Another milestone already.  Last year I read 409 books.  Now it’s November 5 and I’ve already beaten my personal record.

It’s wearing me down, though.  I’ve been trying to do other challenges as well, and it’s necessarily involved reading more than double the proportion of fiction that I normally do.  You know what?  Most fiction is depressing!  Murder.  Suicide.  Adultery.  Hypocrisy.  Oppressive social constraints.  Terminal misunderstandings.  Even the funny stuff starts to weigh on you, because I think all humorists have a jaundiced view of humanity that leaks through.  I can definitely say that I will be reading less fiction next year.

The other problem is the sheer amount of work that’s gone into this stupid stunt.  I get flack from my friends for missing social gatherings that I didn’t even hear about until after the fact, because I only check my e-mail about once a week.  Whenever I’m not reading, I’m running around doing housework or errands, trying to clear the decks so I can get “caught up.”  Inevitably it’s a race to catch up, because I’ve been behind goal since the second week of January.  Even now, with eight weeks to go, it’s seriously in doubt whether I can make it.  That’s a minimum of 11 books a week, which I can only occasionally manage.

The other problem is that I’m not getting the ego gratification I thought I would for myself.  I wanted to accomplish a death-defying feat.  Last I year I found that someone else had beat my “record” by something like sixty titles, so I settled in for a second year of dedicating inhuman amounts of time to reading and neglecting other aspects of life.  Now I learn that there are supposedly people out there reading 1000 books a year.  I’m obsessed to the point of obsession with Speed Readers and documentation and proof and the limits of age, intelligence, and honesty.  It’s a theme with me that I set myself a challenge and then get beaten at my own game, usually by a close friend.  I should be grateful for the inspiration but I’m usually enraged.  I’m the one!  Can’t you understand?  It was my idea! Nobody gets to be a megalomaniac but me!  I’d take my marbles and go home, but evidently I’ve already lost them.

Blogging is starting to get to me, too.  It seems like a lose-lose proposition.  What interests random strangers the most is also the most likely to alienate any friends who might know the situation first-hand.  The posts that draw the most hits from search engines are the least likely to interest your regular readers, and vice versa.  Writing about obscure books drives readers off, while writing about popular books annoys them because they see the same book on every blog they read.  Writing at all takes away reading time.  The most interesting posts to write often also seem to draw the least comments, and it’s a constant guessing game to try to write about things that interest yourself and your audience too.  After this year, I can’t think what I would write about.

Introspection is a losing proposition in general.  Go ahead and try asking your friends what they really think of you.  Chances are pretty high you’ll get some “constructive criticism.”  Is it ever possible to receive the benefit of the doubt that one extends to others?  At least in reviewing books, people are willing to say, “I didn’t like it but I’m glad you did.”

Which do you prefer? Biographies written about someone? Or Autobiographies written by the actual person (and/or ghost-writer)?

I love both.  They both have their drawbacks, but usually I’d rather read a biography or memoir than anything else.

Biographies are best when you’re curious about the person.  When I read a biography, it’s because I’ve sought it out and I want to know more about the subject.  The biggest problem with this is that sometimes I don’t like the person as much any more after I know more details.  For instance, ever since I read that Gandhi used to “test himself” by getting into bed with naked girls, I’ve just… wrestled with it.  Still, biographies have the advantage of historical context, research, and a broader POV.

Autobiographies are a bit of a guilty pleasure.  There’s an element of “race to the bottom” in memoir:  “I will disembowel myself emotionally if you give me a book deal.  I have the worst childhood of anyone who ever lived.  Now that you’ve seen life through my eyes, you can never judge me again.”  I loved A Reliable Wife, but then I read Goolrick’s memoir The End of the World as We Know It and it gave me mixed feelings about the novel.  I can’t leave memoir alone, and in this case I will go out and read about anyone as long as the story seems compelling, but at the same time it can feel a little dirty afterward.  Maybe there’s a variety of autobiography that is more positive; maybe it’s what I’m drawn to; or maybe it’s just a trend that will pass.

