I’m going to blame work deadlines and strep for a slow conclusion to the summer reading. Work kept me tied up late into the evenings and over weekends, and the strep left me feeling listless and uninterested in picking up even the funniest book. But eventually both were conquered and I did squeeze two more books into the season:

I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away, by Bill Bryson

From the book jacket: “After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens — as he later put it, ‘it was clear my people needed me’). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item. Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, [the book] recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man’s attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.”

Why this book? I really enjoy Bryson’s books. I bought it because there was a buy-2-get-1-free sale of certain publishers at my local book store. I picked it in August because you can’t help but laugh when you read Bryson, and the month seemed woefully serious from the outset.

My take: The book differs from a number of other Bryson tomes in that it is a series of adapted newspaper columns he wrote for a British newspaper recounting the differences (both good and bad) he encountered between the U.K. and his new-old home in the U.S. The advantage of such a book is obvious for such a disconnected month — no column lasts more than four pages and the topic changes from “chapter” to “chapter.” And it worked. I’d read an article or two at night to wind down before I went to bed or while I waited for the Metro in the evening. On the other hand, because it’s a series of articles, there are some repetitions that wouldn’t be as noticeable if the series were read weekly over three years that become more so when read nightly.

While it wasn’t my favorite Bryson book, it’s not because it isn’t good or funny; it’s just different. I’d recommend it to anyone who thinks they’d like to try a taste of his style without having to commit to a whole book about one subject — Europe, the Appalachian Trail, science — or someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to read anything all at once and has to fit their reading into bits and bats of time sprinkled throughout the day, week, or month. You’ll find you won’t think about things like health clubs the same way again!

Pages: 288

Peter and the Starcatchers, by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

From the book jacket: “In an evocative and fast-paced adventure on the high seas and on a faraway island, an orphan boy named Peter and his mysterious new friend, Molly, overcome bands of pirates and thieves in their quest to keep a fantastical secret safe and save the world from evil. Bestselling authors Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson have turned back the clock to reveal the wonderful story that precedes J.M. Barrie’s beloved Peter Pan.”

Why this book? This has been on my to-read list for a while (because who doesn’t love Dave Barry?), but I hadn’t managed to pull it together to buy myself a copy. And the library took its own sweet time in acquiring a copy. Hopefully they won’t be so slow in buying the sequel, which came out in July.

My take: Having read one of the original Barrie works, I definitely feel this pulled more from the play and movie adaptations than the original works. Having said that, I enjoyed it anyway, finding it entertaining to see how Barry and Pearson managed to introduce each familiar aspect of the Peter Pan story. I also enjoyed the new characters (especially Mollie) and plot twists that were introduced

The book’s beginning was a little slow, with the authors taking a bit too long to get the action moving, but once they got going, the story remained riveting and fast-paced. There was no obvious, “I wrote this chapter; he wrote the next” kind of divisions disrupting the story, so I’ll definitely read future collaborations between the two, even if they choose to stray from this successful storyline.

Pages: 452 pages

Total pages read for Kat with a K’s Summer Reading Program during July: 740
Total pages read to date this summer: 3890
Total books read this summer: 14

This leaves me having beaten my goal of 10 books for the season, but falling short of my bonus goal of reading de Tocqueville. It’s too bad for Democracy in America, but there’s always the winter… And I just want to note that some of Kat’s other participants leave me feeling woefully inadequate and under-read. As of last week’s update, the folks leading the count had read 50 books apiece and one woman’s page counts were more than quadruple mine. I bow before such prowess.

What is it about a good book that makes it so hard to put down? What makes a book compelling rather than commonplace? Is it the storyline? The characters? A unique twist in the storytelling? Something intangible?

I’m not sure which of these has come into play, but I finally got around to reading Peter and the Starcatchers and it is taking all my self-restraint to put it away for the night and to go to bed. I mean, it’s 2 a.m.! I have another 20 chapters — probably 150 pages — which I could finish by 4.

What sane person thinks like that? What normal person seriously considers intentionally staying up until 4 hours before they need to go to work in order to read a book that will still be sitting there come lunchtime or eveningtide? Will things happen in the book while I’m away that will change the story? It’s not like I’ve left the characters in a precarious situation (which I never would do, by the way). They’re all safe. They’re on the beach. They’ll be fine until I’m able to get back to them. (They will be, won’t they?)

