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.

December 2014 Reading

Reading got real in December.  When the goal is in sight, I've got eyeballs and I am not afraid to use them.

1. Insomnia - Stephen King. (novel)  This book is now firmly ensconced in my shelf of Stephen King favorites.  Sleep and death are so often compared; King takes this conceit and turns it inside out. An unusual and attractive element of this novel is an action hero who is 70 years old!  I hope this is made into a movie or TV series.

2. The Paris Architect - Charles Belfoure. (novel)  Lucien Bernard is an architect living in Nazi-occupied Paris who gets caught up in the scheme of building hiding places for Jews, although he really has no empathy for them.  I enjoyed Belfoure's hardboiled style and his rat-a-tat dialogue. He reminds me of Ken Follett. Again, I would like to see a movie version.

3. Mrs. Mike - Benedict and Nancy Freedman. (novel)  16-year-old Katherine Mary O'Fallon goes from her home in Boston up to her uncle's home in Calgary, Canada to improve her health.  After a short time, she meets and marries Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman Mike Flanigan.  Soon after the marriage, he is reassigned to a far northern region.  Parts of this book, with its gritty descriptions of life in these remote outposts, appealed to me, but the narrative conventions of the 1940s as well as some of the plot devices have not helped the book to age as gracefully as it might have.

4. Marbles - Ellen Forney. (graphic novel)  Forney's story of her several-years' struggle to find a workable balance of medication for her bipolar symptoms.  I love her artwork; it reminds me of Alison Bechdel's, except with these madly delightful flourishes.

5. Touching the Void - Joe Simpson. (memoir)  In 1985, while hiking in the Peruvian Andes, Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, met with an accident in which Yates presumed Simpson had died, and cut the rope that bound them together on their climb. Simpson was still alive however, with a badly broken leg. Although the story is dramatic and riveting, it was a difficult read.  I have trouble relating to the need to conquer a mountain of ice.  Also, the book was heavy with mountaineering jargon.

6. Lila - Marilynne Robinson. (novel)  A sequel to Robinson's earlier novel, Gilead, which is told in letters written by Lila's much-older husband, Reverend John Ames.  Lila is about the title character's odd childhood with a band of drifters in 1920s and 30s America, and how she eventually met and married "that old man".   Robinson's descriptions of this hardscrabble life hearken back to Steinbeck, but also resonate clearly with a modern reader's sensibilities. Because Lila's upbringing was unconventional and her education limited, her responses to things are also unconventional.  I read a review in which she was referred to as "a Faulknerian idiot", which is just not true.  Perhaps the reviewer only meant to show his or her erudition. Unfortunately, they ended up showing something else. Lila reminds me of the Bible; every sort of language you could wish for is in this novel to be pondered and savored.  I wouldn't be surprised if Robinson snags herself another Pulitzer.

7. Cardboard - Doug TenNapel. (graphic novel)  Cam's father can't find carpentry work anywhere. He brings home an empty cardboard box for his son's birthday, and creates a figure for him. The cardboard is magic and the figure comes to life.  Things get out of hand because of a rotten neighbor kid, Marcus, and Cam has to save the day.  All the characters feel real, which gives the story a good base for the magical stuff. I imagine the ideal reader for this book as a boy in 4th-6th grade.

8. A Girl From Yamhill - Beverly Cleary. (memoir)  The author of the Ramona books details her childhood in 1920s and early 1930s Oregon until she departs for college in California. She was an only child and her parents, perhaps because of their own disappointments, were emotionally distant, especially her mother.  This information surprised me and made my heart ache for her, but although Cleary relays the frustration she felt at the time, she doesn't wallow in self-pity.

9. My Own Two Feet - Beverly Cleary. (memoir)  Cleary takes up her life story again from her college days during the Depression, through WWII, when she worked as a hospital librarian on an army post, and ends with her as a newly-minted children's author.  Cleary's parents become more overbearing as they oppose her romance with Clarence Cleary because he's Catholic.  Both of these books are straightforward and entertaining. It was a treat to read both volumes, one after the other.

10. Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? - Roz Chast. (graphic novel/memoir)  After years of not "having to deal", Roz Chast finds herself faced with two parents well over 90 years old who can't live unassisted any more, but they aren't accepting the fact gracefully.  Scary look at the costs of elder care in America and the implications of lingering illnesses and the shifting relationships as parents become helpless and Chast, an only child, is faced with making decisions about their lives and finances.  As the only daughter and eldest child of a mother in her late 70s in increasingly perilous health, this book had a profoundly disturbing effect on me.

11. Poor Cow - Nell Dunn. (novel)  Written in 1967 and set in London, the "poor cow" of the title is Joy, who is married with a new baby.  She has a genius for making bad choices: Her husband makes his living as a thief, and is sent to prison.  She then falls in love with his partner in crime (who is a good sort, otherwise) who also ends up in the clink. Joy tries to stay faithful, but she's beautiful and young and swinging 60s London beckons. The novel is like a documentary filmed with three different cameras:  There's the omniscient author, commenting on the squalid state of things, but generally protective of her characters; there's Joy's dreamy, stream-of-consciousness thought; and there's the  badly spelled letters Joy writes to her lover, Dave in prison.  Brilliant with slice-of-life and atmosphere, but I could never escape the feeling that Dunn was merely slumming.

12. Tom's Wife - Alana Cash. (novel)  I didn't realize that this 2011 novel first breathed life as an indie film about ten years before.  Depression-era Arkansas. Annie is married to Tom, who alternately abuses and neglects her.  Not my favorite read for the month, but props to Cash for the authentic feel for time and setting. Now I want to find the movie.

13. What's Living in My Knickers? - Valerie Hamer. (nonfiction)  Tales from expats living in Asia about their medical and dental mishaps, often due to cultural differences.  I've been in South Korea ten years, and I thought I'd heard almost everything, but this book was an education.  I nearly missed my subway stop.  Both hilarious and horrifying.

14. Euphoria - Lily King. (novel)  Based loosely on anthropologist Margaret Mead and her second and third husbands during the time all three were in New Guinea, this is an incredible story about making sense of cultures so different from one's own, the excitement of discovery, and feelings of jealousy, both personal and professional.  I finished it a few days ago, and it hasn't settled with me yet.  I just keep walking around going, WOW and Wow.  Thanks to Susan at Pages Turned for recommending this one.  I'm going to call it now:  If Lila doesn't get the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, it will go to Lily King for Euphoria.

15. Daddy Needs a Drink - Robert Wilder. (humor, essays)  I shied away from this book for a while, thinking it was just going to be a bunch of poopy diaper anecdotes, but Wilder can actually write.  He keeps it real in beautifully crafted essays.

16. Gridlock - Matt Gaffney (nonfiction)  This book about the world of crossword puzzle makers and competitors was a fun read.  Gridlock reminded me of Word Freak, the book about Scrabble competitions and competitors.  I fell under its influence and now I've started doing crossword puzzles online every day.  A little gem of a book that I plucked from the shelves at the Busan English Library.

Booklight in August

I was pleased to be able to realize two reading goals this month: Finish the Maya Angelou memoirs and finally read The Well of Loneliness.

1. Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou. (memoir)  In the third volume of her memoirs, Maya, now in her early 20s, gets a job in a music store and meets a Greek-American who she is married to briefly.  After her divorce, she makes her living as a performer.  Her big break comes when she joins the cast of Porgy and Bess, which embarks on a European tour.

2. The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou. (memoir)  Maya meets a dazzling array of 20th century icons: Billie Holiday, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King.  She also begins to develop her skills as a writer as she moves to New York City and joins the Harlem Writer's Guild. After working for Dr. King for a while, she falls in love with a South African freedom fighter, Vusumzi Make. She and her son move with him to Cairo.  When Maya and Make separate, she goes on to Ghana.

