Peter and the Starcatchers

For those of you who don't know, just walking into a bookstore allows you one guilt-free book purchase. Just one. All the rest you buy are very bad, but one is completely acceptable. Anyway, Mom visited and can I help it if she needed to go to Borders? I finally was able to get Peter and the Starcatchers, which I have been looking at for a while. It was co-authored by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, so it sounded awesome. Well, it lived up to the hype. It is a good read.

Actually, I think that a prequel to Peter Pan was a long time coming. There are a lot of holes in the Peter story that I have always been curious about. How did Peter end up the way he is? Why can he talk to mermaids? What really did happen with Hook's hand? Where did tinkerbell come from? Somebody else must have been curious also. The style is also pretty funny, very similar to Dave Barry's "Big Trouble".

Here's an excerpt from the chapter when you meet Black Stache--or you know him better as Captain Hook:

"The crew of the Sea Devil understood: If Black Stache laughed, you laughed. If he snarled, you snarled. If he breathed in your direction, you ran for cover. "Ratbreath," his sailors called him behind his back. It was said that he liked to eat his vermin raw with a touch of sea salt."

The Sex Lives of Cannibals

I tore through this book. I really like the author and I will try to get his next book, "Getting Stoned with Savages." If you ever had an inclination to chuck it all and move to a very small island in the South Pacific, this is the book for you!

He also has ingenious titles to his chapters, such as:
"Chapter 2: In which the Author reveals the Fruit of his Research into the Strange Island Nation he has declared his new Home (which leaves much unknown), compensates for his Ignorance with his Lively Imagination (which is inadequate, very much so), and Packs (inappropriately)."

Therein lies:

"To picture Kiribati, imagine that the continental U.S. were to conveniently disappear leaving only Baltimore and a vast swath of very blue ocean in its place. Now chop up Baltimore into thirty-three pieces, place a neighborhood where Maine used to be, another where California once was, and so un until you have thirty-three pieces of Baltimore dispersed in such a way so as
to ensure that 32/33 of Baltimorians will never attend an Orioles game again. Now take away electricity, running water, toilets, television, restaurants, buildings, and airplanes (except for two very old prop planes, tended by people who have no word for "maintenance"). Replace with
thatch. Flatten all land into a uniform two fee above sea level. Toy with islands by melting polar ice caps. Add palm trees. Sprinkle with hepatitis A, B, and C. Stir in dengue fever and intestinal
parasites. Take away doctors. Isolate and bake at a constant temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The result is the Republic of Kiribati."

Enjoy!

d

Julie & Julia

How appropriate of me to write a blog entry about a book, based on a blog.

From http://www.twbookmark.com/: "Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that's going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes. In the span of one year."

So some parts of this are really good, some parts are really funny, some parts made my stomach hurt (September 11 in NYC). It is, like a blog, kind of spotty and not always consistent in tone. Also, sometimes she is a little too forthcoming in her personal life. Sometimes a reader would like a little censorship. That, too, is like a blog - it's the first draft of the first thought in your head.

Over all, this is a book I have been circling for a while and I finally pulled it of the shelf at the library. I enjoyed it and recommend it for a quick and easy read.

d

Oliver Sacks

Ok, I think everyone already read this book. But, I just finished "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and it's really good. It can get a little 'sciency', but they are clinical tales, so you should know what you are getting yourself into.

Oliver Sacks also wrote the "Oaxaca Journal"

In the mean time, I also read some terribly boring books on food that I won't burden you with at this time. Tonight I'm going to the lib to get a book on cd of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time."

Enjoy your weekend!

d

Well...

Too tired to read. Real jobs are hard. If I get a minute I read "The First Days of School" by Harry Wong. Really good book if you are a brand new teacher. No takers? Didn't think so. Weekend is here and I plan to spend a good deal of tomorrow reading. So more coming. If you want to know what I'm doing instead of reading you can check out my other blog.

Catching Up

I have not been reading enough lately and have vowed to give my library card a good workout this fall. To start, I checked out Mr. Vertigo, Lamb (By Christopher Moore), Book Lust and Oaxaca Journal.
Mr. Vertigo was a wild read. I found it very entertaining - it is definitely one of the most creative books I've read lately. I loved how the kid talks in this street-wise "Hey, Mista, what's the big idea?" kind of way. I really, really liked Lamb! It was a cool spin on the old, old story, and Moore has a great sense of humor. I checked out Oaxaca Journal b/c Della said she read it on vacation, and I really like other Oliver Sacks books, like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Awakenings. I will read that next.
And as for Book Lust, well, frankly Cali, if you checked out that book you would have no need for this blog!!! I have about 4 pages of a notebook filled with a 'to-read' list from it. Better get going... ;-)

Hoot

I haven't read anything else by Carl Hiaasen, but this seems very different from his other books. I did see that he has written another young adult book now, and I think Hoot has a movie. Anyway, this was a very fast read and was pretty entertaining. A great young adult novel where kids make a difference. I thought they way they went about it was sometimes questionable. After all, usually I don't see vandalism and violence getting results, but it has a happy ending. I guess if it was all peaceful protest it would be sort of a preachy book. Anyway, it's recommended if you like new kid hero stories.

