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One reader's thoughts as she steps from book to book.
Books I've Finished
- "A Christmas Memory"
- by Truman Capote 12/8/12
- "Child's Christmas in Wales"
- by Dylan Thomas 12/7/12
- "One Christmas"
- by Truman Capote 11/29/12
- "The Thanksgiving Visitor"
- by Truman Capote 11/29/12
- Inside Mrs. B's Classroom
- by Leslie Baldacci 11/28/12
- The Bee Eater
- by Richard Whitmire 11/15/12
- There Are No Shortcuts
- by Rafe Esquith 10/28/12
- I'd Like to Apologize to
- Every Teacher I Ever Had
- by Tony Danza 10/21/12
- Corked
- by Kathryn Borel 10/15/12
- Year of Learning Dangerously
- by Quinn Cummings 9/30/12
- A Hologram for the King
- by Dave Eggers 8/23/12
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- by Harper Lee 7/18/12
About Me
- Christine
- I often have a few books with bookmarks in them at once. I enjoy classics more than contemporary works of fiction, often read historical fiction, and love to get glimpses into other people's lives by reading memoirs and biographies.
11 comments:
I've been working on T.H. White's Once and Future King at work, Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell at home, and Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul at the library. Somehow, though, the fantasy-sci-fi thing isn't doing it for me at the moment. I'm thinking of picking up some of Bill Bryson's travel writing. That'd just about hit the spot. Or maybe I'll take a peak into Bradbury's sequel to Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer.
Oh, yeah, have a good inventory, all you B&Ners.
Update: Inventory was going good when I left@ 11.
This week I read "Quiet, Please". This is what Amazon sez: For most of us, librarians are the quiet people behind the desk, who, apart from the occasional “shush,” vanish into the background. But in Quiet, Please, McSweeney’s contributor Scott Douglas puts the quirky caretakers of our literature front and center.
Here is my take: Half the librarians in the country will love this book. Half the librarians in the country will detest it. No one else will care. And yes, it is yet another book padded with nonessential stuff. Why is the new generations of writers SO afaid of writing something good but short?
Am now reading "Banana". Yes, it's the history of the banana.
Oh, and Jodi's making me read "The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team" for work. Hey, what's she implying?
Don: re "Banana": you are what you read. Mwa ha ha...oh, I kill me...
*wipes tears away* Sorry, still on an inventory/pastry-sugar high.
I dropped "Quiet, Please" as I found the author to be a less irksome A.J. Know-It-All type. I still couldn't read it. I found all those "pointless information" paddings to be interruptive and irritating, and since there was a Sephora tutorial makeup book just dying to have to me check it out, I opted for that instead.
Also I am reading a book of short stories called Little Black Book of Stories, by the author of Possession, that stupid movie with Gwyneth Paltrow and some moony guy. I am choosing not to hold this against the author, as the stories are moody and evocative and a bit gothic in their feel. She's apparently a Booker Prize-winner, so that trumps stupid movie-ness also! Yay for finding cool stuff while zoning!
Oh hey Don, does your banana book have anything in it about that song from Beetlejuice? You know, the "tally m[y] banana" song? Cause that would be interesting...
Sleep. That would also be good.
Good job all you inventory takers! I did not work the overnight but will be heading back to B&N this morning to wrangle with the mags.
Danika, I'd read a Bryson with you.
Danika and Don, don't you have something to say to the group about Dandelion Wine?
I still want to try Quiet, Please. Might check it out today, in fact. I worked at the library, you know, so I figure I got a 50/50 chance of liking it, right, Don?
Martha, one of Cooksin's all-time favorite books is Possession by Byatt.
Only Martha knows that I've been reading Sundays at Tiffany's in bits and pieces at work (I mean not at work, Don! Only on my breaks!). It's by James Paterson whom I've never read. Now I know why. (Snobbery alert!). He cowrote this with a woman with a French sounding name. I'm sure it was to make sure he got the female angle right. Wow. It is the fluffiest fluff that ever fluffed. I get feathers in my mouth just reading it. A young woman's former imaginary friend from childhood, who is a dashing and handsome man, enters he life years later and sweeps her off her feet. So this guy, who was like a dad to her when she was eight, now wants to date her? Eewww. It's gonn be a movie. You watch.
The banana book sounds promising.
I am reading "Bird by Bird", by Anne Lamott. I wish I had the book with me so I could quote her. Here is something I found on a PBS page..“Maybe you really don’t want to write, maybe you want to read, but if you do want to write, life is going by very quickly and if you’re not careful you’re going to be 80 years old and have spent your life wishing that you’d gotten your work done. I think it’s good to consider where you’re going to be at 80. I believe at 80 we’re not going to wish we spent more time cleaning our houses. I believe at 80 we’re not going to wish we’d stayed out of warm tropical water more often ‘cause our thighs were not firm. Really no one cares if you get your writing done, it’s of no cosmic importance that you do. All I know that if it’s in you you’re going to get sick if you don’t let it out. And it’s your memories and your dreams and your versions of things and these characters who’ve selected you to be their typist. You’re their own Rosemary Woods. If you don’t have the luxury of writing 8 to 5, give up the 10 o’clock news. The 10 o’clock news only serves to ruin the next day’s newspaper. And to tell you about fires in areas you never go to, so what’s the point? So have you have an hour then, if you can budget the hour from 10 to 11, give up this one thing. It’s like God will meet you half way and be like, ‘Okay, cookie, let’s go.’”
Bird by Bird is one of my most favorite writing books. On Writing Well by Zinsser and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg are two others. Sophia, you might also like the Goldberg book.
Sophia, is it God or Anne addressing the reader as "Cookie"? If it's God, is that good for me? I loved Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions. Martha, AS Byatt is my favorite author, and I agree that the movie version of Possession is incredibly bad. Aaron Eckert was so smarmy in the lead role, and Gwenyth played her character as sweet! Yuck. I would love it if you read Byatt's short story Angels and Insects and then saw the movie version--both are fabulous. Danaka, I loved Speaker For The Dead! I've already finished Xenocide, and am a few pages into Children of the Mind. Nothing beats blazing through a series.
Wow, inventory at B&N came and went and my schedule has been such that I didn't even catch wind of it!
Thanks for the lowdown on Sundays at Tiffany's, Christine. My mom likes James Patterson's thrillers, and I was thinking of getting her Sundays as a change of pace for Mother's Day. I went with Jodi Picoult instead, and now I'm glad I did!
~Lisa
I believe that God is addressing her as "cookie". It's clearly good news for you.
I knew you'd like 'em, Cook!
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