Summer reading and the giggles.

My first post for the Summer Reading Challenge is up. One down, fourteen to go...

Tonight I went to see Jen Lancaster, of Jennsylvania, read from her new book BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG ASS. The book is hilarious on the page, but it was really neat to hear those words come to life in Lancaster's particular presentation. She said during the Q & A that she was lucky to come from a very funny family but claims no comedy background for herself. Still, a story like a terror-inducing trip to the "girl doctor" is even funnier in person. She had me at "Hee."

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG ASS took me completely out of my head at a time when I really needed something to laugh at. Lancaster's headed back to Chicago, but you should pick up this book if you need to laugh really, really hard.

I've got a golden broomstick.

In celebration of her ability to take the rest of her life off, J.K. Rowling is doing a midnight reading and signing in the U.K. for 500 lucky Harry Potter fans on July 21, the release of HARRY POTTER AND THE GREATEST BOOK OF OUR TIME. Ticket holders get a free book, too -- but if you're enough of a superfan to get into this, you probably have already reserved yours somewhere else (plus a back-up in case the bookstore of your choice runs out). Only seven seats for seven lucky U.S. readers, so ask your Grandpa Joe to buy you a... er, enter the sweepstakes.

Via About Literature.

Summer reading inspiration?

One of my fellow participants in the Summer Reading Challenge is tackling WAR AND PEACE this year. What a slog! I read it about four years ago and, unfortunately, retain very little except the Major Spoiler-y Events (as pretentious as it sounds, I liked ANNA KARENINA much better). Anyway, it turns out that Daniel Handler (of LEMONY SNICKET fame) is also a fan of the Big Summer Book, as he reveals in an interview with The Onion A.V. Club in the San Francisco edition (and posted on editor Tasha Robinson's blog):

I always read a big book every summer — I’m going to read The Aeneid this summer, so I’m excited about that. I don’t know why I chose it. Last year was War And Peace and the year before that was The New Testament, and the year before that was Don Quixote. It’s a nice, sort of braggy thing to carry with you all over the summer. My wife prefers short books, but I like one big book because I’ve always found the idea of summer reading to be kind of wacky, that when summertime comes there are all these articles that suggest really lightweight books for the summertime. It implies that for the rest of the year you’re reading all this super-intense stuff, which I just don’t think is really that common. I don’t think there are a lot of people who are like, “Thank God summer’s here. I’ve been reading Henry James all year long, and now I’m ready for a thriller.” Summer reading should be more challenging. And I think if you read a long book, then you begin to feel that your summer is mimicking that long book, and that’s pretty powerful. If you have a Moby Dick summer, that’s great. And The Aeneid is sort of an Odyssey-like story, so I hope that will shape my summer. Last summer I read War And Peace, and my summer was definitely full of high points and low points, so that was good.

Why save the fluff reading for summer, eh?

I've never read any of the Lemony Snicket series (although their new cover design, as seen above, rocks my socks) but I do recommend Handler's novel for adults THE BASIC EIGHT. It's not a big book, but if you like murder mysteries, books based around diary entries and high school intrigue amongst girls, you will like it.

Where did May go?

For twelve years of my life, May was always the busiest month of the year. Orchestra concerts! End-of-the-year tests! A family birthday and Mother's Day in the same week! Why I figured this year would be different, I have no idea... until I realize that I haven't posted here for a full 30 days. There's just something about May.

Anyway, it's almost June and I've signed up for the Summer Reading Challenge to get my own rear into gear. No review copies among this bunch... just fun books which have nevertheless been sitting around in my room for ages. Tell me what you think -- am I too ambitious?

