detailmuse in 2012

Continued on part two here

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Welcome! I’ll post cover images of the books I’m currently reading here. In the next message, I’ll maintain a list of what I’ve read, with ratings and links to reviews. And in the third, a list of non-book reading -- specifically, some of the ~100 articles I recently culled from my stacks of backlogged New Yorker magazines.

My preferences are mainstream and literary fiction, memoir and science-y nonfiction, workplace settings, and originality. I’ll be getting to some of the long books in my TBRs* this year, the most likely being:

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Life by Keith Richards
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett Finished!
The Stories of Anton Chekhov
Working by Studs Terkel

*See my Books off My Book Shelves Challenge thread

For more about my recent reading, see my Club Read 2010 and Club Read 2011 threads.

(First 50) Books Read in 2012

Fiction
45. Glaciers by Alexis Smith (4) (See review)
43. Castle by David Macaulay (5) (See review)
40. Talk Before Sleep# by Elizabeth Berg (3.5) (See review)
39. The Pillars of the Earth#+ by Ken Follett (4)
36. Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks (2) (See review)
33. Don Quixote+ by Miguel de Cervantes (4)
31. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (4.5)
30. Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction by David Macaulay (4.5)
25. The Elegance of the Hedgehog# by Muriel Barbery (3.5) (See review)
23. Unaccustomed Earth# by Jhumpa Lahiri (5)
21. A Raisin in the Sun# by Lorraine Hansberry (4.5) (See review)
18. The Gift of Fire / On the Head of a Pin by Walter Mosley (2) (See review)
16. Charming Billy# by Alice McDermott (3.5)
15. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (3.5)
8. Stay Awake# by Dan Chaon (4.5) (See review)
6. Mr g: A Novel About the Creation# by Alan Lightman (3.5) (See review)
3. The Thorn and the Blossom# by Theodora Goss (3) (See review)
1. Notes from the Dog# by Gary Paulsen (3.5) (See review)

Nonfiction
49. Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky (3) (See review)
48. Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See by FranCoise Mouly (4) (See review)
46. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (4)
44. The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle (3) (See review)
42. Thinking, Fast and Slow+ by Daniel Kahneman (4.5)
38. Outliers# by Malcolm Gladwell (5)
37. A Broom of One's Own# by Nancy Peacock (3) (See review)
35. Rural Free: A Farmwife's Almanac of Country Living# by Rachel Peden (3)
34. The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker (4)
32. The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout (3)
28. Just Kids by Patti Smith (4) (See review)
27. Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death by Bernd Heinrich (4.5) (See review)
22. Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (3) (See review)
17. The Great American Cereal Book by Marty Gitlin and Topher Ellis (3)
14. 'Tis# by Frank McCourt (4.5)
13. When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams (3) (See review)
12. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen (4) (See review)
11. One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900# by Barron H. Lerner (4) (See review)
10. It's All About the Dress by Randy Fenoli (3.5)
9. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling (2)
7. Quiet# by Susan Cain (4) (See review)
5. Geek Wisdom# ed. by Stephen Segal (4) (See review)
4. The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch (4)

Other
50. Frommer's Washington DC 2012 (5) (See review)
47. She Walks in Beauty# ed. by Caroline Kennedy (4) (See review)
41. Bellevue Literary Review Vol 8 No 1; Spring 2008# (3) (See review)
29. Lonely Planet Discover USA's Best National Parks (3) (See review)
26. Frommer's Las Vegas 2012 (5) (See review)
24. Kitchen Express by Mark Bittman (4)
20. Bellevue Literary Review Vol 11 No 1 Spring 2011# (3.5) (See review)
19. The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook by Judy Gelman and Peter Zheutlin (4)
2. Cupcakes, Cookies, & Pie, Oh My!# by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson (4) (See review)

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# denotes a book on my TBR shelves as of 12/31/11
+ denotes a “long book” (500pp+)

2012 Non-book Reading
Creative Writing by Etgar Keret -- very short story about a man and woman who explore their marriage via the short stories they write

Anatomy of a Tear-Jerker -- how music moves us to emotion

John Cheever’s short story, The Swimmer and a New Yorker podcast and discussion of it

The Unfinished, D. T. Max’s New Yorker eulogy of David Foster Wallace and Wiggle Room, an accompanying excerpt from DFW’s posthumous novel, The Pale King

Colum McCann's "Looking for the Rozziner" -- a personal essay meditation on his dad and himself as journalists and the interplay of work and recreation.

I read the following for an April short story challenge (30 stories in 30 days).
From The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
     1. “The Geranium”
     2. “Judgement Day”
From the anthology, The Plot Thickens
     3. “The Man Next Door” by Mary Higgins Clark
From Granta: Issue 109, on work
     4. “All That Follows” by Jim Crace
From The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber
     5. “The Catbird Seat”
From Say Your'e One of Them by Uwem Akpan
     6. “An Ex-mas Feast”
From Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
     7. “Unaccustomed Earth”
     8. “Hell-Heaven”
     9. “A Choice of Accommodations”
     27. “Only Goodness”
     28. “Nobody’s Business”
     29. “Once in a Lifetime”
     30. “Year’s End”
     31. “Going Ashore”
From The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin
     10. “At the ’Cadian Ball”
     11. “The Storm”
     12. “The Story of an Hour”
From Stories of Anton Chekhov
     13. “The Death of a Clerk”
     14. “Small Fry”
From McSweeney's 29
     15. “Labyrinth” by Joyce Carol Oates
From the Bellevue Literary Review Spring 2011
     16. “But Now Am Found” by Patti Horvath
     17. “Winston Speaks” by Jill Caputo
     18. “Happiness Advocates” by B.G. Firmani
     19. “Crazyland” by Ruth Schemmel
     20. “Odd a Sea’s Wake” by Nicholas Patrick Martin
     21. “Condensed Milk” by Danielle Eigner
     22. “The Day of the Surgical Colloquium Hosted by the Far East Rand Hospital” by Gill Schierhout
     23. “Minivan” by Anne Valente
     24. “Moab” by Jennifer Lee
     25. “Hamlet” by Benjamin Parzybok
     26. “Sisters of Mercy” by Joan Leegant
(#27-31 listed above under Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

2012 Non Reading
Video of Martin Hanczyc’s TED Talk about the continuum of life and not-life

Video of David Christian’s TED Talk on Big History -- the origin and history of our universe, which I imagine to be a snapshot of his book, Maps of Time

First! Nice chunkster list. I was astonished by some of what I learned in The Great Influenza. I've heard great things about The Emperor of All Maladies too.

Little Women is one of my childhood favorites. It is on my mind to reread it one of these days. Hope you enjoy it. Will be interested in your reaction to Pillars of the Earth. That book is so heavy I actually cut it in half! It bears the dubious distinction of being the only book I ever mutilated. But it was for a good cause because it was excellent.

ETA - I just popped over to your profile page and see that you just added Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem. I just acquired it as well. Have always thought her writing style was amazing.

Looking forward to your 2012 reading dm.

Studs Terkel was a favourite of mine many years back, when he was still alive. A fabulous recorder of lives and experiences.

>4 labfs39: First!
hmm there ought to be a prize for that! You expressed interest in Secret Letters from 0 to 10 -- I'll likely pass my copy on to the library but I'd love to send it to you instead. Leave me a PM if you're interested.

>5 Poquette:, 6 welcome!
What a good idea, to tear the book into sections, for me the alternative is to sit upright at a table :( Not sure I'll be able to deface Infinite Jest, though it needs physical accessibility even more. I came to Didion through her two recent memoirs, loved their bald vulnerability and that there's so much else, off the page.

zeno, your "many years back" reminds me of a fight 30+ years ago with a boyfriend who didn't produce the only gift I'd requested, a Terkel book. I feel lucky to be in Chicago, where Terkel still resonates.

I wrapped up 2011 and posted some stats and my top reads on my old thread … or see it here, among everyone’s 2011 recaps.

Sort of off-topic:

My interests have been the biological sciences, and last year Peter Adolphsen’s Machine captured me with the fine line between life and not-life:

Death exists, but only in a practical, macroscopic sense. Biologically one cannot distinguish between life and death; the transition is a continuum. {...} The problem of defining death mirrors a corresponding difficulty with the definition of life: a living organism is formed of non-living material, organized so it can absorb energy to maintain its system, and death is thus the irreversible cessation of these functions.

This year, I’m catching up on Ted Talks, and Martin Hanczyc gets incredibly close-up on that continuum (15-min video).

detailmuse, interesting quote, but I am not sure what it means for death to exist only in a macroscopic sense. If you were to chemically define the components of a body after death, they would be very different -- less oxygen, less ATP etc. etc. Perhaps I am missing the point? I tend to do that...

k4

>11 krazy4katz: It's confounding, yes? I took it to mean that we know life (in the general sense) when we see it, can define it ("absorb energy to maintain its system"), but are far from knowing why a bunch of chemicals switch from exhausting interactions to supporting interactions and vice versa. Martin Hanczyc gets closer and theorizes the origin of life.

1. Notes from the Dog by Gary Paulsen

How does a 14-year-old guy transform from a loner whose goal is to speak to fewer than a dozen people total over the summer -- to realizing that “the more people who were in our yard, the better it looked”?

For Finn, it happens with the help of his border collie Dylan, his confident buddy Matthew (whose parents are divorcing and who’s living with Finn and Finn’s dad because “he wasn’t going to learn how to do the shared custody thing on his summer vacation”) … and Johanna, a twentysomething who’s house-sitting next door and undergoing chemo for breast cancer.

A light, sweet YA novella.

#10 I read your post about Adolfsen's book and loved the quote. When he writes Biologically one cannot distinguish between life and death; the transition is a continuum. two thoughts leaped to mind, both rather off tangent. I was reminded of The Wind in the Door, which completely fascinated me when I was about thirteen. Especially the idea that the balance of life could come down to the fate of a single cell or mitochondria within a cell. The second thought was how cells live and die, but the organism continues to live midst all this creation and death. Like with dead skin cells sloughing off all the time to be replaced by more. When more and more of an organism's cells (or I like to think, systems) degenerate, the organism begins to fail, yet new cells are still being created and the system continues to work it's way along the continuum. There is the whole cycle of life concept and how old cells become the building books of new. But even from the brief quote you give, I think the author is going some place much more subtle. I would love to hear more about it as you go along, since I won't be reading the book any time soon.

I realize my thoughts will seem incredibly simplistic (and probably wrong!) to someone more knowledgeable (like yourself), but I did want to let you know that I found the passage thought-provoking and that I'm still thinking about it.

>14 labfs39: cells live and die, but the organism continues to live midst all this creation and death
I take this so for granted, feels like it needs some breathing space. Cells, civilizations, …

I knew A Wrinkle in Time was one to catch up on, now A Wind in the Door is another. And lol it’s curiosity I have, and in the process an overwhelm of not-knowledgeability, (oh well).

P.S. edited to add: I do have another by Adolphsen in my TBRs, probably equally intriguing but I think more mystical than biological.

I read A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet as a trilogy when I was a tween. Now I see that these books are now listed as part of a "Time Quintet" series. I have not read 4 and 5.

The Thorn and the Blossom by Theodora Goss is a contemporary love story. It opens as an American student at Oxford, on holiday in medieval-rich Cornwall, strolls into a bookshop and meets the son of the owner. Or, seen from the opposite perspective: a young man, enjoying a pint in a pub, sees a woman enter his father’s bookshop and ducks back into the shop to meet her.

I mention “opposite perspective” because it’s part of the originality of this novella -- actually two short stories, one told in the man’s perspective and one in the woman’s; begin with whichever and then read the other. More originality comes from each story being printed on one side of a long length of paper that is folded, accordion style, and bound into a hardcover and stored in a slipcase. A delightful concept and physical presentation.

The story itself is okay -- little story overall, then overly parallel and repetitious between the two narratives. But when considered in light of the medieval stories of Gawan, Elowen and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that Goss summarizes, there is an homage and a somewhat satisfying echo in the contemporary story.

The book looks, and sounds, beautiful. Do you remember Dictionary of the Khazars? It made a stir when it was translated into English because there is female and a male edition. I only have the female addition, so I never did get to find out how they differed.

I am intrigued by The Thorn and the Blossom. Thanks for the review.

