My 2007 Reading Resolutions

Okay, so we've talked about what I read, what I didn't read, and what I really should have read before '07. Now, my reading resolutions, and a few blogging resolutions:

1. I will not buy any books for myself before I move. This one's pretty easy. I have a ton of unread books in my apartment; the more I buy, the more I have to truck with me at the end of the month. Plus, one of my other real-life resolutions is to save more money.
2. I will give away more books than I take in. I've been getting better at culling my shelves, and I want to keep it up. On Saturday I passed two books off to a friend who asked for recommendations.
3. I will pick up on the Modern Library list again and read 10 more books off it this year. I had such big plans! But I got discouraged and stopped tackling the list because I was too tempted to read other things, so I've shrunk it down to size. Ten books will put me at half-read. Ten books I can do, especially when I'm getting one of them in e-mail every day from Dailylit. If I read more, why, great!
4. I will give more credit where credit is due, by linking to my fellow litbloggers and creating a blogroll. I read a fair amount of great reading Weblogs, but I hardly ever comment or link back. This makes me a bad blogger (or at least one who isn't using the communal Web to its fullest).
5. I will get on a regular posting schedule.
I hardly posted here at all until this fall, and now some days I post a lot. I'm not sure what I'm aiming for; I have to think about it a while longer.

New Year, Old Shelf

I am embarrassed to admit that of all the year-end "to-dos," finishing up books I started in '06 somehow fell by the wayside. (Along with half of my holiday cards. Sorry, everyone I know!) Here are the books I'm carrying into the new year, along with the approximate month I got them. What a procrastinator am I.

It was so good, what's wrong with me?
(September) Francine du Plessix Gray, THEM

Critical picks
(October) Leslie Epstein, THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD
(December) Barbara Ehrenreich, DANCING IN THE STREETS

Borrowed from friends
(October) Anthony Lane, NOBODY'S PERFECT: WRITINGS FROM THE NEW YORKER (from my friend Brian Orloff -- sorry, Brian! I didn't forget!)
(Oct.) Pauls Toutonghi, RED WEATHER (from my dad)
(November) Katharine Weber, TRIANGLE (from mom)
(Nov.) David von Drehle, TRIANGLE (from mom as well, only nonfiction)

The library books
(Dec.) Carol Shields, LARRY'S PARTY (which became my first book of 2007)
(Dec.) Melanie Rehak, GIRL SLEUTH

From the Stacks Challenge
(May) Ben Yagoda, ABOUT TOWN (I had read about 2 chapters and then put it down until the challenge)
(May) Herman Wouk, MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR

What I Didn't Read In 2006 (Incompletely)

Darby Dixon's list of books he didn't read in 2006 was so hilarious and true that I had to do one of my own. Mine is much less complete, I fear, because I don't always write down books that I check out of the library and subsequently return, or books I pick up at a store thinking of buying and after 10 pages think "Hell no!"

This list is culled from my paper journal for books read (I guess the analog version of Wormbook?) I started such a journal two years ago at the suggestion of my boyfriend who had given me an adorable pocket-sized notebook for Christmas while I was visiting him. Visits to his place always involve an insane amount of book shopping, so it was the perfect time to start. But by the time a book gets listed in my paper journal, I have already made a good start on it and was planning to finish it, until something happened. That's why my list isn't as long as Darby's -- it's certainly not because I am more patient than he. In any case, the list:

Jose Luis Gallero, SOLO SE VIVE UNA VEZ -- No, I didn't not read it because it was in Spanish. I didn't read it because it had been recommended to me as a comprehensive history of the movida, Spain's 1980s cultural revival, and instead it turned out to be a series of interviews with people who must have been instrumental in the movida but how was never explained. I got frustrated pretty quickly.

Daniel Handler, WATCH YOUR MOUTH -- How Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, manage to land one book on the best-of list I posted yesterday and one on this list? WATCH YOUR MOUTH is about taboos, and unfortunately after 75 pages I reached my personal limit. The writing was great, it's just... I couldn't get past it.