1. Paullina Simons, THE GIRL IN TIMES SQUARE
2. Joan Acocella, TWENTY-EIGHT ARTISTS AND TWO SAINTS
3. J.P. Donleavy, THE GINGER MAN (ML #99)
4. Carole Cadwalladr, THE FAMILY TREE
5. William Styron, SOPHIE'S CHOICE (ML #96)
6. Iris Murdoch, UNDER THE NET (ML #95)
7. Pauls Toutonghi, RED WEATHER
8. Katharine Weber, TRIANGLE
9. David von Drehle, TRIANGLE (nonfic.)
10. Jeannette Walls, THE GLASS CASTLE
11. Jessica Cutler, THE WASHINGTONIENNE: A NOVEL
12. David Mamet, BAMBI VS. GODZILLA
13. David Gilbert, THE NORMALS
14. Adam Rapp, THE YEAR OF ENDLESS SORROWS
15. Henry James, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

If things are going well by mid-July I may tack on more books... followed by a substantive increase in my commute time in order to finish them. Just kidding.

Oh. My. Gawd. Becky, Look At Her Book.

I want 'em real thick and verbose
So find that volume double
Boy am I in trouble
Beggin' for a piece of that Dickens
So I'm lookin' at Russian littin'...

So your girlfriend drives a Rolls Royce
Playin' books on tape from James Joyce
But hearin' ain't like readin' in the back of her limo
My anaconda don't want none unless you got books, hon

--"Baby Got Book." Via reading under the covers.

Birthday books!

My birthday was about a month ago (yeah, I'm in denial!) and I got a lot of lovely books:

The film books at the bottom and the miniature book at the top are from my dad (we're both huge movie nerds, in our spare time at least). The Book of Perhaps Unnecessary Cursing and the thick paperback are both from my lovely boyfriend.

I also got a gift card from my Aunt Trish and Uncle Bob (& co.) which read, "If you buy books with a gift card, they don't count, right?" Well, if you insist:


Delightful! Birthdays are great, and my To Be Read pile is officially taller than I am. (Not that that's a feat; I'm quite short.)

Tinfoil Prize For Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

I'm not a lifetime Kurt Vonnegut fan like some of y'all. In fact, I read one of his books only because of this project. But as far as I'm concerned, if he had just written that one book he would still have made an indelible mark on 20th century fiction.

Kurt, this tinfoil fez is all for you.

Adieu, adieu, all's vanity

In this passage from Heart of Darkness, the narrator is traveling down the river in his interminable voyage Kurtzward, and wondering about his fellow shipmates whom he believes to be cannibals:

Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn't go for us--they were thirty to five--and have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences... And I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest--not because it occurred to me I might be eaten by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I perceived--in a new light, as it were--how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so--what shall I say?--so--unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that time.

Conspiracy theory, and a new Chunkster.

I just finished Alexandra Robbins' SECRETS OF THE TOMB, a short nonfiction book which purports to tell the real truth behind the Skull and Bones secret society. Skull and Bones is a fraternity at Yale which is famous for potentially having its pledges lie in coffins and recite their sexual history (only part true, says Robbins!) and for being the party house of power, where both John Kerry and George W. Bush were members (true, although neither will talk about it). For those of you who saw "The Good Shepherd," Matt Damon's character was "a Bonesman." Skull and Bones is just one of many secret societies which have existed in the Ivy League through the years, but it's arguably the most famous because of its most powerful members.

I was inclined to take most of what Robbins says here with a grain of salt, when I noticed something... weird. Sure, I love a good mystery story, and Robbins herself was a member of a Yale secret society (she wouldn't say which) and got apparently a lot of Bonesman to talk to her under cover of anonymity. That doesn't explain, though, why my library copy of SECRETS... was missing several pages. It looked like someone very carefully tore out parts of three different chapters, so the page remainders were almost down to the spine. And given the context, I'm pretty sure some of the missing pages contain a description of the Bones building's inner sanctum, the so-called Room 322.

Very mysterious! It would be very easy for the secret network of Bones patriarchs (as the alumni are reportedly called) to order this kind of destructive work to be done. But does anyone want to go to her or his library and find out if the same thing has been done there? After all, I'm pretty close to Yale here...

Have I been caught in a web of International Conspiracy? Nah, I just wish I were.

