“So here today I present to you an Unread Books Challenge. Give me the list or take a picture of all the books you have stacked on your bedside table, hidden under the bed or standing in your shelf – the books you have not read, but keep meaning to. The books that begin to weigh on your mind. The books that make you cover your ears in conversation and say, ‘No! Don’t give me another book to read! I can’t finish the ones I have!’ “
I own lots of unread books. Long before I had a stash of yarn, I owned a stash of books, acquired as gifts, souvenirs, and library book sales. After moving to D.C., my job periodically required me to attend the American Library Association’s annual conference, where they give away books — for free. So each time I went, I’d come home with a suitcase full of novels and other books.
So for ease of writing tonight (and for future post fodder), I decided to consult only one shelf tonight. In the reading nook, the following books remain unread*:
The top shelf, which, admittedly, is a bit light on books compared to those below gave me false hope. Only two books hadn’t been read:
The Scotch by John Kenneth Galbraith
The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald
The second shelf down, which houses a large portion of my knitting book collection also didn’t look too bad, although only the last item has anything to do with knitting:
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Into the Wild: Warriors 1 by Erin Hunter
The Last Dragon by Silvana de Mari
Subject to Debate by Katha Pollitt
A Woman’s Education by Jil Ker Conway
Thinking Out Loud by Anna Quindlen
No Idle Hands by Anne Macdonald
Third shelf down and we start to see the results of randomly shoving books onto the shelf in a frenzy of cleaning. This shelf is supposed to hold poetry, but now seems to equally hold fiction:
The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
Reading like a Writer by Francine Prose
The Open Door by Steven Gilbar
The 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
Rules by Cynthia Lord
The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (I’ve read a couple of the sequels, but not the original.)
The Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine
Grace and Gravity: Fiction by Washington Area Women
Bottom shelf. This is supposed to hold literature compilations, as well as books from college. It seemingly also holds piles of fiction I couldn’t fit elsewhere:
Forgiveness by Jean Brashear (I entered a contest to win yarn on the author’s website and she sent me inscribed copies of four of her books)
Mercy by Jean Brashear
Coming Home by Jean Brashear
Live Is Lovelier by Jean Brashear
The Illustrated Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson
The Bilingual Edge by Kendall King and Alison Mackey (Ummm… I have no idea why I picked this one up at the last ALA conference I went to…)
Foundling by D.M. Cornish
Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
Zlata’s Diary by Zlata Filipovic (I started this one but it was depressing and I abandoned it in favor of less warlike reading.)
The Name of This Book Is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch
Making Money by Terry Pratchett (Can I tell you? I looked at the title of the book and thought, “Why in the world did I get a book on that?!?”)
Admit it: aren’t you glad I only tackled one shelf?
Any recommendation for books in the shelves that should shift toward the top of the to be read pile?
* Some of these books mentioned above were gifts from friends that I have yet to read. Please don’t feel that your present was unappreciated. I’m just savoring our connection for even longer than usual.
Maybe one of my goals for July should be to catch up on book reviews. I wonder what it would feel like to be current with my reviews instead of telling you about books I read back in February…
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
From the jacket: “January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’d never met, a native of Guernsey, the British island once occupied by the Nazis. He’d come across her name on the flyleaf of a secondhand volume by Charles Lamb. Perhaps she could tell him where he might find more books by this author. As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, she is drawn into the world of this man and his friends, all members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a unique book club formed in a unique, spur-of-the-moment way: as an alibi to protect its members from arrest by the Germans. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the Society’s charming, deeply human members, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. through their letters she learns about their island, their taste in books, and the powerful, transformative impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds there will change her forever.”
My take: Oh. my. god. This book is amazing. I laughed. I cried. I finished it and wanted immediately to begin it again.
Set in the year after the end of World War II, this epistolary novel opens as the English are attempting to rebuild their lives as well as their cities. Juliet Ashton, a writer who had an upbeat newspaper column during the war, is back to being able to write about the topics of her choosing, but she’s unable to settle on a subject that matters.
A letter arrives at her doorstep, forwarded from her previous, bombed-out flat, from a stranger on the Isle of Guernsey. He has come into possession of a book that once belonged to her and, intrigued by the subject, he’s hoping to learn more. Could she possibly point him to a shop in London that would be willing to search out additional books for him? All the bookshops on the island were destroyed by the Nazis and he’s desperate for a new book.
Through their correspondence, she comes to learn more about her pen-pal, his odd group of friends who comprised the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and life under Nazi rule. Could there be a story there for her to tell?
Annie Barrows recently stopped by Politics and Prose to do a reading, so I and a bazillion other fans turned out to hear her talk about the novel. She explained that the book had been her aunt’s, but that when her aunt became deathly ill, Annie, already a published author of children’s books, found herself being asked to flesh out and fill in the story. Mary Ann died before the book came out in English, but Annie sweetly said that she was so glad that her participation in the project had enabled readers to connect with the best storyteller in her family.
And I can believe it. The characters are so well-written that you’ll wish you could time travel to meet them before you remember that they didn’t really exist. The format of the book allows secondary and even tertiary characters to have full and well-rounded back stories and for events to be shared from different perspectives, which I found to be quite rewarding.
