Book List for 2008

Okay. It's that time again.

Here is what I read in 2008, in MLA format (as best as I can remember and manage, anyway). As always, library books are designated by asterisk.

Anderegg, David. Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them. New York: Penguin, 2008.
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor, 2003.*
--. The Robber Bride. New York: Doubleday, 1993.*
Barry, Dave. Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far). New York: Penguin, 2007.*
Bombeck, Erma. Family: The Ties That Bind…And Gag!. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1987.
Boyett, Jason. Pocket Guide to Adulthood: 29 Things to Know Before You Hit 30. Orlando: Relevant Books, 2005.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Mists of Avalon. 1982. New York: Del Ray, 2008.*
Brockmeier, Kevin. The View From the Seventh Layer. New York: Pantheon, 2008.
Browne, Jill Connor. The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999.
Burroughs, Augsten. Running With Scissors. New York: Picador, 2002.
Byatt, A. S. The Biographer's Tale. New York: Knopf: 2001.*
--. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories. New York: Random House, 1997.*
--. The Game. New York: Charles Scriber's Sons, 1967.*
--. Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. New York: Random House, 1998.*
--. Little Black Book of Stories. New York: Knopf, 2004.*
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkely: University of California Press, 1984*
Cain, James. The Postman Always Rings Twice. 1934. New York: Vintage, 1981.
Claiborne, Shane. The Irresistible Revolution. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.*
Clarke, Susanna. Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004.
Cobb, Linda. Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean. New York: Pocket Books, 1998.
Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
Cutler, Katharine Noble. Flower Arranging for All Occasions. 1967. New York: Doubleday, 1981.
Editors of Consumer Reports Books with Edward Kippel. How to Clean Practically Anything. 4th Ed. Yonkers: Consumers Union of the United States, Inc., 1996.
Fforde, Jasper. Thursday Next in First Among Sequels. New York: Viking, 2007.*
--. Thursday Next in Something Rotten. New York: Viking, 2004.*
--. Thursday Next in the Well of Lost Plots. New York: Vicking, 2003.*
Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces. New York: Nan A. Telese, 2003.
Gates, Stefan. Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy, and the Brave. Orlando: Harcourt, 2006.
Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and The Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. *
Guterson, David. Snow Falling on Cedars. New York: Vintage, 1995.
Haggard, Ted and Gayle Haggard. From This Day Forward: Making Your Vows Last a Lifetime. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 2006.
Herbert, Frank. Chapterhouse: Dune. New York: Ace, 1987.
--. Dune. 1965. New York: Putnam, 1998.*
--. Children of Dune. 1976. New York: Ace, 1987.
--. Dune Messiah. 1969. New York: Berkley, 1981.
--. God Emperor of Dune. New York: Berkley, 1981.
--. Heretics of Dune. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1984. 480 pages*
Hesse, Herman. Siddhartha. Trans. Hilda Rosner. 1922. New York: MJF Books, 1992.
Klosterman, Chuck. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. New York: Scribner, 2003.*
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Herm. 1984. New York: HaperCollins, 1999.
Laskas, Gretchen Moran. The Midwife's Tale. New York: Dial Press, 2003.
Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook. 1962. New York: Bantam, 1981.
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 1950. New York: Scholastic, 1987.
--. Prince Caspian [The Return to Narnia]. 1951. New York: Scholastic, 1987.
--. The Silver Chair. 1953. New York: Scholastic, 1987.
--. The Voyage of The Dawn Treader. 1952. New York: Scholastic, 1987.
McGuire, Maria. To Take Arms: My Year With the IRA Provisionals. New York: Viking, 1973.*
Palahniuk, Chuck. Choke. New York: Anchor, 2001.*
Parker, Suzi. Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt. Boston: Justin, Charles & Co., 2003.*
Radosh, Daniel. Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture. New York: Scribner, 2008.
Rigg, Jo. Tabletops. Boston: Bullfinch Press, 2003.*
Sedaris, Amy. I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. New York: Warner, 2006.*
Seo, Danny. Simply Green: Parties. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.*
Setterfield, Diane. The Thirteenth Tale. New York: Washington, 2007.
Shute, Nevil. On the Beach. 1957. New York: Perennial, 1966.
Simon, Leslie and Trevor Kelly. Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture. New York: Harper Entertainment, 2007.
Summers, Montague. The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. 1928. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1991.
Wodicka, Tod. All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008.

