Archive for January, 2009

This week I stopped by one of my favorite bookstores, Skyline Books. Skyline Books is a cozy little used bookstore near Union Square that’s packed with good books at good prices.

One reason I love used bookstores is that they don’t have everything. It’s always fun to go in and see what you can find, what they have that day. It’s satisfying to come out with the only copy there of a book by one of your favorite authors, that you got for 1/3 of the original price.

While browsing the fiction, I noticed they had a lot of old modern library editions of many classic authors – everything from Faulkner to Austen to Voltaire. When I took them down to look at them closer, I saw that they all had a bookplate inside, and had all belonged to someone named “Allen V. Miller.” “Allen Miller” in some books, others used the middle initial. Some were handwritten, some were typed. Some had his entire Brooklyn address included. He had several different bookplates, one version was actually the Bookworm print that I just bought myself.

Well, I don’t know exactly why Allen V. Miller’s books were sold to Skyline Books. My guess is that he died, or maybe had to be taken to a nursing home and his family had to condense his belongings. Or maybe he’s still alive and well and just needed money (wouldn’t be shocking in this economy). Or any number of other reasons – he may have just gotten sick of them and not wanted them anymore.

However, I sort of doubt that he didn’t want his books anymore. He had a wonderful collection, and they were in good condition but were obviously read and loved. And he put bookplates in them! Super cute.

Regardless of the reason why his books were there, it made me both happy and sad. Happy that Allen Miller existed, and that he loved books. Happy that he put bookplates in them. Happy that I could be standing there looking at them. Happy they’ll get passed along to other readers who will enjoy them. Sad that they were no long with him, for whatever reason. I am a giant nerd.

I was incapable of leaving without one of his books. It took me a while to decide which one I wanted, but I finally decided on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It didn’t have my favorite bookplate in it (the Bookworm one was in an F. Scott Fitzgerald book, and I already owned that exact edition), but that’s ok. It actually had the silliest bookplate – a cute little nature scene with raccoons. I love it though, and I was really happy I could own a part of his collection. At least one book from his collection now has a new home.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

From the Books of Allen Miller

Here’s to you, Allen Miller.

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A friend on Rory’s Book Club recently posted a quote from The History Boys, and reminded me of how much I love that particular quote. That got me thinking about all my favorite quotes about reading, so I decided to post a few of them here:

“The best moments in reading, are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”
-The History Boys

“Every new search is a voyage to the indies, a quest for buried treasure, a journey to the end of a rainbow; and whether or not at the end there shall be turned up a pot of gold or merely a delightful volume, there are always wonders along the way.”
-Vincent Starrett

“Each interpretation of an event, setting or character is unique to each of those who read it because they clothe the author’s description with the memory of their own experiences. Every character they read is actually a complex amalgam of people that they’ve met, read or seen before – far more real than it can ever be just from the text on the page. Because every reader’s experiences are different, each book is unique for each reader.”
-Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde

“Of course anyone who truly loves books buy more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.”
-David Quanimen

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Here’s a site with many fun desktop wallpapers to download, and includes very large sizes for those of us with large  screen resolutions. (found via How About Orange)

A hilarious McSweeney’s feature that imagines a literary critic reviewing a resume.

Many of you have probably seen the Domino’s commercial that claims people prefer Domino’s sandwiches to Subway’s 2 to 1. It didn’t come as too big of a shocker to me then that Domino’s sandwiches all include more calories, fat, cholesterol, and sodium than comparable Subway sandwiches. Amazon’s Al Dente blog breaks down the nutrition information from each restaurant.

I just found out that one of my favorite kid lit bloggers, Fuse #8, is originally from my hometown – Kalamazoo! She recently went back to tour the main branch of the Kalamazoo Public Library and wrote a great post that features the library and includes lots of pictures. This is the library system that I grew up with – I was a frequent user of the library during my childhood, and when I was in late elementary school my mom got a job at one of the branches. Then I spent even more time there, and volunteered there constantly – shelving books and helping with the children’s programs. When I was in high school my mom got promoted and moved to the Main branch (the one pictured) and I got a job at the Oshtemo branch. I still love visiting my mom there every time I’m home, and I loved looking at these great photos and great comments by Fuse #8.

