Gatsby Mania

Who's not excited about the upcoming Baz Luhrmann extravaganza that will be The Great Gatsby, brought once again to film?



I wandered up to a local mall to find a dress for an event tomorrow night (last minute, I know!) and caught sight of some of the marketing spin happening around the premiere.

Chapters had a display that included two different editions of the book plus some others set in the same period or with the same theme  (Rules of Civilityby Amor Towles, Bright Lights, Big Cityby Jay McInerney, The Emperor's Childrenby Claire Messud, Call Me Zeldaby Erika Robuck.)

Over at Brooks Brothers, two of their windows had been thus styled:

I've read the novel a few times and understood more with each reading. I'm very much looking forward to the film, and won't be at all disappointed if it doesn't replicate the book (as no film really can). I enjoy Luhrmann's visual excess so it cannot really disappoint.

(Mini-)Book Review: Two novellas by Francoise Sagan

 

COUVERTURE DU PARIS MATCH N°2889 : FRANCOISE SAGAN UNE VIE (Photo credit: Patrick Peccatte)

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After half-watching a documentary about the life of Francoise Sagan (it was in French, so I only caught about half the info), I decided to have a got at some of her work.

Bonjour Tristesse was her first book, published when she was 19. It was a media sensation for its sexual themes, but it made her name (and a lot of money). A short work, I found it rather juvenile in its language, but a well-crafted story, a novella really. That being said, I was reading it in translation so I leave it to readers of the original French to set me straight.

I liked it enough to move on to her second (also short) work, A Certain Smile.

 

A Certain Smile: A Novel by Françoise Sagan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this immediately after Sagan's first work (Bonjour Tristesse) and much preferred it. The writing seems much more mature, although it was written only two years later.

Bored with her studies and boyfriend, Dominique sets out on a flirtation-turned-affair with his uncle. Sagan, who was the same age as her protagonist, writes convincingly and with authority, and the emotional tide feels very true-to-life.

Recommended.

View all my reviews

 

(Mini-)Book Review: Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book didn't really hang together for me. The story of a group of 20-something young women, it felt like a music video, kind of choppy, and brusquely spliced together. That being said, it kept me reading. The individual story arcs were interesting, but there were five of them and none felt really resolved. It's going into the give-away pile.

View all my reviews

What's on my nightstand?

It's been a bit of a wild reading ride recently, mainly because we're in the middle of some home renovations and I'm also trying to get some progress on my genealogical work. But there's always time at the end of the day (or on the subway) for a good book.

I'm finishing up Howards End. 

1. Howards End by E.M.Forster -  I wanted to have it read before the TIFF screening yesterday, at which James Ivory was interviewd by Eleanor Wachtel as part of their Books in Film series. But I didn't quite make it through, so that has to be number 1 on my list (and in my bag.)
2. The Outsourced Self: Intimate LIfe in Market Times by Arlie Russell Hochschild. - I'm about a third of the way through this fascinating look at the impact on family life of the outsourcing of what were traditional family/village tasks. Online dating, wedding planning, childcare, cleaning, personal coaching, etc all fall under the authors eye.  
3. The Cure for Grief by Nellie Hermann - This is our July book club pick. I don't know much about it, but it was highly recommended by one of our members.
4. And the Pursuit of Happiness by Moira Kalman. - This graphic novel is (I believe) an investigation into democracy. I've checked it out of the library a couple of times before but have never gotten to it.
5. Aerogrammes and Other Stories by Tania James - A book of short stories recommended in the NYT Book section. 
6. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - Our August book club pick, and a response to my suggestion that we choose books that put us outside our comfort zone. I'm not a big fantasy reader, and a couple of our members thought that this would be a good place to start. I picked up a paperback at Value Village, but the print is too small and the contrast too low, so I've downloaded it onto my Kindle.

How do books get there? Mainly recommendations from friends, book reviews in one of the papers I read, online at places like Book Riot, and of course, the book club. I also like to read books from anyplace I'm planning to travel, although we don't have much coming up, vacation-wise. I don't browse in bookstores or the library much...I have a huge hold list (sourced from the above) so I've always got books being fed to me.

Shelf Awareness hits it out of the park

I subscribe to Shelf Awareness' weekly newletter and it was just chock full of good stuff today.