And because I wanted to do something new this year, I made up some categories for some of these titles.

I Realized I Hate You After the Fact and I Hate Myself for Letting You Waste My Time
All of the Thursday Next books
Sex in the South
To Take Arms
Every Dune book but Dune
How to Clean Practically Anything
Oryx and Crake
Choke
The Midwife's Tale

You Did Not Let Me Down and I Deeply Appreciate That
Family
Dave Barry's History of Millennium
Tabletops
I Like You
The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love
Dune
Rapture Ready!
The View from the Seventh Layer
The Thirteenth Tale
Gastronaut
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

I Had No Idea You Were Going to Be This Amazing and I Want to Be Best Friends With You Forever and Ever!
Madwoman in the Attic
Everybody Hurts
Flower Arranging for All Occasions
Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean
The Golden Notebook
The Hours
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye
The Game
Snow Falling on Cedars
Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell

November's book list

This has been quite the smarty-pants reading month.

I'm prone to undeserved book snobbery, but I realized I'd hit my zenith (at least, I hope I don't get any worse than this) earlier this morning when I was reading a blog I discovered. This woman was discussing her infertility problems, and having just checked out her profile and seen her favorite authors, I thought perhaps God was trying to prevent this woman from bearing and raising yet another stupid person like herself.

Yes, I really did.

I'm very sorry.

I'm sure that's not why she's having problems having a baby (it's actually because she's approaching middle age--she said so herself).

I sincerely hope she eventually becomes a mother.

And I hope that when she does, that kid is going to have some intelligent mentors around to recommend reading selections beyond Goodnight Moon.

I'm sorry!!!!

It really was the first thing that came to mind.

Ahem, um, anyways....here's the book list for November. I have lengthier, non-helpful reactions to each book because I got very enthralled this month. It was a welcome change.

Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Mists of Avalon. 1982. New York: Del Ray, 2008.
Did you know this was originally published by Knopf? That's a big deal! Anyway, this is (yet another) reconfiguration of the Arthur mythos. What's not to love? Well, the incest factor. I didn't love that. But then, I never do and it's always in the Arthur mythos anyway. Royals are crazy. But apart from that, the story had magic, 1980s New Age-y goddess mysticism, a thoughtful examination of the mixing of the pagan and the Christian (I always get excited about that), treachery, romantic entanglements, visions (I also get excited about psychic business), and murder. Seriously, murder out that wazoo. Fun, exciting stuff. I really didn't mind it being over 800 pages.

Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
This is about a single day in the life of three women. This is the same premise of Mrs Dalloway. And one of the women is Virginia Woolf. And The Hours was her working title for Mrs Dalloway. And this is a spectacularly awesome book. I watched the movie a few years back, and now that I've read the book, I'm so glad to know that the movie did a wonderful, faithful adaptation. The book is still better because the narrator tells us what the characters are thinking. I ♥ postmodernism. I bought this book at the Lutheran High Used Book Sale and started reading it that afternoon. And then I finished the following evening. Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite authors. Her suicide note to her husband is one of the sweetest love letters I've ever read.

I think God just disqualified me from having children.

Cutler, Katharine Noble. Flower Arranging for All Occasions. 1967. New York: Doubleday, 1981.
Oh. My. Goodness. This book was previously published under the title How to Arrange Flowers for All Occasions, and was apparently so wildly popular that Doubleday released a new edition in 1981. Sadly, it is now out of print so you'll just have to scrounge in garage sales and library sales. And believe me, you want it. You want it so badly, you don't even understand yet. But you will. This is actually a pretty helpful guide to arranging flowers for people who don't know how to do it (like me), and even though it's a little dated she makes some great points about using found items. Another indication that it's dated: She keeps talking about bouquets looking "fresh" and "gay." "Gay" is probably featured in the book no fewer than 50 times. Seriously. And she is not writing about homosexuals at all. Which brings me to the other thing I love about this book: it is laugh-out-loud unintentionally hilarious.

