I have been reading the same handful of books for too long. I feel mired in a book swamp, like I will never finish these books and will be trying, feebly, to finish them until the day I die.

Oh, the drama.

I have nothing against the books I am reading, nope. They are all fine.

Sure, none of them are yanking me away from my other obligations. But I don’t expect all the books I read to appeal to me like that. I think it’s valuable to read books specifically because they don’t yank on me, actually. Reading outside my tastes is a valuable endeavor, personally and professionally. If I only read books that I thought I would like then I would just re-read the same 10 Pink-Covers for the rest of my life. That is not the kind of reader I aspire to be.

However, feeling as swampy as I am, I think my currently reading selection is lacking a certain balance.

I do read multiple books at once. This horrifies many people, but I have been doing it for so many years I can’t really even adequately justify myself anymore. It’s like asking why I prefer a certain spoon with their cereal. It’s just the spoon I like, okay? What does it even matter? But more importantly, I can’t stop reading multiple books at once because that would require finishing EVERYTHING I’m reading until I’m just reading One Single Book and that just gives me the heebie-jeebies. Blargh.

I don’t like to read too many books, though. Instead of actually FINISHING any of the books I am currently reading, I’ve thought intently about what amalgamation of books I would prefer to be reading at once and how I might better devise my reading in the future.

You know, after these five books kill me. Beyond the grave reading planning. Yes, sir, it’s that kind of week.

1. The Audiobook

Let’s start with the most obvious: I like to have an audiobook on deck. This is a practical habit – I do a lot of my reading while commuting… but since moving across town, my commute includes more walking, more transferring trains, and more Rush Hour, Can’t Get a Seat or Hold A Book Without Whapping Someone in the Face stuff. I keep my headphones in and use that lovely little white headphone clicker to instantly apply an audiobook when needed.

(That is the Yuppie reason why I like to always have an audiobook. The real reason is that I like to fall asleep listening to a book, and I am freakishly anxious about sleeping and potential insomnia. I will actually listen to ANY audiobook at this point while I try to go to sleep, but it’s better when it’s something I’m, you know, actually into).

I am fairly picky about what I listen to on audio, but that is a much longer post for a much longer day. If I can’t find anything new to listen to, I am perfectly content to listen to books I’ve liked in the past or revisit some old audio favorites. It doesn’t matter. I just like to have a book to shove in my ears when I want to shove other stuff out.

Right now, I am listening to Piper Kerman’s Orange is the New Black, which is definitely a good listen, but is due back on the 21^st. I should really stop [insert whatever bullshit distraction I am inventing for myself] and get on it.

2. The eBook

This is also an obvious category, but a new one for me! I have made the delightful discovery that yes, I can read an eBook on my iPhone WHILE I am running on the treadmill. And I actually prefer it over other While You Run entertainments (except, perhaps, watching Girls).

I am running 3-5 times a week right now, so I like to have something ready to read on my phone at all times. I don’t read very *quickly* on the treadmill, however, so I can’t check anything out from the library using Overdrive without it expiring on me. This leaves me with the wide, wide world of egalleys.

Another comment that could be a particularly lengthy blog post: I have to choose what egalleys I read carefully. Whether or not I am running, I typically end up reading egalleys on my phone, and I’ve had some markedly mixed results. Some books I am completely disinterested in, but if I read on my larger Kindle, I’m fine. Some books I can barely even understand… but if I check out the hard copy, I’m totally into them. I naturally read galleys with a bit of an evaluative intent, so I think it would irresponsible of me to read a book in a format or setting that would color my judgment.

I haven’t really tried to pin down which books work and which ones don’t, but I suspect it has to do with language style and sentence length. Right now I am reading Geoff Herbach’s Fat Boy vs. The Cheerleaders which I am finding definitely e-Readable.

3. The Backburner Book

The Backburner Book is the book that sits at my house rather than coming with me in my purse. It’s the book I read a bit of before bed or with my coffee in the morning. It’s the book that I return to when my other books aren’t quite suiting me. It’s the book that I’d rather savor than rush through.