I’m fascinated by the difference between the story of someone’s life as told by the subject and by an observer, or series of observers.  There are historical figures who have inspired reams and reams of commentary, and it seems like even centuries later there is still more to be researched and reevaluated.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have an autobiography by everyone who became the subject of a bio?  Then we could compare notes, especially when the biographer never met the subject in life.

It’s a compelling issue for me, because frankly, I’ve had stuff in my life that I could quite probably sell as a memoir.  Yet I know from long experience that my memories do not usually jibe with my family’s.  That’s part of the problem.  One of the things that makes a family dysfunctional is that the ‘perpetrator’ either denies everything, has no memory of it, didn’t realize it was significant, interprets it in a flattering light, ignores it out of narcissism, or blames everything on the ‘victim.’  Or all of the above.  “The one who got away” is most likely the only person who “buys” the story.  You want to write a memoir when you feel like nobody is on your side.  At least a neutral audience might consider hearing me out, right?  I think the act of writing a memoir is an attempt to establish one’s sanity, to reinterpret perceptions and adjust to the normal world after attempting to escape the surreal vortex one came from.

On the other hand, memory is notoriously fallible.  A biographer comes in, does hard research, and comes up for air thinking, “There is no way this happened the way my subject claims.”  A memoirist is going to interpret everything in his or her own favor while simultaneously attributing significance to all the wrong things.  We all have plans for our lives, and we tell ourselves a story arc in our minds that most likely has nothing to do with how our lives actually turn out.  A biographer can look at this more objectively.

What I get out of both biography and memoir is the sense of a life as a story, one with patterns, one with recognizable mentors and villains, lucky chances, and successful or unsuccessful reactions to circumstance.  It seems like a pretty good way to get some objective perspective on my own life.

The strangest connections come up between books sometimes – and it’s even stranger when it’s two separate coincidences between the same two books.

God Lives in St. Petersburg -> Drink, Play, F@#k: children of diplomats

Juliet, Naked -> Local: 7/4 (I guess this is a type of music?  All I know is that it’s a time signature).

The Store -> Lamb in His Bosom: kids shouting “Christmas gift!” – appears to be a Southern regional tradition

Honey in the Horn -> Tintin vol. 1: tracking a footprint with missing nails/ a broken horseshoe

A Gate at the Stairs -> The Yearling: eating bear liver

Sag Harbor -> What the Dead Know: the game “7 minutes in heaven”; Road Warrior

New World Monkeys -> Her Fearful Symmetry: characters procrastinating on a thesis

Her Fearful Symmetry -> I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: tooth extraction

Her Fearful Symmetry -> Girl in a Blue Dress: Highgate Cemetery

Girl in a Blue Dress -> Something Wicked This Way Comes: amber stickpin in necktie

New World Monkeys -> Guns, Germs, and Steel: New World monkeys

Our county’s libraries will be closed for ten days over the holidays due to budget cuts.  [Cue screaming]

They are short $1.7 million and elected to shut down temporarily rather than lay off staff.

Imagine my feelings, on the one hand.  In the final week of my 500-book challenge, I won’t be able to pick up anything new.  I grumble.

On the other hand, why is this happening in this way?  Our libraries draw over 90% of their funding from property taxes.  Personally, I’m a renter.  I don’t pay property taxes, and I imagine a large number of other library users don’t either.  The point is to provide media to people who couldn’t otherwise afford it, and I’ll fight to protect that until my dying breath.  Still, I can’t help but wonder whether a bit of marketing might convince others in my position to help out with library funds a bit.  Call it a sort of ’sliding scale.’

