall’s relationship with her father - a con man who has been lying and scamming his friends and family his entire life. It was an interesting story, and I think I appreciated the story more in graphic novel form that I would have a traditional memoir. 

Books Purchased:
Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

I’ve been wanting to read American Gods, and I found it new for $5.95 at Strand. I’ve also been wanting to get A Confederacy of Dunces for a long time, and I found a like-new copy at the KPL Friends bookstore for $2.

Books Read:
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling (re-read)
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty (re-read)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli (library)
Are You There God? It's Me Margaret by Judy Blume (re-read)

Previously reviewed: The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Baking Cakes in Kigali, and Lolita.

I re-read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince before going to see the movie. I did really enjoy the movie, I think it was extremely well done. I also think that this movie, even more than any of the others, shows how much of the story you miss if you only watch the movies. There was so much that had to be left out of the movie - so much of Tom Riddle’s history that was fascinating to learn.

I also re-read Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty. I had read this, and the sequel (Second Chances) during my first year of college. The third book came out a few years later, which I bought but never got around to reading. Since then two more books in this series came out (the fifth one is the final). I remembered the first two as being light, fun books and was sorry that I hadn’t kept up with the series. So I decided to start again from the beginning and re-read the first two and go on to read all five. Sloppy Firsts was very fun to read again - it’s different from a lot of what I’ve been reading lately and it's a great book for summer. I’m looking forward to the next four.

Asterios Polyp is a new graphic novel by David Mazzucchelli. It’s extremely impressive, and I enjoyed every minute of reading it. I checked it out of the library, but I know I’m going to need to buy my own copy sometime soon. I definitely recommend reading it. If you're interested, there's a five page excerpt posted on NYTimes.com.

Rather impulsively, I sat down outside while in Michigan and re-read all of Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. I hadn’t read this in years, and it was fun to re-read it. It’s one of the quintessential coming of age books that no girl’s childhood should be complete without reading.

My full Polysyllabic Spree list is located here. 

This is a little late - I feel sort of drained creatively and am struggling to write anything. Hopefully I snap out of this writing rut soon.

Books Purchased:

Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Literary New York by Susan Edmiston and Linda D. Cirino
77 Love Sonnets by Garrison Keillor
American Eve by Paula Uruburu
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

I bought fewer books than I read this month, which is excellent!

I picked up Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins at Strand, and randomly opened to page 39. The poem on the page (“I Go Back to the House for a Book”) caught my eye. It’s a great poem, and if you’d like to read it yourself, I found it online here. 

Books Read:

The Long-Winded Lady by Maeve Brennan
Another Marvelous Thing by Laurie Colwin
The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright (library)
Something, Maybe by Elizabeth Scott (library)
American Eve by Paula Uruburu
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction by J. D. Salinger
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright (library)
Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi (library)

Previously Reviewed: The Long-Winded Lady and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction.

Another Marvelous Thing is the first work of fiction that I’ve read by Laurie Colwin. It’s a novel in short stories about a man and woman who are both married, and are having an affair. I enjoyed this and I like Laurie Colwin’s style, and am glad I have more of her novels to read.

I read the next two books in the Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright - The Four Story Mistake and Then There Were Five. I enjoyed these as well and am looking forward to the last book in the quartet - Spiderweb for Two.

Something, Maybe by Elizabeth Scott finally came in for me at the library. It was exactly what I expected: a cute, fast, and fun YA book.

American Eve is a biography of Evelyn Nesbit. She was a iconic “it girl” at the turn of the 20th century and the most photographed woman of the era by age 16. She was at the center of the “crime of the century” when her mentally ill husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed her former lover, Stanford White in 1906. This is a fascinating biography - a very readable account of Evelyn’s rise to a life in the spotlight and her very twisted and troubled relationships that lead to her downfall. I’m reading Lolita right now, so it’s very interesting to have read this first. So far there are several similarities and parallels.  

Chicken with Plums is a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, the author of Persepolis. It’s the story of her great-uncle, set in Tehran in 1958. She is such an excellent storyteller, and so talented. I don’t know if she has anything new in the works, but I certainly hope so. 

