For the Record: January 2014

How is it that the first month of the year is over already?  Being that this is the year we finally finish our house renovation, I've got a gazillion things to decide.  But I'm starting to really look forward to unpacking all my books...I seriously daydream about how I'll organize them (sad but true).

After lowering my goal on GoodReads (for number of books to read in 2014) I'm less stressed, but I'm still struggling a bit to keep on track.  Ugh.  I wish I didn't care.  I'm trying to not care.  But still.

5 Books Read in January: (5 year-to-date)

2 Classics:
  - Free Air, Sinclair Lewis (4) Okay, so this Sinclair is delightful.  This was a wonderful look at a road trip in 1919.  Who knew Americans were all over the great road trip adventure way back in '19? I loved the social humor and the peek at so many different kinds of society at the time.  I've heard this is in no way his best—which is quite intriguing for this fan.  I bought this book because of the lovely cover in conjunction with the author's name.  See?  Judging a book by its cover paid off.
  - Oil!, Upton Sinclair (3) And THIS Sinclair was a bit of a drag.  Even though the title has an exclamation mark which should mean the book is exciting.  It isn't.  Well, more precisely, the first third is engaging, and then it devolves into a political rant about socialism being better than capitalism.  Even that is interesting, in light of current sentiments...and the fact that we have seen the socialist ideal fail in practice...but still a little so-so overall.  I haven't watched There Will Be Blood (which is supposedly based on the first third of the book) but I think I'll do it soon.

1 for Book Club:
  - Breathing Lessons, Anne Tyler (3.5) I adored Tyler's new book, The Beginner's Goodbye, which I picked up on a whim at the airport a few months back, so I decided that her Pulitzer Prize winner would be a good choice for our next book club read.  There were many funny parts, and a lot of depth into what drives people, but it was sad too (in that life-doesn't-always-turn-out-how-you-expect sort of way).  One thing the two books did have in common was the extraordinary way she writes of ordinary people.  Her characters are so real.

2 Others:
  - The Lighthouse Road, Peter Geye (5) I loved this book.  Probably even more than I did his first book, Safe From the Sea.  There is something about the way he writes about land, family, and history that appeals to me so much.  If you are ever in the mood to read a little historical fiction—something that reads quickly but has depth and substance—pick this!
  - Mrs. Queen Takes the Train, William Kuhn (3.5) This lovely lighthearted book was an impulse buy at my local book shop.  Although it began with a cast of characters in disarray, it soon pulled together and tidied up.  Kuhn's portrait of the Queen was very kind and sweet, and the book ended up being a nice happy read.  Recommended if you're in the mood for something simple and happy.

        


4 Current Reads:
  - Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen.  I'm reading the annotated version for this re-read and it's wonderful so far!
  - Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.  I'm joining Wallace at Unputdownables for a read-along of this.  I haven't begun yet (I need to start!) but it's not scheduled for completion until the end of March so I'm feeling like I've got all the time in the world.
  - The Best of McSweeney's.  Still reading this, story by story.  There's been so much to love that I'm not in a huge hurry for it to end.
  - The Dog Stars, Peter Heller.  My new audiobook.  So far the writing is spare, which matches the post-apocalyptic landscape.  Listening to it instead of reading it myself (which I tried a while back) is helping me to go at a slower pace and appreciate the syntax.

      

On My Nightstand:
I really don't have much in the queue right now, although I have a couple of vague goals.  First, to catch up on an Indiespensable book or two (I did a terrible job at keeping up with them last year) starting with the newest shipment: Orfeo by Richard Powers.  Second, to read my next Willa Cather book and/or knock back a couple of my classic novellas.  We'll see how it goes after I'm done with Sense and Sensibility.

  - The Big Burn, Timothy Egan.  One of my goals this year is to read more nonfiction, so I thought it might help to have it staring me in the face.  I really enjoyed Egan's The Worst Hard Time (about the Dust Bowl) and am looking forward to this one about Teddy Roosevelt and our National Parks and Forest Service.

    

Vintage "Authors" Card Game

I had the best bookish surprise this week.  It felt like Christmas all over again!  I was giggling (fan-girl-style) and my kiddos were telling me to calm down.  But what a wonderful treat!  My dad sent me a small gift—something he'd stumbled across on eBay and decided to get for me instead of just telling me about it (like I probably would have done).

