Archive for February, 2009

Book

Book jacket mittens! I love love love it!

Thanks to my friend Derek for sending me the link. :)

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

February has been surprisingly busy, the past two weeks especially. Getting a nasty cold didn’t help.

I don’t have long before I need to get dinner ready and watch the Oscars, but I wanted to do a quick post about what I’m reading, since it’s been a while.

During my trip to Michigan I was in the mood for a love story, so I googled lists of best love story novels. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough was on almost every list, so I picked up a copy at Schuler Books. It’s a whopping 673 pages, and I’m currently about 200 pages from the end. I love it so far, and it’s exactly what I was looking for.

I’m also read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which is excellent. I’ve marked it all up with circles and stars because there are so many little quotes and passages that are wonderful. I’ll gather the best of them for a post when I’m done with the book. In the book she writes about the difficulties she had writing her second novel, Rosie. It went through 3 major re-writes, but finally came together and is one of her most beloved and bestselling novels. I really want to read it now, and I picked up a copy at Strand last week.

After I finish these I think I need to read something shorter to try to keep up with my goal of 100 books. Maybe Thank You, Jeeves – I’m in the mood for a P. G. Wodehouse. :)

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My Vox neighbor Christa posted a very fun meme and I decided to join in. I commented on her post (she had the letter D) and she gave me my own letter. I have to post ten things I love that start with the letter she gave me, C. Very fun!

If you’d like to play along too, leave a comment on this post and I’ll give you a letter too!

C

Cupcakes – cupcakes are the best dessert ever, hands down. I love all sorts but am particularly partial to chocolate cake with pink vanilla buttercream frosting from Magnolia’s. When I make them I prefer strawberry cake with white buttercream frosting.

(I will try to make the rest of my Cs not about food – though I could go on with cookies, cheese, cake, chips, chili, chicken fingers, etc.)

Stephen Colbert – Stephen Colbert is spectacular.

Billy Collins – I love Billy Collins, he makes poetry seem so easy, but in reality he’s a master.

Being Cozy – I strive to be Cozy at all times, which I think is part of the reason why summer is my least favorite season. I like hot coffee, blankets, pillows, and stacks of books. Preferably rain beating down on the windows. A fireplace would be ideal, but I’ll make due with the heat being on in general. It’s very hard to achieve Coziness in the summer. My favorite stores and restaurants all have cozy atmospheres. I dislike modern, minimal designs because they’re not Cozy.

Christmas – Christmas is my favorite holiday, probably because of how much I like being Cozy. Christmas is definitely the Coziest holiday.

Coffee – I said I would try to make the rest not about food, but Coffee is a necessity. Few things make me as consistently happy every single day.

John Cusack - Many of my favorite movies are John Cusack’s 80s movies. Particularly The Sure Thing and Better Off Dead. Other favorites include High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank.

Candles – I love having candles lit in the evening. It makes things….you guessed it – cozy.

My Computers – I currently use two computers at home. My iMac is about a year and a half old, and my Powerbook is over 5 years old, but still working great. My iMac is named David Letterman and my Powerbook is named Taco Sam.

Cough Drops – I’m currently pretty sick, and the only thing keeping my coughing spasams under control is cough drops. So they get a bump up from obscurity into my top ten C things.

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David Copperfield (Nonesuch Dickens)

Charles Dickens

Before last year, I had only read one book by Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities for AP English in high school. I am not someone who hated books just because I read them for school. In AP English we read, and I enjoyed, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Canterbury Tales, and many others. However, I hated A Tale of Two Cities. I found it dull, slow, and confusing. I would probably appreciate it more now that I’m older and a more seasoned reader, but at the time I hated it and swore off Dickens altogether.

