Monthly Archives: April 2009

Upcoming Books

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I’ve been inspired by Kelly’s recent post about upcoming books that she’s looking forward to, and wanted to post a list of the books that I’m looking forward to this year as well.

My list starts with Shanghai Girls by Lisa See, coming out on May 26. I loved Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love, and I can’t wait to read her latest.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger – September 29. I’m one of the many people curious about how her second novel will compare to The Time Traveler’s Wife. I’m hoping it will be just as captivating.

Juliet, Naked: A Novel by Nick Hornby – September 29. I didn’t know Nick Hornby had a new book out this fall until I read about it on Kelly’s post, but I’m very excited.

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart – October 6. This will be the third Mysterious Benedict Society book, and I can’t wait. I’ve been wondering about when the next one will come out, and was very excited last weekend when I saw that the newly released paperback of book two announced the release of book three in the fall.

Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut – October 27. More Kurt Vonnegut is a good thing.

Release Date & Title TBD: Alton Brown’s Good Eats book. I’m extremely eager about this one. I’ve read that Alton Brown’s latest two book deal will be for two books about his Good Eats TV show. Each will be sectioned off into chapter by show, with recipes and tecniques in each section. There will also be lots of photos from the episodes, including behind the scenes.

Also: HarperCollins is releasing new editions of the last six Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace this September. It’s a bit odd, because it appears they are combining them – two novels per book. I don’t think I’ll be tempted to buy them, I already own all them in a very cute matching set of HarperTrophy editions that my Mom bought for me, but I’m not above standing in a bookstore reading any new content they’ll put in the P.S. section at the back. I’m very curious what the covers will look like. If you haven’t already read Betsy-Tacy books, I highly recommend them. I’m re-reading them all this month and am as delighted as when I read them years ago.

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

Saying Yes and being brave

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I don’t often give many details about my job on here, for two reasons:

1. it’s probably boring to read about

2. people get fired for things they write about work on their blogs
But today is going to be an exception, although I’m making the post neighborhood only.
I’ve been at my current company for 3 years. It was a rough start (had a boss that wouldn’t assign me any work, and I was bored out of my mind for about 4 months), but soon got better. I made many good friends, got a new boss who was AMAZING, and succeeded there in many ways, for several years. It was also my first job out of college, and my first job in New York.

Last November, things started getting sucky. I still won’t get into too many details, but the cause was really bad decisions and management from two people in charge of my department. Then, it got even worse in February when they laid off my wonderful boss. The last 3 weeks have been especially miserable.

I started updating my resume as soon as they laid off my boss, but then decided to stick it out a little bit to see if it got better. It didn’t.

So two weeks ago I started looking for a new job again. It was stressful. But a great offer came just over a week into the hunt, with a company I think I’ll be really happy with. I said yes to the offer.

I let my current company know on Thursday, and my last day is May 6. Normally my work sends people home and doesn’t let them stay two weeks. My new boss had to fight the VP to let me stay and help transition, since I’m working on so many big projects. I definitely wouldn’t have minded two weeks off, paid, but I am kind of glad to have a proper ending to this job. I’ve been there for a long time and have many close friends. My closest friends, the girls on my team, are planning a big goodbye happy hour for me on Cinco de Mayo, the night before my last day.

I’m excited for my new job – excited that I had the courage to say Yes and make a big change in my life. I’m also fairly scared. It’s a big change. I’m really comfortable in my current position, despite being miserable. But I’m confident that it will be a good change, and a really good experience for me.

On the day I put in my notice, my mom sent me a quote from the Declaration of Independence that I love, and I was amazed at how fitting it was for my situation. :)

“Mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by altering the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them to under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.”

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

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

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A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway

I’ll admit something right now: I had been resisting reading anything by Ernest Hemingway for a long time. I’ll also admit that I don’t know really remember why. I suppose I considered myself more of an F. Scott Fitzgerald girl. I also suppose that Hemingway’s subjects didn’t entice me very much, it all seemed to be about bullfighting, fishing, or war. Three topics that make me yawn or cringe just thinking about attempting to read.

But about three years ago, I heard about his memoir about his time in Paris in the 1920s, A Moveable Feast, concerning his life among all the literary giants there at the time and his own development as a writer. This, I thought, was a book subject I could get behind. I bought the book at Strand, but it sat around for a few years before I finally got to reading it last month.

It was a fascinating book, and a pleasure to read. There have been several books written about this time in Paris, it was sort of a literary jackpot of talent all in one place. I’d like to read more about it, but I think it was great to start with Hemingway’s first hand account.

