The Stand: Final Results

didn't like it - 0
it was OK - 1
liked it - 1
really liked it - 1
it was amazing - 0
didn't finish it - 0

3 votes total.

The Best of the Best: 2008 Books

This blog post creates a sort of meta-analysis of the best books of 2008 and ranks them in terms of the number of votes they got from all the best of the year lists that went around. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is on the thriller/mystery list.

NY Times Review of Blindness

This review (of the book, not the recent movie) contains many spoilers, so you may want to hold off reading it until you've finished the book.

Link here.

The Alchemist: Final Results

didn't like it - 0
it was OK - 3
liked it - 4
really liked it - 3
it was amazing - 0

10 votes total

Dracula: Final Results

10 votes total

didn't like it - 0
it was ok - 1
liked it - 1
really liked it - 4
it was amazing - 0
didn't finish it - 4

March Mystery Nominations continued

A nomination from Marina:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson: Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family's remote island retreat north of Stockholm. This first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption—at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman.

March Mystery Nominations

Since March is coming up, we probably need to pick our mystery soon. I've been doing a little research and have a few nominations below. Please feel free to offer others in the comments or a separate post.

1. What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman: A driver who flees a car accident on a Maryland highway breathes new life into a 30-year-old mystery—the disappearance of the young Bethany sisters at a shopping mall—after she later tells the police she's one of the missing girls. As soon as the mystery woman drops that bombshell, she clams up, placing the new lead detective, Kevin Infante, in a bind, as he struggles to gain her trust while exploring the odd holes in her story. Deftly moving between past and present, Lippman presents the last day both sisters, Sunny and Heather, were seen alive from a variety of perspectives. Subtle clues point to the surprising but plausible solution of the crime and the identity of the mystery woman.

2. In the Woods by Tana French: Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, land the first big murder case of their police careers: a 12-year-old girl has been murdered in the woods adjacent to a Dublin suburb. Twenty years before, two children disappeared in the same woods, and Ryan was found clinging to a tree trunk, his sneakers filled with blood, unable to tell police anything about what happened to his friends. Ryan, although scarred by his experience, employs all his skills in the search for the killer and in hopes that the investigation will also reveal what happened to his childhood friends.

From Freakonomics: Public Library Renaissance

The NYT Freakonomics blog notes a Boston Globe article about how 2008 was a big year for public libraries: circulation increases, library card applications, and of course, job hunt searches were all up. It makes me happy. A bad year for publishing but good year for community libraries.

Reading Resolutions

Does anyone have any reading related resolutions? I have one to read at least two books a month, our book club book plus one of my own choosing. I have a long list of books I want to read and last year I read only a handful of books outside of our book club picks. I have the free time so there's no reason I shouldn't be able to accomplish this goal. I'm publicly declaring this resolution here so you can all hold me accountable.

Also, if you haven't started The Stand yet, it's not too late! I just started last night and calculated that you only have to read 80 pages a day between now and book club to finish. That's doable, right?

Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, has a new memoir out, reviewed in this past Sunday's NYT. It appears to give a behind the scenes glimpse at the author's life and choices to leave, then come back to Iran (then leave again).

The reviewer is the author of another book I'd like to read, called Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran.

Reading like a Girl

Michelle Slayalla's NYT piece "I Wish I Could Read Like a Girl" breaks my heart. It's a quick eulogy for what readers lose when they grow up. Maybe that's our desire as adult readers - to recapture that youth and adolescence spent "draped over sofas and chairs and beds" and transported to another world.

Eeek!

Wow, this blog is out of date! I resolve to be better with it in the New Year!

For those of you who want to read in installments, DailyLit is an interesting idea. It's a service that allows you to subscribe to books. Portions are sent to your email or RSS feed reader every day, so you can read little bits at a time. It's an interesting idea but the idea of reading books in email or in Google Reader is not at all appealing to me. Does anyone think this would work for them?

Edward - What a Girl Wants?

This article has sparked such a good discussion on Facebook, I wanted to get all of your thoughts on it.

Children's Books Recommendations

Hi everyone! I miss you guys and am hoping to make it back to book club in January (and hopefully bring the girls to the holiday party in a few weeks). I have a book dilemma that I thought you guys would be perfect to solve, and hopefully can have some fun in the process:

I'd like to get Isa some new books for Christmas and want to graduate from the board books we've been reading to her to something with a bit more of a story. She's almost 2 and a half, and lately has really preferred the crazy stories we make up for her to books, so I think we need new books to pique her interest. For those of you with kids already past this age, what books did your kids like? For those of you without kids, what books do you remember enjoying? I'd love suggestions of titles, authors or even book type. Thanks!

Best of 2008 lists

I came across this neat music and literature blog today called Largehearted Boy. He has tons of cool stuff to explore on his blog but one especially nice feature is his compilation of all those year-end "best of books" lists. You can see his list for 2008 so far here.

From his blog, I saw a link to USA Today's list of best-selling books for the last 15 years. The books on this list aren't too surprising (hint: we muggles love our diet books!) but I still find these types of lists fascinating.

Monday Meme

Just a quick question. What book are you thankful for?

Celebrity Lookalikes!

Post your own!



