Oh, there's no place like...

Live from the airport! I am on my way home for the next ten days, where I anticipate reading a lot. I didn't fulfill my own goal to finish all my review books before today, but que será, será. I'm not missing any deadlines by bringing them home, although they add to my luggage (review books + gifts = a 50-pounds-exactly bag, and lucky it was).

What do you want to read, if you're facing at least a little vacation time? Have you gotten, or are you hoping to get, a special book for the holidays?

Great Books? Well, some of them are just OK.

News flash! Our children no longer read the classics! Siena College took a list of 30 "Great Books" and surveyed freshmen and faculty on whether they had read these classics. The article goes on to (unfairly) pick on an English professor who includes books by Julia Alvarez (living Hispanic female) and Ernest Gaines (living African-American male) in her Great Books class. In the footsteps of pages turned I decided to look at the list myself and do some fessing up.

So I've read 18 out of these "Great Books," which I consider to be pretty good. I'm not sure, though, that we need to make room for WAR AND PEACE and MOBY DICK in high schools. Plato's REPUBLIC, on the other hand, would have been good, and I can think of several books I was made to read -- DELIVERANCE, HOUSE ON MANGO STREET and THE SHIPPING NEWS, for instance -- that could have been replaced by works of more merit. But don't take my word for it; after all Britney Spears has me beat on the Greeks.

1. The Works of Shakespeare -- I've read most, but not all.

2. The Declaration of Independence

3. Twain, Mark, Huckleberry Finn

4. The poems of Emily Dickinson -- Selections

5. The poems of Robert Frost -- Selections

6. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Scarlet Letter

7. Fitzgerald, Scott F., The Great Gatsby

8. Orwell, George, 1984

9. Homer, Odyssey and Iliad -- I complained a lot about having to read THE ODYSSEY in ninth grade, but I think it's worth it.

10. Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities -- I read GREAT EXPECTATIONS on my own, though. We did read A CHRISTMAS CAROL in middle school -- gotta love those amendment exempt private schools [although I celebrate Christmas, so at the time it didn't bother me].

11. Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales -- I think we might have skipped some of the minor ones.

12. Salinger, J.D., Catcher in the Rye

13. The Bible -- Selections, although by then I had already been exposed to it in church, so I thought reading the Bible in school was silly. I'm sure my ninth grade English teacher made a very good argument as to why the Bible is so crucial to Western Literature, but I probably just rolled my eyes and wrote in my journal, "Yeah, whatever." Sorry.

14. Thoreau, Henry David, Walden

15. Sophocles, Oedipus

16. Steinbeck, John, the Grapes of Wrath

17. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays and poems -- Selections, but not until college did I read him in any depth.

18. Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice -- And oh, how the boys complained...

19. Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass

20. The novels of William Faulkner -- Now here's a place I always thought was an Actual Hole in my education. When I took American lit in high school, we had a semester of it, but because the semesters were not equal in length, people who took the class in the spring read one more book than we in the fall did. That book was AS I LAY DYING. I feel like I've made up my Faulkner deficit from reading that book, plus ABSALOM, ABSALOM!, GO DOWN, MOSES and THE SOUND AND THE FURY, but none of that happened before I got to college.

21. Melville, Herman, Moby Dick -- Not in school. Not, I think, really necessary for people to read in school.

22. Milton, John, Paradise Lost -- Just selections.

23. Vergil, Aeneid

24. Plato, The Republic

25. Marx, Karl, Communist Manifesto -- Some excerpts.

26. Machiavelli, Niccolo, the Prince -- Excerpts.

27. Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America -- Excerpts, although I do own it. Points for trying?

28. Dostoevski, Feodor, Crime and Punishment

29. Aristotle, Politics

30. Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace -- But no one made me, I spent most of the second semester of my freshman year reading this.

Kaavya and Jayson rejoice?

