I was on a real roll there for a while with my blog posts. Well where the hell have I been for the last month? Have I slipped back into the abyss of blogger slackerdom? How dare you suggest such a thing. Let me explain.
As most of you don't know (because, seriously, what's more boring than listening to someone talk about her New Year's resolutions?) at the start of 2011 I set a goal for myself of reading 26 books during the calendar year. To some people that probably sounds like a lot of reading. To the types of folks who are much faster readers than I, it probably sounds like I may as well have made the resolution to remember to breathe once every few seconds. For me, the only person who really matters as far as setting goals for me goes, I just wanted an achievable, realistic number. One book every two weeks or so. For a person with a job, and a genetic need to spend a few hours a week at the gym, and an unabashed willingness, if left unsupervised, to watch 25 hours of television a week, 26 books felt attainable. In the interest of full disclosure though, I am currently supervised for about 90% of my waking hours, and I really only watch about 3 hours of TV a week, most of which is Friends dvds; otherwise, I'd never have reached my goal. Oh, did I just bury the lead there? Yes, I just said I reached my goal of 26 books read in 2011. In fact, I got so into this whole, reading thing, that I couldn't stop myself and a read a few more. I'll admit, when I got to November and I realized I still had 6 books to read, I got a little twitchy. I put the blog on hold, but I filled a few pages in my little pocket notebook with blog ideas, so don't fear: there's more on the horizon. As soon as I figure out what in the hell I meant when I jotted down, "Jason Stark, Einstein hair," we'll be back in business.
If you're the sort of person who's interested in what other people read, here's the list of my 2011 books. Just to clarify, when I say "books" I mean those bound things with all the wonderful smelling pieces of paper with squiggly lines printed all over them. The ones you can hold spread open in both hands. The solid masses you can swat people with if they dare interrupt you right when you're getting to the best part. Books.
Here's a simple breakdown of what kept my eyeballs and my brainball occupied this year:
Fiction: 22
Nonfiction: 8
Male: 22
Female: 8
Memoir/Personal Essay: 6
Science/History/Biography: 2
Scandinavian Crime Fiction: 5
We read a book for my book club that left such a bad taste in my mouth that I decided I desperately needed a literary pallet cleanser. I asked a friend if he could recommend a good mystery, and he pointed me to Scandinavian. I have no real explanation for how I ended up dedicating 1/6th of my reading efforts to Scandinavian crime fiction. They're good, but they're not that good. They were all sort of slow burns that took me longer to read than they should have given that the genre is supposed to compel you to keep going, just one more page, one more chapter, one more plot twist further. Three of the five were part of the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell. The first I read of that series was Sidetracked, and once I figured out what in the hell rapeseed is (this book is full to the gills of rapeseed fields) I really enjoyed it. Mankell is considered something of a rockstar of the genre. All I know about the man I learned from Wikipedia. He's married to Ingmar Bergman's daughter, and he hates Israel. But Wallander is damaged goods with a gruff exterior and a soft, hidden underbelly. How could you not want to spend a few hundred pages with him. If you liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I don't see why you wouldn't like the Wallander books too, especially since they aren't bookended by 100 dull, tedious-to-read pages at the beginning and end of the story.
I can't believe how few books by women I read this year. I should be ashamed of myself, and I am. Having said that, easily the two best books I read this year were written by women, so stick that in your pipe. My last read read of the year was Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri. You may be familiar with her without even realizing it. Perhaps you went to see the movie, The Namesake, because it stars Kal Penn from the Harold and Kumar movies. I've never seen those movies, but I'm assuming he's Kumar. I hope that doesn't make me a racist. Anyway, my point is that Jhumpa Lahiri wrote the book that the movie The Namesake, starring the guy who played Kumar (or Harold?) in the stoner flicks. Lahiri has also won a little thing called the Pulizter Prize for her first collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Sorry, I've gotten off the very important track of talking about how good Unaccustomed Earth is. It's really good. If you you enjoy character driven fiction, then it's really really good. I'd say more, but I have 20-something more books to get through, and I've already gone on and on about Kal Penn. Suffice it to say, for now, that Unaccustomed Earth might have been my favorite book of the year. Or it could just be that it's the one I read most recently. Who can say?
Either my second favorite book of the year, or my favorite book that happens to be less fresh in my mind than Unaccustomed Earth was Karen Russell's, Swamplandia!. That exclamation point is part of the title. I don't just throw those around willy-nilly. This book was fantastic! The most common way that I've described it unsolicitedly is to say that it's sort of like a The Smiths song. It's kind of fun and poppy, and then you start to pay attention to the lyrics and you realize he's singing about his girlfriend who is in a fucking coma. That's not poppy. Well the setting and the language in Swamplandia! gave me a similar feeling. What a charmingly eccentric family of alligator wrestlers dressed up as Native Americans, and selling worthless souvenirs to the mainlanders they disdain. Oh wait--the mother's died, the father has no idea what in the hell he's doing, and the protagonist has just wandered off into the swamp with a gypsy. I can see how this story might not be for everyone, so if you're on the fence, you might leaf through Russell's earlier collection of stories, St. Luce'y Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. There's a story in there called, "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," that Swamplandia! is based on.