• First, don't you just love this diary? For people who have difficulty getting insprired, Philipp Keel's Simple Diary makes it easy.
• Next, check out this live map from Book Depository, that shows titles and locations of book purchases.
• They also featured a link to an article entitled Literary Drinks: 10 Famous Fiction Writers and Their Cocktails. I may need to initiate a tasting project.
• There are also some good book recommendations, a couple of which caught my eye for summer reading: Southern Charm: A Novel by Tinsley Mortimer (doncha love that name? Tinsley?); and The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones. The first is a novel featuring a displaced Southern woman in Manhattan, the second a comic mystery set in an English manor house.

You can check out the rest of the newsletter here.

~~~~

I'm currently reading Mindy Kaling's memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) and it's a fast, light, and very funny read. Kaling is a producer and writer for the American version of The Office and also plays Kelly Kapoor. 

Book review - Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood.

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An absolutely brilliant novel that I wish I'd read years ago, although perhaps would not have been able to take it all in back then. Atwood's protagonist Elaine expresses so much about what it means to be a woman, and speaks words that resonate deeply with me.

The story follows Elaine from her childhood in Toronto during WW2 through her life as an artist, and her eventual move to in Vancouver. Her return to Toronto for an opening of a retrospective of her work frames the narrative as she reflects on the difficult experiences of being bullied as a pre-teen.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.

View all my reviews

Related articles

• Cat's Eye: More Than Just a Marble (zaraalexis.wordpress.com)

It's Monday....what am I reading?

I've got four books on the go right now which is a lot.  But so far it's working for me.

• What to Eat by Marion Nestle. Nestle is a big-wheel nutritionist and from what I've read so far, sensible, straightforward, and no-nonsense. The book is rougly organzed by food group, starting with fruits and vegetables, then dairy (and non-dairy substitutes) and now I'm on the chapters on meat. The only quibble I have so far is the dietary-cholesterol-raises-blood-cholesterol story, which I'm not sure is still considered a given, at least based on what I've read in Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories and the associated research. I would be in interested in Nestle's take on that book. While I'm only a third of the way through Nestle's 600 page book, I'd recommend it. I'm also planning to check out her newest book on feeding pets.
• Blankets by Craig Thompson.An at times heatbreaking graphic novel about a young man growing up in Wisconsin, his difficulties with his family, faith, and friends. I've been on the hold list at the library for ages for this novel and am reading it slowly, savouring it. Am about two-thirds of the way through this 600 page tome.
• The Good Guy by Dean Koontz. I picked this up specifically for a Seasonal Reading Challenge task and have never read anything by this author before. It's a crime/thriller novel and I am very much enjoying it. The premise is interesting, if somewhat implausible, but the characters are engaging. I'm listening to this on audio and the production is excellent. 
• The Distant Hours by Kate Morton. I read Morton's The Forgotten Garden last year and very much enjoyed it. I've had this novel on my Kindle for some time, but just started reading it when I finished the paperback I had in my purse while I was downtown and needed something else to read. Also set in England, Kent to be precise, I'm not very far in but loving it already. I suspect I'll keep my Kindle in my bag while I'm attending TIFF, for all the lineup-and-waits, so this will be a good novel to have on the go over the next couple of weeks.

 

Take a deep breath.....and read!

The Goodreads Seasonal Reading Challenge Summer 2011 has come to a close.  I hit a personal best for these 3-month challenges, reading (or listening to) 61 books and almost 19,000 pages. My list is here (I managed to read the books in bold type.)

Most of the tasks have been posted for the Fall Challenge, and I've made up my reading list. This varies over the challenge as new books come my way or I move some around, but I'm trying to read from my shelves this quarter so that I can continue with my book purge.

I'm starting off this challenge with a few items from the library:

Books:

What to Eat by Marion Nestle. I've been wanting to read this ever since it was published, but hadn't gotten around to it until it finally came up on my hold list at the library.  It's 600+ pages of clear, straightforward, no-nonsense writing and I'm enjoying it.

The Idle Parent: Subtitled "Why Less Means More When Raising Kids".  Recommended on the excellent blog Mental Multivitamin, I'm reading this mainly to feel better about our laid-back attitude to parenting, as it's too late to change much at this point.

The Young Man From Atlanta by Horton Foote. I borrowed this Pulitzer Prize winning play from the library for the summer challenge, but didn't get to that task. I'm hoping to find a place for it on my list when all the tasks have been posted.

Three graphic novels that I picked up after browsing at my local library branch. I like this genre because the story is told in fewer words but the artwork is typically engaging and tells a good part of the tale. The first two are by American writers and the third Japanese.

