The Adoxist Society Book Swap!

My co-worker, CanadaBoy, can be so very sweet. He's not exactly a bookworm, but he has the gift of being attuned to his friends' addictions. He called me up a few weeks ago and said the five magical words I've been dying to hear since I moved to Korea two years ago:

"I found a book group."

I was still a sickly bookworm. I'd been lying flat on the bed, convinced that all the phlegm lodged in my chest was actually concrete, but CanadaBoy's announcement had me struggling to a sitting position pretty damn quickly. "Where?" I rasped.

"In Daegu." [a 20 minute train ride] "At Seattle's Best Coffee downtown."

"I'm there. Oh, God -- I'm there. Thank you. I love you, [CanadaBoy]!"

I snapped my cell phone shut, aglow with vindication. I knew there had to be an English-language book group somewhere in Korea! I knew there had to be other bookworms out there somewhere! I knew there had to be something in that great abyss that separates the two main foreigner groups in Korea -- Jesus Huggers and Bar Huggers. After all, I'm not that much of an anomaly; I'm just a Bybee who loves to read too much. Did I say too much? Bite my tongue!

Hungrily doing some research, I found out that The Adoxist Society, the wise and wonderful, brilliant and bookwormy people spearheading this effort didn't actually have a book group per se. Reading through their blog, I was able to ascertain that the group read A Tale Of Two Cities then sputtered and died sometime last spring.

I shrugged philosophically. Book groups live and book groups die and dumbass people quit book groups in a huff like whiny little babies because no one else in the group wants to read The Sunlight Dialogues by John Gardner. (But that's another story, obviously.)

Reading on, I saw that there was still a book swap once a month. Even better, because you weren't limited to discussing just one book, and it was time well spent cruising for books!

The Adoxist Society's motto is that they are a "literary organisation made up of foreigners living in Daegu who like books and don't mind people." When I read that last part, I knew that this was my tribe and these were my people.

The day finally arrived, and the train pulled into Daegu. I was right on time, clutching my bag of 12 books to swap, but discovered that I had a slight problem: I'd been to Seattle's Best Coffee before, but it was with my nemesis, Shanghai. Because I had actively despised each and every moment spent with Shanghai that evening, I had subsequently blocked out the exact location! Oh shit! I got on the phone and called Pablo, who (you guessed it, if you read this blog regularly) patiently gave me impeccable directions.

The day was really nice for late November, and The Adoxist Society was gathered out on the patio of Seattle's Best Coffee, books spread all about on tables and chairs. I was dazzlingly happy. I nearly forgot to reply to Jason's and Ben's friendly introductions and greetings as I unpacked my bag, but I was really gratified when they fell upon the titles I'd brought like they'd missed breakfast and lunch.

Speaking of what I brought to swap, I have to admit that I struggled about this for several days. I've noticed that bookworms often tend to hoard really good stuff and trade stuff that is:
a) really shit reading
b) in really shitty condition
c) really shit reading that's in really shitty condition.

Because I like to rescue books and people like to give me books, I have plenty of the first group. Because this is Korea, and English-language books are a relatively scarce commodity, I also have plenty of books that are in the second group. And I also have a boatload of books in the last group because I rescued some books from Pablo last year.

Pablo had been given a bunch of books by a well-meaning Aussie friend who'd gone to a secondhand store in Australia and just grabbed a bunch of crap, including historical romance novels, much to Pablo's great disgust. ("I told him I was interested in history!") Pablo let the books gather dust for a year or two, then when he started making noises about their next stop being "the rubbish pile", I said, "Oh now, they can't be that bad!" and insisted that he bring them to me. He did. Yeah, it was and is a pretty cruddy selection, but I salvaged what I wanted, bookcrossed some, and put the rest on a shelf in my office.

Anyway, I wanted to unload this category c) stuff, but felt strongly that I should include books that would add variety and sparkle to the swap, if that makes sense. So here's what I swapped:

1. Twilight Of The Superheroes -Deborah Eisenberg (short story collection). [It got a rave review in Time magazine, and it's got a really cute cover that grabs everyone's attention, but the stories were a little too New Yorker-ish for me. I hate that I didn't like this book more.]

2. Independence Day -Richard Ford (novel) [I really love Ford's writing, but the Frank Bascombe novels just don't float my boat. I say this, fully planning to buy The Lay Of Land, the newest in the trilogy soon. I thought this would be a good swap, because it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction a few years ago.]

3. Vernon God Little -DBC Pierre (novel) [I really thought I would enjoy VGL more, but the satire annoyed me after a while. I was eager to find an appreciative reader for this book.]

4. Blow Fly - Patricia Cornwell (novel) [Just not my genre, but I wanted to add variety to the selection I was offering.]

5. Venetian Song -Kay Nolte Smith (novel) [One of Pablo's castoffs. I wasn't interested in it either, but the story looks like it could be good, and the cover is pretty.]

6. The Water-Method Man -John Irving (novel) [This is one of Irving's early novels. It contains the seeds of greatness that went on to bear fruit a few years later in The World According To Garp.]

7. The Rule Of Four -Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason (novel) [Maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm under the impression that it's sort of like The Da Vinci Code.]

8. Teacher Man -Frank McCourt (memoir) [read and enjoyed, but felt as if I'd read it before in his previous works.]

9. Left For Dead -Beck Weathers (memoir) [Weathers was one of the people on the ill-fated Everest expedition written about in Into Thin Air]

10. The Friendship Factor -Alan Loy McGinnis (self-help) [This was a RABCK from a fellow Bookcrosser. Very nice of him or her, but I don't really care for self-help books. I thought this might possibly fall into the appreciative hands of a Korean who reads at a fairly high English level. Koreans are relentless self-improvers.]

11. The Bonesetter's Daughter -Amy Tan (novel) [read and enjoyed, but not enough to hang onto it indefinitely. I know there are many Amy Tan fans out there.]