Every time you think you've got the latest in plagiarism at your disposal, someone goes forth and tops you. A Swedish book critic was recently fired for panning a book in the newspaper Helsingborgs Dagblad. So what? She was panning a book that was never published. On behalf of my quarter of Swedish heritage, I am sorry for inflicting this nonsense on the world. (Via Edrants.)

Books I read recently, in haiku form.

#102. David Mitchell, BLACK SWAN GREEN

Thirteen's hard. Secret:
I like hobbits, poetry.
Wonder what that means.

#103. Heidi Julavits, THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT

Kidnapped, or did she
Fake escape from Boston 'burbs?
Add witch metaphors.

#104. Michael Lewis, TRAIL FEVER

'96: Gore's liked,
Dubya's drowned out, Nader's fresh.
Attack ads still run.

#105. Kate Muir, LEFT BANK

He cheats. She's a bitch.
Kid runs away. Pretty Paris can't
keep him from nanny.

And the challenge with the best name is...

The Chunkster Challenge! Read at least one book over 400 pages in the first six months of 2007. I remember from finishing A SUITABLE BOY this year how satisfying a very, very large book can be to complete. I'm going to aim for three, and perhaps I can do more -- Doris Lessing's THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK, Cathy Kelly's WHAT SHE WANTS (which I just had checked out but was too daunted to actually crack open) and Susanna Clarke's JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL (Michelle of overdue books is doing this one too).

Have you read a very large book you enjoyed? Share, please. (One of my favorite books, ANNA KARENINA, is a chunkster -- and I swear I'm not being pretentious, I've read it three times and recommend it to pretty much everyone I know.)

It's the final countdown...

We're getting closer and closer to the end of the year and the year-end lists are coming out. Unfortunately for all of you, I am nowhere near deciding what my favorite books were this year. I hope, however, that I come up with superlatives as -- well -- superlative as this list does. Still, to give myself something to update later on in December, for what it's worth, here are

Statistics for my 101 books read so far this year:
72 were for pleasure
29 were for reviews (a personal best!)
42 were nonfiction, 58 fiction, 1 by Hunter S. Thompson (a genre all his own?)
Of reviews only, 10 were nonfiction, 18 were fiction
41 of those were in the first six months of the year (school used to take a huge toll on my reading time... yet I still miss it)
36 were library books -- I can't believe I remember this, but I have a pretty good memory for book covers, which I guess helps. Seems pretty low until you take out the 28 review books, which means almost half the books I picked up this year for pleasure were library-owned. Let's hear it for your local library! Hoo rah!
18 I purchased during 2006 (bad! bad! And those aren't even the only books I bought this year.)
1 I bought and then returned
16 books read in November, the highest month (cold weather + traveling over Thanksgiving break)
4 books read each in February and March, the lowest months (not counting December)
8.41 average books per month
0.2765 average books per day

And on the nightstand I have
4 books to review
3 From-the-Stacks challenge books (which I want to finish before January 1st, even though I know the challenge goes on longer)
59 library books ETA: Oops?

So in theory if I only read those books, I will top out this year at 113 -- not my best performance but not my worst either. Frankly, if I crack 100 books I'm pleased. I know it's a lofty goal, but for me right now (being childless and not in school) it's doable.

Of course there's the matter of me having seen more movies than books read this year -- but that's another post.

How cool...

Is Will Self? Not only is he a major walker, but his work space looks like some kind of Post-It wonderland. These photos of it are mesmerizing.

Cien!

Yesterday I finished my hundredth book of the year. The book was Steve Almond and Julianna Baggotte's WHICH BRINGS ME TO YOU, an amazing novel-in-letters that I recommend you all go out and buy, beg or borrow.

In other news, next week there is a book sale at work, and I am already prepared to swear off the sale and then in a moment of weakness grab at least 5 books. Maybe I can get some Christmas shopping done while I yield to temptation? I have a stack of eight books to donate to the sale, so if I'm savvy I can come out ahead. (It benefits the Friends of the Emmaus Public Library, so I know at least my failure is another person's aid.)

