17 posts tagged “reading”

If only I were better about doing this AS I'm reading vs. way after the fact. I think we're on number 18.

And so, here we go:

#18  The Tent by Margaret Atwood - Poetical little vignettes of fiction, similar to her book Good Bones & Simple Murders.  I really enjoyed this tiny book, filled with her own illustrations.

#19  Eragon by Christopher Paolini. I picked this up as an audiobook, narrated by Gerard Doyle, who creates voices for all the characters (some of which are terribly annoying).  As for the book, Paolini was young when Eragon was first published and everyone was fascinated by the fact that he managed to write and publish at 15 (it was first self-published by his family). There is a lot about the book that shows it was written by someone so youthful--the fantasy world was somewhat typical with dragons, elves, dragons and orc-like creatures. Some of the scenes make you roll your eyes with the melodrama. But what brings it home is the story--he's a master storyteller and you end up being sucked in even if the execution is weak in spots. I'm already on the next book, Eldest and I look forward to the third in the series, Brisinger. Paolini is 25 now and what's very exciting about reading a young author who is great at the story is that there is a very good chance his writing will improve over time. I really look forward to watching that progression.

#20 Groundswell by Josh Bernoff & Charlene Li -  Excellent business book on social media. Great case studies and examples.

#21 The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott - one of the best new books on social media. If you are a PR pro you need to pick this up.

#22 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser - Greg got me this for my birthday. Wow. What a shocking book this must have been when it came out. And how depressing is the end!!! Overall, very good read.

#23 Lavinia by Ursula K. Leguin -  I love this author so much. She writes beautiful, character rich stories that I can't ever get enough of. In this book she explores ancient ancient Roman history, writing about Lavinia, a woman who we only know as the wife of Aeneas because of a line in Virgil's poem. Aboslutely lovely.

Love love love my new toy!  I blogged about it over on my writing blog, so I'll send you there for the review. Oh oh I'm a very happy camper!

My New Kindle

Sooo I know I promised to read 50 books this year, and I AM well on my way but have been lax on updating. Here are my most recent reads:

#11   Livia by Anthony Barrett  -- a wonderful biography about Augustus Caesar's wife, Livia.

#12  Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges -- This book is on the favorite list of many literary-minded friends and I have to admit that I just don't see why it's so brilliant overall. Maybe I'm the one that's not so brilliant, sigh.

#13  The Game by A.S. Byatt -- It was just ok. Nothing of the brilliance that Possession had. Overall I felt like it was rather a let down. But I bought it second hand for about $2 so I suppose it evens out.

#14  Salem Falls -- Jodi Picoult -- Better by far than The Game but still, just OK. I picked it up at the airport in Oakland in a shop that had a terrible selection of books. She has done some work with Grub Street in the past so I tend to want to patronize authors connected with one of my favorite organizations. It's an easy read but the whole teen witchy thing felt cliched.

#15 The Witch of Portobello -- Paulo Cohelo  who, according to the book flap, is one of the most beloved writers of our time (he is?).  So I haven't read the Alchemist yet, don't sue me. At any rate, this book was also a fast-paced read but I did find that the ending rather fell flat for me as some great "literary" fiction has a tendency to do. Again, maybe I just don't have an overall affinity for the esoteric? What I liked about this book was the style--not a single bit of it was told from the POV of the main character but instead, through a series of interviews of everyone that knew her.

#16  The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay -- I really liked this book partially because it was about books and about a bookstore and because the characters are so strange and peculiar. Despite the oddness of the cast, the book is very accessible and reads quickly. Definitely recommend.

#17  The Collected Poems of Carl Sandburg  --  Ahhh just plain wonderfulness. I often read poetry to Joe before we go to sleep at night. When you read poetry aloud to someone who isn't much of a reader, you realize that accessiblilty is of the utmost importance. I was struck by how many of his poems, now 100 years old in many cases are still so very relevant, fluid and modern even today.

I'm also halfway through Aldous Huxley's The Island, partway through Margaret Atwood's The Tent and sigh of sighs, only about 400 pages into War and Peace. I like the Peace portion a lot but the War portions tend to drag on for me. And I can't figure out how late 18th Russia had so many damn princes and princesses...they seem to be everywhere you turn around!  

I haven't been posting as I go for the 50 in 365, but I have been reading. Sooo here is the backtrack for what I've read in the last two months.

#1-3

The Gormenghast Novels

The Gormenghast novels are really three books, Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone. Incredible books, especially the first two, which chronicle the story of a very odd castle and its strange inhabitants, including the just born Titus Groan, the 77th Earl of Gormenghast. It's a well-written gothic fantasy of sorts, although it can hardly be called fantastic in that there is no magic, just an amazing cast of characters.

I highly highly recommend these books. The BBC and WGBH put out a mini-series a few years back that is based on the first two novels. I think that the mini-series would have been confusing to me if I hadn't read the books, but I thought that they did do justice to the story and they did a great job with casting. Netflix them AFTER you read the books.

Now You See Him: A Novel

I've read quite a few other books as well...

#4  After Gormenghast, I read Eli Gottleib's Now You See Him. It's not the type of book I would normally buy but I scored a free reviewers copy. It's a short, easy read. Interesting literary mystery novel if you like those sorts of things.

