My To-Read List Just Keeps Getting Longer

I went to the Texas Book Festival in Austin two weekends ago. The weather was gorgeous and the authors were interesting and entertaining, even the ones that I wasn't that excited about seeing. The problem with the weekend, though, is that now I have a bunch of books added to my already impossibly long list of books that I want to read. When I picked the sessions for Sunday, I seriously thought about cutting out early and even not going at all, but I ended up staying all afternoon, and I am so glad that I did. What follows is a list of the authors that I saw and the books that I now want to read. (I started this post over a week ago, so excuse the lack of details for the Sunday sessions. I suck when it comes to posting regularly.)

Saturday


Jane Smiley and Lucy Silag: I thought that I had read something of Smiley's, but after checking out her list of works, I'm fairly certain that I was mistaken. After hearing her talk about her writing, I definitely want to read something of hers, especially A Thousand Acres and maybe her new YA book, The Georges and the Jewels, which is what she is promoting right now. I already wanted to read her daughter's book Beautiful American, but I didn't know Silag was Smiley's daughter. I picked up an ARC of the book at last year's Texas Library Association's conference, but I haven't made time to read it yet. When I get to work tomorrow, I'm going to move it to the top of the to-read pile that I have there.


Colson Whitehead and ZZ Packer: The title of this session was About Race: Identity and American Fiction. Whitehead began by reading a very funny satirical piece about post-racial America then he read an excerpt from his most recent novel Sag Harbor. I have read and really enjoyed his earlier novel The Institutionist, and I think I started his novel John Henry Days several years ago after I saw him read here in Houston. After hearing the excerpt from Sag Harbor, I really want to read this book. ZZ Packer read from an article that she wrote about Reconstruction. The she read part of a short story from her book Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which I have read already and highly recommend. She is currently working on a novel about the Buffalo Soldiers and Reconstruction--can't wait to read it now. After they read, there was a discussion about race and American fiction, which was very interesting.


Jim Crace, Johnathan Lethem, Robert Olen Butler, and David Eagleman: This panel was very interesting, but, unfortunately, I had to leave early to get to the location where Margaret Atwood was speaking. I was there long enough to hear each of the authors talk about their most recent books: Being Dead (Crace), Chronic City (Lethem), Hell (Butler), and Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlife (Eagleman). It was very funny when Eagleman talked about people coming to his appearances, thinking that he was going to talk about the afterlife from a neuroscientist's point of view and being surprised that the book is fiction. I have to admit that I was one of those people. :-) I have never read any of their works, but I think now that I will definitely try to read some of them.


Margaret Atwood: She is the main reason I wanted to go to the festival. I have seen her once before. I think she was the first author that I ever went to a reading by and Alias Grace was definitely my first signed book. I LOVE Atwood's writing, and I think she is such a smart, funny woman that I don't think I would ever be disappointed by her or miss any opportunity to see her in person. I already have The Year of the Flood, and I will probably read it as soon as I finish Howard's End, the current selection of my book club.

Sunday


Michael H. Marvins: Texas' Big Bend: A Photographic Adventure from the Pecos to the Rio Grande is about a place that I LOVE. I've been there twice and look forward to going back some day. I liked the photos that Marvins showed during his talk, so I bought this book--Surprise! Surprise! But it was the only book that I bought all weekend, which is really good for me.


PC Cast and Kristen Cast: This mother-daughter team are the creators of the House of Night series, a young adult vampire series. There are currently six novels available in this series: Marked, Betrayed, Chosen, Untamed, Hunted, and Tempted. I really don't like vampire stories, not even Twilight, but I went to this session anyway because some of my students have read the series and have asked if I will get it for the library. Last year, one of my co-workers read the books and said she felt like they were too mature for 7th and 8th graders. One of my 8th grade students who has read the books said she thought they would be inappropriate in our library. Still, I thought I would check out the authors, and I'm glad that I did. They were very entertaining women, who are very concerned about empowering young women. Plus the mother used to be a high school English teacher. She doesn't know it, but we bonded over both those points. According to PC, the vampirism in these books is based in biology, something about junk DNA, something that I know nothing about but it made the books sound more interesting to me than the usual vampire books. I'm going to read Marked, the first book in the series, and see if it really is too mature for my school's library.


