30 Day Book Challenge: Day 30

"And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain...."

Here we are, the last day of our 30 Day Book Challenge.  Gianna cried into her Honey Nut Cheerios this morning when she realized it.  I'm trying to drown my sorrows in a bottle (of Diet Coke, naturally).

Day 30: Favorite Coffee Table Book

Gianna:

Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World

Introduction by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo

Photographs by Eddie Adams

Edited by Nan Richardson

Emily Bruce (one of the outstanding Random House sales reps and friend) told me about this book years ago, and since then I have kept it in my living room. I am a fervent believer in speaking truth to power, but in my little world what is at risk really? Thumb through this book and you see face after face of what bravery, ingenuity, and resilience really mean. Some of my favorite quotes:

Digna Ochoa

Mexico

Human Rights

“Anger is energy, it’s a force. If an act of injustice doesn’t provoke anger in me, it could be seen as indifference, passivity. It’s injustice that motivates us to do something, to take risks, knowing that if we don’t, things will remain the same.”

Fauziya Kassindja

Togo/United States

Female genital mutilation and immigration abuse

“On Thursday they said I’d be married. On Friday they told me they’d cut me. At midnight I escaped.”

Vaclav Havel

Czech Republic

Free Expression

“You don’t want to become involved with the dirt that is around you and one day, all of a sudden you wake up and realize that you are a dissident, that you are a human rights activist.”

Maria Teresa Tula

El Salvador

The Disappeared

“We held a press conference telling the public about the work…As a result, a death threat appeared in the newspaper threatening all members of Co-Madres that if people did not obey they would be disappeared or decapitated one by one.”

Kek Galabru

Cambodia

Political Participation and Children’s Rights

“The authorities push the family to take poison, so they die, the mother, the father, so many children, at the same time.”

Anonymous (pictured on cover of book)

Sudan

Human Rights

“We are helping the people. The problem is that the government doesn’t want this type of help. It is certainly to the government’s benefit that people don’t know much about laws because then people will not demand any rights. This is one reason why it would be difficult for me to reveal my name.’ - (Remember this book was published in 2000 and this was the only place that they were asked to not publish the identity of the defender that is how bad the situation was even then…)

Speak Truth To Power, a pretty great book to end the 30 Day Book Challenge.

Liz:

 

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

 

This book isn't perfect for the coffee table because it's an oversized photography or art book; it's perfect because it serves as a reminder of how many voices compose our literary history and it encourages engagement with stories that have the power to move, entertain, enlighten, and enrage.  I turn to it when I'm in a reading rut, or when I burn out on reading just the assigned books that are a (normally thrilling) part of my job.  I am even nerdy enough to keep track of which books I've read and what percentage of the 1001.  This book is a reminder of why I'm even in this business.  There is a magic in sharing great books with friends, strangers, booksellers--anyone who shows an interest.  I am, admittedly, a wee bit socially awkward, but I speak the language of books.  1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is written in the language I love most and it inspires me to keep going.

 
Speaking of keeping a thing going....
 
Gianna and I have decided that there are so many more topics we haven't touched upon with this 30 Day Book Challenge that we're going to keep a (probably regrettable) thing going.  So, beginning tomorrow, we're attacking our own categories and keeping the conversation going for another month.  I'm severely sleep deprived and probably crazy; I'm not sure why Gianna agreed to continue, though.  This should be a hoot.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 29! Penultimania!

Whatever will the dozens of you think about after this challenge ends tomorrow?  It's so sad.  And what about all of the categories not covered by this formal 30 day challenge list?  How about favorite prison book?  Or the weirdest place you've read a book and what that book was?  Best book given to you as a gift?  We may need to create a whole new month's worth of categories.....Gianna will kill me.

Anyway, here it is, Day 29: The Book You're Currently Reading

Gianna:

This is the hardback cover.
UT Press cover to come.

I am currently re-reading a really wonderful book called Welcome to Utopia by Karen Valby. I always say this book surprised me because I had no expectation that I would like it. What I should say now is that this book keeps surprising me because I had no idea how much this book would end up meaning to me and so many of the people who have read it. I sold this book in hardcover when I was with Random House and when I left I took this book with me. The University of Texas Press will publish this in paper this May. I also took two boxes of paperclips, one manila folder, a stapler, and four Girl With a Dragon Tattoo shirts (actually I just found these in my garage). The paperclips are extremely handy but Welcome to Utopia is the best thing I took by a long shot.

Karen Valby was given an assignment by Entertainment Weekly to find a town that had not been impacted by pop culture. Utopia, Texas – population…a few hundred (they have no one to record the official population) – by the time Valby arrived in 2006 some pop culture had found its way but much of this town had remained untouched, and what was changing wasn’t going easily.