Filthy Rich

Narcoleptic Sunday

Ristorante Paradiso

Audiobooks that I've downloaded from the public library onto my iPod:

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande. I know about the essence of this book having read an article in the New Yorker (I think), but I'm looking forward to a longer description of this approach to reducing errors in different industries.

The Night Road by Kristin Hannah. I don't know this author and the book was published in March 2011, so I must have read a review of it somewhere and put it on my hold list.

Prisoner's Base (Nero Wolfe mystery) by Rex Stout. I like Nero Wolfe mysteries and they're good, quick listens.The narrator on all the ones I listened to in the past has been excellent.

The Good Guy by Dean Koontz. I chose this for a task where you have to read a book by an author who has a retired hurricane name. You "get out" of reading a second book if the book you read was written in the year the hurricane name was retired, in this case, 2007.

 

Books on the road

As many of you know, I'm a huge library fan and make use of the wonderful Toronto Public Library's excellent hold system for most of my reading needs.  I don't, however, like to take library books with me when I travel, and an upcoming ten-day jaunt to Stockholm has me starting to think about what I'll take with me.

I scanned my Summer Reading Challenge reading list for potential candidates...books that either I own or can buy used, and that would be enjoyable to read while travelling.  I already have a few on my Kindle:

1. A Connecticul Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (I'm about a third of the way in to this).
2. Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
3. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton (I don't currently have this assigned to a Challenge Task)

Other books that I had on hold at the library that I thought would be suitable are:

1. Ann of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  I decided to reread this during the recent Royal Visit, which included a stop at Green Gables in PEI.
2. Friend of the Devil by Peter Robinson.  It's the next up (for me) in the Inspector Banks series.
3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry in Values by Robert Pirsig.  I read this long ago as a teen, but it's the group read for the challenge and I'd love to give it another read.

I managed to find these at The Handy Book Exchange, my local used bookstore just around the corner on Avenue Road.  (They're dog friendly which means I can pop in for a look when I'm walking Wilson, and they give him treats while I'm there.)  I'll take off the library holds on these three and plan to leave them in Sweden with a BookCrossing sticker once I've finished them.

There are also a few books that I own that I'll consider taking with me:

1. Trader by Charles de Lint.  I've never read any of his work before, and I picked this up some time ago at Value Village. I'm becoming more open to the fantasy genre so we'll see how this goes.
2. Open Secrets by Alice Munroe.  Another one that I read some time ago and would like to re-read, and then give away.

Six paperbacks and a Kindle?  Maybe that's excessive.  Maybe I'll have already devoured one or more of these before I go.  Either way, I feel prepared!

 

Tide Road by Valerie Compton - A review.

Tide Road by Valerie Compton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel grabbed at my heart. A woman mourns the disappearance of an adult daughter and the book intertwines narrative from the mother's past and present as she struggles to come to terms with this tragedy.

Set mainly in the 1960s on Prince Edward Island, Valerie Compton describes island life with fondness and care. Life is speeding up with the coming of colour television and direct-dial telephone service, but the deep emotional threads in this novel take time to untangle. Alternately meditative and jarring, this story is difficult to put down. Highly recommended.

Thanks to the publisher Goose Lane for my copy.

View all my reviews

The neutrality of facts?

From Chapter 2 of my current audiobook The Last Summer (Of You and Me) by Ann Brashares. Alice and Paul are lifelong friends.

[Alice] knew things she shouldn't have known.  She knew things Paul had not told her, things he probably didn't know. Alice hated that, and faulted her mother for having ever told her. Her mother was too keen on information, too quick to belive in the neutrality of facts, just because they were true.

"It's the journalist in me" her mother claimed, managing to praise herself even in apology.

This jumped out at me as I was listening, so much that I rewound and transcribed the text.

I suspect that I have this tendency myself, to use facts in ways that might be gossipy or hurtful or in other ways that have the potential to break trust. The passage reminds mne that sometimes there is a burden placed on the receiver of such facts, that are so very often far from neutral.

WWW Wednesdays...and book giveaway!

Haven't participated in this recently,  All you need to do is answer these three questions, and post your link over at Should Be Reading:

1. What are you currently reading?
2. What did you recently finish reading?
3. What do you think you’ll read next?

Here goes!

Currently reading:  I've got three four books currently ongoing:

1. Richard III by William Shakespeare.  Trying to get through this before my trip to Stratford on Thursday.  I really need to buckle down and make a serious effort to get at least through the first two acts. Then Act III can be a surprise, LOL!