3. All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes - Maya Angelou. (memoir) The story of Maya Angelou's years in Ghana. Among other things, she ponders on the differences between Africans and African-Americans. During this time, she tours in a revival of the Jean Genet play The Blacks, and goes to Germany and Italy. While in Berlin, there is a horrible, yet almost hilarious scene in which she and a Jewish friend have breakfast with a wealthy German family that is unashamedly racist.

4. A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou. (memoir) This volume takes place in the years between the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.  In an eerie coincidence, both men asked Maya Angelou to come work for them.  In both cases, she accepted, but postponed for personal reasons.  In the times during the postponements, both men were killed.  I read this book on Kindle, but it is probably best experienced on audiobook.  Narrated by the author, it won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.

5. Mom & Me & Mom - Maya Angelou. (memoir) - Maya Angelou's tribute to her mother, Vivian Baxter, "Lady B".

6. Financial Peace Revisited - Dave Ramsey. This book seems like a warm-up for The Total Money Makeover.  

7. Food Rules: An Eater's Manual - Michael Pollan.  Pollan boils down his previous writing into a list of rules for sane and healthy eating.  This small volume would be ideal for your Readathon stack.

8. The Well of Loneliness - Radclyffe Hall.  (novel) This classic and groundbreaking novel about lesbianism from 1928 is a bit melodramatic, but gets so many things right.  Although there is nothing graphic like one sees in Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Well was banned probably because of Hall's insistence that "inverts" are born, not made.  Also, Hall maintains that people like her should be able to live openly and proudly.  She asserts that their time will come, and the novel ends with a demand for sooner, rather than later.  I'm so glad this book was written and wasn't completely quashed.  I imagine it's been a comfort to many generations of readers.

9. Landline - Rainbow Rowell.  (novel) Over the course of three novels, Rowell wrote characters that are funny, lively, engaging, attractive and alive.  Then there's Landline.  Oh, Rainbow.

10. Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay.  I read this book of essays to take out the bad taste after reading Landline.  Roxane Gay is a marvelous writer.  Her mastery of the essay makes me want to fall at her feet.  In addition to feminism, she also covers race, gender, entertainment and Sweet Valley High.  I was hooked from the first page, but she truly won me over when she wrote about her participation in Scrabble tournaments.

On to September!  For starters, I'm back with George Gissing, reading his 1891 novel, New Grub Street.

June Reading: Leaps and Bounds

Whoaaaaaaa! 17 books this month.  What happened?  This has got to be tied to my recent resolution to DNF with impunity.  Or it could be that I read a few short books.  Either way, it was a great reading month in both quantity and quality.  New books, new discoveries.  There's nothing like being a bookworm.

1. Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou.  This is Angelou's life from age 17 to 20.  A lot of activity during these years, a lot of missteps, but she owns it all.  I must get the other volumes of her memoirs.

2. Plainsong: For Female Voices - Wright Morris.  This is a forgotten classic. Find it. Read it.

3. Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850 - Susan Campbell Bartoletti.  A lucid, moving account of those terrible years in Ireland.  For younger readers, but don't let that stop you.

4. Blankets - Craig Thompson. I first thought this graphic memoir was going to be like Stitches, with evil, creepy parents.  So glad I was wrong!  Offbeat story of growing up and first love.

5. Veggies Not Included - Christine Leo.  Her rather unconventional method helped her lose 130 pounds and keep it off, and that's because she's put a hell of a lot of brain work behind it.

6. Highway with Green Apples - Suah Bae.  This is a long short story (47 pages) translated from Korean.  I wrote a review of it here.

7. Medicine Men: Extreme Appalachian Doctoring - Carolyn Jourdan.  There's already a lot of great material here, with the oral histories of the Appalachian doctors and their patients, but at times, Jourdan gets in the way of her own objective with her overly folksy manner.  As a reader, I felt vaguely insulted when, in the middle of a funny, interesting narrative, she broke in and said something along the lines of, I was doubled over with laughter. As if the readers might not be getting it.  Still, it was a fun read that kept me occupied during a few subway rides.

8. Radical Frugality: Living in America on $8,000 a Year - Nic Adams.  Difficult and Spartan, but not impossible.  I enjoyed the lists of the cheapest states and towns/cities.

9. The Odd Women - George Gissing.  What I like best about Gissing is how he illustrates how his characters fit (or don't fit, in some cases) into the society they are part of.  This novel, published in 1893, follows a group of women who are unmarried by fate or by choice. Gissing also turns his attention to one woman who didn't want to struggle along, settled for marriage and got a husband that makes Mr. Casaubon from Middlemarch look like a picture of mental health. Gissing throws his readers some curve balls, but I respect an author who has confidence that his audience can keep up with him.

10.  The Street - Ann Petry.  This novel of a single mother in 1940s Harlem struggling to give her 8-year-old son a better life is a combination of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth and Native Son by Richard Wright with a few of Sherwood Anderson's 'grotesques' from Winesburg, Ohio sprinkled in.  Another forgotten/neglected classic.

11. Gentleman Jim - Raymond Briggs.  In this graphic novel, Jim, a janitor, decides to change careers after 20 years.  His Walter Mitty-like daydreams and befuddled notions of how to proceed and Jim's wife, the most perfect straight man ever, make this a hilarious read.

12. The Strongest Man in the World: Louis Cyr - Nicolas Debon.  A short graphic biography of the 19th century strongman from Quebec.

13. Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China - Jen Lin-Liu.  The author went from America to China in search of her family's roots.  Her explorations led her into the world of cooking.  She went from reviewing restaurants to attending a cooking school in Beijing, to working as a noodle intern, then to working in the kitchen of  a high-end restaurant in Shanghai.  Eventually, she opened her own cooking school, Black Sesame Kitchen in Beijing.  Thanks to my friend Nancie for giving me this book.  I'm looking forward to reading another offering by Lin-Liu called On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta.

14. Shirley - Susan Scarf Merrell.  This novel reminds me so much of Call Me Zelda -- imaginary person becomes intimate friends with well-known literary figure.  I have to stop reading these types of books because they irritate me.  Too much of the imaginary person and not enough of the other. Who am I kidding? I can't stop; they are like candy.  Shirley is odd and brilliant like the author herself.  I love all the details sprinkled in from the Oppenheimer biography of Shirley Jackson and the psychological needling.

15. How to Start Out or Over on a Shoestring - Annie Jean Brewer. I have fond visions of Annie Brewer going toe-to-toe with Amy (The Tightwad Gazette) Dacyczyn in a frugal-off.

16. The Nether World - George Gissing.  In this novel, written a few years before The Odd Women, Gissing depicts the lives of several different families living in the slums of London.  He is sensitive to the subtle differences of poverty.  Some of the characters are managing with a job or renting out rooms and some are so poor they are compelled to pawn their clothing.  Most of the characters want something better for themselves, but scarcity leads to bad decision making and schemes gone wrong.  Really depressing, but I loved it.

17. The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith.  What's not to like about this 1952 classic?  Snapshots of New York City in the late 1940s.  An unconventional (for that time) couple.  A road trip. Romance. Suspense. Highsmith's dry sense of humor -- the couple succumb to passion in Waterloo. So much smoking and drinking and drinking and drinking.  The smart and literate writing demands and deserves an instant reread.  I have to get back into reading Patricia Highsmith's work.

Reading: The First Quarter

Ooops, not that kind of quarter.  Sorry.  Still got money on my mind.