---

In other news, I've made a few changes to my Chunkster Challenge line-up. As it is, I haven't started any of the books (bad! bad!), but a new Chunkster just fell into my lap this week. To wit:

Doesn't it look lovely? It's the second novel by Chandra (whose first book RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN I read several years ago) and my mom just finished it while she was on vacation. Yes, she really took it to the pool! Or so I imagine, because it isn't greasy with sunscreen and it doesn't smell like chlorine. But I'm going to go ahead and throw that up there, and do some arm curls in prep for carrying this 900-plus-page monster around on the train.

98. James M. Cain, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

Once I heard this very short novel was not a discourse on the postal system, but in fact a noir classic, I was all over it. I got my copy via Bookmooch and took it with me Saturday night while I was out with my friend Katy. (Gotta have something to read on the way home, but my regular read wouldn't fit in my going-out bag.) I read almost all of it that night between Times Square and my apartment and eventually put it down when I was too tired to finish the last 20 pages.

I'll try to write this without giving too much away: The book is narrated by Frank, a vagrant of sorts who stops at a Greek diner in southern California where the owner tries to convince him to stay and work for him at the diner. Frank doesn't want to settle down until he sees the owner's wife, Cora, who's really hot, so he stays there. Frank and Cora fall into lust, and he tries to convince her to run away with her -- but then they hatch a plan to kill her husband. (There are no postmen in the book; I found an interesting (but with spoilers) theory on Wikipedia about the title.)

Depending on what you've been reading lately, this book might be a breath of fresh air. In Cain's world there are no flashbacks or long stretches of dialogue; things happen very quickly (a lot more things than what I've described here, because I didn't want to spoil any of it) and it forces you to read in a different way to handle the punchier text. You don't have to slow down, necessarily, as much as realize that details of the plot are coming at you faster than the last book you read. It's invigorating, though, and I'll definitely be looking for other Cain books to pick up.

Many of his books have since been adapted to films, the most famous being "Mildred Pierce" and "Double Indemnity"; there are also two American movie versions (and several others from other countries) of "The Postman Always Rings Twice," the John Garfield/ Lana Turner version and the Jack Nicholson/ Jessica Lange remake. (Apparently the second is much racier; I didn't find the book that scandalous, but apparently the original film had to be re-edited because it was too shocking to comply with the Hays Code.) I'm adding the Garfield/ Turner to my Netflix queue right now.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 42-58

#100!

It's my hundredth post! I thought about combing through the archives to bring you a top 10 of my entries, but I thought that was a little egotistical. So instead, here are some books I've read recently, in haiku form.

Steve Pond, THE BIG SHOW

Big fuss but small crowd:
If Oscar falls in L.A.,
does anyone care?

Cheryl Mendelson, LOVE, WORK, CHILDREN

She's in a coma.
Do we want her to wake up
While we fall in love?

Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins, A STAR IS FOUND

Casting agents get
No respect. Also, no one's
Like Whoopi Goldberg.

Judy Renee Singer, STILL LIFE WITH ELEPHANT (advance review)

No pachyderm can
Replace your cheating husband.
Elephants are better.

Julie Powell, JULIE AND JULIA

Merde!Aspic's gross! But
in the making, fulfilling.
Wish that I could cook.

Joseph Conrad sure loves the ladies!

Well, at least I could laugh at it:

It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

Oh, Joey. (From Heart of Darkness)

Seven

...is the number of books I've bought so far this year. The latest is Steve Pond's THE BIG SHOW: HIGH TIMES AND DIRTY DEALINGS BACKSTAGE AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS, swiped off the 75-percent-off shelf at Barnes & Noble last night while I was shopping with my friend Jen.

In the same amount of time, I have
Checked out 27 books from the library
Gotten 9 books to review

I don't feel sorry about buying THE BIG SHOW, not only for its unbeatable price of $4 but because I was caught out with it last night for a long time and it kept me entertained. (Locked out of the apartment. Sigh.)

