What are you reading?
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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.
8 comments:
Christine, I love your little bird!
Secret Gift, Ted Gup. True story: During the darkest days of the Great Depression in Canton, OH where the unemployment reach 50% a man took out an ad in the local paper offering a Christmas gift of $10 to 75 people. (This is when a loaf of bread was 7¢.) He received so many responses that he reduced the amount to $5 for 150 families. His grandson, Ted Gup, was given the suitcase that had been saved for many years containing the original ad, 150 pleas (the ones who received the money), and the thank-you notes that often followed. In addition to this heart-warming story (as if this weren’t enough for a really good read!), Gup also investigated his grandfather’s secret past life to try to figure out what would motivate him to do such a thing. I’d been waiting a long time to check this out and this book didn’t disappoint!
Wow Mary, that book sounds really cool!
I'm currently reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery (she wrote it in French, and I'm reading the English translation by Alison Anderson). It's about the musings of two people who seemingly don't have much in common: a rich 12-year old girl living with her family in a luxurious hotel, and the hotel's older, widowed concierge, a woman of much lowlier means and birth. So far, what I gather is that both are philosophers at heart who search their lives daily for deeper meaning. The older woman is an autodidact, while the younger girl is extremely precocious and seems convinced that she will not find the significance she seeks; in fact she has already planned to commit suicide on her 13th birthday. The book is not nearly as dreary as I'm making it seem though; I have a feeling both protagonists will find something about this world to grab onto.
I finished Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt. Overall, it was kinda all over the place, but I liked the parts about doing stand-up in Canada best. He also had this surprisingly sweet and well-written poem about his middle school Dungeons and Dragons character, whom he retired forever when he developed a strong interest in girls. His philosophy about everyone condensing their world into a world of zombies, a spaceship, or a wasteland was kind of a stretch though.
I also finished two other books last week: Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter (for me, she was pretty much preaching to the choir about how the toy/clothing/everything industry pretty much has parents of girls over a barrel in terms of shoving the pink princess culture down everyone's throat), and Olivia Munn's Suck It, Wonder Woman (an at-times funny, at-times trying-too-hard-to-be-funny-and-not-that-funny, and at-times totally baffling account of Olivia Munn's adventures in Hollywood as a geeky but attractive would-be actress/model).
~Lisa
Hi Mary! Not my little bird, just a little bird I grabbed off the Internet!
Wow, Secret Gift sounds very interesting, and I'm glad to see that you liked it so much. My mom might like it, too.
Lisa, I recently saw the hedgehog book in my book-a-day calendar and thought that it sounded like something I would like, too. Coincidence? Or do we have the same calendar?
Hadn't been aware of the the Orenstein book before. Thanks for mentioning it here.
Don't know who Olivia Munn is--was she just on the cover of Maxim?
Don, did you also read the Oswalt book?
I don't have that calendar, but I think you would *really* like The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Christine.
You're correct that Munn was just on the cover of Maxim. She became famous among geeks as a cohost of a TV show called Attack of the Show (I've never seen it and don't even know what network airs it), and she is currently (maybe?) a Daily Show correspondent, although from what I hear, she's not a very popular one (people don't seem to think she's funny there--I wouldn't know, I've never watched the show since she's been on). She's also on a new NBC sitcom called Perfect Couples, and I think she's good on that. But I first saw her in the movie Date Night in a small role as a restaurant hostess, and Tina Fey said some nice things about her so naturally that's how she got on my radar, haha. Wow, that was a really long, probably unnecessary explanation.
Yeah, Don has read the Oswalt book too. His response was "meh." I'll let him elaborate if he wants.
Hmmm. Will keep "Hedgehog" on the back burner. Thanks.
Thanks for the background on Munn. I like Tina Fey, and you just reminded me that I never saw Date Night. I certainly don't expect great things, but I'll bet there are more than a few laughs. Also, also, I want to hear that Tina Fey fake Joni Mitchell song that I've been hearing about.
Don says, "meh," about a lot of books. Don, when was the last time you said, "I loved that book!"?
Hey Christine, if you want to hear "Paints and Brushes," here it is:
http://soundcloud.com/ericandrew16/paintsandbrushes
That was posted by Tina Fey's personal assistant, Eric Gurian. Tina Fey improvised the lyrics, and someone who works on the show (not her composer husband, actually) was accompanying her on guitar. There's actually more in the show because the night club scene is broken up into two scenes (one of them is a flashback). But in the above song, she references some people she works with at "30 Rock," and also talks about standards being uncomfortable with her making jokes about tampons. It's pretty rambling and incoherent, but as a Joni Mitchell homage, it's pretty spot-on. lol
Date Night is not a great movie, and some parts are cringeworthy, but it also has some very sweet and funny parts.
Thanks, Lisa!
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