Books Purchased:

Alice, Let's Eat by Calvin Trillin
Another Marvelous Thing by Laurie Colwin
A Big Storm Knocked it Over by Laurie Colwin
The Lone Pilgrim by Laurie Colwin
A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Dairies and Letters by Barbara Pym
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Best American Short Stories 2008 edited by Salman Rushdie
Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine
American Food Writing edited by Molly O'Neill
Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler
I Love You More Than You Know by Jonathan Ames
A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenburg
Food With the Famous by Jane Grigson
The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher
The Best American Non-Required Reading 2002 edited by Dave Eggers
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
A Mess of Everything by Miss Lasko-Gross

A lot of books this month - due mainly to trips to Michigan and Milwaukee that involved a lot of book shopping. I won’t write about every book on the list, but I will comment on some of my best finds this month:

-I picked up three of Laurie Colwin’s fiction books from Strand, for about $5 each. Very excited to try her fiction after loving her two collections of food writing essays.

-I was extremely excited to find a hardcover copy of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks for $3.98 at the Milwaukee Borders. Emma and I both got ourselves a copy.

-Food with the Famous is a book I had never heard of until I found it in the food section of Renaissance Books in Milwaukee. (I had heard of Jane Grigson, the author, before - Laurie Colwin writes affectionately about her books.) In this book, Grigson explores the culinary lives of famous women and men. It contains recipes and the social history of the food mentioned in classic literature and that famous figures ate. The featured people include: John Evelyn, Parson James Woodforde, Jane Austen, Thomas Jefferson, Rev. Sydney Smith, Lord & Lady Shaftesbury, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola, Claude Monet, and Marcel Proust. For example - one of the foods in the Jane Austen section is White Soup - what it is, how it originated, and how to make it yourself. This book is out of print now, but there are used copies on Amazon Marketplace that are reasonably priced.

Books Read:

Betsy and the Great World  by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
Betsy and Joe by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenburg
Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine
Lucky by Gabrielle Bell (library)
Escape from "Special" by Miss Lasko-Gross (library)
When I'm Old and Other Stories by Gabrielle Bell  (library)
The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright (library)
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
A Mess of Everything by Miss Lasko-Gross
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I talked about the Betsy-Tacy series last month, and here are links to my reviews of A Homemade Life, The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, and Shanghai Girls. I’m planning a separate post about Mrs. Dalloway, since it’s one of my summer reading list books.

I read a lot of graphic novels this month. It helped me to read a decent number of books even though this month was incredibly busy. :) I read several graphic novels by Gabrielle Bell and Miss Lasko Gross before their event at Strand. It’s hard to pick a favorite of the five graphic novels I read this month - I enjoyed them all in different ways, and the three artists are very different. It was fun to discover Miss Lasko-Gross, I hadn’t heard of her until I saw she’d be with Gabrielle Bell at Strand. Her books are memoirs, and her style is very different then most of the graphic novels I’ve read. She uses very deep, rich artwork with a lot of shading, and the effect is gorgeous and moody. A Mess of Everything is the sequel to Escape from "Special" - and I'd recommend starting in order if you'd like to read them yourself.

I also read the first book of the Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright, The Saturdays. This was a fantastic children’s novel, and I can’t believe I hadn’t read it before now. The Melendy family includes four kids (two girls and two boys), their father, and their lovable live-in housekeeper, Cuffy. Of course the children have all kinds of adventures, and get into the occasional mischief. In The Saturdays, they decide to pool their allowance each week so that one of the four can go out in the city on a Saturday and have their own adventure: going to a museum, opera, etc. Reading The Saturdays was great fun, and I’m looking forward to the other books in the quartet; I currently have the next two checked out from the library.  

May Book Events:

I went to three great book events in May:
Neil Gaiman (Part of the Pen World Voices festival) 5.2.09
Gabrielle Bell & Miss Lasko-Gross (Strand) 5.19.09
Lisa See (Barnes and Noble on 82nd Street) 5.27.09

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

Books Purchased:

Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth Reichl
Cecil and Jordan in New York by Gabrielle Bell
P. G. Wodehouse: In His Own Words by P. G. Wodehouse, Barry Day & Tony Ring
The Luck of the Bodkins by P. G. Wodehouse
Ring for Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
The Agony of Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
America Eats! by Pat Willard
Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin
The Long Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker by Maeve Brennan
Beard on Bread by James Beard
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Despite having an insanely busy month (Emma’s visit, searching for and getting a new job, and lots of social activities), I still managed to buy and read a large amount of books. This month I’m going to try writing more about the books I bought, rather than just the books I read. Mainly because it can be months or years until the books purchased get to make an appearance on Books Read. :)

I got Ruth Reichl’s latest book, which I’ve been looking forward to for months. I got new graphic novel (Cecil and Jordan in New York), recommended by my Vox neighbor M-----l. I couldn’t resist three more P. G. Wodehouse books at Strand. P. G. Wodehouse: In His Own Words is a great book of Wodehouse quotes and passages from his novels. I can never resist the cute Overlook Wodehouse hardcover editions, so The Luck of the Bodkins came home with me (it also looks very good). And Ring for Jeeves was a bargain and was so old and unusual that it was irresistible. Yet another great Strand bargain was Villette by Charlotte Bronte, and it was also the gorgeous Vintage Classics edition.

