A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

This year seems to be The Year of Barbara Pym; I know some of you out there are involved in some kind of a readalong in honor of the 100th year of her birth. I’ve read most of her canon, with only The Sweet Dove Died, Civil to Strangers, An Academic Question, and Crampton Hodnet left to go (sadly). Barbara Pym’s novels feature very similar casts of characters: spinsters, clergymen, retirees, clerks, and anthropologists, with which she had direct experience. So it stands to reason that there would be overlaps in characters between the novels. You can trace that though the publication history of her books and therefore see how Pym onionizes her stories and characters. She adds layers onto layers, adding more details as her books progress. Some Tame Gazelle (1950): Archdeacon Hoccleve makes his first appearance. Excellent Women (1952): Archdeacon Hoccleve gives a sermon that is almost incomprehensible to Mildred Lathbury; Everard Bone understands it, however, and laughs ...

It's come to my attention that today is the 5th anniversary of my keeping this blog! 678 book reviews, 1195 blog posts,  3579 comments, 125420 page views, and I'm still going strong. This blog has seen me through several moves (from Brooklyn to Manhattan and then to Philadelphia) and several jobs, some of them with the same company. 2012 was a great year, and I hope that things continue to go well in 2013. If anybody is reading this, have a happy new year, and happy blogging to you, too!

… or, where history meets literature. Isn’t it interesting how off the wall documents like library records can tell you so much about someone? What will our descendants be inferring about us from our reading habits 100 years from now? http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/11/the_wondrous_database_that_reveals_what_books_americans_checked_out_of_the_library_a_century_ago_.html

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

I just joined a few days days ago, and I'm still playing around with it a bit. Any of you out there Library Thingers? If so, got any tips for a newbie? I've joined a few groups and edited my profile to make it more "me." Feel free to send me a friend invite. I'm also curious about the Library Thing Early Review program--I saw a few things on the list that look interesting. What's your experience been with it, if at all? (ie, how long have you been doing it, how often do you receive what you request, how much do you like/ dislike them?).

Here's a picture of boxes and boxes of books as I pack up for my move on Sunday... yes, I'm really that anal that all these boxes are labelled with such things as "Fiction, A-C." There are twelve boxes stacked up against the wall, which you can't see here, and the boxes on the table contain my TBR pile, plus some I've read but haven't reviewed yet. If you look closely at the Fiction, P-S box, you'll see part of the cover of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (this box is also very, very heavy; it contains my Penguin edition of the complete works of Shakespeare. How pretentious do I sound when I say that?)

Somewhere on my trawls through the internet, I discovered this : a banned books bracelet, for sale at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City. It's a quirky, odd, and slightly tacky idea for a bracelet, but I just thought that all of you in the book-blogosphere would appreciate something off-the-wall like this!

Here's the link to the main article . In bold are the books I've read; in italics are the books I plan to read. The list covers 1983-2008, and it looks as though both fiction and nonfiction are represented, as well as both literary and commercial fiction (Dan Brown, anybody?). In all, a very healthy mix. 1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006) 2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000) 3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987) 4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995) 5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997) 6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001) 7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991) 8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996) 9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997) 10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997) 11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997) 12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998) 13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87) 14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992) 15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000) 16. The Handmaid's Tale, ...

I was browsing in my local used bookstore this afternoon when I came across this version of East Lynne , by Ellen Wood , published by Rutgers University Press in 1988. East Lynne was originally published in 1861 and was considered "trash"--albeit popular trash--when it came out. Voila, the trashy cover! (If you can't enlarge the image, at the bottom, the caption is, "Look at me! I am your mother!" and the text in the circle at the top by the title reads, "The Great Emotional Drama").

Have you ever gone over to someone’s house and snooped through their bookshelves? (of course you have, admit it! You’re a reader). Do you ever make assumptions about your friends, acquaintances, and boyfriends/girlfriends by what’s on their bookshelves? I admit that I do. I also wonder what my friends think of me when they come over to my apartment and see all my books lined up (sorted alphabetically for easy reference). I read here that a person’s bookshelves say a lot about them as a person. Although it deals primarily with dating, I think that the same principles can be applied to pretty much everybody who reads or doesn't. Each book on my shelf has a certain significance to me. According to the article, my interest in fiction means I “tend to claim that that there is more truth, beauty, and understanding about the world and human psyche can be derived from make-beliefs.” Some people claim that all of this is bunk; but I believe that in some respects this assessment is true.

