the bookshelf

David Sedaris - Letting Go

I just finished reading the new David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed In Flames, and when I started reading the last essay (which is called "The Smoking Section"), I thought it sounded pretty familiar. As it turns out, that's because the essay is an expanded version of a piece Sedaris wrote for the New Yorker last year, called "Letting Go" - and you can go read it on the New Yorker's website.

The entire essay is still worth reading, and it's more than 80 (short) pages long, but if you've been contemplating picking up Flames, this shorter piece might be just enough to whet your appetite and encourage you to pick up a copy of the book.

Goodreads review: Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
It has been a long time since I read something that was this... exceptionally written. I felt like I kept pausing in my reading to just think - wow, this feels like poetry. Yates has an incredible descriptive ability - from scenes, to objects, to moments, to specific emotions - and he paints things so vividly that I couldn't help re-reading certain passages as soon as I had finished them. This story is beautiful - alternately painful, romantic, frightening and heartbreaking - and he captures such a spectrum of human emotions so clearly and accurately that I'm shocked this wasn't a book I was assigned to read in high school or college. It seems just as timeless and brilliant and a nearly flawless example of literature as anything that appeared on my reading lists, and I have to say I can't wait to see how the film version handles the narrative. Highly recommended to anyone and everyone.

What a wonderful first book of 2009.

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Goodreads review: I Was Told There'd Be Cake

I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I devoured this book like the cake in the title - scarfed it in about a day and a half like a homemade slice of chocolate with white frosting (my favorite). And I felt a little guilty afterward, like I should have savored it more, extended the experience, stopped to take a sip of milk and let it sink in just how wonderful this book is. But you know what? I own my copy of I Was Told There'd Be Cake, and I already know I'm going to go back and re-read this book several times (maybe as soon as this year).

The book is a collection of memoir-ish essays, a la David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs, and I would definitely rank it up there with the work of both those authors - plus it has the added bonus of being written from a female perspective, which I obviously identify with even more. It's funny, it's witty, and Crosley is about my age, so I felt like she kept hitting the nail on the head. From friends and jobs to sex and plastic ponies, she kept me laughing - and now I'll be on the lookout for her second book.

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Goodreads review: The Polysyllabic Spree

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I am quite, quite overdue for a review of the last three books I read in 2008 - and before I get too much 2009 reading under my belt, I had better put down my $.02 about these books before I forget.

The Polysyllabic Spree was book #36, and I actually read two different copies of it - the first was a loan from my friend Caleb, and the second was a replacement copy I bought while home over Christmas, since I left Caleb's copy in the seat pocket on the airplane. Caleb's text-messaged response when I told him I bought him a new book? "You mean you found another copy signed by Hornby? What are the odds?!" Grr. I'm pretty sure if it were signed I would have just stolen his copy. :)

Anyway, this definitely helped cement the fact that Nick Hornby is one of my all-time favorite authors. The book is a series of columns published in The Believer, and in each column Hornby runs over the books he has purchased and the books he has read. However, it's just like Songbook in that the columns themselves are less about the books and more about the reader - the observations aren't very critical, and it's as if the books serve as a springboard to talking about something else. And along the way, time and time again, Hornby does the two things that make me love him so much - making me laugh, and making me stop after reading something and think to myself "that is SO true, that is exactly how I feel, and if I were a writer that is exactly how I would like to say that."

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What I read in 2008

I have about half of book #38 to go, but since tomorrow is New Year's Eve (and I feel pretty confident that I'm going to achieve my 38 books goal in the next 24 hours or so), I think it's time to reflect on what I read in 2008.

Here's the full list, with a little breakdown at the end:

1.  Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
2.  Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman
3.  Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
4.  Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
5.  Speaking with the Angel by Nick Hornby
6.  Night Train by Martin Amis
7.  The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
8.  The Diagnosis by Alan Lightman
9.  Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
10.  Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
11.  Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
12.  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
13.  Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
14.  Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
15.  The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
16.  The Preservationist by David Maine
17.  The Hours by Michael Cunningham
18.  Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
19.  Marley & Me by John Grogan
20.  Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
21.  Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
22.  How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
23.  The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
24.  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
25.  Empire Falls by Richard Russo
26.  King Dork by Frank Portman
27.  Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
28.  The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle de Jour
29.  The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle de Jour
30.  A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs
31.  Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
32.  Songbook by Nick Hornby
33.  The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
34.  An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser
35.  High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
36.  The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
37.  I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
38.  The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten (almost finished with it)

Three of these books were re-reads (Fight Club, The Catcher in the Rye, High Fidelity), two of them were terrible (Skinny Bitch, The Diagnosis), fourteen were non-fiction or memoirs or at least non-fictionesque, nineteen were by authors I had never read before and six were published before I was born.

As for my favorites, they were:

Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Songbook by Nick Hornby

Along with my two previously-read favorites:

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Extremely honorable mentions, and highly recommended to most of you include:

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
King Dork by Frank Portman
Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

I'll have reviews of the final three books soon, but first I have to finish #38!

