Several more books were finished during the second fortnight of June (the first half of the month’s reading is here), including one I acquired at the Orange County Airport:

The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss

From the book jacket: “Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother’s loneliness. Believing that she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author. Across New York, an old man named Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who, sixty years ago in Poland, inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn’t know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . . .”
Why this book? Of all the books I flipped over at the airport, this was the softcover that appealed to me the most. I hadn’t really been enjoying the one book I brought with me and earlier attempts at finding a book to buy had been stymied. Plus when I opened it, it contained three pages of rave reviews from the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. and from publications as diverse as the Financial Times, the New York Times, and Marie Claire UK.
My take: Rudi kept looking over at me as I read this — over two flights, a prolonged layover, the Metro rides home, and then in bed after giving up on doing any more cleanup post-flood — and noted that it must be good because I didn’t want to put it down. It was, and I didn’t; ultimately I finished it before I went to bed the same day I bought it.

It starts strong: “When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT. I’m surprised I haven’t been buried alive.” And it continues to be lucid and funny and ambitious right through to the very last line.

Alma and Leo are two very different, but well-drawn characters and it was a pleasure to watch how each one struggled to live a fully realized life — Alma just embarking on hers and Leo trying to wrap up some of his loose ends.

The secondary characters are quirky but just as loveable.

This will almost definitely make my best books list of 2006. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand love, which I hope, is all of us.
Pages: 255

The Tale of Despereux being the story of a mouse, a princess, some soup, and a spool of thread, by Kate DiCamillo

From DiCamillo’s note inside the book jacket: “The tale of your exceptionally large-eared, extremely unlikely hero”
Why this book? It was sitting on Danny’s shelf and I needed a good book to take with me to the beach. Plus I’d been wanting to read it for a while and had enjoyed Because of Winn-Dixie when it first came out a few years ago.
My take: A nice fairy tale about an undersized mouse with oversized ears who discovers his bravery exceeds everyone’s expectations. The story also features a sad princess, a maid with cauliflower ears, and a heart-broken rat with a love of light.

This book would be an enjoyable read if you have ever felt like you didn’t quite fit into your prescribed role within society. Whether it’s that you love fairy tales or that you yearn for something that you’re not allowed to have, you will find something within this story to cheer you.
Pages: 270

Fly By Night, by Frances Hardinge

Why this book? Rudi picked this up for me at ALA this spring and when I blogged about it coming home with me, it piqued Danny’s interest, who then went out and bought and read it. So then I had to play catch-up.
My take: I really liked Mosca Mye, a young girl whose father taught her how to read before he died, leaving her orphaned and with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. She, like many of us, has a love of words and of storytelling and of reading. You accompany her as she embarks upon the biggest adventure of her life and as she, like the rest of us, has to learn whom to trust and how much.

Her companions on her journey include a vicious goose named Saracen and Eponymous Clent, a thief, a spy, and a charming scalawag of a storyteller.

Before long Mosca and her fellow travellers have left her small hometown behind and have headed to the county seat, a large city headed by a pixelated Duke with a love of symmetry and run by the guild of Stationers who dictate what may be printed and read. A plot to unseat the Duke is at hand and somehow Mosca finds herself at the very center of it.

A delightful read containing real philosophy about the role of government, newspapers, and an educated populace.
Pages: 486

Grab on to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way, by Bryan Charles

Why this book? The Washington Post‘s Source writers gave it an A- two weeks ago, reminding me that I’d picked up a proof of it back in March.
My take: I slogged through this one, waiting to see why the Source had liked it so much.

Conceivably I ought to have liked the book more. The main character, Vim, and I graduated from high school the same year. But even I didn’t recognize all the pop references the author threw in, and it began to seem more gratuitous than anything else. Maybe this same feeling haunts those reading books peppered with multi-syllabic words, but the first half of the novel just left me feeling frustrated and resentful.

But the second half did pick up when the author left his obsession with early 90s music behind and instead focused on character development. Vim went from being a hard-partying 17-year old I didn’t particularly like to someone who could admit that he had been hurt by his past and that he was confused by what his purpose in life was, a universally relatable quandry.

I so disliked the first half of the novel that I’m not sure I’d recommend anyone else read it just for the truths unearthed in the second half, but I leave that up to each reader to ultimately decide.
Pages: 211

Total pages read for Kat with a K’s Summer Reading Program to date: 2203
Total books read in June: 8

For people who love books, Rudi and I tend to leave them on the floor. Normally this is fine, but not when two of your rooms flood.

