L&L: The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

- I don't like that this became a cancer story. Knowing that it's a series book, I wish things could have ended without all the cancer. I thought getting all the damned people together was good enough.

- James and Georgia are too cheesy, which is totally subjective and I realize there is some charm to Georgia's ignorance of James' intentions. But only some.

- This particular audiobook was kind of distracting because of the narrator's attempts at different voices for the characters, particularly the questionable Scottish.

Last & Lingering: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I haven't done well about blogging after reading--especially after audio books because I don't take time to preserve quotes like I do with print. Even so, I have read and listened to a lot of books in the last 10 months and I have only written a couple posts. I haven't done much in terms of reviews on my Goodreads which is where I mostly keep track of reading lists.

While some books I just don't think will ever warrant a review on the blog, others I at least have something to say, so I ought to say it. That is the point of this blog, and all. In light of this, I introduce to you: the Last & Lingering. If the book warrants comment but not a full-length post, then I'll give you three takeaways from my reading experience, whether that be final thoughts, character concerns, ideas for future research, or lingering questions.

To commence this new system, let's start with a book club pick I just finished on vacation: The Night Circus.

1. I liked the structure quite a bit. The alternating chapters from different perspectives, instead of one linear tale, especially mixing the two opponents experiences, was a nice way to read through the challenge, but also experience the characters once their relationship to one another became known. It also helped make the importance of other characters (like Bailey) slowly become more evident. 

2. I really liked the choose-your-own-adventure-like nature of the super sort chapters intended to see you feel like you were experiencing the circus. However, it just didn't get there for me. They didn't have much of a plot or description, and they didn't clearly "define" the previous or following sections of the book for me.  Perhaps if I went back and read it I would find a clearer connection between the tent experiences and the surrounding text. Since I don't plan to do that, I wonder: Could some of the general chapters' descriptions of tents gone into these little breaks to become meatier and more involved for the reader? Could there have been clearer movement between the tents when in these passages? 

3. These two illusionists winning it all and bring together in some weird state? Totally didn't buy it.

Book For Every State

I just came across this link from Brooklyn Magazine, called "Literary United States: A Map of the Best Book for Every State." What an idea! I kind of like the thought of reading your way through the USA, particularly when you're stuck in a Midwestern winter like the one heading my way in the far-too-near future.

I've read 9 of the 53 books on the list. Looks like I've got some work to do this winter.

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I listed to The Beautiful and Damned on audiobook quite a while ago. I really didn't love it, just the story of two people who use money to fix their problems and never learn their lesson, ever. I guess Fitzgerald did a pretty great job of making the characters consistent in moral character, and he was successful making you dislike them.

The reason I'm posting here at all is because there was part of a sentence in the book that I wrote down immediately after hearing it--and I just found it.

... that it is the manner of life seldom to strike but always to wear away. 

Sure, he's probably not the first person to express that sentiment. Yet I think he expressed it well in that very Fitzgerald way.

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

I always admit that I have read Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L James. I'm also quick to follow up that I didn't read the second or third installment, that I hated the book, and that I think it should still be something everyone is free to experience and enjoy.

I found the book to be one of the most frustrating experiences of my book-reading life for three reasons:

1. There is horrible sentence structure and too much repetition.
Some sentences aren't even sentences, inner goddess.
2. The plot is based on unrealistic sex and an unrealistic development of a relationship that is sick.
I'm not talking about the sex. I'm talking about the idea that a woman with little self-confidence, should or would, stick it out for some troubled, abusive (physically, mentally, and emotionally) man who doesn't want a relationship. It's all good, inner goddess, you can save and change him and be happy in the end.
3. I dislike the fact that this book spurred some kind of sexual revolution or awakening.
Either my inner goddess had never heard of porn before, had never read any number of erotica or romance novels, or she was just too repressed to enjoy it. But a bad pseudo-relationship and some boring-girl-gets-the-guy plot totally sexes things right up. BDSM! Slapping! Hair pulling! What utterly new ideas to bring to my bedroom. 

Even writing it now, I feel like I  can never adequately describe my frustration with the book. But I think this write up by Dave Barry for TIME is pretty much perfect. And it's hilarious. Enjoy!


 

SAG Foundation: Storyline Online

Celebrities with books:
Reading them.
Standing near them.
Talking about them.
Posed with them. (See: Benedict Cumberbatch on the cover of An English Room. Yeah, I have a copy.)

If I know there's a celebrity with a book in that link, I'm totally going to click it. Click it good.

Thanks to that very compulsion, I recently discovered Storyline Online. The website, sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, houses free videos of celebrities reading children's books.