It's a tiny set of cards (less than 2"x3") that was made in 1935 and featuring twelve different authors.  Each author has four different books listed, and the game is played like Go Fish.  One of the things I love most is the viewpoint from the 30s.  I know most of the authors, but some I don't.  Interesting to see what is renowned at different points in time (assuming that was the reason these authors were picked).  I have to say that it made me add some new old books to my list!  This will be the perfect little treat to add to my bookshelves once our renovation is complete!

1. Oliver W. Holmes (Over the Teacups, The Guardian Angel, Songs in Many Keys, Elsie Venner)
2. R.L. Stevenson (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, Merry Men, Kidnapped)
3. Joseph Conrad (Youth, Typhoon, Chance, Almayer's Folly)
4. Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book, The Light that Failed, Just-So Stories, Soldiers Three)
5. Charles Dickens (Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist)
6. H.W. Longfellow (The Golden Legend, Tales of a Wayside Inn, Evangeline, Hiawatha)
7. Louisa M. Alcott (Little Women, Little Men, Eight Cousins, An Oldfashioned Girl)
8. Sir J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan, Peter and Wendy, The Little Minister, A Window in Thrums)
9. H.H. Jackson (Glimpses of California, Nelly's Silver Mine, Letters from a Cat, Ramona)
10. T.W. Burgess (Lightfoot the Deer, Old Mother West Wind, Adventures of Reddy Fox, Mrs. Peter Rabbit)
11. Cornelia Meigs (The Trade Winds, Rain on the Roof, Clearing Weather, The Crooked Apple Tree)
12. Booth Tarkington (The Conquest of Canaan, Gentleman from Indiana, Monsieur Beaucaire, Penrod)

Revising My Goals

At the first of the new year, being full of grand hopes and resolutions, I was tempted to join challenges, publicly declare lofty goals, and was quick to renew my aim for reading 100 books in 2014.  I know myself well enough by now, however, to do myself the favor of forcing myself to let some time pass before jumping into too many things.  I'm glad I did!  I was able to really think through what I want this year to look like. Here's how I've decided to focus my reading life this year:

• Since I've spent the last couple of years feeling like I haven't read enough nonfiction or classics, I decided to set myself a personal goal of reading 15 of each this year.  That's a few more than last year, but not a super crazy number. 
• Related to the above, in order to ease off the pressure and encourage myself to read deeper, longer books, I've adjusted my GoodReads 2014 goal to 80 books instead of 100.  I hate seeing "You're 2 books behind" every time I finish a book...I get all anxious, which is pure silliness.  Who cares if I break 100?  Quality above quantity is the idea this year.
• In keeping with my hope to get back into blogging, my goal is to post once a week.  So far, so good!  By going more informal, the pressure is off.  This is my time.
• Since I've got a goal to read fifteen classics this year anyhow, I've decided to join in the Back to the Classics Challenge.  Go to Books and Chocolate to sign up before March 1st. At this point, I'm not planning on anything for the optional categories, but should have no problem with the others. Here's the scoop:
• A 20th Century Classic -Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather
• A 19th Century Classic -Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen
• A Classic by a Woman Author -Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• A Classic in Translation -Les Miserables by Victory Hugo
• A Classic About War -undecided
• A Classic by an Author Who is New to You -Oil by Upton Sinclair
• An American Classic [optional]
• A Classic Mystery, Suspense, or Thriller [optional]
• A Classic that has been adapted into a TV series or movie [optional]
• A review of the above movie or TV series [optional]

A Classic About War...any suggestions?  Nothing is tickling my fancy for that one.  Maybe I'll re-read War and Peace. ;)

Un-Multitask-Able

What really set the mood for last week was the death of my espresso machine.  We got back from Christmas break and found that someone had turned it on (possibly my eldest son but most probably the lady who came to clean house) and left it that way without any water in the boiler.  And now the boiler won't boil.  Hopefully it will be able to be repaired, but in the meantime, I need coffee.  I pulled a small coffeemaker out of my garage (I come with multiple back-up plans as far as coffee is concerned) and have proceeded to attempt to perfect drip coffee.  I think I've finally arrived, but it took me until the weekend.  It was a rough week!

