book lists
24 Nov 2012

reading wishlist: i am out of time

I calculate my yearly reading quota from January 1st to December 31st; some years I am cramming books into that last week between Christmas and New Years, desperately trying to hit my arbitrary quota of 100.

This year, I am done with weeks to spare – Ask Elizabeth was my glorious 100th book of 2012 – but I am still feeling antsy. While my reading year still has weeks to go, my fiscal reading year – which is relevant for my Annual! Book! Review! Extravaganza! – is only two weeks away.

Aaand I am staring down two weeks of nonfiction after nonfiction after nonfiction.

This is fine, but at this point, my free-ranging anxiety reminds me of all those books that everyone said were AMAZING that I just didn’t get to read. Would any of those books have made the top 10, if only I’d turned off Skyrim for a few hours back in June and picked up the damn book? And what about all those books I started but never finished? WHAT ABOUT THOSE BOOKS?

Here is a handful that I just wish I had time to read:

Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

I really did like The Scorpio Races, and I really did start reading Raven Boys. And yeah, it started slow, but I would stick it out! I would!

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Okay, I could just cut and paste the above sentence and place it here. Actually, I could probably cut and paste the above sentence 9 more times here. I actually did read enough of this one to get to where things got exceptionally interesting, but there was a vacation-related library-book snafu, and I had to return it.

Better luck next year? I now have an ARC in my Drawer of Shame at work, so no more untimely due dates.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

This is the first time I’ve had a particular interest in the adult National Book Award category, but the youth category was just too all over the place this year (and *cough* Sheinkin got robbed *cough*). I have heard some good reviews of this Erdrich book, and it’s only just over 300 pages – not too long to scare me.

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

This one shames me. I have my copy, fresh, never been read, waiting for me. BUT ALL THE NONFICTION GAAAHHHHH

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a good feminist manifesto. And everyone went a bit gaga over this one in the summer. And I have my copy. It’s sitting there, taunting me. I could also cut and paste this sentence about eight times. What it is about library holds… you wait and wait and wait and then as soon as you have no time to read anything, all 25 come in at once?

Okay, so maybe I am the only human in the world with that problem. Carry on.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

I think Code Name Verity takes the award for Most Personal Recommendations from Friends… that I have completely ignored. Actually, I didn’t completely ignore them… I worked on reading this for a few weeks, but this was in my late summer reading doldrums, and eventually I decided to read some fluffy lifestyle-y nonfiction instead.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

My new job has made me much more aware of trends in adult books than I usually am, and subsequently, I am more susceptible to book hype. I was number 600 and something on the hold list for this summer’s obsession – Gone Girl – and now that it was arrived, I am not even sure that it is a book that I would actually like. I’ve read a few pages and I think if I’d picked it up at a bookstore, I would put it right back down.

However, 50% of people I know who have read it say it is thrilling and disturbing and at least an interesting read. The other half said it was crap and didn’t finish.

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon

I have long loved Austin Kleon’s blog for his lovely, hand-written note-taking – something about the way he combines information with visual design just pings something in my soul. I also love books on creativity! I would probably adore this book.

The Diviners by Libba Bray

Dear Libba Bray – Your books are huge. I was reading this book and then I stopped because it wouldn’t fit into my purse. Can you please divide your books by two? Thanks. Sincerely, A Concerned Reader

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

As we have determined in today’s post, I am a reading procrastinator with no patience who is highly susceptible to both hype and feel-good-prose. If I wasn’t such a procrastinator, I would probably like this hype-worthy, feel-goody book that is full of short, palatable essays. The end.

 

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book reviews
22 Nov 2012

holiday gift guide 2012

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I am blessed to have some dear friends to hang out with today, and am blessed to have a full-time job that requires me to work tomorrow. Seriously, though. This is the first year in the last five that I have a ready-made excuse NOT to go Black Friday shopping! SERIOUSLY, THOUGH I live with this boy who discovered Black Friday shopping awhile back with one of his fellow stingy friends, and even though he had food poisoning or the stomach flue and became violently ill while WAITING IN LINE AT A CIRCUIT CITY, he still counts it as one of the best days of his life. You should have SEEN the deal he got on that external hard drive, guys!