I had to read this book with a pencil in my hand or close by, since there were so many lines I felt compelled to underline or star. Here are my favorites:

“I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.” (page 6)

“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning.” (page 45)

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.” (page 49)

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.” (page 58)

“By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.” (page 62)

“I had heard complaining all my life. I found I could go on writing and that it was was no worse than other noises, certainly better than Ezra learning to play the bassoon.” (page 93)

Well, I’ve changed my mind about Hemingway. Anyone who can write this well deserves to be given a chance, even if he does tend to write about bullfighting. I’m optimistic that the writing will make any subject interesting. I’m not sure yet which of his novels I should start with, and I’m open to suggestions. I also have a collection of his short stories, so that might be interesting to read next.

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

Why I won't switch to digital books

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This post involves another quote from Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin, but it brings up a different topic and I wanted it to be a separate post.

While reading Home Cooking, I came to this paragraph and realized that it’s such a perfect example of why I will never stop reading and buying traditional books, and never adopt digital books into my own life:

These wafers come from The Settlement Cook Book by Mrs. Simon Kander (copyright 1926). I have my mother’s copy, which is falling to pieces and has written on the endpaper the telephone number for Charlie’s vegetable truck service from 1947.”

That example pretty much sums up my reasons for sticking to traditional copies of books. My books have a history. Some are a recent history that so far only involves me. Some belonged to my parents and have their name and the year they purchased the book written in their own handwriting inside the book. Some are from used bookstores and have a history I’m less familiar with, but that I’m happy to be adding to. One belonged to Allen V. Miller. I make notes inside my book with a pencil. In my cookbooks I write the date I first made the recipe, for what occasion it was made, and how it turned out. I’m aware you can make notes in digital books, but it is far from the same.

I have no problem with people reading digital books. It’s just not my preference. I’m not the sort of reader that benefits from digital books. I don’t often purchase books knowing I’ll only read it once and then not need anymore. Every book I buy with the hopes it will become a favorite and beg to be read again. It doesn’t always turn out that way, but I don’t buy it unless I think I have a chance of really enjoying it.

I also don’t travel so much that I need gobs of books with me. The amount of time I’ll be away is reflected in the size of my bag/luggage and thus the number of books I can carry. I’ve never run out of books to read in my life.

All this, and I haven’t even touched on the other main 50% of my reason I don’t like digital books – there’s nothing that can replace the feeling and experience of reading an actual book in my hands. I love technology and my computer, iPhone, etc, but it will never replace a physical book for me. I also feel a need to not be staring a screen every waking hour of the day. This is the main reason many people cite when declaring that they wont adopt e-books, but I guess I wanted to point out that while it’s a major reason for me too, it’s only part of the experience of owning a book.

I also know I complain about buying too many books, and that I’m running out of bookshelves for them – but truthfully there’s no other material possession I’d rather have in my apartment. Someday they will all have shelves, but for now some of them will be fine stacked on the floor.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
-Cicero

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

Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

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I’ve been on a “Food Writing” reading kick lately, and I don’t really know how to explain how much I love this genre. I suppose it’s partly because I love to cook and bake, but also a large part of it is just how fun most of the books I’ve read from this genre are. It’s been fun living and eating vicariously through Julia Child, Ruth Reichl, Gael Greene, and now Laurie Colwin.

When Emma and I were shopping at Three Lives and Company Bookstore, I spotted a book displayed on a table that looked very fun. It was Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, by Laurie Colwin. I had never heard of it before, but after flipping through it, I knew I had to get it. It’s a book of essays about making food at home, full of descriptions of cooking and baking, charming illustrations, and recipes.

This is one of the coziest books I’ve ever read. It was delightful. You don’t have to be an experienced cook yourself to enjoy her essays. She writes about the pleasures of eating and cooking and how certain foods are tied to your memories and past in interesting ways. One of my favorite parts of the book is a description of one of her memories involving soup:

Soup has come to symbolize the ultimate in comfort and safety. Many years ago, when I was about fifteen, I saw someone served a cup of soup, and this vision, which had all the sentimental charm of a painting by Sir Edwin Landseer, is indelibly imprinted on my mind.

It was a cold, rainy autumn night and some grubby teenagers had gathered at a friend’s rather splendid house. We heard the crunch of a car on gravel. A taxi pulled up and into the wet night stepped the friend’s older sister, who was coming home from college for the weekend. She was probably nineteen but she looked like the picture of sophistication. She wore brown pumps, a green tweed suit, pearl earrings and her hair was pulled back in a French twist.

She took off her wet coat, sat down in front of the fire and her mother brought her a large, ornamental bone china cup of soup. She warmed her hands on the cup and then she set it on its saucer, balanced it on her lap and ate the soup with a bouillon spoon. The dog, a weimaraner, lay dozing at her feet. Outside the rain clattered. Inside that pretty living room was all safe.