A Backburner Book is often a comfort read – a little life-raft book in case you hate what you are reading but also everything else about your existence on this earth. Comforting reading, for me, is often re-reading. A re-read makes for a good Backburner because you can dip in from time to time without confusion or recaps.

Easy reading in general can also be comforting. We all have our authors/genres/topics that give us immediate gratification – books that don’t ask too much from us. Mine tends toward nonfiction. Hippy-dippy self-help, mostly, but also books about food and writing. My current Back Burner read – Daily Rituals: How Artists Work – fits very neatly into this category. The sections are short and discrete, ideal for quick reading spells but nothing longer.

On the flipside, certain books hit the Backburner because they take so damn long to read that if I read them exclusively then I’d be reading the same book for months. Which, we have now learned, makes me feel swampy and also compelled to write really lengthy blog posts about things that aren’t terribly relevant to other humans. I’d like to tackle more long reads by throwing them on my backburner, though. I read Octavian Nothing this way once and found it quite gratifying. (Maybe I should start with Part II? Not having read the second half of Octavian’s story is becoming an area of my deepest reading shame…)

4. The Primary Read

Last but definitely not least… there’s the Primary Read. Otherwise known as “The Book You Are Reading.” If you are leaving the house, this is the book you grab. If your fun bookish friend asks you what you are reading, this is the answer you give.

If you are a single book reader, then this is the only category for you. Keep it simple! That’s a good thing!

If you are a multi-book reader, then this book could just be whatever book you are reading that doesn’t fall into any other category – whatever other categories your books fall into. It could also be a book that started as a treadmill egalley or an audiobook but then got REALLY good REALLY fast and has graduated to your Primary Read. Or you might just have a little pool of uncategorized semi-read books and your Primary Read is the one that suits you that day.

For me, the Primary Read is often:

• The new YA book
• The book I’m reading for book club
• The book I’m reading for review
• A particularly hot galley
• Whatever else my little heart desires
• Whichever book is due back first.

This is where I am getting stalled up. I have TWO Primary Reads. The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton, which is both strange and beautiful. It reminds me of those lovely, lyrical family dramas you find in adult lit – a less lengthy Middlesex with a younger spirit. I am also reading Lorrie Moore’s short story collection, Bark, which is a little difficult to convince myself to get into, but once I do the prose just… carries me all the way, like I’m on a tide.

But I’ve been reading both for weeks. WEEKS. I feel like my disinterest in reading compounds when there are TWO books to choose from, especially when neither provide The Yank that inspires me into a reading frenzy.

~

In conclusion, I need to stop micromanaging my reading life and just finish a dang book already.

And then finish another one.

And then only start reading another one if I have an open slot.

And not read more than four.

Forever and ever amen.

P.S. How the heck do YOU read? You are probably normal and just… you know… read. If you do something weird, though, fess up!!

It is the end of the month and I have read basically zero of the books I’ve checked out and that means they will still be here when all those books on hold come in and now I am in hold jail. Also, it felt like negative degrees this morning so I’m considering putting myself in apartment jail, too.

And then I remember that this time last year I was languishing in a freezing cold apartment, barely ever leaving my bedroom or even my bed and never the actual house. So I’m doing okay.

But I still have a shit-ton of books checked out and need to read much faster because I might die without having read them all.

Checked Out

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman

Celeste and Jesse Forever [DVD]

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

The New Rules of Lifting for Women by Lou Schuler

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath

The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast by Laura Vanderkam

All the Truth That’s In Me by Julie Berry

Belle Epoque by Elizabeth Ross

Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill

Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

Dangerous Women ed. by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller

The Essential Guide to Children’s Books and Their Creators ed. by Anita Silvey

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in A Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters

Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath before Ted by Andrew Wilson

The New Rules of Lifting: Six Basic Moves for Maximum Muscle by Lou Schuler [for The Boy]

OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu

The Portable MFA in Creative Writing  by the New York Writers Workshop

Sex & Violence by Carrie Mesrobian

Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe

With or Without You by Domenica Ruta

On Hold

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg

Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story [DVD]

The Way of the Wizard

Afternoon Delight [DVD]

Sea of Hooks by Lindsay Bell

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

My Education by Susan Choi

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

Hild by Nicola Griffith

The Way, Way Back [DVD]

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

20 Feet from Stardom [DVD]

Philomena [DVD]

The Butler [DVD]

Dallas Buyers Club [DVD]

Game of Thrones Season Three [DVD]

Captain Phillips [DVD]

Blue Jasmine [DVD]

I’ve wanted to post something about Ned Vizzini since he died, but I’ve been unsure of what I can say. What I should say.

Most of us who have passions have a story to tell about our passion. An origin story. The friend who lent you that book. You know, the book that changed your life. Or maybe it all started at school, when you picked up an oboe for the first time, took the class that flipped on a light switch in your brain, met the teacher who spoke directly to your soul.

My origin story includes Ned Vizzini. My mother handed me a thin yellow galley – maybe my first galley? – and told me I might like it. It was Teen Angst? Nahhh, Vizzini’s first book, a collection of essays he’d written while still in high school.

Ned’s essays floored me. They delighted me. They were stories about family, about feeling different, about feeling too nerdy to get by but getting by anyway. Ned was just a little bit older than I was. He was young. He was writing about being young. He was writing well. I’d read YA lit before – loved YA lit – but this was something entirely different. Something special.

I read and re-read this book many times as a teen, and when Be More Chill came out in 2004 I was excited. So was my sister. Ned was running his own book tour, insisting that he and his girlfriend loved road trips and would drive anywhere that would have him. My sister – my shy, introverted, nervous sister – called me at college and told me she’s talked to the principal and she’d emailed Ned and he was coming. To our high school. What on earth.

Something fell through on the school’s end, though, and Ned wasn’t to come. He felt bad. He emailed my sister and invited her to come to another school event, an hour away. I came down from school and we drove into the sticks together. We sat in a strange rural middle school cafeteria, the odd teens out – were we groupies? Fangirls? Sisters who couldn’t pass up a once in a lifetime chance?

We met Ned, briefly, afterwards. I remember that he knew my sister’s name, that he was much more excited to be hanging out in rural Michigan than I was, and that he seemed so much younger than me. He had a strange, guileless energy. Like he might say anything. Like he might respond to your emails if you asked him to visit your high school, even if you were a sixteen-year-old girl.

When It’s Kind of a Funny Story came out in 2006, I knew what a galley was and I was happy to get one. When I read that Ned based the book on his time in a mental health unit, I wasn’t surprised. When the book found a broad audience – many teens and young people who themselves struggled with mental illness – I wasn’t surprised.

But when I read that Ned had killed himself, I couldn’t believe it. I read in an interview somewhere that he thought he was still struggling. That he was always going to struggle. But he had coping mechanisms. He wasn’t having suicidal thoughts. Things wouldn’t ever be great but they could just be.

I’m a person who is deeply, irrationally invested in believing the best things people say about themselves. Probably because I spend so much time crafting my own, hoping that someday I will be the person I imagine myself to be. Hoping that everyone believes me. I’m sorry you were in pain, Ned. I’m sorry you had to go so soon. Thank you for starting early and hanging on, for writing your books, for letting me be a weirdo in your middle school writing workshop, for being a tiny, tangential part of my own story. Thanks so much.

So far in 2014, I am reading like this:

• Pick up a book, read two pages, put it down.
• Pick up a different book, read two pages, put it down.
• Put seventeen books on hold even though I have seventeen perfectly good books already checked out.
• Spend an entire 60 minutes browsing Overdrive and Goodreads to find seventeen more books to put on hold.
• Listen to one disc of an audiobook, then stop listening and try another one.
• Pick up another book, read two pages, put it down.