2. The Likeness by Tana French.  This is a big book, clocking in at just under 700 pages. It's the second police procedural by this author and is set outside of Dublin. An intriguing premise: a young woman is found dead, and she is the spitting image of a police officer who used to work undercover. The ID on the body is that of the undercover officer's "persona" and said officer ends up going back into character, pretending that the woman didn't actually die, and moving in with her housemates. Hard to put down!
3. The Last Summer of You and Me by Ann Brashares. I've just started this audiobook and don't have much to say about it yet. It's the first adult novel by Brashares who wrote the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and other YA titles.
4. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. I'm reading this via DailyLit and am about 15% of the way in. There are funny bits interspersed with boring bits.  

Recently finished:

1. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (audiobook). Excellent fantasy adventure, and that's high praise from me as I don't usually enjoy fantasy literature. I'm looking forward to the rest of the trilogy. Philip Pullman narrates the novels and there is a cast of other readers which makes the audiobook very enjoyable.
2. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.  Beautfiful novel about a young woman who immigrates from Ireland in the late 50s. If any of my readers would like my copy, drop me a line and it's yours. First come, first served! Email, comment, Facebook, whatevs...
3. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. Loved the format of this novel set at an international newspaper headquartered in Rome.  Tells the story of the paper in chapters, each the story of an employee or reader of the paper. Chapters are interspersed with third person narratives about the history of the company.  Funny, poignant, and well-deserving of the accolades it's received.

Up next:

1. Needled to Death by Maggie Sefton.  This is a book from the "Knitting Mystery" series. It'll go quickly after I finish The Likeness. Got this one from Value Village a few months ago.
2. Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay. This novel's been getting some great buzz. Got it from the library.
3. Black Rose by Nora Roberts. This is my next audiobook. It's the second in the "In the Garden" trilogy and a follow-up to Blue Dahlia that I read a couple of weeks ago. It's a romance novel with some gardening and genealogy thrown in to keep it moving forward. Can't beat a good romance in the summer!

 

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It's Monday....what am I reading?

Well, I finished up last quarter's Seasonal Reading Challenge with my best score ever!  So I'm on to a new reading list and heading full steam ahead. Last week I finished up a couple of Peter Robinson mysteries and The Silver Pigs on audio, just under the May 31st wire for the challenge.  I already had a bunch of books checked out of the library for the new challenge and whipped off a few right away:

• The Sunday Wife by Cassandra King.  A middle-aged woman discovers who she is apart from her role as a minister's wife.  Set in the South, I really enjoyed this novel. 
• Lovers by Vendela Vida.  I didn't know what to expect from this and came away thoroughly satisfied.  A middle-aged widow returns to a villiage in Turkey where she and her late husband spent their honeymoon.  She meets a peculiar cast of characters and has insights into this stage of her life.  Hard to put down.
• The Eternal Smile: Three Stories by Gene Luen Yang. A collection of appealing graphic stories, light on text.
• Thrifty: Living the Frugal Life with Style by Marjorie Harris.  I wanted to like this, and the sections with stories about Margaret Atwood are interesting, but there's not much new here for someone already actively pursing this kind of lifestyle.
• An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender. An odd little book, one that I should have loved given the protagonists peculiar relationship with numbers (something like mine), but I had difficulty "getting" it.  Loved her novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake though.

Currently on board are

• Blue Dahlia by Nora Roberts.  A guilty pleasure, Roberts' stories.  I'm listening to this gardening-oriented book (first of a trilogy) on my iphone. Besides gardening, it's got love, lust, a ghost, children, a dog, and Southerners....all great subjects for a romance novel!
• An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel.  I picked up Wolf Hall when I was in England and found it in a seaside cafe, used, for a pound.  I've had An Experiment in Love on hold for a while, so want to get this one read before it's due back at the library.
• A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthurs Court by Mark Twain.  My friend Kathleen is just about through War and Peace via DailyLit (the email-based service that sends you a short bit of a novel every day to help you get through the classics.)  I read a couple of books this way years ago, but she's encouraged me to give it another go. I get the bits in my feed reader every morning. This book has 142 parts and I'm reading two a day do it will take me about 10 weeks to read.

Up next:

• Richard III by WIlliam Shakespeare.  I'm heading to see the play at Stratford with some girlfriends in a couple of weeks and had better get this under my belt by then
• How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Steven Marche.  This is a quick read and has been widely (and well) reviewed, so it's in my bag.