#5   I was looking for a book on my great reading list that I could take with me on a business trip I took in January. Joe convinced me to bring Great Expectations, which I, shockingly, have never read. In fact, I've never read any Dickens beyond certain passages handed out in writing classes in college. This is very strange to me, being such a literary freak and such a fan of British literature in general. Dickens' collected works are on my list to read, definitely. I really enjoyed the book but found it hard not to picture Ethan Hawke, Gwenyth Paltrow and DeNiro as characters. I hardly remember that movie but reading the book brought it back and it was difficult not to think of those actors as I was reading.

#6  I picked up Love in the Time of Cholera at the airport in Oakland, CA on my way back from that trip. I hadn't read it yet, nor have I seen the movie, but wow, what a beautiful story. I do want to rent the movie...can anyone tell me if the movie does the book justice?

#7 The Glass Castle was interofficed to me by a colleague who knows I like books. I don't typically read many memoirs but this one threw me for a loop. It's written by a now-successful journalist who was raised by parents who were rather fucked up but still loved their kids. The story chronicles the story of how they lived, in shacks, often without food or money or clean clothes. I was absolutely riveted.

Finite and Infinite Games

#8  Another book that I read, Finite & Infinite Games by James Carse, was a slim volume that I picked up as a result of some random blog post I read about cognition. Basically Carse presents a philosophy of looking at the world, either as a finite game or infinite game. Children play infinite games...neverending games without rules or boundaries. Adults define, place rules around and create finite games, which in turn create stress in our lives. I like the idea of figuring out how to let go a little, how to take life less seriously and how to shape the world into a game that I want to play rather than to play the finite games of others around me.

Incredible Good Fortune: New Poems

#9 If you love poetry, you must pick up Ursula K. LeGuin's Incredible Good Fortune. It's been a very long time since I have read a book of poetry that has pleased me so much. The poems are delightful, smart, charming and they are incredibly accessible.  I love the magic that weaves in and out of her words, as much here as in the many wonderful stories she has published throughout the years.

Lots and lots of books to read in the new year.

To start me out, I'm going to be tackling:

Trying to knock a few more off my massive lifelong booklist...I managed to check off about 50 this year, which is good considering that I only started it midyear. There are about 4k books on that list overall. I read about 21 or so books that are not on the main list, not counting all the many nonfiction Rome books I have been reading for research on my book. If I was only tackling books on my big list I probably would have plowed through a lot more. Goal this upcoming year is 100 books off the main booklist. Shouldn't be too hard...I read about 800 words a minute.

This week I read:

I also have been reading through You on a Diet which is pretty good, actually. Figured I could use some motivation in 2008. :)

I'll probably also snag a book on CD at the library, actually. I find that I really like listening on my drive to work. Right before Christmas I finished Pompeii, which I highly recommend.

Oh, and I zoomed through The Glass Castle right before Christmas. VERY VERY good--a book that will sit with me for years to come.


I think that's enough bookish things for now, don't you think?

Last night Joe and I went to hear a Grub Street reading that featured Debutante Ball bloggers Tish Cohen, Jennifer McMahon and Patry Francis talking about writing and their debut novels. It was a very fun night and I loved hearing about the process that these three women went through when they were writing, publishing and dealing with the success of their books. They also read selections from their novels and I found myself really drawn into their stories. It's such a powerful experience to be able to get into the heads of characters the way their authors intended. I can't wait to read the books now.

What was interesting to me is that in the case of all three of them, the book that managed to be sold was the third or fourth book that they had written. They didn't let the lack of sales on their first books stop them--they just kept writing and kept working toward the next novel. Afterwards, when I was at the Porter Square Bookstore table purchasing their books so I can snag an autograph, I handed over my Visa which is decorated with Vincent VanGogh's Starry Night. I made some mention of how Vincent would be amazed that his painting graces the plastic that people use to fork over money--money he never had or ever saw for his paintings. It made me realize the parallel...the fact that it was the third book that sold for those authors and the fact that VanGogh only found success after he was dead and gone. The parallel there is that all of those creative souls had to put themselves out there, regardless of what happened to their end results. The authors kept writing. VanGogh kept painting. Success found them, but in the end, it was about the creative process that pushed and pushed them forward.

It was a great night all around but for me the real excitement came when I told Tish, Jen and Patry about my Apicius book. I have been so enamored of the story but you know how there is always a little piece of you that wonders if your ideas are really good ideas or if the people close to you are just humoring you? I didn't get that sense at all when I told them about it...they seemed just as excited to hear about the story of Apicius and his feasts as I was to tell it, so that felt good. Tish's reaction was the best...she was so horrified at the end of the story, because it ends in a very shocking death. If you ever read her posts on the Debutante Ball, you'll know that she is more afraid of death than all the people reading this blog combined. She was really funny. She then told me a story that she heard about a man who was obsessed with apples and ate about 300 in one day and died--his stomach apparently exploded or dissolved or something of that nature.  Obsessions do make for great stories though--it's certainly the basis for my Apicius story, his fear of losing all his money and starving drive his every waking moment.

I'm going to be doing some volunteer work with the Grub Street crew and I'm quite excited about that. I'll be able to help them get a PR program set up and ready to go forward. One of the events that they are starting to plan for now is a big fundraiser in the fall and I have some great ideas on how to publicize it. But the best part of all is the chance I'll have to work with other writers, to hear stories about how great novels are written, how ideas are generated and how people jump over hurdles to accomplish great things in their writing. It feels really good to be back in a community of writers.

Anyone use Good Reads? If so, drop me a PM with your email addy and I'll add you to my friends. It's similar to LibraryThing but more social. 

how fucking cool I find Jezebel? One of my new daily stopping spots...

score one for the ladies

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