Do you understand where I’m going with this?  I know intellectually that I could donate cash to my library.  But I don’t have a way of knowing how much they need or how much my personal usage costs the library system.  Do library fines actually defray the total cost of overdue or lost books?  If there is a way to volunteer time, what would be the most helpful to keep the doors open – shelving books?  Not that I’d want to put anyone out of a job, mind you.

I’ve lived with libraries that had a book rental system.  Several copies of new books experiencing high demand would be made available at $1 and $2 a day.  Business was brisk for those who didn’t want to wait 4-6 months but didn’t want to buy a new book they’d finish in a week, either.  I’ve heard complaints that this isn’t fair to people of limited means.  Speaking as a former slum resident who has gone hungry many a night, I think the book rental system would be a terrific impetus for someone to build literacy skills.  “I really want to read this, and if I can’t finish it this weekend, it will cost me a day’s bus fare.” [flip flip flip]

I’m reading What the Dog Saw, the new Malcolm Gladwell, and in his essay on fighting homelessness he says we get so caught up in doing things “right” that we perpetuate problems, rather than “give in” ethically and come up with a working solution.  I say it’s right to keep libraries open, as many as possible as often and as late as possible.  Whatever it takes to make that happen, let’s do it.

Some ideas:

• Book rental.  Just do it and quit crying about it.  Keep some free copies in circulation but charge those who can pay up the wazoo for convenience copies.
• Internships.  Get those unsupervised high schoolers cracking.  Can they open shipping containers, label new books, shelve returned books?  Vacuum the floors?
• Special hours.  Create a program where a patron can pay, say, $2500 a year for a special ID card that allows library access at a time hoi polloi can’t get in.  Like ‘adult swim’ at the pool.  Maybe 6-7 one day a week.
• Social services.  Bill the relevant city for babysitting frequent-flier homeless who have nowhere else to go during the day.  If you can’t provide public restrooms anywhere else, you need to subsidize the library for doing it for you.
• Donations.  Simply put up posters estimating the cost per checkout for a book, CD, or DVD.  Put a locked donation box under it.  If I realized it cost exactly $3.75 for me to read the new Malcolm Gladwell, heck, I’d pay it.  Tip jars are an automatic response for a lot of people.
• More donations.  Put a sticker with the patron’s name in it if someone donates enough to buy a specific new book.  Do it like the Giving Tree.  “The library wants 10 copies of the new Alison Weir.”  Patrons pull off the tag and bring it back taped onto a new item.
• Fee per service.  All those people who come into the library solely to use the computers to play poker or look at porn can pay.  Is $1 an hour excessive?  Kinko’s charges something like $8 a minute.

A world without libraries would be too dreadful to contemplate.  Let’s see what we can do to make sure that doesn’t happen.

What do you do?  You’re quite sure your friend just mispronounced a word.  Do you say something?  Do you ignore it?  If you say something, does it make it a bigger deal if you point it out on the spot – like spinach in the teeth – or if you wait and do it later, in private?  If you ignore it, are you in effect damning your friend to years of potential embarrassment?

I have a friend who has mispronounced ‘gesture’ as ‘guess-ture’ as long as I’ve known him, which is over 15 years.  Sadly, it seems to come up in almost every conversation.  Every time he does it, I use it in a reply and pronounce it ‘jess-ture.’  I’ve even tried to tell him, “Honey, you’re saying it wrong,” and he just shrugs me off.  He’s a little flamboyant and I think he just prefers ‘guess-ture.’

On the other hand, I have a coworker who is very dignified and courtly.  He came in one day saying he felt ‘dis-heave-eled.’  I said, “You mean ‘dish-eveled’?”  He stopped and said, “I believe it’s pronounced ‘dis-heave-eled.’”  We went back and forth, deciding finally that neither of us wanted to be wrong and that it would be best to look it up online.  Dictionary.com agreed with me.  I felt really badly because my friend was clearly mortified, and as he’s in his forties, he must have used this favored word of his incorrectly over and over again.  Would it have been better to have pretended not to notice?

