Math rules!

From the dramatic side of life: The Playgoer has a list of the top 10 most produced plays of the past decade, and David Auburn's "Proof" is tops in a sprint. I saw "Proof" in the past decade (at Trinity Rep in Providence) and really liked it, but I haven't heard of a few of these. I'm inclined to buy the Playgoer's theory about why "The Glass Menagerie" gets produced over other, better Tennessee Williams plays, but a little shocked that it's the only "classic" up there.

Via Tara on Twitter, Quirk Books has announced its follow-up to SENSE & SENSIBILITY & SEA MONSTERS, and it's not Austen: It's Leo Tolstoy's ANDROID KARENINA, a much longer book than the first two to receive the classic mash-up treatment (and one of my favorites, at least in its historic form).

Co-author Ben H. Winters will be speaking on a panel at the Morgan Library here in New York on the 26th about adapting Jane Austen. From poking around on Quirk's website, I also learned that Natalie Portman has signed to star in and produce the P&P&Z movie adaptation; her co-producer told Variety the book "lends a modern sense of urgency to a well known love story."

All that you can't leave behind

Fellow ink-stained wretch and alum of best school ever Sonia alerted me to two articles in the Times that fit in well with an ongoing discussion on this blog, "Books You Can Live Without" and "Books to Live By." In the first, authors share their secrets for maintaining their collections -- at least the ones who will admit to giving away any books at all. In the second, commenters share the one or two books they wouldn't give up for love or money.

A few thoughts:

• Most of the authors approached this question practically and metaphysically, with the exceptions of Fred Bass of the Strand (all practical) and Joshua Ferris (all metaphysical). The former end suits if you run a giant used bookstore; as for the latter, it must be hard to take a principled stand against discarding any, but I too have fallen prey to the "addiction of good intentions."
• The closest I ever came to narrowing down my library to essentials was probably when I studied abroad -- but that was a false cull: I was only giving up my library for six months, making the separation slightly easier.
• To the commenter who asked if anyone had felt euphoria while reading: Yes, you are not alone.
  
• Do you own any books you aren't re-reading (or have no plans to re-read), but can't bear to give away? Reference books don't count.
• Also, discuss:
  

"Is a gentleman’s library of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves anything more than a vanity? Now if I can just get rid of all the mirrors in the house." --Billy Collins

Goodreads Choice Awards

The YA dystopian sequel CATCHING FIRE won the first annual Goodreads Choice Awards. The third book in former Nickelodeon writer Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series is due out in August this year, and I hear good things from literary quarters about the first two.

Top fiction and nonfiction honors went to book club favorite Kathryn Stockett's THE HELP and Dave Cullen's COLUMBINE. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES lost in its category by 13 votes to one of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels, but at least one book I voted for won: Stieg Larsson's THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE smacked down Dan Brown to take first in the mystery/thriller category.

If you don't use Goodreads already, it's really fun to play around with either to make pithy comments or longer reviews on what you're reading. A neat feature I never use any more but should is the ability to order your to-read list according to which books you're going to read right away, and which can wait a while. Ideal for the short attention span! If you're on already, let's be friends.

Jokes About Zombies And Their Relation To The Unconscious

Great news! With the new year Sigmund Freud's body of work has now passed into the public domain, so if you can think of a Freud parody that hasn't already been done, you are now free from legal action on it.

Other authors in the class of '10: W.B. Yeats and Ford Madox Ford.

Slippers (get it?): Unemployed Philosophers Guild

NYC: A bookstore that delivers

I can't decide if this is genius or the act of dirty enablers: If you order a book from McNally Jackson in SoHo by 3PM and it's in stock, and you happen to live in the neighborhood, they will bring it by on a bike before 5.

Now granted, Barnes and Noble already offers this, and Amazon's trying to, but I bet the McNally J. delivery person is much more charming -- I'm seeing a trailing scarf and one of those baskets with plastic flowers on the front -- and probably won't just stick the door tag on and leave without ringing the bell, FEDEX. Too bad I'm not in the neighborhood!