I’ve been wanting to buy all of the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, but I dislike the new editions. At Strand I found this old hardcover edition of The Agony of Alice, which was the exact same one that I read from the library when I was younger. I’m going to keep an eye out for them at used bookstores, and hopefully someday I’ll have them all.

America Eats! and Home Cooking were two books that I did not know existed until I saw them in bookstores while shopping with Emma. They were impulse buys, but I’m pleased with them. America Eats! explores the unpublished WPA writing from the New Deal - Pat Willard uses the works as her guide to rediscover America’s food traditions. Soon after buying this, I heard about a book coming out in a few weeks that sounds very similar: The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky. http://www.amazon.com/Food-Younger-Land-Food-Before-Restaurants/dp/1594488657/

I own the complete New Yorker on DVDs, but I still can’t help buying anthologies of essays from the magazine. The most recent one that I could not resist was The Long Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker by Maeve Brennan. Her essays are fantastic, and this is a great collection. I really enjoy owning the complete New Yorker disc to look up random articles and browse the cartoons, poems, and contents, but I love owning their anthologies too. I have my eye on Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drinks next.

Last week I was cookbook hunting at Skyline Books, and found an old James Beard book, Beard on Bread, and it happened to be signed too. I want to start baking more bread, and there are many, many recipes that look wonderful in this one.

The last two books I bought in April were ones I had already read - hardcovers of Coraline and The Graveyard Book. Ryan and I went to a Neil Gaiman event today, and I needed nice copies to get signed. The event was fantastic - I’ll post pictures from it soon. He left for Paris today and could only sign one book per person so that he could catch his flight. I decided to get The Graveyard Book signed because I love that one more, and plus it has the shiny Newbery medal on it. :)

Books Read:

Thank You, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
Cecil and Jordan in New York by Gabrielle Bell
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin
Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
Betsy-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
Heaven to Betsy by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
Betsy Was a Junior by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
Betsy and Joe by Maud Hart Lovelace (re-read)
Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth Reichl
More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin (library)

Thank You, Jeeves was yet another enjoyable and humorous Jeeves and Wooster tale. It’s the first full length one as well (until this novel was publish, the duo had only appeared in short stories). I really enjoyed this one. A few of the J & W tales I’ve read lately had very similar plots (usually surrounding an object that fell into possession of someone it shouldn’t have, and Wooster having to retrieve it). They were all enjoyable, but this one was refreshing - a completely new and unexpected plot with very funny twists.

I loved Cecil and Jordan in New York. I haven’t read many (any?) short stories in graphic novel form, so it was fun to read this collection. The stories left me wanting more, in a good way. I’m now very curious about her other books, and am looking forward to her author event at Strand this month. I just reserved Lucky and When I’m Old and Other Stories from the library.  

WARNING: Spoilers in this paragraph about The Awakening. I had been meaning to read The Awakening for several years. I was really enjoying it most of the way through. It’s very well written and I was very engrossed in the plot. Then I got to the end. I’m sure the ending was shocking when this book was published in 1899. I’m trying to keep that in mind when I evaluate my thoughts about this book. But I can’t help feeling disappointed about the ending. Not because I wish she didn’t kill herself, but because I felt it was so predictable. I actually groaned. I thought, “oh lordy, she’s going to kill herself. Here we go.” I wanted more from her. I wanted her to DO something. I guess that’s partially the whole point of the book though. I do want to read more from Kate Chopin now.

I got the urge to re-read the books that were dearest to me in my childhood, the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. There are ten books total, and last month I started with the first book, Betsy-Tacy, and got completely pulled into the Deep Valley world. I couldn’t stop reading, every time I finished a book I had to pick up the next. Toward the end of the month I finally made myself stop so I could read Ruth Reichl’s book before the book signing and More Home Cooking before it was due back to the library. But as good as those books were, I longed to go back to Betsy’s world. I probably read the entire series through at least 5 times through while I was growing up, and it’s lovely that these books are just as delightful as an adult. They are also the coziest books ever - the characters start to feel like very good friends. If you’ve never read this series, I highly recommend it. Books 1-4 are in print, and books 5-10 are coming out this fall in new combo editions.