From The Stacks Update: Kirsten Lobe, PARIS HANGOVER, I'm Already Packing My Bags

Have you ever hesitated to read a book, not because you didn't want to, but because you were afraid it wouldn't live up to expectations? Of course, when you do read it you end up kicking yourself, because you could have known about it so much sooner!

I bought this book because it sounded like a fluffy, fun read (complete with pastel cover). This was before the New York Times identified it as part of a trend (TimesSelect) of books set in contemporary Paris. It is way more than that. With this book I actually put it down for a few days so I wouldn't finish it all in one sitting. It was that captivating.

A lot of it reminded me of my expat days of 2005, sometimes pleasantly, sometimes painfully. Narrator Klein is hilarious and awkward and lovely, but most of all honest about what it means to drop your American life (in her case, much more glamorous than my own) and take up residence in an arrondisement. By 50 pages in I was practically dusting off my passport. The book wasn't entirely realistic -- even a former fashionista would have a hard time living off her savings while trying to make it as an artist -- but I bought it, because heck, it's romantic. This book makes a great escape.

1. Erica Jong, FEAR OF FLYING
2. Kirsten Lobe, PARIS HANGOVER
3. Herman Wouk, MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR
4. Ben Yagoda, ABOUT TOWN: THE NEW YORKER AND THE WORLD IT MADE
5. Adrian Nicole Leblanc, RANDOM FAMILY

Learn more about the From the Stacks Challenge here.

Generation Q

Here's an interesting article about how the consumption of entertainment has shifted recently to a consume-later mindset -- from saving movies in theatres to your Netflix queue (of which I am guilty) to Amazon.com and TiVo. (I would add del.icio.us and Bloglines to that list, even though I'm not spending money on those when I consume them.)

I was just talking with one of my coworkers the other day about how I wanted a Netflix for books, so I didn't end up with (as I have now) scads of books that I haven't read, which get pushed back and back because of my propensity for library books. I've attempted to implement a system similar to that with which I discipline my Netflix queue -- where I sit down the night before my books are due and read the first few chapters of the ones I haven't even touched, to see if I do actually want to read them, or if they aren't what I expected or wanted. (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust recommends reading the first 50 pages of a book if you're under 50, less if you're older.) Sometimes this backfires -- I went ahead and renewed Sex with Kings and then it lagged a ton in the middle and I regretted it, but hey, back it goes, no loss. At least this way I don't amass huge library fines. For Netflix, this system has meant returning a fair amount of movies whose first half hour just didn't grab me, and that's all right, too.

Of course, there's always self-imposed limits like the From the Stacks challenge (in which I am advancing -- more on that later!), but sometimes those don't work. Like this weekend, when I was traveling and had three library books waiting at home while I bought more books. I should have held back, but my dad was buying -- he knows the way to my heart all right.

I feel stupid.

Either Britney Spears actually read Antigone, or she read enough of it to write a middle-school essay on it. I have not, in fact, read Antigone. (Via Jenisfamous.)

258!

The number of books fiction judges for the National Book Award get to review. Between May and August. Judge Marianne Wiggins writes in the L.A. Times that she "constructed an elaborate system of piles: read, unread, couldn't get past page 10, crap, bloated, vomitous, kill-me-now and praise God." OK, I'm sold.

NY Times Notable Books of 2006

Here are my stats, given there are 100 books (or as Paperback Writer points out, 99 books and 2 novellas) on the list:

I reviewed 1 of them.
I read 1 of them (not counting the ones I reviewed).
I own 1 of them that I haven't read yet.

Coming later, my early predictions for my personal notable books of the year.

Early Reading Meme

I swiped this from pages turned.