Aaaanyway. This year, I’ve just got to work in the morning, so sorry, honey, you can get up at 4 a.m. and put on your winter coat and hats and mittens by yourself.

But for those of you getting your holiday shopping started early, and not everyone on your list would like a 1,567 GB external harddrive, here are some books I would suggest. Do bookstores do Black Friday? If the answer is yes, I might change my curmudgeonly tune…

 

For babies and toddlers…

 

Everywhere Babies by Susan Myers and Marla Frazee

Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney

Pantone: Colors by Helen Dardnik

This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen

 

For assorted other children…

 

Penny and her Doll by Kevin Henkes

Wonder by R. J. Palacio

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson

Chomp by Carl Hiaasen

 

For your weird teenage cousins…

Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Baby’s in Black: Astrid Kirchnerr, Stuart Sutcliffe, and The Beatles by Arne Bellstorff

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

 Rookie Yearbook One ed. by Tavi Gevinson

 

For brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, and other “adults”…

 

 

 

The Signal and the Noise: Why Some Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t by Nate Silver

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman

The Story of America: Essays on Origins by Jill Lepore

Live By Night by Dennis Lehane

 

 

book reviews
21 Nov 2012

the holocaust, the civil rights movement, and first world problems

It is possible to be objective about a book, to judge literary quality based on established criteria, to separate the reader-self from the text on the page.

However, it’s probably impossible to do all that 100%, and do it 100% of the time.

A professional part of me says I should try my darndest to be that objective reader, but a big part of me doesn’t really want to bother.

(And maybe the biggest part of me just doesn’t want to? The part that likes the intersections of self and reading, that finds it amusing to chill out in this in-between? This is why I insist on keeping a blog that is about a lot of books but also in no way claiming to be a professional resource, and also why I have a lot of persistent professional angst…)

And how, exactly, do you read these three books in the same weekend and not let the reading experience of one bleed into the other?

Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

by Doreen Rappaport

There are so many books about the Holocaust for young readers, but heck if this isn’t the most encyclopedic that I’ve encountered. And Rappaport doesn’t just retell the same retellings – instead, this book is thick with stories you haven’t heard, the often minute tales of bravery, ingenuity, and self-sacrifice enacted by Jews while they were oppressed, tortured and killed. This book is dense for certain – it took me a few weeks to muster up the energy to make it through, but man, these stories are wild! People crawling through sewers, starting armed forest civilizations, pitching homemade bombs into Nazi strongholds, and general badassery. See Marc Aronson’s NYTimes review for more coherent descriptions (maybe more professional? maybe not… I’ll let you judge).

 

We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March

by Cynthia Y. Levinson

This is another book about unsung heroes, this time of the American variety. I took an extremely comprehensive course on the American Civil Rights Movement while in college – probably the most life-influencing course this white girl has ever sat in on, by the way – and I’m sure we learned about this march in class. However, Levinson writes about the movement in Birmingham and its participants in such vivid specificity that I couldn’t remember a single thought or assumption I had before I opened this book. Focusing in on the particular experiences of four youngsters from different backgrounds and neighborhoods, creating her text with heavy research and interview material, Levinson captures not only the tremendous maturity and resolve necessary to willingly submit oneself to angry dogs, police with billy clubs, fire hoses, and, oh, jail, (AT FOURTEEN!), but also the experience of just being a young teen during this time of Jim Crow. What it felt like to look into a restaurant from the outside and see a banana split that looked good but know that you were not allowed inside, would never be allowed inside, and that was that. What it felt like to realize that you, just a kid, had the power to influence change, and were maybe even essential to the cause.

Yes, I’ve been in a bad mood, been hormonal, been pretty crazy… but this book made me cry.

 

Ask Elizabeth: Real Answers to Everything You Secretly Wanted to Ask About

Love, Friends, YourBody… and Life in General

by Elizabeth Berkley

To Berkley’s credit, this is probably a book I would have lovvvvvved as a ten, eleven, twelve-year-old. As an oldest child, tween and teenhood, to me, felt like a foreign landscape that I was walking through, alone, and believe me, I knew a written map when I saw one.

However, it is not possible for me to read a book as if it exists in a vacuum, 100% impermeable to the rest of my life and the world.