The Time Traveler's Wife

This was one of Pam's book group books that looked good (so many of them do) so I grabbed it at the library. It's a little sci-fi of course...with the time travel element. But it is the kind of sci-fi that is easy to get into and you don't have to learn a whole new language to read it (those of you who have read Dune know what I'm talking about). It's mostly a character driven plot and I love the way the author sort of lets you look at their lives big picture instead of in a linear birth to death sort of way. It very circular and if I were the author I would have a hard time deciding where to start. Here's an excerpt of the main character describing his unusual problem to a friend who's not a friend yet:

"I am a time traveler. At the moment I am thirty-six years old. This afternoon was May 9, 2000. It was a Tuesday. I was at work, I had just finished a Show and tell for a bunch of Caxton Club members and I had gone back to the stacks to reshelve the books when I suddenly found myself on School Street, in 1991. I had the usual problem of getting something to wear. I hid under somebody's porch for a while. I was cold, and nobody was coming along, and finally this young guy, dressed--well, you saw how I was dressed. I mugged him, took his cash and everything he was wearing except his underwear...."
"I find myself in situations like that all the time. No pun intended. There's something wrong with me. I get dislocated in time, for no reason. I can't control it, I never know when it's going to happen, or where and when I'll end up. So in order to cope, I pick locks, shoplift, pick pockets, mug people, panhandle, break and enter, steal cars lie, fold, spindle, and mutilate. You name it, I've done it."

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Oh, my, goodness. I'm only 2/3rds of the way through this book and I had to write about it. This is the best book I've read this year.

It's non-fiction and about food production, which may not sound like the most exciting things to some of you, but this guy is great. He's a professor of Journalism at Berkeley and has written about food before (The Botany of Desire).

This is what the publisher says about the book (I can't seem to find an excerpt on line):

"Pollan has divided The Omnivore's Dilemma into three parts, one for each of the food chains that sustain us: industrialized food, alternative or "organic" food, and food people obtain by dint of their own hunting, gathering, or gardening. Pollan follows each food chain literally from the ground up to the table, emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the species we depend on. He concludes each section by sitting down to a meal at McDonald's, at home with his family sharing a dinner from Whole Foods, and in a revolutionary "beyond organic" farm in Virginia. For each meal he traces the provenance of everything consumed, revealing the hidden components we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods reflects our environmental and biological inheritance."

The great thing about him is that he does not condemn the farmer or the consumer. Yet, he is reminding us to consider what we are eating and where we are shopping and what that implies. Also, he does not admonish the reader for her bad eating habits after he witnesses the industrialized food chain. Pollan does want the reader to acknowledge that the price you pay for your hamburger at the grocery store is more than just the amount of money you hand over.

For those of you who read My Year of Meats or Fast Food Nation (also recommended) this is better. I can't say enough good things about this book, and you should all run out and get it from your library right away. I think I may buy it.

d

Austen Mania

I finally got to read the Jane Austen Book Club that Amanda talked about. It was great! I know Amanda already shared but now I am in a total Austen craze so I thought I would share the parts where she talks about everyone's perception of Austen:

"Jocelyn's Austen wrote wonderful novels about love and courtship, but never married."

"Bernadette's Austen was a comic genius. Her characters, her dialogue remained genuinely funny, not like Shakespeare's jokes, which amused you only because they were Shakespeare's and you owed him that."

"Allegra's Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she'd worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section."

"Prudie's was the Austen whose books changed every time you read them, so that one year they were all romances and the next you suddenly noticed Austen's cool, ironic prose. Prudie's was the Austen who died, possibly of Hodgkin's disease, when she was only forty-one years old."

"Sylvia's Austen was a daughter, a sister, an aunt. Sylvia's Austen wrote her books in a busy sitting room, read them aloud to her family, yet remained an acute and nonpartisan observer of people. Sylvia's Austen could love and be loved, but it didn't cloud her vision, blunt her judgments."

So I've been trying to figure out who my Austen is, but really she is all of those things. Isn't there a famous quote about every woman thinking she personally knows Austen better than everyone else? I looked for it but can't find it.

Fire and Ice

Ok, so the title is a little bit terrible. But the book was a fast enjoyable read. I got tired of the Kate Shugak character several years ago, but when I saw that there was another series with a different hero I decided to try it. I just got tired of Kate because her character never evolved and nothing ever changed as far as the big timeline. This could happen with the new character, Liam, but I've only read one book so...so far so good. I really enjoy all the Alaska stuff. This book has a very detailed description of fishing for herring and it is really interesting. Fishing is a good career background for characters in a murder mystery. Very tough and competitive. The most appealing part of the story is the characters Dana Stabenow develops for this tiny Alaskan town. She drew me in with the people so I will probably be looking for the second in the series when I go back to the library.

Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe

This was another one of Pam's book group books. She recommended it to me and I ended up reading the whole series. I started with this one, which is actually the middle, but it was a good one to start with. It left me with questions for books one and three. The series tells the story of Josephine Bonaparte. Honestly I had very little interest in Napoleon prior to reading this book, but Sandra Gulland paints him as an interesting character. We see him through Josephine as a very opportunistic general who is not anything like emperor material. He is also very arrogant. He carries his own hard-boiled eggs to dinners so that no one can poison him. He even changes her first name from Rose. Josephine is no saint either. She has tons of debts and a weakness for laudanum. Upon telling her aunt she has married:

"Why...that's wonderful," she said, crossing herself, "but to whom?"
"To a military man by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. He's--"
"What type of name is that?" my aunt demanded, frowning suspiciously.
"It's a Corsican name, Aunt Désirée, and--"
"You married a Corsican?" She reached for a brass bell and rang it vigorously...(she calls for smelling salts and insults the corsicans thoroughly)...
"A church ceremony, Rose?" she asked, pulling and twistingng the green handkerchief, worrying it.
"No," I admitted. Bonaparte was anti-Church, but I wasn't going to tell her that.
I heard a sniff. Oh dear! Was she weeping? Dismayed, I reached out to comfort her, but she turned on me like a hawk. "Rose how could you?" she wept, dabbing her cheeks. "How could you have married a man with such a horrible name!"

Robinson Crusoe

This is another one of those classics that I had been meaning to read for years. Over all it was an excellent book. Especially the first 3 quarters. Or even 5/6ths. But pretty much after he is "rescued" I lost interest. Also, I thought it was really annoying that each chapter begins with a overview of what happens in the chapter. For example "Friday tells me of the white mans in his country. I make a canoe. Keep another anniversary. The savages again land. We attack them and rescue a Spaniard. Friday finds his father." And then the chapter begins. What?! It gives away all the surprises. If I could only stop myself from reading those parts! My only other complaint is the end of the book. The last sentence is: "I sent them also from the Brazils five cows, three of them being big with calf, some sheep, and some hogs; which, when I came again, were considerably increased." So actually there is no ending.

I love the action in this book. It is very exciting and actually reminded me a lot of Fatu-Hiva by Thor Heyerdahl. Although that was a real reminiscence, they dealt with some of the same survival issues. I thought it was really funny the way he ends up describing how he built a canoe in great detail, but when he gets married it isn't really clear who the lucky lady is. I also thought it was funny the way you think through the whole book that he is just unlucky with the sea, but then the first time he travels by land he is attacked by wolves. So I think the moral of the story is: Stay home and listen to your parents. ( at least when they tell you that you are doomed to be lost at sea)

Kite Runner

Ok, I won't say much about this one because I'm pretty sure I'm the last person on the planet to read it, but if it turns out someone else out there is the last person then I highly recommend this book. It's about a couple of boys in Afghanistan, so it isn't a cheerful sort of book, but it is very insightful. I learned a lot about the history of the country through this book. This is the way I prefer to learn history I think...through fiction. Anyway, it's well written and deserving of a second look if you get a chance.

So, I've been listening to Robert Parker in the car and find this Spencer fellow entertaining. He is a really tough PI who always cracks the case. Also, he happens to be highly intellectual even though he is big and brawny.

I'm trying this link thing to see if you can read a review. He has some great lines, but since I listened to it I can't remember enough to put in here so you will have to listen for yourself.

I am now moving on to Twain.

Email from John

I got permission from John to post an e-mail of his here:

I've had an interesting year of reading, although I'm
out of the reading mode until it's not nice enough to
do something rational. I'm reading quite an
interesting fishing book, well, make that "fly
fishing" book, called, "Rivers of Shadow, Rivers of
Sun" by Norm Zeigler. Not much fishing about it,
really. Sort of a "Blue Highways" sort of thing
centered around finding off-the-beaten-path of famous
European/Scandinavian rivers. Reading it is like
sitting over a glass of wine in a small European cafe
talking about people, rivers and the fish that we aim
to catch and sometimes do. This is a nice contrast to
"Footnotes from a Catastrophy" and some of the other
environmental glasnost books that seem to find their
way into my hands. Sharon dropped "Marley and Me" on
me and it was a nice flight book to and from Boston,
but in the end I couldn't finish the book. This winter
I went through a rash of Annie Proulx books after a
seatmate on a flight to Boston gave me one of her
books. "Close Range." "Accordian Crimes." A couple of
others. A very good writer with great
characterization. My brother gave me a Bush Attack
that I sometimes will read a chapter of before bed,
although there is so little I find either amusing or
even funny about the man, so the work usually bores
me. It's like reading about the one guy who is always
trying to crowd into a table of people he thinks are
friends, and is not intelligent enough to realize they
find he and his jokes stupid rather than funny. JGW

Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys

This book totally horrified me as I read it but the more I think back on it, the better it gets. I really loved Eric Garcia's Dinosaur series that I wrote about earlier (Anonymous Rex, Hot and Sweaty Rex, and Casual Rex). I also enjoyed Matchstick Men. Now after I say that I should have know that this book was going to be totally messed up because everything he writes has an element of loony in it. However, it starts out so Bridget Jonesy that I was caught off guard. She seems like the normal, shallow, chick lit heroine who hates her job and anyone who looks thinner than her. But in no time you learn that she has three men chained in her basement, and her mom is cheerfully under house arrest for telemarketing fraud. For a lawyer, she follows a very loose interpretation of the law in this book. Don't ask--you will have to read the book to follow her totally screwed up rationalization about how it is OK to kidnap bad dates and hold them hostage. I certainly can't explain her. Here is the first page for all of you who like a glimpse:

"There was a woman on television the other day who insisted that the best way for us, as humans, to achieve our goals is to grade ourselves, in every aspect of our lives, with stark and unrelenting candor. It's not good enough simply to think about these grades, or to tell them to a friend; according to this woman, who may or may not have been an actual doctor, you've got to write them down at least once a day if you want to make a difference in your life. There's no need, she said, to make any specific proactive plans for these changes to occur. The sheer act of writing them down, is eventually, enough to do the trick. Though I have a strong feeling the woman was a shill for the Bic pen corporation, it's difficult for me to resist what seems like a ridiculously easy method to turn my life toward the better. If all it takes to achieve happiness is a belly flop into the culture of constant self-evaluation, I'm ready to pull on a bikini and call myself a swimmer. To start, I'll give myself a C in metaphor."

I give Eric Garcia a C- for getting inside the mind of a woman (I cannot see most of this behavior as female, but instead an extremely exaggerated version of how men might see women) and an A+ for writing an apparently fluff summer read that completely took me by surprise.

Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

So this is my first Christopher Moore, even though he's caught my eye several times. It was hilarious. The characters are really funny. This book is about 2 friends doing whale research and their 2 employees. One employee is named Amy, has no tan even though she's in Hawaii, and has no past. The other employee's name is Preston Applebaum, but he calls himself Pelekekona or "Kona", and he talks like this ( an actual excerpt is the only way to describe):

"Some rippin' sets North Shore, they be callin' to me this morning." The kid shrugged. What could he do? Rippin' sets had called to him.
Nate squinted at the surfer, realizing that the kid was speaking some mix of Rasta talk, pidgin, surfspeak and....well, bullshit. "Stop talking that way, or you're fired right now."
"So you the ichiban big whale kahuna, like Clay say, hey?"
"Yeah," Nate said. "I'm the number-one whale kahuna. You're fired."
"Bummah, mon," The kid said. He shrugged again, turned , and started toward the door. "Jah's love to ye, brah. Cool runnings," he sang over his shoulder.

I think the plot is really funny too, but I'm not going to share much because there are a lot of surprises. It's sort of a mystery. Kinda. Also, just a warning--this book starts out fairly realistic and then become more and more fantastic as it goes on. This is fiction that believes in being fiction.

Stephanie Plum #12

Yeah, there is a new Stephanie Plum novel. She is the crazy 30ish female bounty hunter. Very fun reads. #12 is called Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich. It is really good so far. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312349483/sr=8-1/qid=1151433454/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1343251-9869657?ie=UTF8http://

Also on audio I've been doing Robert Parker, the ones with the private eye named Spencer. They are fun in the car.

I listened to A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L 'Engle, which I hadn't read for a coon's age and it was still good!

Almost out the door!

I'm leaving for vacation on Saturday (to Mexico), so I had to go fess up at the library and pay my fine in order to get more books.

I checked out Sixpence House (AGAIN), maybe this time I will actually be able to read it before the fines start. And, I also got the Short Stories by Gwyn Thomas (recommended by Max) and Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (recommended by AJ, a long time ago - pre-blog).

If I have a chance to get to a different library, I may be able to get the second book in the Hitchhiker series - although I'm concerned that my reading voice will not be nearly as funny as hearing Stephen Fry read the first book.

On the plans for the vacation, the boyfriend is going to take me to an English language bookstore. So, I don't have to worry about running out of books this time. Last vacation, I got a cold and was laying on the couch reading much more than I had anticipated.

I did read a few books recently and haven't posted anything about them. Mom & Dad came to visit and left me a stack of books. I tore through Oaxaca Journal (by the guy who wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), English as a Second Language (I can't remember the author, but it's about a girl who goes to England for a master's degree - fairly fluffy, but entertaining.)

Also a co-worker lent me the new Amy Tan book Saving Fish From Drowning. It was good, but I'm not sure I liked it as much as the others. I was annoyed by a few holes in the plot.

Have a great 4th!

d

Sleeping with Schubert--Not just for music nerds!

This is a fun read. (it was a great beach book!) It reminded my a little of that movie with Lilly Tomlin and Steve Martin where they share a body--what was it called? Anyway, this girl has to share a body with Schubert. The steamy title is a little misleading, since she does EVERYTHING with Schubert after he "shows up". Here is an excerpt from the first chapter where she realizes something is wrong. It starts with her listening to the pianist at Nordstrom department store.