What I love most about this book is that there are so many moments, real moments, in these Utopians' lives that great novels are made of. Fathers, sons, ranchers, money, race, small towns vs. cities, war, humor, death and women...it’s all here. This book has heroes. Utopia sends its share of soldiers to the military, and yes heroes all, but the woman I think about so often is Kathy Wiekamp.  She saw three of her four boys go off to war along with her brother. Yet day in and day out, one foot in front of the other Kathy walks on; even after the tragic news of her oldest's death in Afghanistan she must keep going. Here is a beautiful scene from Welcome to Utopia as Jeff Weicamp is brought home:

When the limo rolled down Ranch to Market Road 187 into Utopia, every child in school, from pre – K to twelfth grad, stood silently on the sides of the road holding up American flags. The notice board in the town square was wrapped in ribbons, its simple block letters promising WIEKAMP FAMILY YOU HAVE OUR PRAYERS AND SYMPATHY. Toddlers wearing nothing but bathing suits and Velcro-tabbed sneakers held their parents’ hands and on whispered commands gave pudgy-fingered salutes. Tearful mothers of all the local young men and women who were stationed overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan held their breath as they watched the limo pass. And the dozens of old veterans who call Utopia home held their caps and cowboy hats to their hearts, their naked foreheads exposed to the merciless sun.

Can you imagine if your town did that?

Liz:

Richard Mason,
hot author

I'm finishing a novel coming in the spring season for 2012 called The History of a Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason.  The book tells the story of Piet Barol, a Dutch tutor who takes a job in a wealthy family's home in order to teach--and help to cure--the musically gifted son tortured by obsessive compulsive disorder.  The real meat of the book, however, deals with Piet's conquest of the Amsterdam in turn of the century (20th, not 21st) social circles, wooing the staff members and daughters of his employer, and ultimately seducing his wife.  There's a strong flair of the bawdy underground Victorian novel here.  Piet's conquests and adventures are, um, titillating.  In a different time, The History of a Pleasure Seeker would be the book you hide between your mattress and box springs.  Mason has written a vibrant, joyful novel with echoes of books like Brideshead Revisited, Tom Jones, and even Patricia Highsmith's Ripley.  Oh, and Richard Mason is easy to look at, too.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 28

Day 28: The Last Book You Read

Gianna:

I have no interest in money. I know it’s terrible.  I know. This debt ceiling thing is kicking my ass. Plus I have a brother who really gets into the nitty gritty of money management and likes talking to me about his mortgage lender and their conversations. I had like two conversations with my mortgage lender by the way; why he has so many conversations with his mortgage lender is just really alien to me. [Recipe swapping?] But he enjoys it like I enjoy listening to old Lily Tomlin Live records (good old Lud and Marie) so…. I let the boy be.

Anyhoo, Bill Brands (H.W. Brands) has a slim volume called Greenback Planet: How the dollar Conquered the World and Threatened Civilization As We Know It, due out by the University of Texas Press. Think of it as everything you always wanted to know about the dollar but didn’t know to ask. Brands hit all the topics you would expect (if you knew to expect them): from the Civil War, flat money, and Black Friday to the creation of the Federal Reserve. Oh, and the who’s who is in here as well: Alexander Hamilton, JP Morgan, FDR, Jay Gould, Alan Greenspan (the sex symbol of the book), Ben Bernanke, and a load of others. The book concludes with the dissection of the 2008 financial debacle. The best part for me? Incredibly readable and truly succinct.

Liz:

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

I was a big fan of Harkaway after reading first book, The Gone-Away World, and I'm now an even bigger fan.  Harkaway, if he's new to you, is thriller master John Le Carre's son.  He's forging his own literary reputation by focusing on terrific plots and pacing, quirky and witty characters, and humor.  His newest novel, Angelmaker, comes out early in 2012 and it's worth placing it on your must read list for the new year. 

Nick Harkaway

Angelmaker is a combination of a spy thriller and Kakfaesque critique of contemporary society with a doomsday device ticking away to keep the story moving.  The main character, Joe Spork, had fought against his mobster father's legacy by following in his grandfather's footsteps with a career in repairing clockwork.  Joe is not above taking on semi-shady commissions, though, and when a friend presents him with a strange, mechanized book, Joe, takes up the challenge by fixing it and installing it into a beehive-like larger machine.  Then the clock starts ticking toward the end of the world.  The woman who possessed the book, an octogenarian named Edie Banister, was a super-spy from World War II intent on bringing down the ruler of a small principality, and Edie waging a fifty year spy vs. spy war against him.  Joe is suddenly in over his head and Edie's terrific past is revealed.  And in Harkaway fashion, there are terrorist monks, a famed serial killer, mobsters, government agents.  There are elephants and clockwork bees and torture hospitals and a secret train and a mobster underworld market.  Who wouldn't want to read this book? 