I’m in between cycles of Required Reading, which should be fun but sometimes isn’t. On one hand, I have all the time! In the world! To read whatever I want! On the other hand… I read 25 books in December. Can a girl get a break? For a few weeks.

Unfortunately, though, I don’t want a break. I’m sure some of you are familiar with this feeling, this Aarrrrrrgh where ARE YOU, book that I WANT? Why can’t I FIND YOU?

I am a professional. I’m better equipped to assess reading tastes and desires than most. You would think I could recommend myself The Book that will Soothe My Soul.

I cannot.

The truly sad part of this tale is how many truly tantalizing, juicy books I have at the ready. Fantasy. Literary memoir. Trashy exposé memoir. Books I’ve been waiting forever to read. Books I just discovered. . Audiobooks. Ebooks. Advanced Readers. Regular readers. I bring home one new book a day, in the hopes that a subway ride will be long enough to snare any one of them. Nope nope.

These specimens are all sitting in my apartment. Waiting patiently. For me. Should I try Ellen Litman’s Mannequin Girl, a March ’14 coming of age novel set in Soviet Russia, about a teen girl who has scoliosis and is sent to a special school for invalids? Or maybe Dave Eggers’s latest, The Circle? Do I dare scare myself away from social media and the Internet completely?

Or maybe a book that I have probably put on a list, oh, A HUNDRED TIMES??? Now I have acquired my own copy of Matthew Quick’s Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, I am running out of excuses. Even psychological ones.

Perhaps, though, I am setting my bar too high. Maybe my brain is just small and inattentive right now, and I should turn to something completely scandalous. Like a good religious cult memoir. My hold for Jenna Miscavige Hill’s Beyond Belief finally came in.

Or maybe instead of coddling myself with ghostwritten scandal-books, I should get my gd nose to the grindstone and get ahead of the game. I have a copy of Leslye Walton’s The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender in my possession. It looks magical and weird and something I might like.

If only I could get past those first two pages.

In the meantime, I have set the bar even lower than low. I am re-reading Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl. Despite my low esteem of myself and my reading motivations in this chilly, slumpy January, Fangirl is just as delightful as it was the first time around. While I can’t read anything else for longer than a few pages, I read Fangirl  for 30 consecutive minutes yesterday.

On my phone.

On the treadmill.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

(do gentlemen read this blog?)

I present to you…

[Subtitle: Jessica has fun with spreadsheets]

[could also be the subtitle to my life]

Just when you thought 2013 was well behind us.

I read 145 books in 2013. Goodreads only gave me credit for 140, but that’s because Goodreads doesn’t believe in reading the same book twice in one year. To Goodreads, I say, “pooh-pooh.” Although it is fairly useless to say anything to a database because a database does what a database does. Also, I will blame Amazon.

Stay on task, Jessica. I read 145 books. This is the most books I have read in a year. Ever. Applause, applause, applause. I would spend some time speculating about why the uptick in reading this year, but in 2012 I read 141, so maybe this is just where I’m at. I should, however, give credit both to a steady diet of professional review books and Cybils participation. What, you mean you didn’t spend a weekend on the couch reading 10 nonfiction books back to back? Hmm.

On to the fun stuff. I made pie charts, guys.

First, some broader data. How did my reading break down this year in terms of audience and format?

A majority of my reading was YA, but I was still surprised to see how many adult books I read this year!

This is also interesting because, as a person who reads YA and children’s books for various professional purposes, adult books are almost always “fun” reading for me.

• 12 of the adult books I read were audiobooks.
• 4 were ARCs I picked up at work – stuff that was getting media buzz, mostly. 
• 3 were graphic novels.
• 2 were feel-goody re-reads
• 4 were… ah… filthy
• 6 were Game of Thrones

The rest were a mixed bag of last year’s best fiction, memoirs, creative advice books, and even one book from my Unread Library.

I only read 6 middle grade books. This is normal, but looking at that little pie sliver makes me think I should try to read a few more next year. Middle grade isn’t really my particular wheelhouse, but I’m thinking of some Horn Book editorial about YA taking all the credit/attention/page space away from children’s literature (see also: The World Thinks Anything That Isn’t a Picturebook is YA), which rankles me a bit. Perhaps more on this later?