Jonathan Safran Foer, Novella Carpenter, James Sheehan, James E. McWilliams: This panel was hosted by an Atlantic Monthly writer, Corby Kummer, and I think it was the best panel of the weekend. Each person briefly described the genesis of their most recent books: Eating Animals (Foer), Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (Carpenter), Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen (Sheehan), and Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (McWilliams). Kummer had obviously read all three books and asked pertinent questions, and the panelists were not afraid to voice differing opinions on how we should eat, where we should eat, and where we should shop for food. (I wish I had made notes or posted this a week ago). There was talk of factory farming and the ridiculousness of farm bills and how the farm lobby does nothing to help change the status quo. I try my best to shop locally and by free range/grass fed meat, sometimes organic and sometimes not, but I learned that all those terms don't always mean what they connote. I'm a meateater, and I can't really see myself ever giving it up completely, but this panel gave me a lot to think about, and I'm putting two of these books on my to-read list, Eating Animals and Locavores. As my regular reader(s) knows, I'm not big on non-fiction, but I think I might have to start reading more of it.


Jessica Lee Anderson, Libba Bray, and Sara Zarr: These are all young adult authors. I've read one book by Bray and one by Zarr, but I've not read their most recent works. This panel was very entertaining, thanks mostly to the antics of Bray, who definitely wanted to be the star of the panel, and the rather dry humor of Zarr, who didn't seem like she wanted to play second fiddle to bray. I was especially interested in hearing/seeing Zarr because she is a self-professed (former?) struggling reader and an admitted slow reader (me too!) who writes realistic fiction, which is much more to my taste than all the vampire/fantasy novels that everyone and their dog is writing these days. After hearing these authors, I think I would like to read all of their most recent works: Border Crossing (Anderson), Going Bovine (Bray)--is that a great title or what!--and Once Was Lost (Zarr). This was the last panel of the weekend for me.

I had a really great time at the Texas Book Festival, and I was pretty geeky impressed by the fact that I was sitting in the Senate chamber and House chamber for some of theses panels. My final assessment of the weekend's events: I'm never going to get my to-read list down to a manageable number.

A Review and Something about Mysteries

I finished reading The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf a couple of nights ago. (It is my book club's current selection.) This novel is about what happens when two young girls, best friends, go missing at the same time. One of the girls, Callie, hasn't spoken for four years, not since the night her mom had a late term miscarriage after falling down the stairs with some help from her drunk dad. Early on, the reader knows that only one of the girls, Petra, is truly missing in the kidnapped sense. Although a certain person thinks the opposite is true, I tried very hard to like this book, but in the end, I just didn't like it very much.

The story is told from points of view alternating among the participants in the story: Callie; Petra, the other missing girl (only one or two times though); Callie's older brother Ben; Antonia, Ben and Callie's mother; Martin, Petra's father; and Deputy Sheriff Louis, who just happens to be Antonia's first love. I usually like stories with alternating points of view, but I think that Gudenkauf's choice to make all of them first person narratives except Callie's was a mistake because I don't think any of them except Ben really had a distinct narrative voice, although a case might be made for the very stilted and unbelievable first couple of chapters from Louis's point of view. Also, the chapters were so short that I never felt like I got to know the characters well enough to really sympathize with them. (I do not buy James Patterson's theory that short chapters make reading a book feel addictive, and I have to wonder if that's what Gudenkauf was going for.)

One big problem that I had with this book is that in the chapters written from Callie's point of view there were descriptions that were obviously not the way a child would view things or describe things. Although these chapters were not written in first person, in Callie's voice, I still felt like the adult word choices were a misstep. For example, at one point, Callie recalls a fun afternoon at Petra's that included the marriage of a dog and a stuffed animal. The dog belonged to one of Petra's father's students, Lucky. Callie recalls Lucky "pretending to cry with happiness..and drawing [Petra] close to him." I"m sorry but an eight-year-old would not recall that event using those words to herself. Another example occurs late in the story. Callie is thinking about what she witnessed, about what happened to Petra. She remembers, "He carefully moved to set Petra down, resting his hand behind her head as he laid her on the altarlike rock. Once again he stood, shaking his arms free from the residual weight of Petra." Now Callie might be a very smart eight-year-old, but this description is not believable as hers at all.

Depite this problem and others, I didn't hate this book, and I thought it had some good writing in it, but overall, I just didn't think it was better than okay. The characters are not very original, but the writing is not bad and even occasionally very good. I really like this passage, Ben is describing his father, but I'm not sure it's a teenager's description:

"For once in my life, I think my dad looks old. Not ancient old, like an eighty-year-old man, but just tired old. Like a middle-aged man who spent too much time drinking and being mean to others, time sits on his face like some Halloween mask."