30 Day Book Challenge: Day 27

Day 27: Favorite Fiction Book

Gianna:

In my quest not to repeat, I won’t pick O’Connor or Toni Morrison here (but forced to pick I would have to say that Beloved is my favorite novel; we will stretch the meaning of this question as always). Too many great books to really pick, so I again thought of something I couldn’t let go of in recent memory.  I came up with Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply. I still get a bit giddy when I get to talk about this book. It is so delicious, beginning to end, that it makes me sad that I will never get to read it again for the first time. It is a book that at the end you say “son of a bitch!” and then if you are anything like me, you start backtracking. In a word, the novel is about identity, but it is oh so…chilling. Here are the first few lines, and if you can move on with your life without wanting to read more…well…I don’t know if Liz wants to be friends with you.  [In general I probably don't want to be friends with you, but I do love this book too.]

We are on our way to the hospital, Ryan’s father says.

Listen to me, Son:

You are not going to bleed to death.

Ryan is still aware enough that his father’s words come in through the edges, like sunlight on the borders of a window shade. His eyes are shut tight and his body is shaking and he is trying to hold up his left arm, to keep it elevated. We are on our way to the hospital, his father says, and Ryan’s teeth are chattering, he clenches and unclenches them, and a series of wavering colored lights – greens, indigos – plays along the surface of his closed eyelids.

On he seat beside him, in between him and his father, Ryan’s severed hand is resting on a bed of ice in an eight-quart Styrofoam cooler.

The hand weighs less than a pound. The nails are trimmed and there are calluses on the tips of the fingers from guitar playing. The skin is now bluish in color.

This is about three A.M. on a Thursday morning in May in rural Michigan. Ryan doesn’t have any idea how far away the hospital might be but he repeats with his father we are on the way to the hospital we are on the way to the hospital and he wants to believe so badly that it’s true, that it’s not just one of those things that you tell people to keep them calm. But he’s not sure. Gazing out all he can see is the night trees leaning over the road, the car pursuing its pool of headlight, and darkness, no towns, no buildings ahead, darkness, road, moon.

So yeah….Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon is my favorite fiction book of 2009 and certainly makes the list of all time.

Liz:

Listen. Allow me to be your god.  Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining.  Let me tell you a story.

As I read the opening lines of The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine I knew I would be in the assured hands of a master storyteller, and I knew that this novel would hold a special spot among the many great books I've read.  "Hakawati" means storyteller, the traditional storyteller who, like Scheherazade, spins stories ending with a cliff hanger each day to lure back listeners, and Alameddine's book is a splendid weaving together of multiple tales and the history of a modern Lebanese family.  Here are tales of the Arabian Nights and genies and great warriors and cunning princesses given a modern flavor as they relate to the story of a young man returning to his native Beirut to help with his dying father.  Here are stories of the wars in Lebanon and the great pigeon wars that take place over the buildings of Beirut and of princes and demons and magic carpets.  I was mesmerized.

I had really just started at Random House when I read The Hakawati, with the company only about a year.  I had stumbled across Rabih Alameddine's earlier novel, I, the Divine years earlier when I was a bookseller and loved it (that book is the story of a woman's life told through her multiple attempts to write her autobiography but she only ever writes the first chapter), so when I learned that Knopf would publish his new novel I dove right in.  The Hakawati was my favorite book I read that year, one of my desert island book picks, and the book that helped me realize what the most rewarding part of my job of a sales rep is.  I have the power to discover incredible books and then spread that love to the right booksellers.  The pleasure of working with the books I most love makes my job, for all of the frustration I sometimes feel, magical.  Booksellers at BookPeople in Austin, Brazos Bookstore in Houston, and Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi, in particular, all shared my passion for The Hakawati, and through their efforts numerous readers across my territory discovered themselves the genius of The Hakawati.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 26

Day 26: Favorite Non-Fiction Book



Technically, non-fiction



I hate "non-fiction" as a category.  Are we really to assume that The Oxford English Dictionary and Penis Pokey belong in the same category?  And for that matter, isn't The Feminine Mystique non-fiction too? It's stupid.  (I hope Gianna didn't pick Penis Pokey.  I haven't looked at her choice yet.  I'm safe, right?....I should be safe, but she does love to be inappropriate.  Do you all understand how difficult it is to put together this little blog?)

Gianna:

This should come as no surprise but I am going to sort of cheat. Some of these questions if answered truthfully...well, you would repeat books and what fun is that? So in an effort not to repeat books, and also in order to talk about books that maybe don’t get talked about enough in my opinion, I am going to pick a really controversial book as my favorite non fiction book. [Crap.  It's Penis Pokey, isn't it?  And not Gianna is going to give me hell.] Let me say however this book is absolutely one of my favorite books.

