A Moment's Notice

My blog has been stagnant due to a brief foray out of the country to Nicaragua. Regularly scheduled posting will soon follow.

Since my poll on what book to read next did not end with a decisive winner, I read the three books that got votes, in alphabetical order. :)

I read Gilead, Impossible, and Love Among the Walnuts. Gilead was a beautifully written prose style book - a man's reflections to his son as he approaches death. Not exactly airplane reading, but I wanted to stay true to my poll. Impossible was GREAT - a modern day fairytale without the helpless damsel crap and a true love story. And last, Love Among the Walnuts - a kooky story about a young man trying to save the family business from his greedy power hungry uncles, interesting read.

So Many Good Books...So Very Little Time...

And now, time for a poll! I have a BUNCH of books on queue for this holiday break. Which should I read first? Here's a little break down of some and then I'll read which one wins the poll.

Impossible

Elsewhere

Prep - recommended as a not-to-read book, so how can I NOT read it to formulate my own opinion?

Love Among the Walnuts

Gilead - did you know that before Obama started reading the Twilight series with his daughters, he was reading this book?


(Look for the poll on the left hand column)



did I ever tell you about my second foray for my "books gone wild" section? if anyone noticed, i have been applying this label loosely, and not to pictures of random people's reads. BECAUSE i tried to ask a few people on the T about the books they were reading, thinking the T ride was a perfect time to ask since lots of people read. I approached a middle aged woman and a guy around my age. Both were very embarrassed and very apologetic in their refusals. it discouraged me, but made me realize there are optimal conditions for getting people to agree to my crazy idea. So..."books gone wild" has morphed to incorporate other things for now.

now on to book talking! I found a new teen/YA review site that has really random, not always typical fluff sounding reads - Reading Rants! Here's a few I picked out that sounded good enough to add to our collection at my work:

Janes in Love by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

What I Saw and How I lied by judy blundell

The Ghosts of Kerfol by Deborah Noyle

Emiko Superstar by Mariko Tamaki and Steve Rolston

Mexican White Boy by Matt de la Pena

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Chains by Laurie Halse

Getting the Girl by Susan Juby

If I stay by Gayle forman

The Knife of Letting Go by Patrick Ness


Cheers y'all and happy holidays.

Pimp yo' book cart

The people over at Unshelved, the librarian comic strip, hold an annual contest to see who can trick out a book cart the best. I'm not sure what they use as qualifiers for "best" because I wouldn't have chosen their winner. I would have chosen 'Mini Me.' What do you think? Check out the winner and the runners up here.

Just In

Just finished reading two of the most WONDERFUL Young Adult novels. One is a full on graphic novel and the other is quite literally the literature version of mixed media painting.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Coraline. Read them both in one night only so they are not time consuming. The graphics in each are both very different styles, but both add a level of engaging with that text that enhances the story. There was one picture in the Hugo book that took my breath away with its ability to capture the feeling in a shared look between two characters. The author was also the illustrator/media includer and the drawings are simple, black and white pencil drawings...even more incredible for the depth they contain.

The images in Coraline are full color and range from beautiful and flowing to jagged and disturbing. All integral to certain affects/effects/and situations happening in the story. Both are MUST READS!

Of God and Google

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson is a...haunting book. Her descriptions of ordinary things reveals something almost...supernatural about them, and just how much significance actions and things can hold. How everything sane can hang on the edge of insanity. Calm with disorder. Nature and civilization. I got swept up in the language at certain points, even though I was also a little lost at the same time. Her prose is very poetic, beautiful, but sometimes strays so far into lucidity that I couldn't remember our point of departure.

Here is one interesting passage I'll share -

"Cain killed Abel...a story so sad even God took notice of it. Maybe it was not the sadness of the story, since worse things have happened every minute since that day, but its novelty that God found striking. In the newness of the world God was young, and grew indignant over the slightest things. In the newness of the world God had perhaps not realized the ramifications of certain Laws..."

Setting aside the cliche of God being a figure and a person, more the Catholic idea of God, what I find so interesting about this perspective is thinking of God...as new. As someone who could make mistakes. Someone learning the ropes. Someone prone to tempers or joys or other emotions that might influence actions in a split second, not someone who always thinks everything out. If I fully believed in a Catholic image/idea of God this notion might help explain a lot of things about the Bible and Gods actions in the early days.


Close to Godliness in the world of information search and retrieval is Google. Reading over a Wired Magazine I came across some awesome search features I didn't know about and thought, hey, maybe you don't either!

* to find sites in the government or education sector, add :gov or :edu to the end of your search terms

* Google will convert currency and units. their example - "12 par secs in light years."

* Enter a ticker symbol to check out how your stocks are doing

* Limit your search to file type by adding :PPT or :doc to the end of your search term


Google just keeps getting better and better. You GO Google. You go...

Books Books and more Books

Don't know what to read next?



Try this handy dandy site to see what else is out there that is similar to the last book you read, similar to your favorite book of all time, or similar to that title someone randomly told you and you never read.

This site is free and it ROCKS.

Fall Is A Good Time for Mysteries...

At work I've made two displays this month, well, three actually - two for mysteries and one for the Halloween/Scary themes of Fall. There are two mystery sections because there are two schools here, the Upper school which is grades 9-12th and the Lower School which is grades 5-8th. The library itself is three floors, so each school has its own floor of fiction books with one floor for dear Dewey Decimal books.

As I went through the catalog to make the mystery displays, I kept finding books that sounded so darn interesting and readable. Just from this search I added three more books to my already towering stack of books-to-read.