Rona Jaffe, MAZES AND MONSTERS -- Another author with a place on the best-of list, and yet as soon as I opened up this book and read the preface about how Dungeons and Dragons kills people, I knew I would never actually read it. On the bright side, I figured out why my parents never wanted to play D&D with a neighborhood friend (after this book was made into a movie).

Cecelia Ahern, LOVE, ROSIE
Alison Pace, PUG HILL
I'm not ashamed to read chick lit. Hey, it's out there, a lot of people buy it, it's not wrong in and of itself. But I am rather picky about what chick lit I read, just as I am about any book. I adore Jennifer Weiner, for example, but I just couldn't get into these two books.

A.S. Byatt, THE VIRGIN IN THE GARDEN -- I tried. I tried, people. I loved the second book in this series (STILL LIFE) but I just couldn't get into the mind-frame of this one. Maybe next year?

2006: The Year in Reading, The Best

This is the full list. Unfortunately, I used to be much better at my superlatives. I'd like to elaborate on all of these, eventually, but if you need a quick hit leave a comment.

Semicolon has a huge round-up of best-of lists, which I am combing through greedily while hitting ADD TO WISH LIST on Amazon.

Tomorrow, an incomplete list of books I did not read in 2006, and what my bookstand looks like here in 2007.

Best Fiction I Read in 2006
Rona Jaffe, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING
Audrey Niffenegger, THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE
Daniel Handler, THE BASIC EIGHT **Note: Commenter Carl V. made me realize I should point out, this is the Lemony Snicket Daniel Handler, but this book is not for kids -- it's way too funny and dark.**
Vikram Seth, A SUITABLE BOY (it’s worth it)
Marisha Pessl, SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS
Ted Heller, SLAB RAT
Kirsten Lobe, PARIS HANGOVER
Critical choices: Harold Pinter, THE DWARFS; Margaret Atwood, THE PENELOPIAD

Best Nonfiction I Read in 2006
Blair Tindall, MOZART IN THE JUNGLE
Koren Zailckas, SMASHED: STORY OF A DRUNKEN GIRLHOOD
Sara Nelson, SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME
Jerry Oppenheimer, FRONT ROW ANNA WINTOUR: THE COOL LIFE AND HOT TIMES OF VOGUE'S EDITOR IN CHIEF
Michael Lewis, TRAIL FEVER
Critical choice: Dan Savage, THE COMMITMENT

Real page turners (or Books That Cost Me the Most Sleep in 2006)
Rachel Pine, THE TWINS OF TRIBECA
Jennifer Weiner, GOODNIGHT NOBODY
Colleen Curran, WHORES ON THE HILL
Kaavya Viswanathan, HOW OPAL MEHTA GOT KISSED, GOT WILD, AND GOT A LIFE
Megan McCafferty, CHARMED THIRDS
Tom Perrotta, LITTLE CHILDREN
Sarah Strohmeyer, THE SECRET LIVES OF FORTUNATE WIVES
Adam Langer, THE WASHINGTON STORY
Mary Gaitskill, VERONICA
David Mitchell, BLACK SWAN GREEN
Heidi Julavits, THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT
James Ellroy, THE BLACK DAHLIA
Critical choice: Matt Rauscher, THE UNBORN SPOUSE SITUATION

Best fiction in letter or diary format
Laurie Graham, GONE WITH THE WINDSORS
Steve Almond and Julianna Baggotte, WHICH BRINGS ME TO YOU

Amazing but depressing:
Frances Kuffel, PASSING FOR THIN
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, RANDOM FAMILY

Just depressing:
Daniel Jones (ed.), MODERN LOVE: 50 TRUE AND EXTRAORDINARY TALES OF DESIRE, DECEIT, AND DEVOTION

Why did I finish this?
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, PLAYING WITH BOYS
Isabel Rose, THE J.A.P. CHRONICLES
Hilary De Vries, SO 5 MINUTES AGO
Kazuo Ishiguro, NEVER LET YOU GO
Mary Carlomagno, GIVE IT UP!

2006: The Year in Reading, The List

First, the full list; next, my personal favorites.