I had a plan for the weekend, and it was a simple plan: finish reading my book on Saturday, blog about it on Sunday, and finish knitting a baby sweater in-between.  What actually happened was more like this: start catching up on blog posts about the renovation on Saturday, have a three-hour meeting about the electrical in the house on Sunday, and work on design decisions in-between.  Sigh.  I'm definitely ready to have the house done so I can have time to do other things.  While we have most of the decisions made, there is still a lot to do.  And I'm a slow decision maker (although I'm getting so much faster with all this practice) because I like to know all my options and really think things through.  Anyhow, the house absorbed all my lovely, cozy plans for the weekend.  The house will not be multi-tasked.

So I'm not done with The Lighthouse Road like I had hoped I would be.  It feels just as wonderful as his first (Safe From the Sea) which adds an element of I Don't Want It To Be Over Yet.  If you like historical fiction, but find that much of it feels contrived; if you like books with evocative settings, but don't want it to be overly poetic; if you don't mind a book that is happy/sad or a bit bleak; if you have connections to the Great Lakes or Norwegian immigrants; if any of these, then you may want to look into this book.  I love how simple and straightforward Geye's writing is—he is an author that simultaneously inspires me to write and makes me feel I'll never come close to good enough.  (As a sideline, if you are wondering how to pronounce his name, I found this entertaining interview that's well worth spending half a minute reading!)

Other Book-ish things this week?  I saw Catching Fire, which almost made me wish I'd read past the first book in the trilogy (sooo hard for me to do, generally speaking) since I enjoyed the movie so much.  And I saw the preview for Divergent, which I haven't read but do own.  I've been trying to convince my kiddos to read it with no luck.  (Oh! Last week I finally watched The Great Gatsby which I thought well done but for the fact that I was really hoping that the music would play a larger role in it than it did.)

There was something else I was going to mention but it completely slipped my mind.  :/  Maybe it'll pop back in by next weekend.  Until then, have a great reading week!

Short Stories and Retro Reads

I'm sitting by a fire in cozy socks, drinking Mexican hot chocolate in a hand-painted mug from Mexico (little things like that make me happy) and trying not to thinking about the fact that this coziness is all part of an elaborate attempt to recreate the effect of seasons in season-less land.  The truth of the matter is that earlier today I was barefoot with a tank-top on, complaining about the heat. SoCal is hard on a girl whose favorite season is winter!

Today I finished reading my first book of the year: Free Air by Sinclair Lewis.  Written in 1919, this was a novel about adventuring via automobiles—already an established American pasttime‐as well as a humorous look at the different social classes before the World Wars.  In some ways, it was a bizarre mash-up of F.Scott Fitzgerald and Willa Cather where socialites meet farmers.  I love how the literature of this era reflects the times, teaching so much about daily aggravations and expectations.  Driving back then, by the way, was a chore.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, for all that it is apparently one of his lesser appreciated novels.  I liked his humor and his talent for highlighting human foibles.

The other thing I've been reading in bits and pieces is the latest Indiespensable selection: The Best of McSweeney's.  I had previously been entirely unaware of McSweeney's (soooo out of the loop in regards to literary journals!) but got pretty excited upon opening the package for a few reasons.  First, the paper quality is divine: a tactile delight!  Second, Powell's had six of the authors sign the inside of the book.  Third, the dust jacket is a poster in disguise.  And ultimately, all the writing has been wonderful thus far.  Most of the 600 pages is comprised of short stories, though there are letters, comics, and other goodies interspersed throughout.  It might take a little while to get through, but it will be worth it.

What are you starting your year out with?  Are you diving into challenges or taking it easy?

2013: Full List and Stats

2013 was a crazy year, mostly due to having a 13yo daughter and being stuck in the middle of a major renovation, and I must admit that 2014 is already looking to be much better (both major items are making major progress).  Even with severe constraints on my time and mental capacity, I somehow managed to read more books than I thought I would.

Biggest success this year?  I read a lot more short stories than I ever have before.  Last year I made an [unsuccessful] attempt to love poetry, this year I focus on short stories and have really come to love them.  Yay!

Biggest goal for 2014? I'd really like to pull back into blogging, both for the social aspect and for how it lets me think through the books I read.  I miss you all—seeing what you are reading and talking about our observations and opinions.  I miss read-alongs.