12. Crime And Punishment -Fyodor Dostoevsky (novel) [I got 2 copies of this novel last year for my birthday. What were people trying to tell me? Although I thought a classic would round out my offerings nicely, C&P turned out to be a bit of a clunker, because there were already a couple of copies available for swap.]

Anyway, back to the swap. A pretty good selection, a little heavy on the classics, but CanadaBoy later told me that only just a few years ago, classics were the only novels available in Korea. Dang. I guess if I'd arrived in 2000, like I originally planned, I could have plugged many of the shameful literary gaps in my reading.

An unexpected pleasure was that while I was jumping on their titles like I'd missed both breakfast and lunch, Jason and Ben kept asking me: "Have you read this? Have you read this?" I forgot which one put Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett into my hands. (I've since found out that this is on a banned books list for some damn silly reason or another, so I'm determined to read it now!) Ben and I got into a lively discussion about The Catcher In The Rye -- we both like it.

Jason asked me if I'd read Ulysses, and without thinking, I replied, "My husband did", which made everyone laugh. Manfred, Sr. read it about 10 years ago, and he read so many sections aloud to me that I almost feel as if I read it as well. Actually, I read the Molly Bloom section.

The book swap lasted about 2 hours. I think it's more of a come-and-go sort of thing, but I couldn't bring myself to leave the conversation and the books. In fact, when Ben finally packed up all the books in a large black suitcase and wheeled it out of the coffeehouse, I was walking close behind. Ben treated everyone to hotteok, (which is a delicious pancake snack filled with a mixture of brown sugar, honey, cinnamon and peanuts) then he went in search of a taxi. I watched the wheels on that suitcase full of books roll out of sight. The next meeting is December 16.

*Of course* I walked away with a bag full of books:

1. Catch-22 -Joseph Heller (novel) [I've crapped out on this novel twice before, but I'm determined to finish it before I die or whatever. Besides, this novel came out in 1961, like so many other good things, lol.]

2. Shirley -Charlotte Bronte (novel) [I read Jane Eyre and I read Wuthering Heights. After WH, I decided that even though Charlotte Bronte had published more books, Emily Bronte could kick her sister's literary ass all over the place with just her one novel. But of course, there was that dark horse, Anne Bronte, whom I had not read. To be fair, I must read everything in the Bronte canon before I make my final judgment about which Bronte sister owns the other two. Shirley will help me get started on that project.]

3. Autobiography Of Malcolm X [I picked this up thinking that Manfred, Jr. might like to read it, but actually, I want to read it myself.]

4. The Pillars Of The Earth -Ken Follett (novel) [The first line grabbed me: "The small boys went early to the hanging". Couldn't resist.]

5. The Agony And The Ecstasy -Irving Stone (novel) [Another 1961 novel! What a year for literature! Of course, on the down side, it's also the same year that Hemingway committed suicide.]

6. Empty Promises -Ann Rule (true crime) [There's nothing like snuggling up with a true crime book and reading about pyschopaths that could be The People Next Door.]

7. Of Human Bondage -W. Somerset Maugham (novel) [I really liked this movie. Bette Davis was such a BITCH! Leslie Howard was such a doormat...I mean gentleman! I read somewhere that Maugham was popular and a bestselling author, but he never really got respect from the critics because he wrote simply and directly instead of in a more complicated style like Joyce or Faulkner.]

8. The Rainbow 9. Women In Love (Both novels by D.H. Lawrence) [BIG SCORE! I've wanted to read these novels one of which is a sequel to the other, but in my picky way, I wanted to own both so I could finish one and continue on to the next immediately. Well, I wanted the option!]

10. The Count Of Monte Cristo -Alexandre Dumas (novel) [Also picked this up for Manfred, Jr. since he liked the movie with James Cavizel. I never knew it was such a doorstop of a book! Maybe I'll give it a try myself.]

And.........how sick is this??? After the book swap and the hotteok, I headed back down the street towards Kyobo bookstore and picked up these 2 books:

1. Let's Eat Korean Food -Betsy O'Brien (Food guide)

2. The Known World -Edward P. Jones (novel)

So, to recap: 12 books out, 12 books in. CanadaBoy remarked, during a recent visit to my office: "You're going to need another bookshelf soon."

The Diminished Bookworm

I hate being sick. I'm sure most of the population feels the same way, but I know they can't possibly suffer as much as I do. [insert self-pitying tone here]

The reason? When I'm sick, I can't read!

No, I'm not suddenly stricken illiterate, thank goodness. But I have a terrible glimpse into what life must be like for nonreaders, and people with a reading disability.

When I'm sick, reading's a chore. It takes me forever. I read the same paragraph 4-5 times, and wonder what I've just read. I can only read a few pages then my attention wanders or I go to sleep. It's like someone has taken me off of Optical Cruise Control. My brain feels disoriented, like when I try on occasion to use my left hand exclusively.

The loss of this inner mechanism is how I can gauge if I'm really sick or just a bit under the weather. If I'm just under the weather, my reading life goes along, smoothly as always -- I'm propped in bed with my comforter, OTC medicines, and a tidy stack of books, reading along at my usual clip, but looking haggard enough for people to tiptoe around me, letting me get my "rest".

That hasn't been the case for over two weeks now. I'm propped in bed with all of the above, staring wearily at the stack of books wondering what the hell has happened to me. It's all very frustrating, because I still need to read. I still have the urge: I'm Bybee, therefore, I read.

So I grind along, and the results are not very pretty. For example, it's already mid-November, and I've only read one book! The last book I finished was on October 25. I had to abandon my next read, A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman because it was too overwhelming. How frustrating! I'd just finished the chapter about the Black Death, and was beginning to read about Charles The Bad, and I just couldn't go on, as much as I wanted to. I felt like Little Blackie, Mattie Ross's pony in True Grit. I dropped right there in my reading traces. I couldn't have continued even if Larry McMurtry and John Updike had been there taking turns propping the book for me, and the whole American Library Association had been clustered around the bed, cheering me on.