Statistics for my 113 books read so far this year:
81 were for pleasure
32 were for reviews (a personal best!)
47 were nonfiction, 65 fiction, 1 by Hunter S. Thompson
Of reviews only, 10 were nonfiction, 21 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)
40 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!
21 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
9.4167 books per month (average)
0.309 books per day (average)
0 books from the Modern Library reading list -- the only stat with which I am actually disappointed.

Books in italics are ones I reviewed. Books without numbers were re-reads.

1. Zoe Heller, WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? NOTES ON A SCANDAL
2. Rona Jaffe, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING
3. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, THREE DAUGHTERS
4. Nicholas Basbanes, PATIENCE AND FORTITUDE
5. Rachel Pine, THE TWINS OF TRIBECA
6. Gail Godwin, QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD
7. Marilyn French, THE WOMEN'S ROOM
8. Dara Horn, THE WORLD TO COME
9. Gail Godwin, THE MAKING OF A WRITER: JOURNALS 1961-63
10. Audrey Niffenegger, THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE
11. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, PLAYING WITH BOYS
12. Angela Nissel, THE BROKE DIARIES
Karyn Bosnak, SAVE KARYN
13. Liz Perle, MONEY: A MEMOIR
14. Jason DeParle, AMERICAN DREAM
15. Joan Didion, SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM
16. Stacy Kravetz, WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD
17. Marshall Berman, ON THE TOWN
18. Daniel Handler, THE BASIC EIGHT
19. Andres Martinez, 24/7: LIVING IT UP AND DOUBLING DOWN IN THE NEW LAS VEGAS
20. Hunter S. Thompson, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
21. Ian Frazier, GREAT PLAINS
22. Joan Didion, THE WHITE ALBUM
23. Douglas Coupland, JPOD
24. Peter Biskind, EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS
25. Jane Smiley, MOO
26. Max Messmer, JOB HUNTING FOR DUMMIES
27. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT OF BRAZIL
28. Karyn Bosnak, TWENTY TIMES A LADY
29. Bonnie Fuller, THE JOYS OF MUCH TOO MUCH
30. Gay Talese, THE GAY TALESE READER: PORTRAITS AND ENCOUNTERS
31. Caroline Preston, GATSBY'S GIRL
32. Rona Jaffe, CLASS REUNION
33. Augusten Burroughs, POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS
34. Jennifer Weiner, GOODNIGHT NOBODY
35. Jen Lancaster, BITTER IS THE NEW BLACK
36. Carolyn Parkhurst, LOST AND FOUND
37. Al Franken, THE TRUTH (WITH JOKES)
38. Isabel Rose, THE J.A.P. CHRONICLES
39. Ralph Ferrone, DON'T BLOW THE INTERVIEW
40. Vikram Seth, A SUITABLE BOY
41. Bill Bryson, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID
42. Hilary De Vries, SO 5 MINUTES AGO
43. Kazuo Ishiguro, NEVER LET YOU GO
44. Jonathan Ames, I LOVE YOU MORE THAN YOU KNOW
45. Colleen Curran, WHORES ON THE HILL
46. Blair Tindall, MOZART IN THE JUNGLE
47. Jennifer Solow, THE BOOSTER
48. Koren Zailckas, SMASHED: STORY OF A DRUNKEN GIRLHOOD
49. Kaavya Viswanathan, HOW OPAL MEHTA GOT KISSED, GOT WILD, AND GOT A LIFE
50. Megan McCafferty, CHARMED THIRDS
51. Meghan Daum, THE QUALITY OF LIFE REPORT
52. Chris Ayres, WAR REPORTING FOR COWARDS
53. John Grogan, MARLEY AND ME
54. Bridget Harrison, TABLOID LOVE
55. Kirstie Alley, HOW TO LOSE YOUR ASS AND REGAIN YOUR LIFE