I felt a lack of nonfiction and classics this year, but it looks like my nonfiction was on par—only my classics count was low.  My other stats are comparable to previous years, looking at the percentages, with one of the most interesting (to me) being the fact that my best reading months center around April, and my worst happen at the end of the year.  Makes sense, now that I think about it.

How many books read in 2013?
79 (16 less than 2012.  My goal is always to break 100, which I haven't done for the last couple of years, but it's still a good number!)

Genres? 
NONFICTION -  14% (11 books)  [15% in 2012, 14% in 2011]
FICTION -  86% (68 books)  [85% in 2012, 86% 2011]

• CLASSICS - 15% (12 books) [18% in 2012, 30% in 2011 (novellas!)]
• JUNIOR / TEEN - 19% (15 books) [21% in 2012, 20% in 2011]
• ADULT FICTION - 52% (41 books) [46% in 2012, 36% 2011]

Male/Female authors?
FEMALE - 52% (41.5 books) [51% in 2012, 48% in 2011]
MALE - 48% (37.5 books) [49% in 2012, 52% in 2011]

Old/New?
OLDEST? Jane Austen's Persuasion, 1817
NEWEST? Guests on Earth by Lee Smith, late 2013
# WRITTEN BEFORE I WAS BORN? 28 [24 in 2012, 51 in 2011]
# WRITTEN THIS YEAR? 8 [9 in 2012, 20 in 2011]

Length?
Longest book read? Ireland by Frank Delaney @ 651pp
Shortest book read? Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl @ 81pp
Number of "chunksters" (450+ pages)? 8 [12 in 2012, 10 in 2011]
Any in translation? 4 (2 modern, 2 classic)


Best/Worst Reading Month?
Best--April and May @ 11 books each [2011: March and April w/13 books each]
Worst--June, November, and December @ 4 books each [2011: September and October w/2 books each]

TOP FIVE of 2012: (I only had four 5-star books, and ten 4.5-star books, so this wasn't very difficult to figure out.  I didn't include Jane Austen's Persuasion, since it isn't new to me...it is an all-time favorite, though, a cherished reread that I highly recommend!)

The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy (breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative)
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (wonderful, captivating nonfiction)
Whose Names are Unknown by Sanora Babb (better than Grapes of Wrath for sure)
My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather (real, intimate, honest, and simply complex)
The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler (quirky yet insightful)

    



and a comparison chart just for the fun of it--

Again, the most notable change in my reading in the last 5 years is the shift between Junior/Teen Fiction and Adult Fiction.  This is mostly because I'm homeschooling only one kiddo now.  The other [unfortunate] change is a decrease in classics and nonfiction.  I miss it dreadfully.  One of the side-effects of kiddos growing older is that they stay up later, thus infringing on my quality reading time (boo).  That is compounded by our house renovation that sucks time (and life) out of me.  (The good news is that our house should be complete by summertime.  Yay! THEN, I'll be able to unpack my books into their permanent home.  It'll be fabulous.)

LISTED BY GENRE/RATING:

Nonfiction: 14% (average rating 3.91)  [2012 average: 3.76, 2011 average: 3.56,2010 average: 3.74]
5 stars:
  - The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan
  - Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
4.5 stars:
  - Below Stairs, Margaret Powell
4 stars:
  - The Famine Plot, Pat Coogan
  - The Water is Wide, Pat Conroy
  - Flapper, Joshua Zeitz
  - Fate is the Hunter, Ernest K. Gann
3.5 stars:
  - Two Guys Read Jane Austen, Chandler & Hill
  - Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
  - Nelson Mandela: Portrait of an Extraordinary Man, Richard Stengel
2 stars:
  - Wild, Cheryl Strayed

Classics: 15% (average rating 3.96) [2012 average: 3.97, 2011 average: 3.74, 2010 average: 4.04]
5 stars:
  - Persuasion, Jane Austen
4.5 stars:
  - The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  - My Mortal Enemy, Willa Cather
  - The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
  - Whose Names are Unknown, Sanora Babb
4 stars:
  - The Professor's House, Willa Cather
  - The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis
3.5 stars:
  - Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw
  - The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
  - A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
3 stars:
  - Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
  - Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin

Adult Fiction: 52% (average rating 3.64) [2012 average: 3.80, 2011 average: 3.81, 2010 average: 3.38]
5 stars:
  - The Illusion of Separateness, Simon Van Booy
4.5 stars:
  - River of Earth, James Still
  - Benediction, Kent Haruf
  - The Secret Lives of People in Love, Simon Van Booy
  - Mudbound, Hillary Jordan
  - The Beginner's Goodbye, Anne Tyler
4 stars:
  - The Death of Bees, Lisa O'Donnell
  - The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
  - Some Tame Gazelle, Barbara Pym
  - The Heretic's Daughter, Kathleen Kent
  - The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier
  - Queen of the Big Time, Adriana Trigiani
  - A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
  - State of Wonder, Anne Patchett
  - Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Lorrie Moore
  - Heat Lightning, Helen Hull
  - Kindred, Octavia E. Butler
  - Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro
3.5 stars:
  - Running the Rift, Naomi Benaron
  - Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver
  - Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie
  - Annie Dunne, Sebastian Barry
  - The Chaperone, Laura Moriarty
  - Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Therese Anne Fowler
  - Bobcat and Other Stories, Rebecca Lee
  - Mary Coin, Marisa Silver
  - Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Tom Franklin
  - The Prisoner of Heaven, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  - Possession, A.S. Byatt
  - The Childhood of Jesus, J.M. Coetzee
3 stars:
  - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski
  - New Irish Short Stories, various authors
  - Ireland, Frank Delaney
  - Hikikomori and the Rental Sister, Jeff Backhaus
  - Follow the River, James Alexander Thom
  - An Unfinished Score, Elise Blackwell
  - When She Woke, Hillary Jordan
  - Guests on Earth, Lee Smith
2 stars:
  - Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, Emma Straub
  - The Midwife of Hope River, Patricia Harman

Junior/Teen Fiction: 19% (average rating 3.83) [2012 average: 3.65, 2011: average rating 3.5, 2010: average 3.64]
4.5 stars:
  - The Wheel on the School, Meindert DeJong
  - The Enchanted Wood, Enid Blyton
4 stars:
  - Little Pear, Eleanor Francis Lattimore
  - Toothpaste Millionaire, Jean Merrill
  - Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren
  - The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
  - Coraline, Neil Gaiman
  - The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
  - Pippi Goes on Board, Astrid Lindgren
  - Good Masters, Sweet Ladies, Laura Amy Schlitz
  - The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
3.5 stars:
  - Emily's Runaway Imagination, Beverly Cleary
3 stars:
  - Gib and the Gray Ghost, Zilpha Keatley Snyder
  - The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Hugh Lofting
  - Black Horses for the King, Anne McCaffrey

For the Record: November and December 2013

Well, happy belated Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and happy New Year!  As years go, this has been a crazy one on many fronts, and Christmas snuck up on me more stealthily than it usually does, but I still managed to read a couple books (surprisingly!)  I'm technically on vacation, so I should be able to pull together my year-end posts here quite soon.  I must say that I'm antsy to get on with a new year. For now, though, here's how the last couple months have shaped up for me in the reading department.

4 Books Read in November &
4 Books Read in December: (79 total for 2013)

3 read aloud to my 9 year-old:
  - The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl (4) So much fun!  Now I know why my others kiddos loved the movie.  Of course, it is Roald Dahl, so I shouldn't be much surprised.
  - Pippi Goes on Board, Astrid Lindgren (3.5) I'm not much of a Pippi fan (she wears me out) but this one was more balanced than the first...which means that my 9yo didn't like it quite as much but I probably liked it more.  Still, Pippi exhausts me.
  - Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Laura Amy Schlitz (4) Not necessarily entertainment reading, but a fantastic addition to studies on Medieval times.

1 Nonfiction:
  - Nelson Mandela: Portrait of an Extraordinary Man, Richard Stengel (3.5) This book coincidentally arrived in my mailbox (from one of my book club friends that bought it on a trip to South Africa) on the same day that Nelson Mandela died, so I began reading it immediately.  It was a good introductory look at Mandela's life, arranged into an assortment of life lessons.  Good if you want a quick, cursory look; not the best choice if you are looking for an in-depth biography.