Very funny XKCD comic about Windows 7.

As I went through my Google Reader starred items I found even more wonderful desktop wallpaper that was featured on How About Orange.

Awesome website – Beard Revue – about all things Beard related. (found via I Like)

More gorgeous editions of classic literature that seem to only be available in Europe. (found via Kimbooktu)

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Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, The

E. Lockhart

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart caught my attention in a big way this week when it became the first YA novel to be included in The Morning News Tournament of Books. Reading the descriptions online made me even more antsy to read it. That very night I went to the Hoboken Library to pick it up.

The Book Description (from Amazon):

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend:  the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.

This is the story of how she got that way.”

I’m not one who gets self-conscious about my reactions to books on the train. I admit, I don’t laugh out loud nearly as long or as hard as I would at home or somewhere more private, but I don’t mind smiling or chuckling as I read a book on the train. I’ve even leaked tears on the train because of a book. My opinion is that people can see you have a book in your hand (that you’re reading) that is causing that reaction. It doesn’t look crazy or silly, as if you had no headphones, companion or book and were just sitting there laughing to yourself. With the sad adult reading rates it’s probably a good thing for people to see others enjoying a book, or being emotionally affected by one. However, if I was a person to be self-conscious about all this, I would have been terribly embarrassed reading The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks on the train. This book joined me for two morning commutes, and I was grinning from ear to ear and chuckling* through most of it. I couldn’t contain it.

One of the best things about this book is that Frankie is one of the best modern female characters I’ve read in YA fiction in a long time. (My Vox Neighbor Ginger Sister recently posted a lament about the recent lack of strong, smart, female heroines.)

Not only is Frankie a majorly awesome girl, she struggles with understanding and accepting gender roles in her boarding school. She spends a lot of time thinking about and trying to figure out her new role in the “popular crowd” – a spot she holds because she’s dating a very popular senior boy, Matthew. She gets frustrated with how fickle they all are toward people – especially the girlfriends of the boys in the crowd. She’s not ok with the fact that they act like her friends, but if she and Matthew were to break up, she would be invisible to them again.

What makes Frankie such a great female character is that she’s smart, clever, funny, headstrong and outspoken, AND she also has doubts, regrettable actions and decisions, problems, and internal conflict. She seems real. It’s not something I’ve seen a lot in recent YA literature.  It’s something I’m going to search for more as I attempt to keep up with all the wonderful new YA books that the awesome bloggers I follow are raving about.

As if all that weren’t enough to make her a fabulous character, Frankie discovers the author P. G. Wodehouse and the result is so awesome that I don’t want to say anything more about it because I don’t want to spoil it.

Highly recommended to anyone looking for an awesome heroine and a story that keeps you turning pages long after you should have gone to bed.

For more information:
E. Lockhart’s website
E. Lockhart Interview by the National Book Foundation (this book was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature)
NY Times Review

*Apparently enough time has passed for me to get over my aversion to all forms of the word “chuckle” that I developed from reading the Twilight series.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

Mighty Queens of Freeville, The: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them

Amy Dickinson

Before the holidays, I received a review copy of The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson. I love memoirs, so it was exciting to read and review it here.

Here’s the description of the book, from the info on its Amazon page:

Millions of Americans know and love Amy Dickinson from reading her syndicated advice column “Ask Amy” and from hearing her wit and wisdom weekly on National Public Radio. Amy’s audience loves her for her honesty, her small-town values, and the fact that her motto is “I make the mistakes so you don’t have to.” In The Mighty Queens of Freeville, Amy Dickinson shares those mistakes and her remarkable story. This is the tale of Amy and her daughter and the people who helped raise them after Amy found herself a reluctant single parent.

Though divorce runs through her family like an aggressive chromosome, the women in her life taught her what family is about. They helped her to pick up the pieces when her life fell apart and to reassemble them into something new. It is a story of frequent failures and surprising successes, as Amy starts and loses careers, bumbles through blind dates and adult education classes, travels across the country with her daughter and their giant tabby cat, and tries to come to terms with the family’s aptitude for “dorkitude.”