I’ve written here before about how much I love Ruth Reichl’s books, and I was very excited for her latest - Not Becoming My Mother. It’s much different than her other memoirs, but it’s very good. I was surprised by how affecting it is - it’s a beautiful tribute to the dedication of her mother to make sure that Ruth’s life was better than her own had been. As Ruth points out, many women of that generation worked hard and struggled so that their daughters could have better lives. 

I wrote about Home Cooking here earlier, and I’m pleased to report that More Home Cooking, her second collection of cooking essays, is just as delightful. I highly recommend both books.

I didn’t read any short stories this month, I was focused on reading more poetry in honor of National Poetry Month. I didn’t quite hit a poem every day, but I read lots of wonderful poetry and discovered many new favorite poems.

As always, my complete Polysyllabic Spree list is found here.

I had a great week with Emma, who was visiting from Michigan this week. We had a lot of adventures, and I have many pictures to post. I also have a lot of Vox posts to catch up with, starting with my Polysyllabic Spree for March.

Books Purchased:

 
Comfort me with Apples by Ruth Reichl
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool
Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels by Deirdre le Faye
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Love As Always, Kurt Vonnegut as I Knew Him by Loree Rackstraw
A Little History of the World by E. H. Combrich
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl

I bought one less book than I read this month, so that’s not too bad. Ruth Reichl has a signing for her new book at the end of April that I’m going to go to, so this month I found her three older books in hardcover so that I can get them signed along with her new one. I got great deals on them - Comfort Me With Apples was $5.95 at Strand, and Garlic and Sapphires and Tender at the Bone were about $7 each after shipping on Amazon Marketplace.

Books Read:

 
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl (library)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
A Partisan's Daughter by Louis de Bernieres (library)
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
Love as Always, Kurt Vonnegut as I Knew Him by Loree Rackstraw
The Rose Variations by Marisha Chamberlain (library)
French Milk by Lucy Knisley (library)
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Reviews already posted: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, A Partisan’s Daughter, In a Sunburned Country. Future post planned for A Moveable Feast.

Garlic and Sapphires is Ruth Reichl’s third memoir. This one is about her time as the Food Critic at the NY Times. I loved her previous two memoirs as well, but this one is my favorite so far. After she was announced as the new Restaurant Critic, every single restaurant in New York City immediately had her photo hung up and a staff trained to keep an eagle eye out for her. She chose to create elaborate disguises for herself in efforts to have a “real” experience dining at the restaurants she reviewed. Not only did she change her entire physical appearance for these eating adventures, she changed her entire personality too, becoming the character she created. It makes for wonderful reading. I’m looking forward to her fourth book, Not Becoming My Mother, I found it at Strand last week for 50% in the review section, so I'll be able to read it before her book signing.

A Year Down Yonder is the sequel to a book I read last month, A Long Way From Chicago. The latter received a Newbery Honor award, and the former won the Medal. This is the way I would have called it too. I enjoyed A Long Way From Chicago, but A Year Down Yonder was the most fabulous. Grandma is still my favorite character. One of the best lines in the book is, “And Grandma was packing a pistol.” Maybe one of the reasons why the sequel is better is that, as readers, we are already so fond of Grandma, so it’s very delightful to read more of her adventures.

A few times I started to open a new Vox compose window to write a full post on Love as Always, Kurt Vonnegut as I Knew Him. But the truth is I don’t have much to say about it at all. It was interesting, and I enjoyed reading it. It was a little weird, because I had never heard of Loree Rackstraw before, and the book is a memoir of sorts about her deep friendship with Kurt Vonnegut over the years. So there’s a lot about her life in there as well. Loree Rackstraw has had a very full, interesting life, and has been deeply involved in the literary world, especially in Iowa, for decades. None of that comes across very affectingly in the book though, it’s not really explored deeply - nor should it have been really, since it’s a book about certain parts or aspects of her life. I guess it was just a very challenging approach to a memoir - writing about someone so famous, from the viewpoint of someone in his inner circle of friends who wasn’t famous herself. I did really enjoy reading an intimate account of Kurt Vonnegut’s personality and life though. Very committed fans of Vonnegut will probably find it very interesting. For others, I’d recommend starting with one of Kurt’s own non-fiction “autobiographical colleges” or essay collections: Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, Palm Sunday, or Fates Worse Than Death.