I am thinking of Achilles' grief, he said. That famous, terrible, grief. Let me tell you boys something. Such grief can only be told in form. Maybe it only really exists in form. Form is everything. Without it you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry -- sincere, maybe, for what that's worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a grievance but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry.

--Robert Frost as a character in Tobias Wolff's novel OLD SCHOOL

As long as we're on matters of security

If you're trying to come up with a name with positive literary connotations for your new data protection software, is your best option really Grendel?

First in-flight book ban takes effect

And so it begins: Transport Canada has banned carry-ons for U.S.-bound passengers citing "pressures at the security checkpoint" related to the attempted Underbomber. Passengers can carry on medication, coats and laptops, but have to check books and magazines, although if they wanted they could buy new ones after clearing security.

There's usually something worth reading in your average airport bookstore, but I wouldn't want to have to rely on that, especially since I like to plan what I'm reading in advance. But who would've thought this would start with Canada, the international equivalent of that girl in your high school class who is popular because she's actually nice to everybody?* And the caveat about being able to carry on what you buy in the terminal is reminiscent of the liquids ban, in a bad way. And unlike with liquids or shoes, no plot has surfaced so far suggesting terrorists were going to use books in any attack. (Judging by past practices, the TSA should be banning underwear right now. I'm not saying they will or that it's a good idea, but the record is there.)

The regulations, which began Dec. 28, will be in place "until further notice" according to a Jan. 4 press release. They're also offering pat-downs, in case you didn't get your relative hug quota over the holidays. And by offering I mean requiring.

---
*The U.S. in this analogy being the guy or girl who is the subject (possibly the source) of rumors every summer that s/he won't be coming back, only to surprise everyone in September by failing to move to Europe, get arrested or enroll in boarding school.

Filmbook: Adaptation Grab Bag

Movies, I saw movies:

"Sherlock Holmes" (2009) -- Exquisite set design, extra-loud punches, jaunty hats and people running away from explosions. This movie was silly, but fun, and probably won't damage the Holmes legend forever, although it's true what they say: Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. have more chemistry with each other as long-time partners in detection than with their respective female counterparts.

"The Informant!" (2009) -- Great Matt Damon performance around a solid movie in which he plays a naïf caught up in an international corporate scandal (or is he?). It runs a bit long but I was with it the whole time because it has a very carefree, almost idiosyncratically cheerful tone. Melanie Lynskey is very good as Damon's wife, capping a year of small scene-stealing parts (see also "Away We Go" and "Up In The Air"). Also, a great "Hey! It's That Guy!" movie, especially if you like comedians.

"The Lovely Bones" (2009) -- It's been so long since I read this book I'm not reliable on how much was changed, but this movie is part Hallmark and part horror and it's a mighty uneasy mix. (The last trailer I saw shaped it into a Mark-Wahlberg-avenging-dad movie, and it is very little of that.) One juxtaposition in particular made my skin crawl even as I felt I was supposed to be moved by it. But Saoirse Ronan is terrific as Susie -- a little older and she would be a Best Actress shoo-in. Can't imagine ever sitting through this one again, but it's great to look at; the visuals of "the in-between" are more wow-inducing than "Avatar," while Earth is shot in the same lovely-scary palette as "Little Children."

Join an online book club this year!

The A.V. Club's Wrapped Up In Books kicks the year off with Joshua Ferris' THEN WE CAME TO THE END, a book I'm looking forward to re-reading. Discussion starts January 25. The next two books are Patrick O'Brian's MASTER AND COMMANDER and Stephen Dobyns' THE WRESTLER'S CRUEL STUDY.

The organization FKA Infinite Summer pledged to spend a few months on the long road of Roberto Bolaño's 2666, although no official schedule has been posted yet. (ETA: The blog BolañoBolaño.com has forged ahead with a schedule, planning to start Jan. 25.) Hopefully after reading it I will be able to answer why it's called 2666, as I was unable to when I unwrapped it Christmas morning. ("Uh... maybe part of it is in the future? Or it's a statistic? Why don't you go play with Penguin Race?")

Common Sense Dancing's new pick is Mark Helprin's WINTER'S TALE, starting Feb. 1. I'm not that familiar with Helprin -- failed to get through the first hundred pages of FREDDY AND FREDERICKA -- but this one comes well recommended and is set in New York City.