The book I did finish this month and the only reading I've been able to manage was something I'd had on my TBR bookshelf for 2 years: All Things Bright And Beautiful, by James Herriot, the second in a quartet of books about a veterinarian practicing in Yorkshire. I was under the impression that these books were the "Chicken Soup" books of 30 years ago, but I was wrong. Herriot's writing style is slightly awkward, but endearingly so. His stories of his animal patients and their sometimes eccentric owners are humorous and robust, and never at all cloying as I feared they might be. It took a long time to read this book, but I enjoyed it so much that I'm planning to read the whole quartet, starting with All Creatures Great And Small, when I lay my hands on a copy.

I was in a bookstore this weekend, and even browsing titles was work! (God help me if I ever come down with something more significant than bronchitis; I'll be a finished-off bookworm for sure.)

Optimistic that the "real" me is just lying in wait and will go back to cracking books with great ferocity one day soon, I bought 2 novels: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I looked at a copy of Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, but the absence of chapter breaks and the Capitialization in the middle of Sentences gave me a Headache.

I hate being sick. Bring on the cough, the fever, the stuffy nose, and all that goes with it -- I'll endure. Just give me back my essence of bookworminess!

Naked Without Baseball

Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!

-Jack Buck, (1924-2002) longtime St. Louis Cardinals announcer

The last week has been intense. I've been following the increasingly exciting saga of the St. Louis Cardinals, who defeated the Detroit Tigers in just FIVE games and won the world series on October 27, 2006.

Unbelievable but true: I don't just eat, sleep and breathe books. For 6 months out of the year, I'm also about baseball. My favorite team is the aforementioned 'Redbirds". If I can't see their games on TV, I'm usually at the computer, reading the play-by-play.

Although I'd rather see a Cardinals game than anything else, I will watch other teams. Watching baseball is soothing, calming and relaxing for me. Of course, if the Cards are playing, this isn't true -- I'm too emotionally wound up with their day-to-day fortunes.

I've even been watching the Korean baseball championships. I don't see much difference between Korean baseball and MLB, except that in the former, the strike zone seems really HUGE.

I'm being redundant, (so sue me) but for me, baseball is the perfect sport. I watch other sports from time to time (hockey, basketball and soccer) and although I enjoy them, I never really have that feeling of utter relaxation and concentration.

Speaking of soccer -- this will sound silly to seasoned soccer fans -- when I first began watching soccer last year, I was so amazed that the clock runs up instead of down. I spent most of those first games staring at the clock in fascination, losing track of the action on the pitch.

One of the many things I love about baseball is that there is no clock. Nine innings are played, more if there's a tie at the bottom of the ninth. When a win has been achieved by one team or the other, the game is finished, no matter how long it takes. Beautiful. The absence of a clock gives baseball a classic, historical feel. A feeling that an important ritual is being conducted.

This has been said before, so I'm not going to worry about being blasphemous: There's something liturgical about baseball. I get the same peaceful feeling watching a baseball game that I did when I was attending Episcopalian church services. For a brief time, all the snarls and snags in my life are combed smooth.


The Book Of Common Prayer is a wonderful example of how beautiful spoken language can be, and I feel the same way about the language of baseball. It feels so right to my ear, like music. It feels so good in my mouth, like a savory meal: Strike. Ball. Full count. Fastball. Curve ball. Hanging curve ball. Breaking ball. Pop fly. He flied out to center. He grounded into fielder's choice. Can of corn. Double play. Squeeze play at the plate. Home run. After 6 months of that on a daily basis, why would anyone ever want to listen to/talk about anything else?

The Cardinals were triumphant in just 5 games, but now the season's finished. I'm a lot closer to Siberia than I was when I was living in the United States, so winter here seems colder and bleaker. Add in the fact that there's no baseball until next spring. Pretty grim. Oh sure, there are sports news stories about off-season trades and players who have had surgery for their injuries, but those news tidbits hardly suffice to fill the gaping crater created by the absence of baseball.

The calendar is an enemy that s-l-o-w-l-y becomes a friend as spring training draws closer, then finally, it's the first day of the new season. As John Fogerty said:

we're born again/there's new grass on the field

I'm giddy with relief at having survived another off-season, making students and friends and family members suffer while I celebrate opening day by reading my favorite (no kidding!) poem, Casey At The Bat.

Right now, I'm happy and sad, euphoric and depressed, all at once. Too many emotions to deal with. I can't get them out in a sane-seeming manner, so I've got a plan: I'm going to damn well read them out. Yes, it's true: Baseball books are on the docket for the next few months. Here's the beginnings of a list I've cobbled together:

Men At Work: The Craft Of Baseball -George F. Will
[I think there's a chapter in this book about Cardinals manager Tony La Russa when he was a manager in the American League. Whenever I see George Will on news talk shows, he comes across as stiff and pompous, but when he discussed baseball in the Ken Burns documentary, he lost that stiffness and pomposity and seemed more alive. Unbelievably, he exuded something akin to sex appeal]

The Boys Of Summer -Roger Kahn
[Kahn's memoir of growing up in the 1930s and 40s in a household and neighborhood full of Brooklyn Dodgers fans. This is considered a classic in baseball literature]

Wait Till Next Year -Doris Kearns Goodwin
[Also a memoir, and also about the Dodgers, but the 1950s Dodgers, which was the most exciting and heartbreaking time to be a fan of theirs, as Goodwin shows. My only re-read on this list]

Early Innings: A Documentary History Of Baseball 1825-1908 -Dean A. Sullivan
[Being in love with baseball is a lot like being in love in general: I want to know every detail of its past. I want to know how it got started. I want to know what it was like in its infancy. I want to read about people who were playing it and watching it and thinking about it and writing about it a century before I was born. If that wasn't enough, there's a reprint of Casey At The Bat]

Well, that should get me started. I'm so glad I was lucky enough to be born a bookworm! How do nonreaders get through the long months of the off-season?

Books Read, 1995

In 1994, I didn't work, so for the first time, I was able to read more books in a year than Manfred, Sr. He protested that it wasn't a competition. He had a point; I would have read voraciously no matter what, but the competitive aspect gave me that little extra frisson of pleasure.