>18 labfs39: - The Dictionary of the Khazars is on the pile but I haven't read it yet. This site has the two differing passages from the male and female editions (can't vouch for it though).

http://stason.org/TULARC/education-books/find-books/14-What-is-the-difference-be...

Thank you for the link, Ms Bat. Still I think I need to read the books in order to fully understand. Which version of the book do you have?

I have the male version. Maybe we can compare sometime? I'm planning to read it soon-ish for the Reading Globally Balkans theme.

The Thorn and the Blossom sounds interesting - I always like books with different versions of the same story.

>Lisa, DieFledermaus -- new to me and very interesting, The Dictionary of the Khazars. Wikipedia and Amazon both say the male/female editions differ in only "a critical passage in a single paragraph" and "seventeen crucial lines," respectively, which makes your linked excerpt fascinating (and btw beautiful). I enjoy experimental fiction and am eager to follow your conversation.

>bas -- I read the woman's story and then stopped to read your thread and some other background about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight before reading the man's story. I think I overthought it :) and will be interested in your comments if you get to it.

Cupcakes, Cookies, & Pie, Oh My!, one of the most creative books I’ve seen, is full of dessert-decorating ideas developed by Karen Tack (a food stylist known as “the cake whisperer”) and photographed by Alan Richardson.

To be clear, it’s not a cookbook -- the projects begin with store-bought goodies (think pound cakes, packaged cookies, frostings and candies; you could substitute home-baked goods for some basic items). But that doesn’t mean the projects are simple or quick, in fact they’re complex and laborious, requiring the goodies to be transformed by rolling, cutting, melting, mixing, etc., and then assembling. To give an example, the sheep project featured on the cover involves:

-- cutting slices of Sara Lee pound cake to form the sheep bodies, dipping the leg portions into melted frosting and setting it to dry, then covering the rest of the body with regular frosting onto which you stick mini-marshmallows (some of which have been shaken with cocoa powder for the black sheep);
-- cutting Milano cookies to form the sheep heads, coating them with melted frosting as above, attaching the heads to the bodies and then decorating the faces with piped frosting, mini-chocolate chips, decors and Jelly Belly beans;
-- then there’s still the pretzel-fences and patches of coconut-grass to make.

The directions are extremely well written and are presented with a mise en place methodology that gets all of the components prepared and in stand-by mode before beginning the overall assembly. And there’s meticulous clarity, for example (my emphasis added): “For the eyes, pipe two dots of vanilla frosting onto the cookie. For the pupils, attach the mini chocolate chips, flat side out, to the frosting.” In most projects, there’s room to get children involved in at least one step. Each project includes a beautiful photograph of the finished product; most have additional photos showing the techniques of interim steps.

My favorites are the rainbow-trout cupcakes that have fish scales made of M&Ms and swim in waves of blue and green Jell-O; high-fashion shoes composed of decorated cupcake fronts, tapered and coated (in melted frosting, as above) graham-cracker soles and Pirouette-stiletto heels; cupcakes baked in tall popover molds and decorated to look like soda-fountain drinks; and a pumpkin pie (one of the few actual recipes in the book) decorated with colored leaves and a rake made from extra pie dough. My only quibble is that most of the projects end up being mostly decoration (i.e. sugar overload).

These projects are special-occasion treats, not everyday, and they’re WOW-worthy -- hugely fun and inspirational to browse through and then destined to be the talk of a birthday party, shower or family gathering.

Geek Wisdom ed. by Stephen Segal

A nicely put together collection of approximately 200 quotations from mid- to late 20th-century popular culture (science-fiction/fantasy books, film, television and video games), each accompanied by a short essay that illuminates the quotation’s philosophical (“sacred”) teaching, and some footnoted with a bit of playful trivia about the quotation’s source.

For example:

It’s people. Soylent green is made out of people. --Detective Thorn in the 1973 film Soylent Green

suggests that, whether it's a food supplement made from the recently dead or “children in sweatshops or migrants working under substandard conditions, the lifestyle of comfort that we likely take for granted has been built on a foundation of systemic dehumanization. It’s made out of people.”

Or:

Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible. --Rod Serling

discusses geeks’ interest in other worlds -- maybe to escape personal dissatisfaction or maybe to daydream an increase in human satisfaction.

A few of the quotes were totally new to me and quite a few of the sources were relatively unfamiliar, so I wanted more background and context. But the true-geek audience won’t need that and besides, it’s not the purpose of this collection -- the philosophy is. And here, the philosophy is individually encouraging and societally positive.

Geek Wisdom sounds very interesting, detailmuse. I suspect that I may fall under the true-geek audience ;-)

BTW, the editor has an... unfortunate name. Hopefully, he doesn't take too much ribbing for it.

Two very different books, but both sound like fascinating pick-up and put-down books. Although I'm not much of a gourmand, I would like to look at the pictures in Cupcakes, Cookies, & Pie, Oh My! just to admire the creativity involved. I want to see the rainbow trout swimming up a river of jello!

>26 dmsteyn: dewald LOL! on both comments :)

>27 labfs39: lisa that's a to-do for me too, with her first two books next time I'm at the library. Very fun.

Read some recent New Yorkers and enjoyed Etgar Keret's fiction in the January 2 issue -- Creative Writing, about a woman and man who explore their marriage via the short stories they write. Must get one of Keret's collections of flash fiction.

Finally catching up here. Wondering how Little Women is progressing. And, I love that you're posing your "non-book" reading this year.

>24 detailmuse: - A very entertaining review. I love looking at those kinds of books in the store. Do you have any plans to make something from the book?

I enjoyed Etgar Keret's The Nimrod Flipout, a collection of short stories. They are definitely odd - not quite sci-fi, not metafiction, but lots of fun.

>dan, ah Little Women, so patient up there in msg#1 and on the table beside me. It's not a re-read, so I didn't come to it with warmth but it's developing. Delightful. (Despite most characters and chapters conveying Lessons with a capital L.) I wanted immersion in my long books yet I've been breaking this up with lots of short, clever reads and I think I will reverse that this weekend.

>DieFledermaus, my constraints are a small kitchen and my having gotten almost back to fighting weight in large part by limiting the sugar and processed foods those projects involve. That said, one of them will be my pick the next time I need an event-worthy treat -- probably one of the cupcake projects starting with a recipe from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes, which also serves dozens. I'll post a photo.

Mr g by Alan Lightman is God’s playful memoir of cosmology.

It opens as he wakes from a nap, bored in the Void and yet troubled by the potential of his power.

{T}hat was the problem. Unlimited possibilities bring unlimited indecision. When I thought about this particular creation or that, uncertain about how each thing would turn out, I grew anxious and went back to sleep. But at a particular moment, I managed … if not exactly to sweep aside my doubts, at least to take a chance.

So he creates time and space, then forms energy into universes -- sometimes evoking in my mind the care of blown glass, sometimes the volume and rapidity of a bubble machine. He’s on a learning curve, destroying damaged universes in frustration and watching others self-destruct. But when he defines some “organizing principles” (i.e. physics) and inserts them into a new universe, things evolve into familiar forms of matter, life and consciousness, which God watches with special interest.

The narrative pulls close enough to offer lessons in math and science; readers unfamiliar with specifics of the big bang will find the novel fascinating, revelatory and accessible. And it pulls back far enough to offer fantasy (God playfully interacting in the Void with an aunt and uncle) and philosophy (debating free will and determinism, consciousness and immortality, with a demon-like character). Lightman brings nothing new to the science or philosophy, but the narration is imaginative -- evocative language and the personality of a curious and contemplative creator.

Mr. g sounds delightful. It's going on my wish list. I just finished reading Einstein's Dreams by Lightman, and it sounds from your review as though the two books share the imaginative, evocative language and speculations.

lol! I was just browsing my library to offer some suggestions for the dreamy/fable-y/quirky novellas you asked about on your thread. I'll post them over there. Mr g is one, though I liked it less than Einstein's Dreams -- the voice was imaginative but I missed the brain-popping speculation that Lightman offered in Einstein's Dreams.

Reading Mr g reminded me how much I want to get to the LT-lauded Maps of Time by David Christian. For now, it's still in my wishlist but I did watch Christian’s TED Talk on Big History, which I imagine to be a snapshot of his book.

>37 detailmuse: – Fascinating talk! I had not heard of TED but I now have bookmarked it. Thanks!

I saw a short review of Mr. g in the NY Times and thought it sounded interesting so glad to see you liked it also. Sounds like it will be a fun read.

So, if I had to chose one (or start with one), I should read Einsteins' Dreams ?

Maps of Time ... I just need time for it...

>40 dchaikin: dan, for me an easy choice: Einstein's Dreams. I've never been a re-reader but it's one of a growing number (suddenly) that I want to read again.

I came across Maps of Time on one of the history thread a couple of years ago for the first time (it seems to have made minimal impact on this side of the Atlantic, so I hadn't heard of it previously). Maybe one for a groupo read at some stage?

ETA: meant 'group' read, but actually groupo read sounds more fun....

Z - I'm interested if you're willing to wait till 2013. Note that I've come comments that the book takes a year to read.

42 - yes happy to wait until 2013 dan - particularly if we move on to the NT & Koran this year.

Interested MJ?

Very interested! Thanks for suggesting it. 2013 would be great.

Hi, MJ! Just starting up with my 2012 thread. My New Year's resolution to spend fewer hours on my iPad while watching TV, and trade it for more time reading books and conversing with my LT friends, is getting off to a slow start. I'm committed, though, because I've truly missed people, not to mention all the good book talk.

I love TED talks! Such interesting topics and everybody is just so darn inspiring. My ADD brain can waste hundreds of hours exploring the net--I know I'm addicted--but I just love the access to so many intelligent, creative people on the web. I don't even have to get out of my pajamas!

Maps of Time plays something of a central role in the History at 30,000 feet group.

Robert

>46 bonniebooks: glad to see you back bonnie! I'll head over to your thread.

>47 Mr.Durick: thanks Robert, that group warrants perusing! -- the first thread I read included this scale of the universe.

#48 - That was worth a look.

I'll bring up this group read idea again later in the year and see what kind of interest there is.

That sounds great Dan.

Well I've set aside Little Women for now. Just set it aside, just for now. It's very pleasant and readable but I just wasn't picking it up ... and then not picking up much else either. So I've turned to two others, each twice as long -- The Pillars of the Earth and Don Quixote. I took someone's suggestion to physically cut Pillars apart and it's easy to handle now. And I'm listening to DQ on audio during my dawn walks for coffee; figure its 35 CDs will see me through to spring. The reader is merry and I'm looking forward to it. To both of them; and I'm already noticing some similarities between them so they may make a good pairing.

I enjoy every Saturday’s Review section in the Wall Street Journal -- short and longer articles on so many art/science/business topics that I’ll just say it’s about ideas.

Two from last weekend have stayed with me. One is Anatomy of a Tear-Jerker -- that science says music moves us to emotion through accumulated bits of dissonance which create passages of tension and release that increase dopamine levels in the brain’s pleasure/reward areas. Very interesting, but I hope composers won’t go chasing dopamine like the culinary engineers who now layer fat/salt/sugar/texture to create hyper-palatable foods.

Then I enjoyed Kaui Hart Hemmings’ primer on setting in fiction -- that it should be “inextricable from the novel itself” … “should feel necessary” … “should infiltrate the plot.” She references John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” as a particularly good use of setting -- a man swims home via his neighbor’s swimming pools -- and so I read it online and loved it. I’m hooked actually; also listened to a New Yorker podcast of it and now I have the Burt Lancaster film to watch. Must read more by Cheever.

Sheepishly admitting that I was probably the one who suggested cutting Pillars of the Earth in half. It worked for me, and I'm glad it's working for you!

I listened to Don Quixote on tape many years ago, back when Books on Tape was still in business. The reader was a delightful Englishman named David Case. Is that by any chance the same reader on your audio version? If so, I'm sure you're in for a treat.

>52 Poquette: It's you on both counts! -- the cutting (I looked for your post but couldn't find it and didn't want to defame you!) and your mention of audio on Dewald's thread. I separated Pillars into fourths, I can wrap the softcover back around the narrow spine and hold it in one hand. About DQ, I have the Grossman translation, read by George Guidall -- lively, with hints of a Spanish accent and a smile.

