50 Books in 2008

I had a quest to read 50 books in 2008- I made it to 39. 

Not a failure, says I, because in the process I discovered the intensity of Jose Saramago, whose Blindness ranked among my favorites of the year, Steve Martin, whose acting efforts have always left me lukewarm, but whose Shopgirl was an unexpected pleasure, and Sarah Vowell, whose Assassination Vacation made me interested in US history for maybe the first time ever. (Books I'd recommend are marked with asterisks below.)

#1- My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
#2- Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
#3- Beasts by Joyce Carol Oates
#4- The Snapper by Roddy Doyle*
#5- Shopgirl by Steve Martin*
#6- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers*
#7- The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
#8- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
#9- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
#10- Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
#11- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
#12- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#13- The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
#14 - The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
#15 - The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
#16 - The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
#17 - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
#18 - Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
#19- I, Elizabeth by Rosalind Miles*
#20- Little Birds by Anais Nin
#21- Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
#22 - New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
#23 - Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
#24 - Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
#25 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
#26 - When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
#27 - Blindness by Jose Saramago*
#28 - Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
#29 - Persuasion by Jane Austen*
#30 - Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
#31 - The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
#32 - The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#33 - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austin
#34 - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
#35 - Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell*
#36 - The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
#37 - Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
#38 - Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
#39 - The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

Luckily, the coldest winter in recent history has me well on my way to 50 in 2009. 

“The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.”

-James Russell Lowell

26 Years of Jane Austen Aversion -- Cured

I haven't blogged in quite some time, mostly because I was busy getting married... the strangest consequence of which is I suddenly love Jane Austen.

How can this be, after 26 years of finding Romantic Lit tame and dry, (dare I say boring?) I've woken up one day with an appreciation 4 years of university English study couldn't create? Perhaps my scant months of marriage have taught me to appreciate subtly, where before I wanted the bold, raw meat of Modernism?

Whatever the cause may be, my foray into Austen so far includes Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, and I just started Northanger Abbey. I enjoyed Sense least, mostly because I found Elinor a little cold and had no sympathy for Mr. Willoughby, (that scoundrel!) Persuasion is the easiest and shortest, if you're looking for a quick taste to get you in the mood.

If you haven't tried the classics in awhile, I urge you to give Jane another chance. You may find you suddenly adore using words like "signify" and "insipid" about the house, or suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to plan a vacation to Bath. (Though I hear Jane wasn't really a fan.) Now, how to convince Hubs to be Mr. Darcy for Halloween. hmm....

"It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before. "

-Jane Austen

(here's hoping!)

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Peter Boxall's new work, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, as reviewed by the NYT today (Volumes to Go Before You Die), lead me to create my own personal list of "must reads". Upon starting the task, I found myself breaking things into mental categories:

*Literature: Imperative to my intellectual growth- ie: Ulysses;
*Nostalgia: This book made me love books back when we are just discovering what we love- ie: Little Women;
*Guilty Pleasures: I stayed up until 3 reading this book in one night, though I wouldn't admit it to my friends- ie: Eregon

I've decided to lump them all into a shmorgasborg of booky goodness, disreguarding whether I consider it part of the valid cannon and going purely on whether I enjoyed it enough to read again. As I can't possibly choose from every book I've ever read, (though in the last 3 years I've started keeping a list,) I perused my LibraryThing catalog and picked only from among my own collection. I've left out those which I know will probably belong on the list eventually but that I haven't gotten around to reading yet. (That was harder than you might think, as many of the "snobbery books" are on the yet to read list.) I've also left out plays and books of poetry (I sense future lists for the like...) So here goes, though I've probably forgotten many treasures, I humbly offer:

50 of My Favorite Books (in my collection)(in no particular order):

1. Ulysses - James Joyce
2. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
3. Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -Douglas Adams
5. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
6. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
7. The Blind Assasin- Margaret Atwood
8. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
9. Ham on Rye - Charles Bukowski
10. Post Office - Charles Bukowski
11. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
12. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
13. (Any of the Hercule Poirot mysteries)- Agatha Christie
14. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
15. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
16. The Sound and The Fury - William Faulkner
17. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
18. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
19. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
20. Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
21. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman
22. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
23. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
24. High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
25. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
26. (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) - J.R.R. Tolkien
27. The Children of Men - P.D. James
28. Fear of Flying - Erica Jong
29. Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen
30. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
31. The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
32. Fall on Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald
33. Wicked - Gregory Maguire
34. Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
35. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
36. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
37. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
38. Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
39. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
40. Anthem - Ayn Rand
41. Harry Potter (yes, all of them) - J.K. Rowling
42. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery
43. The Winter of Our Discontent - John Steinbeck
44. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
45. Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
46. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
47. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
48. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
49. Night - Elie Wiesel
50. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. " - Ayn Rand

I Has a Grammar

I occasionally read the tongue-in-cheek blog Stuff White People Like and thought you might share my amusement in this recent post on Grammar. I chuckled while reading because it's true; I get a not-so-secret satisfaction at pointing out obvious flaws in the newspaper, my coworkers' emails, the regulations coming from our elected officials that I edit everyday... Only yesterday I found myself scoffing at a set of new laws which used that when it should have been who. The caste system is alive and well in America, and you can tell the Sudras by their choice of there vs. their.

To err is human, to forgive divine.

-Alexander Pope

Quiz Thyself!

Wondering what to do with all your useless literary knowledge? Take the Never-ending Book Quiz and prove your worth!

Report back.

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays 

there is so little useless information."

                  - Oscar Wilde

Writing that Counts: 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winners

The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced last week. (I love that Bob Dylan got a nod.)

FICTION
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books)

DRAMA
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts

HISTORY
What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press)

BIOGRAPHY
Eden's Outcasts by John Matteson (W.W. Norton)

POETRY
Time and Materials by Robert Hass (Ecco/HarperCollins)

POETRY
Failure by Philip Schultz (Harcourt)

GENERAL NONFICTION
The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins)

MUSIC
The Little Match Girl Passion by David Lang (G. Schirmer)

SPECIAL CITATION
Bob Dylan

Avada Kedavra! Rowling Curses Lexicon's H. Potter Plots

Does J.K. Rowling have a right to protest thievery of her H. Potter material? Yes. Will she win? Sadly, no.

Rowling's in court this week testifying against a proposed H. Potter encyclopedia published by Lexicon. Word is she was planning her own encyclopedia (with proceeds donated to charity, no less) when Lexicon beat her to the punch and produced their own version. Yes, she's the richest woman writer in the world; but I say to you- she still has a right to own her own ideas.

You may say Rowling has enough success to share, and there's certainly enough fan-base willing to shell out for every bit of merchandising even vaguely related to her hit series, but I stand in defense of Rowling's intellectual rights. The woman produced an iconic story, a story that made both children and adults excited to read, excited to purchase books and cherish them, and excited to look for others to fill the gap now that they've concluded. It seems there are plenty salivating to take advantage of that excitement. Though copyright laws allow for nearly anyone to publish a companion series to her story without violating her rights, I wish we'd let her exhaust her efforts before encroaching on them. Can there be too many books on one subject? Quality over quantity, I say. Putting out nine hundred different companion books while the real author is still alive and writing: Riddikulus!

Find out more: Rowling Testifies Against Lexicon Author.