Over the last few years, I slowly realized I needed to give Dickens another shot. The following things contributed largely to my change of heart:
-Nick Hornby’s enthusiasm for David Copperfield (his May 2004 Polysyllabic Spree)
-References to Great Expectations in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, especially Miss Havisham
-Reading Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
-My Mom’s love of Dickens, especially David Copperfield and Great Expectations

So I made it a reading goal in 2008 to read David Copperfield. It almost didn’t happen, I made it to October without even taking it off the shelf. But mid-October I got it down and read the first few chapters. I liked it a lot, but for some reason didn’t read much more. I got serious about it again in November, and read about half in November and half in December. (I read it sporadically, especially because my edition was the huge hardcover Nonesuch Dickens that was too big to bring to and from work every day.)  I finished the last 20 pages on the morning of January 1, 2009. It was a little bit heartbreaking to not finish the last 20 pages in the year 2008, but I’m proud that I accomplished the goal of reading it. I even brought it with me to my friend’s apartment for her New Year’s Eve party, but obviously didn’t get much reading time. I could have stayed home and finished it instead of celebrating 2009, but that would have been ridiculous. And sad.

Anyway, to the point: I loved David Copperfield! It’s a wonderful story, and I learned to appreciate Dickens’s writing style. He’s wordy, but it’s ok because he’s so good with them. There were many lines that I loved, but this one is by far my favorite, and had me laughing for several minutes:

“These observations, and indeed the greater part of the observations made that evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber’s discovering that Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head on with both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking Traddles under the table, or shuffling his feet over one another, or producing them at distances from himself apparently outrageous to nature, or lying sideways with his hair among the wine-glasses, or developing his restlessness of limb in some other form incompatible with the general interests of society; and by Master Micawber’s receiving those discoveries in a resentful spirit.”

What I love best about David Copperfield is the characters. Whenever I’ve truly disliked a novel in the past, it’s usually because of the characters – I didn’t care about them, they weren’t relatable, they were annoying or unrealistic, or some combination of these problems. David Copperfield was the opposite, I did really enjoy the plot/story, but it was the fantastic characters and Dickens’s gift at making them come to life that made this book one of the best classics I’ve ever read. Some of his characters may not be the most realistic people ever imagined – a few are extremely eccentric, but certainly some of the most entertaining characters I’ve encountered. And despite some of them being improbable, Dickens makes them seem as real as anyone you might meet today. As Nick Hornby said in his comments about the novel, I too was genuinely sad to end the book and to say goodbye to the characters.

Also – their names! Dickens has the best names in literature, hands down. Whenever I finally get to adopt a puppy, I hope to name it Traddles.

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

Books Purchased:

Books Purchased – January 2009

The Writing Diet by Julia Cameron
Meet Mr. Mulliner by P. G. Wodehouse
Lord Emsworth and Others by P. G. Wodehouse
The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense by Edward Lear
The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
A Curtain of Green and Other Stories by Eudora Welty
One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty

Only seven this month! My goal was less than five, but this is still respectable. :) As the above shows, I decided that it’s about time I read some Eudora Welty. I’m trying to slow down a bit on buying Wodehouse – I have plenty to read, but I cannot resist when Strand has the gorgeous Overlook hardcover editions for 60% off. They were only $7.50 each!

Books Read:

Books Read – January 2009

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill
The Writing Diet by Julia Cameron
The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

I did separate posts for three books read this month, David Copperfield, The Mighty Queens of Freeville and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.

Bad Behavior was an impulse buy at Strand last month. I’ve been wanting to read more short story collections, and have been keeping an eye out for collections that look interesting by authors I’ve never read before. Bad Behavior was pretty good; I really like Mary Gaitskill’s writing style. And she certainly is good at writing about dysfunctional relationships. It was also interesting to read the short story that the movie Secretary was based on. The two are very different. Here’s my favorite passage from the collection, from the story “Trying to Be” -

It was a beautiful Halloweenlike night, and there were exuberant people on the streets. She walked happily, admiring faces and haircuts. She looked at people, dogs, cars and buildings, and everything pleased her. She stopped at a Korean grocery store and looked at the fruit. She was struck by how neat and beautiful it was in its organized, traditional piles. She though of herself coming here every week and buying fruit, vegetables, bread, cereal and milk, and it seemed like a wonderful idea. She bought herself an apple, and walked home eating it.”