Audio books will often have mispronounced words.  I noticed one example in which the narrator changed his pronunciation a couple of disks later.  Evidently the issue had come up but it hadn’t seemed worth the expense or bother to go back and correct the earlier version.  I have to ask whether it’s possible for someone – anyone? – to go over the text and highlight unfamiliar words for the narrator.  Otherwise we audio commuters will go around mis-correcting our own pronunciation, and the very foundations of spoken English will crumble!

I’ve done it myself.  I’ve mispronounced words to the point that many of them are family jokes.  Chi-hooa-hooa for chihuahua; fat-i-gyoo for fatigue; vinn-uhl for vinyl… It’s a really common problem for kids who are big readers.  We encounter words in print that we never hear anyone use in conversation.  Or if we do, like my troubles at six years old with chihuahua, we don’t realize that it’s the same word.

I let it go in business.  How often do we hear per-iphreal or nucyulur?  What happened to the i in verbiage?  Are they joking when they say ‘ambiguish’?

But then there’s personal life.  A friend showed me the list she keeps of other people’s speech errors.  One of her examples of ‘fake words’ was actually a word:  orientate.  I said as much, and she and my other friend gave each other a look that I read as “what a jerk.”  We’ve also had a debate over whether it’s correct to say ‘an historian.’  I realize this is becoming antiquated and it’s more of a Britishism, but I feel I can use the older form when I like because, hey!  I have a bachelor’s in history.  I remember my ex-husband and I had to consult the dictionary over the correct pronunciation of ’segue.’  He felt he’d won when we discovered that both pronunciations were equally valid.  I still prefer the French pronunciation, but in speech I say ’seg-way’ and I wince every time, thinking of his unmerited scorn.

Probably I am a jerk.  The majority of the time, when I hear a word misused in some way, I keep it to myself, as when I recently heard ‘banal’ pronounced to rhyme with ‘anal’ instead of ‘canal.’  I’m quite sure I do it without flinching or making a face.  At home, my man Rocket Scientist and I had a discussion, and he asked me to make sure to correct him, but we acknowledge that it’s a strain sometimes.  I understand that people don’t like to be corrected, especially when it’s a family Scrabble game and I’m forced to challenge something that is definitely not a real word.  Do people really prefer to remain in the dark, though?  Let’s hear your response.

Picky eaters and those who are trying to raise them will adore this book.  Matthew Amster-Burton is an engagingly funny writer who makes you want to call him and offer to babysit his adorable young daughter.

I’m not really going to review the book, though.  I’ll tell you that it’s full of recipes which, as a vegan, I wouldn’t go near with a ten-foot fork.  If you’re an omnivore and a foodie, this book would probably give you some great ideas about introducing your kid to the kitchen.

What I do want to talk about is the subject of picky eating, since anyone searching out this book may very well have a problem eater at home.

First, I have to address Amster-Burton and The Tightwad Gazette, because I’m a huge Dacyzyn fan.  There’s a notorious article on picky eaters, and A-B mentions it.  He’s in the “cruel and unusual” camp, in response to the Dacyzyn family “you’ll eat it and you’ll like it” policy.  Dacyzyn comments extensively on the negative response to this article, saying that meals are a happy time for her family and that the older kids influence the younger ones before they’ve even had a chance to taste something.  I agree with Dacyzyn wholeheartedly, and I think the picky eater problem revolves around this family culture issue.

I’m a stepmom, and my new teenager was the ultimate picky eater.  I understand that everyone has different tastes, because a close friend of mine is, at 30, still incredibly squeamish about a wide variety of foods.  It’s painful and a picky eater misses out on a lot of great stuff.  I want to offer my perspective, because I’m an adventurous eater raised by a picky eater, and because I think non-parents have a really different take on parenting issues.  (No kidding, huh?)

