2012: okrysmastree vs the library

I'm back, once again, and ever hopeful that I'll make it to that ever longed-for 75 this time around.

me:
Kristin Leigh, aged 23 in March, studying toward a career in dental hygiene.
In fiction, I love
• bildungsroman/coming-of-age
• haunted houses
• nonlinear narrative structure
• unreliable narrators
• dystopia
In non-fiction, I tend to go through periods of brief obsession with a single area of interest - lately it's been fraud and forgery, particularly of art, but also currency/checks.
If anyone has recommendations, I'd love them! My to-read pile and wishlist are ever-expanding.

threads of yesteryear:
2009
2010
2011

2011's best:
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski
When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Poet and the Murderer - Simon Worrall
I Was Vermeer - Frank Wynne

reading now:
Mammy - Kimberly Gisele Wallace-Sanders

officially abandoned:
Feed - Mira Grant

to-reads:
physical bookshelf:
I'll fill this in later!
library loans:
downloaded ebooks:
Cut & Run - Abigail Roux & Madeline Urban | Helter Skelter - Vincent Bugliosi | True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey | Ned Kelly's Last Days - Alex C Castles & Jennifer Castles | David Copperfield - Charles Dickens | Extremely Loud & Incedibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer | The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne | Black Looks: Race & Representation - Bell Hooks | Clinging to Mammy - Micki Mcelya | The Ruins - Scott Smith | Mammy - Kimberly Gisele Wallace-Sanders | A Criminal History of Mankind - Colin Wilson

books 1 - 10:
January
o1. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
o2. Marilyn: A Biography - Norman Mailer
o3. A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
o4. The Sign of the Four - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
o5. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - John Perkins
o6. The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
o7. The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon
o8. The Sicilian - Mario Puzo
o9. You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, and Forgiveness - Heather Sellers
1o. The Incredible Shrinking Man - Richard Matheson

books 11 - 20:
11. How to Smell a Rat: The Five Signs of Financial Fraud - Ken Fisher
12. The Man in the Rockefeller Suit - Mark Seal
13. Seventh Son - Orson Scott Card
14. Red Prophet - Orson Scott Card
15. Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power - Alexandra Robbins
16. Prentice Alvin - Orson Scott Card
17. Compulsive Acts: A Psychiatrist's Tales of Ritual and Obsession - Elias Aboujaoude
18. Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History - Ben Mezrich
19. Belieber!: Fame, Faith, and the Heart of Justin Bieber - Cathleen Falsani
2o. American Lightning - Howard Blum

books 21 - 30:
21. Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures - Bob Wittman
22. The Accidental Billionaires - Ben Mezrich
23. The Runner - David Samuels
24. Escape from Alcatraz - J. Campbell Bruce
25. Boardwalk Empire - Nelson Johnson
26. Stiff - Mary Roach
27. Skinny Legs & All - Tom Robbins
28. Battle Royale - Koushun Takami
29. Bossypants - Tina Fey
3o. Jonathon Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach

books 31 - 40:
31. Water for Elephants - Sarah Gruen
32. House of Stairs - William Sleator
33. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex - Mary Roach
34. Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef - Gabrielle Hamilton
35. How To Be A Woman - Caitlin Moran
36. Just My Type: A Book About Fonts - Simon Garfield
37. Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory - Kimberly Gisele Wallace-Sanders
38. Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America - Micki McElya
39. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think - Brian Wansink
4o. How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read - Pierre Bayard

books 41 - 50:
41. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
42. Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen
43. My Name Is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok
44. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
45. Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of the Mona Lisa - R.A. Scotti
46. Anatomy of a Fraud Investigation - Stephen Pedneault
47. A Dog's Purpose - W. Bruce Cameron
48. Fuzzy Nation - John Scalzi
49. Talk Me Down - Victoria Dahl
5o. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami

books 51 - 60:
51. Diary - Chuck Palahniuk
52. Nerd Do Well - Simon Pegg
53. Redshirts - John Scalzi
54. Carrie - Stephen King
55. Wintergirls - Laurie Halse Anderson
56. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie

All right, that should do me. I'll put this post together later today. :D

What is the source of the text above? I suppose that my head is in a jumble at the moment, but I've enjoyed the sitting still part!

Welcome back!

>11 thornton37814: It's an excerpt from William Cobbett's Advice to Young Men and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life, published in 1829.

>12 drneutron: Thank you! I'm happy to be here.

Glad to see you back with us again, Krys!

Oooh, you're reading a couple of my all-time favorites: Kafka on the Shore and The Yiddish Policeman's Union. Hope you're enjoying them!

>14 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia! I'm glad to be back and doing my level best to make an actual dent in my to-read piles this year.