Victoria Bernadotte is apparently a Swedish princess. So disappointed there's no Katie Holmes or Audrey Tatou!

Finally, an official diagnosis!

Do you have PEWS?

Post-Election-Withdrawl-Syndrome:

The feeling of general depletion and emptiness in the few days after a presidential election. Caused by the sudden withdrawal of any campaign coverage, sound bites, or pictures of babies being kissed. May be accompanied by aimless clicking on news websites looking for something to read.

*NOTE: This condition has been observed in people whether their chosen candidate won or not.

Other symptoms: actually having to read the book club book to have something to talk about this month.

Rednecks for Obama, Part 2

Fashion Icon of the Week

Michelle Obama rocked the J. Crew ensemble on Leno last night.



The vivid yellow color looks amazing on her and the cut of the outfit perfectly suits her body type!

Ramona Forever

Ramona Quimby is finally coming to the big screen. The linked article is a wonderful interview with Beverly Cleary, author of the Ramona books. She still writes them! A quote from the article:

"I haven't been very enthusiastic about the commercialization of children's literature," she says. "Kids should borrow books from the library and not necessarily be buying them."

What do you think of this comment? If we are truly facing economic hard times, and a turn towards more sensible spending habits, these are words to live by. I appreciate her perspective. Young readers aren't just a market to sell books to, they are our children! As a non-commercial environment, the library seems to protect them from the kind of subtle manipulation that even our beloved bookstores engage in. In libraries, children have a space to explore and discover literature at their own pace and on their own terms.

Friday Flashback: Bee Season

In 2001, we read Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. (Later, we also read her book, Wickett's Remedy.) How many of our current members have read Bee Season? It is one of the book club books that I still think about frequently. It is my favorite representation of enlightenment, or nirvana, divine trancendance, whatever you want to call it. Becoming one with God. I guess I like the depiction of it in the book because it doesn't happen in a way that any of the human characters can comprehend or make sense. Or so I remember it. I also love the exploration of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the genetic and practical variations of this kind of mental illness in a family, and its relation to their spiritual practices. So fascinating. It would be great to read and discuss it again.

Suite Francaise: Final Results

Didn't like it - 0
It was OK - 0
Liked it - 1
Really liked it - 1
It was amazing - 0
Didn't finish it - 1

3 votes total.

You Might Be A Redneck If ...

I know many of us are immersed in the upcoming elections so here are some literary-related political items I came across today.

David Sedaris has a funny essay about undecided voters in The New Yorker. An excerpt:

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

In today's NY Times, Margaret Atwood has an editorial about debt and how it is much larger than just money. I learned she also has a book coming out on the same topic titled Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. Who knew she had such an interest in the subject?

And on a non-literary note, how awesome is this: Rednecks for Obama. Two men from Missouri, one 74 and the other 60, are on a mission to get rednecks like themselves to vote for Obama.

Dress Shopping

OK, so since our virtual makeovers at the beach, I am shopping obsessed. I kept seeing this dress in internet ads that I thought looked perfect for Marina.
It inspired me to go virtual shopping for others as well. I tried to remember the styles and colors we discussed for each person during our virtual makeovers. For those of you who weren't at the beach, if there's a certain style you really like, let me know and I'll be more than thrilled to go shopping for you as well! Here's what I found.

Allison:

Katie:

Dawn:
Cindy:

Me:

Yes, I get the sequins!!

Now we just need a cocktail party to wear them to. . .

First the Fashion?

Today as I was getting my coffee at work, one of my more stylish colleagues (she is more junior than me and I don't know her name, oops!) said, "I LOVE your dress! I always admire your sense of style!" Of course, I felt very self-conscious (yet thrilled!) and thanked her.

Because I have no boundaries, and think that other people must find my life as fascinating as I do, my immediate instinct was to say, "Oh I just got the most wonderful style tips from my book club, we had a fabulous girls weekend at the beach, and we picked celebrity style icons for each other!"

Thankfully, not having yet had my coffee, I was able to suppress the urge!

Dreams from my Father: Final Results

Didn't like it - 0
It was OK - 1
Liked it - 3
Really liked it - 2
It was amazing - 0
Didn't finish - 0

6 votes total

Monday Meme

Yeah, it's Tuesday, but I'm just happy to be blogging again and not obsessing over a grant application!

This week's discussion: libraries (again)! One of my favorites.

What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

Post your answers in the comments!

Bookstore Spotlight: Denver

Last week, Dawn and I were in Denver for the Joint Statistical Meetings (she a presenter, me a tag-a-long spouse). Being the book nerds we are, we decided to visit the local bookstore, the Tattered Cover Book Store, one of the largest independent bookstores in the US. It was in a beautiful old building with two floors of books, lots of armchairs and couches, and even fireplaces.

They had a nice display of book club suggestions. I don't think we've read any of these as a book club or at least not since I've been in book club.

Unfortunately Dawn and I did not get a picture of us together at the bookstore but we did get a good one that night before dinner.

If you're ever in Denver, visit this store!

Book Club for Intellectually Disabled - Nice Story

Book Club Girl posted a link to this story about a book club for adults with developmental disabilities. It is such a neat idea, I thought you might like to read it.