October's Tiny List

The list is tiny, but two of these three were chunky tomes.

 1. What is the Story of Smokey the Bear? -Steve Korte-  Nonfiction. A laborious look at a long-lived American icon.

2. Time and Chance -Sharon Kay Penman- Novel. The second installment in the Plantagenet series covers the early days of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage as well as his bromance then fractured relationship with Thomas Becket as Becket moved from being Lord Chancellor to, at Henry's urging, Archbishop of Canterbury. The job switch backfired on Henry because instead of having a yes man in the church, Becket had a conversion and began to take his religious role seriously. Again, impeccable research combined with spellbinding storytelling. It's a huge cast of characters and Penman brings them all to life. Next up: The Devil's Brood, which covers the lives of Henry and Eleanor's children as well as Eleanor and Henry's growing disillusionment with one another.

3. Leave Her to Heaven -Ben Ames Williams- Novel. A bloated and overlong soapy novel from 1944 about a writer who marries a woman with severe issues concerning boundaries. Hollywood improved on the material a couple of years later with a movie of the same name. Watch that instead. It's a noir in Technicolor!  Gene Tierney is beautiful and icy and merciless, stealing the whole film from the rest of the cast until Vincent Price enters and steals it from Tierney, picking splinters of the scenery he's chewed from his teeth as he strides away.

In other news:

Still loving my book group. At the last meeting, we reported on historical fiction we had read. I talked up Sharon Kay Penman's Plantagenet series. Other books mentioned were Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips, Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker, and Sipsworth by Simon van Booy. I promptly put all of them on my TBR. For the next meeting, November 15, we will be discussing nonfiction we have been reading, and thinking up new names for the book group for a fresh reset after declaring independence from the original library program.

I'm really glad that the topic is nonfiction, because I'm doing a Nonfiction November. Here's what's on my nonfiction stack:

1. A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960. Jeanine Basinger.

2. The Noble Hustle. Colson Whitehead.

3. The Farm. Richard Rhodes.

4. Supercomminicators. Charles Duhigg.

5. Fire Lover. Joseph Wambaugh.

And finally...

Dreaming in Literature: The Weird Philip Roth Dream: 

Philip Roth came back to life and wrote a new novel. My first reaction was anxiety, because in dream-logic, I was compelled to read his book, like it or not. After picking it up and paging through, I felt better because the protagonist was female and the book was stream-of-consciousness like Ducks, Newburyport, and the main character constantly had earworms. At that point, I honestly wanted to read Roth's novel and remember feeling very tender and indulgent towards him.

Booooooktober!

Now, why in the world did I Booo! in my title? I didn't read anything remotely ghosty or scary during the month of October. 

1. Scrappy Little Nobody - Anna Kendrick. Memoir. Audiobook.

2. The Man Who Loved Books - Jean Fritz and Trina Schart Hyman. Juvenile Nonfiction.

3. The Lager Queen of Minnesota - J. Ryan Stradahl. Novel. Reread. Book group book.

4. Happiness Falls - Angie Kim. Novel.

5. Sharp - Michelle Dean. Nonfiction. Audiobook.

Notes:

I was only familiar with Anna Kendrick in Pitch Perfect and that song, Cups. Now I want to immerse myself in her filmography, particularly Into the Woods and Up In the Air.

The Man Who Loved Books was a treasure of a read. St. Columba of Ireland loves books, and since this takes place long before the printing press, he copies by hand any new book he comes across. This gets him into some trouble, and he banishes himself from Ireland. His legend is presented like an illuminated text (Trina Schart Hyman, the illustrator is styled the "illuminator"). Her illustrations are beautifully detailed and often humorous, and the legend is relayed to readers by Jean Fritz with a good dash of Irish swagger. Although this book can be found in the children's department, people of all ages should check it out. The Man Who Loved Books turned out to be my favorite read for October.

The Lager Queen of Minnesota was just as enjoyable this time around as it was the first. J. Ryan Stradahl, please hurry up and write another novel. Or a memoir. Or anything. Ever since Kitchens of the Midwest, I've been a big fan of yours. When I saw you interviewed on KCTV5 a few years ago, I alternated between beaming at the television and squeeeing like a fangirl.

Happiness Falls is a suspense novel set during the 2020 pandemic. The father of a family goes missing, and the only witness is his 14-year-old autistic son, Eugene, who shows up alone at the family home, agitated and with blood on his clothing. The novel is narrated by Eugene's older sister, Mia, who tries to figure it all out while staying one step ahead of a police detective named Janus, who seems determined to pin a crime on Eugene. Like Mia, the novel is fiercely intelligent and often seems all over the place, posing challenging philosophical questions as well as examining every possible scenario about the father's disappearance. Filtered through Mia, Happiness Falls often feels as if it's struggling for air. It can be a frustrating reading experience, but I can't stop thinking about it and I would like to read Angie Kim's first novel, Miracle Creek.

Sharp features portraits of ten women -- Dorothy Parker, Hannah Arendt, Rebecca West, Mary McCarthy, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Pauline Kael, Janet Malcolm and Renata Adler with an intriguing cameo of Zora Neale Hurston -- who made their reputations as writers and critics. Sometimes their lives intersected. Occasionally, they were friends, or didn't like one another. Since I really enjoy 20th century literary gossip, this was my cup of tea. Except for the chapter about Renata Adler, which I disliked. It seemed as if Michelle Dean also disliked Adler, and she was passing the punishment on to the readers. Adler's chapter was mercifully short, thank God. Ouch. Come to think of it, maybe *that* was my scary October moment.

Goodbye October and hello to Nonfiction November! I'm building a stack that is engrossing but probably overly ambitious.

June 2023 Reads: Summertime and the Reading is Easy

The last time I checked, school is supposed to be out in June, but The Spawn unleashed his inner stern schoolmaster, and set me to reading six books all in one evening. Part of me was thinking, Where did this come from? Why is he getting all Ichabod Crane on my ass? The other part of me was secretly enjoying seeing my yearly reading count rise exponentially. Thank you, Spawn. Midyear finds me at 44 books so far. My goal of 62 for 2023 seems assured.

Ten books for June! Whoo hoo!

1. Ice Cream Man: How Augustus Jackson Made a Sweet Treat Better - Glenda Armand and Kim Freeman. That subtitle says it all. From the description in the book, it seems as if ice cream was more of a cold eggy pudding, and it could often be savory rather than sweet. Some of the flavors come across as vile. It sounds like the dessert part of an episode of Chopped. Augustus Jackson improved on the treat by removing the eggs, creating sweet flavors and using rock salt to make the concoction freeze faster. With beautiful illustrations, this book is the perfect summertime read.

2. Library Girl: How Nancy Pearl Became America's Most Celebrated Librarian - Karen Henry Clark. I first discovered Nancy Pearl back in 2004, and she's been my girl crush ever since. I follow her on Twitter and still swoon when she likes one of my tweets. My very own superhero's origin story was funny and heartwarming. Kudos to the adults that gave her support and confidence.

3. A Perfect Fit: How Lena "Lane" Bryant Changed the Shape of Fashion - Mara Rockliff.  Lithuanian immigrant Lena Bryant was working as a seamstress when one day, a customer asked her to make a presentable dress that she could wear in public that would be designed to expand ...and maternity wear was born! {Pun intentional, of course. I don't know what women did before then...hide out at home during that last trimester?) Riffing off her success, Lena decided to open a business that celebrated women of all shapes and sizes. The Lane in Lane Bryant is an accidental transposition of Lena. I enjoyed this book and would gladly read an adult biography.

4. Blast Off! How Mary Sherman Morgan Fueled America into Space - Suzanne Slade. Mary Sherman Morgan excelled at chemistry in school, so when she graduated right at the beginning of WWII, she found a job in a lab that designed rocket fuels. Later, when the USA decided to enter the space race, Mary went to work at NASA, and through much determination and trial and error, finally came up with the formula to launch a rocket into space. I really liked how the book showed how much work science can be and how it can be worthwhile. At the end of the book, there is a short biography designed for older readers.

5. The Brilliant Calculator: How Mathematician Edith Clarke Helped Electrify America - Jan Lower. Edith Clarke always loved math and puzzles. She was the first female electrical engineer in America, but in those days, no one wanted to hire a woman. Undaunted, she went on to create a calculator on paper that saved engineers valuable time. This innovation led to the electrification of the United States. The female pioneers in the STEM fields are finally getting the respect they deserve. I wonder if we can ever give them enough.