"I tried to walk away but his playing attracted me like a spectator to an Amtrak wreck. Occasional missed notes hit my body like flying glass. I outplayed him in my head, summoning the music's original beauty. When he left for his break, I calmly took his place on the piano bench and began to play.
Through all my grad-school piano lessons I'd only gotten good enough to recognize the skill in others. Suddenly I became an other. I was not like a lifeless puppet, nor a remote-control robot. All the movement came from inside. Muscles flexed, fingers moved, and my mind was filled with a comprehension I had no right to possess. I vibrated like a tuning fork as the music flowed outward. Visions slid in and out of focus. My brain engaged in a psychic tug-of-war with an unseen opponent.
It was a lovely piece I played, one I'm sure I never head before but which felt like an old friend...(chunk taken out here to save space)...When I stopped, the world of Nordstrom fell in on me again. The response to my music was, like, totally Californian. Most of the shoppers shopped on, unscathed by a miracle...(another sloppy editing job, sorry)...
"Hey, lady, how'd you do that?" I turned to see an adolescent boy in trendy, cool-kid clothes. He stared at me, stunned, as if he'd just discovered fire.
"I don't know," I answered. Then the world grew dark, the ocean rushed through my ears, and I gratefully passed out.

I love this excerpt because it was always my dream to sit down at the piano and have it miraculously sound good without having to practice first. After reading the rest of the book I changed my mind. Practice sounds easier than having a musical genius borrow your body.

Blue Like Jazz

This is not typical Christian literature. He calls himself a "realist" and basically just writes about his day to day life. He also challenges a lot of fundamentalist Christian behavior (which should be challenged) and makes it plain that he thinks liberals can be Christians too (an idea very close to my heart). He also says things that a normal "Christian writer" wouldn't say, like that Powell's bookstore is a church for him, and that he gets "fed" at Reed University which is one of the most anti-Christian campuses in the US. I really identified with the way he wanted to apologize for a lot of so called "Christian" behavior that has not been very Christian at all. Also I loved his passion for Christ and his sense of social responsibility to LOVE. Anyway, I recommend this to anybody who is curious about a new, loving kind of Christian movement. Besides being very insightful it is just a good read. Here is a funny passage I liked:
"Here's a tip I've never used: I understand you can learn a great deal about girldom by reading Pride and Predjudice, and I own a copy, but have never read it. I tried. It was given to me by a girl with a little note inside that read: What is in this book is the heart of a woman. I am sure the heart of a woman is pure and lovely, but the first chapter of said heart is hopelessly boring. Nobody dies at all. I keep the book on my shelf because girls come into my room, sit on my couch and eye the books on the adjacent shelf. You have a copy of Pride and Prejudice, they exclaim in a gentle sigh and smile. Yes, I say. Yes I do."

Mr. Vertigo

I just finished reading this book last night. It was a quick read and quite entertaining. The story is told by a man recalling his childhood/life as Walt the Boy Wonder. A boy who could fly. It is a very nice combination of magical realism and historical fiction set in the 1920s-40s.

Mr. Vertigo was recommended to me by Adrian and he thought I would enjoy it because the boy is a huge Cardinals fan. So, periodically he will discuss Rogers Hornsby or Dizzy Dean. It is a very fun book, with enough plot twists and a quick pace to keep the reader very interested.

I think AJ & BJ should read this. (Well, the rest of you should read it also.)

d

New York Times Travel Section

Sunday's Travel section of the NY Times has an article about the Hay-on-Wye bookfair.

enjoy!

d

A Long Way Down

This is the newest Hornby I think. It was not as good as About a Boy or High Fidelity, but it was much better than How to be Good which was terrible. This one was about four REALLY different people who end up spending a lot of time together. I was going to say they end up being friends but that's not quite right. They have a very strange relationship. The only thing they have in common is that they all tried to commit suicide on the same night (New Year's Eve). The best thing about this book is the way Hornby kept making fun of me as the reader because he knew that I wanted a happy ending where everything wraps up nicely. I would quote something along those lines except that Jeremy just took the stack of library books back to the library, so you will just have to read it to know what I mean.