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to eat healthier (I used to eat a lot of junk, and my cholesterol was getting a little high) and to get in better shape – I’d like to go down one jean size and not be so exhausted at the top of our stairs. I’ve never read any diet/healthy living/fitness book before, so I can’t really compare The Writing Diet to anything else like it. It’s a great starting point though, if you’d like to eat healthier and get in better shape. I really like her suggestion of writing in a journal every morning, your “morning pages,” and I have been doing it every morning. I have combined her book with many other strategies for healthy living – I’ve joined a gym and have been going at least 4 times a week, I use the book Eat This, Not That: Supermarket Survival Guide to help me learn how to read food labels and shop better at the grocery store, and I’ve gone to a nutritionist to help me eat healthy despite my food allergies (I’m allergic to all raw fruits and veggies, which makes healthy, balanced eating a challenge). So I’m not leaning on having read The Writing Diet as the only plan I have for healthier living, but it’s a great motivator and has a lot of great ideas in it that I’ve used with success so far. I figure if the tools I’m using to get healthy continue to work successfully for several months, I’ll write a larger post with more details, for anyone who might be interested. Especially with information from my nutritionist, because that has definitely been the most helpful. I would feel funny posting my entire strategy only 3 weeks in; it seems I should give it more time to evaluate it myself before I recommend anything. :)

I read Coraline in anticipation of the movie adaptation coming out February 6. The movie looks fabulous, and I wanted to have read the book before seeing it. This is the first Neil Gaiman book that I’ve read. Coraline was wonderful – twisted and unusual and exciting. It’s spooky, and I’m glad I read it well before going to bed. It’s a quick, excellent read, and I recommend picking it up and checking it out before seeing what looks to be a fantastic movie. I’m also very excited that Neil Gaiman won the Newbery for The Graveyard Book. I just got that from the library and can’t wait to read it.

I don’t know what my delay was in reading The Tales of Beedle the Bard, considering I read the Harry Potter books within 24 hours of their release. I guess I just wasn’t as excited about it considering it wasn’t a “real” new Harry Potter book. But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed all of the stories. The tales are good in themselves, but it’s Dumbledore’s commentary that makes this book excellent. Each story and notes from Dumbledore was a treat, and I decided to make the book last long I’d read one tale and notes before bed each night for a week. They made wonderful bedtime stories.

I love to bake and cook, and have also really enjoyed the few food memoirs I’ve read about famous foodies and reviewers discovering and developing their own love of food. (The others that I’ve read are My Life in France by Julia Child and Insatiable: Tales from a life of Delicious Excess by Gael Greene.) Tender at the Bone is a very fun and enjoyable memoir. The parts that involve her mother in the beginning are especially funny – she often has to save dinner guests from her mother’s cooking – not only is it bad, but her mother frequently used food products of very questionable freshness. I flew through Tender at the Bone, and picked up the sequel, Comfort Me With Apples, from the library.

Wonder Boys is the second Michael Chabon novel I’ve read (the other is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay).  It’s a little hard to compare the two, and maybe it’s because it’s fresh in my mind, but I think I liked Wonder Boys even more than Kavalier and Clay. Michael Chabon is an excellent writer. Sometimes during Wonder Boys I’d stop after a sentence and think to myself, “good lord, this man can write.” I can’t really come up with any logical reason why I would have liked Wonder Boys better than Kavalier and Clay, and it definitely doesn’t mean that it’s better. Mainly it’s just amazing how good of a writer Michael Chabon is and how his novels have such a broad subject range. I own several more of his books, and I think I’d like to read his short story collection Werewolves in Their Youth next.

Short Stories Read:
“The Lady With the Little Dog” by Anton Chekhov, from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead anthology
“Love” by Grace Paley, from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead anthology
“Appetites” by Kathryn Chetkovich from The Best American Short Stories 1998 anthology

I’m continuing to enjoy all the stories I’m reading from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead that Jeffrey Eugenides edited, and finally read one of Chekhov’s most famous short stories. Garrison Keillor edited the 1998 BA Short Stories, which is why I bought that particular year. I liked “Appetites” a lot, and I’d like to get a copy of her collection that it appears in, Friendly Fire.

As always, my complete Polysyllabic Spree lists are posted here.

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