But it doesn’t matter. I really just want to throw myself back on the couch, pull out the book, and read away until I reach “The End” and my curiosity about what happens next is satisfied.

Woe to those who hope their children grow up to be readers. This is the future that you’re pointing them to — sleepless nights and an unquenchable thirst for adventure and knowledge. It’s a hard life.

Since I have no new reading progress to report today, I instead will share the new (to me) book I bought Saturday.

In an effort to spend some daylight sunshiny time outside, we ventured northeast one neighborhood to Adams Morgan. I stopped at Western Market for some sorbet (very few vendors had showed up) and continued north on 18th Street. Rudi wandered over to the bike shop and I hunkered down at Idle Time Books to see what the owner had added recently to her stock.

I always browse the kiddie lit section of used bookstores first. I’m not looking for anything in particular, but I often find books I’ve meant to read or that I read long ago that ask to come home with me.

At Idle Time, the children’s section is buffered by cookbooks and travel books. I found nothing amongst the kid’s books or the travel lit, but nestled amidst the other cookbooks, I did find a treasure — a Moosewood cookbook.

My experiences with Moosewood vegetarian cookbooks have been limited. I was introduced to them by Rebs and have had some recipes out of them over the years, but I’ve never owned one. And they’re very hard to find used, leading me to believe that once someone owns one, it is too well-used and well-loved to make its way to the used bookstore.

My book is Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant: Ethnic and Regional Recipes from the Cooks at the Legendary Restaurant. Aside from the chutzpah it takes to call your own restaurant legendary (however true it might be), the book is filled with exciting recipes I can’t wait to try. From West African Peanut Soup to Sweet Potato Bread to Shepherd’s Pie, it all sounds great — and edible for those who try not to include a lot of meat in their diet. What a treat!

I think I may have cooled off finally from my trip to New York City. Although each time I leave the cool tunnel of the Burrow, I have flashbacks.

We pulled into Penn Station shortly before 11 and after briefly venturing into the heat, we opted to return to the air conditioning (although not in the stations) of the subway. We surfaced at Grand Central a short time later and walked the couple blocks to Coliseum Books, across from the New York Public Library, where Debbie Stoller was scheduled to speak. After assuring ourselves that there would not be a problem with seating, we backtracked a shopfront to Pret a Manger, a UK-based pre-made sandwich shop we fell in love with on our first trip to London. Why can’t Americans figure out how to make tasty sandwiches ahead of time and not have them taste dry and stale and gross by lunchtime?

Rudi dropped me back at the bookstore and headed off to Virgin. I unpacked my sock and waited to be amused. It didn’t take long. Debbie is as funny as her books and she passed around great samples from her crochet book for us to fondle. (It does, however, make it tough to work on picking up gusset stitches if every 45 seconds you have to put down your knitting to hand the next sample on to your row-mate.)

After the talk ended, Rudi returned and we walked across to sit in the “shade” at Bryant Park so I could try and coordinate meeting up with everyone that evening. The heat made me short-tempered, which didn’t make it easier to work out details. Eventually I resorted to the “call me later when you know what’s going on” method of handling things.

We went into the library, which while it may be the most iconic library in the world, is actually crap. Sure it looks nice. But you can’t actually handle the books. Hell, you can’t even handle the magazines without asking. I want to be able to browse. Clearly it was not designed to encourage a love of literature or literacy.

Shortly, the appeal of vaulted ceilings and marble benches wore off and we were forced to consider other means of entertaining ourselves. We contemplated a museum visit. Erik had suggested a perfectly lovely one that I couldn’t remember where it was and since there were no helpful periodicals lying around to consult… we opted for the more pedestrian but easily accessible option of a movie.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie on the 12th or so floor of a building before, but our theater was located high above Times Square. I don’t think it was merely the altitude nor the air-conditioning that made me enjoy Little Miss Sunshine so much, but it put me into a more positive frame of mind.

We hiked back to Grand Central where we waited in the food emporium for Karen and Michael’s train to arrive and for Eri to slog uptown from work. Then we hustled (at least as much hustling as can be done in 110 degree humidex) up to Radio City to get in line for An Evening with Harry, Carrie, and Garp.