6. What was the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921? - Caleb Gayle. In the early part of the 20th century, the Greenwood district in Tulsa was known as "Black Wall Street". Black businesses and the community thrived. Greenwood was much more affluent than adjoining White communities, and of course the Whites seethed about this. It all boiled over when a young Black man was accused of assaulting a young White woman. A mob gathered, intent on lynching him. A group of 75 men from Greenwood, some armed, showed up to protect him. Violence erupted when a White man demanded that a Black man hand over his pistol, then tried to take it away from him when he refused. Greenwood was invaded that night, people were killed and businesses, homes, and schools were burned. After it was too late, the governor finally got around to imposing martial law. Incredibly, this was all swept under the rug and made to look like the citizens of Greenwood torched themselves. Caleb Gayle, who grew up in Tulsa, used interviews with survivors to give his look at a neglected and shameful chapter of American/Oklahoma history a shocking immediacy not usually found in this series.

7. City of Girls - Elizabeth Gilbert. Novel. Audiobook. I am really mad at myself for side-eyeing and sidestepping this novel for the past four years. I'm sorry, Liz! City of Girls, a historical novel that takes place primarily in the early 1940s is funny and smart and effervescent. Written as a letter from a very old woman named Vivian Morris to a younger woman named Angela, Vivian relates her life story, unapologetic warts and all. Everything is perfect. The setting -- NYC -- is perfect. The dialogue is perfect. Not one character utters even one syllable of an anachronism. There's a musical, from which the book gets its title, written into the novel, and it's --as you may have guessed-- perfection. Even the most minor of the minor characters is beautifully fleshed out. It's even better than my inarticulate description. If you haven't read City of Girls, don't be like me. Read it. If you don't get to it now, I think the perfect time to read it would be during that week between Christmas and New Year. I audiobooked it, and Blair Brown's narration only enhances an already satisfying experience.

8. The Girl Puzzle - Kate Braithwaite. Novel. A frustrating read in the form of a historical novel about pioneer female journalist Nellie Bly. The Girl Puzzle has two timelines: The first one introduces Nellie, brand-new in New York City who is trying to land a job at a newspaper. Since it's late in the 19th century, no one wants to hire a woman. In spite of that, Nellie manages to impress Joseph Pulitzer and his managing editor and they give her an assignment: Get yourself committed to Bellevue on Blackwell Island and write about the conditions there. The rest of that timeline is a rehash of Bly's Ten Days in a Mad-House with slightly saltier language than would have been permitted in the newspapers of the time. The other timeline leaps forward to nearly the end of Nellie Bly's life, and her current crusade is adoption. Her viewpoint is filtered through her secretary, Beatrice, which removes a lot of pep from the novel. The two timelines are juxtaposed, and I found myself impatiently counting pages until I could get back to Nellie in the asylum.

9. Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus. Novel. I thought this was a romance novel at first. Wrong! Always look beyond the cover. 93% of the time you'll be right, but you must allow for the other 7%. Lessons in Chemistry is quirky, funny, clever, infuriating, hopeful. I loved it. I wish there really were an Elizabeth Zott and a show called Supper at Six. Six-Thirty, Zott's dog is my favorite animal character since Desmond the cat in Anne Tyler's French Braid. Speaking of Tyler, I kept hearing the echo of her authorial voice in Lessons in Chemistry. Finally, I was reminded a bit of Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. Garmus's book feels like the one I was wanting while reading Bernadette. I want to say more, but I'm still emerging from the love bubble.  At this juncture, all I can do is squeee and strong-arm people into listening to me squeee. But wait! My friend Teresa in San Antonio just texted me that she's got it on hold at her library! Squeee Power!

10. Haven - Emma Donoghue. Novel. Audiobook. Set in 7th century Ireland, a monk with 'a vision from God' travels to bleak and uninhabited Skellig Michael. (This island is now best known as Luke Skywalker's hideout.) Artt, the visionary, brings along two other monks: an older convert named Cormac and a young one named Trion. Together, Cormac and Trion have mad skills for surviving on the island, but Artt isn't any help. In fact, he's not interested in anything but building crosses and altars and chapels and copying The Bible. Unfortunately, he is the leader and the two monks have pledged obedience to him. It's reminiscent of  Donoghue's most famous novel, Room: Two people isolated with an unreasonable captor. Good detail and description of how things were done in that time and what tools were used. In addition to the psychological tension, there's a dark environmental current.  The island is adversely affected in just a few months as the monks struggle to eke out an existence. Rich, dense and rewarding read.

Here's what I'm in the middle of reading:

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing - Lauren Hough. Essays.

The Guncle - Steven Rowley. Novel (Thank you again, Care!)

The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert. Novel. Audiobook.

What I'd like to read:

The Secret to Superhuman Strength - Alison Bechdel. Graphic novel.

January, 2023 Reading

 Nine books this month, which is a really good number for me. I can't take total credit; some of them were books that followed me into the new year.

Before I discuss those nine, here's what I'm in the middle of reading now:

Spare - Prince Harry. Memoir.  On audiobook. Of course.

Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography - Gail Levin. Aren't all biographies intimate to some degree?

Poison - Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Novel. It's a roman a clef with a weird Virginia Woolf vibe.

Here's what I want to read:

Ducks - Kate Beaton. Graphic Novel. It just arrived today via ILL. Squeeeee! I know it's going to zoom to the top of my reading pile, but when? Tomorrow? Tonight? As soon as I get off this computer?

Here are the nine for January:

1. Sons - Pearl S. Buck. Novel. The second in a trilogy following The Good Earth. Wang Lung's three sons are an interesting bunch, especially the youngest, Wang the Tiger, a soldier turned warlord. I'm eager to finish the trilogy.

2. The Man Who Invented Christmas - Les Standiford. Nonfiction. An examination of Charles Dickens and his most popular work, A Christmas Carol. I liked it, but it felt padded, as if it were really meant to be New Yorker article-sized rather than book-length.

3. Who Was Michelangelo? - Kirsten Anderson. Nonfiction.

4. Moloka'i - Alan Brennert. Novel. For several decades, Hawaiians exhibiting symptoms of leprosy were ordered by law to leave their families and go into an undetermined quarantine on the island of Moloka'i. This story follows the life of Rachel who is five years old when her symptoms first appear. I have mixed feelings about this book. I liked all the history of Hawaii, but felt the crashing weight of information dumps throughout. Brennert writes beautiful descriptions of the islands. The reader can really see their rugged beauty. The characters are mostly sympathetic and their rituals are presented respectfully and often movingly. My interest in learning more about Moloka'i was piqued. On the other hand, the prose style is a little clunky. The dialogue often seemed anachronistic and POV was all over the place, sometimes all at once. I wish that Brennert had just committed to doing this as straight nonfiction; I think the result would have been more satisfying.

5. Joan is Okay - Weike Wang. Novel. Joan is an attending physician who works in an ICU unit in New York City right about the time that COVID-19 is starting to make its frightening presence known. At times, the novel and the title character have a sort of flat affect, but then there's a good deal of sharp commentary. This is one of those novels I'm going to have to read again to fully absorb.

6. Opening the Road: Victor Hugo Green and His Green Book - Keila V. Dawson (author) and Alleanna Harris (illustrator) Nonfiction.

7. Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver. Novel. Basically, David Copperfield set in Appalachia during the opioid crisis. I never realized that Kingsolver and Dickens had so much in common. You don't have to have read David Copperfield to "get" Demon Copperhead, but it enhanced the experience for me. I suggest pairing those two books, or pairing Demon Copperhead with the nonfiction book Dopesick by Beth Macy.

8. Who Was Shaquille O'Neal? - Ellen Labreque. Nonfiction.

9. Starring Steven Spielberg: The Making of a Young Filmmaker - Gene Barretta (author) and Craig Orback (illustrator). Nonfiction.

DNF:

A House Divided - Pearl S. Buck. Novel. The third book in the House of Wang trilogy. I got a quarter of the way in and had an audiobook malfunction. I'm hoping to get back to it after I finish listening to Spare.

IT'S NOT ME, IT'S YOU, I THINK:

I've been in my book group for a year now, and we just don't seem to meld, or click, or whatever you call it. Our group dynamic is chilly. We engage with the leader (who is the Outreach librarian) but there's no rapport among ourselves. It's painful and I'm frustrated.

I need to feel some sort of connection. As a last-ditch effort, I'm going to try the library's other book group, which meets a little earlier in the day. The leader said that this other group is 'harder to please' and 'complains a lot more', so I'm interpreting that to mean that they are lively and interesting, and that maybe discussions are a little more organic. Wish me luck???

So Long, November

Good news from the hometown! We were in danger of losing our only bookstore. The owners wanted to retire, and were having trouble finding a new owner. The store even put up liquidation signs. I would have had to drive an hour to Kansas City or an hour to Columbia just to go to a bookstore. Yikes. But all is well. The bookstore has a new owner and he takes over on December first. This feels like such a gift. 

Today is the last day of November. Yesterday, I had the funniest feeling: There was something about November 29 that I knew was significant, and I couldn't place it. You know when Peter Parker says his spidey-sense is tingling? Well, it was like that, except it was a bookworm thing. Finally, right before I went to bed, I got it: Mark Twain's birthday! What a relief.