So what kind of YA was I reading this year?

Despite threatening to become a fantasy fan, I’m still reading mostly realism, at least when I read YA. I’ll be interested to see how this compares to next year’s stats.

That big 30% of the pie is thanks to Cybils, and a lot of my realism reading is for review. This made me curious about how much of my reading was “required” and how much was not. This is a blurry issue – when given free reign over my reading, I will still tend toward books that help me keep up with trends or to gain a better perspective of the genre. I try to read award winners and classics and such. However, exactly how much of my reading is left up to me, and how much is straight up You Have to Read This Jessica Or Face Consequences?

At various times during the year I have felt completely swamped by required reading. Looking at this chart makes me feel like a bit of a whiner. Or at least reminds me that while I have months where I am pining over greener book-pastures, I also have months where no deadlines loom and I can’t be bothered to read anything.

See also: this month.

It also stands to mention that 100% of my required reading is YA or MG. The amount of free-reign YA reading I am doing is a bit less than my free-reign Adult reading – about 37 YA free reads and 49 adult free reads.

This chart could also be labelled “More Evidence That Jessica Has Complex Personal Issues Regarding Classic Literature.”

A more gracious interpretation could be that a lot of my 2013 reads fall under the category of Required Reads. 2012 was a lot of catching up on fun reading. 9 of the 23 books I read that were published between 2000 and 2011 were re-reads – comfort reading.

I am torn between wanting to give more of my pie to reading new books. I really should have read more 2014 books by now, from a professional standpoint and also a YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO CATCH UP WITH READING ANYTHING standpoint. But oh, I want to read more older stuff, I do.

In case you missed it, we have reached the point of this long, long post where I start to freak out because there are only so many more years in my life and what if I die before I read All Of The Books? Heaven help me…

I wanted to run this chart to make sure I am reading equitably, but I wasn’t really concerned about my performance. I naturally tend towards female writers, and I’m kind of on the girly YA beat for some of my professional reviewing. I am actually more interested in whether or not I am reading books written by and about folks of different ethnic backgrounds, but I didn’t keep that data this year. Next year, though, I will.

And last but not least…. is the printed book dead?????

No. Not in the Jessica-sphere anyway. I got an iPhone in January and a Kindle Fire in March. I still only read 9 ebooks out of 145. My problems with ebooks are as follows:

• I work at a library. I don’t need to buy books unless I want to have my own copy of a favorite or support an author. If I’m going to do that, I’m going to buy a print copy.
• I do check out ebooks from my library’s Overdrive collection, but you guys know how awful I am with reading books I check out. That same 14-day reading limit that inspires me to muscle through audiobooks has the opposite effect on my e-reading – once my hold finally comes in, I’m usually busy reading other stuff so I pretty much ignore them.
• I like Netgalley & Edelweiss in theory, but so many of the books I’ve rented are so poorly formatted that I don’t actually read them.

I could also tell you how much money I spent this year buying print books for the library, but let’s suffice to say that it was a lot of money.

Other reading stats of note:

• I read 5 Alex Award winners
• I read 1 Boston Globe Horn Book Award winner and 1 honor
• I read 4 Cybils Award winners (2 YA fic, 1 SFF, 1 MG)
• I read 7 National Book Award finalists
• I read 3 Printz Honors
• I read 1 William C Morris winner and 1 finalist
• I read 3 YALSA Nonfiction Award finalists
• I listened to 11 Overdrive audiobooks between September and December.
• I read 39 YA fiction books by authors that were new to me.
• I re-read 12 books.
• I read 33 books for professional review.

And I “reviewed” 21 books here for this here blog. I was aiming for 1 a week, but you know… I’ll take it.

What’s in store for next year? Well, I have thoughts and pie charts on that topic too, but I will save those for a later date. When you are better rested after making it through this ridiculous, naval-gazing exercise.

