Bookworm

What I Read in 2012

Children's Books Read to My Daughter

1. Stormy: Misty's Foal by Marguerite Henry ****
2. Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry ****
3. The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler ***

Regular books

1. Comfort & Joy by Kristin Hannah ****
2. Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman ****
3. V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton ****
4. The Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith ****
5. Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son by Anne Lamott ****
6. Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale ***
7. Everyday Matters by Danny Gregory ****
8. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen ****
9. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins ****
10. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline ****
11. The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan ****
12. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes ****
13. Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews ***
14. Starburst by Robin Pilcher ***
15. Make, Take Murder by Joanna Campbell Slan ***
16. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn ****
17. Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt ****
18. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins ****
19. The Inn at Rose Harbor by Debbie Macomber ***
20. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins ****
21. The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds by Alexander McCall Smith ****
22. The Age of Miracles by Karen Walker Thompson ***
23. Ready, Scrap, Shoot by Joanna Campbell Slan **

Audio books

1. Escape by Barbara Delinsky ****
2. I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections by Nora Ephron ***
3. Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult ***
4. Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs ***
5. The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs ***
6. Knit Two by Kate Jacobs **
7. The Litigators by John Grisham ***
8. Another Piece of My Heart by Jane Green **
9. Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella ***
10. Blue Nights by Joan Didion ***
11. The Replacement Wife by Eileen Goudge **
12. Home Front by Kristin Hannah ***
13. Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan ***
14. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Chery Strayed ***
15. One Summer by David Baldacci **
16. Friends Forever by Danielle Steel **
17. A Good Woman by Danielle Steel **
18. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling ****

• I've bolded all the four star books. It's funny how different they are -- everything from juvenile horse books to YA dystopia to mysteries that take place in Scotland. 
• The books that used my brain the most this year were probably the Julian Barnes novel (short, but lots of sentences that made you think about time and memory) and the nonfiction Anna Quindlen book. She has a marvelous vocabulary and it felt like a wise book. I posted a short review here. 
• I still really enjoy the Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexander McCall Smith and hope he continues his two books per year pace of publication! 
• I won't read any more of Joanna Campbell Slan's scrapbooking mystery series; I barely skimmed the last one I borrowed from the library. 
• I'd like to buy and reread Tell the Wolves I'm Home. It was a library book and I ended up skimming some of it so I could return it. 
• I'd like to read more books in 2013 and more books that are high quality or challenging reading.
• Most of the books that I gave low ratings to were audio books. In part this is due to the lack of variety of available audio books through Overdrive and partially because I know I can't pay attention to anything too deep while I'm simultaneously driving my car, so I tend to choose less demanding things. 

If anyone reads this post besides me -- what did you love (or hate) in 2012? What do you hope to read in 2013?

Happy reading,

Laura

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen

This is a wise and well-written memoir, more akin in many ways to an essay collection than a biography. It is reflective and full of big picture thinking about the human condition and her generation's place in history, rather than minutiae. It was one of those books where you find yourself nodding in agreement and copying out sentences.

"One of the useful things about age is realizing that conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity." (42)

"Creeping codgerism is an inevitable effect of getting older, a variation of memory loss, the rich tradition of adults insisting that the younger generation has slalomed through an easy life while their generation pushed the rock of responsibility uphill." (51)

On seeing the outcome of your parenting: "It's as though we were working long repetitive shifts on an assembly line, and in the end we had the Sistine Chapel." (122)

"Only ephemera makes the past seem somewhat real, poems written in my more rounded youthful script, photographs found in a drawer, a forgotten earring at the bottom of the jewelry box. So much of the rest is like a movie whose plot outline I recall but whose scenes I've mostly forgotten." (175)

The chapter entitled Faith is particularly strong. She describes her and her family's "haphazard" approach to church and religious tradition and compares them to her parents' more "observant" generation and her grandparents', which was "devout."

[This review is mirrored in my account over on GoodReads. I figured, why do all this typing and not post it on my own site?]

I Just Can't Read This Book

At the public library I saw that Jacqueline Mitchard had written a sequel to her novel The Deep End of the Ocean.  I decided to borrow the sequel and also the first novel, with which I was familiar, but hadn't read. 

I brought the first novel to work to read on my lunch break and realized that I simply cannot make myself read this book.  Spoiler alert for anyone who requires it. . . . . . . . the subject of the book is the kidnapping and eventual return of the protagonist's little boy. 

I feel I'm a relatively well-adjusted person and parent, but I do worry about keeping my little girl safe.  I feel that reading this book, even though it's fictional, would simply unhealthily feed those worries.  Does anyone else feel this way? 

The Way Life Should Be by Christina Baker Kline

I recently read The Way Life Should Be and enjoyed it.  The protagonist is a single woman in her early thirties trying to find her place in the world.  Initially, I thought it might have too much of a cookie cutter chick lit vibe, but moving the character to Maine kicked it into a different gear.  Angela has been engaged with her grandmother's Italian cooking her entire life and has a talent for cooking and baking, which helps to propel her into her new life away from New York City.  This cooking thread was the backbone of the novel.

State of the Blog

I haven't been posting on this blog for a while, as I've become completely obsessed with paper crafting as a hobby.  My blog Lens is the most active right now, with pictures of cards I've made and the occasional photo.  I occasionally post on Twitter. 