Another common theme for me this year was reading nonfiction by people who are funny who have strong voices that I admire. If you want to be a person who writes, you should also be a person who reads. It's a wonderful way to hone your craft. It's also a wonderful way to spend 2 months not writing while still feeling self-righteous about the fact that you're working on something that you're obnoxiously snobbish enough to call, "your craft." The two best books that feel into this category this year were, Half Empty, by David Rakoff and, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, by Steve Martin.
If you've never read David Rakoff, I'd like to make a couple recommendations. First, start with one of his other books. Fraud, for example. Second, even if you're not the sort of person to do this, get the book on cd. David Rakoff is one of those people who's actual spoken voice adds something to what you're reading. If you've ever listened to David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell read their own work, you know what I'm talking about. I'm not suggesting that Half Empty isn't as good as his other books, I'm just suggesting that, since this one is largely about his experiences with his own cancer, you might want to get to know that guy first. He's dry and snarky and wonderful and I don't understand why my girlfriend, who read this book in 2 days and claimed to love it only gave it 3 stars on goodreads. Jen?
Another book that Jen only gave 3 stars, though she read it in a day, couldn't put it down, in fact, Steve Martin's, Born Standing Up, gives the best glimpse of what it must be like to slog through the early years of being a live performer or standup comic, something it's never occurred to me to try, but which I found fascinating nonetheless. Having said that, I have always been madly in love with Steve Martin, so maybe I'm not a reliable source as far as this one goes. If a book of the same theme had been written by, say, Andrew Dice Clay, I wouldn't have picked it up with rubber gloves.
I'm going to be honest with you, dear reader, I'm running out of battery power on this machine. I'm out of town, and I have no charger with me. It's the last day of the year, and I swore I would get this posted before the year was over. I'm going to finish this one up quick and dirty.
Book 26 almost killed me, and it took a year of on and off reading to get through. Jon Meacham's, American Lion, is quite good, and if you had access to unlimited amounts of Adderral or Cocaine, you could probably get through it in fewer than 9 disjointed months. I'm sure it was me. The book won the Pulitzer, and it was about a president whom I've always found fascinating. I would recommend it to anyone looking for an American History or American politics suggestion. Really, it was me, not the book.
I just scanned through the rest of the books I read in 2011, and, yeah, I think I'm good. I don't feel compelled to mention any of the others here. I did mention another of my books in a previous post. Please do check out the rest for yourself though. If you see anything you'd like to know about, you know where to find me.
2012--35 book, 52 blog posts. Hold me to it.
As most of you don't know (because, seriously, what's more boring than listening to someone talk about her New Year's resolutions?) at the start of 2011 I set a goal for myself of reading 26 books during the calendar year. To some people that probably sounds like a lot of reading. To the types of folks who are much faster readers than I, it probably sounds like I may as well have made the resolution to remember to breathe once every few seconds. For me, the only person who really matters as far as setting goals for me goes, I just wanted an achievable, realistic number. One book every two weeks or so. For a person with a job, and a genetic need to spend a few hours a week at the gym, and an unabashed willingness, if left unsupervised, to watch 25 hours of television a week, 26 books felt attainable. In the interest of full disclosure though, I am currently supervised for about 90% of my waking hours, and I really only watch about 3 hours of TV a week, most of which is Friends dvds; otherwise, I'd never have reached my goal. Oh, did I just bury the lead there? Yes, I just said I reached my goal of 26 books read in 2011. In fact, I got so into this whole, reading thing, that I couldn't stop myself and a read a few more. I'll admit, when I got to November and I realized I still had 6 books to read, I got a little twitchy. I put the blog on hold, but I filled a few pages in my little pocket notebook with blog ideas, so don't fear: there's more on the horizon. As soon as I figure out what in the hell I meant when I jotted down, "Jason Stark, Einstein hair," we'll be back in business.
If you're the sort of person who's interested in what other people read, here's the list of my 2011 books. Just to clarify, when I say "books" I mean those bound things with all the wonderful smelling pieces of paper with squiggly lines printed all over them. The ones you can hold spread open in both hands. The solid masses you can swat people with if they dare interrupt you right when you're getting to the best part. Books.
Here's a simple breakdown of what kept my eyeballs and my brainball occupied this year:
Fiction: 22
Nonfiction: 8
Male: 22
Female: 8
Memoir/Personal Essay: 6
Science/History/Biography: 2
Scandinavian Crime Fiction: 5
 |
| Rapeseed, rapeseed, my friend |
We read a book for my book club that left such a bad taste in my mouth that I decided I desperately needed a literary pallet cleanser. I asked a friend if he could recommend a good mystery, and he pointed me to Scandinavian. I have no real explanation for how I ended up dedicating 1/6th of my reading efforts to Scandinavian crime fiction. They're good, but they're not that good. They were all sort of slow burns that took me longer to read than they should have given that the genre is supposed to compel you to keep going, just one more page, one more chapter, one more plot twist further. Three of the five were part of the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell. The first I read of that series was Sidetracked, and once I figured out what in the hell rapeseed is (this book is full to the gills of rapeseed fields) I really enjoyed it. Mankell is considered something of a rockstar of the genre. All I know about the man I learned from Wikipedia. He's married to Ingmar Bergman's daughter, and he hates Israel. But Wallander is damaged goods with a gruff exterior and a soft, hidden underbelly. How could you not want to spend a few hundred pages with him. If you liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I don't see why you wouldn't like the Wallander books too, especially since they aren't bookended by 100 dull, tedious-to-read pages at the beginning and end of the story.
