Here's to Henry

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This year was by far my worst year of reading . . . ever. Although there are 11 days left in the year, I am calling it. I do not think I read even 15 books this year. January started off fine, maybe 1-2 books off pace. But then, that was it.

I don't want to be one of "those" people - a person who doesn't read. How can a life-long well-loved habit be lost so easily and seem almost insurmountable to regain?

Do I need a fabulous recommendation? Not really. I have lots of books, hundreds, in my house to choose from - books that once must have intersted me. I've started The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman - that Mary references below in her most recent post. I'm on page 36. It's a perfectly good book - but rather than lie in bed and read for 1-2 hours in the evening, I just lay there and stare at the TV.

Maybe I should give my TV away? :-)

I don't know what to do to make 2011 what 2010 was not - a wonderful year of reading.

Summer Reading

What is everyone reading this summer?

I know Jen plans to reread Gone with the Wind. The neighborhood book club is reading Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll and A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Those two are on my list.

Right now I'm reading The Believers by Zoe Heller (unavailable on Kindle last time I checked, so I bought the paperback). I'm liking it so far, it's a dysfunctional family kind of a story.

Two fabulous books I've read in the past month or so are

(1) The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. This one is a story of the lives of various messed-up people involved in producing an English-language newspaper in Rome. Lots of interconnected stories, very funny.

(2) The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. The story of a man with four wives and 28 children, living in a *plyg* community in Utah. He is a sorry, lazy, hapless father, which means that he's a failure at being the leader he's asked to be. Also very funny, but deals with some serious issues like child neglect, etc. A joy to read -- main character is a loveable screw-up.

I read Jane Smiley's latest, Private Lives, and it was okay if you like quiet books. The main character is a wife who lives her life in a kind of a fog, which makes you want to shake her by the neck and yell *wake up.* But it's also the story of a long loveless marriage, with a fair amount of the outside world and its history intruding. (It's set from about 1900-50s, World War II)

I am planning to read the latest Steig Larrson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest over the summer.

Anyone else read something good?

2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction . . .

goes to Sherman Alexie for War Dances - "a collection of stories on the themes of love, betrayal, familial relationships, race, and class." I didn't really enjoy his 2003 collection of short stories Ten Little Indians. Is this one worth a try?

A challenge?

Could I read all of the selections and vote? Time is tight!

The Lost Man Booker prize of 1970

Would I want to?

Top Selling Hard Covers of 2009

Publisher's Weekly has published a list of the top-selling books of 2009.

Top 5 Fiction

The Lost Symbol: A Novel by Dan Brown (Doubleday)
The Associate: A Novel by John Grisham (Doubleday)
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam/Amy Einhorn)
I, Alex Cross by James Patterson (Little, Brown)
Ford County by John Grisham (Doubleday)

Top 5 Non-fiction

Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin (Harper)
Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think about Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment by Steve Harvey (Harper)
Arguing with Idiots: Hoe to Stop Small Minds and Big Government by Glenn Beck (Threshold)
Liberty & Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin
True Compass: A Memoir by Edward M. Kennedy (Twelve)

How many of these have you read? I have only read The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which I very much enjoyed.

Seeking inspiration

It's February 17th and my year of reading is already flopping. Sigh . . .I need some inspiration. It's too early to call the whole year, but 7 books by February 17th may be my worst start in recorded history. It's not for a lack of books on my nightstand or on my shelves. I'm not in a relaxed place though. I think I read best when I am feeling more relaxed.

I'm going to plug in to a site - www.flashlightworthybooks.com; I need to find that next great book that I won't be able to put down!

In the interim, I think I will pick The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowel back up again; I'm halfway through and recall tht I was enjoying it. :-)

A new year of reading - what is the plan?

It's 8:35am on New Year's Day, 2010. I'm up way too early and without a hangover, SO, I have time to reflect on the year of reading ahead.

I am going to call 2009, "the year without reading." Technically, this is not true, of course. I would have to be dead or recently blinded and not learned braille yet for there to ever truly be a year without reading. But, overall, I felt like I read less than usual in 2009.

I did have two magnum opuses (opuses being more common in the English language than "opi"; he he) in my reading list:

World Without End by Ken Follett, 1024 pages (I read it on the Kindle - 20,000+ clicks!)
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, 1488 pages

Books like that can take a bit of time. Each book was for a bookclub, so they were on a deadline as well, which perhaps cut down on my simultaneous, multiple books reading.

My book total for the year was 73.