4 Others:
  - When She Woke, Hillary Jordan (3) My book club read Mudbound this month, which I read in August, so I read Jordan's newer book so that I would have more to contribute to the conversation. The two books are so opposite from each other!  My biggest complaint with When She Woke was that it didn't feel thoroughly thought-through...almost unfinished in some ways.  The first half of the book was intriguing, thoughtful, and promising, but the second half didn't deliver.  It seemed to transform into an action movie.  Weird.
  - Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro (4) While I was reading this, Munro won the Nobel Prize; a second happy literary coincidence!  My first experience with her, and another attempt to really appreciate the Short Story form.  A very good collection.  I think I like short stories after all
  - Guests on Earth, Lee Smith (3) I loved Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, and I've been nearly obsessed with the 1920s and 1930s all year, but this book fell somewhat flat.  It was an alternate perspective on Zelda Fitzgerald, but ended up being more of a focus on the history of mental health care than anything else...and not even that in a very full sense.
  - The Ask and the Answer, Patrick Ness (4) I squeezed this book into the final minutes of the year - luckily it is a fast paced book that is easy to read in a crowd. (Very few books I read fall into this category!)  It is very well written teen dystopian fiction with intense action that spurs deeper thought.  It is also the second in a series...I rarely read the second in a series, but my 13yo daughter insisted I read on.  :)   I have a feeling I'll be reading the third (and final) book in the series sometime soon.

              


2 Current Reads:
  -  Oil, Upton Sinclair.  I'm about halfway through the audio and it has become a little slower in pace so my interest has slacked.  I don't get a whole lot of audio time, so this might last throughout January.
  - Free Air, Sinclair Lewis.  This is the first year in quite a while that I haven't begun my year with a Jane Austen book.  I forgot to bring my new (annotated, illustrated) copy of Sense & Sensibility on vacation with me, so that'll have to wait until I get home on Sunday.

  

On My Nightstand:
  - The Lighthouse Road, Peter Geye.
  - Breathing Lessons, Anne Tyler. My pick for our next book club read.  I'm looking forward to it!

  

New Books for the Stacks

It began in the most predictable of ways: a mother walking into a book store on an errand for her child: to procure the next book in an engrossing series. Before  the object had been secured, her eager arms had begun to fill with Happy Thoughts (a book of poetry) and Lofty Ambitions (a compilation of short stories.) In a frantic rush to escape the tantalizing temptations, knowing they would soon become relics of wishful thinking, she managed to exit the store with a mere four books more than the one she had entered to find. 

Yeah, so, that was me today.  I don't hold much hope that I'll really be able to plow through that book of short stories (short stories often take me longer to read than long stories) any time soon...but I like to think I will.  The only one of the four I'd already been considering was Aimless Love, but then the fact that I've never read Hurston or Lewis seemed unfathomable...so those book jumped into my arms too.

Who can resist cover art like that on Free Air?  I want some driving goggles!  I'm listening to Upton Sinclair's "Oil" on Audible, and somehow the idea of reading two different Sinclairs at the same time makes me happy.*




*My interest in Sinclairs might be due to that being my younger brother's middle name.  He is named after an author...but my mom can't seem to remember exactly which author.  Maybe after reading these two books I'll just decide!)

For the Record: October 2013

I've noticed something...I've gotten to a point where I have begun to want to blog again.  My house design hours have not slimmed down or gotten less stressful, though they are getting to be a little simpler now that we are down to the details instead of big picture goals.  I've been so absent for the last few months, which happened to coincide with Google Reader disappearing, that I think I'll have to slowly re-find all your blogs so I can start visiting again.  That sounds almost like a light at the end of the tunnel!

7 Books Read in October: (71 year-to-date)

2 read aloud to my 9 year-old:
  - The Enchanted Wood, Enid Blyton (4.5) My first experience with Enid Blyton!  Oh that I had found her when I was young...My 9 year-old loves the innocence and joy of the older books, and loves the British element.  You can be sure there will be other Blyton titles in our future.
  - Black Horses for the King, Anne McCaffrey (3) I'm trying to challenge my daughters listening ability, but this book was a bit beyond even that.  If it hadn't been for the fact that she adores horses, this book would have been a total bust.  Since it was pretty much entirely to do with horses, it was only a partial bust.  Archaic writing style and names made it a frustrating read-aloud.