• The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. A debut novel that's getting raves.
• The Likeness by Tana French.  A great new-ish voice in the police procedural genre.  Looking forward to this, her second book.

As always, you can check out the settings of my books on this google map Where Am I Reading 2011?

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Monday Reading Round-up (and book giveaway!)

I missed last week's reading roundup, so I will herein confess that I did very little reading while on vacation.  However, I got through two novels and got going on a third.

1. I started and finished another YA novel, The Mysterious Benedict Society.  It had been highly recommended when it first came out in 2008 and I found a copy in the checkout line at Winners just beore we left for England.  (There is a reason why they keep those lines long.) It involves a group of four children who are selected through an interesting series of tests to helpa Mr. Benedict foil some nasty business that is going down. The children are interesting and the story moves quickly.  It's the first of a series and I hope read the rest.  I left it in the bookshelf at our inn in Folkestone with a handwritten Book Crossing ID in it.
2. I then picked up Vita Sackville-West's The Edwardians which I loved.  The story follows a family of nobles, in which the father has died and the mother is waiting for the son to marry and take over the estate. His sister, eighteen, is also expected to "come out" and behave as women did in those days.  The most interesting part of the book to me was not the plot (although it was good) but the description of how life was changing during that time (1901-1910) in terms of societal morés: the role of women, relationships between nobility and their servants, the advent of the motorcar, the rise of socialism, and feelings about the monarchy.  This is the first writing by Sackville-West that I've read, and I'll be sure to read more.
3. Peter Robinson's The Summer That Never Was came next. The thirteenth Inspector Banks novel, it was as good as I expected.  Robinson is one of my favorite mystery writers and this was no disappointment.  I hope to read the next three in the series as part of my GoodReads challenge this quarter.   

When I got home, I grabbed Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville on my Kindle and breezed through that novella.  I had heard reference to Bartleby in a number of different places and decided it was time to actually read the piece.  The story of a law office and a clerk who, when asked to perform a task, says "I would prefer not to." And the conseqences on the office of this piece of work action!

I didn't really listen to audiobooks while I was away, but it was great on the plane trips there and back. I finished up Under the Net by Iris Murdoch and then listened to Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.  Loved the Murdoch, and as it turned out, had already read the Atkinson, but listened to it anyway as I had forgotten much of the plot.  It's the first of the Jackson Brodie series of mysteries and I definitely plan to listen to more (which, hopeffully will actually be new to me!)

At present, I'm re-reading Fifth Business by Roberston Davies.  I think I must have read it thirty or more years ago, and that I was too young to appreciate it for more than the simple plot.  I am absolutely loving it and will be diving into the other two books in the Deptford trilogy. I'm also listening to Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down which is hilarious and moving, like much of his wonderful fictioin. I'm nearly finished both of these and so will soon by moving on to my to-read pile, which includes:

• Does this Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat by Peter Walsh.  (This *could* solve two problems in one...)
• Tide Road by Valerie Compton.  A freebie from a Goodreads giveaway.
• Giants of Jazz by Studs Terkel. Bought this for Michael a few months ago.
• Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer.
• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly, another YA novel.

So. The giveaway. 

I would love to pass on my copy of The Edwardians. If you are interested, either leave me a note in the comments or send me an email (janet (at) berkman (dot) ca). I'll draw for the lucky winner and contact you for mailing/delivery info. 

 

Seen Reading

Have you heard about Julie Wilson's (aka Book Madam) Literary Voyeurs project?  She (and a number of helpers) document sightings of books and the people reading them in public. Public transit seems to be a popular source of material, as are bookstores, coffee shops, and restaurants. While it started in Toronto, there are contributors from all over the world. The fomat is what you seen below.

I'm not a formal contributor, but enjoy the "sport".  A couple of sightings from the past week:

• Location:  Toronto:  61A bus southbound on Avenue Road
  Time of Day:  3:30 pm
  Reader:  Young, Asian woman, long dark hair, wearing white polo tee, khaki shorts, running shoes, and carrying a backpack.
  Book: The Gargoyle.  Heavily studded with pink post-it flags, before and after the page she's reading.
  Author:  Andrew Davidson
  Publisher:  Vintage Canada 

The following were a couple. 

• Location:  North York.  Doctor's office waiting room
  Time of Day: 12:15 pm
  Reader:  Older woman, grey hair, stylish plastic-frame glasses, bright pink top, black slacks, hose, and flats.
  Book: Barney's Version (paperback).  Almost finished.