Here is a sampling of my favorite books (in alphabetical order, by author's last name), read in 2009 :

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
People of the Book: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks
Valeria's Last Stand by Marc Fitten
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
City of Refuge: A Novel by Tom Piazza
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaeffer & Anne Barrows
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

My LEAST favorite book of the year was Netherland by Jospeh O'Neill. God, that was awful. My entire neighborhood bookclub hated it as well.

Surprisingly, Jodi Picoult's Handle with Care falls in the least favorite category as well.
Here is my LibraryThing review of the book:
I am a huge Jodi Picoult fan and have read every book she has written. Handle with Care was disappointing. If you have read My Sister's Keeper and hated that pointless ending, you will hate this one as well. Picoult is a very formulaic writer and the formula usually works, but here, Picoult just lacked original detail. Handle with Care is another book featuring a relationship between a sick sister and a healthy sister, decisions that tear a family apart - it felt too similar to My Sister's Keeper, but it was not as well told, the characters were not as compelling/likeable. I'm worried now. I hope Picoult's next book is better!

So, 2010. What is the plan?

In the wee hours of this first day of January, as I lay in bed, preparing to sleep, I finished off an advanced reader copy of The Journal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux. It was interesting and inspiring and filled with literary references. One way I enjoy reading is to flow from one book to a literary reference, or to another book by the author. So, perhaps I will do that.

I think I will choose Ten Poems to Set You Free, Roger Housden, because I NEVER read poetry. And I can buy it right now on the Kindle. :-)

Have a Happy New Year of reading!!

What's on my nightstand

I've been having trouble keeping up my reading pace these past several months. Is it just that I do not have the right books on my nightstand?

New Stories from the South 2008 - ZZ Packer, ed.
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
The White Queen - Philippa Gregory
Something Incredibly Wonderful Happened: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Us - K.C. Cole
That Old Cape Magic - Richard Russo
The Heart of a Child - Patti Brady
Firefly Lane - Kristen Hannah

I'm about half-way through the Russo book. I tried to start both the Collins and Gregory books, respectively too depressing and not my favorite English time period. The others I haven't started.

What are YOU reading that I should be reading? :-)

Babs' Five Favorite Reads of All-time (so far)

The beautiful thing about favorite reads is that they do not have to be anything but that; they don't have to be best-sellers or classics or award winners. Just favorites

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - I received this as a gift, in beautiful hard copy, the Christmas after I turned 10. I love this book! It's lost its dust jacket along the way, but I still have the same copy, from my Aunt Ruth in 1983.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - I wanted to be Scarlett O'Hara when I was growing up. And I always thought Vivien Leigh and my Aunt Kim shared a resemblance, so I thought it could be in the family. ;-)

Inferno by Dante Alighieri - An utterly, fascinating, amazing read. When I was a child, I dreamed of reading it in the original Italian, on the opposite page from the English in my copy.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand - Yeah for Howard Roark! Introduced me to the objectivist philosophy - happiness as moral purpose - being the facet I liked the most. ;-)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - Hilarious and idealistic - "One man, scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this." One of my favorite quotes of all time, and seriously, brings a tear to my eye every time I read it.

My June Reads

Hmmm . . . I may not have logged all of my books last month, but this is what I have:

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell
Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America by Linda Furiya
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee
My Life in France by Julia Child
Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation by J. Maarten Troost
Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together by Ron Hall & Dencer Moore
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

7 books, 2192 pages

That's 55 books through June, so I am still on pace for 100 by the end of the year.

My May Reads

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
*My Invented Country: A Memoir by Isabel Allende
*Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
The Last Summer (of You & Me) by Ann Brashares
*The Host by Stephenie Meyer
The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death: Reflections on Revenge, Germophobia, and Laser Hair Removal by Laurie Notaro
*City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
Look Again by Lisa Scottoline
*The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaeffer
The True Naomi Story by Alayne Silver
*Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner (368)

12 books, 4,096 pages

I highly recommend the books I've asterisked; although some of them I own on Kindle and don't have to loan - sorry!

Interesting . . .

Penguin to Publish Vladimir Nabokov's Last Work

The Telegraph reports that Penguin will publish Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov's last book. The book is called The Original of Laura. It's a novel that Nabokov wanted destroyed when he died. His death wish will not be granted as the novel will be in bookstores in November.

Kirschbaum said she and Stefan McGrath, the managing director of Penguin Classics, sealed the deal after a three-day stay at Dimitri Nabakov's home in Montreaux, Switzerland. It was brokered by Andrew Wylie, the New York-based literary agent known as 'The Jackal'.