Should auld unbookening be forgot

Note: As last year I didn't count any books I bought as presents since they went straight back again.

Checked 11 out from the library
Received 10 for Christmas
Bought 1 (ugh. Long story.)
Brought 1 back from home
Got 5 to review
28 in

Returned 13 to the library
Donated 3
Returned 15 home
Lent 1
32 out

Of new houses and old men

They say it’s a natural part of becoming an adult, when you start to realize — gradually — that the house where you grew up isn’t where you live anymore. You begin to understand that the phrase “childhood home” actually means the place where people tried their best to prepare you for your own life.

Some children take it gracefully. Others, like Jonathan Franzen, write thinly veiled autobiographical novels excoriating their parents.

“Do me a favor,” I pleaded, “don’t read ‘The Corrections’ until you give the new house a chance.”

--Michelle Slatalla has a little fun at Mr. Franzen's expense as she breaks it to her college-age daughters that they're moving to a new house. I'll say this, my parents still live in my childhood home and I'm pretty attached to the place. They just became empty nesters, so this topic is definitely in the air, but if their moving caused me to write something a tenth as good as THE CORRECTIONS... it might be worth it. Good thing they don't read here, or else they could be packing by the end of this sentence.

Unfortunately this is only my second-favorite literary scene from this weekend's New York Times, prize going to this sentence from a Katie Roiphe essay:

After reading a sex scene in Philip Roth’s latest novel, “The Humbling,” someone I know threw the book into the trash on a subway platform.

Sorry, she did what? I haven't read THE HUMBLING yet. I don't know whether it's good. Some Roth I liked and some I didn't. But we do not throw away books. At least you could donate it! Or pass it off to a BHD on a Brooklyn-bound train. Or sell it at the Strand and buy something less personally offensive.

There are jaw-droppers aplenty in the rest of the essay, which is about sex and the male American novelist then and now, but I never got over that anecdote. If she can afford to throw away a hardcover why is she taking the subway in the first place? She could take a cab... or perhaps a magical money-eating winged chariot. I hope Roiphe had to provide the name of this "someone [she] know[s]" for a fact-checker who called her up and said, "Did you, Janeane Q. Public, really throw a Philip Roth book away on a subway platform? Really?" And then that fact-checker hung up, slammed his forehead down on his desk several times, and went back to trying to verify that Antonin Scalia is shocked that not everyone likes him.

New Year's Reading Resolutions

Here were my resolutions for the past year:

1. Read Richard Yates' other novels, since I loved REVOLUTIONARY ROAD so much in 2008. Whoops. I read one of his novels, COLD SPRING HARBOR, but didn't like it.

2. Continue the Unbookening: going through the books I already own and haven't read, reading them, and trying to get rid of some before I buy more. Hooray, I did this. Except for March and April I was either even or gave away more than I got, which is better than last year.

3. Read one Modern Library list book a month. Oops. I read three -- HOWARDS END, OF HUMAN BONDAGE and APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA -- and started WOMEN IN LOVE.

Oh well. New year, new raised expectations:

1. Finish the SANDMAN series. I've read two of the volumes, which means I have eight left, but they're quick reads.

2. Keep Unbookening. I thought about this a lot when I was at home over the holiday but I'll save the proselytizing for later.

3. Summer project: Read some more David Foster Wallace (first novel, three story collections, two essay collections) before THE PALE KING comes out. My best intel right now is that THE PALE KING will be out not this year, but in April '11; still, I think this would be fun. This is just a placeholder till I figure out what I actually want to do.

4. Read all the Modern Library books I currently own -- I haven't counted, but I believe there are 8.

Do you make resolutions about what you want to read in the coming year? Have one you want to share?

I Raise A Glass To You All

I rang in 2010 at a bar named for a poet. Even when I don't look for this stuff, it finds me! Happy New Year to you; let's talk about reading-related resolutions tomorrow.

(Since I practice Safe Internet you can freely assume I am no longer at that bar, if you sleuths can figure out what it is. Also, did I bring a book for the long, cold subway ride home? It's possible.)