I remember reading how some notes are perceived as "sad" by our brains, while others feel "happy". That's a fascinating concept to me. I know that my taste in music generally runs toward "sad". Hmmm... I have this bias against the WSJ (I loves me my "liberal media"), but I've been reading (via Flipboard) some good investigating journalism coming from there lately, so I'm going to have to do some investigating myself. Sounds like I'll have to borrow my friend's Saturday paper at the very least. Thanks for the links.

Well, I always said I'd rather be infamous than famous! Looks like I've succeeded! George Guidall is a wonderful reader. I especially remember his reading of a thriller by Thomas H. Cook called The Chatham School Affair. Haven't thought of Cook for ages. Does anybody read him anymore?

Enjoyed the wsj article "Anatomy of a tear-jerker" linked in #51

51 - Great article (Anatomy of a tear-jerker). I sent it to my musician friend who is now using it to try to convince me to dig this The Bad Plus cover of Comfortably Numb because it's doing the same things they talk about in the article. The song's growing on me, but it gets kind of wacky and atonal at the end, and my non-musician brain has trouble processing it.

>54 bonniebooks: bonnie I don't love much media these days, too noisy and vacuous*, so was happy to discover that section. I also like its mention each week of an illustrated/coffee-table book (or thematic grouping of them) -- often oldies, often available through my library.

>55 Poquette: suzanne I confess to vetting Guidall as much as the translation before committing to 40+ hours! His list includes many I've been wanting to read.

>56 dchaikin:, 57 dan and jane, ack Comfortably Numb keeps me anxious the whole way! I did feel some release at the first chorus but not after, maybe not enough lulling? Not Ready to Make Nice by the Dixie Chicks gets me every time, a little at the first chorus and them major at the buildup to the next chorus and when the strings come in.

*speaking of which:


Still smiling months later at Tina Fey's Bossypants, I listened to audio of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling, writer/actress on The Office. Vacuous. I probably over-rated it at two stars, but downgrading it now would only bump it to the top of my recent reads and keep it visible even longer on my profile page.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Today I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country. It was absorbing, it was exciting, and I got to meet a lot of interesting people whom I never would have known otherwise. But I was always an expatriate.

So Cain summarizes her experience as an introvert among extroverts, and likely the experience of many of the hundred-million-plus American introverts -- a third to a half of the US population -- whom extroverts deem to have “a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.”

Her book is part history, documenting America’s move from the farm to the city and from an introverted “culture of character,” intelligence and creativity to an extroverted “culture of personality.” It’s part biology and psychology, exploring genes and environment toward a thesis that the amygdalas of introverts’ brains make them threat-avoidant while extroverts’ make them reward-seeking: “introverts like people they meet in friendly contexts; extroverts prefer those they compete with.” And it’s part how-to, with tactics to better involve introverts in the workplace, tips for parents raising introverts, and rehab (my word) for “expatriated” adults (“{T}hink back to what you loved to do when you were a child {…} pay attention to the work you gravitate to {...and} what you envy”).

Written accessibly and for a wide audience, the book will be revelatory to extroverts who are confounded by quiet people. And for quiet people (like me, also formerly a workplace expat), the book feels like coming home.

While adding this to my wishlist, amazon somehow found two books, this one and Introverts Suck: Why You Need to Be More Gregarious, Assertive and Outgoing...and How To Do It!

LOL!

Yes, why be an introvert when you can become an extrovert?

Especially when it can be done in 10 easy minutes.

lol all! Maybe Adam Mansbach will publish a reply: Shut the F**k Up!

Cain’s book emphasizes the intellect and creativity lost when introverts are dismissed.

It also recognizes the strengths of extroverts. Unfortunately, extroverts seem honestly unable to fathom strengths in introversion, and unable to recognize the impairment in that lack of perspective.

Stay Awake by Dan Chaon (my latest Early Reviewer snag) collects a dozen short stories about (mostly) Midwest men who are emotionally, physically and/or psychologically displaced after (sometimes years after) the loss of parents, spouse or child. The bleak settings and just-getting-by characters remind me of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s American Salvage, although 10 of the 12 stories here are in the male point of view. In fact, this is the first book I’ve been moved to tag “men” (i.e. about men); I can think of many more now to tag that way, yet wasn’t moved to do so until this collection.

In the first story, a man estranged from the son from his first marriage begins worrying about his son from his second. In the last, three sisters riff on the night their father came home to kill their mother and them. The stories in between open with an adult son who continues to live in his childhood home where his parents committed suicide; a couple with newborn conjoined twins; another having suffered a miscarriage; a man and the young son of his meth-addict girlfriend; a woman who keeps company with her ex-husband who suffered a debilitating brain injury some years after their divorce; a man whose estranged eldest sister starts calling him on the phone.

The stories are solemn, reflective, even sad. One is nearly horror and another is mystical/supernatural. Many have surprising or ambiguous endings. I was engaged enough to finish every story and fully loved three-fourths of them. I’m looking forward to more by Chaon -- first up, his previous collection, Among the Missing.

Wow, those sound like some tough stories to listen to. Makes me want to go read Chaon's biography. I've read two books by Chaon and liked one way more than the other.

I loved the stories. Browsing around about him somewhere, I read that he started writing Await Your Reply almost as short stories, so after I get to his other collection of stories, that's the novel I'll read first (crossing my fingers it's the one you liked better). His wife died, fairly recently; but he's been writing the stories in Stay Awake for many years so I think his interest in loss is not recent.

In memory* of (what would have been) David Foster Wallace’s 50th birthday last week, I located my unread 3/9/2009 New Yorker and read D. T. Max’s eulogy of sorts, “The Unfinished”.

It put me decidedly in the “yes” camp of “do I want to read The Pale King”, DFW’s unfinished, posthumously published novel about boredom. I love workplace fiction and I respect boredom -- I think it leads to creativity and I fear for the current culture’s intolerance of it. So I dived into Wiggle Room, the accompanying excerpt from the novel, and all I’ll say is it’s only a slight exaggeration to characterize the four-page excerpt as a single paragraph … and add that when David Foster Wallace wants to evoke boredom, watch out.

*prompted by this collection of DFW media

>58 detailmuse: I'm still smiling over the audio of Bossypants also. I think I listened to it at least three times.

Did you have comments on the drunk driving book...did I miss them? I think it's easy to forget the times before Mothers Against Drunk Driving changed everything (we have watched the first four seasons of "Mad Men" this winter and oh, what a reminder!)

>68 detailmuse:

Generally, I am very critical about (and basically a bit fed up with) postmodern fiction, but I found The Pale King a very interesting "piece of prose," that is to avoid the word novel. As an experienced reader, I am sure you will be able to appreciate the fragmentary nature of the work for what it is.

I haven't followed, but would be able to understand a debate about the publication of such a work. On the other hand, many unfinished works of a great number of other authors have been published, or even "finished" by other authors. That is not the case with The Pale King. I had the feeling of reading a very authentic work, although, especially with very short fragments, I can imagine that they could have been included in a different order.

I think a great part of the debate is about whether this is or isn't the structure David Foster Wallace would have preferred. I think one of the (possible) tenets of postmodern literature is that the structure is subordinate to the content, and that varied structuring may contribute to varied reading experience, see for example B.S. Johnson's The Unfortunates. (Although there are remarkably few followers.)

I think "to read" or "not to read" is not really a debate. One of the great features of LT and Club Read is that we are all influenced by each other's reviews, but go on and read the books for ourselves.

>69 avaland: hi avaland, comments probably this weekend.

I’ve been glued to Mad Men since halfway through the first season so this looooong hiatus has been difficult! btw did you know Newsweek will publish a ’60s-themed issue (including ads) timed with this season’s premiere?

>70 edwinbcn: edwin intriguing comments, particularly about writer/editor/ghostwriter and narrative sequence. The Unfortunates interests me; have you read Geoff Ryman’s 253? (still in my TBRs) -- originally (and still) an online hyperlinked novel where readers create different experiences by veering among the vignettes in different orders.

I browsed your reviews to find The Pale King and !!! the reviewing you’re doing, wonderful. Illness as a Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors caught my interest; its concept of “blaming” reminds me of the evolution of outrage at drunk drivers to drunk driving in One for the Road (which avaland asked about, above).

One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900 by Barron Lerner describes how the US has “become a society that concurrently condemns and tolerates drunk driving.”

Beginning with the first automobiles, worsening after the repeal of Prohibition and as driving expanded to the suburbs and interstate highways, then improving a bit through education, law enforcement and societal pressure -- Lerner now sees drunk driving at a stand-still: “{D}espite decades of anti-drunk driving messages, millions of arrests, there are still more than 80 million car trips taken annually by impaired drivers {and 15,000 American deaths every year, deemed an ‘irreducible minimum’}.”

I recall the 1980s activism of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and, familiar with the “condemn” side of the debate, was drawn to this book out of curiosity about the “tolerate” side. I have a friend whose father was an old-time milkman with a delivery route and a big drinking problem; his lament that his dad losing his driver’s license would have meant losing the family livelihood strikes me but doesn’t sway me. (Lerner notes that taxi driver Hugh D. Gravitt had earned 20+ tickets, including for drunk driving, over the five years prior to his fatal strike of Margaret Mitchell while he drove drunk.) Drunk driving as a foolish mistake, with its there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I lament, also strikes but doesn’t sway. Excessive drinking as fun, risky and manly doesn’t even strike. On the other hand, I was interested to learn how often anti-drunk driving forces were characterized as neo-Prohibitionist, and law-enforcement activities as anti-Libertarian and in violation of the constitutional protections against self-incrimination and unreasonable searches. Yet as Lerner quotes bioethicist Bonnie Steinbock, “It is not unreasonable to require people to undergo great inconvenience to avoid killing other people.”

One for the Road is readable and fascinating; still, it’s an academic (vs. “popular”) book. Lerner intricately documents a complex history: of a lax enforcement mentality and a lax enforcement ability (that was eventually tightened when science, via the Drunkometer and Breathalyzer, correlated blood-alcohol concentrations (BAC) with levels of impairment); of political factors like inexpensive (low-tax) alcohol, alcohol advertising and industry lobbying; of inadequate public transportation; of the phenomenal awareness and change made possible through grass-roots activism (including MADD). Over the 20th-century, legal BACs were reduced nationwide from 0.15% to 0.1% and finally to 0.08%; still, it’s widely accepted that impairment presents at 0.05% and most industrialized nations allow 0.05% or even 0.03%.

Lerner also acknowledges distracted driving, including a 1997 study that correlates cell-phone use to a 0.08% BAC. He discusses efforts to make cars more protective in the event of a crash, and to control the car rather than the driver, e.g. via ignition interlocks. In the end, he likens drinking to smoking in that further reduction may finally come only from a combination of legal enforcement and social marginalization.

One for the road; Drunk Driving since 1900 Interesting stuff. here in France a new law is being introduced that says you must have a breathalyser in the car with you at all times and of course must use it if you have been drinking.

I don't drink and drive now, but that is probably only because I am older and life seems more precious. Strict laws against drunk driving certainly makes sense and you probably only need to ask a victim of a drunk driver to bring the point home.

The US will likely mandate back-up cameras on new cars sold; I'd rather mandate Breathalyzer ignitions. Illinois requires first-time offenders convicted of drunk driving to install a device and prove sobriety before starting the car (and then re-prove it periodically during the trip). But there were four high-speed crashes in February alone by drunk drivers going the wrong direction on Chicago expressways.

Interesting conversations; I'm sorry I'm playing catch up. I am listening to Quiet on audio currently and finding parts fascinating, such as the author's visit to HBS and her anecdotes about evangelism and introversion. I wish I were reading the book so I could read the bibliography- the library's print copies are on enormous hold lists. I get alarmed when the author cites articles in The Atlantic for research data.

It's definitely a "popular" treatment with anecdotes and memoir-ish passages. My copy is an arc with no indication of a bibliography to come; if I recall, the endnotes I read referenced psychology texts/journals, biographies and other popular treatments.

Sort of off-topic about The Atlantic, it seems a trend to expand articles into book-length treatments (Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows comes to mind) -- some excellent information, then more so padded than expanded.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen

After the middle ages comes the renaissance.