Speaking of Mr. Clemens, the library has The Autobiography of Mark Twain in audiobook. Lots and lots of listening hours. I want to commit to it, but its so long and checkout times are so short -- only two weeks and you can only renew three times. I guess I could shrug off the overdue notices and turn it back in when I'm damn well good and ready, but I actually like being a good library citizen. 

So, anyway: Since I was last here, the angry scribble in my left eye (yes, it's called a floater, but that reminds me of what happens to your poo when you eat too much fast food) seems less pronounced, but it's always a cloudy day on that side. But the right side is nice and clear and I'm driving again, which feels wonderful. My time in the car with my audiobook is the coziest time of the day. Who says you can't get hygge with it going down the highway at 65-70 miles per hour?

What I read:

Fresh Off The Boat - Eddie Huang. Memoir. My favorite parts of this book were Huang's exuberant and evocative descriptions of food. Lots of energy in this memoir. I enjoyed it more than an earlier food-related memoir this year: David Chang's Eat A Peach.

Grandma Pottymouth's Fast as Fuck Cookbook - Peggy Glenn. Cookbook. Since I didn't learn to cook until I was an adult, preparing meals has always been about ease. The way I measure that is by how many swears I used to get the food from ingredient to table. Grandma Pottymouth delightfully plays into all of that. Her recipes are easy to follow -- I don't think any of them are more than a page -- and helpful ("Spread that shit on the cookie sheet") and she swears so I don't have to! I haven't tried all the recipes. Some feature pine nuts, and I don't go there. Enchilada Casserole was delicious. The inelegantly named Slop was all right. Even Granny herself admits that it's just okay the first night, but gets better in leftover form. I'm not sure about that. My very favorite recipe is Sweet Potato and Chicken Get Married on a Ranch (Dressing, That Is). Brilliant, unconventional combination of sweet potato, chicken pieces, onion, and a packet of ranch seasoning mix. Baked in the oven. Oh my God, the aroma. The taste. I want some right now!

Getaway - Zoje Stage. Novel. After I read Baby Teeth, nothing else would do but more Zoje Stage. Two sisters and their friend from high school go on a camping trip in the Grand Canyon. The younger sister and the friend have some unresolved baggage, and younger sister has also just missed being mowed down in a synagogue shooting back in Pittsburgh. The camping trip is meant to be a time of healing and reconciliation, but someone is following them and tampering with their supplies. Welcome to the camping trip from Hell. I really admire and appreciate Stage's writing. She works really hard to craft multifaceted characters and still keep the pace nice and brisk. She's also great at atmosphere. 

The Boys - Ron Howard and Clint Howard. Memoir. I devoured this memoir in happy, hungry gulps. Conversational in tone (much like a family reunion), The Boys details the meeting of Harold Beckenholdt and Jean Speegle, two theatre majors at the University of Oklahoma, who impetuously elope to New York to become actors. Harold changes his first name to Rance and the family name to Howard and in due time, they give birth to Ron and Clint who turn out to be quite literally, born actors. Jean gives up acting to care for the family. Rance gets bit parts here and there and the kids' careers go into the stratosphere with The Andy Griffith Show (Ronny, as Ron was then known) and Gentle Ben (Clint). Rance and Jean closely managed their sons' careers, but they weren't horrible stage parents, and Rance taught them how to act rather than just performing and parroting lines. There's just enough scruff on this memoir (swearing, Clint had problems with substance abuse, Ron clashed with his parents about his early attachment to his future wife, Cheryl) to keep it from being sickeningly wholesome. I enjoyed reading about Ron's early interest in what goes on behind the camera, and his development as a director. Damn good read. You couldn't go wrong giving this one as a Christmas gift.

What I DNFed:

How To Change Your Mind - Michael Pollan. Nonfiction. But I don't really mean it as a DNF. Just a "Well, it was overdue and I had to turn it back in to the library, and I'll take it up again later."

What I'm reading:

A Carnival of Snackery - David Sedaris. Diaries. Audiobook. I would read anything by David Sedaris, and his diaries are most certainly better than most. I love that Tracey Ullmann is reading the entries from England while David reads all the others. Still, these compilations of diaries make me uneasy. It's like Sedaris is getting rid of everything. Cleaning out his closets. Swedish death cleaning. I'm laughing, but also feeling an undercurrent of sadness.

Wonderland - Zoje Stage. Novel. This one is crazy with atmosphere. Kind of like Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House.

Kings Row - Henry Bellamann. Novel. Getting those enjoyable Peyton Place vibes.

What I want to read:

Taste - Stanley Tucci. Memoir. WANT

Where I want to go: 

Fulton, Missouri. Apparently, Kings Row = Fulton, MO c.1890s. The good people of Fulton were reportedly pissed when they read Kings Row and started recognizing people and locales.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Zoje Stage's books all feature Pittsburgh in one way or another. Her love for her city shines through.

What I'm watching:

The Office Season 5

And now, it's the first day of December. I can't wait to look back at all the good books I've read this year. So many great discoveries. And cheese!

Welcome To My Reading Week: Early July, 2021

 Okay, let's do this. I've got my Belle (Beauty and the Beast) socks on and my reading journal at my side. Here's a look at my read life from July 1-11:

What I read:

Who Is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson? - James Buckley, Jr. Nonfiction. I know that I complained about the 50-page offerings in the Who Was...? series, but this one felt just right. Not rushed at all. I enjoyed reading about how Dwayne Johnson grew up with a father and grandfather who were famous wrestlers, and how Dwayne tried to become a successful pro football player before following in the family business and finding success in the WWE. Despite its brevity, the book did justice to Johnson's charm and charisma.

The Mayor of MacDougal Street - Dave Van Ronk. Memoir. Recently, I watched Inside Llewyn Davies, a Coen brothers movie that came out a few years ago, while I was living in Busan. It was one of the films featured at the Busan International Film Festival, but I couldn't get a ticket to see it. The story of a folksinger going through a rough patch in Greenwich Village in 1961, the title character is loosely based on Dave Van Ronk who seemed to know everyone and everybody across several musical genres, including a new kid from Minnesota called Bob Dylan. Van Ronk died in the middle of working on this memoir, so parts of it feel a bit disjointed, and while his musical insights are illuminating and entertaining, those sections are a bit rambly. Ditto for his political views. Still, I'm glad to have read The Mayor of MacDougal Street. (Many thanks to The Spawn for tracking down both the book and the movie for me.) Dave Van Ronk was a hilarious guy with a trenchant sense of humor, and his chapter about a cross-country trip from NYC to LA with a fellow musician and a 12-year-old kid in tow makes up for the unevenness of some of the other chapters. One big surprise: Dave Van Ronk was also heavily into science fiction fandom. What if he was at a convention I attended in San Francisco back in the early 1990s? My heart beats a little faster to imagine it. By the way: If anyone is working on a time machine, please consider sending me to Greenwich Village, 1958-1961. Thank you.

What I'm reading:

The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich. Novel. At first, I didn't like the latest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and complained about it bitterly in a couple of letters to my bookwormy friends Care and Teri. But once I got to the 170-page mark, I settled in, or Louise Erdrich settled in, and now I like it much better. 

Little Bird of Heaven - Joyce Carol Oates. Novel. I'm audiobooking this one, and I love it. Typical JCO dark and depressing and sharp with an upper New York State setting to match the bleakness of the narrative. I never thought of listening to Oates on audiobook before, but it's an inspired match. I feel a little crazy after my commute, but in a good way.

Cheeky: A Head-to-Toe Memoir - Ariella Elovic. Graphic Novel. If Elovic never does another book in her whole career, and she will, because she's only 30, she will have performed a valuable service to female humanity. This funny, frank, charming, whimsical, eye-opening memoir is her effort to change the conversation with herself about her body self-consciousness from "Imperfection!" to "I'm perfection!" I'm already halfway through Cheeky and loving every single page of it. I think it's already influencing my thinking, because I winced when a friend took a selfie of herself and her pet and asked us to excuse her unmade-up face, which is absolutely beautiful as it is. Anyway, I hope Cheeky gathers a wide audience, and I wish it could have somehow been around back in the 1970s and 1980s. There's that time machine longing again.

January 2020: What Are...Guilty Pleasures?

Thanks mostly to snowy days in January, I'm off to a good start, reading-wise.  Eight books so far this year!

Also, I've decided once and for all to cast off any sheepishness about loving and enjoying the Who Was...? series of biographies for young readers and embrace my guilty pleasure. I'm allowing myself to read them as long as I read one "adult" book between them. Of course, such self-imposed strictures are unnecessary and even laughable. Why do I do these things to myself? If anyone suggested such a restriction to you, I'd fight them.

To my great relief, I found that I wasn't alone. On the Facebook "Bookaholics" page, the question about guilty pleasure reads popped up, and I decided to share my fangirl feelings. Immediately, replies appeared: Oh yeah! Me 2! and Love those! and I don't always need a full-sized biography, and these fill the bill nicely.