1. How old were you when you learned to read and who taught you?

I don't know! I'm told I was 3, but I don't really remember. It's not that I don't trust my mom's words, but I'm really, really not sure. I definitely knew by kindergarten because I remember how excited I was to get to go to the school library. I imagine my parents both taught me and I picked up anything else I needed from "Sesame Street."

2. Did you own any books as a child? If so, what’s the first one that you remember owning? If not, do you recall any of the first titles that you borrowed from the library?

The first books I can remember as mine were the American Girl series (see below) and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series. Those butter-yellow books still sit in the bookshelves at home although now the pages are yellow and brittle. I read those over and over -- with the exception of BY THE SHORES OF SILVER LAKE and THE LONG WINTER, because of all the bad stuff that happens in them. (I won't elaborate, in case you still want to get back and read or remind yourself.)

3. What’s the first book that you bought with your own money?

When I was 5 or 6 I got $1 a week for my allowance, and American Girl chapter books (yes, these, although mine were white paperbacks) were $6. To foster Good Spending Habits, I had to save $12 in order to be taken to the much-missed Cedarburg Books and buy one book. Another hard lesson: When the price of those books went up to $7, meaning it now took 14 weeks to earn enough to get a new book. That hurt! Apparently they haven't gone up in price again since then, though.

4. Were you a re-reader as a child? If so, which book did you re-read most often?

Oh heck yes. I read ROLLER SKATES by Ruth Sawyer and A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Betty Smith over and over. And MATILDA and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, and Gordon Korman's NO COINS, PLEASE, which permanently shaped my view of the world. Ditto ANNE OF THE ISLAND and the EMILY trilogy by L.M. Montgomery. (ANNE OF THE ISLAND, the third Anne of Green Gables book, was the best because Anne goes off to college and lives with really cool roommates in dodgy boarding houses, plus **spoiler alert** she ends up with Gilbert at the end.) And I had the USBORNE BOOK OF WORLD HISTORY, which I now recognize as a completely Western-centric, sexist, racist book, but it had great drawings in it.

5. What’s the first adult book that captured your interest and how old were you when you read it?

My parents are going to kill me for admitting this, but here goes anyway. As a kid I can remember very few books that I was actually kept away from, and I started reading "adult" novels probably before any librarian would feel comfortable recommending them to me. (Then again, YA books weren't what they are today.) I remember wanting to read THE FIRST WIVES' CLUB, which all my mom's friends were reading, and having that taken away from me. (But not THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X... even though I never got past the part where he went into prison.) But the best book to read when Mom and Dad were out was P.J. O'Rourke's MODERN MANNERS: AN ETIQUETTE BOOK FOR RUDE PEOPLE. Probably 90 percent of the jokes went over our innocent little heads, but I still remember and quote the page on how to speak Fake French, and I still sometimes look for it in bookstores. At some point my sister and I got caught and the book disappeared -- I never found it in the house again. I think I was 8 or 9 at the time.

6. Are there children’s books that you passed by as a child that you have learned to love as an adult? Which ones?

I think I will always be a little sad that Harry Potter Mania didn't hit until I was almost out of middle school. I had to read the books furtively on family vacations instead of devouring them in public noisily. (Exception: last summer's ...HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, which I read on the Chicago El even after a strange man said to me, "You got boobs. You too old for Harry Potter." Sir, I disagree!)

"Don't make it a big deal, don't be so sensitive." -- Fiona Apple

Maybe Chuck Klosterman ought to stop reading some of his reviews:

The AV Club: When you're reading reviews of your work, do you
generally find them fair, as someone who's done a lot of criticism yourself?
CK: The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books, or write opinion pieces about what they think of Neil Young, or why they quit watching ER or whatever. And because of that, I think there's a lot of people who write about my books with the premise of, "Why this guy? Why not me?"... When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.

I haven't read any of Chuck Klosterman's books, just his Spin essays (which I liked), but I'm feeling a distinct refusal to roll over and submit to his glorious and untouchable prose. Also, you know he wants to be Van Halen and/ or Sofia Coppola.