I'm not off to a very fast start, but I'm sure things (like reading)  will pick up as more things (like books) get picked up during April, May and June.  Here's what I've read so far:

January

1. My Brother Sam is Dead - James Lincoln Collier. How about a spoiler title like that, huh!?  I liked this YA novel because it showed how not everyone was a revolutionary, loyalties could be divided even within families, and, in war, everyone loses. (fiction)

2. The Shining - Stephen King.  I love Uncle Stevie with all my heart, but sometimes it seems as if he's just slapping it down on the page.  Not so with The Shining.  Lots of action, lots of horror, but he reins in his prose, and that makes it all the more effective.  This is a novel Shirley Jackson would have been proud to have written. (fiction)

3. The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk.  The romantic subplot with Willie Keith and May Wynn was irritating.  I really hate it when I don't fully enjoy one of my Pulitzers.  Pout.  (fiction)

4. Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt.  I'm still shaking my head at how these three boys got railroaded for a gruesome murder because the local lawmen were too stupid and lazy (and possibly inbred?) to investigate the crime properly. The judge should have been asked to step down from the bench.  (nonfiction)

5. My Name is Mary Sutter - Robin Oliveira.  It's 1861, and midwife Mary Sutter wants to be a surgeon.  She keeps getting turned away from medical schools because she's female.  Fortunately for her, the Civil War helps her get a foothold on her ambitions.  Gritty heroine, gory details.  Highly recommended.  (fiction)

6. Dolly's Dixie Fixin's - Dolly Parton.  Dolly put together a cookbook of her favorite down-home dishes.  So glad there's a shout-out to a long-time Missouri institution, Lambert's, "The Home of the Throwed Rolls".  Tasty recipes, and if there's a quicker way to do it, Dolly will tell you.  My only complaint is that there were no food pictures, just pictures of Dolly.  Luscious as she may be, she can't trump vittles.
Favorite quote: "As far as I know, any vegetable treated to cream and bacon drippings is a mighty good-tastin' one."  (nonfiction)

7. Before We Were Free - Julia Alvarez.  The last days of the Dominican Republic's Trujillo dictatorship, as seem through the eyes of  12-year-old Anita, youngest daughter of a family who is resisting the regime.  They've protected and shielded her, but as events spiral out of control, she must learn and adapt quickly. Bit of a nod to The Diary of Anne Frank.  Audiobook, beautifully read by the author. (YA fiction)

8. Hyperbole and a Half - Allie Brosch.  I love Allie Brosch's art.  She gives me Lynda Barry feelings, which is very very good.  And her writing!  No one has ever explained the various stages of depression more eloquently.  (graphic memoir)

I noticed that I got a little blathery when I discussed my February reads, so I was compelled to divide this post into three (January, February, March) so they wouldn't be overly long.  You're welcome. :)

Novel and Nonfiction November

Only 10 books in November.  I made up a reading plan, and of course I deviated from it.  The Caine Mutiny remains unfinished, and I never got to John Green's An Abundance of Katherines.

1. Johnny Cash: The Life - Robert Hilburn.  I wrote about my overwhelmingly positive feelings here.  This look at The Man in Black would be an excellent Christmas gift for the bookish music lovers in your life. (Kindle)

2. Jenny and the Jaws of Life - Jincy Willett.  Ever since I brought this book home from the Busan Book Swap, I've been mangling the title, calling it "Jincy and the Jaws of Life".  The stories, first published in the 1980s, have a subtle and delectable strangeness about them, but they aren't the masterpieces that David Sedaris raves about in his introduction to the new edition.  I appreciate and admire his Aeneas-like efforts to bear Jincy Willett on his influential back from near-obscurity into the literary spotlight. (Paperback)

3. The Execution of Noa P. Singleton - Elizabeth L. Silver.  With a title and premise like that, I was expecting something more searing.  I wasn't blown away, but I liked the book well enough to get into a sharp little exchange on Amazon with someone who I thought was being unnecessarily denigrating about Elizabeth Silver's writing style and word choices. I'm looking forward to her next novel (Kindle)

4. The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards.  The writing is gorgeous, but I never quite bought into David's reasoning for his despicable act the night the twins were born.  With that kind of weak foundation, the book seemed to get shakier as the years passed in the life of this family.  It also seemed padded, but in spite of everything, Edwards is compelling storyteller.  I couldn't stop reading. (Paperback)

5. Shadow of the Moon - M.M. Kaye.  I'm not a big fan of historical romances, but I absolutely LOVED this book, which follows the tumultuous relationship between Winter de Ballesteros and Alex Randall, set in India against the backdrop of the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857.  M.M. Kaye did an excellent job of research.  Shadow of the Moon is on or even above the same level as epics such as Gone with the Wind and Lonesome Dove.  She's even got a touch of Dickens about her, as there is one character you'll love to hate. (Harcover)

6. The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary - Joseph A. Michelli.  Since I started "Operation Carb Face" a few weeks ago, I've striven to turn my attention away from McDonalds, Burger King, and KFC.  What seems to work is promising myself a visit to Starbucks 1-2 times a week, so the coffee giant was on my radar when I found this book in my school's Global Zone.  I enjoyed the stories about the many ways Starbucks connects with its customers, its communities and the world at large.  Unfortunately, this book is written for business types, and the flow is disrupted every page or so as Michelli invites his readers to reflect on the point he just presented.  In case they're having trouble reflecting, he makes a long list of questions to prime the pump.  I thought some critical thinking skills were essential for business owners.  Can't they just absorb the stories and draw their own conclusions?  Must they be spoonfed?  Is Michelli being condescending, or does he know his audience better than I do? (Library book) 

7. Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul - Howard Schultz.  The Starbucks Saga picks up here in 2007, when founder Howard Schultz saw that the company was getting off track.  One of his first clues was that when he walked into a store, the smell was different. Coffee was being drowned out by the aroma of cheese from their popular breakfast sandwiches. As he looked closer, he saw other things that concerned him so much, he came back as the ceo (yes, they refer to upper management in lowercase letters, which I found a bit precious). Not only was the store in trouble, the economy was not feeling too well, and after the 2008 financial crisis, Starbucks stock, already in a downward trend, slid like a greased pig on skates. Schultz discusses that tense year, and the adjustments (often painful, such as closing more than 800 stores in the United States) and innovations (sometimes unsuccessful, like Sorbetto; sometimes a big hit, like Via instant coffee) that he tried and implemented to get things back on track.  An interesting read, but business writing seems so graceless! (Kindle)

8. The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien.  I don't know what to say.  I loved it and I was awed by it.  Fiction more true than fact.  Disturbing images, like the Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong  (who may or may not have existed as anything but a wild story) with her necklace of tongues,  Kiowa and the river of shit, Norman Bowker's endless circling of his hometown lake, young O'Brien fleeing because he's scared and scared because he's fleeing and holed up at Rainy River, the way the older O'Brien keeps saying, "Now I'm 43 years old..." as if it were an incantation and he could get some distance.  I don't know what to say.  I need to read it again, but will I know then? (Library book)

9. If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino.  This wasn't my favorite read for the month.  I liked some of the parts; I didn't care for it as a whole.  Maybe I wasn't in a playful reading mood.  I know it's considered one of the great novels of the 20th century, but I can appreciate it only marginally.  I feel the IQ points falling off of me like autumn leaves.  I'm glad I joined in on the readalong with Care and Avid Reader, but I'm even gladder that it's done. (Kindle)

10. The Birthday Boys - Beryl Bainbridge.  A fictional account of Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition.  Scott and a team of four other men got to the South Pole early in 1912 to find that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them by a month.  Scott's team left the site and they died on the return journey, due to a shortage of food and fuel, injuries, and worse than anticipated weather.  Each of the five sections of Bainbridge's novel is narrated by the five men: Scott, Evans, Wilson, Bowers and Oates.  Although these men were seasoned explorers and hardy men, there is a sense that they didn't have their minds fully concentrated on what they set out to do.  A combination of bad luck, wasted energy and resources, and nearly slavish belief in and devotion to Scott seems to be a constant theme and their undoing.  More incompetent men than tragic heroes.  (Kindle)

October, 2013: You Read Sixteen Books; What Do You Get?

I'm not sure what you get!  Eyestrain?  Happiness?  Relief?

I'm at 113 books now, so I can set myself on optical cruise control and easily meet my goal of 126.  I have mixed feelings about passing the set goal, because that means the bar will be automatically set higher by one book for the next year.  I've been steadily climbing since 2008.  One of these years, that steady escalation will falter, but I hope not for a long time.