They have lived in London, D.C., and Chicago, but all roads lead them back to Amy’s hometown of Freeville (pop. 458), a tiny village where Amy’s family has tilled and cultivated the land, tended chickens and Holsteins, and built houses and backyard sheds for more than 200 years. Most important, though, her family members all still live within a ten-house radius of each other. With kindness and razor-sharp wit, they welcome Amy and her daughter back weekend after weekend, summer after summer, offering a moving testament to the many women who have led small lives of great consequence in a tiny place.

I finished this book with a sense that it was incomplete, that there was so much more potential in her life story that would have been inspiring. Her life is certainly interesting – one of her main distinctions is that she was the person chosen to replace Ann Landers’s syndicated advice column.  She shared many interesting little pieces of her life – her break up with her husband, raising their daughter on her own, her relationship with her own father, how her extended family all live in the small town of Freeville, NY and see each other practically daily, etc. All of it was interesting, but each relationship/person in her life was described so minimally that you don’t get to know anyone very well. Specifically, it would have been wonderful to read more about her relationship with her daughter. They seemed to have a Gilmore Girls-esque relationship – very close, good friends, raising each other, and so on.  Yet we rarely get to hear about her daughter Emily.

Also, all the women in her life (another unique circumstance – lots of female relatives, very few men) are surprisingly absent from most of the memoir. She comes from a big family of strong, supportive women, and it’s a shame they’re not in the book more often. Their stories and presence in the memoir would most likely have made the book more meaningful and interesting.

Still, it’s an enjoyable read. It moves along quickly thanks to Amy Dickinson’s clear and accessible writing voice. She’s a very nice person to spend a few hours with in her book. Maybe she’ll write another memoir someday with more from the Mighty Queens.

The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson will be released on February 3, 2009
Buy this book at an Independent Book Store
Buy this book from Barnes and Noble

For more info on the book, the Amazon page has a book trailer, and the Barnes and Noble page features a stream of the first six minutes of the audio book.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

I’ve been pondering my reading goals for 2009 for a few weeks, and have settled on a list that I think will be challenging yet attainable.

When setting the number of total books to aim for, I almost went with 80, a much safer number since I read 87 this year. But I figured that I’m so close to 100 that I might as well shoot for it. I’d like to read more graphic novels and kid’s lit books anyway this year, so doing that will help me reach my goal.

100 books in a year comes out to 8.3333 books per month, so I’m going to aim for 9 books per month. In the past few years I’ve always had a few “dud” months where I barely read anything. (Like June of 2008).  If I’m going to hit 100 books I’ll definitely need to avoid dud months. I don’t want to avoid longer books either, so I’ll definitely need some kid’s lit and other fast reads to help balance out the longer books.

For my short story goal – my goal is to read a variety of stories from: The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and many various anthologies I own. I won’t count individual stories in a short story collection by a single author if I read them all consecutively and finish the book.

As for the specific books to read, there was no rhyme or reason to their selection, they are just classics that I’ve owned and been meaning to read for a while.

And one last goal that I didn’t include in the list (because it’s hard to quantify) – I’d like to buy more of my books at independent bookstores. I already buy quite a bit at Indie stores, especially Strand, but I could definitely improve. Particularly when it comes to brand new books, Amazon’s40% off has been too affordable to resist. I’d even like to shop more at the Hoboken Barnes and Noble (over Amazon) – I love having a place to buy new books right in Hoboken, especially on the weekends. The only other bookstore in Hoboken is great, but only sells used books and has a limited selection. I’m not Anti-Amazon, but in this economy it’s much healthier to support local stores and workers.

One last, important thing: I need to buy way fewer than 191 books this year! My wallet and apartment bookshelves demand it!

So – we’ll see how I do! I have a lot of other personal goals this year that will consume time, so if I come up shy of 100 books read I won’t be too surprised. But I figure it’s best to aim high, and it’d be wonderful to have a 100 book year in 2009.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

I finally finished my second annual Books and Reading Recap. I loved going through my lists last year and finding fun stats about the books I read, so it was very fun to do this again for 2008. I’m using the same information I posted last year, and added even more stats. (To see my 2007 Recap, click here).