The Glass Castle

This is a true story but it doesn't read like one. Makes my childhood experiences seem pretty hum-drum. I really liked this memoir because it didn't play up some horrible, life changing experience and then blame everything afterward on that event. It was more about the general experience of growing up in a family with parents who refuse to provide for their children, and what the kids learned about survival. They were incredibly resourceful and creative. One of my favorite lines:
"A couple of weeks earlier, Miss Page had gotten the ax when the principal caught her toting a loaded rifle down the school hall. Miss Page said all she wanted to do was motivate her students to do their homework."
Also, I thought this passage was sort of the thesis statement of the book:
"One day Professor Fuchs asked if homelessness was the result of drug abuse and misguided entitlement programs, as the conservatives claimed, or did it occur, as the liberals argued, because of cuts in the social-service programs and the failure to create economic opportunity for the poor? Professor Fuchs called on me.
I hesitated. "Sometimes, I think, it's neither."
"Can you explain yourself?"
"I think that maybe sometimes people get the lives they want."
"Are you saying homeless people want to live on the street?" Professor Fuchs asked. "Are you saying they don't want warm beds and roofs over their heads?"
"Not exactly," I said. I was fumbling for words. "They do. But if some of them were willing to work hard and make compromises, they might not have ideal lives, but they could make ends meet."
Professor Fuchs walked around from behind her lectern. "what do you know abou the lives of the underpriviledged?" she asked. She was practically trembling with agitation. "What do you know about the hardships and obstacles that the underclas faces?"
The other students were staring at me.
"You have a point," I said."
That was a long excerpt. Anyway, my point is that this book is a first person perspective on poverty and it is really interesting.

The Jane Austen Book Club

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452286530/ref=pd_lpo_k2a_1_txt/002-0757692-9758466?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Here is the link to Amazon's listing of 'The Jane Austen Book Club', which I just finished. If you haven't read the Austens it will just be a quick, shallow read for you. For those who have, the Austen mimicry in the book club members' storylines is there to consider.

AJ

Small Island

This is a really well written book. It is written from four different people's perspectives during WWII in England, Jamaica and India. One of my favorite passages is written from one of the Jamaican character's perspectives:
"But for my I had just one question - let me ask the Mother Country just this one simple question: how come England did not know me?...It was inconceivable taht we Jamaicans, we West Indians, we members of the British Empire would not fly to the Mother Country's defence when there was threat. But, tell me, if Jamaica was in trouble, is there any major, any general, any sergeant who would have been able to find that dear island? Give me a map, let me see if Tommy Atkins or Lady Havealot can point to Jamaica. Let us watch them turning the page round, screwing up their eyes to look, turning it over to see if perhaps the region was lost on the back, before shrugging defeat. But give me that map, blindfold me, spin me round three times and I, dizzy and dazed, would still place my finger squarely on the Mother Country."
Entertaining and a very different perspective of England.

Long Time No See

So I have finally found some time to read again. I've finished several of my final projects so things are starting to wrap up. If you want to see what I've been doing you can visit my portfolio. Not all of it works yet, mostly because I already got a job so it has not been a priority. However, most of it should work within the next month. Anyway, I should be posting more now that grad school is letting me have a little more time for other things.

New Books and the dangers of the Public Library

I received an e-mail from grandma yesterday advising me to get a book called "Castles in the Air" about a woman and her husband/boyfriend/fiance/something who move into a dilapidated castle in Northern Wales. I found it at the lib, but on the way through the stacks I spotted 2 other books on my new booklist!

So, I also picked up "Stolen Figs: And other adventures in Calabria" by Mark Rotella and "Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books" by Paul Collins.

I have high hopes for "Sixpence House" as it is about a family who move to Hay-on-Wye.

I'm almost done listening to "Don't Get Too Comfortable", which Cali recommended below. It's pretty funny. I also recommend it.

I've decided, in order to read all my books in time to get them back to the library before the late fees begin accruing, I will just have to stop unpacking and cleaning my new apartment.

I finished the "Flame Trees of Thika", but I did so under the pressure of moving and mounting library fines, so I can't really say that it was a relaxing or enjoyable process. I still recommend the book, though.

Enjoy the weekend!

d

Sad, Sad Me

This is just to apologize for not posting in a loooong time. I haven't been able to read much because I am trying to graduate on time. It really stinks too because Jeremy has been sick and so he's been reading non-stop. He's always wandering into the office saying "I just finished another book!" or "Boy was that a good one!". Hmph. So anyway, you all will have to pick up the slack for me for the next few weeks.

Max's Reccomendations

Max has apparently been reading tons of Welsh stuff and sharing with Grandma but nobody else. I haven't been able to keep up but she did e-mail me today....

"you should read some Gwyn Thomas I think; he's a comedian from the 60s, I think he's funny and he was really famous for a while so you might actually be able to find his stuff. maybe. some of these books are rather obscure so I don't know how feasible it would be for you to find them. He's funny in a dark sort of way at times but i did actually laugh out loud at some of his short stories."

So this is really from Max.

I Need More to Read!

S is for Silence

Great book, another Grafton mystery. I am listening to it right now and can hardly wait to get back to the gym to get on the eliptical and put on the headphones. So, if I want to excersize it has got to be a great read. I'm sure it is not going to expand my mind nearly as much as anything A.J. is reading, but, who wants to expand their mind when they are sweating?

Other books I'm reading include the 2nd in the Paddington Bear series. We are getting through these quickly since I turned off satilite TV during Lent. Stella has made me read so many chapters a day of Paddington, she doesn't like for us to say "Paddington Bear" only "Paddington", that my throat is sometimes scratchy. Of course he is always doing something terrible which reminds me of Stella!