Through 15 personal essays, Quindlen explores the shifts women make at contemporary midlife -- in relationships (long-term marriage, aging parents and adult children, girlfriends); in self (appearance, belongings, faith); and in perspective (as retirement, decline and loss loom).

It’s a very readable exploration with a very likeable guide, the observations about aging and feminism an homage to previous generations and reminiscent of Nora Ephron and Ayelet Waldman. I’d characterize it much more as a place of shared recognition than new insight, although I found the following revelatory about men and women:

Sometimes I think women, freed from societal expectations and roles, age into confidence, while men, losing the power, status, and strength of youth, age out of it.

A recommended comfort read.

78 - Sounds interesting. I'm going to put that on my wish list, but with reservations. I haven't been that thrilled with other books by her. But willing to try again!

Nor I, evidenced by the fact that I just looked through her LT author page and recall reading two novels and two nonfictions yet none are in my library here. Pretty sure one is still on my shelves. Now my periodic conundrum: do I enter pre-LT books I'm "meh" about? My usual answer is no...

Great quote in your Quindlen review. I've enjoyed Quindlen's essays, but the one book I read from her was the perfect example of a book that is...OK. (it was One True Thing, which was later made into a movie)

#80 - I enter them all, any books I can remember. :) But then I also enter books from the library that I didn't get around to reading, because it reminds me that I might want to go get them again (or, just as importantly, that I might not).

One True Thing for me too (I see it tagged "euthanasia"; how can I not remember that aspect?!), and her next, Black and Blue. Then I guess I gave up except for Newsweek columns. Regarding pre-LT books, I do think about perusing lists or some other way to recall books I've read. Then it seems a huge job, and my tastes have changed. But it's so satisfying every time I remember some forgotten read.

>73 detailmuse: -75 Very interesting, thanks. I approach from the law enforcement angle, having sent way too many ambulances and medical examiners to accident scenes involving drunk drivers (in an interesting note, one of the EMTs first trained to became one as part of his community service for a drunk driving charge he attained as an older teen (drunk -> accident -> death of best friend who was also drunk).

>78 detailmuse: Oh, the Quindlen sounds good. Waldman...isn't she too young to write a book like that? She can't be more than mid-40s... Very interesting quote.

>80 detailmuse:, 81, 82 How interesting, I've not thought to enter books I remember reading. It would be so incomplete. I often have feelings of dejá vu around older books...

>83 avaland: I kept thinking of Waldman's feminism and other aspects from her Bad Mother. I think I needed a "respectively" after the "aging and feminism ... Ephron and Waldman" above.

>80 detailmuse:-83: I periodically remember a batch of books I've read in the past and add them, in some cases for better or for worse. Those are what appear in my 'books read once upon a time' collection. It is far from complete, and only sporadically addressed with any real zeal.

The way I look at it, they all form part of the rich tapestry (imagine that being said drily & sarcastically, but with hints of underlying sincerity). :-)

Where I'm torn even on that is whether to add children's books I remember reading from (coughs & splutters a number) years ago.

rich tapestry
definitely sincerity! The farther the outlier, the richer and more complex the whole.

Your collection is a good idea. I'm interested in childhood reads, lots of nostalgia there.

For an April short story challenge* going on over here, I’m planning to sample from some anthologies/collections in my TBRs, most likely:

Uwem Akpan, something from Say You're One of Them
Chekhov, something from Stories of Anton Chekhov
Kate Chopin, something from The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction
Jhumpa Lahiri, something from Unaccustomed Earth
Flannery O’Connor, something from The Complete Stories
James Thurber, something from The Thurber Carnival
Something from an issue of the Bellevue Literary Review
Something from an issue of McSweeney’s
Something from Granta issue 109, where the theme is “work”
Something from the mystery anthology, The Plot Thickens

*the essential challenge: read 30 short stories over the 30 days of April. Variants include toughening it to 30 stories by 30 different writers, or easing it to 10 stories, or 10 by 10 different writers. I’m beginning with the “10 x 10” outlined above and hoping to expand.

The short story challenge is going to be great fun. You have some interesting possibilities there.

Short stories:

From The Complete Stories, I read Flannery O’Connor’s first published story, "The Geranium" -- about Old Dudley, a Southern white man yanked up to New York City to live with his daughter and next door to a black couple. Lovely and heartbreaking.

Then I couldn’t resist following it with O'Connor's final published story, "Judgement Day" -- a reworking of "The Geranium" where an old man plans his return to the South. Smoother and angrier.

Catching up with recent reads, first some comments about my little Irish immersion around St. Patrick’s Day:

  

'Tis is Frank McCourt’s memoir about his 1949 immigration from Ireland and then adulthood in the bars, loading docks and classrooms of New York City. I bought it in 2004, immediately after finishing Angela's Ashes, but only read it now -- and I’m glad I waited because I think anything would have suffered in comparison with AA (as I think my 2005 reading of McCourt’s third memoir, Teacher Man, did). Although McCourt’s childhood innocence is gone here, his in-the-moment narration remains compelling -- filled with energy, phenomenal curiosity and telling detail. Loved it; so sad there’s no more.

Brooklyn is Colm Toibin’s novel about a young woman whose mother and sister ship her from Ireland to work in New York City. She’s the age of McCourt and the year is the same as in 'Tis above, so it was interesting to see parallels. The novel was a pleasant exploration but I was disappointed with misdirection and conveniences in the plotting; am not sure I’d read more by Toibin.

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott is a gently crafted mosaic of Irish lost love, alcoholism and family on Long Island, New York, narrated in Great Gatsby style by a peripheral character. It’s the third novel I've read by McDermott -- none particularly memorable yet all pleasant and I’d read more.

ha, I love me a fresh towel, and was interested to see this in two of the books:

From 'Tis, where McCourt boarded in a house of twelve men:
There was one bathroom for all of us, bring your own soap, and two long narrow towels that used to be white. Each towel had a black line to separate the top from the bottom and that was how you were supposed to use them. There was a handwritten sign on the wall telling you the top was for anything above your navel and the bottom for anything below, signed J. Logan, prop. The towels were changed every two weeks though there were always fights between the boarders who were careful about the rules and the ones who might have had a drink.

And from Charming Billy:
They reached their towels and in an economy of terry cloth that they had learned in the service dried face and arms and shoulders with one end, chest and legs with the other…

No word from young Eilis in Brooklyn about her towels but I bet they were fresh(er)...

When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams

In Mormon culture, women are expected to do two things: keep a journal and bear children. Both gestures are a participatory bow to the past and the future.

So what did it mean when Williams -- a writer, "in love with words" -- took custody of her mother's 35 journals upon her death … and found them all completely empty? Williams reels from the discovery ("her blank journals became a second death"), and 24 years later, processes it via vignettes here.

I should have loved this book. I'm the age of the author and of her mother when she died. My own mother recently died. I love explorations of voice and stillness, I love narratives structured as vignettes. So I began slowly, savoring the passages and giving them time to arrange themselves. When little seemed to accumulate, I read them without breaks.

In the end, I'm left adrift. There's evocative language; family, feminism and nature; being heard and being silenced. But while I was interested enough to finish, I never much grew to understand or care about Williams. I suspect readers already familiar with her (e.g. via Refuge) will have a much different, better reading experience. Perhaps I'll read that, and come back to this in a year.

You did well to spot the towel connection, as I would suspect it's not one of the most popular subjects for most novelists. Not unless you are Douglas Adams who featured them in A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Interesting thoughts on When Women Were Birds.

bas I love that!! Might move Hitchhiker from "on my radar" to "on my wishlist." You realize Towel Day is May 25?

Thanks Dan. I think I will try her Refuge -- a man-made disaster (her mother's cancer death, likely from Nevada's nuclear-test fallout) alongside a natural disaster (Great Salt Lake flooding that destroyed bird nesting grounds).

:( Another I was sure I’d like. Makes me hesitant about Hitchhiker’s Guide …



The Gift of Fire / On the Head of a Pin consists of two speculative novellas by Walter Mosley -- one involving Prometheus’s return to contemporary south-central Los Angeles; the other an animatronics firm’s discovery of a portal to the cosmos.

I read very little genre fiction but was eager to read these because I’ve hugely enjoyed Mosley’s writing and rich characterization, especially The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Little Scarlet. So I’m distressed to report that I hated these. They have a YA (vs. adult) feel, and (more than once) I envisioned a high-schooler writing them on his way to turn them in during class -- very thin, a mere outline of character and plot (especially in “On the Head of a Pin”), where I was continuously blind-sided by last-moment information, new characters and unearned twists.

As I said and to be fair, I’m not familiar with the conventions of this genre -- these novellas may fit them well. But I am confident in recommending them only to fans of speculative fiction.

Well, I'm a big fan of SF, and the only Mosley I've read was Blue Light, definitely a speculative fiction novel, and I really did not like it. I'm told his mystery stuff is great (and fully intend to give him another chance), but I get the impression that SF just really isn't his genre at all. On the other hand, I wholeheartedly recommend The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I also recommend having the second volume, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe on hand when you finish it, because that one picks up where the first one leaves off.

I'll join the chorus in saying that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it's accompany series is indeed very good. It's the book I recommend to all my friends that don't think they could ever enjoy a sci-fi. Nothing like a little peer pressure, huh?

bragan I'd recommend his 1960s-LA Easy Rawlins series over his contemporary-NYC Leonid McGill series. In fact I was going to get whatever Rawlins book was set closest to 1966 -- to accompany this season's Mad Men -- but I've already read Little Scarlet ('65 Watts) so may read the next, Cinnamon Kiss ('67 Haight).

Okay all, I'm lining up Hitchhiker, is there any reason it would suffer on audio? I'm currently on disc 21 of 35 in Don Quixote, then I'm planning on Patti Smith's Just Kids, then maybe Hitchhiker.

I've already got the first Easy Rawlins book on my wishlist. Hopefully I'll get to it sometime in the not-too-distant future, although considering just how many books there are on that wishlist, I make no promises.

I haven't heard Hitchhiker's as an audio book, but I imagine it would work great. It originally started life as a radio play. (Coincidentally, I've just started reading Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Neil Gaiman, which promises to be entertaining.)

It originally started life as a radio play
ah thank you -- explains the numerous audio options in my library's catalog.

Short stories:

“The Man Next Door” by Mary Higgins Clark (from The Plot Thickens, a 1997 mystery anthology benefitting Literacy Partners) -- a woman-in-peril story about a publicist whose serial-killer neighbor in the adjoining townhouse has his eye on her. Extremely predictable, yet there were a couple micro-moments of suspense that reminded me why I liked her earliest novels.

“All that Follows” by Jim Crace -- about a British jazz saxophonist who’s sort of a slug anyway and now sinking into depression while on hiatus recovering from a rotator cuff injury. The story is framed by references to a hostage situation that involves a man he used to know, and while he drives, half-committedly, to the site of the situation to see if he can be of help, he recalls a time when he did step up to the plate. It’s well written and interesting but a mere fragment (of, I think, his novel of the same name). I chose it (from Granta: Issue 109, where the theme is “work”) because when I perused the Table of Contents I noticed Crace, whom I’d just come across on Poquette’s thread. Many others also tempt from this volume: Colum McCann, Kent Haruf, Julian Barnes, Joshua Ferris, Salman Rushdie.

I will have to go back and find my copy of Granta 109. Thanks for mentioning it, MJ. I have just started Colum McCann's short story collection, Fishing The Sloe-Black River, and it is wonderful so far.

Didn't know Mary Higgins Clark wrote any short stories. Interesting . . .

For some reason your mention of the British jazz saxophonist and a hostage situation made me think of a story by Angela Carter called "The Man Who Loved a Double Bass," which is about a third-rate British jazz combo for which everything falls apart, literally. Probably totally different, but that's what popped into my head.

>104 Linda92007: Why haven't I read more by McCann? So I read his contribution to Granta 109, “Looking for the Rozziner.” It's a personal essay (so won’t count for my short story challenge) -- a meditation on his dad and himself as journalists and the interplay of work and recreation, “to push the body in a different direction to the mind.”

>105 Poquette: Neither did I. But MHC spearheaded this fund-raising anthology, each story incorporating "a thick fog, a thick book, and a thick steak." I think the mileage is going to vary :)

Short stories:

“The Catbird Seat” by James Thurber (from The Thurber Carnival) -- the funny story that became an idiom: a company man gains advantage over his nemesis before she can reorganize his department.