The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison. Oh, how this book surprised me. I was working as a receiver at a bookstore when this book came in and I read the jacket copy, and you know, I am not made of stone…adult daughter has affair with father? Sold. I am going to read that book. Congratulations, you found your audience. But nothing could really have prepared me for that book. It is completely heartbreaking and it drains you. It is one of those books you don’t forget, and not because of the subject. Harrison is such a beautiful writer (if you haven’t read anything by her please pick this up, or Seal Wife or Exposure); this book very easily could have been a disaster. It is not. It is beautiful and terrible and hopeful.

I am surprised more people have not read this memoir. Random House just published a new addition so I hope to see it in more bookstores. Gail Caldwell wrote a really great review of The Kiss, and here is a small piece from it:

Harrison had the good sense to write The Kiss with the most bare-bones approach imaginable, letting the awful force of her story dictate its lean style. Devoid of prurient detail, it is a spare, painful book that saves its most dramatic words for the day she capitulates to her father's need, when ``God's heart bursts, it breaks. For me it does.'' How do you ever come back from a moment like that?

One more thing about Kathryn Harrison…balls o' steel. She was vilified in many places for writing this book, which as you can imagine pisses me off.

Liz:

Penis Pokey.

Just kidding.

I listed a bunch of my favorite history books on the day we talked about books that turn us on, but in an effort to avoid repeats I'm going to pick another work of narrative history that's on par with those other favorites.  I don't know if this book officially is my favorite non-fiction title; I don't know that I have a favorite.  However, The River of Doubt by Candice Millard is pretty darn wonderful.

Millard tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt, former President who had lost his bid to return to the White House, and decides to engage his mid-to-late life crisis by traveling to the Amazon.  Teddy Roosevelt, jungle explorer.  TR puts together an expedition including his son Kermit and Brazil's most famous explorer of the time and they set off into the middle of the rain forest to chart the course of a previously unmapped river.  Roosevelt's hubris almost kills him, and the doomed expedition encounters piranhas, rapids, indigenous peoples, and any number of perils.  The River of Doubt rivals Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air as one of the greatest adventure books ever written, but what makes Millard's book special is that she creates such intensity and life for her story without the benefit of first hand experience.  She's a terrific storyteller and she brings to life a mostly forgotten period for one of this nation's favorite subjects.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 9,476...er...Day 25

Day 25: The Favorite Book You Read in School

I'm going to just assume that this category means that we read the book for a class, and not that we just read the book in a class.  I mean, technically I read John Grisham's The Firm in a class, as I "borrowed" a copy left in my mother's classroom (she was the 11th grade English teacher at my high school) and read it during Chemistry while our teacher was off coaching the boys basketball team for two weeks as they made a run for state.  Ah, small town educational opportunities.  Anyway, here are our picks for day 25:

Gianna:

While I really stewed over the book question whose answer ended up being Carol Burnett, this question is very easy...William Faulkner.  When I was going to school in North Carolina I had a professor who may have been in love, SERIOUS LOVE, with William Faulkner, and I am forever grateful.  It was my introduction and immersion into the world of Yoknapatawpha County.  I read Faulkner and nearly only Faulkner for a year (which sort of makes it sound like I was either in love with my professor--who I assure you cared little for dental hygiene--or maybe I was in love with Faulkner...who had a lifelong fidelity and drinking problem...so if I were to lay odds knowing my romantic history I would say I was in love with Faulkner).  Anyway, I highly suggest that isolating yourself with Faulkner for a period of time (and then get in a car with Liz and drive to Oxford) [Sweet! Road trip companions! I can show you where Gianna's going to dump my body in the Atchafalaya Basin!].  Oh, and in case you care, Absalom, Absalom! is my favorite.

Liz:

As I mentioned earlier, my mother was my high school English teacher, and to make matters worse, my twin sister was also in the class.  Imagine a whole year of every family feud waltzing right into second period Honors English to be enacted in front of the petty little assholes with whom I went to school for 12 years (another joy of rural education--you are in classes with the same 25 kids forever, so the bickering in seventh grade science could pop up as a very cold revenge in sophomore history).  It was a real hoot.  Also, throw in that Attila, my mother, admitted that she graded my work harder than others' and sent my sister to the assistant principal's office for kicking one of the little assholes in the shin (Can an asshole have a shin? Technically probably not....).  Yeah, maybe I hold onto my past a bit too tightly.  I always loved English, but there are some titans of American Literature that I simply don't like.  Hawthorne, for example.  And Twain--ugh.  I'm not so hot on Thoreau and Emerson and the proto-hippie Transcendentalists.  By the second semester of that endless year, I was rather disenchanted with the branch of literature my mother most loved, but then we came to The Great Gatsby.  Here was a story of the little assholes of another time, trapped in that time, and of their vagaries.  Here was an author consumed by his own passions and excesses and still able to define an era with one book.  Fitzgerald's sentences sang to me and I loved the characters and story.  Back in the day the Modern Library announced their greatest novels of the 20th Century.  They picked Gatsby at #2.  I would be willing to argue, though, that it is the greatest novel of that century and this nation. 