I discovered The Rose Variations at a bookstore while I was browsing new fiction.  I wrote down the title and looked it up on Amazon when I got home. It had great reviews there, so I reserved it through the library. I enjoyed it; the story is interesting and I enjoyed the vivid characters. Here’s a description from Amazon:

In her first novel, poet and playwright Chamberlain tells the vibrant story of Rose McGregor, a talented composer navigating academia in the early days of feminism. A temporary appointment as the token “Girl Composer” at a Minnesota college puts 25-year-old Rose on her own for the first time; the older of two New Hampshire sisters, Rose has always been the plain, responsible one, caretaker to sister Natalie, but finds her professional and personal lives blooming in the cold weather of St. Paul. She falls in love with Guy, a stonemason who wants to whisk her off to his farm, but the affair falls apart. From there, Rose joins eccentric cellist Lila Goldensohn, who has turned her country home into an all-female retreat. Living off the land without the distraction of love, Rose returns to composing until Natalie unexpectedly arrives, pregnant and in distress, to overtake Rose’s life again. Following Rose’s music career to the city, the West Coast and back again, Chamberlain makes a charming, quirky fugue of Rose’s pursuit of love, independence and success.

French Milk by Lucy Knisley is a very fun graphic memoir of a girl who lives in Paris for a month with her mom. It's not a particularly eventful month, but it's her journal of the trip and is creative and interesting. I enjoyed it a lot, and now need to get my hands on her other book, Radiator Days, which is a collection of journal entries.

Short Stories Read:

“Brother on Sunday” by A. M. Homes (from the New Yorker, March 2, 2009)
“The Blue Devils of Blue River Avenue” by Poe Ballantine (from The Best American Short Stories 1998)
“Visitation” by Brad Watson (from the New Yorker, April 6, 2009)

Sincere apologies for my unplanned 2 week Vox absence. It's been a rough couple of weeks. There was an upset at work, which I'm not going to go into details about, and on Friday I (finally) had my Wisdom Teeth removed.

This weekend has been very lovely - I've done nothing but read and relax in bed. I've watched many episodes of Gilmore Girls and Mad Men, and yesterday I read all of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

So anyway, here's February's Polysyllabic Spree. My first effort to get caught up on my Vox postings.

Books Purchased

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Uneasy Money by P. G. Wodehouse
Maus I by Art Spiegelman
The Best American Comics 2006 edited by Harvey Pekar
The Way It Wasn't by James Laughlin
Sima's Undergarments for Women by Ilana Stanger-Ross
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
Trust Me by John Updike
Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Rosie by Anne Lamott
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
This I Believe II edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman

Another month, another stack of books purchased that’s larger that I tried for. In my defense, I got some fantastic deals. The Thorn Birds was the only one I paid full price for. The others were at least 50% off, most were cheaper than that. I got the Welty, Updike, and Lawrence for $1 each at the KPL Friends of the Library Book store. The others were used, bargain books, or purchased very cheap at Strand. I did well with my goal of shopping at more independent stores. None of these were from Amazon, and only one (This I Believe II) was from Barnes and Noble (a $4.98 bargain book).

Books Read

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Comfort Me With Apples by Ruth Reichl
Sima's Undergarments for Women by Ilana Stanger-Ross
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop was a very delightful “book about books.” In this case, also a “book about bookstores.” Lewis Buzbee worked at several independent bookstores in California before becoming a Rep for a publishing house, and getting to travel around visiting hundreds of bookstores. This little memoir is perfect for anyone who love books. Buzbee writes about the business side of bookstores, with just enough detail to be fascinating; it never gets dull or dry. He also offers a nice, compact history of bookstores - everything from book carts in the ancient world up through the fantastic Shakespeare & Co. in Paris and the state of bookstores today.

Buzbee’s book was also what made me decide I needed to read something by Eudora Welty right away. I chose The Optimist’s Daughter, because that’s the one he recommended to a women in one of his stories:

I still remember Victoria McIlvrag, one of the first customers I ever surprised with a book. Today I don’t remember much about her, except that she wore a brown raincoat and was always with her young son. The first time we met, she told me she had been reading nothing but trashy best sellers - her words - and she loved to read but wanted something new; she wanted to read about real women. I led her to Fiction and handed her a blue and silver copy of Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter. Ms. McIlvrag looked at the book with some skepticism, but bought it anyway, and came back the next week asking for more by Ms. Welty, please, and anything else I cared to recommend.

