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!  

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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.

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lazily cross posted from  crystalking.com

I wish that I could say it was a writing sickness of some sort, but no, it’s just plain sickness. Second time in less than a month, which makes me quite unhappy indeed. My husband finds my pitiful forlorn-ness rather cute but I’m just not good being miserable.

Napping

Being sick also forces me to do something else that I’m not terribly good at. Taking naps.

Ever since I was a little kid taking naps was something I hated. I was always afraid I was going to miss something. I would pretend to nap when I heard my mother coming up the stairs to check on me and as soon as she would leave I’d pull my book out from under my pillow and start reading. There wasn’t enough time for books, in my opinion.

I still feel that way. Being sick means that I have a hard time staying awake. Even sitting here blogging a bit has me starting to feel weak and womply. I imagine I’ll start and finish this over a long period…a bit here and there because sitting here is tough. I just have so little energy and barely any focus.

For the entire weekend I’ve spent the majority of my time on the couch, feverish, wracked with coughing, with my husband so graciously bringing me juice and ginger ale. He makes me food I can’t taste and runs to the store to buy me kleenex when I run out. This luckiness in finding the nicest guy is a two edged sword. I’d rather be spending the day doing something fun with him, not relegated to the couch, half asleep while he cooks me chicken soup.

I try to read but sadly, reading requires a bit more brainpower and energy than TV does. I rarely watch TV except for a few specifically Tivo’d shows and when I’m sick. Reading puts me to sleep nearly right away but I can manage TV for a little longer. Possibly because it’s actionable and movable and can arrest my visual senses in a way that black words on a white page tend to blur together for me when I feel like this.

So I watch TV and bad free movies on Comcast, feeling miserable, but even worse, feeling guilty.

Yeah. Guilty for being sick. Guilty because I had to cancel the writing workshop that I was supposed to teach yesterday. Guilty because I sleep instead of reading (oh my I have a book pile so high right now that I’m dying to go through). Guilty because I watch TV instead of writing on my novel (although I did manage to write a freelance article this weekend…the editor will most likely cringe at my codeine cough syrup coated words but I did spit it out over the course of yesterday). And even though tomorrow isn’t here yet, I already feel guilty because I’m going to have to call in sick (actually call in to say I’m working from home) for the second time in less than a month (was out for a week with the flu just three weeks ago).
This is where my husband lovingly tells me that I’m crazy. I wasn’t even born Catholic! I shouldn’t feel guilty for not reading or writing or working. I should just be sick and do my best to sleep it off.

But oh, that pillow…it doesn’t really call my name. Heaven forbid if I miss something! Oh wait, some things, like the 98 minutes I spent today watching The Covenant are probably worth missing…

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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?

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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.

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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. 

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In researching Apicius, I've found that some of the books I'd like to have are quite expensive!

First off, Pliny's Natural History, which I realize can be found online, but there is something quite nice about having a book in front of you chock full of bookmarks. Besides, this is proving to be one of the books that I will probably refer to often--being able to comb the Histories to find out information such as that cucumbers were Tiberius' most favorite food--that's priceless.

Well, no, it's $125. At 233 pages, that's $1.80 a page!!!! Ouch. I can buy the individual volumes but I don't see that happening any time soon considering that would be even more for all of them considering they run around $21 a piece for the Loeb Classical editions. I've dug around all over and just can't find a full volume for less.

The Critical Edition of Apicius is a bit of a beast as well, coming in at $73.60. It features new translations and commentary in which I'm keenly interested. But dang, who decided to give it a textbook price?

I suppose that since these are very niche books and will only sell in smaller numbers that the publishers jack them up knowing that serious scholars will fork over the cash. I think I'll be sticking to the online Pliny, despite how much of a pain in the ass it is to go through hundreds of web pages with no easy search feature. But the Apicius one -- well, I'll probably buy it at some point over the course of the next year. I'm already feeling the pain of forking over so much $ for a cookbook... 

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

score one for the ladies

A new mag founded as an answer to the five great lies of women's magazines.

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for someone else (i.e. me) to read, what would it be?

I'm loading up my massive booklist still and would love to make sure it's well-rounded.  Any kind of book, genre, etc. Just let me know.

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I've become obsessed with the compilation of my ever-growing Books To Read Before I Die list. I've taken the best of many numerous lists and begun to add in many less obscure texts as suggested from other great book lists. The end result will be massive and quite comprehensive. Currently it's at 361 authors (but I see it growing to over 500), of which there may be multiple works to read. For example, all of the major books by Dickens or all the plays by Christopher Marlowe for example.

This may sound somewhat crazy and perhaps it is, but the good news is that I read like a fiend. I mean, really, like a fiend. 800+ wpm sort of fiendish. I usually read 2-3 300-page paperbacks on plane rides from Boston to California. New Harry Potter book come out? No problem--one day max. I gravitate toward bigger, thicker books because the stories last longer. Joe thinks that this list will only take me 5 years or so. I do think it will take longer than that, considerably longer, probably, mostly because my time to read tends to wax and wane. And also because I'm bound to take swerving breaks from the list to digest the latest Tad Williams novel or to check out Stephen King's son, Joe Hill's, new novel Heart-Shaped Box.

I was going to read my list chronologically, but I think that I may slip into other eras from time-to-time. Months and months on end of the same historical period might drive me crazy (especially as I move toward the 1700s). For the most part, I'll continue reading in order but will supplement with other popular reading or with selections from other parts of the list. Right now, for example, Jack Kerouac's On the Road is the bathroom book of the week.

On my Google spreadsheet, I'm marking if I have read the book in the past, if I own the book, if I have finished recently reading and any other notes, such as works I can only read online (like The Story of Sinhue or the works of James Shirley). I plan on purchasing as many books as I can, probably from used bookstores, but in some cases, I'm finding that may not be possible. James Shirley, for example, has an astonishing lack of print despite his success as a prolific playwright. I'm not going to drop $2,169 for the 1833 edition of his collected works, not unless I win the lottery at some point in the future. I may also explore newer translations of particular works, such as Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, which I will also note.

Once I get the list better in order, I'll publish it for others to see. I can't believe I would be the only crazy person to do something like this.

I'm currently reading The Upanishads which I find to be more accessible than the Rig Veda. The Rig Veda is hard to comprehend in many places or lapses into too much description about ritual (how to sacrifice horses for example). I find the Upanishads (I'm reading 12 of the 108) to be more of a spiritual journey, a discussion about how to find enlightenment, joy and to experience god as a part of the self. The Upanishads contain the first mention of yoga--a practice to finding "inner-union." The Penguin Classics version contains a really wonderful introduction by Juan Mascaro comparing the tone and feeling of many classic poets to the sense of spirituality that the Upanishads brings forth. The essay describes how the sentiments echoed within the book are similar to that of the Bible and other works (such as Shakespeare and the English Romantic poets) that Westerners are familiar with. In reading the slim volume, I find myself wishing that my mom (who is a bit of a Bible freak) would be open to reading it. The back of this book says, " The Upanishads represent for the Hindu approximately what the New Testament represents for the Christian." I think that even more so, in some ways, this book encapsulates what I think that true spirituality should represent in all people, regardless of religion. The book talks about self-knowledge and finding joy and God within. I find it to be not only a beautiful peace of literature but a true guidebook to becoming a better person.

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