Then later in the same chapter, Ben describes some pajamas that he used to wear:

"I remember they were white and had these grinning little clowns holding balloons all over them. I wouldn't tell all my friends this, but I loved those pajamas. It was like sliding into something happy when I put those on after a bath." :-)

Like I said earlier, I did try to like this book. It's basically a mystery--who and what happened to Petra?--and I like mysteries. I don't think many readers would have a difficult time figuring out who did it before it's revealed, but I don't think they would figure it out too early in the story. Sometimes when I'm reading mysteries, I want to look ahead and see if my suppositions are correct, but I enjoy the getting to the solutions so much that I resist the temptation. With this book, I just didn't enjoy the getting there enough to resist. This book didn't make me want to keep reading or to read faster to get to the end; it just made me want to skip to the end. Not a good sign.

One thing this book did do for me, though, is make me want to read a good mystery, so I picked up an old P.D. James book, Unnatural Causes, to read before I read my next book club selection, which will be picked on Sunday. It also made me wonder what makes a good mystery and made me want to do some research about the conventions of mysteries, which made me think that I need to read The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher very soon. Maybe I'll do some research and post about what I find.

For now, though, I need to go to bed, so I can get up early and do some work that I should have been doing instead of blogging. Later.

No cooking equals book buying

What happens when you don't put the chicken strips in the refrigerator to defrost and don't put the peas in the crockpot to cook while you're at work and the only other option for dinner is spaghetti with jarred sauce? Well, in my home, you end up talking yourselves into going out to pickup some Chinese food. Of course, you also decide to go to the one Chinese food place that is in the same strip as a Half Price Books. No one wants to just sit in the restaurant and wait on the food to be prepared, right? After all, the time will pass much faster in the bookstore than in the restaurant, especially when you find books that you have to have.

I only bought one book tonight: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimimanda Ngozie Adiche. There was no way that I could leave it sitting on the shelf unbought. It just came out in June! I absolutely fell in love with Adiche's writing when I read her novel Half of a Yellow Sun. I still need to read her first novel Purple Hibiscus too. This new book is a collection of short stories, so it might get read sooner than later. I can read one here and there and not have to worry about remembering where I left off.

Well, the Cowboys have won, and I can go to bed and read now. Later!

A Really Good Weekend & Some Reading

Even though the Astros lost badly when I saw them last night for the last time this season, I still had a really good weekend. I enjoyed a yummy Mexican food dinner and margaritas with Valerie and a good friend of ours on Friday night. Afterward we went to a bar for a couple of more drinks.

Yesterday, Valerie and I went to a members preview of a new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. The Moon is an interesting exhibit that combines art with science. My favorite item in the exhibit was a painting by one of my favorite painters: Blue Luna by Kenneth Noland--I wanted to include a photo of it, but I can't find one online. I will definitely go back and see the exhibit again. I want to see A Trip to the Moon, a silent film, the first science fiction film. It's based on two novels, one by Jules Verne and one by H.G. Wells. We watched about five minutes of it, but I want to go back and watch the whole thing. (I have one big complaint about this exhibit. It is organized around the phases of the moon, but it is not laid out in a way to easily follow the phases.)

After the museum, we went to the sorry Astros games. :-( But after the game, we had a nice dinner with another friend and did a bit of people watching in downtown Houston.

Today, I mostly spent the afternoon finishing The Little Stranger. I thought the book was very good. I see why this book is a Booker prize finalist. Waters is doing so much more with this novel than simply creating an entertaining haunted house story. Because one of the main characters is named Roderick, I really feel like I should re-read Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." Also, I need to think about The Little Stranger for a day or two before I write at length about it.

Now, what's next to read? I have to read The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf for my book club, but I'm going to start at least one other book too. I really want to read 2666, but it's so long that I think I will wait a bit to read it. Besides I'm already reading a very long book at work, Moby Dick. I also have been thinking about reading another P.D. James mystery, but Valerie's great pleasure in reading Sarah Vowell has made me really want to read something by her. So, I think I will start The Wordy Shipmates soon.

BBAW Day 5 - The Present and the Future of Breathing Space

For this final day of BBAW, I have two assignments:

1. In 50 words or less, tell what I love best about my blog.
2. In 50 words or less, identify goals/changes that I foresee for my blog.

What I love best
I love that this blog gives me a chance to write about the books I read. I can write reviews of whole books or simply write about a what a passage/book makes me think about. And I love that my posts are archived, so that if I want to refer to them again, I can do it.

Goals/Changes
Well, I now own my own domain name (Thanks, Valerie!), and I would like to migrate my blog to that space and try to create a multi-faceted site. I'm not sure what other facets I will add, but I would definitely like to personalize the look of my blog, even if I simply change the banner. I would also like to blog more regularly and maybe create some recurring blog features.

I've really enjoyed being a part of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and I look forward to reading the blogs that I have discovered this week.