“An Ex-mas Feast” by Uwem Akpan (from Say You're One of Them) -- a Nairobi family living in squalor scrounges a dark Christmas.

From Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri:
   “Unaccustomed Earth” -- after her mother’s death, a woman begins to get to know her father.
   “Hell-Heaven” -- a woman recalls a man whom her family befriended, especially her mother.
   “A Choice of Accommodations” -- a married couple attends a wedding that shines a light on their own marriage.

You've been reading a varied bunch of stories, and they all sound interesting.

Coincidentally, I'm also going to be reading "The Catbird Seat" - did you like it?

I did! It's from a book I bought decades ago while still a teenager (trade pbk size, $2.95!). "The Catbird Seat" was a re-read, and the language seemed fussy; can't remember if that's Thurber or him evoking the meticulous filing manager of the story. Hope you enjoy! I haven't hit a disappointing story yet.

More short stories:

From Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction:
   “At the ’Cadian Ball” -- which man will charm the beautiful and exotic Calixta at the upcoming Acadian (Louisiana) dance: good-guy Bobinot or wealthy Alcee?
   “The Storm” (a sequel to the above) -- where the other guy gets his chance.
Both felt like fragments, so I re-read “The Story of an Hour” -- a tiny story with a full narrative arc, where Chopin beautifully uses a description of setting to foreshadow a new widow’s sense of optimism.

From the Stories of Anton Chekhov:
   “The Death of a Clerk” -- at the opera, a man sneezes on a general sitting in front of him; he apologizes and is waved off, but then just won’t leave it alone. I thought the ending of this very short story was ridiculously unearned ... until I remembered Chekhov’s direct address to the reader near the beginning: “Life is so full of the unexpected!” whereupon I chuckled and acquiesced.
   “Small Fry” -- a low-level bureaucrat who lacks the courage to earn respect from powerful people, resorts to harming the powerless.

“But Now Am Found” by Patti Horvath, from Bellevue Literary Review Spring 2011 -- when teens’ sexual awakening is discovered, the girl, with severe scoliosis, is sent away to a church school where she is not permitted to wear her brace: “{T}hey do not believe in deformity, it being a mark of sin.”

“Labyrinth” by Joyce Carol Oates is a horror story printed on the back endpapers of McSweeney's 29. The story is thin but the experience is full -- the format (below) requires the reader to turn the book around and around, faster and faster as the spiral tightens and the protagonist descends the stairs to a basement.

I'm not a huge short story fan, but your reviews are very intriguing. I just don't know how I'll find the ones you mention!

True. I’m enjoying all the summaries on the challenge thread, yet ... LTers love to pop a book onto a wishlist and that’s harder with short stories. When I’m finished, maybe I’ll google and post links to stories available online.

Oh, don't bother. I can search too. Like you say, it's easier to put a book on hold at the library or add to a TBR list.

Bellevue Literary Review Vol 11 No 1 Spring 2011 -- short stories, essays and poems about illness or coping in some way, often very peripherally, published twice a year by New York University’s School of Medicine. My favorite literary journal but definitely not my favorite issue.

The best of the three essays is “The Tag” by Elizabeth Crowell, whose prenatal twins are diagnosed with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. My favorite poems are “Sinkhole” by Janet Tracy Landman and “Uses for Salt” by Kate Lynn Hibbard ... which I won’t say anything more about because they’re both available online!

And since I’ve been summarizing my short-story reading, here is the fiction (along with "But Now Am Found" by Patti Horvath, mentioned in msg110):
     “Winston Speaks” by Jill Caputo -- when a new caregiver doesn’t view 43-year-old Winston first and foremost as disabled, he begins to not do so, himself
     “Happiness Advocates” by B.G. Firmani -- a freelance creative team works on a project from hell
     “Crazyland” by Ruth Schemmel -- sisters’ sibling rivalry flares as they and their mother deal with their father’s dementia*
     “Odd a Sea’s Wake” by Nicholas Patrick Martin -- a riff on a partner’s final decline, narrated in second-person point of view; while I didn’t like this story, it caught me at some point and I felt profound sadness at the end
     “Condensed Milk” by Danielle Eigner -- a woman travels across a Haitian town, whose residents are simultaneously earthquake-devastated and World Cup-fixated, to bring a remedy to her sister whose daughter has attempted suicide; I learned a lot about Haiti**
     “The Day of the Surgical Colloquium Hosted by the Far East Rand Hospital” by Gill Schierhout -- a man whose hand was reattached after a mining accident attends the medical conference where his case is presented**
     “Minivan” by Anne Valente -- exploration of a man’s sense of helplessness, still, months after his girlfriend’s rape
     “Moab” by Jennifer Lee -- a woman with a breast-tumor scar notices scars on other people
     “Hamlet” by Benjamin Parzybok -- a man bottles a batch of homemade beer instead of attending his mother’s funeral; not sure I "got" the story and have no interest in re-re-reading it
     “Sisters of Mercy” by Joan Leegant -- a glance at nurses covering for a doctor***

*very weak story
**very good story
***excellent story!

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

From Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over--
Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

A Raisin in the Sun is the powerful play about a Chicago African-American family in poverty, with enough dreams deferred and enough coping styles and self-destructive behaviors to cover the poem above. Into this comes an inheritance that gives new possibility to those dreams. And then, in comes racism. In the end the characters feel much optimism; but the reader feels a chill at their naïveté, and a desperate hope.

Set “sometime between World War II and the present” (original publication date: 1959), it holds up all too well. Now on to the film version with Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier.

I used that poem, together with Frost's 'Road not taken' a couple times in a poetry unit and for class discussions about dreams and plans. And it's a play I remember really liking. Thanks for the mini-nostalgia trip!

>110 detailmuse: I've noted your comments on the Oates story. How interesting, I hadn't heard of that -- sort of like some of the experimental poetry I've read.

>116 ljbwell: it's a play I remember really liking
I found the story's Walter Lee Younger fairly unlikeable (though not unsympathetic), so look forward to Sidney Poitier's interpretation. I've also read that Danny Glover was fabulous in a later TV production, so I may watch both.

>117 avaland: McSweeney's is quite experimental, thanks to Dave Eggers. I have half a dozen issues here, inexplicably unread.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson (from Early Reviewers)

I came to this memoir unaware of the author’s blog (“The Bloggess”), but fresh from another funny memoir by a writer also living on the far side of quirky (David Finch’s The Journal of Best Practices, about the effects of his Asperger’s on his marriage, which I recommend and will someday review). But while Finch wants the reader to understand his world, Lawson seems just to want the reader to see her. From page one, she stands smack in front of the narrative lens, wearing italics, all-caps, text formatting and profanity* through a series of essays about childhood and her taxidermist father; her romance, marriage and motherhood; and blogging.

The result is high-energy and high-drama, with some very funny micro-moments where a laugh popped out of me from nowhere. Of three dozen chapters, I most enjoyed a hilarious one about her experiences working in a corporate human-resources department, and a moving one about her miscarriages. But in the end, it’s most telling to note that I haven’t been interested even to check out her blog.

*used lazily, vs. used effectively in books like Sh*t My Dad Says or Go the F**k to Sleep (both also recommended)

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri is like reading silk. I’ve had this collection of long-length short stories in my TBRs for years and it’s my first 5-star read this year.

I posted snapshot summaries of the first three stories in msg#107 above; here are the remaining five:

“Only Goodness” -- a woman who sneaked her under-age brother his first beer is burdened by his adulthood alcoholism; a scene here about a baby will leave parents in a cold sweat.

“Nobody’s Business” -- a man relates the love life of one of his housemates, a woman who spurns Bengali match-ups in favor of a dysfunctional relationship; Lahiri approaches psychological suspense in this one.

“Once in a Lifetime” -- the first in a trio of stories that are linked into a sort of novella; here, Hema relates her early experiences with three-years-older Kaushik: as children at a farewell party before his family leaves Massachusetts to return to India, and as teens when his family comes back to the USA, startlingly Americanized, to live with her family while his parents search for a house.

“Year’s End” -- in the vein of the other stories in this collection (and most of Lahiri’s stories), Kaushik wrestles with identity and displacement and recalls his rebellious early adulthood.

“Going Ashore” -- Hema and Kaushik reconnect in their thirties and the book seems destined for a flat ending; I couldn’t believe Lahiri would do that and couldn’t conceive how she’d do otherwise at that point; and she didn’t! -- she used a word about a dozen pages from the end that lifted a veil and completely earned a stunning ending.

Enjoying your thoughts on the Jhumpa Lahiri stories.

Thanks Bas. I'm nearing the finish of Don Quixote without a clue how to assemble thoughts on it. I've been listening on audio so there's no way to note passages except remember them, and listening while outdoors on a walk so remembering them by the time I get home hasn't happened much. Should have listened on my iPhone, where "Siri" could have taken dictation :)

I keep thinking about the epigraph to Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth -- from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Custom-House:

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

It’s a beautiful passage and an interesting selection, since displacement is such a strong theme in all of Lahiri’s work. I wonder if the passage represents her hope more so than belief? Or maybe she's showing Hawthorne wrong?

For me, it’s a belief, developed in the workplace, where I’ve seen the trauma and disruption of employee turnover lead to benefits for both employee and employer.

I’m off to find The Custom-House, apparently Hawthorne’s opening section of The Scarlet Letter.

Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death by Bernd Heinrich opens with a letter he receives from an ill friend, requesting that Heinrich allow him a “green burial -- not any burial at all” on Heinrich’s forest land in Maine. The friend, an ecologist, deplores both the waste of nutrients when remains are sealed in a casket and the waste of fuel when they’re cremated. It gets naturalist Heinrich to thinking about the cycle of life and death, and the result is this wonderful collection of essays about “the specialized undertakers that ease all organisms to their resurrections into others’ lives.”

With a walk-in-the-woods tone and pace, he explores the recycling of remains in species from tiny to huge, animals and plants, in warm and cold climates, on land and in water -- by scavenger mammals, birds, insects and bacteria (or often fungi, in plants). A behavioral biologist, Heinrich describes the competition for food among larger scavenging species and the tendency of smaller species to consider remains a place to meet-up, mate and stow larvae. Here and in other books, I love his profound sense of curiosity and awe; I don’t recall the material being gruesome. At times, he digresses to more about the scavenger than its scavenging, but he mostly sticks to the topic and it’s all good stuff.

He concludes with comments about the metamorphosis we know in certain species in this life, and the aspects of it that we don't fully understand (that it's nearly a species change; a new life) lead him to wonderings about a metaphysical sort in the afterlife:

What better opportunity than death, not to sanctify an end but to celebrate a new beginning? {…} We deny that we are animals and part of the wheel of life, part of the food chain {…and} seek to remove ourselves from it. {…} My highest aspirations, when I thought about belonging to something greater than myself, used to be an ecosystem. {…Now} I see the whole world as an organism with no truly separate parts {and} I want to join in the party of the greatest show on earth, life everlasting.

How fascinating. The quote at the end gave me goosebumps.

Sounds a bit philosophical and quite interesting. Nice review.

yes good review detailmuse. I am not quite so keen as Bernd Heinrich to be hurrying towards that party of his.

hi lisa and dan -- and lol bas, nor I; plus I bet those parties will stay unavailable around here.

Heinrich seems to have reached a conclusion not far from that of Lovelock with his GAIA theory.

The cycle of life, birth, existence, decay; entropy/negative entropy and the almost mystical nature of DNA is an area of increasing fascination for me.

I also find it interesting when scientists get to a place not too dissimilar to the likes of Jung and the neoplatonists....

>zeno
the almost mystical nature of DNA

Like epigenetics? How have I missed that concept, until now when I keep encountering it? It removes the “or” from the genes-or-environment argument and says everything -- physical, mental, emotional -- can affect not the DNA itself but the gene expression/suppression, and in a permanent, heritable way. I’ve acquired Evolution in Four Dimensions, which looks at evolution through genetics, epigenetics, culture and language.

130 - MJ, that book looks interesting. A fertile area for study.

Some of the greyer areas around the borders come close to linking in to Jung's collective subconscious.