My victory status was short-lived. In April of 1995, I got a job working 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, and it really cut into my reading time. There was no way to sneak and read on the clock at my job. Believe me, I tried several times! As Merle Haggard said in one of his songs, I was rolling downhill like a snowball headed for Hell. Well, my reading totals were, anyway. 40 measly books for 1995! I swore and sulked. Manfred, Sr. reminded me that it wasn't a competition. Whatever.

1. The Good Husband -Gail Godwin (novel) [I think one of the main characters is dying, and her husband takes care of her. Another woman also becomes her caretaker, and she and the husband develop feelings for one another, but they're too well-bred to do anything about it till the end of the book]
2. Talk Before Sleep -Elizabeth Berg (novel) [Is one of the characters dying in this novel? I have a vague memory]
3. The Prodigal Women -Nancy Hale (novel) [First published in the 1940s. Out of print right now. It's time for this novel to be rediscovered]
4. Postcards -E. Annie Proulx (novel) [Loyal Blood accidentally kills his girlfriend, and goes on the lam for around 40 years. He sends postcards from the west back home to his family in Vermont. They also write postcards for a variety of reasons]
5. A Tremor Of Bliss: Contemporary Writers On The Saints -Paul Elie, editor (essays)
6. Flying in Place -Susan Palwick (novel) [???]
7. Violet Clay -Gail Godwin (novel) [The writing seemed a little stiff, the characters cardboardish. This was an earlier novel of Godwin's and I don't think she'd really found her voice yet]
8. Friends For Life -Meg Wolitzer (novel) [Cute. Fun]
9. Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? -Lorrie Moore (novel) [I really love Anagrams, one of Moore's earlier novels, but couldn't warm up to this one. I kind of dislike the title as well]
10. The Nun's Story -Kathryn Hulme (novel) [This was a re-read from my high school days. What can I say? I love this book, although Sister Luke seems a little too intense to be true]
11. Three Nuns -Sarah Harris (nonfiction) [bad writing style]
12. Holy Company: Christian Heroes And Heroines -Elliot Wright (essays) [An assortment of Christian heroes and heroines, each one a chapter and arranged by the Beatitudes. Lively, informative and enjoyable]
13. A Map Of The World -Jane Hamilton (novel) [Alice is taking care of her friend's kids one day. She turns her back for a moment and the 2 year old drowns in the pond. Her troubles are just beginning though, as she is accused of child abuse by a student she has seen at her job as a school nurse. The book is divided into three sections. Alice narrates the first and third, and her husband narrates the middle one, which seemed a little jarring. Otherwise, an enjoyable but bleak and depressing read]
14. A Right To Be Merry -Sister Mary Francis, P.C.C. [Life in a Poor Claires convent. Although it's a little perky, it was a relief after book after book about what's wrong with being a nun and why nuns were leaving convents in hordes around this time]
15. The Book Of Ruth -Jane Hamilton (novel) [An earlier novel by the author of A Map Of The World. Ruth is saddled with two of the most unsavory characters in recent modern fiction: Her mother, May, whose mean mouth proves to be her undoing, and her husband, Ruby who is very much on the scuzzy side of life -- the way Ruth/Hamilton describes Ruby, you wonder how Ruth could even inhabit a room with him, much less get pregnant by him twice. So dark and depressing but so well-written]
16. Duplicate Keys -Jane Smiley (novel) [A mystery/suspense novel; one of Smiley's earlier efforts. Not my type of book]
17. The Screwtape Letters -C.S. Lewis (novel) [Recommended by a clergyman. A series of "letters" from Screwtape, a master tempter-tactician, to Wormwood, his incompetent apprentice. This is the only Lewis writing I really like]
18. The Virgin Suicides -Jeffrey Eugenides (novel) [I didn't like it. The narration seemed all wrong to me]
19. The Stone Diaries -Carol Shields (novel) [This interesting and original novel follows Daisy from her childhood to her first short, strange marriage, to her second marriage with an older man she's known since childhood, through widowhood and old age. The photos at the end of the novel of the characters are disconcerting]
20. Mariette In Ecstasy -Ron Hansen (novel) [Mariette's a nun. She's having visions. Is she just high-strung, or is she faking? No one really knows what to make of it all. The other nuns are awed and a little jealous]
21. Dancer With Bruised Knees -Lynne McFall (novel) [???]
22. Ladder Of Years -Anne Tyler (novel) [Delia just walks away from her home one day and makes a new life for herself away from Baltimore and her doctor husband and their children. When the family writes the missing person's description, they can't even get her basic stats right]
23. The Basketball Diaries -Jim Carroll (memoir) [muddled and boring]
24. Splendora -Edward Swift (novel) [???]
25. Kristin Lavransdatter -Sigrid Undset (trilogy of novels)
26. The Information -Martin Amis (novel) [???]
27. Madame Bovary -Gustave Flaubert (novel) [How did Flaubert manage it? He wrote a novel about a complete 19th century airhead that readers find themselves sympathizing with. The key is his no-nonsense non-flowery writing style. It packs a bigger punch than if he'd written in the overblown, flowery, romantic style that Emma herself was so fond of reading]
28. The Republic Of Love -Carol Shields (novel) [???]
29. I, Asimov: A Memoir -Issac Asimov (memoir) [Entertaining and very readable memoir by the prolific writer]
30. One Writer's Beginnings -Eudora Welty (memoir) [Wonderful depiction of her childhood in Jackson, Mississippi; I think it flags a little at the end, when she's in college then working]
31. The Liar's Club -Mary Karr (memoir) [??? I feel a little guilty, like I should remember reading this book. Okay, re-read list!]
32. Bogart: In Search Of My Father -Stephen Humphrey Bogart (memoir) [Intelligent and thoughtful]
33. Sights Unseen -Kaye Gibbons (novel) [???]
34. Diary Of A Fat Housewife -Rosemary Green (memoir) [Former beauty queen struggles with her weight. Each diary entry starts with her weight. She has a big-time eating disorder. By the end of the book, she's made some good progress, but she's stalled at 208 and still struggling, so I liked that it wasn't all wrapped up neatly and she's in a size 4]
35. Three Women At The Water's Edge -Nancy Thayer (novel) [Thayer's got a nice touch when she's writing about domestic details]
36. Travels With Lizbeth -Lars Eighner (memoir) [Eighner, a homeless guy with a dog is living on the streets of Austin, Texas. He has several chances to be un-homeless, but the condition is that he part from his dog, Lizbeth, which he refuses to do. This book really stuck out in my mind. I'd read it again, anytime. Highly recommended]
37. Last House -M.F.K. Fisher (memoir)
38. Among Friends -M.F.K. Fisher (memoir)
39. Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me -M.F.K. Fisher (memoir) [What I really wanted to read when I was reading all these M.F.K. Fisher books was How To Cook A Wolf, which she wrote and published during WWII and food rationing, but couldn't find a copy. I haven't yet, and I still want to read this book! I love M.F.K. Fisher's writing style...feel like I could just melt into her prose]
40. The Van -Roddy Doyle (novel) [re-read]