I bought a hair dryer this morning and have been blow-drying the wettest (and thickest) of the books for an hour or so while listening to podcasts. I think it will work out okay. (Yes, I have heard a rumor that some people use these machines on their heads. I have never been one of those people and gave away the one hair dryer that was ever given to me. But desperate times called for desperate measures and I am now the owner of a book blower.)

One of my knitting books may have bitten the dust, though. It has glossy pages that all seem to have melded together as they dried and my attempts to pry them apart have not been good for the paper. I’m going to try steaming them apart, but if that doesn’t work, we may have the first significant casualty of the floods. (Or it could become an off-roading instruction manual offering the beginnings of patterns but not the ends where the pages have ripped.)

P.S.: For those who are wondering, yes, we had a great time in California. The present woes have shifted those nice memories into the background, but they will rise again into the foreground soon and then I’ll be happy to bore you silly with tales of 70 degree temperatures, books, visiting loved ones, and hitting the beach.

Since I have joined Kat with a K’s Summer Reading Program, I feel I ought to give updates a bit more often than once a month. So I figured I’d aim for a post on the books of the week (or, in this case, fortnight).

So far this month, I have read:

Pericles, by William Shakespeare
From the Shakespeare Theatre (because the book jacket is lame): “Pericles begins in Antioch, where Prince Pericles of Tyre must unravel a riddle to win the hand of a princess. But when Pericles discovers King Antiochus and his daughter’s terrible secret, he must flee for his life. Pericles sets sail—traveling from kingdom to kingdom—falling in love with a princess (Thaisa) and conceiving a child (Marina). After a terrible storm strikes their ship at sea, father, mother and daughter are separated. ”

Why this book? The Shakespeare Theatre was performing Pericles as its Free for All performance and I’d never read it. A few years ago, Karen, Rudi, Michael, and I went to see a performance of a Shakespeare history play that I hadn’t read and it was very confusing. I recognized Falstaff and the king of England and eventually figured out that another character must have been the French king, but it was a less than ideal play-watching experience. I didn’t want to be caught out again, so I read the first four acts before we saw the play. (I finished the final act today, since it’s always nice to be surprised by the ending of a play when you’re seeing it for the first time.)

My take: Pericles is a lesser-known Shakespearean play for a reason. The first half is believed to have been written by another playwright and it’s all based on an epic poem by the 14th century poet Gower (who appears as the narrator in the play (although not in the staged version we saw)). Apparently the story was well-known at the time, but it was definitely full of unrealistic melodrama by today’s standards. I mean with two assassination attempts, incest, a shipwreck, a birth and death at sea, a pirate attack, a brothel, and slavery in its slim 163 pages, it packs almost as much action in as a soap opera episode. The story at the heart of the play is a sweet one, nonetheless, and the ending is happy. The whole story is far-fetched, but it’s fiction and allowed. Worth reading if you haven’t already.

Pages: 163

Hoot, by Carl Hiassen
From the book jacket: “Roy Eberhardt is used to the new-kid drill. His family has lived all over, and Florida bullies are pretty much like bullies everywhere. But Roy finds himself oddly indebted to the hulking Dana Matherson. If Dana hadn’t been mashing his face against the school bus window, Roy might never have spotted the running boy. And the running boy is the first interesting thing Roy’s seen in Florida. . . . Sensing a mystery, Roy sets himself on the boy’s trail. The chase will introduce him to some other intriguing Floridian creatures: potty-trained alligators, a sinister pancake PR man, some burrowing owls, a fake-fart champion, a renegade eco-avenger, and several poisonous snakes with unnaturally sparkling tails.”

Why this book? I was in the kids’ room at the library and this popped out at me. I knew it had recently been made into a movie and that the book had good pre-movie hype, so I thought it might be time to check it out.

My take: Somehow Hiassen’s name makes me think of gross-out books and I don’t know why. Maybe his adult books are less appetizing? But this story was sweet and reminded me a bit of Louis Sacher’s Holes, but without the prison element or the magical realism. Essentially it focuses on how you develop a personal code of ethics and how far you take it. I really liked the main character who seemed to be an average sort of teen boy with a bit too much curiosity for his own good. Worth a read as well as a good gift for a young person in your life.