The evening featured some celebrities. Whoopie Goldberg opened the evening, but she was very wooden and seemed like she needed to have brushed up a bit more before going on. Tim Robbins introduced Stephen King. Stanley Tucci introduced John Irving. Kathy Bates introduced J.K. Rowling. Soledad O’Brien orchestrated the Q&A.

Here’s the sad part:

I slept through a good portion of John Irving and Stephen King’s readings. The heat and the lack of sleep just caught up with me. (I do know that King read from a story that inspired(?) Stand by Me and that Irving read from part of A Prayer for Owen Meany.)

Periodically I would awaken briefly, laugh or nod at something they were saying, and then doze right back off. As John Irving left the stage, Erik leaned over and whispered, “Now’s the main act,” hoping, I think, that I would finally rally.

He needn’t have worried. I would have awoken from a dead sleep for the author of the Harry Potter books.

Rowling took the stage to the adoring screams that normally accompany a rock star. She settled into her chair and began reading the Pensieve scene from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince where Harry and Dumbledore witness Dumbledore’s visit to Tom Riddle in the orphanage. She then answered a few questions from pre-selected members of the audience.

One person wanted to know whom (other than Harry) she would bring to life of her characters. Hagrid, she responded, because she thought all of us could use a Hagrid in real life.

Others were angling for insights into the final book of the series. Aunt Petunia has secrets we don’t know about, Rowling admitted. And, to the crushing disappointment of many in the room (sorry, Mum), Dumbledore really is dead. I believe “He won’t be pulling a Gandalf” were her exact words.

The other two authors returned to join Rowling on the stage and they each answered a few more questions, including one to Rowling from Salman Rushdie and his son.

And then it was over. We chatted briefly upstairs as we waited for the crowds below us to dissipate and then descended to the heat and humidity outside. Eri scooted off to catch a train down to her Nan’s in Newark. Rudi returned inside to find his wallet, which had accidentally been left behind. And then the rest of us trekked back towards Grand Central, ate a quick bite, and then put Karen and Michael on their train back to Connecticut.

Erik, Rudi, and I headed toward Brooklyn, where we were greeted by the already cooling house of Erik’s mom, who was kindly letting us stay there in her absence and who had asked a neighbor to come over and turn on the a/c. (Poor Erik was not so lucky, as his a/c was down for the second night in a row and his bedroom thermometer read a balmy 95 degrees. (He packed up his things for the next day and joined us back at his mom’s.)) But Erik did take us down to a pier near his house where you could see the Verrazano Bridge, Manhatten, Staten Island, and the Statue of Liberty through the haze. It was lovely.

The next day we slept in, had lunch with Eri at a sushi place by her office (I had an asparagus roll and a kampyo roll featuring a Japanese vegetable the waitress said was a type of squash), met up with Erik to return the keys at a Starbucks in Midtown, checked with Amtrak’s 1-800 line to learn that our train was late, and then ended up missing our train when it was on time after all. Oops.

Amtrak was lovely and booked us onto a slightly later train and we were home by 10, tired but happy we’d gone north to see our friends and a couple of really cool authors.

Rudi and I are heading north on Amtrak in the morning to join friends Karen and Michael, Erica, and Erik (and maybe old college pal Mike) for An Evening with Harry, Carrie, and Garp.

That’s right. By this point tomorrow I will have been in the same room with J.K. Rowling.

Oh yeah, and some guys named John Irving and Stephen King.

I am so excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’re hoping to meet Karen and Michael for lunch at some point tomorrow afternoon. We might go see Debbie Stoller of Stitch and Bitch fame give a talk at lunchtime, depending on when Karen and Michael arrive. Otherwise, we’ll be seeking a museum filled with air conditioning for refuge from the hottest day of the summer.

I probably won’t have internet access tomorrow, so expect a full report on Thursday night after we get off the train.

I know I was going to start posting every two weeks about what I was reading over the summer, but, frankly, I didn’t read much of anything the first fortnight of July. The Knitting World Cup took up the beginning of the month (I’m not as talented as my grandmother who claims she used to knit and read simultaneously) and then it took a while for me to settle into something that I liked enough to finish. (This is particularly bad news for Democracy in America, which I’m supposed to read by the end of August. I’m in the introduction and am already grumpy.)