Books Read, 1994

I'd forgotten that 1994 was a big book-reading year for me. I was a stay-at-home mom that year. Far from feeling bored, I reveled in all that extra reading time!

1. The Interior Castle: The Art And Life of Jean Stafford -Ann Hulbert (biography) [I wrote that I hated this book, but I have no memory of why]
2. Clockers -Richard Price (novel) [All I remember is that the main character is a drug dealer with a bad stomach, which turns out to be an ulcer. He has to drink Yoo-Hoo all the time.]
3. Maybe The Moon -Armistead Maupin [???]
4. Judy Garland: The Secret Life Of An American Legend -David Shipman (biography) [If you read a biography of Judy Garland, read this one and not that loathsome one by Gerald Clarke!]
5. Father Melancholy's Daughter -Gail Godwin (novel) [I really love this novel about an Episcopalian priest's daughter. It embarrasses me to say so now, but I became an Episcopalian for a few years chiefly because of this novel]
6. Love And Reruns In Adams County -Mark Spencer (novel) [If you see this entertaining novel about Lon, a baseball player who was a star in high school but struck out in the minor leagues, and his beautiful first love, Pam, who now works at McDonald's and her second husband, Bobby, who is a little strange, and his ugly mistress, Becky -- get it and read it. These characters will stick in your mind long after you've finished the book.]
7. Love Medicine -Louise Erdrich (novel) [???]
8. Domestic Life -Paula Webb (novel) [???]
9. The Robber Bride -Margaret Atwood (novel) [What I remember is that one of the characters pretends to be friends with the others, but she's a man-stealer and even fakes having cancer!]
10. The Van -Roddy Doyle (novel) [The last novel in The Barrytown Trilogy, and possibly, the funniest. Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr. has been laid off, and he's trying to find ways to fill his time. When his friend, Bimbo is also "made redundant", they find an ancient, filthy and decrepit fish-and chips van, and in their raggedy way, set out to be successful businessmen.]
11. Daphne Du Maurier -Margaret Forster (biography) [I got the impression from this biography that Du Maurier didn't really like writing all that much, and it didn't come easily for her. But she definitely had her moment in the sun with Rebecca!]
12. The Snapper -Roddy Doyle (novel) [The second novel in The Barrytown Trilogy. Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant, and not saying who's responsible. Of course all of Barrytown is dying to know. Also very funny]
13. The Commitments -Roddy Doyle (novel) [The first novel in The Barrytown Trilogy. I saw the movie first, and although the novel is very much like the movie, I slightly preferred the movie. Well, it is about music, so it's best as an auditory experience. Still highly recommend the novel, though]
14. Exposure -Kathryn Harrison (novel) [???]
15. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha -Roddy Doyle (novel) [Doyle is really great at portraying childhood. This seems to be a transition novel for Doyle -- it has some funny bits like The Barrytown Trilogy, but more serious in tone like his follow-up novel The Woman Who Walked Into Doors]
16. Straight Through The Night -Edward Allen (novel) [Chuck Deckle is downwardly mobile. He's a quasi-intellectual who's now working as a butcher for a kosher meat processing company. His co-workers are both mean and stupid and ridicule him at every turn. Chuck's rage is slow-simmering and progressively ugly. A well-written but really bleak novel]
17. She Needed Me -Walter Kirn (novel) [???]
18. Brightness Falls -Jay McInerney (novel) [I have a vague impression that this novel is about the Greedy Old 1980s, and that it's big and bloated like that decade]
19. Animal Farm -George Orwell (novel) [Manfred, Jr. and I read this together at bedtime. Manfred, Sr. was laughing at the satire as he listened, and Manfred, Jr. wanted to know what was so funny, so he got the whole Communism subtext right then and there]
20. The Orton Diaries -John Lahr, Editor (memoir/biography)
21. Old Friends -Tracy Kidder (nonfiction) [Tracy Kidder spends time in a nursing home. Well-written and informative. I'm a huge Kidder fan, although I had to work to get through The Soul Of A New Machine]
22. Skipped Parts -Tim Sandlin (novel) [Although the premise for this novel made my skin crawl a bit, I still thought it was interesting: It's 1960-something. A 13 year old boy and his immature hard-drinking mother have been "exiled" to Wyoming from the south by the boy's grandfather because of the mother's embarassing behavior. The boy meets a girl at school, and they hit it off. Soon, the boy's mother is encouraging them to take it to the max. They do, and soon, these middle-schoolers are prospective parents. Anyway, even though all of this sounds repellent, in the hands of a different writer, I think it might have been good, but actually the writing is pretty dull. What a strange combination]
23. The Devil's Dream -Lee Smith (novel) [I like Lee Smith, but can't remember this novel. The re-read pile is getting mountainous]
24. The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien -Oscar Hijuelos (novel) [???]
25. You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker -John Keats (biography) [This biographer asserts that Parker didn't say a lot of those scathing and witty things she's known for, which was a little disappointing. Still, an interesting look at this writer and her times]
26. Black Mountain Breakdown -Lee Smith (novel) [???]
27. Prick Up Your Ears -John Lahr (biography) [Biography of playwright Joe Orton who was the darling of the London stage in the 1960's. He seems to have been a prankish sort all of his life -- he went to prison for a while for defacing library books! Later on, this humor would show up in the plays he wrote, where he's just basically fucking with the audience. He was fond of the fast life and was violently murdered by his (male) lover who committed suicide directly after killing Orton]