I can't believe how few books by women I read this year. I should be ashamed of myself, and I am. Having said that, easily the two best books I read this year were written by women, so stick that in your pipe. My last read read of the year was Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri. You may be familiar with her without even realizing it. Perhaps you went to see the movie, The Namesake, because it stars Kal Penn from the Harold and Kumar movies. I've never seen those movies, but I'm assuming he's Kumar. I hope that doesn't make me a racist. Anyway, my point is that Jhumpa Lahiri wrote the book that the movie The Namesake, starring the guy who played Kumar (or Harold?) in the stoner flicks. Lahiri has also won a little thing called the Pulizter Prize for her first collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Sorry, I've gotten off the very important track of talking about how good Unaccustomed Earth is. It's really good. If you you enjoy character driven fiction, then it's really really good. I'd say more, but I have 20-something more books to get through, and I've already gone on and on about Kal Penn. Suffice it to say, for now, that Unaccustomed Earth might have been my favorite book of the year. Or it could just be that it's the one I read most recently. Who can say?
Either my second favorite book of the year, or my favorite book that happens to be less fresh in my mind than Unaccustomed Earth was Karen Russell's, Swamplandia!. That exclamation point is part of the title. I don't just throw those around willy-nilly. This book was fantastic! The most common way that I've described it unsolicitedly is to say that it's sort of like a The Smiths song. It's kind of fun and poppy, and then you start to pay attention to the lyrics and you realize he's singing about his girlfriend who is in a fucking coma. That's not poppy. Well the setting and the language in Swamplandia! gave me a similar feeling. What a charmingly eccentric family of alligator wrestlers dressed up as Native Americans, and selling worthless souvenirs to the mainlanders they disdain. Oh wait--the mother's died, the father has no idea what in the hell he's doing, and the protagonist has just wandered off into the swamp with a gypsy. I can see how this story might not be for everyone, so if you're on the fence, you might leaf through Russell's earlier collection of stories, St. Luce'y Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. There's a story in there called, "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," that Swamplandia! is based on.
Another common theme for me this year was reading nonfiction by people who are funny who have strong voices that I admire. If you want to be a person who writes, you should also be a person who reads. It's a wonderful way to hone your craft. It's also a wonderful way to spend 2 months not writing while still feeling self-righteous about the fact that you're working on something that you're obnoxiously snobbish enough to call, "your craft." The two best books that feel into this category this year were, Half Empty, by David Rakoff and, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, by Steve Martin.
If you've never read David Rakoff, I'd like to make a couple recommendations. First, start with one of his other books. Fraud, for example. Second, even if you're not the sort of person to do this, get the book on cd. David Rakoff is one of those people who's actual spoken voice adds something to what you're reading. If you've ever listened to David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell read their own work, you know what I'm talking about. I'm not suggesting that Half Empty isn't as good as his other books, I'm just suggesting that, since this one is largely about his experiences with his own cancer, you might want to get to know that guy first. He's dry and snarky and wonderful and I don't understand why my girlfriend, who read this book in 2 days and claimed to love it only gave it 3 stars on goodreads. Jen?
Another book that Jen only gave 3 stars, though she read it in a day, couldn't put it down, in fact, Steve Martin's, Born Standing Up, gives the best glimpse of what it must be like to slog through the early years of being a live performer or standup comic, something it's never occurred to me to try, but which I found fascinating nonetheless. Having said that, I have always been madly in love with Steve Martin, so maybe I'm not a reliable source as far as this one goes. If a book of the same theme had been written by, say, Andrew Dice Clay, I wouldn't have picked it up with rubber gloves.
I'm going to be honest with you, dear reader, I'm running out of battery power on this machine. I'm out of town, and I have no charger with me. It's the last day of the year, and I swore I would get this posted before the year was over. I'm going to finish this one up quick and dirty.
Book 26 almost killed me, and it took a year of on and off reading to get through. Jon Meacham's, American Lion, is quite good, and if you had access to unlimited amounts of Adderral or Cocaine, you could probably get through it in fewer than 9 disjointed months. I'm sure it was me. The book won the Pulitzer, and it was about a president whom I've always found fascinating. I would recommend it to anyone looking for an American History or American politics suggestion. Really, it was me, not the book.
I just scanned through the rest of the books I read in 2011, and, yeah, I think I'm good. I don't feel compelled to mention any of the others here. I did mention another of my books in a previous post. Please do check out the rest for yourself though. If you see anything you'd like to know about, you know where to find me.
2012--35 book, 52 blog posts. Hold me to it.