I don’t say this enough, but thank you for all of you – my readers – who show up here and watch me gaze at my naval. I like all of you. I do. Thanks for letting me share my 2013 with you.

 

Hello. Thanksgiving has passed. Remind me to tell you about all the pies I baked and all the pies I ate. Or not, actually, because I might be in a bit of a dessert-related shame spiral. Just might be. All I’ve done for the past four or five days is bake pies, eat pies, think about baking or eating pies, listen to Pentatonix CDs in preparation for the triumphant return of The Sing Off…

and read nonfiction books.

Look, guys. The YA nonfiction committee may not have the glam of YA fiction or Speculative Fiction. It may not have the prestige of the picturebook or the middle grade. But I do not care one lick. First of all, those volunteers are saints. SAINTS. Have you seen how many YA books get nominated?? It’s a huge task. I may whine about Cybils reading, but at the end of the day, it’s manageable. But more importantly, it’s useful. You know who hated history classes from kindergarten all the way through college? Me. Reading a few dozen YA nonfiction titles each year is like a catch-up on cultural moments and events that I diligently ignored during my formal schooling. It makes me feel smarter! Which is, of course, the best reason to join a committee. I am so altruistic you guys.

Anywho, because I was a historical delinquent for the first 25 years of my life, I enjoy uncovering past events that spark my interest in that weird, itchy obsessive kind of way. Enter: The Kennedys. James L. Swanson’s “The President Has Been Shot!” – an adaptation of his adult book on the same topic – focuses on Kennedy’s assassination rather than his entire life. Swanson takes the reader through the event with a careful, well-paced specificity; never boring, and – impressively – never feeling too fabricated. I read through Bill O’Reilly’s Kennedy’s Last Days a few weeks back and was rather disturbed by the amount of “creative” nonfictioning going on – sorry, Bill, I don’t think you can prove that Kennedy buttoned his coat absentmindedly while thinking about Cuba. If you can, then for goodness sake give me a citation! After reading these two titles, though – and reading another book about rich white folks with crazy family problems who summer on Nantucket – I have Kennedy fever. I want to read morrrrrreeeee. Maybe The Patriarch?

Speaking of crazy families, enter The Bronte Sisters. Longtime readers know that in addition to snoring through history class, I ignored my English class reading as well. What was I even doing in high school? I have no idea. Writing collaborative stories with friends that slandered each and every one of our classmates. Singing in choir. Getting A’s while putting in the smallest possible amount of effort. Not reading Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, that’s for sure.

Now I would like to. I have read a few literary biographies for young readers now, and I have to say I really dig the structure. The biographies typically begin with the author’s childhood, focusing on incidents and experiences that would prove relevant to their writing careers and the subjects of their most well-known novels. The biography’s “climax” comes when that story is written or published, followed by a chapter consisting of a plot overview. In whole, the book becomes one part biography, one part biographical/historical literary analysis, one part book marketing.

Whether or not teen readers find this type of book as fascinating as I is a different question altogether. A question I will ignore in the hopes my fellow committee members will pick up my slack.

It would  be incorrect of me to state that Karen Bush Gibson’s Women Aviators: 26 Stories of Pioneer Flights, Daring Missions, and Record-Setting Journeys covers EVERY FEMALE AVIATOR to ever take to the skies. There are more than 26 female aviators in existence. Yes. But man, this book just feels so expansive – in a good way, of course. These are ladies who broke race, class, and gender barriers so they could do bad-ass stuff like fly around the globe and beat speed records and save people’s lives in wartimes. In the midst of all these plane stories, I got the feeling that these ladies might someday fade from the public memory – that Gibson is similarly bad-ass for taking on this literary task.