In many ways, I'm annoyed at myself for seeking validation: I'm 58 freaking years old! I'm an English major! I have a graduate degree! I'll read what I damn well want to read! If I want to cover the couch with the Who Was...? series and let them spill off my bedside table like a waterfall, that's my business! But still. My Snobby Inner Bookbitch will never be silent. She'll always be there, judging and censuring.

But enough about my SIB. Back to this series. I sincerely feel the crackle of an intellectual challenge as I read the books and examine how they are put together. The authors/editors relate the stories of their subjects' lives in a way that is brief but entertaining and thoughtful, and they don't feel hasty or boiled-down or condescending to young readers. The sidebars that put the worlds around the subjects into context always feel organic rather than shoehorned in as a "teachable moment". Often, I'm curious to know more about a subject, and what to my hungry eyes do appear but a tasty bibliography?!

One of the main things about the series that intrigues me is the relationship between the author and his/her subject. For example, Sydelle Kramer, who wrote Who Was Daniel Boone? allows that he was a great hunter, woodsman, and pathfinder and that he was courageous and resourceful, but she doesn't shy away from discussing his less admirable attributes such as blithely breaking treaties and settling on Native American land because he feels like it and how he and his descendants were slaveholders up until the Civil War. Kramer also makes a point of showing how Daniel's wife, Rebecca, had an even harder life than the average frontier woman because of Daniel's propensity to scurry over the Appalachians at every opportunity. I don't mean that she actively bashes Daniel Boone, but there seems to be more of a critical eye than in my other two Who Was...? reads for this month. I'm glad for this multi-faceted portrait, because it provides an added richness.

 Who Was P.T. Barnum? seemed to be a completely sympathetic picture. Especially after reading Who Was Daniel Boone?, if I had been predicting tone, I'd have guessed that this biography would have been much more critical of Barnum since he was and is well-known for his humbug and flimflam tendencies. I came away with the feeling that the author, Kirsten Anderson, had expertly researched her subject, but also had visions of Hugh Jackman's charming performance as The Greatest Showman dancing in her head as she sat down to write. I must admit that I felt the urge to burst into song every few pages. Enjoyable read, although I was shaking my head a bit.

The third book I read, Who Was Babe Ruth? was an affectionate look at the legendary baseball player. Joan Holub uses an outline of Babe's life that seems to closely follow the 1948 biopic, but I also got the feeling that her research revealed numerous juicy details that she couldn't (regretfully, I'm sure!) reveal to the targeted young audience. Thank goodness for the bibliography page. Although it's not listed as a source, I feel compelled to read 2018's The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created by Jane Leavy.

So, anyway. If you love biographies and you're in need of a new guilty pleasure, the Who Was...? series is a worthwhile endeavor. If you need further convincing, let me add that the price is right. At approximately $5.00 a pop, you get a lot of bang for your bookworm buck.

November, Two

I finished only two books in November, but I swear that I was reading my eyeballs out. Early that month, I finally received my copy of Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol. 2. Like Vol 1, it's gargantuan, although a slightly slimmer version (1000-ish) of the hefty (1400+) predecessor. Also, it's not the sort of book you can just whip through. At least, I can't. After so many years of reading her words heavily edited by others, I finally get to see what Plath says, unedited. Even if she's going on about rugs and such, I will read it because it's her own damn voice at last.

Here are the two books I did manage to finish in November:

1. The Camerons - Robert Crichton. 1972 novel about turn-of-the-20th-century Scottish coal miners. Like family sagas? Fish-out-of-water stories? Social justice? Strong women characters? Men in kilts? This one's for you. Very well researched and crafted and robustly told story.

2. The Nix - Nathan Hill. This sprawling masterpiece from 2016 has everything. I'm surprised that it didn't get a nod for the Pulitzer. There's a dizzying array of topics: ghosts, video games, 1968 Chicago riots -- among other things -- that the novel could conceivably sink under its own weight. But it doesn't! Everything is gorgeously woven together. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Ari Fliakos, is more than equal to the challenge and the madness of all these characters and their obsessions. He was a brilliant, inspired choice to perform Nathan Hill's prose.

If The Book Isn't There, I'm Not There

Where am I? Doesn't matter; I've got a book on the go. Here's what with me right now:

At home:

The Collected Letters of Sylvia Plath - Sylvia Plath. This one doesn't get much farther than the patio because it's heavy. 1400 + pages. Four-and-a-half pounds. Not easy to read in bed or in the recliner. My best spot is at a desk or table where I can lay the book. I've had it for a little over a week and it's already showing signs of wear and tear...well, not tear. More like splash from a frozen strawberry lemonade. As for the contents, it's fascinating to read Plath unedited. Even the seemingly minor details.

A Book of American Martyrs - Joyce Carol Oates.  I've only just started this book. I keep it on the table in the kitchen, reading bits while waiting for coffee to brew or toast to pop up.

In my purse:

My Kindle. I started Tess of the D'urbervilles, but I'm stalled. I think it's because I know I'm going to be furious with all the men in Tess's life.

A paperback copy of The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty.  Of course there must be a paper book if something were to go wrong with the Kindle, right? I had to find a skinny book. My new purse is a lovely gift from my mom, but it is narrow at the opening and widens towards the bottom. It's a triangle! Not the best shape for toting books around, but that makes me more creative about finding my reads.

In the car:

My current audio book, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard. I like to find errands to run unaccompanied so I can enjoy listening to this book. The narrator, Paul Michael, is particularly good. He has a firm, resonant Midwestern timbre for the fated James A. Garfield, a fine, peppery Scottish accent for the restless genius inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, and a flat, whiny Snidely Whiplash tone for Charles Guiteau, Garfield's assassin who was both a master manipulator and batshit crazy. Author Millard has structured a compelling narrative within an elegant prose style that feels scholarly but doesn't feel overstuffed with research.

For future audio encounters, I'm hoping the new Stephen King book, The Outsider, as well as David Sedaris's newest Calypso, will be journeying back and forth to the grocery store with me soon.

Parade's End

This is my latest bookworm project. 

Parade's End is an omnibus of four novels written by Ford Madox Ford from 1924-1928. I am very much reminded of the early seasons of Downton Abbey, since the setting is in the years prior to and during WWI.

I had the book on my Kindle...don't remember how it got there, but there it is. I also found an audiobook for a very low price at Hastings' before they closed their doors forever. It's a little awkward, but I've been both reading and audiobooking for a week now.

 The main character, Christopher Tietjens, an upper-class public servant and the people in his world are nearly incomprehensible to me and seem prissy and frivolous. There are all these subtle variances of how people should behave and how far bad behavior can be carried as long as it doesn't come off as bad form. It didn't occur to me until the end of Disc 3 that Ford means for readers to feel irritated and distanced from them because the war is going to change their world.

Even with that fresh understanding, Parade's End is challenging. I've talked back to the audiobook several times:
Who the hell cares?
 Oh, shut up. 
Stop pronouncing golf as gulf.

30 discs. Don't think I'll finish before the end of 2016. Sometimes I get that failed fainthearted Villette feeling, but I'm determined to go on. Stay tuned.

What I Read When I Read in November, 2016

Since it's now almost mid-December, this post may be a little stale, but hopefully still tasty.

Germinal - Emile Zola. Thanks to Roger Pearson's in-your-face translation, this novel was eons better on the second go-around. True to the spirit of Zola's credo, "I'm here to kick ass and write novels." Well, maybe he didn't say that, but it must have been something like that. And in French.

Tampa - Alissa Nutting. Boy-lita. I still can't believe I enjoyed this novel so much and that I don't mind admitting it. Although, looking back, I've always enjoyed a good novel about a bad character and would take that anytime over a bad novel about a good character. Maybe even a good novel about a good character.

Hungry Heart - Jennifer Weiner. I've never read one of Weiner's novels, but I loved her memoir, so I'm going to read one or more of her fictional works sometime in 2017.

City of Secrets - Stewart O'Nan. I found this novel about Brand, a refugee from WWII Europe who ends up working for the underground in Israel, very confusing at first. I wish the explanation of the backdrop had been a preface rather than a note at the end. Since O'Nan is one of my favorite authors, I'm going to do a reread. One of my reading goals for 2017 is to finish reading every book Stewart O'Nan has written.

Cooked - Jeff Henderson. My only nonfiction for November was an audiobook which I listened to on the way to and from Tulsa Thanksgiving weekend.  Wow and WOW.  Listening to Jeff Henderson narrate the story of his life -- how he went from drug dealer to prisoner to successful chef -- kept me completely entertained and enthralled for hours. The miles just melted away. My favorite read for the month.

Mid-August Finds Me

I hated the title of this post, then it struck me that it sounds like one of those novels from the 1910s that end up getting reprinted with great acclaim by something like Virago Press. So there it stands.