I did enjoy The Optimist’s Daughter, though it wasn’t quite what I was expecting somehow. I would like to read some of her short stories next, especially one of her most famous - “Why I Live at the P. O.”

I was curious about The Graveyard Book after reading Coraline last month, and after it won the Newbery I knew I had to read it right away. The Graveyard Book is excellent; I couldn’t put it down. I’d like to read Kipling’s The Jungle Book now too, as Neil Gaiman has frequently noted that it was his source of inspiration for this book. There are many great interviews with Neil floating around now, including this one on School Library Journal where he’s interviewed by The Horn Book’s Roger Sutton.

Comfort Me With Apples is the second memoir by Ruth Reichl. I read her first, Tender at the Bone, last month. I have a weakness for good memoirs about chefs or food critics. This month (March) I’ve also just finished her third book, Garlic and Sapphires, about the years when she was the food critic for the New York Times and would dress up in elaborate disguises to visit restaurants on a fair playing field. She has a fourth book, Not Becoming My Mother, coming out in April. There’s an author event for it at Barnes and Noble, and I’m really excited to meet her.

Sima’s Undergarments for Women was an impulse buy at Strand, it was in their 50% off review book section. Here’s the description from Publisher’s Weekly:

In Brooklyn's Borough Park, Sima Goldner runs a bra shop from her basement while tolerating her oafish husband, Lev, who lords over the upstairs. But when young and beautiful Israeli expatriate Timna takes the gig as the shop's seamstress, Sima confronts some long-hidden feelings, fears and impulses, and her formerly small life opens up. From the very first page, this is an assured narrative with an even surer voice; readers will know that they are in the hands of a real storyteller as Sima and Timna forge a partnership. Neighborhood subplots bubble along nicely as Stanger-Ross charts Sima's awakening and shows how Timna's arrival and continued presence affect Sima. The bra shop works wonderfully as a stage and forum for the many ladies who tromp through it. This ends up being much more than a novel of female bonding—it's a subtly powerful treatise on friendship, trust and love, written with plenty of verve.

I did enjoy this book, and I read the entire thing on one fabulously lazy Sunday. I don’t read a lot of new books right when they come out (unless they are by an author I’ve read before). They usually have to put in their time on my shelves and wait for their turn, which could be months or years. But Sima’s Undergarments for Women must have received a wildcard spot, because it actually got read by me in the same month it was published. :)

I wrote earlier about how I decided to read The Thorn Birds, and I’m happy to report back that I was not disappointed. It was a lovely book. I do recommend it, especially if you’re in the mood for an engrossing, epic story that spans several generations. It was nice to read a novel set in Australia too. For some reason I don’t think I’ve read many novels set there. The last paragraph is now one of my favorite last paragraphs I’ve ever read, although it’s definitely not as meaningful without reading the entire book.

I have so many wonderful quotes and lines from Bird by Bird underline, starred, or circled. I will write a post soon with my favorites. It’s a fantastic book. Good reading whether or not you aspire to be a writer.

I’ve been wanting to read A Long Way From Chicago for a long time. I’m (very) slowly working on my goal reading all the Newbery Award and Newbery Honor books. A Long Way From Chicago is a 1999 Newbery Honor book, and its sequel, A Year Down Yonder, won the Newbery Medal in 2001. A Long Way From Chicago was very good, it’s a novel told in short stories - each story is about one week every summer when a brother and sister from Chicago head out to the country to their grandmother’s farm. They have many adventures, and their grandma is a fantastic character, very feisty and not afraid to cause a little ruckus in town when need be. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel.

Short Stories Read

“Al Roosten” by George Saunders (from the New Yorker, February 2, 2009)

Books Purchased:

The Writing Diet by Julia Cameron
Meet Mr. Mulliner by P. G. Wodehouse
Lord Emsworth and Others by P. G. Wodehouse
The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense by Edward Lear
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
A Curtain of Green and Other Stories by Eudora Welty
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty

Only seven this month! My goal was less than five, but this is still respectable. :) As the above shows, I decided that it’s about time I read some Eudora Welty. I’m trying to slow down a bit on buying Wodehouse - I have plenty to read, but I cannot resist when Strand has the gorgeous Overlook hardcover editions for 60% off. They were only $7.50 each!

Books Read:

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill
The Writing Diet by Julia Cameron  
The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

I did separate posts for three books read this month, David Copperfield, The Mighty Queens of Freeville and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.