But in the end I managed four books in the last two weeks of the month:

The Pursuit of Happyness, by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe
From the book jacket: “At the age of twenty, Milwaukee native Chris Gardner, just out of the navy, arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. Yet he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. But no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him homeless with his toddler son. Instead of giving in to despair, the two spent almost a yera moving among shelters, ‘HO-tels,’ and soup lines, even sleeping in the public restroom of a subway station — ultimately making an astonishing transformation from the bathroom to the boardroom.”
Why this book? It was sitting on top of a pile of unread books, and the introduction kept me reading long enough to make me want to know more.
My take: I picked this up as an advance reader’s edition so it is possible that there has been some further editing since I looked the story over. But given how far along the book was, my guess is that the major copy work had already been done by that time. It’s too bad. Gardner and his ghost writer need an editor with a firm hand who is able to restructure the story slightly so that it’s less stream of consciousness memoir and more chronologically ordered. It’s frustrating to have an event alluded to in one place and then to have it referred to again in slightly different (but not much) detail later on.

That said, one can’t help but admire Gardner’s chutzpah, focus, and devotion to his son. His mother told him he could do anything he wanted to (despite her inability to remove her family from an abusive relationship) and he believed her, translating the risks of his rocky childhood into a profitable career in investing. And his own lack of a present father as a boy made him utterly determined to be there for his son.

[The seemingly misspelled title actually refers to a real-life misspelled daycare center Gardner strove to earn enough to enroll his son in.]

The book is going to be made into a movie by Will Smith, so if you like to read books before you see the movie, pick this one up.
Pages: 302

The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis
From the book jacket: “How captive Prince Rilian escaped from the Emerald Witch’s underground kingdom.”
Why this book? This book may (or may not) mark the final book in the Narnian series I read as a child. But I’m going to read all seven this time around.
My take: The books are getting less and less satisfying as I go along. I like Eustace and Jane and their Narnian guardian, Puddleglum, but Lewis’ narrator inserts himself into the story more and more with commentaries that have not held up to the test of time. The narrator’s views of women, co-education, and modern education are antiquated and annoying and it requires a constant internal commentary of “It was written in the ’20s” to get past it to focus on the story.
Pages: 217

The 13 Clocks, by James Thurber
From the book jacket: “How can anyone describe this book? It isn’t a parable, a fairy story, or a poem, but rather a mixture of all three. It is beautiful and it is comic. It is philosophical and it is cheery. What we suppose we are trying fumblingly to say is, in a word, that it is Thurber. There are only a few reasons why everybody has always wanted to read this kind of story, but they are basic: Everybody has always wanted to love a Princess. Everybody has always wanted to be a Prince. Everybody has always wanted the wicked Duke to be punished. Everybody has always wanted to live happily ever after. Too little of this kind of thing is going on in the world today. But all of it is going on valorously in The 13 Clocks.”
Why this book? I wasn’t planning to reread this present from Karen right now, but I was pulling out books for a minor research project, happened upon it, and knew immediately that my life was in need of a little Thurber.
My take: If you have never read Thurber, head right out to the library and pick up one of his books. He writes and illustrates his own works, and they are whimsical and funny and sweet all at once. You can space the story out or you can read it in one brief sitting.

And I enjoyed the re-read sufficiently that the next time I am at the library, I’m going to check out one of his other books or, maybe, one of the collections of his correspondence.
Pages: 124

Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs
From the book jacket: “Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor’s bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules; there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock-therapy machine under the stairs….”
Why this book? We saw a preview of the upcoming film adaptation before The Devil Wears Prada, and Amani and I wanted to read the book before we saw the show. (Thanks to Sarah, who lent us both her copy of the book.)
My take: This book intrigued me when it came out, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading it until now. It’s really one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction kinds of stories. If it weren’t true, no one would believe it as a novel. (Burroughs has been sued for defamation by the psychiatrist’s family for exaggerating the story, so maybe I’ll have to eat my words.)

But either way, the characters are strongly written and thoroughly messed up down to the last one. If it is true, Burroughs deserves major kudos for surviving. If it’s fiction, he deserves major credit for his imagination.

I’m definitely looking forward to the movie.
Pages: 304

Total pages read for Kat with a K’s Summer Reading Program during July: 947
Total pages read to date this summer: 3150
Total books read this summer: 12