Read my responses in the comments section. Feel free to leave your responses, too!
Courtesy of Unconscious Mutterings.
Here’s my list of the best of 2008:
Read my responses in the comments section. Feel free to leave your responses, too!
Courtesy of Unconscious Mutterings.
White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Date: Monday, January 12 @ 7:30 PM
Location: Solas Bar
Poll ends Friday night!
The Strand has put together a wonderful, but short list of gift ideas.
The L.A. Times published their favorite fiction and poetry books of 2008.
And the New York Times as condensed their previous list to the 10 Best Books of 2008.
I just heard the sad news that one of my favorite bloggers, Dewey from The Hidden Side of a Leaf, has passed away. She hosted the Weekly Geeks challenge and posted more book reviews than I could keep up with. My thoughts are with her family tonight.
I’m giving up on The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. I made it to page 50 and still can’t get into it. I’ve heard the book is amazing and there are some interesting bits, but for the most part, it’s been a laundry list of trees and shrubs that will and will not survive once humans are out of NYC.
If you have read the book and found it interesting, please let me know and maybe I’ll give it another shot. Otherwise, I give up.
As part of the Fall into Reading challenge, I read Man in the Dark by Paul Auster. It’s a fairly short novel at 180 pages, but Auster manages to create strong, complex characters. The story is told over one night by an elderly man who cannot sleep. Instead, he fills the hours making up a story about a man who wakes up in a parallel world and reflecting on his life. There’s a few bumps along the way and this definitely isn’t one of his best novels. But it’s worth reading if you’re a Paul Auster fan.
The New York Times has published its annual list of notable books just in time for holiday gift-giving. From the fiction list, I’ve only read one of their notable titles - Netherland, which I cannot recommend. But there are plenty on my “to be read” list:
Beautiful Children by Charles Bock
Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee
His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
Home by Marilynne Robinson
Indignation by Philip Roth
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
Lush Life by Richard Price
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (I have a copy)
This morning I discovered an interesting essay on the site: The Well-Tended Bookshelf by Laura Miller.
Read my “answers” in the comments section. Feel free to leave your answers, too!
Courtesy of Unconscious Mutterings.
I was tagged by Reading is My Superpower for the meme in which I’m to list seven book-related facts about myself.
1. Until I finished college, I was always more of a “classics” reader. Now I read mostly contemporary fiction.
2. I tend to get most of my books from the New York Public Library even if it means having to wait months to get my hands on a copy.
3. When I worked in a bookstore, I always purchased hardcover books. Loved them. Now I never purchase hardcovers - only trade paperbacks.
4. I have every copy of The Believer magazine to date. This is a literary magazine published by McSweeney’s and is not religious in nature despite it’s name.
5. I enjoying reading books about books. Examples include Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman, Book Lust by Nancy Pearl, and Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone.
6. I’m a Nancy Pearl groupie. I own all her books, calendars, and action figures (original and deluxe). When I lived in Seattle, I went to each of her author reading events even though I had nothing left for her to sign. I even went to a Halloween party dressed as her one year. Yet still no restraining order!
7. I collect bookmarks from independent bookstores and libraries. I’ve given some thought to having a weekly blog post featuring the stories behind each of them. Maybe in 2009.
If you have not participated in this meme, consider yourself tagged!
I support my local library, so this is an easy, but great challenge for me. I plan to read at least 25 books from the New York Public Library in 2009. The challenge begins January 1, 2009 and ends December 31, 2009.
1.
A new cupcake place has opened up in my neighborhood! Near Chocolate Bar, Butter Lane is located on 7th Street between 1st & A. Today’s specials were blueberry, pumpkin, and banana. Of course, we had one of each! I thought my favorite would be pumpkin (it always is), but this time around I fell in love with the blueberry. With white cake and blueberry frosting, it was the moistest of the three with a not-too-sweet frosting. Just a few short blocks away from my apartment, Butter Lane is going to be a dangerous place for me. I can’t wait to try more flavors.
I need to read a really good book to get me out of this bad book funk I’ve been in. I can’t seem to get into any of the books I’ve picked up recently.
I’m back on the book challenge bandwagon. The Wind-Up Book Chronicle challenges me to complete books that I started before May 1, but have not finished. Since I have until November 15 to read my three books, I should be successful in this challenge!
1. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides (began in February)
2. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto - Michael Pollan (began in January)
3. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (began in April)
UPDATE: Challenge complete!
Challenge hosted by 3M.
It’s difficult for me to recommend We Need to Talk About Kevin because it focuses on such a difficult subject - a child gone bad. The story is told through Eve, Kevin’s Mother, through letters to her husband. Although I enjoy Lionel Shriver’s writing style, I found that at 400 pages, the subject matter could have been dealt with in 250 pages. Repetition kills this book’s appeal. Still, I’m looking forward to reading Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World someday soon.
Another blog (sorry, I forget which one) alerted me to the fact that “best of 2008″ book lists are already starting to appear online.
Class:
000 Computer Science, Information & General Works
Contains:
Encyclopedias, magazines, journals and books with quotations.
What it says about you:
You are very informative and up to date. You’re working on living in the here and now, not the past. You go through a lot of changes. When you make a decision you can be very sure of yourself, maybe even stubborn, but your friends appreciate your honesty and resolve.
Found via Reading Adventures.
Last Saturday, Christian and I took a cheese class at the famous Murray’s Cheese Shop on Bleeker. The class included six cheeses and two wines.
Clockwise, the cheeses are: Sainte-Maure De Touraine (lightly aged goat from France), Sweet Grass Dairy Green Hill (bloomy rind from Georgia), Durrus (washed rind from Ireland), Roncal (uncooked pressed sheep from Spain), Scharfe Maxx (cooked pressed from Switzerland), and Mountain Gorgonzola (blue from Italy).
My favorite was the Roncal followed by the Mountain Gorgonzola. Christain preferred the Durrus, but it was too much of a “stinky cheese” for my taste buds.