Mid-August finds me in the middle of several books again:

1. Burr - Gore Vidal. Novel.
This is my main read right now, and I'm enjoying it more than when I read it back in 2012. I can't help but wonder if Lin-Manuel Miranda had a look at Burr as well as the Ron Chernow biography of Hamilton, because I have come upon several passages in which I nearly burst into song. My most recent hum-along is The Room Where It Happens. I'm having a brilliant time!

2. Villette - Charlotte Bronte. Novel.
 I should give up, but I don't. I won't. I can't. I'm 18 chapters in! I predict a mad reading/listening rush to midnight on New Year's Eve. Bronte! Bragging! Rights!

3. Triptych - Joyce Cary. Novel.
Even with the new magnifier, the print in this book is putting me off. I don't know what I'm going to do. Hoping to finish at least the first book in the volume, Herself Surprised, but more and more, I'm just not feeling it.

4. Washington: A Life - Ron Chernow. Biography.
I had to switch to the e-reader edition because I got tired of lugging the physical book around. Also, there were print issues with this one, too. I am so irritated with my eyes for wavering and watering! Stop that, you two! I'll turn this head around, I swear I will!!!

5. The Emigrants - Johan Bojer. Novel.
Written in 1924 and translated into English the following year, this Norwegian novel is about a family leaving Norway and pioneering in North Dakota. Although I haven't gotten beyond the first chapter, this book pleases me on several fronts: It's old. It's about the emigrant experience. It's about pioneers. It's obscure.

6. Heroes of the Frontier - Dave Eggers. Novel.
I was captivated by What is the What, Eggers' novel based on the life of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Heroes of the Frontier seems very different so far -- it starts out with a dentist unexpectedly taking/whisking away her two young children on a vacation to Alaska. So far, I'm drawn in and asking the sorts of questions an engaged reader asks.

Mid-August finds me wanting something very much. I can't even say it here. Not now. But I want this particular thing BAD. On alternating days I'm:
1) hopeful
2) resigned
3) despondent
4) actively snarling and looking for rocks to throw at the "thing with feathers"

Some days, I'm all of those things in succession. Today was like that.

Mid-August finds me running out of shelving space in my bedroom. Time to cull the herd.

April: 30 Days, 7 Books Part 1

If only it could be the other way around!
30 books in 7 days. Think of it.

April was a good reading month. Nice mix of fiction and nonfiction, page and audio. Two of my reads left me feeling sweetly twangy, pleasantly steeped in traditional country music.

 And!!! The nerdy Bonnethead part of me sparkled and shone like Ma's house after she and Pa took Mary off to college, leaving Laura, Carrie and Grace behind and they decided to do the fall housecleaning.

1. The Nest - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney.  (novel) The title object refers to a substantial nest egg left to four siblings who are slated to get the payout when the youngest hits her forties. Meanwhile, the oldest son, who is a career wastrel, has his biggest screw-up to date, and the children's (!) mother takes the money and uses it to smooth over the scandal. Someone (I wish I could remember who...someone at Book Riot, perhaps?) theorized that this novel, intentionally or not, is a modern retelling of Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Thanks a lot, Bookworm. Now I've got to read Bleak House. Meanwhile, I don't know if it is or not, but I don't care. The Nest is a smart novel, a briskly told story that touches on many aspects of modern life without making the common mistake of coming off like a checklist. I am already looking forward to Sweeney's next book and I'm sure there will be a movie version of The Nest.

2. Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter - Kate Clifford Larson. (nonfiction) For years, the eldest daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy was carefully hidden from public view. As her brother JFK's political star rose, rumors abounded: She was a teacher in the Southwest. She was in a convent. Finally, the truth started to come out: Rosemary was mentally handicapped. Then, years after most of her family was dead, more horrors and skeletons emerged from the closet. From the moment Rosemary was born, the world was a hostile place. To placate a doctor's ego, her birth was delayed, resulting in a loss of oxygen which led to brain damage. To make matters worse, she was born to parents for whom image and success was everything. When her erratic behavior threatened that, Joe Kennedy...well, he was an evil bastard, and Rose not much better. The heroine in this story is Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Rosemary's younger sister and founder of Special Olympics. I audiobooked this one, and while it was well done, it was painfully sad to listen to.

3. Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty - Diane Keaton. (memoir) I've always liked Diane Keaton's work, so I was disappointed in this memoir, which reads like a scattered first draft. The parts in which she talked about Woody Allen made me uncomfortable. She is complimentary and loyal. I understand and appreciate that, but then again, Woody Allen. This was my least favorite read for April. The title says it all. I've heard that her earlier memoir was good, so I might try that one.

4. High Lonesome World: The Death and Life of a Country Singer - Babs H. Deal (novel)  My history with this novel goes back a few years. I remember seeing the paperback in our home. Someone gave it to my non-reading parents who further disdained it because "it wasn't real". I tried to read it, but I was still in elementary school and found the shifting viewpoints confusing. Somewhere in all our moves, that copy of High Lonesome World disappeared. I remembered it when the Hank Williams biopic came out, and tracked it down on Amazon.

 At the beginning of High Lonesome World, published in 1969, Wade Cooley, a wildly popular country music singer is found dead in the backseat of his baby blue Cadillac while he is being driven to a show he must perform at on New Years Day. If you're thinking Hank Williams, you're right.

 High Lonesome World takes place in the small (fictional) town of Bellefonte, Alabama over three days' time, as the citizens of that community wait for their hometown hero to be brought back on the midnight train and laid to rest. Wade's life and death is examined through the eyes of his manager, a close musician friend (inspired by Porter Wagoner, judging by description), the old man who taught Wade how to play the blues, and somehow knew he was dead before the news hit Bellefonte; Wade's ex-wife and his current wife, the current wife's angry father, a past lover, a musician in Wade's band, his mother, the undertaker, the publisher of the local newspaper, and an academic who is doing his thesis about Wade's music.

As pointed out above, all of this is a very thinly disguised account of Hank Williams' life and death, so it was interesting and even fun to tie the slight alterations to the real thing. In the acknowledgements, Deal makes a point of naming everyone that helped her, and that list reads like a Grand Old Opry cast list. She goes on to specially thank Mr. and Mrs. Henry Cannon. That went over my head for a moment, then my country music upbringing kicked in and I thought: Oh wow. (or words to that effect) That's Minnie Pearl! 

 The only aspect of the novel that got on my nerves was that the intellectual characters were a tad too pretentious and did some heavy-handed, ham-fisted philosophizing. (There is one exception: Deal does a sly send-up of the academic getting hooked on country music by repeatedly listening to Miller's Cave by Hank Snow and tying it to every literary and philosophical conceit under creation.) The characters with a 'simpler' view of life were much more moving and believable, not to mention palatable. I'm really pleased that I rediscovered this novel and hope that I have brought some small attention to it.

I was going to discuss the other three books I read in April, but this post is getting way too long, and I need space and time to burble enthusiastically about The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Strangers on a Train, and The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones.

Really Good Titles

I've got three novels on the go right now. Everything is going great; I'm in one of those cherished amiable reading moods for which I am grateful.  For me, early 20th century literature is the pause that refreshes. How about those titles, the words on the cover of the book? They're all good enough to eat! I want to sing them in the shower!

(opening mouth, clearing throat)

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky - Patrick Hamilton. This long-ish 1935 novel was originally published as three novellas in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and feature three young people: Bob, a waiter who works at "The Midnight Bell", which is also the title of the first novella; Jenny, (her beginnings in debauchery are explored in The Siege of Pleasure) the beautiful prostitute who wanders into Bob's life and wanders out when he's depleted his savings; and Ella, a barmaid who is Bob's coworker at The Midnight Bell. She also loves Bob and has an unwelcome older suitor in The Plains of Cement. Hamilton's other career as a playwright serves him well. The chapters are short and punchy and he is expert at establishing character while setting a scene to perfection. What's really surprising is that Hamilton was a huge drunk, but it seems to have sharpened his observational skills instead of dulling them. He describes all the stages of drunkenness so precisely and except for Raymond Carver, no one does drunken blather better. And that title! Yes, he cannibalized Jules Verne, but the result is gorgeous.

Chocolates for Breakfast - Pamela Moore. In 1956, America's "answer" to Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse was published by Moore, who was eighteen years old at the time. Like most first novels, it's semi-autobiographical. Like The Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar, two novels Chocolate for Breakfast is often referred to, it has aged well, probably due to the disaffected heroine and the subject matter. Fun fact: Courtney Love claims that her mother named her after Courtney Farrell, the main character.  Not-so-fun fact: Chocolates for Breakfast was a runaway international success, and Moore went on to write other novels, but they weren't as well-received.  She killed herself at the age of twenty-six. Chocolates for Breakfast fell into semi-oblivion, then was reissued in 2013.