And it was 100% impossible for me to read a book about bffs, crushes, and self-esteem, penned by a non-expert celebrity, no less, without One! Thousand! Eye! Rolls!

Maybe it there was one reference to the following video clip, I could have taken this book seriously.

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adventures
20 Nov 2012

NY, NY

Getting from Boston to New York City is obscenely easy. It is also affordable. Of course, staying in New York City is the opposite of affordable, so we never want to go. However, we bit the bullet a few weekends ago and spent a night in Manhattan.

I wish that I had a ton of pictures to share with you, but The Boy is the designated picture-taker when we travel, and it seems that he did not tend to his duties during this particular trip. This is not a complaint, because when we travel, I am the designated worrier, arguer, stare-vacantly-into-the-abyss-out-of-stress-er, and am generally a nuisance. I do enjoy traveling, but only about six months after I return from a trip.

New York is especially bad, I think – I can handle the noise and the chaos and getting around town, but there is something about that city that just puts me on edge. There is nowhere to sit down, nowhere to relax for just a minute, nowhere where you aren’t aware that you are in NEW YORK. Argh.

My shoulders retracted themselves from my ears for about one hour over the course of the weekend, but I was three cocktails into dinner.

Moral of the story: be more drunk.

Anyway, since The Boy is opposed to planning ahead of time, and I am the Queen of Planning Ahead of Time, grumpy old me got to set the day’s agenda.

So we took a tour of the NYPL’s Schwarzman Building, bought a couple paperbacks at Books of Wonder, and spent an hour or so at the Strand. Naturally.

For The Boy, I made a jazz brunch reservation, and he bought a Wynton Marsalis t-shirt from a vendor on the High Line.

For exhausted, grumpy old me, we paid 10 bucks to hop on an earlier bus home.

 

 Otherwise, a nice weekend.

boston
19 Nov 2012

2012: week forty-five

November 11 – November 17

I am about done with this mood. The only thing I ever want to do is read pop-psychology and write in my orange notebook and feel feeeeelings. I am annoying myself.

Can we talk about how there are only six weeks left in 2012? What a year, guys. Some days I think back to January, February, March etc and I feel triumphant. Some days I feel chewed up and spit out.

One thing that doesn’t suck – Thanksgiving! I appreciate this holiday more and more as I grow older, probably because I have also become a better cook. A holiday devoted to food is one thing… a holiday devoted to cooking? Divine.

This is my second Thanksgiving away from family, sadly, since I am currently lacking these things called “vacation days,” and if the library is open the day after Thanksgiving then you better believe that I need to be there! We are heading out to East Boston to dine with friends and their family, which is really a good way to do Thanksgiving – to be the culinary “guest star.” You can devote your attention to a single dish, putting in the flourishes the host wouldn’t have time for and buying those weird ingredients. Also, you take the train home and your kitchen is waiting for you, clean.

My household will be providing a pumpkin pie, some brussels sprouts, and some kind of corn bread casserole as concocted by The Boy himself. I think the chosen recipe calls for green chiles and at least two types of cheese. I made my pie crust today.

Maybe Thanksgiving will perk me up, and if it doesn’t, I will have another chance – the following Thursday I have been invited to an event called “Thanksgiving 2!” Maybe I can squeeze in an extra Christmas before actual Christmas? Just shove a major holiday into every week, keeping your spirits buoyed with delicious food, drinks, and general cheer all year long?

2013?

 

Reading:

  • So much nonfiction.
  • I am also reading a book about a boy who survives a tornado and finds out he is a sylph. I rarely subject myself to such “paranormal romance,” and I’m trying not to roll my eyes too much. Also, I can’t spell sylph. Also, I am 150 pages in and am not quite sure what a slyph is.

Watching:

  • A little Breaking Bad.
  • A little How I Met Your Mother.

Listening To:

  • Shovels & Rope – O’ Be Joyful
  • Anya Marina – Slow and Steady Seduction
  • Tom Waits – Small Change
  • Oh, and podcasts. It has been a very long time, but I am now almost caught up with You Had To Be There, and SO EXCITED that Sara and Nikki are going to have an MTV show!!!!
life maintenance
15 Nov 2012

life as a normal human: hobbies

The things that you do when you are not working are called “hobbies.”