  Author:  Mordecai Richler
  Publisher:  Vintage Canada 
• Location:  North York.  Doctor's office waiting room
  Time of Day: 12:15 pm
  Reader:  Older gent, blue plaid long-sleeved shirt, khaki pants, brown belt, white running shoes, brownish-grey hair and wire-framed glasses.
  Book: The Best Laid Plans (a couple of chapters in).
  Author:  Terry Fallis
  Publisher: McClelland and Stewart

I struck up a conversation with the gentleman while his wife was seeing the doctor. He was laughing out loud while reading and I caught his eye. He told me that his brother out in Vancouver had recommended it to him and he was really enjoying it. He asked me about the sequel (The High Road) and I told him that it was just as good as the first one, and by the time he'd finished The Best Laid Plans, he'd be desperate for more!

TTFN.  

The reading pile.

We travel on Friday, so I've been in a mad dash to finish up the library books I have to return before we leave.  Currently on the nightstand (and in my purse, and on the coffee table...)

• Under the Net by Iris Murdoch. I don't have a hope of finishing this library book, so I went looking for it in Indigo last night.  It was marked as £8.99 or $23.95 CDN!  For a paperback!  So I grabbed in for my Kindle at $10US last night.  
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.  I picked this up while I was waiting for Michael at a 3 hour rehearsal and had neglected to put a book in my bag.  It was displayed in the check-out line at Winners and I've wanted to read it for some time.  I'm just a couple of dozen pages in, but I think it will only increase my appreciation for Young Adult lit.
• The Postmistress by Sarah Blake. An audiobook, this is set in WWII in the US and London. It's a download from the library and has almost expired, so it's at the top of my list.

Recently completed:

• Double Fault by Lionel Shriver. Just finished this last night. I love Lionel Shriver, and have read most of her books.  This one tells the story of a couple who are both on the tennis circuit and how their rankings affect their marriage. I found it very engaging and, although I don't follow or even really like the sport, the commentary on the world of tennis, competition, and rankings was very interesting. It isn't one of her best books, but recommendable nonetheless.
• An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin. Martin is such a polymath. Comedian, actor, musician, and author. Set in the New York art world, the novel is narrated by an art writer.  He tells the story of the rise and fall of Lacey Yeager, who morphs from a young assistant at Sotheby's to a gallery owner. I learned a lot about the art business while enjoying this novel that is full of intrigue, affairs, and exclusive parties. Highly recommended.
• Becoming George Sand by Rosalind Brackenbury. This novel left me cold, and I had to force myself to finish it.  A writer, who is having an extramarital affair and researching George Sand, starts to identify with her subject. The action (if you can call it that) switches between the present day and the story of Sand and Chopin. Pass it by.
• Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman. A preteen girl suffers while living with her bipolar mother. After her mother's death, she is adopted by a great-aunt who whips her down to Savannah into a world of Southern women, gentility, and eccentricity. This novel has been compared to The Help, but that's an exaggeration. They're both set in the South, but this book is much lighter in tone. It was a fun read.
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. Zouheir put me on to this wonderful novella, originally published in French. Somewhat in the same vein as Reading Lolita in Tehran, two young men being re-educated during the Cultural Revolution in China discover a suitcase with a bunch of (forbidden) french novels by Balzac and others. The audiobook was read by actor B.D. Wong and was very moving. I highly recommend this book.
• Incredible Edibles:  43 Fun Things to Grow in the City by Sonia Day and Barrie Murdock. This is a wonderful little book with great instructions for starting a small city garden (even one just in planters.) The copy I read was from the library, but I ended up buying this book to help me start a garden this year.

This is the selection I'm packing on my travels. They will likely not all get read, but a couple of long flights and time on my own at the castle should provide me with lots of reading time.

• Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.  I chose this because it's set in England and is the first of the Jackson Brodie mysteries. It's on my iPhone.
• The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West.  Another novel set in England, Sackville-West was born in Kent (where we'll be spending a few days). I haven't read anything by her before and am very much looking forward to this (and possibly visiting Sissinghurst Castle where she lived for a while.
• A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. Love Hornby's books, and this has been downloaded onto my iPhone for listening.
• The House at Riverton by Kate Morton. I quite liked Morton's The Forgotten Garden, and this is another one set in the Edwardian period. It's on my Kindle.
• Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville.  It keeps coming up in various things I'm reading, so it's on my Kindle.

Next week I'll hope to post an update on my reading from England!

Why yes....you can have too many books.

