Am I a good reader?

Unusual question? It just popped into my head as I was reading the Letter from the Editor in my most recent issue of Bookmarks magazine. It was about David Foster Wallace's suicide. I actually have never read any of his books because I could never get more than 40 pages into Infinite Jest (a book I gave up on more than a decade ago). But here he is, being mourned by the literary community.

I read a large number of books, by today's standard, but am I any good at appreciating the best of the best?

Are you a "good reader"?

I'm very excited that Wally Lamb is coming out with a new book - The Hour I First Believed - on November 11th! Ten years has been much too long to have to wait for a new work of fiction from Lamb.

Malcolm Gladwell has another book coming out -Outliers: The Story of Success. I have read neither The Tipping Point nor Blink. What am I missing, I wonder?

The Booker Prize Short List . . .
The book that currently piques my interest the most - The Northern Clemency by Philip Henser
From Bookmarks: "In 20th-century northern England, two families' fates and connections intensify as they reflect the social landscape of the early Thatcher era."

The Booker Prize Long List . . .
I can't believe that A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif was on it. I read this book as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewer's program. It was a struggle to finish it.

Of Bookmarks' Best Books of 2008 (50 in total), I have only read one - The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, which I enjoyed but thought could have been funnier. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill sat on my nightstand for a couple of months, marked off at around page 10. I left it, came back to it and started over. Nowe it sits buried on "to read" bookshelves.

Hmmmm . . .

Noel Streatfeild!

When browsing through my Trashionista blog feeds, I came across a blurb about Noel Streatfield's book Ballet Shoes being made into a film. What a flashback - Noel Streatfield! I loved, loved, loved all of her books growing up. In addition to Ballet Shoes, which was a personal favorite of mine, she wrote:

Theater Shoes
Tennis Shoes
Dancing Shoes
Movie Shoes
Circus Shoes
Party Shoes
Family Shoes
New Shoes
Travelling Shoes
Skating Shoes

They were written between the 1930s-1960s. My mom found some more of my childhood books in her basement. Oh I would love if the "Shoe" books were among them!

The oxymoronic "new classic"

First, I'm not sure how I feel about Entertainment Weekly naming "new classics." But I found this post on Readers Read interesting enough to write about it here. These are books published between 1983 and 2008. The top ten are:

1. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)

Of these, I've read numbers 2, 5, 7 and 9. I like Haruki Murakami, however, and number 10 is on my to-read list.

A sampling of other books from the top 100, which I have read:

15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
16. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
20. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (Ooooh, this is so an EW list:^D)
35. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
37. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
50. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Hmm . . was Oprah consulted on this list? ;^D)
60. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
88. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
96. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

What are your thoughts?

Blogs to check out

I've added a number of book-related blogs to my bloglines feeds, and I thought I would share a few:

www.thebostonbibliophile.com
She has a cool Graphic Novel Monday post. For all the Marjane Satrapi Persepolis readers, check out Chicken with Plums. For those who read Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto , check out Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person by Miriam Engerlberg

http://the-goldenroad.net/
She has an interesting post about, mentioning Library Thing (which is how I found these blogs); Shelfari; GoodReads; Anobii; and BooksWellRead

http://bcfreviews.wordpress.com/
Reviewers from around the globe. The latest review - A Page out of Life by Kathleen Reid - a book about women who join a scrapbooking club (he he!!!)

Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block by Judith Matloff

Here is a review of an ARC that I received as part of the Early Reviewers Group at LibraryThing. If you have not joined LibraryThing, you should - it's great!

Like Bringing Home the Birkin by Michael Tonello, I place this book in my "non-celebrity does something a little different and interesting and is able to write well about it" genre. I am ALWAYS drawn to it. This book started off a bit slow in my opinion, and I was worried. I didn't feel a connection with Matloff in Part One; I would have liked more personal background about her and more historical background about West Harlem. Part Two picked up, and I enjoyed the last 200 pages of the book. I think the book could appeal to a wide-range of readers because Harlem, if not West Harlem specifically, is a very recognizable setting. John, the husband's, presence in the book strengthens it, and Salami, Miguel, and Mrs. LaDuke are all interesting likeable "characters" in the book. I would recommend it to my larger neighborhood book club (members are all female, ranging in age from 30s to 60s)when it goes to paperback. And I will offer the ARC to my smaller more erudite bookclub (www.readinggals.blogspot.com) as an interesting read, although I don't think we would select it as a bookclub pick.

For Everyone Who Hasn't Read Everything

That's Bookmarks magazine's tag line, and I finally made a few minutes to peruse the May/June issue.

I'm excited to see that Chris Bohjalian (one of my favorite authors) has a new book out - Skeletons at the Feast - "Inspired by an actual World War II diary." I'm a little disappointed that it's a WWII book. I'm still a bit worn out on the topic after The Good German and Suite Francaise from earlier in the year. But since it is Bohjalian I'm sure it will be much better! :^)

The Readers Recommend section mentioned Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami as a favorite. I read Kafka on the Shore and remember really enjoying it. I've also read After Dark, which I didn't enjoy quite as much, but still found interesting. I think I'll pick this one up. The reader said: "He takes you on crazy adventures in the Tokyo underground and through the subconscious and never loses you. In fact, her turns the journey into a genuine suspenseful mystery."

Other books that sound interesting: The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt ; The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri

A fun book to read, perhaps? And discuss over Chinese take-out? ;^) I've said this before, but I am addicted to this type of book. A non-celebrity goes off and does something a little different and interesting, that ultimately might not be seen as anything of great consequence, but provides interestingknowledge on a piece of the world and observations on various aspects of humankind, let's say, and writes a book about it and gets published. I know why I like these books - it makes me feel like I, too, might one day do something different and interesting enough and be able to write a book about it that gets published. :^) Aaah, my dream come true!

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee (No, the "8" is not a typo . . .)

"Chinese restaurants in the United States out-number all the McDonalds, Burger King, and KFC franchises combined. . . . Lee, a second-generation Chinese-American, travels across the United States and to 23 other countries to discover how we came to inherit our peculiarly hybrid national cuisine, which has little to nothing to do with traditional Chinese cuisine."

Books on the back of a door?

I came across this interesting post at http://www.trashionista.com/ - "Where we read books like they are going out of fashion." :^)

Would you stick your books on the back of a door?

I know that sounds like a mad question, but look!

Spotted in Marie Claire Maison by those amazing Apartment Therapy people, the books are held up by the "Sticklebook". The innovative design comprises an aluminium extrusion which acts as a bracket and polypropylene combed strip that grips the cover and pages of paperback books. The shelf is screwed onto the wall which itself helps support the weight of the book and is an integral part of the design. It is totally secure and fall-proof."

Hmmm, I have crappy doors in my house that I wouldn't really care about putting holes in. But how is the shelf screwed into the wall. Well, anyway, having more books innovatively displayed around my house would make me very happy. :^)