I have probably blogged about this already, but sometime last semester I had a conversation with an undergraduate student about my ridiculous schedule, and she looked at me funny and asked, “Uh, what do you do for fun?”

Blushing. An extended, “Ummm…” Then I settled on the following responses:

  • I read on the bus
  • I listen to podcasts while I run

This was not an adequate answer.

I suppose blogging could be considered a hobby, as well as enjoying fine wines with friends. But I didn’t want to reveal that to my undergraduate acquaintances.

By the way, did I mention that these undergraduate acquaintances who were so baffled with my lifestyle were honors students?

Also, by “enjoying fine wines with my friends” I mean “drinking Two Buck Chuck in my apartment, regardless of who else decided to join me.”

Anywaaaaaaaay. I finally have time to, you know, do some things in my free time. Things “for fun!”

I wish I could say I am doing much more than reading on the bus and listening to podcasts, but frankly, I am afraid that I am having trouble squelching my Type A tendencies. My free time is mostly spent blogging, drinking cheap red wine in my apartment, and micromanaging my life by the way of lists, charts, and cleaning and rearranging my apartment.

I am spending more time, guilt-free, with my friends, including occasional evenings cavorting around Boston without any homework taunting me at home.

I am watching occasional recreational television, and reading occasional recreational books.

I am cooking dinner every night.

I am mostly reading and writing, which is what I like anyway.

I have not begun working for charity, running long distance races, knitting, doing calligraphy, or writing The Next Great American Novel…

but thanks to my dear friend who moved to Seattle who loaned me her sewing machine in her absence… I have one crooked, red curtain in my kitchen.

 Give it another three months, maybe I’ll sew up the other one.

book reviews
14 Nov 2012

a black hole, a fairy, and an unending series of wars

A Black Hole is Not a Hole by Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano

One time, in my AP Chemistry class, I needed some extra credit. And by “some” extra credit, I mean a lot of extra credit. The most fun way I earned extra credit? Sewing a little white felt mole from this exact pattern and turning it in for Mole Day. The least fun way I earned extra credit? Making a Powerpoint that explained String Theory.

Although A Black Hole is Not a Hole is a compact, pleasing little science book with illustrations both charming and beautiful, and the scientific explanations are slow and clear without being oversimplified… reading this book felt a little like making that String Theory Powerpoint. This is high science that my brain is just not equipped for. How I ended up in AP Chemistry and not AP English is a great mystery.

Young scientists, allow your brains to grow bigger than mine and enjoy this book. Maybe by the time you are in high school, you won’t need any extra credit.

 

The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World by Mary Losure

I like a good nonfiction book that exists solely to call attention to an interesting, obscure bit of history that you never would have heard about otherwise. I read a biography of a lady who stole a lot of babies once that I found questionably authoritative and downright horrifying exactly for that reason: reading about these small moments in time, these strangely influential people who have fallen from history’s radar, makes me feel like the universe is vast and interesting.

You’d think I would say that about a book about Black Holes and not about two child trick photographers…. but that’s neither here nor there.

The Fairy Ring is a pleasantly slender history of two young girls who may or may not have actually seen fairies in their backyard, but who did indeed make some trick photos with paper fairies, and those photos indeed did get national press, and the forgery was not revealed until they were both old ladies. It’s an interesting little story and Losure does a good job of calling attention to the strangeness of being a small girl in England, where you have limited agency in your daily life, but maybe have the singular power to materialize fairie-kind.

 

That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone ed. by J.L. Powers

In case black holes and fairies are a little too upbeat for you, might I present to you a collection of narrative essay about children growing up in war zones? This is a weighty read, but worth it – each chapter is a narrative written by someone who has seen war or the effects of war firsthand, and the book as a whole becomes this testament to our world’s violent, violent history. The fact that there are so many wars past and ongoing conflicts is just baffling, especially considering the personal impact. The essay’s authors explore their own childhoods as unwilling players in war – as a Cambodian refugee, the child of a PTSD-addled Vietnam vet, as a civilian in an occupied state, as a potential Taliban recruit, as an orphan.