Of course you need not have a weimaraner or a fire or anyone coming home from college. To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup.

Is that not one of the coziest descriptions ever? The entire book is a treat.

Unfortunately, Laurie Colwin died in 1992 at the age of 48. Two books were published posthumously, including a sequel to this collection, called More Home Cooking. I’m looking forward to reading it, and am very excited because it just came in for me at the Hoboken Library and I’m going to go pick it up today.

She also wrote five novels and a few collections of short stories, that I’d also like to check out someday.

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

Brooklyn on a cold, windy Saturday

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On Emma’s first day here, last Saturday, we got up early to get a head start on all the things we wanted to do in Brooklyn. We had stayed up until after 3 am talking the night before, so it was a rough morning. It was also pretty cold for April and extremely windy.

First, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. Emma is afraid of heights, but the Brooklyn Bridge is a good bridge for anyone who has this fear, since you don’t walk close to the edge – you walk right down the middle. You also don’t have water below you, you have another layer of cement down below (between the two way traffic lanes. It was cold and windy, so crossing was a bit of an adventure. The bridge looks much more intimidating with a sky like this:

At one point in our crossing we were delayed by a very large group of people posing for a photo along the path, blocking everyone’s way. I got a very amusing photo of Emma while we were waiting for them:

 

She may be a Michigander, but she’s got a native New Yorker’s dislike of having their route blocked. :)

 

Next, we walked to Brooklyn Heights and explored some of the former homes of famous authors.

First up was 70 Willow Street, the Adrian van Sinderen residence. It was built in the 1830s, and Truman Capote lived here in the basement apartment, and wrote many of his most famous works there.


Next up is 142 Columbia Heights, where Norman Mailer lived. He was living here at the time of his death in 2007:

We also visited No. 22 Willow Street, where Henry Ward Beecher lived (he is also a distant relative of Emma’s!):

Along the way we saw many beautiful buildings that we decided we would gladly move into at a moment’s notice. One such building had a very lovely window with a piano:

 

After visiting a few bookstores in the area, BookCourt and Rocketship book store, and eating lunch at a cute cafe, we hopped on the F train to Park Slope.

 


We visited the fabulous Community Bookstore, and fell in love with its charming children’s section in the back.


Next we went up to Grand Army Plaza, and took a picture of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch before the wind pushed us out of the plaza.


Close by is the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. It’s huge and magnificent. The wind was getting out of control at this point. We watched people’s hats fly off their heads and travel 100 feet down the sidewalk. We tried to take Emma’s picture in front of the library, and as we were taking the first shot an enormous gust of wind blew the camera askew in my hands and almost knocked Emma over. We had to try another take. Here is the first attempt, and the second, successful attempt:

After exploring and admiring the library, we hopped back on the subway and went back to Manhattan to give some of our money to Strand before heading home for the day.

 

Further adventures and photos will be posted soon!

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

Polysyllabic Spree – March 2009

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I had a great week with Emma, who was visiting from Michigan this week. We had a lot of adventures, and I have many pictures to post. I also have a lot of Vox posts to catch up with, starting with my Polysyllabic Spree for March.

Books Purchased:


Comfort me with Apples by Ruth Reichl
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool
Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels by Deirdre le Faye
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Love As Always, Kurt Vonnegut as I Knew Him by Loree Rackstraw
A Little History of the World by E. H. Combrich
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl

I bought one less book than I read this month, so that’s not too bad. Ruth Reichl has a signing for her new book at the end of April that I’m going to go to, so this month I found her three older books in hardcover so that I can get them signed along with her new one. I got great deals on them – Comfort Me With Apples was $5.95 at Strand, and Garlic and Sapphires and Tender at the Bone were about $7 each after shipping on Amazon Marketplace.

Books Read:


Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl (library)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Bernieres (library)
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
Love as Always, Kurt Vonnegut as I Knew Him by Loree Rackstraw
The Rose Variations by Marisha Chamberlain (library)
French Milk by Lucy Knisley (library)
A Moveable Feast by Ernest HemingwayReviews already posted: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, A Partisan’s Daughter, In a Sunburned Country. Future post planned for A Moveable Feast.

Garlic and Sapphires is Ruth Reichl’s third memoir. This one is about her time as the Food Critic at the NY Times. I loved her previous two memoirs as well, but this one is my favorite so far. After she was announced as the new Restaurant Critic, every single restaurant in New York City immediately had her photo hung up and a staff trained to keep an eagle eye out for her. She chose to create elaborate disguises for herself in efforts to have a “real” experience dining at the restaurants she reviewed. Not only did she change her entire physical appearance for these eating adventures, she changed her entire personality too, becoming the character she created. It makes for wonderful reading. I’m looking forward to her fourth book, Not Becoming My Mother, I found it at Strand last week for 50% in the review section, so I’ll be able to read it before her book signing.