Mark Medley's piece Confessions of a Book Hoarder a couple of weeks ago in the National post got widely picked up, seeming to incite a torrent of stories and "me-too" articles. There seems to be a collective nerve that was struck by this piece, and I'm one of those who felt a twinge.

I sent Mark an email detailing my experiences.  I reproduce it here for my reading public, with the addition of a few links for those wishing to purge (or, God forbid, add to their collection.)

Mark..

We are kindred spirits.  I refer to "my little book problem" when it comes up in conversation.

I've been buying books for 30 years.  Over time, my husband and I moved from a small apartment to a larger apartment, to a small house, then larger house, so we just carted them along with us. A corporate move to the US had me get rid of, oh, a quarter of them. But then the bounty that is The States (Barnes and Noble within walking distance from home, Amazon Prime, Paperback Swap, BookMooch, cheap Media Mail postal rates) saw my collection grow even more.

We moved back to Toronto and into a small house and I simply HAD to get rid of a lot of books.  I came up with the following purging scheme:

Get rid of anything that:

1. I have read before and am not likely to want to read again
2. I have not read before, is not likely to get anywhere near the top of my to-read pile, and is available at the library
3. Is non-fiction and out of date (e.g., atlases, dictionaries, general interest computing and science books...)
4. Doesn't "fit" anymore...world-views I no longer hold, out-of-date fashion, hobbies I no longer do, etc.
5. Is non-fiction and information is easily available online
6. Has yellowing pages, cracked spine, or would otherwise be annoying to read (and is available to buy/borrow). A lot of my old Penguins fell into that category.
7. Is moldy, damp, or otherwise unhealthy.  (You'd think that goes without saying....well, maybe not YOU, but most people.)

I am trying very hard not to bring new books into the house, other than from the library, onto my Kindle, or books that I will want to make notes in or otherwise mark up. I permit books that I'm desperate to read but for some reason are not available at the Toronto Public Library (very few in this category, I must say) and reference books that will not age. (I have a small collection of local history books.)  As I read books from my shelves, I give them away as per #1 above (often via BookCrossing and/or to my local Value Village or library book sale.) Anything else that slips in under the radar (gifts, impulse purchases, freebies) is submitted to the one-in-one-out policy.

I'd like to get down another 30% but I can only purge at a certain speed. The shelves are no longer double-stacked, and I'm getting to a comfortable place with my books.  

Janet

 

Where am I reading? First quarter summary.

Sheila over at Book Journey has a little competition this year, which was the genesis for my Where Am I Reading in 2011? map. She has challenged her followers to read something from every US state. Here's my update that also includes Canadian provinces as well as other countries. Locations I've read from are in bold italic.  To see the actual books, go to the map link above and click on the blue pins.

Where_am_I_reading_table.pdf

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It's Monday....what am I reading?

[Image is a little reminder that pollen season is on the way....]

I'm getting more and more excited about our trip to England in a couple of weeks!  I've set aside some books set in the area to read while I'm there, but I'd really like a novel set around the time of the Norman conquest. So please leave any ideas in the comments box.  I'll let you know what books I'll be taking with me in next Monday's update.

Anyway, at present, I am reading Becoming George Sand by Rosalind Brackenbury. The main character, Maria, is having an extra-marital affair while also reading about George Sand and her affair with Chopin. The novel intertwines her current situation with that of Sand, but I'm not very far into it so am not sure how successful this will be. It's set in Edinburgh, so another country added to my Where Am I Reading in 2011 map!  My current audio book is Shopaholic and Sister by Sophie Kinsella. This is the first of her Shopaholic series that I've read, although I've enjoyed a number of her other novels. They are light but very entertaining novels and I love the narration by Katherine Kellgren on the audiobooks. In this novel, rather well into the series, Becky is married and meets her half-sister who is extremely different from her, and Becky is determined to bond with her. I'm about half-way through and it's been fun so far.

Since I checked in a week ago, I finished up  A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley which was just as great as I expected. Bride of New France by Suzanne Desrochers, about a fille du roi, was excellent and I learned a lot about the period and the hardships that these women experienced.  It would be an excellent novel for a teenager studying Canadian history. And speaking of teens, I finished the absolutely hilarious Young Adult novel Alice, I Think by Susan Juby. It's about a fiffteen-year old girl in British Columbia who has been homeschooled (or rather, "unschooled") and has some issues. It's written in a journal format and she chronicles her efforts towards her life goals in quirky yet intelligent narration. If I was a teen in the early 2000s, this is a book (a series, actually), that I would have loved. Sort of a Harriet the Spy for the new millenium. I plan to pick up the next books in the trilogy.