To start, here are the 2008 reading goals I made last year and how I did with each:

• Read at least 71 books (one more than last year seems like a reasonable goal)
  • Complete (I finished 87)
• Read David Copperfield
  • Complete (However, I read the last 20 pages of it on Jan 1, 2009, so I can’t technically count it as a book read in 2008. I’m very happy I read it though, despite not finishing before the end of the year.)
• Read 3 Vonnegut books
  
  • Complete (I read four – Armageddon in Retrospect & Mother Night, and re-read Slaughterhouse Five and A Man Without a Country)
    
• Visit 10 bookstores in the city that I haven’t been to yet
  • Complete
• Attend at least 20 book events
  • Incomplete (I only went to 9, the list is below)

2008 Books and Reading Recap

Total Books Read – 2008

87 Books Read (for a complete list of books I read, click here to visit my Polysyllabic Spree list)
64 fiction
23 non-fiction

10  re-reads

34 by male authors
53 by female authors

63 books by authors who are still alive
24 books by authors who are now dead

62 different authors
42 new to me authors

16 library books
8 I borrowed, read, and bought after I read it
26,128 Pages Read (does not included unfinished books)
71.39 pages/day average

By Genre (some books may be in more than one category)
Essays – 5
Short Stories – 3
Kid’s Lit – 18
YA Lit – 9
Graphic Novels – 3
Memoir/Autobiography – 13
Books about Reading – 2
Classics – 20
Contemporary Fiction – 18

Published in:
2008 – 17
2007 – 18
2006 – 5
2005 – 7
2004 – 2
2003 – 3
2002 – 1
2001 – 1
1990s – 4
1980s – 5
1970s – 1
1960s – 4
1950s – 5
1940s – 2
1930s – 1
1920s – 1
1910s – 1
1900s – 1
19th Century – 7

Multiple Books Read by an author:
Jane Austen: 6
P. G. Wodehouse: 5
Kurt Vonnegut: 4
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor: 4
Stephenie Meyer: 4
L. M. Montgomery: 3
Libba Bray: 3
Lisa See: 2
J. D. Salinger: 2
Jeanne Birdsall: 2

Favorite Fiction Books Read in 2008

Top Five Favorite Fiction books*
1. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
2. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
3. Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
4. The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
5. Persuasion by Jane Austen

Favorite Non-Fiction Books Read in 2008

Top Five Favorite Non-Fiction Books*
1. Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes
2. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
3. The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders
4. At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman
5. Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

*I did not include any books I re-read this year when considering my favorites books read this year, since I figured it’s pretty much a given that books I re-read are favorites.

Favorite Book Covers of 2008*

Favorite Book Covers (I selected these from the “books purchased” list too, not just “books read”)
I Capture the Castle
The Braindead Megaphone
I Was Told There’d Be Cake
State By State
My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead
Maps & Legends
Favorite Book Titles
I Capture the Castle
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Code of the Woosters
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
I Was Told There’d Be Cake

Books Purchased in 2008: 191 (oy – my goal was to buy less books. This is 41 more than 2007.)

Total Books Purchased – 2008

The Year in Book Events: 9 Events
1. Geraldine Brooks, 1.9.08, Barnes and Noble Union Square, People of the Book
2. Jeffery Eugenides & George Saunders, 1.10.08, Barnes and Noble Lincoln Center, My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead
3. Vendela Vida, 1.17.08, Barnes and Noble Chelsea, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
4. Lisa See, 3.3.08, Barnes and Noble Tribeca, Peony in Love
5. Ben Karlin, 3.28.08, Barnes and Noble Tribeca, Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me
6. Caldecott/Newbery Even at Books of Wonder, 4.13.08
-Peter Sis, The Wall
-Jacquelene Woodson, Feathers
-Mo Willems, Knuffle Bunny Too
-Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret
-Laura Vaccaro Seeger, First the Egg
7. Junot Diaz, 9.4.08, Barnes and Noble Union Square, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
8. Stephen Shore, 9.9.08, Strand, Uncommon Places
9. Sarah Vowell, 10.8.08, Barnes and Noble Union Square, The Wordy Shipmates

A complete list of the books I purchased in 2008, broken down by month, can be found on my Polysyllabic Spree log.
Up next: 2009 Books & Reading goals
(note: I cannot get the font sizes to be anything besides wonky in this post – apologies!)