>15 scaifea: I'm tentatively loving Kafka right now - I say "tentatively" bc it's been taking some very strange turns these past couple of chapters, and I'm waiting to see where it all ends up. It's hard to put down! This is the first Murakami I've read and I'm really enjoying his writing.
The Yiddish Policeman's Union I need to get back to - I was reading it in August and got sidetracked about halfway in; I'd been liking it to that point, though!

Murakami is one of my LT discoveries, Krys. I hope you enjoy his work as much as I have!

Cobbett has certainly put us all in our place! Though those of us who are no longer young men or women are perhaps excused his censure!

I hope you have a good reading year.

No new reading developments to report today (almost done with Kafka on the Shore! About 1/3 into Marilyn: A Biography!).

Just kidding, I do have news - I finished Kafka this afternoon! Still processing, but I'd say I very much loved it. Hopefully everything I read this year is such an enjoyable, thought-provoking experience.

I enjoyed Kafka on the Shore too, Krys. I am glad to see that you liked it.

I've just finished Norman Mailer's biography of Marilyn Monroe. Mailer did a great job of capturing Marilyn the Cultural Icon and Marilyn the individual, talents and tragedies and all - now that I've finished, it seems as though only a novelist could be up to this kind of task.

I'm thinking this weekend will have to be dedicated to a Netflix Instant-sponsored Monroe movie marathon! :)

Now I'm reading the final chapters of A Study in Scarlet, my first exposure to Arthur Conan Doyle, and will probably dive back into Skinny Legs and All, provided I don't get sidetracked in the meantime...

Finished A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four today. I'm enjoying the series and Sir ACD's writing, though I've been having a laugh at the fact that thus far both criminals are honorable white guys who not only don't much hold it against Holmes for catching them ("fair's fair," "good on you," etc), wouldn't be criminals at all if not for the outside influence of (MASSIVELY STEREOTYPED BLACK PEOPLE/INDIANS/MORMONS/WEAK-WILLED LADIES/ETC) driving them to their misdeeds. Also the best part of The Sign of the Four was definitely Watson's disappointment at the thought that his lady-crush might potentially be more wealthy than him. :P

I'm looking forward to getting into The Hound of the Baskervilles as soon as I have the chance!

Also, because it is relevant and made me laugh today, another piece of old-timey advice regarding bookishness/precocity -



From Facts for the People, Things Worth Knowing: A Book of Receipts, in which Every Thing is of Practical Use to Every Body, published in 1850.

Transcribing the post I made on this past week's reading for another blog:

I read a lot this week, actually! Mostly because I've started a new job that involves a lot of data entry - pretty mindless, aka the perfect time to listen to audiobooks as I type.


• Marilyn: A Biography, by Norman Mailer - This is one I'd been working on for a while, since I saw the movie My Week with Marilyn, realized I knew hardly anything about Marilyn Monroe besides "she's a sex symbol" and "her face is pretty and pretty much everywhere in pop culture." I liked this book a lot - Norman Mailer did a great job of separating the fact from fiction, and also in capturing what it was that was so special about Monroe - both as a person, and as actress. Now I need to watch some of her movies! I've got a Netflix Instant-sponsored marathon planned for the near future, and since Monroe was apparently known for being a great comedian who chose her scripts well, I'm looking forward to it.


• A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Oh, ACD. These were a lot of fun - the writing is engaging, the mysteries are well-crafted, and it's SO EASY to see why these characters are so iconic and well-loved today. Even the failier moments of the books - like the sexism, racism, classism, ethnocentrism, etc etc YE OLDE TIMES WERE NOT A GOOD TIME TO BE NOT WHITE-AND-MALE, IT SEEMS - made me smile/laugh-and-facepalm more than they made me uncomfortable or angry. I got to tweet fun things like "Two novels into this series, the criminals are all honorable men forced into misdeeds by black people/Mormons/the ladiez. #SherlockHolmes" and "AHAHAHA @ Watson being PO'd when his crush inherits money. BUT NOW HOW WILL SHE BE PROPERLY DEPENDENT ON ME" and "These criminals never hold a grudge against Holmes for tracking them down. It's always like "oh well, fair's fair." #MaybeItsAnEnglishThing?" What's not to love? Haha, I'm looking forward to reading more of these.


• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins - I was kind of disappointed by this, honestly. I was expecting startling insights into today's global market and the United States' foreign policy, but what I got was mostly travel memoir, rehashing of what is already pretty much common knowledge, and a lot of John Perkins trying to make himself feel better by claiming he was dragging his feet ALMOST THE ENTIRE TIME OKAY EVEN THOUGH HE WENT BACK INTO THE BUSINESS LIKE 3 TIMES HE WAS SO RELUCTANT YOU GUYS AND FELT SUPER SUPER BAD. Like...someone has some responsibility to own up to before I can take anything they have to say very seriously. Just saying.