Finally, I just finished Left Neglected by Lisa Genova. The novel follows Sarah, a high-powered HR exec in an international consulting firm, as she experiences and is treated for a traumatic brain injury following a car accident. The type of damage is called hemispatial neglect (or "left neglect" in this case, since it's her left side). Essentially, she loses the experience of her left side. She's not paralyzed...she just cannot "see" anything to the left, including the left side of her body, the left side of a piece of paper, or her dinner plate, or the room.  It's rather hard to describe, but Genova (who has a PhD in neuroscience) does a fabulous job of evoking not only the physical and mental issues associated with this injury, but the effect it has on Sarah's family and lifestyle. I highly recommend this novel.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins turned out to be an absolutely terrific read, much as so many people had said. As I mentioned last week, it's not the kind of novel I'd normally pick up (dystopian future, kids having to kill each other....) but I was very taken in by the main characters and the world in which they lived. I look forward to the rest of the trilogy.

As I mentioned to a friend last week, I feel like I"m on a bit of a Young Adult jag. There is such terrific writing out there for that demographic. I may even give the Harry Potter series another try!

Coming up in paper:

1. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
2. Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
3. Double Fault by Lionel Shriver
4. Incredible Edibles: 43 Fun Things to Grow in the City by Sonia Day

Coming up in audio:

1. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
2. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
3. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
4. An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

 

It's Monday....what am I reading?

Seems like I mainly get to this blog on Mondays, but I've been more active on Facebook and Twitter these days.  It's so quick to post links and updates via those other two media, and I"m getting lazy in my dotage.

Anyway, it's been an interesting week on the book front. Giving up TV for Lent has vastly increased my reading time, so I've been going great guns on the Seasonal Reading Challenge over at Goodreads.  I've finished up a few books:

• In the Kitchen by Monica Ali.  A tale of a chef in an upscale London hotel restaurant, Ali's writing is crisp and enjoyable.  
• Make Me a Woman by Vanessa Davis, a compilation of her hilarious comic strips detailing her life in sometimes painful accuracy 
• Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me, a biography in the form of a graphic novel,  by Sarah Leavitt 
• Refresh, Refresh by James Ponsoldt, another graphic novel about teenage boys in Oregon, waiting for their fathers to return from deployment
• Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt. Detailed review to follow soon (I hope).

...and audiobooks:

• The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie.  I read all of her mysteries as a kid, but have forgotten all the plots.  This is a good one!
• Glory in Death by J.D. Robb.  The second in this series of detective novels set in NYC in 2058.  Written by Nora Roberts under a pen name, these are fast, easy reads (listens?).
• Dinner with Friends by David Margulies.  This Pulitzer Prize-winning play is not really an audiobook but a recorded play.  It involves two couples, one of whom is divorcing.  The pace is quick, the conversation very realistic, and the acting excellent.  

Currently, I'm reading the third Flavia de Luce mystery, A Red Herring Without Mustard, by Canadian Alan Bradley.  I love this series that centres around 12 year old Flavia, set in '50s England.  She lives with her father, two older sisters, and a cook and a butler in a crumbling house and they are falling onto hard times.  Flavia makes use of her wits and her dead Uncle Tar's laboratory to solve local crimes.  Extremely well-written and engaging.  

I'm listening to The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, this is not normally a book that I'd pick up, but I've read so many glowing reviews of the series that I decided to give it a go.  I'm only about 10% of the way in, but it has grabbed me and yanked me into it's dystopian world.  It's part of a trilogy, so there'll be more to come!

Books up next:

• Bride of New France by Suzanne Desrochers.  I think I read a review of this somewhere and put it on my hold list.  It details the life of a couple of young women sent to Canada as "filles du roi". 
• Alice, I Think by Susan Juby.  Someone wrote that the Alice series were some of their favorite books for girls and I thought I'd pick one up and check it out.  It won a bunch of awards when it was first published in 2003.
• Left Neglected by Lisa Genova.  Recently published, I must have read a good review about this somewhere and put it on my hold list!  I wish the library would allow for comments when we put books on hold so I could remember why I requested them!

And audiobooks:

• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie.  Zouheir recently listened to this and comparied it favorably to Reading Lolita in Tehran, which he also enjoyed. Set during the Cultural Revolution, a suitcase full of Western novels is secretly shared.
• Shopaholic and Sister by Sophie Kinsella.  I'm new to the Shopaholic series, although I've read and very much enjoyed a number of Kinsella's other books.

I just received a review copy of Tide Road by Valerie Compton from the publisher (thanks to Goodreads book giveaways), so I'll have to fit that in somewhere soon.