Goodreads review: High Fidelity

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I initially read High Fidelity in college, and now - probably seven or so years later - reading this book is a COMPLETELY different experience. The whole thing is alarmingly identifiable and simultaneously brilliant and terrifying - it's almost like "here Janet - this is a picture of what's going on inside the head of anyone you could potentially date from here on out." Not to mention the fact that a bunch of these things are going on inside my head, as well.

Anyway, I loved it, and you can bet that I won't be waiting another seven years to pick it up again, although I hope that the next time I read it, it won't be even MORE identifiable than it is now. In the meantime, it's one of the best books I read in 2008, and even having loved it back in 2001 or whatever, I never would have dreamed how much more I would love it now.

Two of my favorite quotes from the book:

You know the worst thing about being rejected? The lack of control. If I could only control the when and how of being dumped by somebody, then it wouldn’t seem as bad. But then, of course, it wouldn’t be rejection, would it? It would be by mutual consent. It would be musical differences. I would be leaving to pursue a solo career. I know how unbelievably and pathetically childish it is to push and push like this for some degree of probability, but it’s the only thing I can do to grab any sort of control back from her.

You run the risk of losing anyone who is worth spending time with, unless you are so paranoid about loss that you choose someone unlosable, somebody who could not possibly appeal to anybody else at all. If you’re going to go in for this stuff at all, you have to live with the possibility that it won’t work out, that somebody called Marco, say, or in this case, Tom, is going to come along and upset you.

I think Nick Hornby is officially my favorite author of 2008, if not my favorite author, period.

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Goodreads review: The Italian Affair

An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
100% a light, quick, easy read - in fact, I knocked it out over Thanksgiving weekend while my parents were visiting.

And it's exactly what the back cover describes - "When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual vacation tryst turns into a passionate, transatlantic love affair, as they rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, and San Francisco."

It's kind of sweet and romantic - as sweet and romantic as a book about an affair with a married French guy can be (he appeared to be in a bit of an open marriage, which at least let me reserve judgment because to me, cheating = not romantic at all). It also seemed to be more of a "recovering from a broken heart" tale than a "transatlantic love affair" tale, a la Under the Tuscan Sun or any of those movies I get sucked into watching on Sunday afternoons. Pretty frivolous, but pretty enjoyable nonetheless. Plus, it made me want to go on vacation (to lay on a beach, not to hook up with a married man).

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Goodreads review: The Rachel Papers

The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Sheesh, I should be grounded for falling so far behind in my reviews - I finished this book a week before the end of November, and here I am on December 17 finally getting around to writing my review.

Anyway, this book was recommended to me by my friend Jay - it's one of his favorites and when he and I started talking books that was the very first one he mentioned. Months later I finally scored it on BookMooch, and then in November I picked it up and started reading.

I'm actually very glad I read this in a year I chose to re-read The Catcher in the Rye, because I could draw a lot of parallels with the Salinger fresh in my memory. And the thing is, I enjoyed this book a great deal more than Catcher - while parts of it are just as awkwardly painful as tales of Holden's exploits, I thought that Charles Highway was more likable, similarly despicable at times but overall you could kind of see where he was coming from, and kind of understand the reasoning behind his misguided attempts to woo Rachel and to figure out his life.

The funny thing is, I keep describing this book to friends, and in explaining the elaborate preparations Charles makes for dates - the way he stages his room, maps the gallery the day prior to going, drafts speeches and prepares each and every clever thing he's going to say - my guy friends tend to say something along the lines of "wow, that book gives away all my secrets." Terrifying.

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Goodreads review: Songbook

Songbook by Nick Hornby

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I LOVED this book - Nick Hornby's About a Boy has always been absolutely one of my favorites, and I've been meaning to read this for ages. When I finally nabbed a copy on BookMooch, I was semi-disappointed when I checked the table of contents and realized that Hornby wrote about many songs I either had never heard or had never been particularly interested in, but then I started reading I realized that his essays really aren't about the specific songs at all. This isn't an exercise in critical music writing, this is about how music makes Hornby feel, and that's the kind of music writer I feel like I'm always trying to be. Practically every essay had several paragraphs worth quoting, and I feel like I'm going to pull this out to read again and again now that it has a home on my bookshelf.

Recommended - no, necessary - if you're a fan of music and a fan of Nick Hornby.

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Goodreads review: Freakonomics

Freakonomics Rev Ed: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The nerdy part of my brain that loved Blink and The Tipping Point completely enjoyed this book too - it uses economics as a tool to look at a number of really bizarre situations and circumstances as diverse as crack dealers, parenting, abortion and the Ku Klux Klan.

I can't really say that it changed the way I think (or at least strongly influenced the way I think) as much as Blink managed to (every time I listen to something I instantly dislike, I still blame thin slicing), but it was cleverly written and engaging and despite being a book about economics, really not boring at all. The abortion/crime link was particularly interesting (crazy, but it makes sense, right?) and the Ku Klux Klan/Superman bit was very interesting as well. I'll have to keep an eye out for more books in this vein.

Highly recommended if you're into nerdy stuff and quirky facts.

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