This book is fascinating, chilling, humbling, and it feels important. This is a small-press book – I hope that it finds as many readers as it can get.

life maintenance
13 Nov 2012

oh the carbs i have baked

Thirty days after Whole30 and I am remembering how eating carbs and sugar just seems to beget more and more and more carbs and sugar… you think you are having an innocent piece of toast, but in truth you are opening your bloodstream and your brain to this idea that you could, at any time, have something delicious. That maybe you even deserve something delicious!

It started with Halloween. I tried to bake some pumpkin cinnamon rolls during the day – as a post-diet celebration – but there was something wrong with my yeast… like, it didn’t bubble, and then, lo and behold, the rolls did not rise. I was already in the kitchen making a royal mess, so I thought I’d bring a treat over to my friend’s party.

Enter: Pumpkin Cupcakes. Martha Stewart’s recipe, natch – she does a good cupcake.

I brought them straight over to the party right away like a good girl, and I only licked the spoon once. P.S. Last sentence, big fat lie. However, I succeeded in Not Coming Home With Any Cupcakes, so all’s well. Right?

… and then there were the biscuits.

I was making some dinner that was going to take too long and I was so so hungry, and wouldn’t some carbs sound nice? Don’t you actually DESERVE some carbs? I used recipe, touted as “The Recipe That Could Salvage Any Dinner for [Insert Male Dining Partner Here]. These biscuits pictured are, actually,  Janssen’s as well – mine were mostly square because I only made a half batch (Good Girl!) and I didn’t want to smoosh my dough around too much and I don’t own a biscuit cutter anyway.

P.S. They did, in fact, please my Male Dining Partner plenty. In fact the phrase “Aww, you made me carbs!” might have been uttered in my kitchen.

Then everything just went to hell.

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, I don’t remember that for sure, but there’s been a hurricane and a Nor’easter, so we’ll just run with it. I had made dinner – I’m sure it was delicious and relatively low carb and healthy. Completely delicious and satisfying.

An hour later, I was making THESE:

Cupcakes, biscuits, then hydrogenated oils stuffed in other hydrogenated oils.

Oh, the shame.

I started writing this post and had to stop myself from making pumpkin muffins.

It’s bad, friends. I shudder at the thought of holiday desserts season, I really do… I am going to come out the other side of December jittering and fat and covered with flour.

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life maintenance
12 Nov 2012

2012: week forty-four

November 4 – November 10

A sad week, a tired week, a grumpy week.

Out of curiosity, I browsed through my weekly posts past. I conjectured that I would find the following pattern – 3 weeks good, 1 week bad.

And that is exactly what I found.

Oh, hormones.

Also see: indoor allergies, rain upon rain upon rain, and daylight savings

Reading:

Watching:

  • An episode of Homeland, which everyone has said is amazing, and although it sounded like the opposite of a show I would like, well, I liked it.

Listening To:

  • Libba Bray read Beauty Queens, which is, so far, quite an enjoyable pursuit
book reviews
10 Nov 2012

chuck close and chuck close

I made it my first 27 years of life without ever hearing about famous living artist, Chuck Close. Heck, I think I may have actually seen some Chuck Close portraits before; still nothing.

And then, last week, I read two books about Mr. Close, and am now an expert, I think.

First, I read Boston-Globe Horn Book Award Winning Chuck Close: Face Book. This book is structured around a school “fieldtrip” – a group of children visiting Mr. Close in his studio and, after studying his life and his work, asking him some rather astute questions. The children had questions about his childhood, his career, his art, etc. It’s a pretty little book, and has an awesome flip book in the middle with portraits you can mix and match.

And then I decided to read Chuck Close Up close by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, because I didn’t JUST read a biography of the same man the day before. Oh yes I did, that’s what this entire post is about! This book is like a slim picturebook, but there is a surprising amount of text. Where Chuck Close: Face Book is more casual, written in Mr. Close’s own voice, and loosely structured, Greenberg and Jordan present a more traditional biography – a format that allows a bit more depth of content.

What I’m trying to say is that

A) Chuck Close is pretty fascinating and talented, especially his thoughts on his own creative process – he is super down to earth, treats his art like craft, and is constantly adjusting his techniques and mediums to adjust for various mental and physical limitations.

B) Both books are informative, interesting reads, and you can read both back to back and not be bored.

C) It is possible that I saw a wall-sized painting of Bill Clinton and forgot about it. I think I am becoming senile.