A Year Down Yonder is the sequel to a book I read last month, A Long Way From Chicago. The latter received a Newbery Honor award, and the former won the Medal. This is the way I would have called it too. I enjoyed A Long Way From Chicago, but A Year Down Yonder was the most fabulous. Grandma is still my favorite character. One of the best lines in the book is, “And Grandma was packing a pistol.” Maybe one of the reasons why the sequel is better is that, as readers, we are already so fond of Grandma, so it’s very delightful to read more of her adventures.

A few times I started to open a new Vox compose window to write a full post on Love as Always, Kurt Vonnegut as I Knew Him. But the truth is I don’t have much to say about it at all. It was interesting, and I enjoyed reading it. It was a little weird, because I had never heard of Loree Rackstraw before, and the book is a memoir of sorts about her deep friendship with Kurt Vonnegut over the years. So there’s a lot about her life in there as well. Loree Rackstraw has had a very full, interesting life, and has been deeply involved in the literary world, especially in Iowa, for decades. None of that comes across very affectingly in the book though, it’s not really explored deeply – nor should it have been really, since it’s a book about certain parts or aspects of her life. I guess it was just a very challenging approach to a memoir – writing about someone so famous, from the viewpoint of someone in his inner circle of friends who wasn’t famous herself. I did really enjoy reading an intimate account of Kurt Vonnegut’s personality and life though. Very committed fans of Vonnegut will probably find it very interesting. For others, I’d recommend starting with one of Kurt’s own non-fiction “autobiographical colleges” or essay collections: Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, Palm Sunday, or Fates Worse Than Death.

I discovered The Rose Variations at a bookstore while I was browsing new fiction.  I wrote down the title and looked it up on Amazon when I got home. It had great reviews there, so I reserved it through the library. I enjoyed it; the story is interesting and I enjoyed the vivid characters. Here’s a description from Amazon:

In her first novel, poet and playwright Chamberlain tells the vibrant story of Rose McGregor, a talented composer navigating academia in the early days of feminism. A temporary appointment as the token “Girl Composer” at a Minnesota college puts 25-year-old Rose on her own for the first time; the older of two New Hampshire sisters, Rose has always been the plain, responsible one, caretaker to sister Natalie, but finds her professional and personal lives blooming in the cold weather of St. Paul. She falls in love with Guy, a stonemason who wants to whisk her off to his farm, but the affair falls apart. From there, Rose joins eccentric cellist Lila Goldensohn, who has turned her country home into an all-female retreat. Living off the land without the distraction of love, Rose returns to composing until Natalie unexpectedly arrives, pregnant and in distress, to overtake Rose’s life again. Following Rose’s music career to the city, the West Coast and back again, Chamberlain makes a charming, quirky fugue of Rose’s pursuit of love, independence and success.

French Milk by Lucy Knisley is a very fun graphic memoir of a girl who lives in Paris for a month with her mom. It’s not a particularly eventful month, but it’s her journal of the trip and is creative and interesting. I enjoyed it a lot, and now need to get my hands on her other book, Radiator Days, which is a collection of journal entries.
Short Stories Read:

“Brother on Sunday” by A. M. Homes (from the New Yorker, March 2, 2009)
“The Blue Devils of Blue River Avenue” by Poe Ballantine (from The Best American Short Stories 1998)
“Visitation” by Brad Watson (from the New Yorker, April 6, 2009)

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

National Poetry Month

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April is National Poetry Month in the US. I’ve been trying to read more poetry in general anyway, and this month my goal is to read a poem every day.

There are a few sites I know of that offer a free poem per day, via email:

One is The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, which has a wonderful, free year round daily newsletter that provides “poems, prose, and literary history.” Garrison Keillor also produces a daily podcast where he reads each day’s newsletter. You can listen or sign up for emails on the site, or subscribe through iTunes. Few things in life are more soothing than listening to Garrison Keillor read you a poem and tell you about today’s literary history. I’ve been enjoying this podcast for years, and many of the daily poems I read this month will come from The Writer’s Almanac.

I also discovered that Knopf is offering a free poem a day in April, for National Poetry Month. You can subscribe on their site.

Besides these two newsletters, I will also be reading poems from Billy Collins (I own The Art of Drowning, The Trouble With Poetry, Nine Horses, and Ballistics), and Garrison Keillor’s anthology, Good Poems.

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