Anyway.  Here's October's pile.  Except for a couple of books, I was insanely, chatteringly happy about my reading:

1. Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang - Joyce Carol Oates.  I like Oates better when she's shorter, so Foxfire was right up my alley.  The story of a girl gang in the 1950s.  If you don't feel like reading this, at least check out the 2012 French/Canadian movie version. (paperback)

2. The Beast Within - Emile Zola.  Mon Dieu!  Trains and murders and murders on trains and murderous impulses and people with low foreheads and underslung jaws. I love Zola when he gets savage, and I was a train wreck myself by the time I finished. (Kindle)

3. Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail - Louise Shivers.  A short, spare novel about a love triangle on a tobacco farm in 1930s North Carolina. Roxy, the main character, will make you want to pull your hair out in frustration, but read it for Louise Shivers' gorgeous use of language.  One reviewer said it was like an Appalachian ballad; I think that's right.  (Kindle)

4. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass.  My friend Val gave me this book.  It's the true account of Douglass's birth into slavery up to the time he managed to escape.  Even from an early age, he was determined to find a better life, and employed all kinds of tricks and subterfuges to learn to read and write, which was illegal for slaves. A great book.  A classic read, in the best sense of the word. (paperback)

5. Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews.  I read this one to plug a reading gap from my adolescence. I didn't like it at all, but felt compelled to keep reading.  It's like a horrid congealed mess of Dickens, the Marquis de Sade and The Boxcar Children. I won't be continuing the series.  (Kindle)

6. Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell.  I didn't think I could love Rainbow Rowell any more after Eleanor & Park, but I was wrong. I want to sit down and write fanfic about Cath and Wren and Levi and the whole gang.  (Kindle)

7. The Silent Wife - A.S.A. Harrison.  This book is cool in the way that The Turn of the Screw is cool.  The actions, or non-actions of Jodi, one of the main characters can be read it two different ways. I felt this one at a visceral level.  (Kindle)

8. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets - Stephen Crane.  I wish Crane had developed this story a little more.  As it stands, it's little more than the author showing off how well he can replicate turn-of-the-century Brooklyn dialect.  (Kindle)

9.Attachments - Rainbow Rowell.  The setting is a newspaper office, right around Y2K.  Lincoln, the tech guy, has to monitor the employees' email for inappropriate content. While monitoring, he gets caught up in Jennifer's and Beth's correspondence, and starts falling in love with Beth.  In anyone else's hands, this novel would be a complete mess.  Possibly drivel.  But Rainbow Rowell has magical powers, and Attachments is sweet, funny, witty, surprising...I could go on, but now it's time to cry.  I'm out of Rainbow Rowell books until Landline, her latest, is published sometime next year.  (Kindle)

10. The Thin Commandments - Stephen Gullo.  I got all excited about this book here.  Update: Nothing bread-ish has entered my Carb Face since October 21.  (Kindle)

11. Twelve Years A Slave - Solomon Northup.  In 1841, Solomon Northup, a free black man, was lured by kidnappers under the pretense of work to Washington, D.C., where he was captured and sold south, to Louisiana.  This book is his account of the brutality and cruelty he had to endure for twelve years, and the day-to-day affronts to human rights he saw around him.  I'm eager to see how Northup's story has been told in the new film version.  (Kindle)

12. Fifty-Nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had - Edward Achorn.  Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn was the winning pitcher in the very first World Series.  Baseball back then was a brutal game.  For example, catchers had no protective gear.  They actually liked it when the weather was hot and humid because their hands would swell up and it would provide a cushion when they caught the ball.  The "Fifty-Nine" of the title refers to the number of games Radbourn pitched in one season.  No pitcher has ever matched or beaten that record.  (paperback)

13. Emily Dickinson: Beyond The Myth - Patricia Sierra.  This version of Emily Dickinson seemed carefully researched and thought out, but she comes across as slightly boring and ordinary.  Her sister-in-law, Sue, comes across as a real piece of work, though.  She was so strange and off-putting that I missed her when she was out of the novel for a few pages.  (Kindle)

14. Three Nights in August - Buzz Bissinger.  I loved reading about my St. Louis Cardinals and getting into the strategic mind of past manager Tony La Russa, but I found Bissinger's writing style distracting at times.  I know we loved Albert Pujols back when this book was published in 2005, but the many references to "the great Pujols" made me roll my eyes.  (paperback)

15. The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg. What do Michael Phelps, the military, Target, Saddleback Church, AA, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have in common? These are all individuals or groups that aware of how the power of habits, and how they can be molded with great deliberation.  A lively and engaging read.  I'll make it a habit to look for more of Duhigg's writing. (paperback)

16. Home Cooking - Laurie Colwin.  Colwin did domesticity so well in her novels that I am not surprised to see her applauded for her food writing.  Her recipes are so clear and lucid that they make my toes curl with pleasure.  She was one of my favorite authors and I still miss her.  (Kindle)

Summer Reading, Part 3

 August

This was a rough month; hardly anything I read pleased me.  I hate when that happens because my dream is to drift from book to book to book in an amiable reading mood -- kind of like Huck Finn on his raft.  Alas, during August I was constantly knocking up against the shoals and biting down hard on my corncob pipe.

The Flight of the Phoenix - Elleston Trevor.  The best thing about this novel (and the two movies it inspired) is the neat plot twist involving the rebuilt plane and its designer.  Other than that, it seems a bit workmanlike.

Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight - M.E. Thomas.  The author of this memoir (?) is pretty weak sauce when it comes to advancing her argument that she is a sociopath.  Her attempts to shock are lame.  She often contradicts herself. She swears she's beautiful, brilliant, charming and captivating, but her lumpy and disjointed prose style belies those assertions.  Did I mention that when she's rhapsodizing about her looks she sounds like a Judith Krantz novel?  I'd like to believe that a real sociopath's writing and editing would be icily precise.  I was shocked, but certainly not in the way M.E. Thomas intended.

Cookoff:  Recipe Fever in America - Amy Sutherland.  I absolutely loved this book about the world of competitive cooking.  Author Sutherland goes on the circuit to chicken, garlic, beef, chili and barbecue cookoffs, a jambalaya cookoff (Rice has a vertical seam, and one should be able to see it if it's cooked properly! Who knew?) and the motherlode of all cooking contests, the Pillsbury Bake-Off.  Sutherland's descriptions of the look and aroma of dishes jump right off the page, and her profiles of the quirky, obsessed contesters are equally entertaining.  A perfect summer read, but delectable any time of the year.

Anchored In Love - John Carter Cash.  Anchored In Love is a memoir of John Carter Cash's mother, June Carter Cash.  He doesn't seem to know much about her life before he came along that hasn't been covered before.  After he does show up in her story, he loses focus and it becomes his memoir.  The book also has a dull, dogmatic and stifled feel that can be traced to its being published by Thomas Nelson, a well-known Christian publishing company.  John Carter Cash wanted to write his mother's story himself rather than having it done by a biographer that didn't know her, but June Carter Cash would have been better served by an objective eye.

The Surrendered - Chang-Rae Lee.  This novel started off so well, but the subplot with the missionary's wife was annoying, and Lee seemed to get too caught up in flowery, operatic writing at times.  However, I must salute the efficiency with which he disposed of two characters at once.  It was meant to advance the plot.  Not sure it helped, but it's nice to see what he's capable of.

My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe.  I thought the title was a bit of a misnomer -- I was picturing Howe surrounded by and selling all sorts of toothsome Korean cuisine.  Instead, it seemed like a generic convenience store in New York City. The only thing that made it "Korean" was that he went into the business with his Korean mother-in-law and his wife.  There was also a subplot about Howe's other job as an editor at The Paris Review, and his encounters with his boss, the legendary George Plimpton.  Nothing really seemed to go together and Howe doesn't have that manic dash that could have made it work in spite of everything.  The book was translated into Korean.  I wonder how that audience responded to the book.