Pages: 292

The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”, by C.S. Lewis
From the book jacket: “How King Caspian sailed through magic waters to the End of the World”

Why this book? As you might have seen in the earlier issues, I’ve been re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia since the movie came out last winter.

My take: The Narnian characters go sailing! Yes, there are a few other things going on the book — slavery, a child being turned into a dragon, invisible people — but it’s pretty much just Narnia on water. Not as good as the original.

Pages: 216

Gatsby’s Girl, by Caroline Preston
From the book jacket: “Just as Jay Gatsby was haunted by Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald was haunted by his own great first love — a Chicago socialite named Ginevra. Alluring, capricious, and ultimately unavailable, she would become his first muse, the inspiration for such timeless characters as Gatsby’s Daisy and Isabelle Borgé in This Side of Paradise. . . . Now, in this richly imagined and ambitious novel, Preston deftly evokes the entire sweep of Ginevra’s life — from her first meeting with Scott to the second act of her sometimes charmed, sometimes troubled life.”

Why this book? I read an excerpt on NPR’s website and thought it seemed like it had potential.

My take: I liked it. Ginevra starts off as your stereotypical debutante — spoiled, rich, and willful. But as time goes on she becomes more than that. She grows — through her reading of Fitzgerald’s books, through seeing herself as a Peter Pan-type of spoiled heroine, and through hearing of Fitzgerald’s frustrated life. By the very end of the book, you feel that she’s grown in ways that Fitzgerald was never capable of — and perhaps in ways that he never realized one could grow.

Pages: 310

Total: 4 books, 981 pages

Jen Robinson had an idea to start a list of cool girls from children’s literature. She solicited her readers’ opinions for suggestions and she has now posted 200 Cool Girls from Children’s Literature at her site.

Of the top ten, I know 8 of the girls. (I may have read one of The Borrowers books, but I have no memory of any of the characters and I’ve never even heard of The Westing Game.) Of the next ten, I know only half. And of the full list, I’ve only read 63! I’d better get reading. (Can I count these as some of my summer reading books, Kat?)

(Via A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy)

When I was in high school, I liked joining things — French Club, Key Club, Environmental Club, volleyball, softball, basketball, drama performances, creative writing magazine, yearbook…. You get the idea.

I thought that had worn off as I’d gotten older, but in the last week, the joining gene seems to have resurfaced since I have signed up to take part in two new projects:

The Kat with a K Summer Reading Program
Kat thought back to her childhood summers and remembered how much fun those summer reading programs the public library used to offer were. So she decided to create her own summer reading program and invited folks to join her. How could I resist?

For this challenge, I aimed low: only 10 books over the course of the summer. I thought about 15 or even 20, but given I only managed two last month (and since I can’t read and knit at the same time (see below)), I decided to play it safe.

But Kat also offered the chance to have a bonus goal and here I aimed high. As I mentioned here, I want to read Alexis de Tocqueville. So my goal is to read the complete text of Democracy in America — all 769 pages of it.

The Knitting World Cup 2006
Since I did eventually finish my Knitting Olympics projects, I thought I would try my hand at the Yarn Monkey’s World Cup knit-along. Who knows? Maybe I’m more of a summer sport girl. (I also thought I would hand the mousie booties from the Olympics over to their new owner, and Heidi seemed pleased by them.)

So what am I turning my needles to? A summer tank top from the most recent issue of Interweave Knits. I’m adapting it to work with Rowan’s Summer Tweed in Exotic (a turquoise tweed in cotton-silk).

The project has stumbled a bit in the early days as my guage swatch seems to have no bearing on either the pattern or the yarn’s specifications. I gave up on the math and decided to just cast on. Except that the pattern calls for a provisional cast on, which I didn’t know. Rudi went to sleep last night to the sounds of my bemoaning the yarn, the needles, the pattern, and my own inability. To give you some clue of how miserable I was, it took me about three hours to cast on and to knit three rows. Three hours. Today’s work is still moving slowly, but there does seem to be actual progress. Let’s just hope it’s not for naught and that the silly thing fits.

And let’s keep our fingers crossed that this is all I sign myself up to do for the next few months….

Guess what I won’t be watching? Tuesday Night Book Club, which starts next week on CBS.

I like light fluff combined with books as much as the next person (was Pam Anderson’s Stacked really that bad?). And I realize this is going to make me sound very shallow. But I just don’t think I would have so much in common with these women.

Sure, I may peek at the book list. But I think that’s where my interest in the show stops.