It Can't Happen Here - Sinclair Lewis.  Back when I was an intrepid young English major, I had a literary crush on Sinclair Lewis. After discovering Main Street in my American Novels class, I hunted down and devoured Arrowsmith, Ann Vickers, Dodsworth, and my favorite, Elmer Gantry. There was also his biography. Then my adoration cooled a bit, but I still dream of visiting Sauk Center, Minnesota and I squealed like a fangirl when I spotted someone in Boardwalk Empire reading Lewis' first novel, Free Air. How is it that I never got to 1935's It Can't Happen Here until now? (The "now" part is more obvious, isn't it, this being a crazier than usual election year.) I'm only a couple of chapters in, and I'm having to readjust myself to Lewis' hit-them-over-the-head-harder-harder! satirical style. Tastes change, I'm afraid, but I still love you, Red.

Which of these titles grabs you by your slightly oversized double lapels and won't let go?

A Four-Book January

Here are the four books I read in January:

1. Green Dolphin Street - Elizabeth Goudge.  I wrote about my mixed feelings here.

2. Spark Joy - Marie Kondo.  Konvert, that's me. I am working on a fangirlish response to this book. Don't know if I loved it as much as The Life -Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but there are some ardent feelings there. Yes. Excuse me, I must now go fold some shirts. Domo arigato.

3. Hangsaman - Shirley Jackson. This was a reread from...I don't know when. Mid-nineties, I suppose. I'd forgotten what a strange book it is. Madness, the college experience...Sylvia Plath could have read this during her days at Smith. I wonder if she did. Something that struck me afresh was the ickiness of Natalie's father. He's not inappropriate in the conventional way, but the way he breathes his stale breath all over Natalie's life, ugh. There's also Tony, Natalie's friend. Read carefully. I did, and my brain hurts, but in a pleasurable way. This is my second favorite Jackson novel after We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

4. The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles. My second faux-Victorian novel in a month! (The other being Green Dolphin Street.) Fowles' book wins for authenticity (Arthur Hugh Clough epigrams!), even though he is so meta. He takes that authorial intrusion and kicks it up a notch. He even puts himself in a railroad carriage with the male protagonist. And the two endings! Meta, meta, meta! I was all squeeeee! and don't let this book end and gotta see the Meryl Streep/Jeremy Irons movie again. Speaking of Meryl, I couldn't get a read on the title character, because although readers hear her voice and see her actions, she's WTF? obscure (Sarah Woodruff makes Sue Bridehead look like Spock) and then further obscured by the author. I'm going to take it that she's some version of the Manic Pixie Girl we always hear tell about.

Slumpish

I am trying to walk on out of Slumpville, following the exit signs, but there is slump on the bottoms of my shoes and my footprints follow me around.

After giving up on Sarah Vowell's book about Lafayette (it's me, not her), I struck out towards fiction and settled on Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge.  It's an oldie, first published in 1944. I'm still a bit restless because Goudge was all about long long descriptions of scenery which makes me want to yawn and scratch.

I'm sticking with Green Dolphin Street because I think some of the main characters might end up in New Zealand later on and that sounds promising.  Also, if I finish and I am a good girl and don't cry,  I will treat myself to the movie version starring Lana Turner.

Bybee's Booktober

October was very much Booktober for me!  I started the month feeling oh-so-nonfictiony, but when I got to the middle, I went on a novel reading binge that still seems insatiable.

My "bridge book" that took me out of October and into November is a novel I've been wanting to read for several years, Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton.  Now that I've gotten past that ponderous spoiler of an introduction by J.B. Priestley, I'm enjoying Hamilton's precise, slightly chilly prose.

I'm stalled with the van Gogh biography. Vincent practically jumps off the page as presented by his biographers, Naifeh and Smith, but to modern eyes, it's obvious that he was bipolar and it's painful to watch him crash through life. I needed a rest.

 I'm also experiencing slow engagement with Stephen King's Insomnia, although I have no complaints about his writing.  It's not you, Uncle Stevie.  It's me.

Getting all caught up in the Kathleen Hale brouhaha that broke out full-force the weekend of the Readathon, I noticed on Goodreads that the author she cited as her main influence was Louise Fitzhugh.  I got all excited and was primed to break out my copy of Harriet the Spy and do a line by line reading which would "explain" Hale.  Luckily for you, I took a deep breath and the feeling passed.

I've committed myself to doing NaNoWriMo.  If I don't try to write a novel at this time in my life when I have almost no distractions, I don't know if I ever will.  I've built up a lot of anxiety about this and I hope I can use that energy to be productive.  If done properly, my reading for the month should go down considerably. Maybe not, though. I'll still keep my subway commute time and pre-sleep time for reading.

So, anyway.  Here's what I read in Booktober.  Got off to a rocky start, then things improved like crazy:

1. You Are What You Wear - Jennifer Baumgartner. Nonfiction.  Initially, I was pretty harsh about this book. I wanted it to be another Lost Art of Dress or Alison Lurie's The Language of Clothes and was disappointed when it wasn't.  Lesson learned: Don't go overboard with reading expectations. Still, for it to have been written by a Ph.D., it seems awfully slight.

2. At Home with Madame Chic - Jennifer L. Scott. Nonfiction.  I first discovered Jennifer L. Scott on YouTube through my love of minimalism and admiration of the French way of living.  I liked it that she edited her videos tightly until the last "um" was bleached out, and seemed to be able to stick with a chosen topic. Her first book, Lessons From Madame Chic is about how her 6 months as an exchange student in Paris living with a French family changed her life.  In the latest book, Scott builds from that foundation and discusses how to live a high-quality life at home, no matter what your income level. She has many helpful examples and suggestions that can be adapted to one's own lifestyle. A generosity of spirit  and intelligent, clear thinking pervades these pages. My favorite part is where Scott and her husband have a knee-jerk reaction that they must move after having children and accumulating more stuff, even though they had perceived that location as their dream home only a few short years before.  Thoughtfully and carefully, they sit down and figure out a way to fall in love with their current home all over again. Since Scott has young children, this book is geared towards young mothers, but older readers such as myself will find things to love about At Home with Madame Chic.

3. The Storm in the Barn - Matt Phelan. Graphic novel. A young boy growing up in the Dust Bowl America of the 1930s struggles to make sense (largely through myth) of the land's desolation and find his place on a farm where there are no crops and no chores. The use of dull dirt colors and empty panels will make readers feel choked and parched and hopeless. The jackrabbit hunt is bloody and graphic, but Phelan imposes a control on the violence that makes the event seem even more shocking.  I thought it was interesting that Dad looks like Henry Fonda as Tom Joad.

4. That Was Then, This is Now - S.E. Hinton.  YA novel. If this novel were to be written today, I believe Mark would be the POV character, and rightfully so. He's much more interesting than his lifelong friend and foster brother Bryon, who narrates That Was Then.... Mark is edgy and flawed, and the only thing about this novel that doesn't seem dated.  I keep thinking of the iconic quote from Hinton's first novel, The Outsiders, "Stay gold...". In That Was Then... much is made of Mark's golden aura -- his hair, his eyes, his easy manner, but his gold is corrupt, tainted, tarnished. I don't know if Hinton intended to extend her gold metaphor, or if fans have perceived it continuing from the first book to the second book, but it is there and I'm sure more than one reader has been left with a feeling of uneasiness although they may not know exactly why.

5. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks - E. Lockhart. YA novel.  I love how E. Lockhart took the formulaic stories of a boarding school girl, a high achiever, Cinderella year, brains and beauty, popular boyfriend and shook them all up and slammed them down on their ears.  Frankie, who at 15, has just grown from gawky adolescent to stunner has a boyfriend who is in a secret fraternity, but she can't join because she's a girl. Annoyed beyond reason (her father was in the fraternity, so she could have been a legacy), but with marvelous precision to her method and madness, she finds a window of opportunity to anonymously take over and shows the guys, whose legendary hoaxes were actually quite lame, how it's really done.  I love the feminist subtext, but even better, Frankie is such a great evil genius.

6. A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 - Victoria Wilson. Biography.  I understand that a biographical subject doesn't exist in a vacuum; they were part of a larger world. But I also think there's a recent trend in biography to cast the net too wide.  It doesn't come across as the author being learned; it comes across as the author not wanting to waste any of his or her research. I enjoyed reading about Barbara Stanwyck (a lifelong bookworm! A book a day!) and her world: Brooklyn, Broadway and finally, Hollywood.  I even enjoyed the in-depth looks at her directors and co-stars, husbands and lovers. The transition from pre-Code to Code pictures was interesting, as well as filmmakers' attempts to circumvent the Code.  I understand that Stanwyck had strong beliefs about politics, but the pages and pages (and pages) about American politics got to be mind-numbing. That's not why I picked up this book.  In spite of the tendency of this project to be a tad overstuffed, I am very much looking forward to the next volume of Stanwyck's biography.

