Tomorrow my family and I depart on our annual holiday whirlwind. Today, I combed the shelves of my library (that would be the one I work in and purchase books for), and drove by two more to collect my haul of suitcase candidates. Here's the short list:
Fiction:
The Book of Lost Things John Connolly
Liar by Justine Larbalestier
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Lark & Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten
Non-Fiction:
King of Heists by J. North Conway
Columbine by Dave Cullen
Charles and Emma by Deborah Heiligman
Tears of the Cheetah by Stephen J. O'Brien
Beauty in the Beasts by Kristen Von Kreisler
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
By the end of the evening, I have to whittle the pile down by half -- maybe more. I'm always willing to carry around a little literary insurance in case I come close to reading as much as I hope to read. Why is it that vacations seem endless before they begin and painfully brief the minute they start?
One aspect that I love about my job in school library world are students who come by looking for recommendations just before a holiday. Yesterday, a really neat kid -- a dedicated library rat and
voracious reader of fiction -- received acceptance to MIT. There's nothing I admire more than a person who can manage both sides of their brain as expertly as she, with the possible exception of a person under the age of 18 who performs such mental calisthenics.
After a serious celebration this morning we headed straight to the fiction room where I buried her beneath all the great books she'd been resisting during the application process. She walked off with a bag full, holding up Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash in front of her nose. -- Lovely!
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
More great end-of-year book lists...
I take it all back ... I do love these end of year lists. Of course, as I look forward to a holiday I imagine myself reading everything. Unrealistic, I know, but it's a nice dream. I currently plan to read my way through the following:
NPR's wonderful and various year-end book lists
NYTimes Best Ten Books of 2009 Be sure to check out the link to NYT's 100 Notable Books of 2009
And here's an ambition list:
The Millions: The Best Fiction of the Millenium (So Far)
NPR's wonderful and various year-end book lists
NYTimes Best Ten Books of 2009 Be sure to check out the link to NYT's 100 Notable Books of 2009
And here's an ambition list:
The Millions: The Best Fiction of the Millenium (So Far)
Just finished...
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan and I really enjoyed it. I always admire authors who try something completely different, but must admit I don't have much patience for those who try but don't succeed. Lanagan expertly weaves together a story of sharp realism and magic to make a contemporary fairy tale in her story of Liga and her daughters Branza and Urdda. You don't have to be a fantasy aficionado to enjoy Tender Morsels. The realistically drawn characters and their stories share equal prominence on Lanagan's nicely set stage with the magical bits. It's a great book to get completely lost in. Fans of Wicked will enjoy Tender Morsels. In fact, I prefer it to MacGuire's novel. Written for adults, it's clearly an excellent cross-over novel for teens too.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Another end-of-year book list
This one from Publisher's Weekly. Such lists will be coming out thick and fast with the close of 2009 and opening of the shopping season. I know I enjoy reading book lists -- although sometimes I have mixed feelings. Anywhere from glee about a whole pile of good recommendations to discouragement of having read so few to feeling overwhelmed because I still haven't finished last year's list. Alas...
The beauty of a good book is its patience. It will sit quietly on a shelf until I get around to picking it up and won't be any less wonderful for the waiting.
The beauty of a good book is its patience. It will sit quietly on a shelf until I get around to picking it up and won't be any less wonderful for the waiting.
Best books of...
The end of the year and the end of a decade will no doubt precipitate lots of lists like this one: AV's Best Books of the '00s. I'm told AV is from the folks who gave us The Onion, only it's serious. The Onion serious? What's the world coming to?
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Short Stories and Students and Research, Oh My!
So I just finished writing a seven-page paper that "juxtaposed an early and late short story to reveal the evolution of the genre" or something like that. What possessed me to do such a thing? It's a long, umm, story.
Reader's Digest version: I'm temporarily pretending I'm a high school senior enrolled in a seminar class entitled The Study of Short Fiction at the school where I am a librarian. Since I'm helping the kids do the research for this project, I thought I'd walk through the experience myself once. I selected what I thought would be the easiest of the several suggested prompts and got started. The stories in question?
Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and Russell Banks' "Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat" (And, no, I'm not forgetting the articles in this title -- there aren't any.)
Both are published in the 7th edition of The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, ed. by Ann Charters, which is the class text. I include the title because it's a really lovely collection and if you're a fan of short fiction you might like to check it out. Just beware: at nearly 2,000 pages it's not something you'll want to toss in the beach bag.
Anyway, back to the research project. My co-librarian would chalk this up as further evidence that I need a life, but I actually enjoyed reading the stories and doing the research on the authors. It was fascinating. I've read a fair amount of Banks and selected him because I enjoy his writing so much. It's probably been -- okay nevermind how many years its been -- since I've read Bierce. Doing some research on him was really interesting. Great writer. Kind of a weirdo, but it made for compelling research.
All this raises the question about whether intensive study of a story (or any genre) ruins the reader's experience. Does Banks expect his readers will indulge him with close readings? Should a reader have to? Does it turn students off and make them ignore good books because they've had them jammed down their throats? What purpose does it serve? Does it need a purpose?
Danged if I know! I was genuinely fascinated by Bierce's story and bio and it made me wonder if sometime in my past I'd sat in a lecture about him and "Owl Creek." If I had, I surely don't remember it. The whole experience seems to reinforce the idea that we really only enjoy things that we discover ourselves on our own terms.
That said, had I not taken on this assignment, I may have waited another 20 years to read Bierce again -- and that would be a shame. So maybe looking for a reading deadline that's not self-imposed is not such a bad thing occassionally?
Reader's Digest version: I'm temporarily pretending I'm a high school senior enrolled in a seminar class entitled The Study of Short Fiction at the school where I am a librarian. Since I'm helping the kids do the research for this project, I thought I'd walk through the experience myself once. I selected what I thought would be the easiest of the several suggested prompts and got started. The stories in question?
Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and Russell Banks' "Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat" (And, no, I'm not forgetting the articles in this title -- there aren't any.)
Both are published in the 7th edition of The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, ed. by Ann Charters, which is the class text. I include the title because it's a really lovely collection and if you're a fan of short fiction you might like to check it out. Just beware: at nearly 2,000 pages it's not something you'll want to toss in the beach bag.
Anyway, back to the research project. My co-librarian would chalk this up as further evidence that I need a life, but I actually enjoyed reading the stories and doing the research on the authors. It was fascinating. I've read a fair amount of Banks and selected him because I enjoy his writing so much. It's probably been -- okay nevermind how many years its been -- since I've read Bierce. Doing some research on him was really interesting. Great writer. Kind of a weirdo, but it made for compelling research.
All this raises the question about whether intensive study of a story (or any genre) ruins the reader's experience. Does Banks expect his readers will indulge him with close readings? Should a reader have to? Does it turn students off and make them ignore good books because they've had them jammed down their throats? What purpose does it serve? Does it need a purpose?
Danged if I know! I was genuinely fascinated by Bierce's story and bio and it made me wonder if sometime in my past I'd sat in a lecture about him and "Owl Creek." If I had, I surely don't remember it. The whole experience seems to reinforce the idea that we really only enjoy things that we discover ourselves on our own terms.
That said, had I not taken on this assignment, I may have waited another 20 years to read Bierce again -- and that would be a shame. So maybe looking for a reading deadline that's not self-imposed is not such a bad thing occassionally?
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