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

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)