7. Dispatches From the Edge - Anderson Cooper. Memoir.  Cooper writes movingly about losing his father and then his older brother at an early age.  He also discusses his struggle to outdistance his pain by always traveling and looking for news to cover in places of suffering like Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and war and famine in Somalia.  A short memoir, but even though it's brief, it packs a lot of punch.

8. The Homesman - Glendon Swarthout. Novel.  Set in 1800s Nebraska, a small community has had several incidents of pioneer women losing their minds over a variety of arduous conditions.  The circuit minister has set up a system for helping these women by appointing a "homesman" to escort them across the Missouri River to Iowa, where they can be sent farther on home to their families. When the current group of husbands prove to be unwilling or unfit to take the women back east, lone female homesteader Mary Bee Cuddy steps up and volunteers for the job. She soon realizes that she can't manage the women and the danger alone, and finds a dubious assistant in the unlikeliest of places. Entertaining read and a slightly different take on the western genre. The movie version of this movie is going to be released soon.  I. CANNOT. WAIT.

9. Stoner - John Edward Williams. Novel.  In a novel that spans the first half of the 20th century, William Stoner goes to the University of Missouri to study agriculture with his father's encouragement and somehow finds his destiny as a literature professor while bumbling through a required freshman English class. His life, both in and out of work is constantly going wrong, and the girl he marries without really getting to know her is all of the battiest females in 20th century literature all rolled up into one. Depressing, but beautifully written. Extra points for recognizable Missouri landmarks.

10. The Girls - Lori Lansens. Novel.  What really struck me about this novel was not that it was about cojoined twins, but the Canadian-ness of it. I liked The Girls a lot more than I thought I would. Lori Lansens is like Miriam Toews, but with more substance.

11. Best American Comics 2012 - Francoise Mouly, editor. Graphic novel anthology.  Francoise Mouly should edit this series every year. Her turn as guest editor produced the sharpest, most attractive volume ever.

12. Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma - Kerry Hudson. Novel. Gritty novel about growing up in council housing in and around Aberdeen, Scotland. Hudson makes an interesting narrative choice is having Janie Ryan narrate what she observes around her from the very moment she emerges from the womb.  According to Janie, who is descended from fishwives, the first words she hears are part of a profanity-laden, end-of-labor invective.  Hudson's writing is compelling and a little rough around the edges. Certain sections of the novel seem less developed than others, and a good deal of energy leaves the book when Janie's ma is not present.  But I would absolutely and emphatically hate it if these flaws were removed; I don't think the novel would have the same power and impact.  I can't wait to read Kerry Hudson's follow up novel, Thirst. If you're a fan of The Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle, you'll appreciate Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float...

13. Lost Memory of Skin - Russell Banks. Novel.  The Kid's story is a sad one, with generous helpings of absurdity. A novel that dares to pose the uncomfortable question: Where can registered sex offenders make their homes if they can't live within a certain radius of children, schools or any other place where there might be minors? Are justice and common sense sometimes in conflict?  What is the line that must be crossed for a person to be truly declared a sex offender?  Fans of The Sweet Hereafter will be pleased to see Delores Driscoll make an appearance in this book.

14. The Sweet Hereafter - Russell Banks. Novel.  Banks' 1991 novel about a small community in upstate New York that is changed forever when a school bus accident kills several children. Different characters take turns with the narrative. Banks is brilliant, but bleak. Two of his novels in a row made me want to hide under my desk with a blanket over me. The movie based on this book is supposed to be even better than the novel.

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

I read this for my Cracked Spinz book group. What a strange book. Because of the events in the novel, I am a little uncomfortable about admitting that I enjoyed it.

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First of all, there’s that numbingly clinical introduction. Then there’s Humbert Humbert, an unreliable narrator with a dark and twisted sense of humor that you can’t help enjoying, but then there’s his nasty, creepy predilection for “nymphets” and then there’s Russian-born author Nabokov playing around in French and English and making literary allusions (can't believe all those whiffs of Poe I was getting!), puns and anagrams with the same gleeful abandon of a kid at his mud pies and finally, there’s that rich, sumptuous, claustrophobic and decadently beautiful prose.

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My mixed feelings of unease and admiration in almost equal parts remind of my initial reaction to In Cold Blood — Capote’s precise, almost delicate narration and the horrific subject matter.Regarding Lolita, the air in the Bybeeary is already crackling, and book group is still several days away. We are going to have our greatest discussion ever; there’s no other possibility.

April's Reads: Optical Cruise Control

Even though my participation in the Readathon was woefully minimal, I still got a lot of reading done during April.

11 books. Dang.

1. Little Women And The Feminist Imagination - Janice Alberghene and Beverly Clark, editors. I talked about it --a lot-- here.

2. Jo's Boys - Louisa May Alcott. The final chapter in the saga about the March family. I had to read this after so many critics in Little Women And The Feminist Imagination pissed and moaned about the way Alcott treated Jo, by not marrying her off to Laurie *and* marrying her off to Professor Bhaer. To hear them talk, she would've been better off wrapped in a shroud and lying in the graveyard next to Beth.
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In Jo's Boys, we see Jo twenty years down the road, fulfilled as both a successful educator and writer. The boys (and girls) from Little Men that she helped raise are kind of boring but slightly flawed, and Jo (and Alcott) are there with a moral or two to ease them along into adulthood. The most compelling one of this group is the still-untamed Dan, who struggles for Jo's love and approval, but can't seem to shake the wildness that is so much a part of his nature. Dan is so well-imagined that he deserves a novel of his own. My heart broke for him, but I was glad that Alcott didn't have a pat little ending for him.
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3. Rilla of Ingleside - Lucy Maud Montgomery. I wrote about it earlier, here.
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4. Mansfield - C.K. Stead. A slice of writer Katherine Mansfield's short life -- 3 years during World War I. Shifting points-of-view. Oddly, the novel seems most charged with power when the emphasis isn't on Mansfield, except in the final chapter, when Mansfield comes to grips with what she's been trying to block out, and realizes that she's not going to live forever.

I was pleased to see a chapter from Frieda Lawrence's perspective -- in a private conversation with Mansfield, she has a few tart things to say about her husband's quaint but wrongheaded ideas about sex that still manage to mess couples up, even today.

After reading about those left behind in Canada in Rilla of Ingleside, it was both moving and disturbing to read about the battlefield death of Mansfield's younger brother, Leslie and her mortally wounded friend, Fred Goodyear.
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Katherine Mansfield's on-again, off-again relationship with John Middleton Murry is a drag on the novel -- someone who didn't know her life story would probably have been shocked at the end note that she and Murry married a year after the events in this novel. Murry's own story is a little bizarre; a year after Mansfield died, he married a woman who looked remarkably like her, and they had two children named after Katherine and himself. The new wife also died young from TB.
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I'm becoming a big C.K. Stead fan -- let's hear it for the Kiwis! I also recommend his novel My Name Was Judas.
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5. A Gentle Madness - Nicholas Basbanes. Ever since there have been books, there have been book nuts. Bibliophiles. Bibliomanics. Nicholas Basbanes pays tribute to these people in this highly entertaining look at book collecting, because without collectors, a great deal of history would be lost. Libraries are also grateful to collectors because they are the ones with vision that unify collections -- libraries as a rule do not go out and purchase items with the idea of ordering a collection and also, they often get the collection as a gift after the owner dies or decides to place it somewhere in particular.

I'll never really understand the need to put a second mortgage on a house just so I can own a first edition of Gulliver's Travels or some great work of literature written on vellum, but I do understand the impulse to collect.

There are some terrific stories about bibliomaniacs and their libraries. Some are sad, like Harry Widener, a young (20-something) collector who was in England with his mother, buying books back in the early part of the 20th century. He shipped about eight rare volumes on the Carpathia, but decided to take his newly purchased 1598 Essayes by Francis Bacon with him when he and his mother boarded the Titanic. He reportedly told his mother as he was helping her into a lifeboat that "the little Bacon" was in his overcoat pocket and he was taking it with him. After her rescue, Widener's heartbroken mother took his collection, added to it with great taste and zeal, and built a library at Harvard (his alma mater) named after him.