Kirschbaum said: "It was important that we meet because it was a big acquisition, and it was quite emotional for Dimitri because it was a big decision to publish, which took him decades."

The Original of Laura returns to territory that Nabokov explored in his previous novels Mary, Lolita and Ada – the yearning to recapture young love.

It is narrated by a man who fell obsessively in love with a girl when young, but is now unhappily married to a promiscuous wife.

Kirschbaum, who described the book as both dark and comic, said: "In this novel he is also very interested in psychology and in what it means to hate yourself and want to disappear."

The book was written on a series of 138 index cards. Penguin will publish the cards as well as a text transcipt. Penguin Classics will reissue Nabokov's backlist when The Original of Laura is released.

From: http://www.readersread.com/cgi-bin/bookblog.pl?bblog=417091

My April Reads

Another month in which I did not get in 10 books, but I have read 36 books this year in 4 months. So, I am averaging 9 per month right now, and at that pace, I will hit 100, which is the goal. If I actually get to take my 10-year anniversary trip in 10 days, I would expect my May reading to pick up. I've downloaded some "beach reads" to my new Kindle 2 - This Charming Man by Marian Keyes and The Host by Stephenie Meyer. Not sure what else I will be bringing with me . . .

Here are the April reads:

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
The Beautiful Miscellaneous by Dominic Smith
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
C'est La Vie: An American Woman Begins a New Live in Paris by Suzy Gershman
Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore
The Last Bridge by Teri Coyne
The Wednesday Letters by Jason F. Wright
Watchmen by Alan Moore

8 books, 2640 pages.

Japanese Anime Movies

I promised to post some links to some Hayao Miyazaki movies, My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. I would say that Totoro is great for preschoolers, and Spirited Away is better suited to school age kids.

The only one that I haven't let my 8 yo watch is Princess Mononoke. It's pretty violent and downright strange. I think I once heard a joke about needing to smoke a little something along with this movie, if you know what I mean. . . Just noticed on IMDB that Neil Gaiman wrote the English screenplay!

My March Reads

Well, I fell off my 10-book pace this month, (March is always hectic) but I have a little lee-way on my 100 book goal. That is, if I read 10 books every month, I would be at 120 by year end. Here are my March reads:

Valeria's Last Stand by Marc Fitten
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy
Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

2,982 total pages

February reads

I hit my 10-book per month quota with two days to spare, so here they are:

Forever Odd by Dean Koontz

Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed. :Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl by Susan Campbell

The Gifted Gabaldon Sisters by Lorraine Lopez

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice by Maureen McCormick

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Ten Little Indians by Alexie Sherman

Page total: 3,871

Some Bookish Links

Book Club For Boys has some suggestions for starting a boys' book club and some reading lists based on level. I thought Jen might be interested, I have hard time finding things for C (right now it's Captain Underpants and Goosebumps.)

Flashlight Worthy. I found this through Twitter (I should say they found me). They publish book lists on various topics on a frequent basis. And I love lists.

Anybody else found anything fun or interesting?

On my way

In January, I read 10 books for a total of 4,109 pages.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling
When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup
Chasing Harry Winston by Laura Weisberger

I've posted my reviews at LibraryThing and GoodReads.

One reading month down, 11 to go. Ten books down, 90 to go! :^)

Reading goals for 2009

Well, actually, it should be "goal." I only one so far (on top of my annual one, which is to read 100 books per year - something that has not happened since I became a mother!). My new 2009 reading goal is to post a review for each book I read. I am currently doing this at LibraryThing, GoodReads and to a lesser degree Facebook. Yes, they are all the same review. Please, how much time do you think I have? :^)

Yeah for Atlanta!

Atlanta is one of the country's most literate cities. :^) This year the following study:

http://www.ccsu.edu/amlc08/overall_all.htm

rated it 6th overall. But Atlanta did not make the Top 10 for the booksellers category. It ranked 6th in Education Level. It didn't make the Top 10 in the internet resources category. It didn't make the Top 10 in the libraries category. It didn't make the Top 10 in the newspapers category. And it ranked 6.5 in the publications category. I didn't look at all the data closely enough to figure out how Atlanta ended up ranked 6th overall. Last in the overall rankings? El Paso, TX.

And here for some commentary . . .

http://litlicense.blogspot.com/2009/01/americas-most-literate-cities.html

I agree, it's interesting.