Here are a few titles you might want to check out:

The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman

Good and Dead by Jane Langton

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christy

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst

Death By Chick Lit by Lynn Harris

No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Something Rotten by Alan Grantz

Spiderweb For Two by Elizabeth Enright (this lady is a CLASSIC)

Shooting Stars Everywhere by Martina Wildner

Gilda Joyce: Psychic Investigator by Jennifer Allison

Last month I made displays for memoirs, non-fiction, and classics. I noticed MANY of the books I'd put out were checked out. This month I'd like to monitor the books I've selected and see if the display increases their usage. However, with all this privacy protection and avoidance of cow towing to the Patriot Act, I'm not sure we track those things. Looks like I have a little mystery to solve.

I'm on the case and will report my findings...

A Word to the Literary

*warning: this post contains a few racy words that may not be suitable for eyes of all ages*

Chuck Palahniuk's writing sucks. I don't care what anyone says to convince me otherwise - his writing sucks. Oh, but he's so edgy. His writing pushes the limits. Duh! that's his schtick, kinda like it's Sarah Silverman's, and I don't really like her comedy either. How many times can one person say cunt and pussy and make racial jokes before they just aren't funny to people anymore?!?!

I haven't even thought of dear old Chuckie once in the last year. The last I did, it was because a friend suggested I try reading Survivor, his favorite book. "You know, by the guy who wrote Fight Club?" he said, and I was sold. Fight Club is still one of my all time favorite movies. I sometimes look back at my journal from that time to read the 10 pages I wrote about the movie and how it changed my ideologies on life. How could I not read another book by the man who wrote the book this movie was based on? Once I started reading it, I felt like I was reading a tabloid. Everything was sensational, sentences were choppy fragments if they existed at all, and the story was written as if it was going to be directly transposed into a screen play...which I think was good ol' Chuckie's intent when he wrote it. I couldn't even finish the book. And just to see if my theory was right, I looked at my friends' copy of Fight Club and I kid you not - the book is almost WORD FOR WORD the movie. Now a lot of readers have major beefs with books turned movies that do not stay true to the book. But c'mon, a book that is written like a screen play...? This leaves half developed characters, overly embellished scene descriptions and attention to surrounding details, a formulaic storyline, and little to no continual plot. I returned Survivor to my friend and never looked back.

Until Jason and I were at a bar last week and the bartender intoned you-know-who's name to another customer as though she were saying the forbidden name of a god. My hackles rose and my irritation surged as I was forced to listen to her extol the books' virtues and how oh so uber cool Palahnuik is. I in turn told Jason how much I thought his writing sucks. This did not stop me from going home that night to put on Fight Club to help me fall asleep on the couch (Jason later remarked how weird an effect that conversation had on me subconsciously if I came home and watched that movie not even realizing the connection, doi).

Which brings me to current time, tonight, June 15th, father's day 2008. The Celtics are on, tied with the Lakers, and I was reading the New York Times Book Review section. Lo and behold, Mr. Cool Pants came out with a new, snarky, one-word-titled hit one wonder - Snuff . (along with the aforementioned Survivor, Choke, Lullabye, Diary, Rant, and Haunted...wow, so clever, Chuck-o!!). Again, I vent my frustration to Jason and continue to read. only to find Mr. Edgy Mc Edgster has ANOTHER book on ANOTHER list in this NYT Book Review - Survivor. Gadzooks!

I wish I could add some disclaimer to this post...some way of talking about him and his writing without having to mention him...or his writing. Because by mentioning either, I'm calling attention to them and probably convincing someone out there to go out and purchase one of these so called "books," which is the exact effect I want to be having right now. Oh well.

End rant.

What are you reading? (at work edition)

Kelli, 28, is reading Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Kelli was kind enough to share this inside scoop with me - Foer is married to Nicole Krauss, also an interesting author of the book The History of Love. AND both books are or are going to be movies. Who knew!?










Megan, 24, is reading The Stranger by Camus, that wacky French author.









Nell, 24, had a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Having attempted to read this behemoth of a novel - weighing in at 400 pages - three times and failing, I was surprised to see it. Nell passed on the words of a wise man in saying that this book is a little like Moby Dick (which I haven't read, but still got the analogy) - one goes on and on about whale anatomy and ships and the other about motorcycles, but both are taking a close critique of the human psyche. Thanks for tip Nell! I'm going to give it another try.




Nate, 26, "found" a copy of Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino while waiting for a friend at South Station. When asked to elaborate on how and where he "found" this book, he quickly excused himself and left.










Katie, 23, said she is LOVING her book I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak.











The day is cold, wet, and yucky so I decided to poke around the work place for some material. Shockingly, at first I only came up with the first two lovely ladies who had a book with them! And we work at a publishing company people!?! After a little more scrounging, my hope in the literacy of the publishing world was restored.

What Are you Reading?

Lyz, 19 years old, was out in the Common reading World War Z by Max Brooks. If this is not a guide book at the Funky Carter Offices, lemme know 'cuz it should be and I will get a copy for you!










Jodi, 19 years old, was sitting back to back with her pal Lyz, reading The Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kaolgridis.












Howard, 44, was strolling along Summer Street, with Star Wars: Invincible by Troy Denning, tucked under his arm.












Matt, 21, was taking a break doing a little reading of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J K Rowling (only my FAVE one of the series). Don't let him fool you though - he's read books 1 through 7 and is now reading them again...backwards.