Why am I not a picky eater like my mom?  Simple:  We were too poor and hungry to be picky.  I remember clearly having to fight my gag reflex on a routine basis because there was nothing but tuna casserole or whatever food bogey I had to confront at dinner that night.  If we didn’t like something, the response was, “I’m sorry, but it’s that or nothing.”  By the time I reached adulthood, I was overwhelmed with sensory bliss every time I tried a new food.  Most of the picky eater preferences, like mac ‘n’ cheese or PBJ, never make it into my kitchen. 

My nephews grew up on Indian food and I’ve never known them to refuse so much as a bite of any cuisine.  Since toddler age, they’ve both gravitated to the kitchen and insisted on being a part of any and all meal preparation.  Their dream jobs were “pizza man” because “you get to cook the pizza!”  Maybe they’re just missing the gene that makes a kid extra-sensitive and easily grossed out.  I don’t know.  The only time I’ve seen a near-tantrum out of either boy (now 13 and 11) is when the younger one was about four, we ate late at a restaurant, and they were out of his favorite soup.  Tears streamed down his little face, and I confess that I’ve felt the same way!  All I can say about raising these two young eaters is that we didn’t have a family culture of squeamishness, we always eat a wide variety of ethnic foods, they started dining in restaurants when they were still in high chairs, and they’ve always been encouraged to help cook.  (The latter three all seem to be true of Amster-Burton’s family, as well, so go figure).

So, I inherited this kid.  When we met she was 10 years old.  I watched in horror as she refused foods, picked things out of her plate, and gasped out “Eww” and “Gross” at the contents of others’ plates.  (A favorite family story had her at age four saying, “It’s all ucky!” to much adoration).  As Amster-Burton addresses his own childhood pickiness, Sweetie Junior was at the right age for a little peer pressure.  I just told her that if she didn’t like something, she should keep her opinions to herself.  When, five years later, I found myself her half-time mother surrogate, I pointed out that if she continued to pick things out of her food as an adult, people would think it was immature and they would look down on her.

The results were nothing short of astounding!  Take mushrooms.  You either love mushrooms or you hate them, right?  SJ was a hater.  A few months after the “don’t pick things out of your food” lecture, we had the following conversation.

Me: “I’m trying to do the meal plan for next week, but I’m trying to avoid focusing on mushrooms every night.”

SJ: “That’s okay.  I have to make up for all the mushrooms I missed out on all those years.”

In nearly six months, I haven’t seen a single morsel of food left behind on this kid’s dinner plate.  Now, I’m no Julia Child.  I’m also a blatant vegetable pusher:  I’ve introduced celery root, fennel bulb, bok choy, kale, and chard, not to mention tofu and tempeh, and she’s eaten them all.  I don’t hide stuff in creamy sauces, either; the kale dish consisted of kale, baked tofu, udon noodles, and sesame seeds.  Left to herself, she will still live off plain pasta, breakfast cereal, candy, and canned chili.  But now we can share the table with her like a civilized person.

As a non-parent, I’ll tell you what anyone else who has never had kids will tell you.  Nobody knows your kid like you do.  But nobody else will put up with the kind of nonsense that you do, either.  There’s no need to force-feed your kid; my mom is still a picky eater partly because she was so traumatized by her parents’ force-feeding techniques.  On the other hand, there is no excuse for tolerating rudeness, either.  Your kid should not be allowed to make nasty comments about the food, especially something someone else is eating.  It’s just not a good preparation for adulthood.  Likewise, if there’s something too revolting to eat, the correct response is to work around it and make polite excuses if the hostess should make an inquiry.  As a vegan I frequently find that I have to smile and say, “No, thank you” to donuts, birthday cake, hot dogs, and all sorts of office party foods.  It’s rare for anyone to keep pushing as to why you’re not eating something – because they don’t really care.  Nobody needs to know if you think something is “icky.”  Write it in your diary and move on.