I know I included a quote from the book in a different post, but I have to do it again.
143: One woman had a most original idea for her bathroom decoration. Knowing that African violets grow well in a humid atmosphere, she turned the top of the toilet tank (which was under a window with good light) upside down and filled it with pebbles. On these she has pots of African violets. They thrive in the light and humidity and are usually a mass of blossoms.

And another, just in time for the holidays.
161: Is there anything more fun to do at Christmastime than to go foraging for greens and other plant material to make your own decorations? Whether you are crunching through the snow in a New England pine forest, cutting blazing poinsettias in Florida, gathering myriads of beautiful pinecones in California, or picking luxuriant holly in the Pacific Northwest, there is something about assembling your own decorations that is smugly satisfying. [Emphasis added because I wanted to point out the craziness.]

I asked Cody if he could think of "anything more fun to do at Christmastime than to go foraging for greens and other plant material" and he assured me he could.

Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2003.
Oh man. Remember when James Frey was a big, fat deal? And then remember when he was deemed a big, fat liar and Oprah nearly had him drawn and quartered on national television? Crazy times. I had still heard this was a good book, regardless of where the library chooses to shelve it. So I bought it at the basement sale and began reading it. And I finished it. And I thought it was a pretty good read.

But I really don't understand how anyone could ever be taken in by this. At first I thought I was just walking into this with all of the stuff I already knew. But no. This angry, angry young man who's destroyed his body and mind with every chemical he can find for the past decade and a half enters rehab and reads one book on Zen and becomes the tender boyfriend figure and this great listener and bucks the AA system and stays clean and Proves Them All Wrong without a single grammatically correct sentence? No. Just no.

It's painfully, embarrassingly, and heartbreakingly obvious that he is writing about events and people (and most of all himself) not as they really were, but as he wishes they had been. And that's the saddest part of the whole book. His stories remind me too much of stories I've heard from friends, acquaintances, and the kinds of people who think they have amazing stories to tell (FYI: if you have an amazing story to tell, chances are it's not going to be about yourself. Yes, I am aware that I tell a lot of stories about myself. I am also aware that they are not amazing or even remotely interesting). Not all of those people had problems with drugs or alcohol. But they all had problems with lying. And they all lied to me.

I would actually recommend all of this month's books to you.

Unless you have problems with paganism, violence, drugs, profanity, suicide, homosexuality, alcohol, sexuality in general, or flower arranging.

Then maybe you should just pick up the new Stephen King collection of short stories and let me know what you think.

October's book list

Since I don't think I'll finish that book on flower arranging today, here's the list of what I read this month. As always, library books are marked by asterisks. I love the library. It's so....free, except that I helped pay for it. I should start checking books that I actually enjoy. You'll see what I mean.

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor, 2003.*
I love Atwood. She's a great writer. I thought I would take a break from her books that are typically written from a female perspective and go with something that had a funny name and seemed kind of science-fictionsque. And the central character was a man. And this was a good book, but it took me forever to finish. Too many flashbacks (even for her), too much buildup, and not enough...something. I almost bought this a couple of months ago, but I'm glad I checked it out instead. It was good, but it was just....not particularly riveting (despite tons of tense moments and Very Important Cues That Something Bad Will Happen/Happened) until more than 3/4ths through. Not cool.

Fforde, Jasper. Thursday Next in First Among Sequels. New York: Viking, 2007.*
The most ridiculous one yet. It can be a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on your patience. I'm losing mine.

Herbert, Frank. Heretics of Dune. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1984.*
At first, I thought I didn't 'get' the ending because I was tired and sick and whatever. No. I got it (and I went back and read the last 40 or 50 pages just to be sure), but it was stupid. I mean, really very stupid. I had considered reading the last 2 books of the series, which were actually written by Herbert's son using notes and drafts, but now I know I'm done.

Radosh, Daniel. Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture.
New York: Scribner, 2008.
This one was fun. At times it got a little smarmy, but I can see where that defense mechanism can kick in when one is surrounded by some of 'those people.' I would recommend that everyone read the book, even if it's just to read the mock interview with Stephen Baldwin. It's completely unfair and ridiculous and made me laugh till I cried and started coughing uncontrollably. Good stuff.