28. Kicking Tomorrow -Daniel Richler (novel) [???]
29. Long Quiet Highway -Natalie Goldberg (nonfiction) [Goldberg talks more about her Zen journey here, and how her Zen master influenced her life. Interesting to compare it to #36 for this year]
30. Primitive People -Francine Prose [I don't remember this novel, but I wish I did. I've always thought that Prose was a great last name for a novelist]
31. Different Seasons -Stephen King (4 novellas) [Another loan from my friend Amy, the rabid Stephen King fan. Her favorite of the 4 novellas was Apt Pupil. Mine was Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption. When I recommend King to the small handful of people who have not read him, I mention this collection and Misery.]
32. For Love -Sue Miller (novel) [???]
33. Sin -Josephine Hart (novel) [I don't remember what this novel is about, but I have an unfavorable impression that it's a piece of crap. I don't know why, sorry]
34. Feather Crowns -Bobbie Ann Mason (novel) [???]
35. The Great Divorce -Valerie Martin (novel) [???]
36. The Empty Mirror -Janwillem van de Wetering (nonfiction) [In the late 1950s, a Dutch guy shows up at a Japanese Zen monastery and stays there for several months, trying to learn the right path. It's not like other Zen encounters that usually sound wide-eyed and so perky and dripping with understanding and enlightenment, no, de Wetering is often grumpy and frustrated, and even at the end, he leaves the monastery, not sure if the whole thing was a waste of time. A quick, humorous read]
37. The Lilac Bus -Maeve Binchy (short stories) [Binchy is great comfort reading. Grab some hot chocolate and an afghan and curl up on the couch]
38. The Light In The Forest -Conrad Richter (novel) [??? I really hate it that I can't remember this novel! I'm a huge fan of Richter's The Awakening Land trilogy]
39.Cadillac Jack -Larry McMurtry (novel) [The great characters you've come to expect from McMurtry against the backdrop of the flea market circuit]
40.Fade -Robert Cormier (novel) [Paul has discovered that he can fade away to nothingness. This is a family trait that his uncle also shares, as well as generations subsequent to Paul's]
41. Marlene Dietrich -Maria Riva (biography) [This is by Dietrich's only child, and it's really well-done, very intelligent]
42.Oh! -Mary Robison (novel) [???]
43.Miss Lonelyhearts -Nathanael West (novel) [An unnamed newspaper writer known only to us as "Miss Lonelyhearts" answers letters for a lonely hearts column, and starts to feel the overwhelming responsibility of saving all those who write to him. His editor, a real bastard, ridicules both his finer feelings and those people who write in to the newspaper, and in the process, destroys Miss Lonelyhearts]
44. Souls Raised From The Dead -Doris Betts (novel) [???]
45. Louisa May: A Modern Biography Of Louisa May Alcott -Martha Saxton (biography) [This seems more like a biography of Bronson Alcott, Louisa's father, with Louisa in there as an afterthought. Saxton tries to assert that Louisa was in love with Thoreau, but her evidence is weak. Also, she gets something about Little Women wrong. It's minor, but it stuck in my craw, and lessened my enjoyment of this biography]
46. In A Country Of Mothers -A.M. Homes (novel) [???]
47.Portrait Of A Marriage -Nigel Nicolson (biography) [Nigel Nicolson is the son of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. Another interesting and intelligent biography by a child with a famous and unconventional parent]
48.Kate Chopin -Emily Toth (biography) [a little boring in spots, but okay]
49.On Cukor -Gavin Lambert (nonfiction) [interviews with director George Cukor as he discusses his films and respectful thoughtful commentary by Lambert. They both love and breathe film and the shining results show in this book . Great movie stills as well]
50.The Shipping News -E. Annie Proulx (novel) [After I read this novel, I wanted to start afresh in Newfoundland]
51.Mama Makes Up Her Mind -Bailey White (Essays) [When Bailey White writes about her mother, her prose sparkles. When Mama isn't present, she's not as effective. Also, she has a tendency to end all of her essays with a neat little *click* of a conclusion that grated on my nerves after a while]
52.Platforms -Pagan Kennedy (nonfiction) [Funny and irreverent look back at all that was charming and goofy about the 1970s. Great fun to read -- not highly polished -- instead, it reads like a long, friendly zine.]
53.Charms For The Easy Life -Kaye Gibbons (novel) [I wrote that I liked this novel, but don't remember why. Another for the re-read list]
54.Confessions Of A Crap Artist -Philip K. Dick (novel) [Philip K. Dick was well-known in the science-fiction world. He also wrote several mainstream novels, but had less success getting them published. Crap Artist was written in 1959, but didn't see print until the mid-1970s. It was a little ahead of its time, with its minimalist style, the shifting viewpoint, and population of the literary landscape with brand names and TV shows. Entertaining]
55. Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years -Margaret Mead (memoir) [I really enjoyed Mead's memoir. I'd read it again, anytime! Show me a copy!]
56. How To Reduce Your Risk Of Breast Cancer -Jon J. Michnovicz [A friend who had had an episode with breast cancer insisted I read this book. It was full of good information about diet which is now common knowledge, written in a reader-friendly style. Some recipes are included that are really healthy and also tasty]
57. The Man In The High Castle -Philip K. Dick (novel) [A "what-if?" novel in which the Axis wins World War II, and they divide up the United States. The main character is in hot water because he wrote a "what-if?" novel, imagining that the Allies won WWII. I'm really not a SF/Fantasy reader, but I really like this novel, which won the Hugo award in the early 1960s]
58. The Finishing School -Gail Godwin (novel) [???]
59. A Southern Family -Gail Godwin (novel) [???]
60. Suicide Blonde -Darcy Steinke (novel) [???]