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 24

Day 24: Book That Contains Your Favorite Scene

Gianna:

This was a really tough question. I sat on this one for a few days, in fact, going back and forth on a few of my favorite books. I finally decided I would abandon all of those books and concentrate on what books really gave me joy or meant a lot to me more recently and I just kept coming back to one book that I find myself talking about often. It was also one of my favorite books of 2010. Of course now I would have to pick a favorite scene from this book that has many great scenes in it – so this too caused another issue. The book is This Time Together by sweet, sweet Carol Burnett. There are so many laugh out loud (seriously) moments in this book, but pages 57 -59 are my favorite. Carol is just hitting it big and her grandmother is in the hospital due to a heart attack. Burnett is told that her grandmother would be fine so she stays in NY and does not fly home to LA, but has asked her cousin (Cuz) to check in on “Nanny” in the hospital. Her cousin checks in on her every day. One day the cousin walks out of the elevator to see a long line of people waiting in the hall, some even in costumes and reading Hollywood trade magazines. The line went all the way to Nanny’s door.

From the book:

Cuz pushed through the crowd. “Excuse me! I’m her grand-daughter!” She eventually managed to reach the door and open it. There sat Nanny, propped up in bed, being entertained by a little girl in a tutu who was tap-dancing and doing some baton twirling, accompanied by her father on a harmonica playing “Dixie.” The child ended with a spectacular split and a great big “TA DA,” arms up in the air, the baton twirling on one finger.


Nanny said, “Thank you. I’ll tell Carol about you. Now send in the next one, please.”


Cuz looked at her dumbfounded. “Nanny, what in the world is all this about?”


Nanny shrugged and smiled. “I got bored.”

There are some other good Nanny stories in here but fake auditioning people is pretty great. Some people just dream of doing things like this… she actually did it.

Anyway, I just loved this book cover to cover.

Liz:

I chose a scene from a book I've read more recently.  An early contender for my favorite book of 2011 is the novel Galore by Michael Crummey.  I LOVE this book about an isolated fishing village in Newfoundland that spans 200 years.  It's storytelling magic.  And I'm open about my Canada obsession, but I'd love this book if it were set on the coast of Argentina, or the coast of Italy, or the coast of a Japanese island.  It's an extra treat that it's Canadian.  I was supposed to read an excerpt of Galore for work and I dutifully picked it up before my sales conference and plunged in.  Because I had about 20 other books to read, though, I hadn't planned to read the whole book at that time; I just needed the flavor of it for conference.  There's a scene at the beginning of the book, though, that sold me whole hog and I neglected my other responsibilities for two days while I submerged myself into the world of some wonderful scenes and characters.  I love everything about this book.

Here's the scene--

At the beginning of Galore, a whale washes up on shore in the coastal village of Paradise Deep, and the townspeople gather around the whale to discuss what's to be done with the corpse.  Some of the fishermen begin to dismantle the body, but then they are shocked to discover a man--stinking of fish and naked--in the belly of the whale.  The villagers are appalled and fascinated...and cattily remarking upon the small penis size of the dead man in the whale.  I love this--I would totally be the one cracking wiener jokes at such a moment.  But then the dead man moves.  He's still breathing, and though the villagers don't know how to react to such a phenomenon, they dress him and try to talk to him, discover his story.  He's mute.  They have to call him something, though, and so the villagers settle on "Judah;" they only have half a Bible in Paradise Deep (the product of another belly-of-a-fish discovery) and no one can remember if it's Jonah or Judas found in the belly of the Biblical whale. 

I love this scene because it rings true to human nature, and it establishes a sense of the miraculous among the mundane, and it captures the underlying humor found everywhere.  It perfectly sets the tone for the book.  Of course I had to discover Judah's story and immerse myself in the lore of Paradise Deep.  I wish I were more artistic; I would draw the scenes from Michael Crummey's novel a la Rockwell Kent.  And seriously, you need to be reading Galore.  This won't be the last time I mention it.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 23

Day 23: A Book You Say That You've Finished (but that's a big fat lie)

Well this should be fun.  Usually I'm pretty up front about my inability to finish a book (see: Confederacy of Dunces).  Gianna lies about everything, though.  I actually think she might be illiterate.