Hattie Big Sky - Kirby Larson.  Hattie Inez Brooks, a 16-year-old orphan who has been shuttled from one relative to another decides to try her hand at homesteading in Montana when her uncle dies and wills her his claim.  Pretty 1800s, right?  Surprisingly (to me), this takes place during World War I.  Author Kirby Larson manages to cover a lot of ground in this Newbery Honor book.  First, Hattie must do a daunting amount of work to prove on her claim and this is all new to her.  The reader also gets a taste of what's going on overseas because of the letters Hattie receives from her old school friend Charlie.  At home, Hattie's new neighbors have troubles of their own.  The husband is a real stand-up guy, but since he's German-American, the cloddish townspeople don't see it that way and he and his family are constantly persecuted.  I liked how Larson obviously did her historical research, but she didn't lay it on with a trowel.  Also, the voices seem true for the time. While I was reading, I kept thinking that Hattie Big Sky would make a perfect Hallmark movie.

Summer Reading Part 2

JULY

Anybody Can Do Anything - Betty MacDonald.  This follow-up memoir to The Egg and I starts off with Betty sending a letter home to her widowed mother and siblings saying that she's not happy being a chicken farmer's wife.  Her intrepid sister, Mary Bard, writes back telling her to leave and move back home to Seattle.  Betty replies that it's 5 miles to the bus stop, and she doesn't have transportation and she's got two babies.  Mary sends a telegram reminding her that the Russians crossed Siberia.  Betty gets to packing.  She arrives back in the city as its citizens are still reeling from the effects of the Depression.  Most of the book is comprised of Mary determinedly finding mostly unsuitable jobs for Betty.  Anybody Can Do Anything struck a chord with me in these times when jobs are disappearing.

The Plague and I - Betty MacDonald.  This is the sequel to Anybody Can Do Anything.  Betty and her family survive the Depression and Betty gets a steady government job complete with her own desk and a co-worker that coughs all over her every day for months.  TB much?  Soon after, Betty manifests symptoms, but carries on (like chain-smoking) as usual and doesn't consult a doctor until she develops an unrelated ailment -- a hemorrhoid.  A place is found for her at a TB sanatorium, where she's told by the director that she doesn't have to pay for treatment, that perhaps she can pay for someone else's when she is better.  (My 21st century self was very impressed about this.)  Betty's rest cure is strictly administered, and in another instance of how health care is different now, the staff at the sanatorium didn't discuss procedures and progress with patients.  If patients wanted information, they were sharply rebuffed. An interesting look at a past chapter in American health care.

The Disappointment Artist - Jonathan Lethem.  Novelist Lethem's aunt, children's author Wilma Yeo, figures prominently in the title essay, so I had to read this book.  Wilma Yeo was related by marriage to one of my great-great aunts, and she was always so good to this aunt and the aunt's sister.  I was always proud that we sort of had a writer in the family and wanted to meet Wilma Yeo, but never got the chance.  "The Disappointment Artist" is about a time when Yeo attended a writing workshop and the writer in charge was a horrid man who did everything he could to discourage fledgling writers.  Yeo's response was to found the Kansas City Writers Group, acting as a mentor and critic.  The other essays in the book deal with Lethem's pop culture obsessions.  I responded to Lethem's writing style, so now I'm interested in finding a copy of The Fortress of Solitude.

An Atheist in the FOXhole - Joe Muto.  Muto was the guy who was the Fox 'mole' for Gawker, although his identity was quickly discovered, and he was fired from Fox News, a job he had held for 8 years.  I wasn't overly impressed with Muto, but enjoyed the 'falafel' story about Bill O'Reilly and also the way Muto cut back and forth from his imminent bust back to how his adventures at Fox first began.

The Lost Weekend - Charles Jackson.  The classic story of an alcoholic on his latest binge.  I'm so used to the arc of the drunkard story in which the last chapters involve some self-realization, followed by a series of AA meetings and a period of sobriety.  Don Birnham never gets that far.  It's fascinating and horrible and occasionally embarrassing to witness his lying, machinations and overall pathetic behavior.  It's worse than just being a witness because the reader is in his mind.  I'm not surprised that this book is semi-autobiographical; people are usually only that harsh and unflinching about themselves.  Dark, bitter, bleak, brilliant.

Summer Reading, Had Me A Blast Part 1

Time to unpack my reading lists for the summer of 2013.  Since there will be a lot of titles in this post, I'll try to keep my comments brief but intriguing. Ha. Wish me luck.

JUNE

On Chesil Beach - Ian MacEwan.  Newlyweds in trouble, bound up by fear and conventions.  Heartbreaker.

Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollack - Henry Adams.  Some of the art theory went over my head, but I was glad to learn about the influences on one of my favorite painters (Benton).  After I read this, I saw Benton's last painting, "Sources of Country Music" at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.  I'll try to get to the Nelson-Atkins museum (the mother lode for Benton paintings) in Kansas City next summer.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl.  I am so very happy that this book is in my rearview mirror.

American Born Chinese - Yang Gene Luen.  Assimilation. Traditions. Legends.  It's a lot to take on in a graphic novel, but Yang is more than up to the challenge.

Stitches - David Small.   This memoir, done in graphic novel form was horrifying.  I'm not even going to try to describe it because I couldn't do it justice and besides, I want future readers to get the full impact.

Heat - Bill Buford.  Yeah, it's one of those "I'm gonna quit my job for a year and do ________." But Bill Buford avoids many of the pitfalls that I've seen in this type of memoir.  He writes robustly, whether he's talking about food or people.  Highly recommended.

Hellhound On His Trail - Hampton Sides.  This book makes for a chilling read as it follows James Earl Ray's escape from prison (in Missouri.  Damn.) and his stalking and murder of  Martin Luther King, Jr.  It's structured a lot like Manhunt (John Wilkes Booth/Lincoln), also a compelling tale.

Heaven to Betsy - Maud Hart Lovelace.  The Betsy-Tacy series moves into high school with this book.  Betsy finds herself a Crowd (always capitalized).  Her popularity is ensured because everyone likes to hang out at the Ray's house.  I'd actually forgotten how nice her parents were.  This time, I found myself focusing in on Mr. Ray's Sunday night suppers.  Vera Neville takes over from Lois Lenski in the illustrating department.  Everybody's gone from primitive to pretty!

Betsy In Spite of Herself - Maud Hart Lovelace.  Betsy's a sophomore now.  She starts dating a jerk, but he's got a red automobile.  The jerk tries to get a little too friendly right at first, but Betsy puts him in his place:  "Look, I don't hold hands." (It's 1908!) She also goes to Milwaukee for Christmas to visit her old friend Tib Mueller, and tries to remake herself with mixed (and slightly cringe-y results).  This is my favorite of the whole series.

Up the Down Staircase - Bel Kaufman.  I liked the jumbly style with notes and memos from students, teachers and the administration to tell the story of Sylvia Barrett's first year as an English teacher, but found the epistolary part of the novel a little tedious.

It's Not Really About the Hair - Tabatha Coffey.  I'm a big fan of Tabatha Takes Over, so it was fun to read about how Tabatha became Tabatha.  I'd love to have her do my hair sometime!

Raymond Chandler: A Biography - Tom Hiney.  It seems that in order to pad out this book, the biographer would make tedious lists of Chandler's book sales.

Townie: A Memoir - Andre Dubus III. Growing up in a rough neighborhood, Dubus had to learn how to fight. Then, as a man, he had to unlearn it.  There are so many great moments in this memoir, but the one that comes to mind most often is the scene on the train in Europe.

What Maisie Knew - Henry James.  Reading this book was like being made to hold the dental surgeon's instruments at my own root canal.

Nana - Emile Zola.  Zola at his best. Nana is such a train wreck.  I was Damn! and Daaamn...