2 AudioBooks:
  - A Room With a View, E.M. Forster (3.5) This is a book I am supposed to like.  After all, I like Austen and Trollope and pretty much any British comedy of manners.  But this felt rather contrived.  Sort of like Little Women.  Like the author was writing to sell a book instead of being spurred by an inner-writing-demon.  I liked the movie okay, though I prefer the movie of Little Women to the book also.  Hm.  I have A Passage to India on my shelf, but I'm rethinking that after this experience.
  - Possession, A.S. Byatt (3.5) I'm probably also supposed to like this book.  But my demographic fails on two major accounts: I do not live and breathe poetry, and I am not from a culture of academia.  And so I found this book quite tiresome.  I read about 50 pages and set it down for quite a while.  Then I decided that if I were to get through it I'd have to listen to it.  Even with a good narrator, it was still pedantic.  Too bad/So sad for audiobooks this month—at least I can cross these two authors off my list.

1 for Book Club:
  - The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay (3) On a positive note, there were some incredibly memorable characters in this book - often minor characters that aren't around for long.  I could hear them as well as see them and they won't be forgotten soon.  As for the rest of the book, it bugged me.  Perhaps because the 'highly autobiographical' element led to a meandering pace that didn't seem to develop properly.  I didn't really care about anyone.  And don't even get me started on the ending.  My group had a good discussion about it though, which is one of my favoritest things ever, so I can't complain much.

2 Newly Purchased Books:
  - The Childhood of Jesus, J.M. Coetzee (3.5) This was an Indiespensable book (from Powell's books) and my first experience with Coetzee.  It was interesting to read two South African authors in one month (inc. Power of One) —they were both so different!  At first, I was intrigued by this book.  The writing style was unique and refreshing.  Then, upon finishing, I felt somewhat ambivalent about the book.  I don't really like allegories, and I didn't get it.  Let me tell you, though, that it keeps popping into my mind.  I can't say that I really know what it was saying, but I'm starting to figure out what it was saying to me.
  - Kindred, Octavia E. Butler (4) One year ago, my 17 year-old son asked me if I'd read this book, since his girlfriend was currently reading it for school.  I hadn't.  Shame.  Boatloads of Shame. (cue Avett Brothers)  So I have to say, I think this is a good choice for high school required reading.  It is fast paced and interesting, but really shows the difference between the 70s (when the book was written) and the antebellum South.  Admittedly, that means there is some rough content (how could there not be?) And, unfortunately, there is a blank spot in my brain when I try to think of this book (what book did I just read???) so that must say something, but enjoyable all the same.

            


3 Current Reads:
  - When She Woke, Hillary Jordan.  So different from Mudbound that I don't really know what to think.  The writing is good, the content has me a little unsure of what I'll think in the end.
  - Oil, Upton Sinclair.  I bought this on a whim at my local book store, having never seen There Will Be Blood (which is based on the book) and having never read anything of Upton Sinclair.  Then I got cold feet and started dreading it would be a slog, so I got the audio version.  I've only just begun listening to it, but I'm enjoying the style very much (and the narrator is fabulous.)
  - Pippi Goes on Board, Astrid Lindgren.  Current read-aloud to the little one.  A little kooky, but fun.

    

On My Nightstand:
The books that were previously on my nightstand got put back on my shelf.  I always dread that happening.  It feels so much harder to get books back on my nightstand than to put them on there in the first place.  This is what is there right now.

  - Les Miserables.  I really need to finish this before I get too far away from having read the first 500+ pages and I need to read it all over again.  I liked it...I just haven't had the focus.
  - The Lighthouse Road, Peter Geye.  I really enjoyed his first book (Safe From the Sea) and am looking forward to this one.
  - Breathing Lessons, Anne Tyler.  I enjoyed The Beginner's Goodbye so much last month that I needed to find another by the same author.  This one was a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I'm hoping to hold off on reading it so I can choose it for my next book club read.  It's about marriage.  That should make for good conversation.

    

Popular Words

Tonight my daughter discovered Google Books Ngram Viewer—what fun!  Have you seen this thing?  You can compare how often words/phrases occur in books, and end up with unending entertainment.  I could do this all night.