Gianna:

Well I may have “implied” to some people that I finished this book. But I want to stress that those people who it really mattered to--and you people know who you are--I never said I finished this book. In fact I was pretty  honest (i.e. incredibly honest) about this book. So not only did I not finish this book (and I want to say that I didn’t not finish it because I couldn’t, or because I had too many other things to read for work), I didn’t finish this book because I just really did not want to (I am being nice). But it was on my “must reads” for work so a bit of a charade went on (more of a don’t ask don’t tell).  So what I did, because I sort of did want to know how it ended, I made my friend Colleen Devine read it. I do that a lot. I say, “Colleen, taste this… it's horrible”, or “does this smell bad?”, or “does it hurt when I push this bruise?” We have that relationship. If you don’t have that friend, I urge you to drop what you are doing (Hey, wait a minute! Keep reading our blog! Your life depends on it!) and go get one; they are most excellent. Anyway, she did me a total solid and read it and filled me in on the latter half of the book...which she enjoyed as much as much as I had enjoyed the first half, by the way.  I feel bad naming the book so I won’t. Just kidding, you can’t like ‘em all so I don’t feel bad. Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel. I know… you all just loved it.

Liz:

That "Infinite" certainly
sums it up well.

I lived in Austin, and I worked at the cool kids' bookstore, and I may have suggested to a few people that I finished Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.  But that period (the lying about it) only lasted for a couple of weeks.  I realized that I didn't care if I wasn't a pseudo hipster and that I have better things to do than read endless footnotes.  I don't hate David Foster Wallace, but he's definitely not my thing either.  I guess I don't understand the cultish DFW worship.  I'm fine with that, too.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 22

Gianna:

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

If my two former co-workers can stop fighting over who will actually send me one of these, this is next on my reading list. Apparently it is some hardship for either of them to look up my address, which is still in the RH database by the way, not to mention my former boss lives 4 miles from my house. Oy. Also…I didn’t ask for this book, this was their idea to send me one. If this doesn’t come my way…I am going to read something by Glenn Beck. Then every evening I will leave Liz and Valerie a voice mail of my favorite passage from that day. Looking forward to reading Night Circus! [I have Gianna's address...I just don't really feel like going to the post office.  It's hot outside. Oh, and Gianna is supposed to make me brownies because her Cubs swept my Astros, so until I see those brownies I might avoid the post office indefinitely.  Bring on the Glenn Beck recitations!]

Liz

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander

I'm currently reading for the Spring 2012 season and this collection of short stories is next on my list.  I'm a big fan of Nathan Englander's first two books (one story collection, one novel) and I've already read the title story for this new book.  It's outstanding.  Englander manages to balance hilarious and poignant moments in a few pages, and oh how I love his characters.  I am looking forward to finishing the rest of the book.  The rumor is that they're all excellent. 

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 21

Is this the home stretch yet?

Day 21: Favorite Picture Book

Gianna:

You know I want to say something deep here. I want to say some great book that molded me into a sort of moral lady person that you would all want to spend more than two or three minutes with, without regretting making eye contact with me, or answering your door, or waving me over, or God knows…that you didn’t run in the other direction.  Yeah, I wish I were about to announce that say, I don’t know, The Giving Tree was my favorite picture book as a child. But that’s not true. In fact, I didn’t even read that book until I worked at a bookstore about 15 years ago and honestly I found it boring and the relationship a little one-sided (I know,I know; some would say that book should have been a Bible of sorts and to them I say, “Hey you broke up with me and isn’t that enough?”) and is it even a picture book? Regardless, its not that book. I wish I could say it was a Winnie The Pooh book and I gathered some sort of philosophy from Winnie and Christopher Robin, or any – any Seuss books…. The Lorax, why couldn’t I fall in love with the book and not the TV movie?  Alas, that is not the case.  The book I really, truly could not get enough of was Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire. Here is the story, the heartwarming story, and I am familiar with it because I just started to re-read it to my little friend Eleanor before quickly putting it back on the shelf.  The leopard is desperately trying to get put in the zoo but the zoo rejects him. They say, “Why should you be in the zoo, what good are you?” Huh…"What good are you." Nice. Eventually, he realizes because he can change colors and juggle his spots he belongs in the circus and lives happily ever after. The circus. That is the picture book that I read over and over as a child. No Shel Silverstein for this little thinker!  Nope…a leopard who tries to get INTO the zoo but winds up happily in the circus. Perfect. [I think PETA holds the copyright on this classic.]

Liz

You will note that nowhere does this say "favorite children's picture book."  I don't have a lot of exposure to the kids' versions, other than what I've read/overheard at my breeder friends' homes as they read to their spawn.  I only heard the rumpus book (Maurice Sendak, you know the one) for the first time about a year ago.  I kind of like the pigeon books, but mostly because I like to chase pigeons.  Still, for my Day 21 selection I choose may i feel said he, poem by e.e.cummings, paintings by Marc Chagall.  "tiptop said he/don't stop said she/oh no said he/go slow said she..." It's a playful little poem about illicit love and some frisky groping, and the poem is paired with Marc Chagall artwork.  I love the Russians almost as much as I love the Canadians.  (They couldn't very well use Emily Carr paintings with this poem; trees and totems are phallic, I guess, but not whimsical enough for cumming's writing.  cumming....heh.  That's what she said...just beating Gianna to the punch here.) 