You don't want to read what I'm reading

I just thought I'd say hello and thanks to Cali for setting up the blog. I just checked out three books from the law library on what law school is like, and I doubt you want to read those, although on her 'vacation' here this week, Mom managed to get through two of them. Paul, any reading recommendations for a person thinking about going into Tax Law? Please don't say the U.S. Tax Code. ;-P
I would offer my recent reads as suggestions, but I have a feeling no one will find them very interesting. I recently read a couple more Paul Theroux books - he is a long-time travel author who became famous for his books about travelling by train (in Asia and down the Americas)...he also does fiction. I am in the middle of The Black Sheep by Honore de Balzac. This is my second book of his and I am enjoying his wry commentary on the maneuvering of the French after the Revolution to advance their political/social status. I am also slowly trudging through Schindler's List, and I wonder WHY this ever became such a hit?? The story is important, of course, but the way it is written is confusing and tedious! Finally, I picked up 'Avoiding Prison and other Noble Vacation Goals' at the used bookstore the other day...this young woman has a quirky sense of humor that is getting me through the book, but her idiotic tendency to fall in love with guys in or just about to be in prison in Central American countries is kind of exasperating.
So, to conclude, you don't want to read what I'm reading.
(But I thought I would let you know, in case you wondered why I hadn't posted anything.)

Leah's Recommendation: Amelia Peabody

These are great. Turns out curse of the Pharoh isn't the first though. I started reading it and there were a lot of references to past adventures so I got suspicious. Crocodile on the Sandbank is the first although both books have been realy fun. What a great feminist heroine! Thanks Leah.

Anonymous Rex

Ok, Ok. I just picked this one up on a whim, I know it looks dumb. But it was great! A perfect spring break kind of book. Sort of a noir spin where dinosaurs walk among us as human imposters. The main character is a Rapter disguised as a human running a failing private investigation office. A lot of the detective work is done through a strong sense of smell. At first I thought it was too much, but then I was grateful for the twist to what would of otherwise been a pretty regular PI in LA kind of book.

Don't Get Too Comfortable

This is what I am currently reading and it is hilarious. I almost avoided it because David Rakoff is a "new york writer" which is something I normally avoid like the plague. You know, the back of their books usually have words like "psychological" on them. But then I read the inside cover and it turns out he writes for This American Life which is my favorite. Also, he turns out to be very similar to me (except that I'm not male, gay or a new yorker). This is the excerpt which I totally identified with:
"Like most people, I like to think of myself as being spontaneous, ready for anything, fun. This is the evening's second hard-won insight: I am neither spontaneous nor ready for anything. I suspect that others would probably regard this news as about as momentous and surprising as when I decided to come out (which was about as momentous and surprising as if I had bravely announced to everyone that I had dark hair and opposable thumbs). I am no fun at all. In fact, I am anti-fun. Not as in anti-violence, but as in anti-matter. I am not so much against fun--although I suppose I kind of am--as I am the direct opposite of fun. I suck the fun out of a room. Or perhaps I'm just a different kind of fun; the kind that leaves one bereft of hope; the kind of fun that ends in tears."
I read this this weekend instead of going out. You may see what I mean.

Recent Reads/Listens

Well I finished the Hitchhiker as read by Stephen Fry in 2 nights. It was addictive. He does some excellent alien voices, I wonder if they can get him to read the rest of the series.

I also finished the Mangoes book. Also very good and I had to go buy some fish this week - still no leftover papaya...

I also checked out "More Book Lust." Cali, if you haven't read "Book Lust" you should go to the lib and get it. It's an annotated bibliography of books to read and it's written by a former public librarian. I found "More Book Lust" in an odd part of the library - I think people may pull it from the shelf and flip through it, go find something else and leave the it behind.

Next it's on to "The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood" by Elspeth Huxley. I'll let you know how it goes.

Have a great weekend!

d

I Need More to Read!

Artemis Fowl Series

Have you tried Artemis Fowl? I figure you probably have but if not they are so much fun. It is actually a young adult fiction by EOM Colfer, an Irish author. The first is just called Artemis Fowl. And then there is The Artic Incident, The Eternity Code, and The Opal Deception. Kind of along a Harry Potter type book with a lot more sci fi and mystery. An excerpt: "I suppose Mulch Diggums deserves mention. Until recently, Mulch was imprisoned, but he had once again managed to wriggle his way out. This kleptomaniac, flatulent dwarf has played a reluctant part in many of the Fowl adventures. But Holly was glad to have his help on this mission. If not for Mulch and his bodily functions, things could have turned out a lot worse than they did. And they turned out badly enough."

Blue Blood

I liked this one. It's fluff but I liked it and I'm not ashamed! For a "chick lit" novel it was surprisingly (in a good way) un-mushy. It was not so much about the romance (maybe saving it for later in the series?) and more about the mystery which was good. The mystery still wasn't the main focus of this book for me, it was the crazy mom. I loved her. She's a horrible snob. Here's one of my favorite quotes from her:
"No, honey, it's gelato," Cissy corrected, "That's Italian for 'better than ice cream'."