Read this book. I found it best book of the year material. Amazing.
Pages: 278 pages
Category: books. There is/are Comments Off on into the stacks: 2009.5.
Trish at Trish’s Reading Nook is hosting the summertime readalong, Non-Fiction Five 2009.
Read 5 non-fiction books during the months of May-September. At least one non-fiction book [should be] different from your other choices (i.e.: 4 memoirs and 1 self-help).
This was another challenge I made a stab at last year in which I failed miserably. I think it’s time to pull out some true tales and learn some new things. But I’m pages from finishing the first book I’ve chosen, so I feel confident that I’ll be able to meet this year’s goal:
Educating Alice by Alice Steinbach
The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The Sun in the Morning by M.M. Kaye
Reading the OED by Ammon Shea
Book selection may change as I find new things to interest me or as these fail to hold up to the D.C. summer heat. Of course, if you have a non-fiction suggestion you think I might like, please leave it in the comments.
I’m off by a day or two because of the long weekend. I’m not complaining, though.
Three beautiful things from the past week:
1. On Saturday, I spent time in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Connecticut. Rudi did the same, substituting New Hampshire for Rhode Island. With the exception of Maine, we covered all of New England. It was good to be home.
2. On 91 north of Brattleboro, the highway travels through and above your typical northeastern forestland. But Vermont’s air is so much cleaner than southern New England’s that you really notice the pine scent as it wafts through your windows. (And earlier in the morning, I could smell the sea at one point, even if I had a tough time actually finding the South Shore.)
3. If I can have a book in my possession, I’d much prefer to read rather than listen to it. (I’m not putting down those who listen to audiobooks, but my brain processes the two experiences in totally different ways, so I find it impossible to say that when I listen to a book that it’s reading.) That said, clearly one should not peruse a novel while driving. I had Plum Lucky on my iPod, so bounty hunters Stephanie and Diesel kept us company while we were stuck in late-night traffic on the Garden State. It seemed appropriate somehow, since the book is set in New Jersey.
From the jacket: “Noah’s dad has a little problem with anger control. He tried to stop the Coral Queen casino boat’s illegal dumping … by sinking the boat. But his bold protest fizzles: Within days, the casino is back in business, and Noah’s dad is behind bars and out of action. Now Noah is determined to succeed where his father failed. But even though pumping raw sewage into the waters of the Florida Keys is both gross and against the law, turns out it’s near impossible to catch the flusher — especially when he’s already bamboozled the prosecutors, the local press, and even the Coast Guard.â€
My take: When I decided to sign up for Maggie’s Southern Reading Challenge 3, my first challenge was going to be meeting a review goal of the first book by today. So I thought I’d tuck a kids’ book into the list so I had time to pick it up at the library, read it, and get it reviewed. I’d read Hoot before, so I knew that I liked Hiaasen’s style, at least for his young adult books.
Like Hoot, Flush takes place in Florida and focuses on the story of a middle school boy who finds out about an impending environmental disaster and must decide what he’s going to do.
The book opens at the town jail, where Noah has stopped in to visit his dad on Father’s Day. Paine is a mild-mannered waterman who, as his family routinely points out, tends to get a little carried away when he sees a wrong that needs righting. In this instance, he has sunk a local casino boat, purportedly because its owner, Dusty Muleman, is pumping the boat’s toilets into the bay. Noah’s mom has tried to bail him out, but Paine refuses to let her. He’s happy to stay locked up, claiming his being in jail brings attention to the situation, but the kids overhear Donna on the phone talking divorce and start to worry their father may have gone too far this time.
In the days that follow, Noah and his younger sister, Abbey, see what they can do to learn more about the charges their father has lobbed at Muleman. They scout around the marina, dodging Muleman’s bullying son during the day and his thuggish security at night. At Paine’s suggestion, Noah consults an ex-mate from the Coral Queen, Lice Peeking, a soused bum living in a trailer with Muleman’s bosomy ex-girlfriend, Shelly, who both agree Muleman’s no good.
But when the kids nearly get grabbed, Lice disappears, Paine gives up his fight, and Shelly, Abbey, and Noah witness the effect the sewage has on the local wildlife, it’s time to up the ante. Can Noah and Abbey set up Muleman, dodge the scarred old man living in the woods (who seems to know an awful lot about them), and still be back home in bed before their folks get home?
Ultimately, this is a story about interconnectedness and vigilance. One thing touches another, which touches another. Noah’s family might get frustrated with one another, but, ultimately, they’re there for each other, looking out for one another, watching everyone’s backs. They are separate but a whole. And the environment is the same way. One person can — for good or for evil — affect the wildlife and the people who use the water. And even seemingly benign carelessness can lead to long-term problems. The environment is not something apart from us.
Hiaasen works a bit hard sometimes to drill these points in, sometimes creating a rather awkward back story to make it all work. But he has created some great characters — Noah, a real boy who’s inherited his father’s passion for protecting those who can’t speak up for themselves; Abbey, his analytical sister with a flair for drama; and no-nonsense Shelly, whose big heart is ultimately much more noticeable than the tattoo on her arm — who carry the story through in the end.
Pages: 263
Category: books. There is/are Comments Off on into the stacks: southern 1.