Books Read, 1993

Question marks in brackets [???] = I have absolutely no recollection of reading this book. Was it really me? Was there a co-keeper of this journal that I'm not aware of?

1. Not The End Of The World -Rebecca Stowe (novel) [???]

2. At The Sign Of The Naked Waiter -Amy Herrick (novel) [???]

3. We Have Always Lived In The Castle -Shirley Jackson (novel) [Finally, a book I remember! This is my favorite Shirley Jackson novel; I recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet]

4. The Object Of My Affection -Stephen McCauley (novel) [I have a vague memory of a gay narrator, very dry and witty writing style. Was this made into a movie with Madonna or Jennifer Aniston?]

5. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot - John Callahan (memoir) [Callahan's tasteless and irreverent memoir of how he became a paraplegic, complete with his hysterically funny cartoons. I laughed, I was ashamed, then I laughed some more]

6. The Haunting Of Hill House -Shirley Jackson (novel) [I like this psychological horror story almost as much as I like Castle]

7. The Risk Pool -Richard Russo (novel) [???]

8. The Girl In A Swing -Richard Adams (novel) [one of my favorites; this was a re-reading, and I've read it again twice in the past 13 years]

9. Forty Whacks: New Evidence In The Life and Legend Of Lizzie Borden -David Kent (true crime) [I enjoy reading about Lizzie Borden]

10. Come Along With Me -Shirley Jackson (novel fragment) [too short to really be considered a fragment, but if Jackson had lived to complete this novel, I know she would've produced another winner]

11. The Year It Rained -Crescent Dragonwagon (novel) [???]

12. Cowboys Are My Weakness -Pam Houston (short stories) [???]

13. Possession -A.S. Byatt (novel) [I've put this on my re-read list]

14. In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs -Tobias Wolff (short stories) [ditto]

15. All The Pretty Horses -Cormac McCarthy (novel) [I wrote that I hated this novel, but don't remember why. I feel as if I should NOT have hated it. Should I re-read?]

16. The Housewife And The Assassin -Susan Trott (novel) [???]

17. She's Come Undone -Wally Lamb (novel) [enjoyed, but I thought it went on too long]

18. Small Spaces Between Emergencies -Alison Moore (short stories) [???]

19. Where The Red Fern Grows -Wilson Rawls (novel) [I didn't read this when I was a child, so Manfred, Jr. and I read it together at bedtime for a couple of weeks. A little sentimental, but enjoyable]

20. July 7th -Jill McCorkle (novel) [???]

21. Disguises Of Love -Robbie MacCauley (novel) [???]

22. The Bridges Of Madison County -Robert James Waller (novel) [I didn't like this novel at all. I was turned off when the male protagonist, the photographer, kept comparing himself to a peregrine. WTF? Clint Eastwood improved the story some in the movie version, but that's not saying much. Pablo said that when he saw the movie, he kept shouting at the screen: "No, Clint, no! What are you doing?"]

23. The Firm -John Grisham (novel) [???]

24. The Easy Way Out -Stephen McCauley (novel) [???]

25. Hairdo -Sarah Gilbert (novel) [I have a vague memory of a beauty pageant contestant bleaching her teeth with Clorox, but I'm not 100% sure that I've got the right novel]

26. Ramona Forever -Beverly Cleary (novel) [another book that Manfred, Jr. and I read together at bedtime. RF involved the continuing adventures of the well-known Quimby family. Manfred, Sr. grumbled at me for inflating my book totals by adding children's books to my reading list. I replied that children's literature was a legitimate genre and shouldn't be dismissed so easily, but what I was really thinking was: "Hey buddy, it's MY fucking reading journal!"]

27. The Duke Of Deception -Geoffrey Wolff (biography/memoir) [Geoffrey Wolff's memoir of his and Tobias' father. On the re-read list]

28. The Evening Star -Larry McMurtry (novel) [Easy to remember. I love everything McMurtry's written]

29. Rambling Rose -Calder Willingham (novel) [???]

30. Like Water For Chocolate -Laura Esquivel (novel) [highly enjoyable. On the re-read list]

31. The Mountain Lion -Jean Stafford (novel) [Stafford's first novel, Boston Adventure was a runaway bestseller during WWII, but it's really reader-unfriendly! Think Henry James. Now think Henry James on one of his bad days, and you'll have Boston Adventure. The Mountain Lion, by contrast is a short well-written novel that shows off Stafford's talents to their best advantage. She went on to win the 1970 (?) Pulitzer Prize for her short stories]

32. Bitter Fame: A Biography Of Sylvia Plath -Anne Stevenson (biography) [More memory trouble. Is this the biographer that was jeered for going along with letting Ted Hughes have final manuscript approval, or did she go along at first then rebel?]

33. The Lost Language Of Cranes -David Leavitt (novel) [???]

34. Wild Mind: Living The Writer's Life -Natalie Goldberg (nonfiction) [I enjoy Goldberg's books about writing -- they're fun and slightly goofy, but full of sunlight and generosity and cheer. For a while, I was doing the automatic writing exercise where you just let it all hang out on the page, telling your internal editor to take a hike. Unfortunately, my internal editor wouldn't leave. She wouldn't even put on her shoes]

35. Katherine Mansfield: A Critical Study -Sylvia Berkman (literary criticism) [starchy, academic writing]

36. Good Rockin' Tonight -William Hauptman (short stories) [???]

37. Jack -A.M. Homes (novel) [I think this is about a young teenaged boy whose parents are divorced and he finds out that his father is gay]

38. Pigs In Heaven -Barbara Kingsolver (novel) [I was disappointed in this sequel to The Bean Trees. I liked the character of Taylor Greer so much that when Kingsolver switched from first-person narration to third-person narration, it was too jarring]