Setterfield, Diane. The Thirteenth Tale. New York: Washington, 2007.
Why do I love the British so much? There are plot twists and themes and dialogue that reads like the script for a Lifetime movie--but I promise the book is cooler than that. Probably because it's so unbearably British. We don't even quite know when the story takes place. There's also a whole lot of twin creepiness. Some of it's intentional and some of it's due to the fact that twins, like all familial relationships, can be very strange.

September's Book List

I told you last time that September would be a good month.

Byatt, A.S. The Game. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967.
-After finishing a particularly unsettling collection of her short stories, I decided to switch over to some Byatt's novels for a nice change of pace. The plot? Two sisters are kind locked into some sort of power struggle over themselves and each other and they're kind of estranged because of some boy from a long while back. They're so close that I thought they were twins, but once I realized they weren't, I was creeped out. I'm not sure why. Also: I don't think Byatt likes spaghetti. I've caught two references in two works (20ish years apart) and there's just something about the way she mentions it.

Clarke, Susanna. Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004.
-I'm not sure what's up with British writers creating alternate universes, but they're always great. And this one has magic. Tons and tons of magic. And hilarious footnotes. Yes, this is fiction. Delightful, intelligent, engaging, escapist fiction. Over 700 pages of awesome. I recommend it.

Cain, James. The Postman Always Rings Twice. 1934. New York: Vintage, 1981.
-So, supposedly this a big deal because it's one of the first books in the 'hard boiled' genre. And I didn't care. But I finished this in a day (it's barely 120 pages), and was incredibly engaged. Parts of it were ridiculous (and, several decades later, incredibly racist), but the story stayed with me. Interesting.

Cobb, Linda. Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean. New York: Pocket Books, 1998.
-If I were one of those people who said "[Book title here] is my bible!" (and I don't, because the Bible is my bible. Duh.), I would say it about this book. Super-informative, relatively uncomplicated, and incredibly helpful. Cobb also only recommends 7 cleaning products you should always have, with a few extras if you have pets. She's easy, she's thorough, and she might be one of my heroes. And yes, I did sit down and read it all the way through.

Herbert, Frank. Children of Dune (3). 1976. New York: Ace, 1987.
-Dune! Crazy, crazy stuff. All kinds of plans just fall to pieces.

Herbert, Frank. God Emperor of Dune (4). New York: Berkley, 1981.
-Even crazier stuff. Not as great as the three before it. Nonetheless, I think I finished it in under a week because I really, really, really liked it. I've got to find Book 5 pretty soon.

In conclusion:

• Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean > How to Clean Practically Anything.

• I really want to read Book 5 of the Dune series, but I don't know about 6 and 7 because they were ghost-written, and are based on drafts and notes. Okay, I probably will.
• Magic = fun.
• British = great.
• My 'read all the A.S. Byatt books in the Central Arkansas Library System' project = daunting.
• Spaghetti = disturbing. And possibly a metaphor for a misspent life.
  

August's Book List

It's been a slow month. And I've once again started more books than finished.

Burroughs, Augusten. Running With Scissors. New York: Picador, 2002.
- I started reading this on the car ride down to Dallas and finished it on the way back. That's all I've got.
Hornby, Nick. About A Boy. 1998. New York: Riverhead Trade, 2002.
- Parts of it were great, and then the ending was stupid. Why do you always do this to me, endings??!?!?
How to Clean Practically Anything. Eds. of Consumer Reports Books with Edward Kippel. 4th ed. Yonkers: Consumer Union of the United States, Inc., 1996.
- This is the only book I can recommend from this month. I recommend all cleaning books, though.
Laskas, Gretchen Moran. The Midwife's Tale. New York: Dial Press, 2003.
-Parts of it were fine. Other parts weren't. It was like being around a bunch of women. Sometimes you empathize. Other times you just pray for the talking to stop. Especially when she tries to write in Appalachian dialect. I'm glad I only paid a dollar for it at the library sale.