May 2013: Getting Voracious with Fiction

Looking back, my fiction reading for May seems quite dark:

1. The Orphan Master's Son - Adam Johnson.  It's to Johnson's credit as a writer that I felt as if I were going crazy in a claustrophobic world  as I read about Pak Jun Do, the orphan master's son, who everyone assumes is an orphan. I think it was the government public-service announcements that did it.  North Korea is a bizarre place.  Whatever Johnson has created can't be too far off the mark.  I'm pleased that he won the Pulitzer for fiction this year.

2. Finn - Jon Clinch. Ever since I saw Neville Brand as Pap Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960), I've been frightened and disturbed by this lowlife presence.  Jon Clinch doesn't do anything to improve on Finn's (readers only know him by his surname; his first name is alluded to but never revealed) reputation, although he provides some surprises.  I'm relieved that he didn't decide to imitate Mark Twain's style or use of dialect.  Actually, the mood of the novel made me think of Jim Thompson. The prose is dark, twisted and yet strangely beautiful.

3. Your Republic Is Calling You - Young-Ha Kim.  Ki-Yong is a 42-year-old foreign film importer who lives in Seoul with his wife and teenaged daughter. Exactly half his life ago, at the age of 21, he was dropped as a sleeper agent from North Korea into the neighboring South.  He assumes that the North has forgotten about him, then one day, he gets a coded email telling him that it's time for him to return.  I liked the premise of the novel and found Ki-Yong and his situation intriguing, but was less gripped by the back stories of his wife, daughter, lover, and a plethora of other minor characters. Even so, I was entertained because the novel takes place in locales around Seoul that are fairly familiar to me.  Young-Ha Kim is often compared to Haruki Murakami.  I actually think he's better.

4. The Game - Jack London.  An early novella of London's about a young boxer's last match, on the eve of his wedding.  Primitive but effective.

5. Where the Lilies Bloom - Vera and Bill Cleaver.  A YA novel set in Appalachia. 14-year-old Mary Call's dying father and remaining parent extracts from her an ungodly amount of unrealistic deathbed promises that she strives to fulfill. This novel has a wonderful regional flavor and it's slyly humorous in many places. With her steely determination and sometimes prim use of language, Mary Call reminds me a lot of Mattie Ross from True Grit.  There was a movie based on this book that was also very well done.  Whatever happened to Vera and Bill Cleaver?  Their books were excellent, but they seem to be forgotten 40 years later.

6. Doc - Mary Doria Russell.  John Henry "Doc" Holliday's life story, concentrating primarily on the time when he was in Dodge City with the Earp brothers and Big-Nose Kate.  As I read, I could see Val Kilmer so clearly in my mind's eye.  That is a very, very good thing.  Mary Doria Russell feels compelled at times to introduce a 21st century sensibility to the story, but her touch is fairly light.  I'll be seeking out more of her books.

7. Germinal - Emile Zola. This is one of the stronger novels in the Rougon-Macquart series,  based on an actual coal miner's strike in northern France in the 1860s.  Zola must have done an extensive amount of research to have written so convincingly and compellingly about the dangerous and squalid conditions in which the miners and their families were forced to live and work, generation after generation.  Not a cheerful book by any stretch of the imagination, but pungent, powerful and a great read.  I'm not sure what to read next in this series.  I might revisit Nana.

May 2013: Getting Voracious with Nonfiction

I read 13 books this month.  For some readers that might be like spit in the ocean, but for me, it's a large amount -- especially since I'm not on vacation.  I think the key to my success is that I only went to one movie (The Great Gatsby) in May.

I'll discuss my nonfiction reads here and talk about the fiction in my next post.  Surprisingly, all but one of these were library books.  Speaking of which, I must update everyone on The Library Situation here in Busan.  It's good.  It's very, very good.

1. Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Last Tycoon -Leonard Mosley.  The biographer does a good job of showing that Hollywood mogul Daryl Zanuck had a messed up childhood with rotten parents, but his maternal grandfather was a positive influence, so one's sympathy only goes so far.  After that, the details of his disgusting and pathetic behavior turned me into a one-woman chorus of "ewwwww."  Actually, I have some issues with the biographer as well.  I can't help feeling that on some level, he admired Zanuck, especially in the womanizing department. There's something in his recounting of Zanuck's exploits/exploitation that's just a shade too breathless. Also a product of that generation in which men behaved badly and women were supposed to smile and be quiet, Mosley comes across as a callous and dismissive ass when he discusses a couple of troubled young starlets who, one way or another, ended up in Zanuck's clutches.  I'm going to try to remember the few glimpses of Hollywood in the golden age and forget the rest.

2. Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You - Sam Gosling, Ph.D.  Extremely entertaining look at how much we reveal of ourselves by our surroundings.  Dr. Gosling lets readers in on the secret of how to be 'super snoopers' and learn home to home in on the essence of people's real personalities rather than being swayed by artfully placed objects meant to create a not-quite-accurate impression.  Check out Gosling's videos on YouTube. He's hot in that mad scientist sort of way.

3. 117 Days Adrift - Maurice and Maralyn Bailey. One of the best survival stories I've ever read and easily my favorite read for the month.  In 1973, a seafaring couple from England, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey were cast adrift when an injured whale damaged the yacht they had scrimped and saved for years to buy. Thinking quickly, they got as much food and as many supplies as possible into a life raft with a dinghy attached.  During their ordeal, Maurice fell into despair. Maralyn found ways to keep their minds sharp and occupied with games and also plans for the future.  She was also cool and inventive, creating fishing hooks from the spring action part of a safety pin.  I was so pleased to read that it was a Korean fishing boat out of Busan, Weolmi 306, that rescued the Baileys and used every resource available to restore them to health.

4. Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost At Sea - Steven Callahan.  Another true story of survival at sea.  While the Baileys' book was more about what they did to survive, Callahan's book contains a great deal of what Callahan thought about during those two-and-a-half months lost at sea.  He also shares what his parents and brother's efforts to find him when they didn't hear from him in an expected time frame.  Luckily for Callahan, he managed to save a survival at sea book when he was forced onto the life raft.  He had also read about others in the same peril, including the Baileys!

5. The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee.  A "biography" of cancer. Mukherjee, an oncologist, traces this disease back to its first mention in ancient Egypt.  Most of the incidents related are from the past 100 years, as researchers made great strides in identifying causes and treatments were developed and fine-tuned.  Although the science writing in The Emperor of All Maladies is often challenging to follow, everyone should read this book, since almost all of us are affected by cancer either directly or through a loved one an acquaintance.  I actively sought out this book because my sister-in-law has been battling uterine leiomyosarcoma for several years.

6. Onions in the Stew - Betty MacDonald.  Because of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, I've always liked Betty MacDonald, but I fell a little bit out of love with her back in 2009 when I read The Egg and I.  As I said at the time, I wasn't prepared to give up on her, so I was pleased to find Onions in the Stew available for Kindle. This is the fourth and final humorous memoir by MacDonald, detailing her second marriage (she dumped the jerk chicken farmer from The Egg and I and took the kids) and life on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, near Seattle.  As always with Betty, life has its share of challenges, but most of her grousing is good-natured.  The thing that really struck me was the huge amount of smoking that went on in this book.  Even her adolescent daughters smoked! It was chilling to read, knowing that Betty MacDonald died of cancer at the age of 50.  After I finished Onions, I went a little Betty-mad over at abebooks.com and bought The Plague and I, which chronicles her bout with TB and time in a sanatorium and Anybody Can Do Anything, her account of trying to find work during the Depression.

April 2013: And I Read

I'd like to thank my friend Becka for sending me these earrings. I'm pretty sure they have accentuated my reading superpowers as well as making me look a trifle cuter.

1. One For The Money - Janet Evanovich.  Count me in at long last.  I'm a Stephanie Plum fan.

2. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything - Joshua Foer.  This book was fascinating.  I thought it was going to be one of those "look at the weird thing I did for one year" books.  While there was that element, Foer also delved into the history of memory-making, how a well-trained memory was once something prized, why it ended up getting a bad rap, and how we now have almost everything that used to be in our minds on some external source.  Bring back memory training!  What I really need is to build a memory palace that holds all my students' names.  Not only do I have an ageing brain and lots of students, my students' names are 98% Korean with variations on a handful of one-syllable names.  I'm sure it can be done, though.  My first memory palace, which I built for the Pulitzer fiction winners, is still holding together after one month.