BBAW Day 4 - A Memorable Book Recommendation

Today's assignment is to write about a book that I read about on a book blog and that after reading it, I fell in love with it. I have to admit that I couldn't immediately think of a book. Thank goodness for LibraryThing! I went to my library and went through the titles there and as soon as I saw Mutual Life and Casualty, I knew I had to write about it.

In the fall of 2005, I discovered this book on The LitBlog Co-op, which was a site that highlighted contemporary fiction from unknown authors and smaller presses. Unfortunately, this site is no longer active, but some of the bloggers who participated in this site are still active on their own blogs.

Mutual Life and Casualty by Elizabeth Poliner is a novel in short stories that tells of the lives of the Kahn sisters and their mother during the late 70s. Before I go any further, I have to admit that I loved the title of the book and the cover. But once I read The Happy Booker's recommendation of the book, I had to have it. I think I even ordered it from Amazon because I couldn't find it in a store here. I didn't write a long post about it then, but the book really resonated with me, and I still think about it on occasion. I think that I connected with these stories because I grew up at that time and witnessed the changing lives of women as they fought for equality. However, I think the stories would be interesting even to people who don't have the same background as I do. Because this is a book of short stories, I don't find myself recommending it very much, but I should. As a matter of fact, I think I might have to re-read this book soon. :-)

Happy Thursday!

A Meme for BBAW

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
I love snack food, but I'm really not a big snacker while I read.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I used to mark books up all the time, and I'm not sure when/why I stopped doing it. I've tried folding page corners to remind myself of the location of sentences/images/events that I want to remember, but I don't feel as satisfied with that method as I was when I marked up books. I think I will have to start reading with a pencil handy again.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
I LOVE bookmarks! In 2002, I went on my second tour of Europe, and I decided that I would buy bookmarks as souvenirs. I'm not usually a big souvenir buyer, but I liked the idea of bookmarks because they are rather inexpensive, easily portable, and useful. So I became a bookmark collector. Often when I start a new book, I will try to find an appropriate bookmark to use. Very silly, I know, but I can't help myself.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
I am a fiction reader who only occasionally reads non-fiction.

Hard copy or audiobooks?
Hard copy! However, I used to commute for an hour one-way, and I did listen to some audiobooks. It's hard for me to call listening to audiobooks reading. I just don't get the same pleasure or satisfaction out of listening to books as I do reading a hard copy.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
It depends. During the week, my main time for reading is when I go to bed. I always try to read to the ends of chapters, but sometimes I just can't stay awake to finish. If I'm close, I might nod off a few times before I give up and put my book down for the night. Most of the time, I can put a book down at any point, but I like to at least finish the last paragraph on a page even if it's continued on the next page or get to a break on the page, if there is one.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
If I can get a good idea of meaning using the context of the word, I won't bother looking it up. Otherwise, it depends on when/where I'm reading. Lying in bed, I would not look up a word. Sitting some place with a computer/cell phone handy/dictionary handy, I would be more likely to look it up immediately.

What are you currently reading?
At home, I'm reading The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. At work, I'm reading Moby Dick.

What is the last book you bought?
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf. I just bought this on Sunday after my book club met and selected this book for our next read.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
I used to be a one-book-at-a-time person unless I was re-reading something that I was teaching. Now that I'm a librarian, I do often have more than one book going at a time. Sometimes it's an adult book and a young adult book, but for the past couple of years, I've found myself often reading two adult books, one for me and one for book club, and one young adult book for work. Sometimes I might even have a short story book or, rarely, a non-fiction book going.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
My favorite time to read is first thing in the morning, sitting in the chair by the living room window and drinking a cup or two or three of coffee.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
I really have never been a series book reader, not even when I was a kid. I don't really like sequels/series movies either. Over the years, as a high school English teacher and now a librarian, I have tried some childrens/young adult series that my students were reading and loving. I read and loved the first Harry Potter, but I've never felt compelled to read the others in the series, although I do sometimes think that I should. I read Twilight and did not fall in love with it, and I know that I will never read any of the other books in the series. Last spring, I read Hunger Games and fell in love with Katniss, the protagonist, and I couldn't wait for September 1 to get Catching Fire, the second book in the series, which I liked just as much as the first one, and now I am anxiously awaiting the next book.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
A couple of books that I know that I've recommended to lots of people are Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides and Possession by A.S. Byatt. My favorite authors are Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison, and I often recommend them. After reading a second book of stories by Alice Munro this summer, I have become a real fan of her work and will start recommending her. For people who like mysteries, I recommend P.D. James and lately, the Stieg Larsson books.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
I wish my books were organized, but I just haven't gone to the trouble of doing it yet. I do have all my signed books grouped together. Maybe next summer, I'll spend some time organizing, but I'm not making any promises.