Sunday, March 10, 2024

It Was 20 Years Ago Today: Happy Birthday, Blob!


 20 years old! Surely this is forever in blog years. 1,184 posts. 

Here's that first blog entry dated March 11, 2004. Strangely, I remembered it as being a lot more interesting:

***

I'm a sucker for a good first line, but suddenly, I've got an attack of shyness and don't know where to begin. Earlier this week on the BBC website, there was a quiz on first lines in books. I got 6 out of the 10 -- blew an easy question by over thinking it. After the quiz, people were invited to write their own first line. I'll post mine here:

"Reminiscences just aren't for me. Over the years, I've found that looking back only aggravates my whiplash."

Actually, that's true and not true. When it comes to books, I'll reminisce till the cows come home. The book is the hook that throws my past into sharp relief for me. Recite a title and I can tell you when I read it, where I lived, what was going on in my life and other increasingly useless minutiae.

I'm crazy (not an understatement) about reading, but I like any kind of interaction with books. I'm really involved with bookcrossing.com right now, and have been "releasing" my books" into the wilds" of Central Missouri.

I recently applied for a part time job at a local bookstore, but didn't get the job. After many years, the manager is probably adept at recognizing unrestrained book lust. During the interview, when she asked if (!) I liked(!) to read, my response tone was somewhat similar to the Cookie Monster's. When asked about customer service, the fervor dissipated and I was once again mild-mannered Bybee, maybe a little vague: "Oh yes, customers. Well, they're uh, important, I guess." Naturally, this translated to: I'll wait on them if I'm not in the middle of a good chapter.
But never mind the bookstore. There's also the local library. And there's my own library, which would be an impressive start to any bookstore.

***

What the what?! I talked about loving books but didn't mention a single one! I talked about Bookcrossing??????? Good God, y'all. However, that was right on about enjoying any sort of interaction with books.

If I rewrote that first entry right now, I'd cut that first part about the book quiz and writing my own first line, and start with: "The book is the hook". AND THERE WOULD BE TITLES AND AUTHORS! AND CHARACTERS!!! I would also call the blog "The Book Is The Hook".

I do remember the sting and burn of not getting that local bookstore job. Good reflection and self-awareness in recognizing where I went sideways at the interview. 

Egad, that last bit about "never mind the bookstore". Way to trail off and fade out of my first blog post.

I do hope the second post was better, but now I'm afraid to look. Instead, I'm going to catapult 20 years into the future and talk about what I read in February, 2024:

1. Friends, Lovers, and the Big, Terrible Thing (memoir) -Matthew Perry. Reading this memoir after Matthew Perry's death was an eerie experience. For those who read it before he died, it probably landed as a rueful survivor's tale, cautiously feel-good. On the other side, it reads as a stark warning, along the lines of Sir Gawain's "I know that I will not live a fortnight".

2. What Is The Story of Romeo and Juliet? (nonfiction) -Max Bisantz. Give me a break. How does a person write a 108 page book about the most famous star-crossed lovers in the world, detailing all their incarnations back to the beginning, and never once mention Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film version? Even the 1936 version with ancient Leslie Howard and geriatric Norma Shearer playing the ill-fated teenagers got a mention. Boggles the mind. Still shaking my head. 

3.  Granny Smith Was Not An Apple (nonfiction) -Sarah Glenn Fortson. And that's right. She was Maria Ann Smith, an immigrant from England to Australia during the 19th century, who worked as an apple orchardist in both countries. She discovered an apple in Australia that was green and never turned red and was quite tart. She got to grafting, and finally produced an apple that was green but tart and sweet and perfect for pies. I thought of my book blogging friend Care while I was reading this informative and entertaining children's book.

4.  Eligible (novel) - Curtis Sittenfeld. A fun and frothy retelling of Pride and Prejudice, updated to the twenty-teens, and set in Cincinnati. I went into this one with some trepidation, but ended up liking it very much. The audiobook version read by Cassandra Clare adds to its sparkle.

5. Where the Crawdads Sing (novel) - Delia Owens. Read this one for book group. The nature writing in the novel is lovely, but the rest of it doesn't rise to that level. Skip the book and just watch the movie version, which is a bit more palatable.

6. I Must Be Dreaming (graphic novel) - Roz Chast. Since I've been keeping a dream journal off and on almost as long as I've been doing this blog,* I actively sought out Roz Chast's latest book about her dreams. To my surprise, we have a lot of the same dreams, like "Old and Pregnant", "I'm suddenly in charge of an infant", and "I can't find my hotel". In her book, she details dreams about Danny DeVito, Elizabeth Taylor and Henry Kissinger. At the end, she recommends some books about dreams and dreaming, including The Mind at Night by Andrea Rock, which has been on my TBR for about a year. Like Chast, I think it's cool that our brains generate these strange, kooky things while we sleep, and a graphic novel with dreams? So so cool. 