79. E.M. Forster, A ROOM WITH A VIEW

Well, I said I was going to go back to my Modern Library dreams, and I just finished my first book of the year, E.M. Forster's A ROOM WITH A VIEW.

The room in question is a hotel room in Florence, Italy, in a hotel where two women, Charlotte and Lucy, are staying. Charlotte is older and is sort of Lucy's chaperone. Their first night at the hotel they meet a man and his son George who have the view, and offer it to the women. Charlotte turns them down, saying it wouldn't be proper for the two women to say where two men had been staying. Eventually she relents, and they take the room and become acquainted with the man and his son (the Emersons), as well as other characters staying at the hotel. Somewhat later, Lucy and Charlotte go home and the book changes to a more domestic scene.

I "got" this book via e-mail (Dailylit), which may be why I had a hard time getting into this one at first. Sure, we all have first and last names like the characters did, but keeping track of whose last name belonged to whom was a little distracting. And halfway through we get a whole new cast of characters as the trip ends. Still, there was a point at which it all fell into place. I only wish I could tell you where in the 89 e-mails that point lay...

If published today, I think this book may have been shelved under chick lit. "Lucy thought her life was perfect... until one trip to Italy and a sexy new suitor forced her to rethink it all." I'm thinking Marian Keyes. (And don't take that as a negative! While I lived in Spain I read a lot of Keyes books in Spanish, to pick up some slang and get a break from my course reading.) Then again, the whole social critique aspect of the book -- especially dealing with tourists abroad and the changing state of unmarried women -- would have to be updated substantially, although its questions are often still pertinent.

As for Dailylit, I'm going to keep using it, but I think it's best for shorter books. Some weeks I would let Monday through Friday's e-mails pile up, and I think if I had seen "Part 27 of 403" in the subject line I might have just given up entirely. So I'm going to take one of the shortest books, and one that I really should have read by now, Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. Speaking of educational must-reads, I think everyone else I know was forced to read this in school at some point. Better late than never!

Ellen VS. The Modern Library: 41-59

I joined a book club! And a website.

I haven't belonged to a book club since I was in high school, and that was a right irregular outfit driven more by the snacks our faculty sponsor brought to morning meetings than by actual books. So one of the first things I did when I moved is sign up for a book group through a networking site I visit a lot.

The book they picked (and had free copies of, luckily) was Grant Stoddard's WORKING STIFF: THE MISADVENTURES OF AN ACCIDENTAL SEXPERT. Stoddard is a British guy who moved to the US for love and fell into a customer service job at the highbrow sex magazine Nerve.com, where he was forced to try all kinds of crazy things for his column "I Did It For Science." (To give a relatively innocuous example, for one column he flew to southern California, interviewed porn stars and had a walk-on role in a porn movie.) The whole book is laced with Stoddard's dry humor and his disbelief at being regarded as a sex guru just because he was willing to try almost anything for his editor, and only much later thought, "I'm developing a bit of a reputation, aren't I?" If I ever meet him, I would like to ask him whether, in fact, there was anything he would not do for science.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but when I was reading this on the subway yesterday I felt rather more disapproving glances than usual. Okay, the title is kind of a dirty joke, but the cover isn't inappropriate to carry around... right? It's not a book for kids, surely, but it's not as if there are pictures (although Stoddard is bare-chested on the back cover... horrors!) Maybe they were just staring at me alternately cringing and laughing with each new scrape Stoddard got himself into. I don't think I've ever felt the urge to censor my reading on public transit before. Then again, it's not every day an "accidental sexpert" writes a memoir.

I'm passing it along via BookMooch, something I finally signed up for after hearing on blogs like A Work In Progress about this never-ending parade of free books. Of course, I don't have much to be mooched at the moment, after the big pre-move weed-out, but I've now given away two books and have one on its way. I tried Paperback Swap and found it a little dictatorial (what with the, "Send it in 24 hours or we'll cancel it and slap you on the wrist" policy); BookMooch looks much more realistic for those of us who don't want to go to the post office every day.