I also read some more of The Yiddish Policeman's Union and will hopefully finish that next week, and then I'm kind of dying to read either this Cut & Run novel everyone is talking about or Mira Grant's Feed or MAYBE I should really be getting to the massive 41-book shelf of to-reads I just alphabetized-by-author this afternoon in my bedroom. We'll see! :P

I tried reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and thought it was too awful to finish. Sometimes I wonder why these books become so popular.

Hello, I'm delurking to admire your funny articles posted. Where do you find them?

I had a mindless data entry job last year and spent a lot of hours listening to audiobooks too. The one about Marilyn Monroe sounds interesting. I've been wanting to see the movie you mentioned. Would you recommend it?

>26 carlym: I don't think I would've finished it, myself, if I'd been reading it myself instead of having it read to me as an audiobook. The entire thing could've been half as long as it was.

>27 RosyLibrarian: Haha, I'm glad someone appreciates them! I pick them up on tumblr, where I follow a few different blogs of retro advertisements and book excerpts.

I enjoyed My Week With Marilyn! I'm not sure I'd recommend the movie based on the plot, which is pretty much your run-of-the-mill "youth spends time with cultural icon, discovers that they too are human, comes away from the experience matured" storyline (see: Me and Orson Welles), but Michelle Williams is, as always, incredible, so I'd say it's worth a viewing for her acting (and all the fun 1960s fashion, of course).

I'm so bad at keeping this updated! I have been reading though, and of course completely failing to stick by my resolution not to purchase any new books for the first part of this year. I sold $126 worth of old books and CDs to a shop yesterday and couldn't resist pulling Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power off the clearance shelf ($3). It looks like it'll either be an interesting, factual look at the secret society system and its mystique...or a collection of hilariously improbably conspiracy theories. Either way, I'm excited to get into it. :D

• The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (reread) - I LOVE THIS BOOK. This is my second time reading it and it's still absolutely wonderful and chilling and wonderful. I'm a little bit of a geek about both horror fiction and literary fiction and female authors and this book just. satisfies on SO MANY LEVELS. It's gorgeously written with gorgeous, multi-dimensional, interesting characters and a really great character study - it's one I recommend all the time to people who don't tend to read genre/horror fiction. It's also freaky as hell, in a slow-building queasy-making gradually-ramping-up kind of way that ultimately has you turning it over in your head for days afterwards, because Shirley Jackson never explains her horrors so much as suggests several alternate and semi-plausible options before leaving it up to the reader to decide.
When I read this the first time I compared it to Black Swan in terms of character arcs/plot parallels, which I think still holds up. I'd call both stylistically-elevated supernatural(?) thriller.


• The Yiddish Policeman's Union, by Michael Chabon - This is one I started reading back in August, actually, and kept dropping and picking up again at random times. It's too bad, because I think the long breaks really ruined this one for me. Having to keep paging back to remember characters and pick up plot strings when you're reading a mystery just kind of...sucks. It's a really interesting premise, though, with a cast of very interesting characters. It was weird to be reading this and Skinny Legs and All (which I'm still working on) at once, since both deal with attempts to bomb the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.


• The Sicilian, by Mario Puzo - I love Mario Puzo. This was no Godfather, and the ending was obvious a mile coming, but his writing is comfortable and his Italian and Italian-American characters are bright and interesting. It especially helped that I was listening to this as an audiobook on loan from the library, and each character was played by a different thick-accented actor. Good times.


• You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, and Forgiveness, by Heather Sellers - I have a friend who is face blind, so this was really interesting. It's so hard to imagine being unable to recognize people by their faces, and such a skill I take very much for granted. I've read a lot of rough childhood memoirs, and this is one of the most well-written and engaging I've encountered so far. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested in face blindness or schizophrenia.


• The Incredible Shrinking Man, by Richard Matheson - Oh, Richard. What is there to say about this? It's cotton-candy pulp, stock gary stu reader avatars and objectifiable women (one of them fifteen, which was pretty gross) and zany pseudosciency happenings and the occasional gem of critical reflection, in this case re: American masculinity and its ideals. I can roll my eyes at Matheson forever, but I can never hate him, because for everything he does that makes me cringe he occasionally hits on something poignant and timeless. Everything else is dated, of course, and hilariously so.


• How to Smell a Rat: The Five Signs of Financial Fraud, by Ken Fisher - I'm not so much interested in investment banking as fraud, but this book was interesting anyway. It's really obvious that Fisher is a magazine columnist first, author second, because the book was subdivided into small sections and repeated itself regularly the way listicle writers seem to. Most of these lessons were ones anyone could learn watching an episode of Leverage (♥), though, so I'd recommend two or three other books on fraud/theft/counterfeiting before this one.

THe Haunting of Hill House is a favorite of mine too! "Journeys end in lovers meeting." Creepy! The movie (the original, not the re-make) is excellent, too.

I haven't been here in a while, but I have been reading! Added 13 books to my list for the year - I think my favorites have been Escape from Alcatraz's prison history, Tina Fey's memoir, and YA dystopia House of Stairs.