An Embarrassment of Mangoes

So, I hesitated to get this book at the library this weekend. The premise was a bit dangerous - a couple Canadians quit their jobs to sail off to the Caribbean for a couple years. It could be REALLY BAD, but it's not. It's actually quite good.

I'm not done yet, but there is only one continually irritating theme: she includes recipe's for things like papaya salad (for when you have too much left over papaya), mango salsa, curried lobster, conch of every variety, shrimp that were caught that morning, etc. ad nauseum.

I don't have any shrimp that were caught this morning! I don't have any left over papaya! ARG!

The other surprise at the library had to do with the Hitchhiker's Guide. I tried to get it in book form, but it was all checked out. I did find it on tape/CD... as read by STEPHEN FRY! I'm beginning tonight!

d

Max in Swansea

Ok, this has nothing to do with books, but you can see Max's pics online now.
And they are super cool.

Driving Over Lemons

OK, this is my first go at putting up a picture.

This book is great. Chris Stewart moves from southern England to Andalusia with his wife and together they run a farm in southern Spain. A couple of reasons I like this book are that he and his wife speak Spanish and he lived/worked on farms before. So, they are a bit less idealistic than some of the other travel writers. They are also genuinely interested in their neighbors.

I own this one and since mom and I discussed it recently, I pulled it off the shelf and read it again.

Apparently, there is a sequel, which I haven't read, and I'm planning to get it from the library soon.

d

Love Monkey

Jeremy got this for me last night. Did anyone else see the TV show that was based on this book? I loved it so of course it got cancelled after just a few episodes. It was all about this A&R rep for a music label who was going to turn around pop music single handedly and make quality music take over the charts. Ok, so maybe it failed for more reasons than just me loving it, but it was great! Anyway, at first I was pretty disappointed that he is no longer an A&R rep but a tabloid reporter. However, the writing isn't bad. It is kinda a mix between Nick Hornby and every chick lit book I've ever read. Except it's in America and it's main character is a boy. Part of the opening description:
"I have a one-bedroom apartment, a refrigerator containing (solely) beverages and condiments, a Manhattan-sized mini-microwave deployed only for popping corn, a supply of Cheez-It crumbs that I store under my sofa cushions, stacks of dusty black stereo equipment, and an increasingly avalanchalbe Matterhorn of Cds."
I'll let you know if it bombs.

Amelia Peabody Series

I also really like the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters. She is sort of like Ms. Pollifax but she is an Egyptologist. My mom said that Elizabeth Peters had real archeology creditials so that is probably why they are so good. It is good silly mystery/fiction with solid Egyptology thrown in.

A quick list...

Here is a quick list of some of my recent favs:

Persepolis - a grafic novel (I gave it to BJ for xmas) of the author's childhood in Iran, this is REALLY GOOD and a fast read (of course it's mostly pictures)

Catfish & Mandala - non-fiction, written by a Vietnamese-American guy who bicycles through Vietnam

Almost French - also non-fiction, the story of an Australian woman who moves to Paris to live with her boyfriend, it was maybe the best 'outsider living in France' book I've read

Any of the Jasper Fforde books - did you read these? You should get The Eyre Affair first. But I think Amanda didn't like them. I read them all.

Enjoy!

d

Stones from the River

Weird. I do seem to be on some sort of WWII kick. How very out of character for me. This is a book I read a couple of weeks ago from the perspective of a dwarf who lives in Germany during WWII. Not as fantastical as it sounds. Joel gave it to me for Christmas, and it was pretty good. For a war book that is. My favorite part is the town has an "unknown benefactor" who leaves the perfect gifts at the perfect times.

Amanda's earlier e-mail

Amanda sent this to Mom and I this morning:

"Look at your local libraries for a book called 'French Impressions' by John S. Littell, or get it online: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451200985/sr=8-1/qid=1140192927/ref=sr_1_1/103-1403975-1452636?%5Fencoding=UTF8. It seems to be going quite cheap, used. 350 pages and I couldn't put it down, had to stay up til 1am reading the silly thing."

I read it (I think Mom owns it) and really liked it. And, it takes place in Montpellier just after WWII - so you can continue your WWII theme!

d

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

This is a book that I have been trying to read for months. I read the begining several times, but had a hard time getting started. It turned out to be a pretty good read. The reason I had trouble to begin with is that it is a WWII book, which makes me very wary. Anyway, it turned out to be a fairly light-hearted book, for so many people dying in it. The main reason I ended up liking it though was all the music references.

Welcome!

Disaster. I am nearing the end of my "books to read" list and I need more! I live so far away from everybody that I am out of the book sharing loop. So I started this blog so that we could all share what we are reading and what we thought about it. So I guess I'll start. You can add comments to a post if you have read the same book, or add a new post if you want to list another book. Also, let me know if there is anyone you think would like to post that I haven't already invited.