Bad Behavior was an impulse buy at Strand last month. I’ve been wanting to read more short story collections, and have been keeping an eye out for collections that look interesting by authors I’ve never read before. Bad Behavior was pretty good; I really like Mary Gaitskill’s writing style. And she certainly is good at writing about dysfunctional relationships. It was also interesting to read the short story that the movie Secretary was based on. The two are very different. Here’s my favorite passage from the collection, from the story “Trying to Be” -

It was a beautiful Halloweenlike night, and there were exuberant people on the streets. She walked happily, admiring faces and haircuts. She looked at people, dogs, cars and buildings, and everything pleased her. She stopped at a Korean grocery store and looked at the fruit. She was struck by how neat and beautiful it was in its organized, traditional piles. She though of herself coming here every week and buying fruit, vegetables, bread, cereal and milk, and it seemed like a wonderful idea. She bought herself an apple, and walked home eating it.”

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to eat healthier (I used to eat a lot of junk, and my cholesterol was getting a little high) and to get in better shape - I’d like to go down one jean size and not be so exhausted at the top of our stairs. I’ve never read any diet/healthy living/fitness book before, so I can’t really compare The Writing Diet to anything else like it. It’s a great starting point though, if you’d like to eat healthier and get in better shape. I really like her suggestion of writing in a journal every morning, your “morning pages,” and I have been doing it every morning. I have combined her book with many other strategies for healthy living - I’ve joined a gym and have been going at least 4 times a week, I use the book Eat This, Not That: Supermarket Survival Guide to help me learn how to read food labels and shop better at the grocery store, and I’ve gone to a nutritionist to help me eat healthy despite my food allergies (I’m allergic to all raw fruits and veggies, which makes healthy, balanced eating a challenge). So I’m not leaning on having read The Writing Diet as the only plan I have for healthier living, but it’s a great motivator and has a lot of great ideas in it that I’ve used with success so far. I figure if the tools I’m using to get healthy continue to work successfully for several months, I’ll write a larger post with more details, for anyone who might be interested. Especially with information from my nutritionist, because that has definitely been the most helpful. I would feel funny posting my entire strategy only 3 weeks in; it seems I should give it more time to evaluate it myself before I recommend anything. :)

I read Coraline in anticipation of the movie adaptation coming out February 6. The movie looks fabulous, and I wanted to have read the book before seeing it. This is the first Neil Gaiman book that I’ve read. Coraline was wonderful - twisted and unusual and exciting. It’s spooky, and I’m glad I read it well before going to bed. It’s a quick, excellent read, and I recommend picking it up and checking it out before seeing what looks to be a fantastic movie. I'm also very excited that Neil Gaiman won the Newbery for The Graveyard Book. I just got that from the library and can't wait to read it. 

I don’t know what my delay was in reading The Tales of Beedle the Bard, considering I read the Harry Potter books within 24 hours of their release. I guess I just wasn’t as excited about it considering it wasn’t a “real” new Harry Potter book. But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed all of the stories. The tales are good in themselves, but it’s Dumbledore’s commentary that makes this book excellent. Each story and notes from Dumbledore was a treat, and I decided to make the book last long I’d read one tale and notes before bed each night for a week. They made wonderful bedtime stories.

I love to bake and cook, and have also really enjoyed the few food memoirs I’ve read about famous foodies and reviewers discovering and developing their own love of food. (The others that I’ve read are My Life in France by Julia Child and Insatiable: Tales from a life of Delicious Excess by Gael Greene.) Tender at the Bone is a very fun and enjoyable memoir. The parts that involve her mother in the beginning are especially funny - she often has to save dinner guests from her mother’s cooking - not only is it bad, but her mother frequently used food products of very questionable freshness. I flew through Tender at the Bone, and picked up the sequel, Comfort Me With Apples, from the library.

Wonder Boys is the second Michael Chabon novel I’ve read (the other is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay).  It’s a little hard to compare the two, and maybe it’s because it’s fresh in my mind, but I think I liked Wonder Boys even more than Kavalier and Clay. Michael Chabon is an excellent writer. Sometimes during Wonder Boys I’d stop after a sentence and think to myself, “good lord, this man can write.” I can’t really come up with any logical reason why I would have liked Wonder Boys better than Kavalier and Clay, and it definitely doesn’t mean that it’s better. Mainly it’s just amazing how good of a writer Michael Chabon is and how his novels have such a broad subject range. I own several more of his books, and I think I’d like to read his short story collection Werewolves in Their Youth next.