I hope September will be better.

June's book list

This month's book list was pretty great. I enjoyed myself, and will continue to take a break from the Chronicles of Narnia.

Bombeck, Erma. Family: The Ties That Bind...And Gag!. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1987. Erma Bombeck is hilarious and insightful and awesome. Some of the stuff is a little dated now, but that's the best we're going to get. So I enjoyed her and laughed out loud for the better part of a weekend while reading this.

Byatt, A.S. Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. New York: Random House, 1998.* The quest to read every A.S. Byatt book in the Main Library continues.

Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.* Once upon a time, when I was taking British Novel as a terrified young sophomore, Dr. Prewitt assigned several chunks of this work as additional reading and would recommend it to us when we were writing papers and doing the dreaded student-teaching portions of the class (I picked one of the weeks we covered Middlemarch. I was an idiot.). I was really impressed with Gilbert and Gubar and the way they looked at writers and characters and always wanted to read the book in its entirety. I didn't have time in college, and then I couldn't find a copy after graduation. Finally, 5 years later, everything fell into place and the library had its copy on the shelves on the day I was there. So I checked it out and began reading.....and finished it Sunday, 3 months after checking it out and renewing several times. It's great. It's interesting. It was my first exposure to feminist criticism and so I'll always hold it up pretty high just for that. But it's a really good source to think about when reading anything by or about women, or when examining the assumptions surrounding creative women and what those assumptions mean. This gets a really long write-up because it was a really long book (over 750 pages with the endnotes and index). Yes, I'm bragging.

Hesse, Herman. Siddhartha. Trans. Hilda Rosner. 1922. New York: MJF Books, 1992. Well, I'd seen several cool kids list this as a favorite book on their myspaces, so I'd figured it was either a great book, or the type of thing you want people to think you read. Either way, I was interested in it because I could've sworn I'd heard important things about Hesse somewhere and couldn't remember why he was important. So I bought the book on a Barnes & Noble date after yet another pointless trip to Lowe's and stuck it in my purse and began reading it. It was good. That's really all I can say. Am I cool, yet? No? Okay then.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. 1984. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Again, this was one of those books that I'd heard good things about and didn't remember what the good things were. But: we got some money for Christmas from my parents and bought books that weren't on sale with some of the funds. Since I'd seen Kevin Brockmeier reference it in a few interviews as being great, and I liked the cover and title, I bought it and just now read it. I started it on the trip to North Carolina and finished it a week later. It was touching. It's about too many things for me to say what it's about, but it's a few love stories and touches on civil unrest and Communism and self-perception and there's a dog, too. There's a reason it's on Kevin Brockmeier's top fifty list (yes, I have a copy. He was giving them out to anyone who was interested at the literary festival a few years ago.).

Simon, Leslie and Trevor Kelley. Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture. New York: Harper Entertainment, 2007. Cody borrowed this from Spencer, and then I stole it from Cody so that I could read it before he did. I know this is supposed to be funny, but I was a little irritated with it for a few reasons. One of the reasons was that I dislike emo things. I don't really enjoy the hair, the clothes, the music, or the constant need for attention that you try to get through showcasing your emotions in a really passionate and annoying way. (This is also why I'm scared of praise and worship services.) As a result, the super exhaustive, yet tongue-in-cheek, overview seemed a little tedious.

The second, and more horrifying, reason was because I recognized nearly. every. single. band. they talked about. We're not just talking about the stuff that made to the soundtrack of The O.C. No. Nearly everything. Why? Because sometimes my CDs wind up in Cody's CD case, and I have to flip through his stuff to get to mine and I can't avert my eyes entirely. We won't even talk about the car trips together where he tries to force that lifestyle on me. But yes, even though I'd denied it ever since we started dating (I didn't even know husky kids could be emo! His size made him seem too substantial for that kind of pitiful behavior.), but yeah, Cody is a little emo. Or maybe he just likes the music. Either way, I'm just grateful that he doesn't wear eyeliner. Gah. Funny book. I hope we haven't lost it. Because we can't find it now. Sorry!

There you have it: June's book list in MLA format. As always, library books are marked by an asterisk.