*In keeping with the theme of my blog, I have a series of intermittent posts labeled "Dreaming in Literature". 


Thursday, February 01, 2024

Oh, Jan

 I read six books in January. I was on the verge of the verge of finishing two more books, but then I fell asleep and the calendar page fluttered to February. They will do that, won't they?

1. The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion - Fannie Flagg. Novel. Audiobook. I read this for book group. I went in, fully prepared to dislike it, but this tribute to the WASPS and their gutsy contributions during WWII absolutely charmed me, and filled me with the deepest respect. 

2. Being Henry: The Fonz and Beyond - Henry Winkler. Memoir. Winkler's memoir is a good one to read in conjunction with Ron and Clint Howard's The Boys. Winkler is quite a bit more introspective, though.

3. Bonnie and Clyde: The Making of a Legend - Karen Blumenthal. Nonfiction. Audiobook. Written for the Young Adult set, but the author didn't write down to her audience. Every bit as good as Go Down Together, the quintessential book about the pair.

4. Who Was Salvador Dali? - Paula Manzanero. Nonfiction. I think it's really difficult to capture the full flavor of the enjoyable weirdness that was Dali, but I loved the anecdote about Dali walking an anteater in the Paris Metro.

5. The Witches of Worm - Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Novel. I do wish I'd saved this novel for October. Troubled latchkey child Jessica adopts a newborn kitten she names Worm who seemingly talks to her and tells her to act out in school and at home. Excellent dark, moody atmosphere, although Worm scared me a lot less than Jessica's feckless mother and the mother's douche boyfriend.

6. Child Star - Shirley Temple. Autobiography. So very glad to be done with this book! I've been wrestling with it since July. July 13, to be precise. Child Star covers Temple's life from birth to approximately her late twenties. Her life was fascinating, her research was impeccable, but her writing is stodgy. She wrote the book long after she had entered political life, and it definitely shows.

Tuesday, January 09, 2024

2023 DNF

 


This was a book group selection, and although I started out well, I was out by the 100-page mark. There was a scene involving rats on the attack, and I could not, would not continue. Call me squeamy.  I'd DNF this a thousand times if it were possible.

Resolutions Past and Passed Gas

 


Above is my resolutions list for 2023. I'm afraid that I didn't make much headway, but it is fun to see the reach and the fullness and optimism that was there for me at the beginning of the year.

Wolf Hall trilogy again: No (regretfully)

Who was? Who is? Yes

Read Canadian Literature: No

Read a Bulwer-Lytton novel: No

Only read literary biographies: No

Finish "Bronte" project: No

No Self-Help: I read How to Keep House While Drowning and loved the hell out of it.

Read PKD: No

Finally get around to Heart of Darkness: No

Finish Tess of the D'Urbervilles: YES THANK GOD and F#@k Angel Clare!

Read MacBeth: No

Read We: No

Rearrange bookshelves into Dewey Decimal Order: OMG, Past Self, don't make me laugh. No, and they're worse than ever.

Read in the car before work: Yes

Read A Girl of the Limberlost: No

Reread The Bell Jar: No

Stick to wish list: Bwahahahahahaha

Buy local: Yes

Read Icelandic Lit: No

1920s Lit: No

Finish Kopp Sisters: No. (sad face)

More science: No

Popular culture: I don't remember what I thought I meant.

2023 Nonfiction

 When did I become such a nonfiction girl? The answer starts from decades back. In second grade and part of third grade, I was an avid reader of fairy tales. Then in third grade, the girl sitting in front of me told me about Helen Keller, and I found myself in the biography section on Library Day that week. Once I was there, I saw other names I recognized Daniel Boone! Geronimo! Florence Nightingale! Amelia Earhart! and that began my second bookish obsession. The Little House series, that beautiful and problematic bonnet string tangle of fiction and fact, was still two years in my future.

 As an adult, Tracy Kidder seems to have been the author that helped open the nonfiction door wide for me. Two years in graduate school led to reading that was almost exclusively nonfiction, and added polish and confidence to my reading self. (Surprisingly, I found myself swooning over tomes about linguistics. Steven Pinker. Sigh.) 

Age has also helped because I've acquired a good amount of background knowledge about  historical and cultural events, so everything feels connected in some way. Is schemata the word I'm looking for?

 I'm convinced that 2024 will be yet another year in which nonfiction dominates my reading.