For an extreme, run a search on Rupert Sheldrake....

Rupert Sheldrake! I've had The Sense of Being Stared At on my wishlist for too long.

124 - Sounds very interesting.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (translated from the French by Alison Anderson)

Set in an eight-unit luxury apartment building in Paris, this is a story of two loners with secrets -- 54-year-old Renee, the building’s lowly concierge who hides her intellect; and 12-year-old Paloma, a resident of the building whose sense of different-ness has her planning suicide. The first two thirds of the book flesh out the situation, slowly albeit with some interesting philosophy, and then the last third captures interest and flies; the proportions should have been flipped so as not only to engage the reader but go beyond foreshadowing to actually earn the ending.

This is my second novel by Barbery, after Gourmet Rhapsody (see my review), set in the same apartment building and sharing characters, and which was okay at best. If I hadn’t tossed it, I’d likely re-read parts now to see if some of the characters shine differently in new light. But I probably won’t read more by Barbery -- her characters are pompous and prickly, her plots plodding and then rushed.

I received review copies of these travel guidebooks ... too bad the destination I’m more interested in (National Parks!) was the guidebook I found less helpful.

 Lonely Planet Discover USA's Best National Parks details the sixteen “best” (see below) USA National Parks and provides quick mentions of an additional eight. For each, there are suggested itineraries of the top things to see and do (emphasizing hiking/biking/kayaking), plus food and lodging (emphasizing campgrounds). The book is well organized and the text is pleasantly laid out and complemented by beautiful, well-captioned color photos.

So that’s 24 parks (not “27” as noted on the cover), with “best” stated as “most iconic” and (unstated) as having the most activities and visitor services. Yet it’s only half of all USA National Parks -- a glaring omission of wonders like the Badlands or Petrified Forest, and Carlsbad Caverns or Mammoth Caves, and without even a list of the remaining parks. But my biggest frustration is this guide’s lack of context. There’s not enough background to learn what’s iconic about some parks and not enough bearings to orient myself in some maps and even some text -- for example the two-page mention of Capitol Reef National Park never identifies its location by state or a recognizable city.

I recommend this guide only as a secondary reference -- after you’ve decided what park you want to visit, you can peruse its listings and compare its ratings/recommendations with those of other guidebooks. I think I’m done with Lonely Planet guides; this is the second one I’ve found less than helpful.

 Frommer's Las Vegas 2012
I haven’t been to Las Vegas since the late-1990s -- during the city’s experiment in “family friendly,” which felt more “meh” than memorable. But lately the idea of going back keeps popping up, so I was interested to see this guidebook, and very interested to read in it that Las Vegas has dumped the pretense that it’s anything other than vice, excess and escape.

I usually consult several guides to a destination but have developed an overall preference for Frommer’s. More than just listings, their pages develop a narrative about the big picture, in a voice that’s direct and conversational vs. the more reserved, professional tone of Fodor’s. Regarding Las Vegas, that narrative is unapologetic, decadent escape, and the listings showcase the extravagance (and in most cases, the success) on all fronts -- food, lodging, casinos, shopping, clubs, shows and the sex and wedding industries. For visitors wanting to come up for air, there are also listings of cultural attractions and area side trips.

Each section begins with a “best of” the category and then detailed descriptions that are well organized (by location e.g. south-Strip, downtown; then price) and nicely laid out on silky (almost glossy) pages. Hundreds of maps and color photos enhance the text, and dozens of sidebars pull out special info or slice large amounts of info in helpful ways, e.g. summary or comparison charts.

It's a great guide to navigating Las Vegas’s return to its true self, improved.

Okay zeno and others: what about coincidences?

During my mother’s recent decline and death, I found Jane Gross’s memoir/caregiving guide, A Bittersweet Season, to be enormously relevant and helpful.

I recently had dinner with a friend who’s now in that struggle with her mother and I thought to give her a copy of the book. She lives an hour away so I decided to send it from Amazon. I added it to my cart last night but had second thoughts: I loved the book, other readers loved the book, but would it resonate with her? I left it in my cart and went to bed.

This morning I woke to find two comments posted overnight on my long-dormant blog … one each on my two posts that mentioned this book -- which I posted last January. Both comments urged getting this book into the hands of caregivers.

WTF?

I believe in Rules of Thumb it is asserted that coincidence is common, that it may be the rule.

Robert

Jung's synchronicity was all about meaningful coincidence. It is almost as if the more you think about such things the more they are revealed to be happening all around us....

Your coincidence is one that is difficult to explain away.

The idea that coincidences may be the rule has serious resonance. As they sink in, I'm thinking those words carry a mindboggling truth. And in keeping with Jung, as Zeno so succinctly points out, it is the meaningful coincidences that are so powerful.

ETA — re Frommer's Las Vegas 2012, since I live in the vicinity, it is fascinating to consider it from a travel guide point of view. I love your comment that "Las Vegas has dumped the pretense that it’s anything other than vice, excess and escape." Since I am a relatively recent arrival (2004), I think of the Strip and all that as roughly equivalent to the factory in a company town. It is "over there" and has little to do with the actual life of ordinary people who live here. There is an amazing gap between the reality of tourist Las Vegas and the reality of everyday life. Just for fun I think I'll get a copy of Frommer. I will probably learn something!

FYI — I actually moved here because of the lower cost of living vis-a-vis San Francisco. Little did I suspect the economic disaster that would come all too soon. Henderson, where I actually live and which merges seamlessly into Las Vegas, has a sparkling quality to it which is subtly different from Las Vegas. It is difficult to describe, but I am not the only one who has commented on it. Anyway, thanks for your review. I am intrigued.

I am finding increasingly that coincidences are relatively common. I have experienced some spectacular coincidences in the past (and thats not just in schlock novels), but they rarely seem significant. Most of the coincidences come from meeting people from the past in unexpected places or situations, but while they might not be significant for me, whose to say what significance they have for other people.

Just catching up with your reading. I think I saw that Moseley will be at Book Expo in NYC this week...something about SF & Mainstream crossover. I might catch that if the crowds are not too suffocating.

>all
Fascinating. Coincidence does seem common, especially with attention. But being “the rule” intrigues me; why then does it so startle? Glad to have the synchronicity / meaningful coincidence terminology, and to find Jung’s Synchronicity, and to see a connection to Arthur Koestler (who’s in my wishlist for something … creativity, I think).

>139 Poquette: I’ll be interested in your Las Vegas perspective. What would absolutely bring me back to Las Vegas is the rumored Cirque du Soleil production set to Michael Jackson’s music.

>141 avaland: If you do hear Mosley, I’d be interested in any update about another mainstream novel from him, a la The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Have a fun and productive time at BEA!

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks, audio read by Matthew Brown

Last year when I started reading Emma Donoghue’s Room, I would have bet against being engaged for 300+ pages by a five-year-old’s narrative voice. But when I finished, I found I’d have mostly lost that bet. So I was excited now to spend time with another five-year-old -- Budo, the imaginary friend of eight-year-old Max, an autistic boy who needs Budo’s help to navigate life’s confusions (particularly idioms and emotions) and dangers (bullies and worse).

Alas, although I was charmed by Matthew Brown’s reading of the audiobook edition, I found the story unimaginative, derivative, and over-long. Unimaginative in that the world-building of imaginary friends is slight and not particularly interesting. Derivative in the story's evocation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and the film, Ghost (note: the mention of Ghost deals with world-building, not a plot spoiler). And over-long in the short-story-length plot that’s bloated into a novel; even when it establishes urgency, it just repeats things over and over as time ticks past, which is boring and tedious rather than suspenseful.

The content is too mature at times for children, too childish (vs child-like) for YA and adults. I’m not sure who the intended reader is other than parents or siblings of autistic kids, who will definitely find recognition and comfort.

A Broom of One's Own by Nancy Peacock

Riffing on the title of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One's Own (which essentially says that to write well, women must have their own lives), this short collection of light essays weaves twice-published novelist Peacock’s work cleaning houses with ruminations on writing.

It’s fast, interesting and inspiring, particularly to mainstream readers and beginning writers. But it feels older than having been published in 2008, and it doesn’t bring originality or new insight to shelves already crowded with famous writers’ books on writing. And it’s surprisingly angry; Peacock is annoyed by cleaning tasks and by clients, readers, publishers, other writers and other workers.

Recommended as a light diversion. If writerly memoir or advice is desired, my shortlist includes any Paris Review interview; Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird; Stephen King’s On Writing; or Elizabeth Berg’s Escaping into the Open.

If writerly memoir or advice is desired, my shortlist includes any Paris Review interview; Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird; Stephen King’s On Writing; or Elizabeth Berg’s Escaping into the Open

Of these, I've read Bird by Bird and On Writing, and I thought they were both great. Another couple of good ones along that line are Negotiating with the Dead, by Margaret Atwood and Reading like a Writer by Francine Prose.

Thanks, Atwood's sounds interesting. I've made two false starts into Reading Like a Writer -- it's terrific and I don't know why I put it aside!!

Hmm, what to do when you have 10 books to write reviews/comments on? Organize your wishlist!

I reaffirmed interest in most on the wishlist but deleted a couple dozen. And, having recently stumbled on some at bargain-book (close-out) prices on Amazon, I reviewed the wishlist for more bargains and acquired these at $4 or $5 each:

Here's Looking at Euclid: From Counting Ants to Games of Chance -- An Awe-inspiring Journey Through the World of Numbers by Alex Bellos

Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet

The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel by Dan Sinker (a guy who tweeted as Rahm’s persona during last year’s Chicago mayoral election)

A couple volumes of collected NY Times crossword puzzles (Heh. I’ll start with the “Mondays” set.)

And, at full price:
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung’s essay on coincidence.

I read Born on a Blue Day and found it extraordinary how well Daniel Tammet is able to articulate both his autism and his synesthesia.

Good luck catching up with the reviews. Entertained by both your new reviews, and noting the list of books at the end of #144.

The son of a good friend is autistic and his imaginary world is very complex and almost Seussian. It features humpback sharks who are indigenous to the grasslands, but travel quite a bit.

Hi Lisa and Dan. And RG, that boy's world is already more imaginative (and funny!) than the one I read.

With autism on my mind, I’ve been following a local story {audio alert; and sorry, everything has an ad-intro now} about a 15-year-old autistic boy who walked out of a south-side hospital while his dad was doing some paperwork there after an appointment. The teen was missing for two days until this morning, when someone biking on a path that winds through a forest preserve recognized him and now he's reunited with his family. He's severely autistic but navigated 25+ miles from the south side through the heart of Chicago to the northern suburbs -- over two days of 95-degree heat. Sooo like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and I'd LOVE to know his story but he speaks only a few words.

Found your thread too and starred it! I am a big short story fan, so I'll need to go back and read those posts more closely.

Glad to see you purged your wish list. Mine got longer today, thanks to this piece in The Millions about most anticipated books of the rest of 2012: http://www.themillions.com/2012/07/most-anticipated-the-great-second-half-2012-b...

Hi Nancy and thankyouverymuch -- lots to like in that Millions post. The for-sures for me are:

Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, a biography which apparently began as the New Yorker essay I read in msg#68 above, and Both Flesh and Not, some additional essays by DFW.

Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's next novel.

Oh so many books to catch up about.



Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg

Especially in her earliest novels, Elizabeth Berg is the literary equivalent of a hug -- short, women’s-friendship stories that are full of spot-on observations and emotional truths.

In this one, Ann, who (though married) “hadn’t realized how much {she’d} been needing to meet someone {she} might be able to say everything to” until she met Ruth, now finds herself one in a small group of caregivers as Ruth declines from metastatic breast cancer. It’s a tender story, and while I didn’t particularly like Ruth nor accept the depth of their friendship, I did feel the weight of Ann’s caregiving.

When the work gets too hard, you stop talking about it. You just try to do it.
…
{My husband and daughter} are going to {a store} to get light bulbs. I am ashamed at what I am feeling: I want to go, too. I want to walk up and down long aisles, saying, “Let’s see. Q-tips? Do we need shampoo?” I want doormats and polyester blouses and matched sets of mixing bowls to be the only thing in my head.
…
Women do not leave situations like this: we push up our sleeves, lean in closer, and say, “What do you need? Tell me what you need and by God I will do it.” {…} I’ve heard that when elephants are attacked they often run, not away, but toward each other. Perhaps it is because they are a matriarchal society.
…
How is it that we dare to honk at others in traffic, when we know nothing about where they have just come from or what they are on their way to?