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 20

Day 20: The Book You've Read the Most Number of Times

Gianna:

Beloved.  First I read it because I wanted to. Then I read it because I had to.  I read it again because I really needed to. And finally…. I read it because I had just seen the film. Flannery O’Connor is my favorite writer and should Flannery ever die, Toni Morrison will move up one notch and take over that position (don’t do it, just please stop yourself from emailing). We will talk more about Toni on Day 27, or if you ever want to call me we can talk about her (or we can talk about The Closer ending, which has me very upset. Why Kyra, why?!).

Liz:

I am not a re-reader.  I often treat my books like a scrapbook history of my life--the book I was reading at a certain time and place and how its reading experience connected to that point.  Most of the books I have reread were because of school requirements.  I read The Great Gatsby a few times, as well as Moby-Dick and the loathsome Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.  Not counting the few children's books I reread for lack of fresh reading material (small town, no bookstore, too young to drive), I think the book I've read the greatest number of times is also by Toni Morrison.  Unlike Gianna's choice, though, I've read Sula more often.  I read it a couple of times for classes, but that was after I'd read it for pleasure in a period after I'd discovered Beloved and needed to read everything that Morrison had written.  I read it a couple of years after college to see if it held up for me (it did).  And I listened to the audio version on one of my road trips last year, if that counts.  It's definitely a desert island book for me even though it's short.  Sula not Morrison's best work according to the critics, but it's my favorite.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 19

Day 19: A Book That Turned You On

Gianna:

This is a total toss up and I simply refuse to choose so I am putting down both! Okay. And this is in no particular order...

1. Barbra Streisand My Passion For Design which is a beautifully written and just so sexy book about uh, Barbra's um, love of design. And as you can tell from the cover it is very assessable and timeless. And I understand you can get those dogs everywhere and since they are white they just go with everything!

2. I am so happy I came across this book, it completely changed the way I avoid making love: Women Can Win the Marriage Lottery: Share Your Man With Another Wife : (The Case for Plural Marriage). Ladies, if you are in a marriage with just a husband and zero other women...you are wasting your life. You have GOT to get on this plural marriage train NOW before it's too late... like, you know, before all the great ladies are taken! I think this author needs to look up the word "lottery" in the dictionary.

Liz:

Crap.  I should have looked at the categories.  I've already chosen the Pol Pot biography, so now I'm at a loss.  And really, Letters to Penthouse has become so predictable over the years.  I'm going to turn, therefore, to my nerdier obsessions.  I am a history nerd on top of being a literature snob, and there are certain people in history that, uh, stimulate my curiosity.  A few outstanding biographies, then, to illustrate what turns me on intellectually:

1. American Prometheus by Kai Bird, detailing the brilliance and tragic downfall of Robert Oppenheimer, designer of the atomic bomb.

2. Whittaker Chambers by Sam Tanenhaus, telling the story of the Cold War spy who brought down the more famous State Department spy Alger hiss.

3. Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montifiore, chronicling the machinations and megalomania of the Soviet dictator.

4. A Clearing in the Distance by Witold Rybczynski, the biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, who revolutionized landscape architecture and designed Central Park and the Chicago World's Fair.

So my ideal seems to be someone with a brilliant scientific mind, a love of nature, Communist ties, no religious beliefs, and wears a uniform well.  Megalomania isn't a bad perk either. 

And yes, I'm still single.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 18

Day 18: Book You're Most Embarrassed To Say You Like

Gianna:

I don't know that I am that embarrassed, but considering that I couldn't find the book on the author's website for a good bit I would say SHE IS.

....but Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle. What can I say? It's a lesbian right of passage and it's bad. It's bad. The main character "dates" a mother and daughter. It really makes you wonder about Rita Mae doesn't it? Oh and before you go judging me...there is more...I also read Sudden Death which is about...you got it, a closeted lesbian tennis star (which I believe was written around the time Ms. Brown was dating Martina Navratilova...yes she was once in the closet). So gossipy this blog, right?! Anyway, they are terrible and I may re-read them again.  [For the record, Rubyfruit Jungle was included on the reading list for the comprehensive literature test I had to pass in order to graduate with an English degree.  I never considered it embarrassing...but now I'm questioning whether my degree is embarrassing.]

Liz:

...I give up?  I scoured my library and either I don't embarrass easily or my books aren't embarrassing.  I don't read a lot of embarrassing = bad books, and usually I would agree that harshly reviewed books aren't any good.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've read some bad (embarrassing) books, but I didn't like them.  I guess we could approach this subject from the vantage of embarrassing = age inappropriate, in which case I choose Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd.  There's nothing wrong with this book; it's sweeping historical fiction spanning prehistory to contemporary times in England.  When I was in the sixth grade, my favorite teacher recognized how bored I was in the middle school library selections and loaned me some books.  I think she forgot that their were some sexy times (about six pages out of six hundred) in there.  My mother saw me reading this book, but she was never going to read it and I didn't worry about getting caught with a naughty book.  I didn't know about how the spines on mass markets crack at the places where they are opened the most, though.  In college my mother cleaned out my room to turn it into her sewing room and she found my never returned copy of Sarum...and the glorious scene of a large (wink) Flemish man visiting the town wench.  That was an awkward conversation.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 17

Continuing on the size theme...