My parents read to me almost every day, for probably the first 10 or 12 years of my life. Computers, the Internet, and even audiobooks weren't part of growing up for me. I absolutely adored those scroll-through computer things at the library. Those machines where you would listen along with a book and "turn the page" when the recording made a certain beep. And I loved the story time read-to-kids programs at the library as well. I'm so grateful my parents made these things happen for me.

But the reality is that it can't happen for everyone. Parents work a lot. Libraries are closing, staffs are reduced, and services aren't available or easy to access anymore. And although the internet is not universally available for everyone at home, it's still reaching plenty of kids. Which is why I think this website is so dang cool. Let a kid be read to by someone who, by their acting nature, is a great reader. Let those talents engage kids with books and reading. For free.

Huzzah to you, SAG Foundation!

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

 I had just returned from a cruise where I spent time along coast of Italy--the exact town pictured, if I'm correct--when I first spotted this book in an airport. So I have to be honest, this selection was definitely a judge a book by its cover scenario. How could a book, embracing the most beautiful place I have ever been, be bad?

Not bad is so far from the description of this book that it's almost a shame that I initially thought that way. This book is beautiful: the language, the characters, the stories. What I loved was how accessible and easy to read it was, while still being a book of substance. Old hollywood, new hollywood, war history, romance - so many elements that combine to create one fluid story and work together instead of feeling forced. Each piece feeds into the next for a narrative that has an ending {spoilers ahead!} that's both realistic and heartwarming. It's not perfectly tied up with a bow and given to you. The young guy with a shitty past doesn't get the young girl with a shitty boyfriend. She actually keeps the shitty boyfriend who seems to get a bit better. No one beats cancer. No one really comes out on top. But most of the main characters end up making the best of their lives in a way that leaves a positivity to the ending. There's a lot they had to go through before the end, but in the end, the end feels right. And that's my favorite kind of book.

I basically devoured the book and didn't read it as closely with sticky notes in hand, but I did have to flag a couple pages.

He had never really mastered English, but he'd studied enough to have a healthy fear of its random severity, the senseless brutality of its conjugations; it was unpredictable, like a cross-bred dog. (9)

I can remember a French teacher trying to relay how complicated the English language is for a learner, and this seemed to nail it.

"Life, he thought, is a blatant ant act of imagination." (13)

Delightful! What is life if you aren't trying to create your dreams?

Alvis Blender, scrittore fallito ma ubriacone di successo--failed writer but successful drunk. (59)

Nothing new - a drunkard with a writing problem - but improved with the addition of Italian?

"We debated such questions when we encountered these meat puzzles: Who took the head of the partisan sentry? Why was the dead infant buried upside down in the grain bin?" (78)

I'm not usually one for war stories or imagery, but this idea is so tangible. Meat puzzles. Parts and pieces of people blown apart, or strewn about, inciting queries as to what happened and creating an unsolvable puzzle.

"The first impression one gets of Michael Deane is of a man constructed of wax, or perhaps prematurely embalmed. After all these years, it may be impossible to trace the sequence of facials, spa treatments, mud baths, cosmetic procedures, lifts and staples, collagen implants, outpatient touch-ups, tannings, Botox injections, cyst and growth removals, and stem-cell injections that have caused a seventy-two-year-old man to have the face of a nine-year-old Filipino girl." (93)

Over the top! At first it felt like too much--wouldn't a couple of those examples have been enough?--but it fits just right. The description grasps the nature of the man, you learn. And you can't at all really imagine this person - except perhaps as Joan Collins?--until the final clarifier.

"But this was Pat, and he proudly confessed his elaborate plans like a cornered Bond villain." (202)

Well, duh, I'll flag any Bond reference. And this is a pretty appropriate one.

New Children's Collection

I am sucker for a good collection--be it watching an entire television show, or buying a grouping of books. My current obsession is the Penguin English Library, which is a collection of absolutely eye-catching classics. I have 50 of the 100 books, and they are currently on exhibition in my apartment.

Not surprisingly, Penguin is responsible for another good looking collection. This one is less sophisticated in design--but that's okay, because it's some of our favorite kids' books!

Photo credit facebook.com/penguinbooks

This Puffin collection is just delightful. Sure, I have Narnia and Harry Potter and there are many others, but this is a kid-lit canon with variety and accessible covers and timeless tales.

I think it would make a fab gift.
-Perhaps a group gift from a family to another family member with their first child?
-What about a to-be grandparent who will love to read and share stories with their little ones?
-A children's librarian
-Collectors?
All the people and all the gifts!




There's something that tugs at the heartstrings with those well loved, well worn collections of our youth (are you thinking about Little Golden Books?), and I think this collection can reach a little older audience with a lot more love to give to reading.

Photo credit facebook.com/penguinbooks