Bellevue Literary Review Vol 8 No 1; Spring 2008

This issue is from the medical literary journal’s eighth year of publication, which is the first year that I subscribed. I liked a number of the entries -- among them the short story ”A vehicular Situation” (about a roadside encounter between a man and a doctor he felt once disrespected him, alternately tense and funny); the essay ”Plant Life” (about tending to sick plants and sick patients); and the poem ”Carousel” (about a son/brother) -- but I think the contributions to subsequent issues keep getting better and better.

Just Kids by Patti Smith, audio read by the author

Another hug of sorts, this one in the story of Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe, sometimes lovers and always best friends, as they fledged adulthood in late-1960s New York City. The audio is read huskily by Smith, and a benefit is that she nearly sings one passage. I routinely clear the MP3s off my iPod after I listen to audiobooks but kept the very beginning and ending tracks of this one. I’m more drawn to Smith as a person than musician, so am happy to hear she is at work on a follow-up memoir. Fans might be interested in an hour-long CBS Sunday Morning interview and performance, where Smith talks about her new album, Banga -- derived from The Master and Margarita, another nudge toward my wishlist.

Looking forward to your thoughts about The Power of Habit.

I really need to catch up on the back issues of the Bellevue Literary Review that I own. Thanks for the reminder.

I have got Just Kids on my book shelf. I must get to it soon.

> lol! I love knowing there's good stuff waiting in the TBRs.

---------------

Now, the first in a medieval trio:

{T}he audience would come out amused by the comic portions, instructed by the serious, marveling at the action, enlightened by the arguments, forewarned by the falsehoods, made wiser by the examples, angered at vice, enamored of virtue…

My predominate thought after listening to Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is that I really want to read Don Quixote.

I couldn’t have asked for a better audio reader (nearly a performer) than George Guidall -- merry, and with a repertoire of voices so in-character and consistent over 35 hours of CDs that the dialogue needed little attribution.

But I came to the novel intentionally naïve about the plot (as much as is possible with such a classic) and unintentionally naïve about the structure, specifically the meta-fiction (and meta-reading!) and the controversy that preceded (and likely prompted) the writing of Part Two. One of my main interests in novels is structure, so I regret not having approached this reputed first and best-ever “modern” novel with more preparation and respect. I wasn't helped by how easy it is to lose concentration in an audiobook, especially on early morning walks full of neighbors with their dogs and baristas wanting my latte order. (I have no comment about the translation by Edith Grossman other than to say I’m not wed to the same translation for a reread.)

Still, I loved Cervantes’s playfulness and intelligence. I loved Don Quixote’s earnestness, I loved everything about Sancho Panza. I marveled at the contemporariness of a book written c.1600. And I experienced everything in that excerpt (above) about the goal of good drama -- albeit superficially, a mere first pass.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett is an epic story of cathedral building amid the politics of church and state in 12th-century England.

It’s an adequately plotted, very easy read. Follet isn’t afraid to throw trouble to his characters, but he’s a bit long-winded. Opposite of my admiration that Don Quixote seemed so modern, this 1989 novel sometimes has a too-modern feel. It was a good accompaniment to Don Quixote and makes me want to get to more elsewhere about medieval politics, religion and society. I made the 973-page paperback physically manageable by cutting it into five sections (I guess I'll rubber-band them together and donate them to the library sale?) but doubt I’ll be able to chop up something like Infinite Jest.

I’ve wanted to look at some of David Macaulay’s illustrated works and Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction was a perfect accompaniment to The Pillars of the Earth. Through 80 pages of extraordinarily fine-detail pen-and-ink drawings and bits of explanatory text, Macaulay describes a fictional ~100-year project to build a cathedral in 13th-century France. On a side note, I was struck to note the crowdedness of a city -- thousands of tiny houses jam-packed around the cathedral all the way out to the walled perimeter of the city. I acquired Macaulay’s Castle also and look forward to it.

An interesting medieval trio detailmuse.

I'm reading Just Kids now. The only problem with is that when I'm reading something else or reviewing, I keep thinking I'd rather be reading this. The audio does sound worth a try.

Don Quixote - need to get there someday. I own the Follett, but I'm somewhat indifferent on whether I actually read it or not. Sounds like a fun distraction.

So glad you liked Just Kids. It's one of the few times where a) I wasn't aware of all the hype, and b) despite the hype, I really, really enjoyed it.

Cathedral - wow, that brought me back. I'm pretty sure my parents acquired it somehow when I was younger - garage sale or new, who knows. But what I recall is that it brought that time to life with its mix of architectural and historical detail.

I found The Pillars of the Earth to be very readable, but with characters that seemed to me to be modern people dressed up in costumes, like a very elaborate Ren Faire.

Love the medieval trio. The architecture books by Macaulay are great, aren't they? My daughter now has my copies.

>166 RidgewayGirl:: exactly.
>165 ljbwell:, 167: Macaulay was about a decade late for my childhood but it’s all good in adulthood too! I think I discovered him with The Way Things Work and must have it around here although it’s not in my LT library. But then someone (janepriceestrada?) reviewed Rome Antics and introduced me to his architecture.

So here’s:



Castle by David Macaulay is the story of building a castle and town in late-13th-century England. While I thought his Cathedral was excellent on architecture, I wanted more context, and here he includes both. There are fabulous drawings, in perspectives from bird’s-eye to worm’s-eye and everything in between. And there’s background about the purpose of a castle (i.e. military, and not just defensive {to “resist direct attack and withstand a siege”} but also offensive {strategic “placement along important supply and communication routes” e.g. in the conquest of Wales}) and the purpose of the accompanying town (to “provide a variety of previously unavailable social and economic opportunities” that would benefit both the English and eventually the Welsh and promote peace).

This book re-ignited my interest in a vacation that includes a couple nights’ lodging in a British castle.

Ooh, is this a trip on the books? When?

Not on the books, but recurringly on the mind!

I have several of the Macaulay's on my shelves. We've been gifting them to our nieces and one of our cousin's kids but wanted a set for ourselves too. I should pick them up one morning for a coffee read.

Pillars of the Earth is also on my pile. I feel I should read it as an architect but it somehow never calls to me. I think the size is putting me off.

lol jane, I can send you my copy, chopped up into installments!

Can't wait to hear what you think about Glaciers.

>173 alphaorder: Just finished and I really liked it, comments to come. Where ever did you hear about it?

Now I have two novellas about librarians to recommend -- The Incident Report by Martha Baillie (a bit dark) and Glaciers (full of longing).

Glaciers by Alexis Smith

…soon she loved {cities in the Pacific Northwest} in the same way she loved the landscape of {Alaska}. Old churches were grand and solemn, just like glaciers, and dilapidated houses filled her with the same sense of sadness as a stand of leafless winter trees

Twenty-eight-year-old Isabel has a fondness for things in decline, from the calving glaciers of her childhood, to thrift shops, to her job in the damaged books department of a Portland, Oregon library. This delicate novella weaves bits of Isabel’s past into today -- the day she decides to ask her co-worker, an Iraq war veteran nicknamed Spoke, on a date.

“It’s never the wedding dresses, you know. We keep those, too, but only because they’re so blooming expensive. No. I’ve seen enough old ladies’ closets to know what we really hold on to. Not the till-death-do-us-part dresses. It’s those first lovely dresses: the slow-dance dresses, the good-night-kiss dresses. It’s those first pangs we hold on to.”

Lovely. I look forward to more by Smith.

She Walks in Beauty ed. by Caroline Kennedy

I got this anthology as a gift and think it makes a great gift. Subtitled, “A Woman’s Journey Through Poems” its ~175 entries are written by a wide range of ancient philosophers and mystics to contemporary poets, and organized into sections of: Falling in Love; Making Love; Breaking Up; Marriage; Love Itself; Work; Beauty, Clothes and Things of This World; Motherhood; Silence and Solitude; Growing Up and Growing Old; Death and Grief; Friendship; How to Live.

Caroline Kennedy introduces each section, and her comments quite inspire a love and respect for poetry. While there aren’t “representative” poems to excerpt, here are two (of several dozen) I liked:

The Emperor by Matthew Rohrer
She sends me a text
she’s coming home
the train emerges
from underground

I light the fire under
the pot, I pour her
a glass of wine
I fold a napkin under
a little fork

the wind blows the rain
into the windows
the emperor himself
is not this happy

We know this much by Sappho
Death is an evil;
we have the gods’
word for it; they too
would die if death
were a good thing

Glaciers appeals on many levels: the writing, the setting, and her occupation. It sounds like a good book for a rainy day.

>176 detailmuse: Oh, I love those poems!

Any book that encourages people to read more poetry has got to be a good thing

Love the Sappho.

> linda, bas: agree!

> lisa it’s in a growing collection of small gems that I’ll pull out to read again, among them also:
Touch
The Spare Room
The Summer Book
The Waitress Was New
Translation is a Love Affair

And likely:
Mister Blue, still awaiting my first read :)
Last Night at the Lobster, which I read several years ago from the library and think of it often enough that I should own a copy

I too loved the Fabre and Poulin books. I'll have to check out the rest. It's nice to have some comfy books around for retreads. Especially when the writing is so superb.

ETA: Okay. So comfy is the wrong word to use. A couple see beautiful but vet sad. The Summer Book is already on my wishlist.

I'm on my phone and it's making weird word substitutions. Sorry.

oh HAHAHA! No sorry! A couple see beautiful but vet sad. ?! Hate the autocorrect, love the site damnyouautocorrect.

Anyway, yes "comfy" is applicable. I kept adding and deleting Of Mice and Men from the list, it doesn't fit 'cause it's definitely not comfy.

That site is so funny! When I first got my phone, it wouldn't recognize playdate and would auto correct to the weirdest things. Embarrassing when you are writing to moms you don't know well at the beginning of the school year asking them to a plateau or a plague.

Have you thought any more about reading The Great Influenza this year? I enjoyed it very much. So much so, that when I lent it out and it didn't find its way home, I bought another copy.

"auto" ... a flawed premise because you should have to opt in to the correction rather than opt out!

I see the damnyouautocorrect page has changed since I linked, here's the best of July page* that had me crying by the time I got to chicken vaginas. (*eta: argh! still doesn't directly link to the page; click on the green square beside the top post)

I want to read The Great Influenza next! But I also want to read about 20 other books next (sigh)

Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See by FranCoise Mouly

From the front flap:
{New Yorker covers} attempt, every single week, to capture the aspects of our culture that are just beyond conscious grasp.

I enjoyed The Rejection Collection (the first in New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff’s books of rejected cartoon submissions) and was happy to see this coffee-table treatment of rejected covers by New Yorker art editor Mouly (who is btw married to artist/memoirist Art Spiegelman).

And there are a couple hundred covers here, in all stages of conception and finalization, well-reproduced and mostly in full color, organized into sections on Race/Ethnicity; Sex; Religion; Politics; Celebrities; Wars/Disasters; Taboos; and accompanied by commentary from Mouly and the artists about how time sensitivities (the news cycle), cultural sensitivities, and the right combo of clarity/subtlety combine to yay or nay a cover.

It's very good, my only quibble being that, contrary to the title and subtitle, it’s actually as much about controversial covers that were published as about “blown” covers, and thus feels a little short.

I think this rejected cover by Barry Blitt is one of the best because -- just like Tiger’s own reputation -- it’s so wholesome until you look closer and note the vulgarity.

Those excerpts from Glaciers are beautiful. Love the poems in #176 too.

>dan I'm trying to develop some poetry muscles, feel like I'm on the 1-pound weights and have a modest goal to get to the 5-pounders.

Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky (rel date: Nov 2012) opens as an interesting expose on the hotel industry, morphs into a lifeless memoir about the author’s promotions despite his desire to leave the industry, and concludes as a disquieting rant spewed at hotel bosses, co-workers and guests.