Day 17: The Shortest Book You've Read

Gianna:

The Laramie Project

101 pages. Although this is a play, it counts because I say so. I remember the murder of Matthew Shepard very clearly and can say it still shocks me. This slim book is the culmination and dramatization of over 200 interviews in the town of Laramie following his brutal murder. I wanted to excerpt just a short section of Dennis Shepard reading a statement to the court after Aaron McKinney was found guilty of murdering Matthew. He is talking about his son being left alone to die:

You Mr. McKinney, with your friend Mr. Henderson left him out there by himself, but he wasn't alone. There were his lifelong friends with him, friends that he had grown up with. First he had the beautiful night sky and the same stars and moon that we used to see through a telescope. Then he had the daylight and the sun to shine on him. And through it all he was breathing in the scent of pine trees from the snowy range. He heard the wind, the ever-present Wyoming wind, for the last time. He had one more friend with him, he had God. And I feel better knowing he wasn't alone.

Dennis Shepard goes on to grant McKinney mercy by not asking for the death penalty.

Liz

First Love by Joyce Carol Oates, illustrated by Barry Moser

This lovely little book measures only 6 inches tall.  Normally I don't like short things (see: LaMorte, Gianna), but I do like both Oates and Moser, so I made an exception and added First Love to my collection.  It sort of gets lost on the shelf though, sandwiched between Faithless and Foxfire in the Joyce Carol Oates section of my bookshelves.  Like Gianna in a crowd...of nine year olds.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 16

Day 16:  The Longest Book You've Read

I'm not sure what the point of keeping up with this sort of statistic would be.  We're both of the opinion that quality is more important than quantity, and there are plenty of fat books that aren't particularly good.  So how do we determine the longest books we've read?  What counts?  Does an anthology count?  I've read The Riverside Shakespeare with its onion skin pages--does that count?

Gianna:

I read The Essential Plato for school (and that dude must not have had cable cuz man he wrote a lot!), but the longest book I read of my own free will (get it...philosophy theme?) is either Susan Faludi's Backlash or Stiffed. Both were around 600 or so pages I guess; I am really not sure.  (And man that woman must not have cable cuz she writes a lot ...). I highly recommend both of those books. She has a third book called The Terror Dream but it looks too long.

Liz

I've read some Tolstoy--both Anna Karenina and War and Peace--but I'm not really much of a fan.  I love my Russian classics but Tolstoy is too preachy for my tastes.  Instead, I'm picking a 575 page biography of one of the most interesting people in 20th Century history: Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare  by Philip Short.  If I'm going to read about totalitarian dictators responsible for mass murders, famine, re-education of the populace, and the removal of currency from an entire country, well, I want that tome to be hefty.  And you know I'm going to read that book.  I'm eagerly awaiting the 1,000 page definitive biography of Kim Jong Il.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 15

Dear God, we're only at the halfway point. 

Day 15: First Chapter Book You Can Remember Reading

Gianna:

I don’t know which one it was exactly...maybe Kiss the Girls, or Run Away Girls, or Kill Kill Kill Those Girls, but I can definitely tell you the author. It was James Patterson. I know, I know… technically he doesn’t write “chapter books,”  but his books contain nothing less than 200 chapters each. Some chapters are only a page long, which I think is really excellent because I love turning pages, so I will count this as the first (and only) chapter book I have ever read. This is dedicated to David Thompson.

Liz

I don't know that I understand what a "chapter book" is.  Gianna says they're those books like Captain Stinkypants that little kids read.  We both think that they didn't exist when we were kids.  Or maybe they did exist when I was a kid, but there weren't bookstores in Woodville, Texas, and also my mother wouldn't buy crap books.  Therefore, I'm going to pick a book that has chapters.  Also, it's not the first book I remember reading.  That was a book about Frog and Toad being friends, but I no longer believe in interspecies comingling.  The cat has convinced me that we should be isolationist in our politics.  On a related note, I'm looking for a home (doesn't have to be good) for a semi-violent, plus sized cat.  So my "chapter book" pick is The Westing Game. It's a fun, twisting book about a group of interconnected people who move into the same building and then discover that they are all potential heirs to the late Sam Westing's fortune if they can unravel the clues.  The main character, Turtle, is awesome (and she's just named Turtle, not a real turtle, so we're not violating those isolationist ideals).  Let me know if you want that cat.