The other consideration is that you are responsible for feeding your child a nutritious diet.  If your kid won’t eat vegetables, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he or she will eat only junk food.  Just – don’t buy the junk food!  We have custody alternate weeks.  During custody weeks, there is no ice cream.  There are no chips.  There are no cookies.  The pediatrician says she needs to lose 10-20 pounds; therefore it’s not fair to torment her by eating forbidden foods in front of her.  Parental hypocrisy is the hardest thing for kids to deal with.

In our house, we take it for granted that there are “power vegetables” at every meal.  There’s a wide variety of stuff in the fridge and freezer.  Everyone takes turns cooking (though I’m the default meal planner).  Everyone cleans up.  We eat meals at the table together, we socialize and we expect pleasant behavior and conversation.  We explain that this is because there are no situations in adult life where unpleasant behavior at the table is acceptable.  Don’t allow behavior from your kids that you wouldn’t allow from a roommate, and it will do all of society a favor.

Here are two of my favorite posts on a Halloween theme.  If you don’t like them and would like a refund, call me and I’ll send you some of our five pounds of leftover candy.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Undead

Zombies vs. Vampires vs. Werewolves

“What words/phrases in a blurb make a book irresistible? What words/phrases will make you put the book back down immediately?”

My book choices are made largely by what’s on various award lists or recommendations from particular sources.  I’ve actually stopped reading all fiction book jackets!  It’s rare for me to browse a bookstore and come across something I want to read that I haven’t already heard of through another source. so I don’t encounter that many blurbs.

Other than that, the cover art is the big draw.  I’ve learned that for some reason, women’s fiction tends to have pictures of women from the shoulders down – so a headless woman on the cover is a sure sign that I’m unlikely to be interested in the book.  Literary fiction tends to have more abstract cover art, maybe focusing just on the title and author’s name, and I tend to be drawn in that direction.  Nonfiction, my favorite, is a different beast entirely.  I’ll read a book on an interesting topic regardless of whether the quality of writing is any good, and I might also read any book by a particular author regardless of subject.

If I am interested enough to pick up a book to scope it out, the next thing that’s going to catch my eye is whether another author has commented on it.  If it’s someone I like, I’ll look closer.  If it’s someone I don’t, I drop it like a hot rock.  Best is when two or three authors with really different styles all seem to like it.

So here’s how I choose books:  First, anything that’s been nominated for a major literary award; second, anything recommended in the “best of” on the Amazon or Powell’s sites; third, anything new by an author I follow; fourth, the occasional recommendation from a friend or another blogger.  Then I look them up on my library web site and put on hold whatever looks like I might be able to read it sometime in the next 4-6 months.  I keep a list in my PDA of books I want to read and where I can find them.

Here’s how I do not choose books:  Book jackets, professional reviews, or other bloggers’ reviews that include any plot details.  I swear I can’t understand why on earth the standard is to spell out all the plot details and character studies for the entire book.  What’s the point of reading it when you already know everything that’s going to happen?  When I read a review in a blog, I skim to the bottom paragraph and look to see whether the blogger says he or she liked the book or not.  That’s it.  When I look at a book jacket, I skip the upper section that spoils the plot, and just look for quotes about how great the book is from other authors or publications.

It’s another milestone.  (Did I almost just type millstone?)  Today I finished Girl in a Blue Dress, my 400th book for the year.  Last year I finished book #400 on December 22nd.

As you all know by now, I’ve been trying to read 500 books this year.  This means I have 64 days to read the last 100 books.  That’s one a day on weekdays (46) plus three a day on 18 weekend days.  (I’m not counting the holidays because for some reason I always seem to read far less on vacation days).  Hmm.  It sounds like I’ll really be pushing it – especially because I have some very lengthy books in my future. 

I still have 41 Pulitzers, with an average length of 440 pages, including the 1056 page Executioner’s Song.  I’m also flailing against the bounds of reason as I try to complete my Too Big to Ignore Anymore challenge by November 15:  If I do them all, I have over 7500 pages to go, or 420 pages per day.  I think I can just manage to do it, but it will bring my total book count down.  There’s also The Faerie Queene for another challenge, and Under the Dome, which we all know will be impossible to leave alone.