The scope is quite limited -- a couple of luxury hotels in New Orleans and midtown Manhattan, where the industry defines “hotel” as the front desk plus housekeeping (thus to make money you must have “heads in beds”), and this book is 90% front desk (including doormen, bellmen and car valets) plus a glance at housekeeping. There are cautions (for example: if you park your stick-shift car overnight, it might be used to train the valet who can’t drive sticks), but overall they validate longstanding legend more than reveal new information. And there are tips about how to score the upgrades that front-desk agents can bestow (essentially: slip them cash) and how to avoid the myriad ways they can punish (essentially: don’t piss them off).

Marketed as a Kitchen Confidential of the hospitality industry, this book lacks Bourdain’s bravado, likeability and underlying respect for the industry. And prose. Over the final 50 pages, I felt I’d been trapped by a guy telling his story in a bar, and I just wanted him to stop talking.

The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle, from LT’s Early Reviewers

From the epigraph:
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. --Aristotle

Along the lines of Michael Pollan’s distillation of his excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma into In Defense of Food and even further into Food Rules, so Daniel Coyle boils down his The Talent Code into this, The Little Book of Talent.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is one of my all-time favorite books and I’ll just leave it at “I hated” the distillations. So whereas I likely would enjoy the depth of Coyle’s The Talent Code, I’m definitely not the audience for his quick-reference guide of “52 Tips for Improving Your Skills.”

That said, I’m going to cut it some slack.

It’s based on the current theory that innate talent is a mere starting point toward success -- and maybe a lesser one, compared with practice and motivation. Much of the theory will be familiar to readers who’ve encountered any of the books in Coyle’s Further Reading list (for example, Outliers, Being Wrong, The Power of Habit, Mindset, Bounce). But the focus is not theory here (or source attribution/documentation), it’s takeaways -- tips toward success in sports, business and the arts that range from a paragraph to a few pages and are organized into sections on Getting Started, Improving Skills, and Sustaining Progress.

Among my favorites are “Stare at who you want to become” (intensely observe the people you want to model, the talent you want to develop), and “Pay attention immediately after you make a mistake” (don’t look away from mistakes, learn from them), for example via “Use the sandwich technique” (learn from mistakes by making the correct move, then the incorrect move, then the correct move again). Like these last two, some tips seem like they could have been combined, but perhaps Coyle separated them along the line of his tip, “Break every move down into chunks.”

In the end, periodically referring to a little book of tips (whether to improve our diets or talents) might be just the kind of habit Aristotle suggests.

Okay, backing up weeks to months to catch up on half a dozen books.



The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, audio read by Stephen Fry

Arthur Dent awakens on a Thursday to find his home scheduled for demolition to make way for a highway bypass … but soon discovers it’s Earth that’s going to be demolished to make way for a galactic bypass. Luckily, a friend who happens to be an alien whisks Arthur away into space and a galactic adventure begins. It’s enormously fun and imaginative, a mere beginning to a Hitchhiker series, and has earned a permanent place in my mp3 files.

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, audio read by Shelly Frasier

Sociopathy stands alone as a disease that causes no dis-ease for the person who has it, no subjective discomfort. Sociopaths are often quite satisfied with themselves and with their lives and perhaps for this very reason there is no effective treatment. Typically, sociopaths enter therapy only when they have been court-referred or when there is some secondary gain to be had from being a patient. Wanting to get better is seldom the true issue. {…T}he concept of sociopathy comes perilously close to our notions of the soul, of evil versus good.

I heard about this years ago on Oprah but the treatment seemed flashy and didn’t appeal. Now the reviews around LT pulled me in again and I liked it well enough to purchase a paperback copy after listening on audio. The anecdotes read like short horror/suspense stories, and I want to reread the psychology about environmental factors that sway genetic predispositions (abuse, lack of attachment, culture e.g. societies that value the attributes of sociopaths). Also interesting: Stout suggests that conscience is not universal because it developed later in evolution.

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, audio read by Tom Stechschulte

…the dangers posed by strangers. This is the violence that captures our fear and attention, even though only 20% of all homicides are committed by strangers. The other 80% are committed by people we know, so I’ll focus on those we hire, those we work with, those we fire, those we date, those we marry, those we divorce.

So after Stout (above), I returned to de Becker, whom I also learned about on Oprah. He deals with physical not psychological dangers and his high-powered security consulting has had staying power.

I read part of this book back in the late-90s -- the chapters about personal/individual safety -- and listened to the whole book now (including sections on corporate and political security). I still found him riveting. De Becker outlines a number of warning signs and reminds readers that “charm” is a verb and niceness can be a strategy, not a character trait. What stays with me most is how dangerous a person is who discounts your word, “No,” regardless how small the matter is.

I will look forward to your ideas about Winter Journal. Paul Auster used to be one of my favourite authors. I loved all his early books up to Timbuktu (1999) and find most books after that disappointing or not living up to my expectations based on his early work. I have bought all novels of Auster written after 1999, but not yet read all of them.

>edwin that’s disappointing with any writer but devastating with a favorite. Do we change or do the writers? I’ve read far too little Auster to be as enamored as I am, but have been collecting his titles in my wishlist and am ready to embark on his canon. I’m drawn by certain themes (eg coincidence) and wonder if I’ll also find a pattern about pub dates.

Winter Journal … vignettes from his past written through a filter of aging … it’s been awhile since I’ve so longed for reading time and getting back to a book.

Interesting duo about sociopaths and fear. The quote from the Stout book is chilling. If a sociopath doesn't want to change and thinks they are fine as they are, are they ever able to be rehabilitated?

I believe the answer is no, but maybe moderated if they're motivated to moderation. To make it more chilling, the sound bite of Stout's book is that 1 in 25 Americans, i.e. likely many people you know and many public people, are sociopaths.

The ether ate my review of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and that has sucked the wind out of my catching up here. I think I cut the text to move it in a document and then forgot to paste it before I cut/copied something else, saved the document, closed Word, etc. etc. :((

Anyway, I enjoy Gladwell. I’ve read all his books except What the Dog Saw (a collection of New Yorker articles I figure I’ve already read or have in my pile of tear sheets to read someday). I enjoy that he takes the reader down an interesting-on-its-own path and then elevates the experience by including a twist.

The path of Outliers is that excellence isn’t just, or even primarily, born (genes; innate talent), but rather is made (environment; circumstances that develop the talent). It was a new-ish premise back in 2008 when the book was published and in these few years has been accepted to the point of common sense. Gladwell susses out some of those circumstances easily (head starts, coaching, practice), but then the twist is those he finds rooted in far-flung ancestry or coincidental cultural timing.

I’d hoarded this book since 2008 and when I finished I was rewarded by learning Gladwell will publish a new book in 2013 -- David and Goliath, about underdogs and the powerful.

>197 detailmuse: Sorry about your frustrating copy/paste experience. The Outliers is required summer reading for my son's friend's high school A&P English class and he told me a little bit about it. (He hadn't finished reading it then). Sounds like an interesting book.

Outliers sounds like the book I skimmed a couple of years ago with a similar premise: innate ability isn't enough, it's passion and persistence that results in excellence and life satisfaction. Rats, I can't remember the title of the book. What does that say about my abilities!

>avidmom, nonfiction has come so far since my high-school days! I'd have loved reading lists like today's.

>lisa it seems to be everywhere I turn! Also meant to say that the Talent book up in msg189 lists Dweck's Mindset in its bibliography; I bumped it higher in my wishlist but I do recall you were conflicted about it...

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, audio read by Mike Chamberlain

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning boys. How’s the water?’ ” the writer David Foster Wallace told a class of graduating college students in 2005. “And the two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’ ”

The water is habits, the unthinking choices and invisible decisions that surround us every day -- and which, just by looking at them, become visible again. And once they are visible, they’re within our control.

Our brains continually try to make things happen in the background, automatic rather than conscious. This book opens with the discovery that habit is a distinct part of brainwork, via the curious 1993 case of a man who’d lost most of his memory after a bout of encephalitis -- he could cook breakfast but not remember that he'd eaten it, he couldn’t draw a map to show the layout of his house yet had no problem finding and using the bathroom.

That launches an exploration of the habits of individuals, businesses and societies and how they’re formed (usually through developing a craving, which is followed by a reward) and broken (or rather, replaced with new habits, since “breaking” habits is extremely difficult). Case studies include the marketing of Febreze; the coaching of Tony Dungy; Alcoholics Anonymous; marketers’ predictions of our habits from data collected about us online and through loyalty programs; and others. I was interested in the discussions of “keystone” habits (which cascade into more habits -- good ones accumulate to greatness such as weight loss, bad ones into catastrophes like wrong-site surgery) and willpower (“a muscle” that needs exercising … and fatigues, so don’t expect much willpower when you’re tired).

Overall, an interesting read.

I liked The Power of Habit too. Have you read The Checklist Manifesto?

I have, and thought it a very worthwhile read about the decrease in errors of ignorance and the increase in errors of ineptitude.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman; audio read by Patrick Egan

I’ve been struggling to write comments on this -- the last of a bunch of books I read back in June -- because I can’t remember much other than my overall reaction that it is one of the best books I’ve read this year. So I’ll start with what I'd posted on the What Are You Reading thread:

A puzzle:

A bat and ball cost $1.10.
The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?

If you reached the intuitive (fast) answer of 10 cents, you need to read the book. If your rational (slow) brain kicked in to verify that was wrong, you’ll still want to read the book to learn all the ways the fast and slow systems of the brain work to compensate for one another.

It’s a fascinating opus of Nobelist Kahneman’s lifelong work on decision-making and behavioral economics. It’s interactive and experiential; I listened on audio but absolutely recommend the printed book because of the need to refer to illustrations (they’re on a CD with the audio but I was never near a computer while listening). The exerpt above is the simplest experiment in the book; for me, the most memorable is one that involves calculations of progressive difficulty, intended to tax and then overload the brain and especially effective since I was listening while driving in fast, heavy traffic -- I had to turn it off! Late in the book, with my interest in post-traumatic stress, I was drawn to Kahneman’s concept of the “remembering” self vs the “experiencing” self, and how memory distorts actual experience. Heh, my opening line's memory of this being a terrific book pushes me to reread it in print and see if my experience will be duplicated.

That sounds really interesting. You touch on it, but how was it overall as an audiobook? I imagine I'd want time to read and re-read the puzzles, to see them in print. It seems to me it would be more difficult in the audio format to absorb and have time to work through them.

Ok, what is the answer? Because I keep coming up with 10cents. Am I an idiot?

Enjoyed catching up and now feeling motivated to start good habits.

206 -

The answer is that the ball costs $0.05 cents so the bat costs $1.05, thus one dollar more than the ball, and totaling to $1.10.

Dammit! I asked my SO that question and he instantly gave the right answer, while I thought and thought and still got it wrong. He's still off chortling to himself. I do beat him in Scrabble, every time.

>RG that puzzle was designed to get fast thinkers to jump without looking :) Probably your SO (quickly) brought his slow thinking in to corroborate his answer (I can imagine "x + (x+1.00) = 1.10" but of course I, too, jumped). Or maybe, per the Scrabble results, he’s a generally deliberate thinker, which has advantages and disadvantages.

>ljbwell I definitely recommend it as a printed book. Some of the puzzles translate to audio, and you can pause the audio while you think but you can’t easily revisit the puzzle. And some don’t translate. I’m easily annoyed by audio readers but Patrick Egan is very listenable, if pinched sounding (listen to a sample here).

I must be a very slow thinker it took a pen and paper and a good few minutes for me to work out the right answer.

bas, I felt very rusty translating that story problem into an equation.

>x + (x+1.00) = 1.10

Interesting: why "x" represents the unknown is answered in this 4-minute TED Talk.

Continued on part two here.

Those quotes from Talk Before Sleep remind me so much of my important friendships. I remember that Berg is to you what Elinor Lipman is to me. Right now I need to be reading more books like this. Thanks! (I don't know how this will come up, since I'm looking back at your previous thread. Now, on to the next one to finish catching up.)

I've heard this was a really good memoir. I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know of one song by Patti Smith. I'll have to go YouTube her. In the meantime, I'm going to go add it to my wish list at my library. I do remember Maplethorpe, though, because of the controversy about his art.

Hey! You've been reading the same brain books that I have. :-)

>Bonnie! So happy to see you online. I wasn’t very familiar with Patti Smith either (other than “Because the Night”) and not with Mapplethorpe at all. But what's best in Just Kids is the friendship, making art, making a life in NYC.