3. The Star Machine - Jeanine Basinger.  I waxed eloquent about Basinger in an earlier post.  Since then, I have learned of another movie upon which her commentary can be heard: Jezebel (1938) starring Bette Davis.  Must watch and listen.

4. French Milk - Lucy Knisley.  A few years ago, Knisley and her mother went to France and lived there for a few weeks over the holidays.  Knisley recorded every detail -- the day trips, the museums, their apartment, the people that popped in to see them during that time, and most of all the food!  Wow and wow. French Milk contains both photographs and drawings, so readers will appreciate her artistic talent even more.  I could have done without the pages and pages of Knisley having her quarter-life crisis several years too early, but hey, that's also what happened during the trip.  I'm looking forward to reading her follow-up, Relish.  You go, Lucy.  Keep that food theme going, and if you're worrying about getting close to 30 -- don't.

5. Silent Stars - Jeanine Basinger.  I wish I could give myself a 1910s or 1920s brain so I could appreciate silent films more.

6. I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies - Jeanine Basinger. Was it Borges that said when an old person dies, it's like a library burning down?  Probably not, but it sounds like something he would have said. When Basinger dies (way, way WAY in the future, I fervently hope) it's going to be like the most beautiful film palace in the world burning down.

7. A Land More Kind Than Home - Wiley Cash.  Since I was still in silver screen mode when I read this book, my mind flashed to Robert Mitchum.  In this horrific tale of religion gone terribly wrong, I imagined the crazy and controlling Pastor Carson Chambliss as a combination of two of Mitchum's characters: Harry Powell from The Night of the Hunter and Max Cady from Cape Fear.  This is a damn scary story, and I admire Wiley Cash so much for his choice of narrators.  It would have been more fun to have written from Chambliss' point-of-view, or the misguided young mother of Jess and Stump, or even poor, autistic Stump himself.  Those choices would have been understandable, but it would have been too much heat and too much beating readers over their heads.  I thought I was done with southern fiction, but Wiley Cash proved to  me that I'm not.

8. The Shoestring Girl: How I Live on Practically Nothing and You Can Too - Annie Jean Brewer.  Ever since The Complete Tightwad Gazette came into my life, I've been a sucker for books like this.  Annie Jean Brewer is the  rawboned, cast-iron skillet of a gal version of Amy Dacyczyn.  She doesn't seem interested in the 19th century farmhouse with an attached barn.  Just the necessities, ma'am. It's a crash course in successful hardscrabble living in the 21st century. Many of her tips concerning technology are extremely helpful, not to mention up-to-date. You may not agree with everything Brewer suggests, but she provides plenty of food for thought.  I admire her guts and gumption.

9. Bless The Beasts and Children - Glendon Swarthout.  A group of misfits at an overpriced "cowboy camp" set out on a secret mission to rescue some buffalo that are being slaughtered for fun and profit. During their quest, the novel spirals forward and backward, giving readers a look at their backgrounds and their early and humiliating days at camp.  I was surprised to learn that Glendon Swarthout wrote this book as an "answer" to  The Lord of the Flies.  (Boys left to their own devices doing something noble rather than something evil.)  I am currently looking for a copy of another Swarthout novel called The Shootist.  I remember seeing a copy a few years ago at What The Book? in Seoul and picking it up and ultimately putting it back on the shelf and going on.  Do you suppose my forehead ever gets tired of me smiting it?

10. Two For The Dough - Janet Evanovich.  I was happy to see more of Grandma Mazur. She was played by Debbie Reynolds in the movie version of One For The Money!  I love Debbie, but it just didn't feel right. Anyway, kudos to Evanovich for bringing Lula back after her brush with death in the first book.  Since it's early in the series, I am hopeful that the very attractive Ranger will get more page time and Morelli a little bit less.

11. Marbles - Ellen Forney.  This graphic novel is Forney's chronicle of how she has struggled with being bipolar. She presents the manic side of herself first, and draws and writes about it so fetchingly and creatively that the reader begins to agree with her about being reluctant to medicate. I cannot lie -- I loved that version of Ellen and was sorry to see her disappear.  That part of  Marbles is the strongest and most vivid, but Forney's skill is even more in evidence as she presents the "down" side of her illness and in the subtle shadings of difference in the way she draws herself as she improves, then has a few frustrating setbacks, then improves again.   Both educational and entertaining.  I'm really getting into memoirs presented in the graphic novel format.

12. My Mortal Enemy - Willa Cather.  I consider myself a Willa Cather fan, but I sure don't like this sour novella about a petty middle-aged woman's disillusionment.  It should have stayed rolled up in Cather's typewriter or gone to its deserved rest in her wastepaper basket.  Better yet, she should have sent it to Edith Wharton and let her straighten it out.

What I Talk About When I Talk About What I Read During February

I have words to say about these books. Wordy words, because it was an excellent reading month, both quantity and quality-wise. However, I'm feeling a little stressed about starting the new job (not because it's hard or strange or even that different, but because that's the way I process change, or any type of being and becoming) so I can't concentrate enough to make consistently well-designed paragraphs.  I can turn out the slaphappy variety, so let's do that:

1. Cathedral - Raymond Carver.  This collection includes my favorite Carver story "A Small, Good Thing". It was also the first I ever read, and for at least 3 years after that, Raymond Carver was the only star in my author firmament. When I read Cathedral this time, I was mainly struck by how it so clearly belongs to another era.  People get up and down to turn the TV off and on and change channels.  One of the characters  talks about someone having a color TV.

2. Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life - Carol Sklenicka.  I was glad that Raymond Carver was able to shake off both his drinking problem and Gordon Lish, but I felt dreadfully sorry for his first wife, Maryann. Raymond and Maryann married as teenagers, and she supported him and sacrificed for his talent with a superhuman effort, only to be on the outside looking in when he finally he gained the long-awaited money and fame.

3. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka.  Two middle-aged sisters are aghast when their 84-year-old dad announces that he's marrying a 36-year-old woman to rescue her from life in the Ukraine, where he immigrated from decades before. When the story moves away from this plotline, it seems a little awkward, and the excerpts from the father's book, which shares its name with the title of the novel are laborious reading after a short while.

4. Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn.  A Chicago reporter goes back to her hometown in rural Missouri to get a scoop about the murder of two young girls there.  A real page-turner with tons of unlikable characters.  I read her novels in reverse, so it's interesting to see how Flynn has developed as a novelist.  I hope she'll publish another one soon.

5. The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language - Steven Pinker. I already gushed over this book in an earlier post.  Buffalo buffalo buffalo...!

6. 344 Pounds: How I Lost 125 Pounds By Counting Calories - Shawn Weeks.  When Shawn Weeks decided to vanquish his lifelong weight problem once and for all, he created a blog in which he periodically photographed himself shirtless, then went and hit the gym. He ate what he liked, but tried to burn more calories than he consumed, or "erase" the ones he over-consumed.  His story is a familiar one, and he tells it plainly and honestly. His message is more about getting real than it is about a bunch of facile diet tips.

7. Swamplandia! - Karen Russell. After Ava Bigtree's mother, the star gator-wrestler of the family amusement park Swamplandia! dies, the family and the family business comes apart. Grandpa's in a nursing home.The father goes off with the gauziest of explanations.  Ava's sister, Osceola, elopes with a ghost. Her brother, Kiwi,  goes off to work at a rival amusement park in the area with a satanic theme.  Ava is left to draw her own erroneous conclusions.  Swamplandia! reminds me a little of Geek Love and Kiwi's descriptions (the Kiwi sections were my favorite part of the book) of The World of Darkness remind me of Chuck Palahniuk's Damned.