If I can pull this thing off at this point, it will be a miracle.

It looks like it’s been a while since I’ve recounted what I’ve been reading lately.

The Late George Apley – Pulitzer winner of 1938.  Read this if you ever have trouble understanding your parents.  Touching pseudo-biography of a Boston brahmin as he is forced from adventurous young man to stodgy paterfamilias.

A Gate at the Stairs – I love Lorrie Moore but this one didn’t grab me.  It was kind of a bummer.

The Yearling – ARGH!  Never again!  You can’t make me!  This book has no business in the Juvenile section of the library.  It was frickin’ brutal.

The Adventures of Tintin, vol. 1 – I couldn’t help it, I had to know what Tintin was all about.  Like The Yearling, I have to ask what is supposed to make this a children’s book.  Heroin smuggling?  Opium dens?  The Mafia?  The only thing missing was a brothel.  I love it and I’m planning to read more, but I wouldn’t give this to a grade-schooler.

The New Valley – Josh Weil is hotttt!!!  I can’t say enough good things about this book.  He’s a terrific talent, and if he’s already writing at this level we’ll be hearing more of him.

Fear the Worst – I think I reviewed this.  If you like thrillers, you’ll love this.

Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys – Can’t get enough of the Weetzie Bat books.

The Song of the Cid – I think I reviewed this, too.  It’s short and the Penguin translation is really approachable.

Howards End – I’ve been rationing out E. M. Forster for years because I know he didn’t write very many books.  So many quantum leaps above and beyond all other literature, in my mind anyway.

The 13 Clocks – One of James Thurber’s children’s books on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list.  I didn’t care for it as much as his adult works.

The Hobbit – We did this for Family Reading Hour, and it took two weeks.  Sweetie Junior kept falling asleep.  She kept saying, “I think this book is cursed!”  She enjoyed the plot and plans to read LOTR, but I think they’re not at their best read aloud.

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies – The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series continues.  I do these on audio while I fold laundry and cook, and it’s pure bliss.

Sag Harbor – Funny and moving.  Deals with racial tension.  Do those things even go together?

Jesus’ Son – Denis Johnson, I can’t figure you out.  It’s either a tiny book or an enormous book.  Either way, it’s a distinct voice.

The Good Soldier – I always thought this was a war story, but it’s actually a twisted mess-with-your-mind story of romantic obsession, tragedy, and death.  Absolutely brilliant and great for a stormy night.

The Nobody – A graphic novel retelling of The Invisible Man.  Wonderful.

What the Dead Know – For book group.  Eh.

The Grapes of Wrath - I finally did it!  This book has always been my albatross, but I finally confronted it 20 years later in all its odd beauty.

In This Our Life – Pulitzer for 1942.  It’s sort of a cross between Years of Grace and To Kill a Mockingbird.  Big fat soap opera.

New World Monkeys – I loved this book, although I’m not sure I can figure out the ending.

Dogs and Water - A surreal and haunting graphic novel.

The Three Paradoxes – A graphic novel about family, love, and philosophy.  Hornschemeier’s artwork is absolutely pure.

Curses - Yes, I read graphic novels all day Friday.  BFD.  I loved this one because it was about starlings and superstition.  Great for Halloween time.

The Recognitions – The epic monster I tackled for Read-a-Thon.

The Elements of Style – Everyone should read this.  It’s funny.  I just found out I’ve been misusing the word ‘aggravating’ all this time.  How irritating.

Her Fearful Symmetry – Wonderful!  Fabulous!

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – …And then I read the most gut-wrenching, depressing memoir of all time.

The Satanic Nurses – A collection of short literary parodies.  I’ve been pecking at it for weeks.  There’s sure to be something for everyone here.