Most bibliophiles hung on to their collections until death, but composer Jerome Kern began to feel enslaved by books and auctioned off his whole library in 1928. Basbanes wrote that Kern's play, Show Boat was sold out on Broadway, but bookish New Yorkers were scrambling for a seat at that auction. The sale of Kern's books garnered almost two million dollars. Nine months later, the stock market crashed, and books dropped significantly on many "to buy" lists.
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Another bibliomaniac was actually a bibliokleptomaniac named Stephen Blumberg. Beginning in the 1970s, Blumberg travelled to university libraries all around the United States, stealing precious and priceless books and ephemera. He was a master at breaking into special collections rooms, dismantling alarms and demagnetizing books so he could sneak them through the security systems, then cleaning the pages of any identifying marks. Although he could have sold the ill-gotten objects of his desire, he instead stored his collection in a house in Ottumwa, Iowa, which is where they were when the FBI caught up with him. When the FBI contacted the libraries about returning the stolen material, (Blumberg cooperated fully in helping the police by identifying which pieces came from where) many expressed surprise that they had things that had gone missing!
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In a couple of cases, book madness was heroism. In the late 1970s, college student Aaron Lansky wanted to collect Yiddish writing and preserve the language, which was dying. Jewish leaders were not impressed and told him he was wasting his time and that he should just go to Israel. Lansky persisted, often digging Yiddish books and papers out of dumpsters. In time, he was awarded a "genius grant" and Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for literature, both of which furthered his cause, and today there is a National Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts. In the 1950s Charles L. Blockson played football for Penn State alongside Lenny Moore and Rosey Grier. Along with his teammates, Blockson had a chance to go pro with the New York Giants, but he declined and instead focused on becoming a "black bibliophile". According to Basbanes, he had already been collecting since he was a child and his grade-school teacher told him that black people don't have a history. His collection has been housed at Temple University in Philadelphia since 1984.

I'd love to see those collections, plus a few more that made my mouth water: Actor John Larroquette's first editions of contemporary authors, including Anne Tyler; Chicago restaurateur Chef Louis Szathmary II's culinary arts collection; the children's literature collections of Betsy B. Shirley and Ruth Baldwin; Louise Taper's Lincoln collection and Louis Daniel Brodsky's Faulkner collection at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau.
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Please read this book. Pretty, pretty please.


6. Slam - Nick Hornby. Young Adult fiction always feels a little phony to me -- like the authors are trying too hard to display their hipness quotient, or they're straining to shoehorn in a natural-sounding moral. I shouldn't be surprised that Nick Hornby (in all his awesomeness) managed to avoid those pitfalls and got the YA novel exactly right. As another reviewer pointed out, his characters are usually boyish men enjoying an extra-long soak in adolescence, so it's not that much of a stretch to introduce a boy careening on greased wheels into the adult world long before he's ready. I love the role Tony Hawk plays in this novel.
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7. Shanghai Baby - Wei Hui. Should I be nice and say that this 1990 Chinese novel is a homage to the novels of Erica Jong, or should I be absolutely blunt and say that she blatantly ripped off the author of Fear of Flying? Everything -- the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, the copious but unsatisfying sex, the mention of masturbation and menstruation, the nod to Henry Miller as a kindred spirit, the agonizing about writing -- just cries out Erica! to me. Except Jong can actually write, and when she's occasionally clumsy, her humor more than makes up for it.
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I could blame the bad writing on the clunky translation, but I'm not going to, except for one part where our heroine, Coco (whose real name is Nikki, which made me think of the Prince song and I didn't really want to) begins a sentence talking about a handbag and by the end of this (short) sentence, the item has strangely turned into an item of clothing.
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Coco's English name should have been Katrina (as in Katrina & The Waves, not Hurricane), because Wei Hui has Coco referencing sunshine in practically every scene. If she could have, I'm sure she would've had Coco dribbling a ball of sunshine down court and shooting it into the net for a 3-pointer.
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Also, there's too much tell and not enough show. Wei Hui cuts corners by having Coco rush to tell readers how cool and artistic her friends are right before their cameo at a party where we really don't see enough of them to be impressed or otherwise.

Nobody has compared this book to Fear of Flying, but they have compared it to Less Than Zero. Valid comparison, yes, but so NOT a compliment.
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On one occasion, Wei Hui tries to be socially and culturally relevant, when an American and a Serb end up at the aforementioned party. Of course there's a row, but it's brief, almost obligatory. Worse yet, the reader was already tipped off a couple of pages before when Coco worried that there might be a scene between the two. Cringe.
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I would mention how Coco is torn between two lovers -- an impotent, drug-riddled but oh-so-sensitive Chinese guy named Tian Tian and a virile, healthy, rich German guy who's an SOB named Mark (like Deutsche Mark, right?) -- but I'm typing with my head hung over the wastebasket at this point, so never mind.

I almost want Raych to read Shanghai Baby because she gives such good insult, but on the other hand, I don't like to be cruel to my book blogging buds. In spite of everything, I'm glad I read it because my Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm can use it for bragging rights when we tally our international reads at the end of this year.
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8. The Classic Era of Crime Fiction - Peter Haining. According to Haining, who is English, crime/detective fiction all began with Edgar Allen Poe, and the spy novel began with James Fenimore Cooper. Go, Americans! This is a gorgeously lovely book that meticulously traces the history of these genres and is brilliantly illustrated with reproductions of illustrations and book covers from Haining's extensive collection. I read this book with pen and paper at the ready, so I could jot down ideas for future reading. I want to find books by: (this is just a sampling) Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, E.W. Hornung, Horace McCoy, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, W.R. Burnett and Jim Thompson.
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9. Carver Country: The World of Raymond Carver - Raymond Carver, Bob Adelman, Tess Gallagher. Adelman's photos didn't really rock my world, but coupled with Carver's poetry and prose, they reawakened an ache. Gallagher's lengthy introduction provides good insight into Carver's last years, but she seems a little too self-congratulatory about how good she was for Carver, and when she talks about Carver's mother, first wife and children, there's a hint of a cat scratch via reminiscence. To be fair, this was in 1990, when the sadness of Carver's passing was still relatively fresh.
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10. The Hidden Flower - Pearl S. Buck. This is the story of an interracial romance, but it's so much more. In fact, it's too much more. Buck has a world of interesting characters and ideas here, but it's too much for this one slim novel -- it can't bear up under the weight. Still, missing-the-mark Pearl Buck is better than a lot of things you could read.
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11. The Benchley Roundup - Robert Benchley. This compilation of Benchley's writing was compiled in 1954 by his son, Nathaniel. I'm a little put out with the younger Benchley for not including the humor piece "How To Sleep Anywhere", which is the one that made me fall in love with Bob all those years ago in 11th grade American Literature class with Mrs. Lucille Huffine at Lawton High School. I was also slightly annoyed with Nathaniel Benchley for not arranging the pieces in chronological order and putting dates on them, but some of the later work is a little uneven -- he was definitely phoning it in, so it was probably a good decision to scramble them a bit and finish with some stronger pieces.
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This compilation is a sign of younger Benchley's times as well as his father's. For example, at the end of a piece called "Whoa!" (which fancifully chronicles Paul Revere getting on his horse for the famous midnight ride, suddenly getting a vision of America and Americans in the future, and deciding to steer the horse back to the stable) there's an acidic little note: This piece was first published in 1924, when derision was not confused with disloyalty.
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Blissful sigh. What can I say about Benchley's writing? He was sweet, he was funny, he was crazy. He had a wonderful vocabulary; I learned so many new words reading this book ("chivvy", "mux", "footpad"). He played with language like it was Silly Putty, all the while charmingly dropping apologies to the proofreaders and typesetters before madly scampering on.
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Choosing my favorites in this volume has been a difficult task. I liked "Kiddie Kar Travel", which begins with my all-time favorite quote: "There are two ways to travel -- first class and with children.."; "Take The Witness!", in which Benchley imagines himself on the witness stand breaking down his cross-examiner instead of vice versa and "How To Get Things Done" ('I've refined this theory over the years; now I'll have to start coarsening it up again').
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I was delighted to see Benchley the bookworm make an appearance in "Mind's Eye Trouble". Benchley apologetically admits that he has a problem visualizing scenes in books and for him, great works of literature and history are set in his birthplace of Worcester, Massachusetts. For example, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire all take place under the "porte-cochere" of his future wife's house, every tale out of Dickens (except A Tale Of Two Cities) is set in his own boyhood home, his side yard is the American South, his aunt's side yard is the Wild West or Australia and Venice is simply King Street flooded with water. The school playground can be seen from Clarissa's room, and is also "the scene of Tom Sawyer's evasions of Aunt Polly and Katherine Mansfield's garden party."
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In the last piece in this book, "Do I Hear Twenty Thousand?", I encountered a second mention of the 1928 auction of composer Jerome Kern's library. Written in play form, Benchley wickedly imagines the "shades" of the giants of literature, Poe, Keats, Shelley, Lamb, Wordsworth, Swift and others drinking several rounds at their ghostly literary gentlemen's club and looking on Kern's auction and expressing amazement at the prices their work went for. Shelley is particularly shocked that Queen Mab was sold for $68,000, ("It wasn't my best work by a long shot") and he's indignant on Keats' behalf that one of his original manuscripts went for a "measly $17,000". Tennyson affects boredom, but when he learns that his Maud drew down only $9,000, he gets testy and remarks that auctioning off literature cheapens the beauty of it. Poe orders another round, can't pay for it, and a new member of the club, Avery Hopwood, (a Jazz Age playwright who died at 45 in 1928) offers to pay the bill.

This blog post is waaay too long. Oh well. Too late now. Next month, I'll divide my fiction and nonfiction reads into separate posts. If you've stayed with me till this point, I owe you one!