Let me also mention the Who Was...? books, because they are very much a part of my reading list. The Spawn is always finding new books in the series for me to read. (My current one is about Salvador Dali.) The series can be uneven -- a little bit like the little girl with the curl -- some are very very good (World War I) and some are horrid, (Hello, Kitty) but I'm always eager to have a new one in my hands. I wish that those books had been around for eight and nine-year-old me.

So anyway, below is list of nonfiction read in 2023. I've noted my favorites in green.

1. The Man Who Invented Christmas

2. Who was Michelangelo?

3. Opening the Road: Victor Hugo Green and His Green Book

4. Who is Shaquille O'Neal?

5. Starring Steven Spielberg

6. Ducks

7. Spare

8. Last Rampage

9. Hey, Kiddo

10. The Year of Less

11. Who was Alex Trebek?

12. Who was Maria Tallchief?

13. The Rainbow Comes and Goes

14. Who is LeBron James?

15. What is the Story of Nancy Drew?

16. Forget the Alamo

17. Ice Cream Man

18. Library Girl

19. A Perfect Fit

20. Blast Off!

21. The Brilliant Calculator

22. What was The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921?

23. Happening

24. All You Can Ever Know

25. Shy

26. What is the Story of Anne of Green Gables?

27. What was World War I?

28. Who was Frank Sinatra?

29. Who was Jim Thorpe?

30. Scrappy Little Nobody

31. Sharp

32. Napoleon vs. The Bunnies

33. Jerry Changed the Game!

34. Who is Simone Biles?

35. Who is Nathan Chen?

36. The Wager

37. Good Books for Bad Children

38. What is the Story of the Headless Horseman?

39. Five Days at Memorial

40. Who is Harry Styles?

41. What Do We Know About the Winchester House?

42. Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy

43. Who was Betty White?

44. You Could Make This Place Beautiful

45. What Do We Know About the Children's Blizzard of 1888?

46. Hollywood: The Oral History

47. Madly, Deeply

48. Abridged Classics

49. How to Keep House While Drowning

50. The Man Who Loved Books

51. Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte

52. What was The Donner Party?

Thursday, January 04, 2024

2023 Fiction

Not much fiction here, but I'm happy with the list. Classics, new authors, happy discoveries, a few surprises and a little re-reading.

Favorite: City of Girls

Least Favorite: The Girl Puzzle

1. Sons - Pearl S. Buck (audiobook)

2. Molok'ai -Alan Brennart (book group book)

3. Joan is Okay - Weike Wang (book group book)

4. Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver

5. Anne of Green Gables: The Graphic Novel

6. Young Man with a Horn - Dorothy Baker

7. A House Divided - Pearl S. Buck (audiobook)

8. Sooley - John Grisham (book group book)

9. Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen - Sarah Bird (book group book)

10. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (audiobook)

11. At the Edge of the Orchard - Tracy Chevalier (audiobook)

12. The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. -Lee Kravetz

13. The Farewell Tour - Stephanie Clifford

14. Writers & Lovers - Lily King

15. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (audiobook)

16. City of Girls - Elizabeth Gilbert (audiobook)

17. The Girl Puzzle - Kate Braithwaite (book group book)

18. Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus

19. Haven - Emma Donoghue (audiobook)

20. The Guncle - Stephen Rowley

21. The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert (audiobook)

22. Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh

23. Gain - Richard Powers (audiobook)

24. Freaky Friday - Mary Rodgers (re-read)

25. Playing for Pizza - John Grisham (audiobook)

26. The Call of the Wild - Jack London (re-read, book group book)

27. Yellowface - R.F. Kuang

28. Lessons - Ian McEwan (audiobook)

29. The Lager Queen of Minnesota - J. Ryan Stradahl (re-read, book group book)

30. Happiness Falls - Angie Kim

31. Tom Lake - Ann Patchett (audiobook)

Tuesday, January 02, 2024

2023 Reading: The Breakdown

 


I read 83 books this year. This is my highest total since 2015. The numbers are getting bigger each year and that's encouraging. I'd like to think that I have another 100+ year in me.

fiction 31

nonfiction 52

 audiobooks 21

graphic novels 2

library books 73

my books 9

borrowed/gift 1

first book of the year: Sons - Pearl S. Buck

last book of the year: Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte -Kate Williams

longest book: Hollywood: The Oral History - Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson

shortest book: The Man Who Loved Books - Jean Fritz

funniest book: Abridged Classics - John Atkinson and Napoleon vs. The Bunnies - J.F. Fox and Anna Kwan

saddest book: Five Days at Memorial - Sheri Fink

most helpful book: How To Keep House Without Drowning - KC Davis

bridge book (started in 2023, will finish in 2024): Child Star - Shirley Temple Black

reading revelations: I'm not intimidated by Richard Powers anymore! Elizabeth Gilbert is a goddess.

next post: My fiction, 2023 list

Happy Book Year!