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

Hello and Happy New Year! I’m back from two wonderful weeks in Michigan and ready to jump into several posts about 2008 (mainly 2008 reading) that I have planned/started. I will also post my goals for 2009 reading.

First up – my Polysyllabic Spree for December:

Books Purchased – December 2008

Books Purchased (or received as gifts)

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling

The Best American Short Stories edited by Stephen King

Reborn: Journals & Notebooks, 1947 – 1963 by Susan Sontag

Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

Love Letters of Great Men edited by Ursula Doyle (gift)

The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry selected by Billy Collins

Eleanor Roosevelt Volume 1 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook

Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (gift)

The Time of Their Lives by Al Silverman (gift)

Shakespeare Wrote for the Money by Nick Hornby (gift)

Very Far Away from Anywhere Else by Ursula K. Le Guin

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (gift)

The Best American Short Stories of the Eighties edited by Shannon Ravenel

With Love and Squalor edited by Kip Kotzen and Thomas Beller

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

I received many wonderful books for Christmas. I also got several fantastic cookbooks, which I do not include on my official book lists. The cookbooks I received were: The Art and Soul of Baking, Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook, and The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book. It seems my books acquired stack is destined to always be towering, but this month its size is mainly due to the many awesome $1 to $2 book deals I found at Book Off, Skyline Books, The Book Nook, and the KPL Friends of the Library bookstore. Oh well, there’s always next year to try to accumulate less books. :)

(Also not pictured is my collector’s edition of Tales of Beedle the Bard. It’s absolutely gorgeous, in fact – a little too gorgeous to actually read. Instead of buying the US edition as a reading copy, I fell in love with the cover of the UK edition, so I ordered it from Amazon UK. Yes, I’m that fanatical about my Harry Potter collection.)

Books Read – December 2008

Books Read:

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (library)

Rebel Angels by Libba Bray (library)

The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray (library)

I only finished three books in December. I blame the holidays. I started a lot of things that I didn’t finish in December, and hopefully will soon. I did really enjoy the three books I read this month though. I read the complete Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray. It’s a teen fantasy saga and it’s much better than the Twilight series. It’s very dark and gothic, which was just what I was in the mood for during the busy holidays – something completely absorbing that would be very fun to read. Rebel Angels, the second book, is my favorite in the trilogy. If you’re interested in learning more about this series, the official website has descriptions of each book, and a link where you can read the first chapter of A Great and Terrible Beauty. Also, according to IMDB, A Great and Terrible Beauty is going to be made into a movie, coming out in 2010. The status is only “announced” so I hope this actually happens, it would make an excellent movie. An added bonus of this series – the love interest, Kartik, is completely wonderful.

Short Stories Read:

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
(There are many collections that include this story, including several cool new stand alone editions, but I read the story in a book called Before Gatsby: The First 26 Stories.)

I’ve decided to try logging short stories that I read into my monthly posts. However, I’m not going to list individual stories when I read an entire collection at once, or if I plan on finishing the entire collection soon. I’d like to read more short stories from various places (like the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and various anthologies of short stories by multiple authors). I’m not very good at making time to read them though, so I think having a running list will help. In December I wanted to read “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” before seeing the movie. I love most of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories, and this one was good too. I saw the movie on New Year’s Day. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was completely different from the short story. If you’re interested in reading the story for yourself, it’s available for free online right here.
Currently reading: Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon.

As a bonus this month, since I’ve been absent for over 2 weeks, here are three more fun book related photos from this month:

Bookplates

Here’s a photo of some awesome bookplates I found at Schuler Books in Michigan (a fabulous independent bookstore I love to visit when I’m there). The picture is one of my favorite paintings, The Bookworm.

Old Photo

This is an old photo I found in a book I bought at the Book Nook in Cadillac, Michigan.

Bookmarks

Here are old bookmarks that were free from the KPL Friends Bookstore.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)