• The best book I've read so far this year is Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, about a woman who made a lot of great fossil discoveries in England in the early 1800's, but didn't receive a lot of recognition because she was female and from a working class family.
• I'm current reading The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris.  It is engaging, yet difficult to read.  You can't help but put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist or his wife and feel the stress of their situation. 
• I thoroughly enjoyed the Vancouver Olympics.  I felt like I got to see almost everything I was interested in and that the coverage by NBC was better.  There was a lot less emphasis on medals, and gold medals in particular (which we all understand is the goal and motivation for the athletes, needless to say) and the winners from other countries were recognized and interviewed.  It seemed like there were fewer biographical pieces and the ones they had were generally shorter. 
• The TV show Lost is in its final season and it boggles the mind to imagine that any of it will make sense in just few months. 
• I enjoy American Idol, but I honestly can't imagine the show without Simon.  The other judges' comments are a lot more relevant this season, but he's the most straight-forward. 

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

I finally finished this book last night.  I say finally not because it was a tough slog, but because I've been distracted by the baseball playoffs and new episodes of my favorite shows! 

"A secretary in Queens risked her marriage and her sanity and her cats' welfare to cook all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking -- a book that changed the lives of thousands of servantless American cooks -- all in one year.  The same year she turned thirty.  It was the hardest, bravest, best thing a coward like her ever did, and she wouldn't have done it without Julia." (297)

Vegans and vegetarians should not read this book. Seriously. I eat meat, but definitely don't want to eat a lot of the stuff that is described in this book. I found it entertaining & full of personality, but could have done with many fewer swear words. After a while you want to say, "We get the point." The author reminded me a bit of Heather Armstrong (Dooce) in her storytelling. I admire her tenacity in attempting to cook all of these challenging recipes. I think the book could have used a bit more Julia Child and a little less about the lives of Julie's crazy friends. I'll be interested to see the movie version of Julie & Julia; I can definitely see Meryl Streep as Julia Child (she's such a marvelous chameleon), but I wonder if Amy Adams is too sweet for Julie. (No offense, Julie.)

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

I finished reading the intense new Niffenegger novel Her Fearful Symmetry Monday night. The best thing about her work is that she goes all in -- full bore commitment to scenario, characters, etc. and this literary ghost story is no exception.  The setting is a powerful "character" in this book.  The action takes place primarily in a three flat building that borders Highgate Cemetery in London and encompasses the lives of those who exist there, in various degrees of life and death.  All of the characters are trapped by some combination of fear, grief, ill health, history, lifelong habits, inertia, or weakness and must decide whether and how to overcome these barriers.

“Julie & Julia”

". . .has there ever been a romantic comedy in which the climax comes when not one but two women land book deals (instead of Prince Charmings)? Granted, they both already had Prince Charmings, but a lot of the romance in this rom-com had to do with the relationship between a gal and her writing. . ." [Second “Julie & Julia” Post of the Day: The Book Bench : The New Yorker]

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire are the time traveler and the time traveler's wife, respectively. He is a librarian and she is an artist. Their life together is sometimes perfectly happy and normal, except for one thing -- neither of them know when Henry will simply disappear, literally, leaving his clothing in a limp pile. He has a genetic condition which causes him to travel in time, sometimes into the past, sometimes into the future. Just as abruptly, he will travel back to his present.

One device within the text that I found useful was the section header which provides a date plus Henry's and Clare's current ages. In the "present," Henry is eight years older than Clare. When he journeys into the past, he is sometimes an adult when she is a child. Nothing untoward ever happened during those visits, but in less deft hands, this aspect of the story could have had Lolitaesque overtones. I think the author neatly side-stepped them.

If you're not normally a fan of genre fiction, specifically science fiction, don't let that deter you from reading this book. The time traveling is integral to the plot, but the book also stands on its own as a 20th/21st century literary love story.

[Originally posted: 01/14/2004]

Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire are the time traveler and the time traveler's wife, respectively. He is a librarian and she is an artist. Their life together is sometimes perfectly happy and normal, except for one thing -- neither of them know when Henry will simply disappear, literally, leaving his clothing in a limp pile. He has a genetic condition which causes him to travel in time, sometimes into the past, sometimes into the future. Just as abruptly, he will travel back to his present.

One device within the text that I found useful was the section header which provides a date plus Henry's and Clare's current ages. In the "present," Henry is eight years older than Clare. When he journeys into the past, he is sometimes an adult when she is a child. Nothing untoward ever happened during those visits, but in less deft hands, this aspect of the story could have had Lolitaesque overtones. I think the author neatly side-stepped them.

If you're not normally a fan of genre fiction, specifically science fiction, don't let that deter you from reading this book. The time traveling is integral to the plot, but the book also stands on its own as a 20th/21st century literary love story.

[Originally posted: 01/14/2004]

Rushdie’s Stream library & Borges’ Print library

"In Borges’ library, as in the traditional print library, the books sit on the shelf, with no suggestion of their being connected to each other, no sense of movement. Rushdie, on the other hand, imagines a library in which the books flow in a stream — twisting and stretching and weaving in and out of each other." [Seeing the picture » Blog Archive]