Short Stories Read:
“The Lady With the Little Dog” by Anton Chekhov, from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead anthology
“Love” by Grace Paley, from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead anthology
“Appetites” by Kathryn Chetkovich from The Best American Short Stories 1998 anthology

I’m continuing to enjoy all the stories I’m reading from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead that Jeffrey Eugenides edited, and finally read one of Chekhov’s most famous short stories. Garrison Keillor edited the 1998 BA Short Stories, which is why I bought that particular year. I liked “Appetites” a lot, and I’d like to get a copy of her collection that it appears in, Friendly Fire.

As always, my complete Polysyllabic Spree lists are posted here.  

Hello and Happy New Year! I'm back from two wonderful weeks in Michigan and ready to jump into several posts about 2008 (mainly 2008 reading) that I have planned/started. I will also post my goals for 2009 reading.

First up - my Polysyllabic Spree for December:

Books Purchased (or received as gifts)

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling

The Best American Short Stories edited by Stephen King

Reborn: Journals & Notebooks, 1947 - 1963 by Susan Sontag

Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill 

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

Love Letters of Great Men edited by Ursula Doyle (gift) 

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry selected by Billy Collins 

Eleanor Roosevelt Volume 1 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook 

Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (gift)

The Time of Their Lives by Al Silverman (gift)

Shakespeare Wrote for the Money by Nick Hornby (gift) 

Very Far Away from Anywhere Else by Ursula K. Le Guin 

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (gift)

The Best American Short Stories of the Eighties edited by Shannon Ravenel 

With Love and Squalor edited by Kip Kotzen and Thomas Beller

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey 

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

I received many wonderful books for Christmas. I also got several fantastic cookbooks, which I do not include on my official book lists. The cookbooks I received were: The Art and Soul of Baking, Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, and The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book. It seems my books acquired stack is destined to always be towering, but this month its size is mainly due to the many awesome $1 to $2 book deals I found at Book Off, Skyline Books, The Book Nook, and the KPL Friends of the Library bookstore. Oh well, there's always next year to try to accumulate less books. :)

(Also not pictured is my collector's edition of Tales of Beedle the Bard. It's absolutely gorgeous, in fact - a little too gorgeous to actually read. Instead of buying the US edition as a reading copy, I fell in love with the cover of the UK edition, so I ordered it from Amazon UK. Yes, I'm that fanatical about my Harry Potter collection.)

Books Read:

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (library)

Rebel Angels by Libba Bray (library)

The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray (library)

I only finished three books in December. I blame the holidays. I started a lot of things that I didn't finish in December, and hopefully will soon. I did really enjoy the three books I read this month though. I read the complete Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray. It's a teen fantasy saga and it's much better than the Twilight series. It's very dark and gothic, which was just what I was in the mood for during the busy holidays - something completely absorbing that would be very fun to read. Rebel Angels, the second book, is my favorite in the trilogy. If you're interested in learning more about this series, the official website has descriptions of each book, and a link where you can read the first chapter of A Great and Terrible Beauty. Also, according to IMDB, A Great and Terrible Beauty is going to be made into a movie, coming out in 2010. The status is only "announced" so I hope this actually happens, it would make an excellent movie. An added bonus of this series - the love interest, Kartik, is completely wonderful.

Short Stories Read:

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
(There are many collections that include this story, including several cool new stand alone editions, but I read the story in a book called Before Gatsby: The First 26 Stories.)

I've decided to try logging short stories that I read into my monthly posts. However, I'm not going to list individual stories when I read an entire collection at once, or if I plan on finishing the entire collection soon. I'd like to read more short stories from various places (like the New Yorker, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and various anthologies of short stories by multiple authors). I'm not very good at making time to read them though, so I think having a running list will help. In December I wanted to read "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" before seeing the movie. I love most of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories, and this one was good too. I saw the movie on New Year's Day. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was completely different from the short story. If you're interested in reading the story for yourself, it's available for free online right here. 

Currently reading: Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon.

As a bonus this month, since I've been absent for over 2 weeks, here are three more fun book related photos from this month:

Here's a photo of some awesome bookplates I found at Schuler Books in Michigan (a fabulous independent bookstore I love to visit when I'm there). The picture is one of my favorite paintings, The Bookworm.

Old Photo

This is an old photo I found in a book I bought at the Book Nook in Cadillac, Michigan.
 

Bookmarks

Here are old bookmarks that were free from the KPL Friends Bookstore.