56. Eduardo Santiago, TOMORROW THEY WILL KISS
57. Edith Wharton, THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
58. Jancee Dunn, BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME
59. Sara Gay Forden, THE HOUSE OF GUCCI
60. Marisha Pessl, SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS
61. Kevin Jennings, MAMA'S BOY, PREACHER'S SON
62. Joshua Zeitz, FLAPPER
63. Jay Quinn, THE GOOD NEIGHBOR
64. Lolly Winston, HAPPINESS SOLD SEPARATELY
65. Augusten Burroughs, RUNNING WITH SCISSORS
66. Tom Perrotta, LITTLE CHILDREN
67. Sarah Strohmeyer, THE SECRET LIVES OF FORTUNATE WIVES
68. Sara Nelson, SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME
69. Mary Carlomagno, GIVE IT UP!
70. Daniel Stashower, THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL
71. Jennifer Weiner, GOOD IN BED
72. Jerry Oppenheimer, FRONT ROW ANNA WINTOUR: THE COOL LIFE AND HOT TIMES OF VOGUE'S EDITOR IN CHIEF
73. Sonia Singh, GHOST, INTERRUPTED
74. Anthony Bourdain, KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL
75. Robert Rave and Jane Rave, CONVERSATIONS AND COSMOPOLITANS
76. Jeff Black, PLANTING ELI
77. Dan Savage, THE COMMITMENT
78. Adam Langer, THE WASHINGTON STORY
79. Ted Heller, SLAB RAT
80. Ken Jennings, BRAINIAC
81. Susan Isaacs, PAST PERFECT
82. Laurie Graham, GONE WITH THE WINDSORS
83. Ayelet Waldman, LOVE AND OTHER IMPOSSIBLE PURSUITS
84. David Zinczenko, MEN, LOVE & SEX: THE COMPLETE USER'S GUIDE FOR WOMEN
85. Brett Josef Grubisic, THE AGE OF CITIES
86. Mary Gaitskill, VERONICA
87. Jerry Oppenheimer, HOUSE OF HILTON
88. Margaret Atwood, THE PENELOPIAD
89. Jill Smolinski, THE NEXT THING ON MY LIST
90. Erica Jong, FEAR OF FLYING
91. Julie Morgenstern, NEVER CHECK E-MAIL IN THE MORNING
92. Harold Pinter, THE DWARFS
93. Marjorie Leet Ford, DO TRY TO SPEAK AS WE DO
94. Fritz Peters, FINISTERE
95. Valerie Taylor, WHISPER THEIR LOVE
96. Laura Zigman, PIECE OF WORK
97. Claire Messud, THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN
98. Kirsten Lobe, PARIS HANGOVER
99. Heidi Raykell, CONFESSIONS OF A NAUGHTY MOMMY
100. Steve Almond and Julianna Baggotte, WHICH BRINGS ME TO YOU
101. Matt Rauscher, THE UNBORN SPOUSE SITUATION
102. David Mitchell, BLACK SWAN GREEN
103. Heidi Julavits, THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT
104. Michael Lewis, TRAIL FEVER
105. Kate Muir, LEFT BANK
106. Laura Ruby, I'M NOT JULIA ROBERTS
107. Daniel Jones (ed.), MODERN LOVE: 50 TRUE AND EXTRAORDINARY TALES OF DESIRE, DECEIT, AND DEVOTION
108. Frances Kuffel, PASSING FOR THIN
109. James Ellroy, THE BLACK DAHLIA
110. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, RANDOM FAMILY
111. Lu Vickers, BREATHING UNDERWATER
Zoe Trope, PLEASE DON'T KILL THE FRESHMAN
Natalie Goldberg, THUNDER AND LIGHTNING
112. Elizabeth Hickey, THE WAYWARD MUSE
113. Anne Lamott, BIRD BY BIRD

Happy New Year!

I've been off all week, bonding with my family in Wisconsin.

I got back to my apartment today to find The Old Hag had sent me Gregoire Bouillier's THE MYSTERY GUEST: AN ACCOUNT. Yippee! I am so looking forward to getting into it, as soon as I do my other boring grown-up things.

2006 year in review (an update on this post): soon!

May your days be merry and bright...

And may all your holiday bookstacks be taller than you can handle.

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.)