8. Founding Mothers - Cokie Roberts.  I spent most of Presidents' Day listening to this book. Cokie Roberts gives American history a fresh perspective by discussing what the wives and mothers of the Founding Fathers had to contend with in the years prior, during and after the American Revolution. Martha Washington and Abigail Adams are prominently featured, and we're also introduced to powerhouse Eliza Pinckney, long-suffering Deborah Read Franklin, scribe Mercy Warren and there's even some juicy scandal.  Cokie Roberts' dry and highly opinionated commentary is really funny.

9. Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Maria Semple.  This epistolary novel feels like a screwball comedy and I kept getting huge, enjoyable whiffs of Arrested Development.  I mean all of the above with the greatest admiration and respect I can muster.  Bernadette Fox is a madly brilliant creation. I'm now a Maria Semple fan.  I want to go back and read her first novel.

10. English Teacher Guide to Teaching Abroad - English Teacher X.  He's foul-mouthed and often unkind, but English Teacher X knows his stuff about teaching English abroad.  He covers the whole spectrum, from how to teach a conversation class successfully and play the stupid games in "McEnglish" schools around the world to giving dodgy but sage and explicit advice on how to do a "runner" properly if this particular career path isn't working out.  I laughed and shook my head in recognition on practically every page.

11. American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story - Cynthia True.  I don't like overly scholarly and stiff biographies, but this one suffered from a too-slight writing style.  No pictures, either, which is my pet peeve. It feels like it was quickly cobbled together after Hicks died in 1994, but it actually came out almost 10 years later.  I hope a more accomplished biographer will decide to research and write a more studious and compelling account of comedian Bill Hicks' short life and career.

12. L'Assommoir - Emile Zola. The title is usually translated as "The Dram Shop", but according to Wikipedia, an Assommoir is a place where people go for the express purpose of getting hammered as cheaply as possible.  Zola details the slow yet inevitable slide of a family into poverty and alcoholism with the kind of thoroughness one associates with crime scenes or autopsies. Although I read Nana years ago, this book, which features Nana's parents, is the one that got me interested in the Rougon-Macquart series, so my plan is to go back and read all 20 of them in order.

13. Therese Raquin - Emile Zola. It's a hardboiled novel well ahead of its time. Zola unflinchingly explores what guilt can do to twisted and superstitious minds. Dark stuff.  Even the setting becomes a kind of malevolent character.  There's one of the most wildly satisfying karma payouts I've ever seen in literature.

14. Medium Raw - Anthony Bourdain.  Bourdain talks about his life in the 10 years since Kitchen Confidential became a bestseller, profiles a couple of young and interesting chefs, names his heroes and villains of the culinary world, shares some food porn from his feasts around the world and alludes to one of the Zola novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle. Strange coincidence, that.  My son, a big fan of Kitchen Confidential, was not enthusiastic about Medium Raw, but I enjoyed it.

January 2013: What I Read

Only 9 books for January!  Usually I romp and stomp this month, all fueled with time off and minty-fresh new  resolutions, but this year not so much.  I laid on the excuses with a trowel in my last post.

I'll tell you who kicked down the door of 2013 and really tore up the pea patch:  my friend Teri, who did the SO LOL Seollal Readathon with me during Lunar New Year in 2012.  She read 48 books in January!  Kindle books and audiobooks, and probably she was hooked up to a book I.V. as well.  Checking her progress on Goodreads is like visiting an amusement park; I get dizzy watching her numbers go up so fast.  If only I could read like that.  If only.

Here's what I did read:

1. Speaking Activities That Don't Suck - English Teacher X.  The anonymous author directs his mock-solicitous advice to young, inexperienced and hungover English as a Foreign Language teachers who, more often than not, stumbled into their professions because they simply wanted to travel and party.  English Teacher X's posture is scathing, his language bad and his jokes lame, but there's gold in them thar pages. ETX stayed awake during his CELTA course, and he imparts some sound teaching practices.  Heartily recommended for both newbies and seasoned EFL teachers on the verge of burnout.

2. The Snowman - Milo Manara.  Metch Kangmi. Yeti. The Abominable Snowman.  He has been known by many names.  Kenneth Tobey, a brash young London reporter, sets out on a Himalayan adventure in 1922, and gets a lot more than he bargained for.  A short graphic novel, originally published in Italian.

3. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo.  I've decided that this is my desert island book.

4. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch - Alison Arngrim.   If it hadn't been for Nellie Oleson and her family, I wouldn't have been such a big fan of Little House on the Prairie.  It was not the tearful Ingalls family that brought me back week after week.  I always cast a cold eye at all that bawling.  In the books, Ma and Pa and Laura exhorted each other and themselves to brace up.  Yeah, it's the episodes with Nellie that I remember most fondly.  Not only is Alison Arngrim a great actress, she's a brilliant writer.  I'll buy any other books she might write and I'd love to see her stand-up act.

5. Wild: From Lost to Found on The Pacific Crest Trail - Cheryl Strayed.  At 26, Cheryl Strayed was an emotional train wreck, but somewhere inside her, there was a cooler, more lucid Cheryl who hit on precisely the right kind of therapy for herself:  A three-months long hike over the Pacific Crest Trail which totaled more than 1,100 miles.  Although the walk took place during the mid-1990s, I was struck by what a different time it was: no social media, no email, no cellphones.  Strayed always had a book on the go during her hike, so I was amused and intrigued by her reading choices and what she did to lighten the load in her already ridiculously over-sized backpack.

6. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel.  The Henry VIII years from the viewpoint of Thomas Cromwell, who was the son of a blacksmith who rose to prominence under Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, then captured the king's attention when Wolsey fell out of favor at court. Cromwell loved Wolsey, but how can one say no when being asked to advise His Majesty and fix his women problems?  Cromwell is usually presented in books and film as a bad guy. Here, he's merely capable and cool-headed with a sardonic eye that seems startlingly but refreshingly modern.  I enjoyed this book immensely and couldn't wait to get to the sequel.

7. Parnassus On Wheels - Christopher Morley.  A quirky, fun novella about a New England spinster named Helen McGill, who is keeping house for her brother, a Thoreau-like author in the first years of the 20th century.  She longs for something more than baking bread and looking after their farm. One day, adventure and literature arrive in the form of a mobile bookshop called Parnassus and its owner, Roger "Professor" Mifflin, and Helen sets out abruptly to discover the world beyond the farm, herself, and eventually...While I'm sure this book, first published in 1917 is a riot to read, the audiobook version with Bernadette Dunn narrating is the way to go.

8. Bring Up The Bodies - Hilary Mantel.  The sequel to Wolf Hall picks up almost where the first book left off.  The king still perceives himself as having women trouble.  Cromwell knows it's his job to make Henry happy, but he also sees a way to settle an old score.  Much darker and grittier than Wolf Hall.  I'm eagerly (because I enjoy Hilary Mantel's writing) and anxiously (I Wikipedia-ed Thomas Cromwell) waiting for the last book in what will be a trilogy.  I'm sure this question has already been asked:  Can Mantel do a hat trick with the Booker?

9. How To Be A Woman - Caitlin Moran.  I read this book because Fizzy recommended it.  I also wish I had a physical copy so I could underline passages in ink.  She's smart, she's hilarious, her bullshit detector works great.  I think she'd like me because all the things she says that women are nuts to worry about -- it never occurred to me to worry about those things.  Except the hair color thing, as in covering up my gray. Caitlin says:  "Lines and grayness are nature's way of telling you not to fuck with someone -- the equivalent of the yellow-and-black banding on a wasp, or the markings on the back of a black widow spider.  Lines are your weapons against idiots."  So thank you, Caitlin.  You've freed me from worry and made me feel cool, powerful and slightly dangerous. I'm not even going to stress about moving any more.  From now on it's like: "Hey, Busan!  Better get cleaned up and put on a fresh t-shirt because Bybee is coming to town next week!  Questions?"  Caitlin Moran:  You're like the cool little sister that my parents somehow forgot to give me.