This title is a great example of one of the primary conflicts I face while trying to judge nonfiction titles is the balance between Information Content and Readability. Creating a readable work of nonfiction – one that attends to language, pace, story, and structure – is likely an extremely difficult task, and a commendable one. Remember Sleepy Jessica in history class? She might have read “The President Has Been Shot” – or, last year’s critical darling and Cybil’s winner  Bomb. However, Sleepy Jessica also needed to write history reports and other assignments. And what about her classmates who have a higher tolerance for informative text? Perhaps even prefer a slew of facts to fiction? When read in one go, the stories in Women Aviators tend to blur together – every lady had a clear memory of their first encounter with planes, had some challenges, overcame them, etc. However, to automatically privilege a more narrative work over an book that serves more of a reference purpose than a smooth, cover-to-cover reading experience would be short-sighted. I am reminded of Vicki Smith’s article from this year’s Heavy Medal – as a committee member, I try to avoid judging a book by my own tastes and instead, let the book teach me how to read it and, then, how to evaluate it.

Just read…

Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers and Saints. I read Boxers last weekend. As soon as I finished, I began kicking myself for leaving Saints at work. I am not particularly skilled at talking about graphic novels. When I read a work like Boxers and Saints, I tend to turn the final page and just feel pretty stupefied, unsure of how to comprehend what just happened. However, I am glad I did read them because I traversed out to Harvard Square to see Gene Luen Yang and M.T. Anderson chat, and if I hadn’t read them, I would not have appreciated their discourse as much as I did. I mean, I probably still would have liked it a lot since there are probably not two more charming and brilliant people who could have a chat together, but yeah, it helped.

Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. As a hardcore introvert, I really enjoyed this book. And while I’m not sure extroverts in general would want to read this book, I also thought it was a really interesting application of personality theory; Cain explores introversion in various business, educational, and social settings. It’s really quite fascinating, and she makes a good argument for how introverts are treated in general and provides useful tips to help both the introverted and extroverted level the playing field.

Currently reading…

Curtis Sittenfeld’s Sisterland. I like reading Curtis Sittenfeld’s books, but I’m not sure if I actually like Curtis Sittenfeld’s books. I like her writing. I like that she writes female characters and pays attention, and respect, to her character’s childhoods, teenage years, and young adulthoods. However, I haven’t really read a Sittenfeld that I finished and said, “Yes, that was a fine, fine book.” Maybe The Man of My Dreams, but it’s been years and years since I’ve read it so maybe I would have a different opinion now. Anyway, I am going to have to muscle to finish this before my audiobook expires, but I am really motivated because Favorite Roommate gave it the following review on Goodreads: “I am completely unable to give this a rating right now, because the action the protagonist takes at the end is resonating negatively with me, and I think I would rate it for my feelings rather than merit itself.” WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN THAT IS SO AWFUL?? I am almost more invested in this book now. That is probably strange.

Martin W. Sandler’s Imprisoned and Abigail Haas’s Dangerous Girls. These two are brought to you from the department of Required Reading. I am glad to see a book for a young audience about Japanese internment, mostly because I had no idea this happened until I was in college and felt a little deceived by my public education. However, so far, I am almost completely distracted by the atrocious page-turns in this big, shiny book. There’s only so many times you can interrupt sentences with giant double-page spreads on completely different topics, Sandler. Dangerous Girls, on the other hand, has me flipping pages without any qualms whatsoever. It’s a YA crime novel – did the protagonist kill her best friend? If it wasn’t her, then was it her two-timing boyfriend? The creepy stalker? The smarmy, rich Dutch boy who bought the girls drinks all night at the bar? It’s very wtf is going on, a little Gone-Girlsy.

Up Next…

Losing It and Catherine Reef’s The Bronte Sisters. Well, the thing about Required Reading is that it begets more Required Reading. I should probably read these two next, just because I gotta. I had Losing It on my TBR shelf and The Bronte Sisters looks pretty accessible so I won’t complain too much.

George R. R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords. Once I finish up Sisterland I will be in the market for a new audiobook. And while I’ve halted my Game of Thrones madness for a few months now, I just… I just… I don’t know. I might be tired of staving it off. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s the freaking holidays, I’m feeling indulgent. I feel like it might be this or Harry Potter. So let’s just not talk about it.