39. Vanished -Mary McGarry Morris (novel) [???]

40. Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life -Claire Tomalin (biography) [really interesting. Tomalin has a theory that Mansfield caught the TB that would kill her at age 34 from none other than D.H. Lawrence. For a few months in the nineteen-tens, Mansfield and her lover, J. Middleton Murray were living with Lawrence and his wife, Frieda. Tomalin also speculates whether Mansfield contracted a venereal disease in her early womanhood which undermined her health, and discusses a story that Mansfield may or may not have plagiarized from Chekov. Pretty juicy stuff for a literary biography. Good research, good writing]

41. Needful Things -Stephen King (novel) [About this time in my life, I made a new friend, Amy. Amy was a rabid Stephen King fan. For her, there was no other author. She also had frequent sexual fantasies about King that she shared with me in graphic detail. When Amy found out that I'd only read Carrie and Misery, she helpfully began to loan me copies of King's novels to plug up these almost unforgivable gaps in my reading experience.

42. The Life Of Katherine Mansfield -Antony Alpers (biography) [sigh...after the Tomalin biography, it was pretty dull. How can "The Life" compare favorably with "The Secret Life"?]

43. Bastard Out Of Carolina -Dorothy Allison (novel) [bleak but enjoyable]

44. Dolores Claiborne -Stephen King (novel) [Amy was indignant over Dolores' lot in life, and went on about all the ways she would have dealt with that husband much earlier and much more harshly. She also had a dream where she met Stephen King's wife, Tabitha, and convinced her to step aside and let her, Amy, be his muse and lover, not necessarily in that order]

45. Hunger -Knut Hamsun (novel) [this short novel, originally published in Norway in the late 19th century really packs a wallop. A young unnamed narrator is starving on the streets of Christiania. He's convinced of his own genius, but he's going mad as a side effect of hunger and privation. Somehow, just as he's about to go over the edge in every possible way, he manages to pull back just in time. Hemingway is a famous example of one of the many writers who were influenced by Hamsun. If you haven't read Hunger, go out and find a copy. Knut Hamsun won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920.]

46. Foxfire - Joyce Carol Oates (novel) [I'm a big JCO fan, and I enjoyed this story of a girl gang in the 1950s]

Reading Journal, 1993-1998

About a quarter of a century ago, I got the idea to keep a reading journal because Manfred, Sr. was keeping one. It would be fun to compete with him and see who read more books per year. Problem: My first attempts at journaling fell flat because I always forgot to write the books down, so at the end of the year, Manfred, Sr. had officially read oh, 50 and I'd read, according to my journal, 3.

Part of the problem was that I didn't have a proper reading journal at first. I merely recorded my lists in the backs of books, where there's always a page or two of blank paper. (Why is that? I've never known. When I was in elementary school and I ran short on drawing paper, I'd raid my books for a fresh supply. I knew that's not what the paper was there for, but I appreciated publishers for including blank pages for life's little emergencies.)

I have a complete list for 1990, but have no idea what I read because the list is at the end of a book called INSIDE OSCAR, and I have no idea where that book might be. I know the total for that year was 40, though. It sounded Biblical.

The only other complete list is from 1984, the year Manfred, Jr. was born, and I don't have an idea of which book I wrote that list in. I don't even remember the total for that year. All I remember are numerous collections of short stories (pregnancy interfered with my concentration big-time) Dr. Spock and a couple of novels by Susan Fromberg Schaffer. I remember lying on my back in bed reading and thinking that the one good thing about my stomach getting bigger and bigger was that when I propped a book there, it was closer to eye-level.

Manfred, Jr.'s birth is the event that changed my life irrevocably, but I'll be damned if I can remember what book I was reading on that date 22 years ago. I guess I thought that having a reading list would mean that it was preserved forever. Well, it is...somewhere. Whoops. Anyway, I'll bet that I was reading a classic novel because I knew the baby's birth was getting close and I wanted him/her to be impressed with me. As if.

Fast-forward to Christmas, 1992. Manfreds Sr. and Jr. gave me a 4x6 blank book for my book lists, and I used it faithfully for the next several years until it was filled up. I found that first little book when I was was in the US a couple of months ago, and threw it in a book box that I sent to myself, which arrived yesterday. Paging through my reading journal last night, I was astounded at all I'd read ...and forgotten!

Also included in the book were movie lists that grew progressively more incomplete as the years wore on. At the end of a year, I'd panic and remember to do my movie list, and Manfred, Jr. would gamely sit with me and we'd both try to reconstruct it from memory. Consequently, it looks as if I saw just a few children's movies during those years.

Also at the back of the book are the lyrics to "Louie Louie". I got tired of not knowing what the *hell* the Kingsmen were saying and decided to look up the lyrics on the internet. In addition, there are elaborate (for me) dinner menus scrawled in crayon on the endpapers-- probably written when the in-laws were coming for a weekend visit.

What's also fun but a little cringeworthy is revisiting my attempts to review books. Most of them come off as awkward but brief, and I kind of get a sense of why I liked the book. Other comments are long-winded, pompous and even more awkward. I also winced when I saw my attempt at a grading system:

Excellent
Very Good
Very Pretty Good [category invented later, when I struggled to rate a book of essays by Bailey White]
Pretty Good
Fair
Yecch

After a couple of years, I abandoned this system, and went with an adjective or terse phrase to convey my impressions: "Poignant." "Fun." "Disappointing." "First novel; she hadn't turned the corner yet." "I want my own copy." [that was of course reserved for library books]

I abandoned this second system when I let a bookworm friend examine my reading journal and she hooted at these descriptions. To this day, I can't even read the word poignant without feeling all sweaty and embarrassed. After that, I stuck with just a strict accounting of what I'd read, and only jotted a quick impression if I was really motivated -- a trend that continues in my second reading journal 1999-present.

Since I've read so much that I can't remember, starting next entry, I'll put up my lists and see if these titles jog any memories for other bookworms.