I borrowed this meme from Bookgirl, who borrowed it from other people. What you basically do is come up with an author for each letter of the alphabet. Here’s my list: · A—Anderson, Kurt. Heyday · B—Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre · C—Cox, Michael. The Meaning of Night · D—Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie · E—Edgeworth, Maria. Belinda · F—Fielding, Helen. Bridget Jones’s Diary · G—Gissing, George. The Odd Women · H—Harwood, Jon. The Ghost Writer · I—Irving, John. The World According to Garp · J—Janowitz, Brenda. Scot on the Rocks · K—Kinsella, Sophie. Confessions of a Shopaholic · L—Lee, Min Jin. Free Food for Millionaires · M—Mitford, Nancy— The Pursuit of Love/ Love in a Cold Climate · N—Nichols, John. The Milagro-Beanfield War · O—Oates, Joyce Carol. Them · P—Penman, Sharon Kay. The Sunne in Splendor · Q—Quindlen, Anna— How Reading Changed My Life · R—Rubenfeld, Jed. The Interpretation of Murder · S—Suzann, Jacqueline. The Valley of the Dolls · T—Toltz, Steve. A Fraction of the Whole ·...

The detailed rules can be found on Bottle of Shine's blog; the challenge is called 342,745 Ways to Herd Cats . So here's my list of ten books: 1. The Thirteenth Tale , by Diane Setterfield--destined to be a classic, about the mysterious life of a famous author. 2. The Sunne in Splendour , by Sharon Kay Penman--historical fiction about the life of Richard III. It's a long book, but absolutely fascinating. 3. The Meaning of Night , by Michael Cox--again, historical fiction, set in Victorian London. 4. The House at Riverton , by Kate Morton--upstairs-downstairs historical fiction about the mysterious death of an author, told from the point of view of a servant in the household. 5. Confessions of a Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella--chick lit, essentially; hillariously funny novel about a woman who loves to shop. First in a series. 6. Sin in the Second City , by Karen Abbott--historical nonfiction about two sisters who ran a brothel in Chicago in the 1890s. 7. I Was Told There...

Do you ever have those moments where you just can’t finish a book? It’s been like that for me, and not necessarily because the books were bad. It’s just that I haven’t been able to truly focus, or to find a book that really hooks me. It was like that with a book called The Master of Verona , by David Blixt. It’s about Dante, but there’s a lot of Shakespearean elements in it. It’s been reviewed pretty well, and the writing is good, but I couldn’t bring myself to read past page 35. Same with a book by Vanora Bennett called Portrait of an Unknown Woman . It features Thomas More’s adopted daughter. Since I love fiction (and non) set in this period, I began reading this with high expectations. But my attention wasn’t completely caught by it. Ever had a moment such as this? I’m having better luck with Susan Vreeland’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, about Renoir and the famous painting of the same name . I’m about halfway through right now, and I’ll tell you what I think when I finish.

About a year ago, I was introduced to a website called Shelfari.com. What you can do is use the site to track the books you’ve read, what you’re reading, and what you want to read. I think it’s ingenious—you have everything at your fingertips, where you can give ratings and reviews to books and see titles and their covers lined up on your “shelf.” You can also use the site to see what other people are reading and get recommendations. As someone who reads voraciously, that tool has become invaluable to me, since I go through books the way someone with a cold goes through Kleenex. I stopped using the site after a while and only picked back up on it a few weeks ago. Since then, I’ve been going to Shelfari religiously. It’s become like Blogger or Gmail or the media websites I visit several—ie, numerous—times a day. I recently learned that Lauren Weisberger, author of the famed The Devil Wears Prada, is coming out with a new book. I loved Devil, but I hated her second book (as did a lot of ...

Today on my lunch break I went to the Strand to browse. Well, browsing usually turns to buying, and I ended up with two more books to add to my library. They are: The Queen of Bedlam, by Robert McCammon, about a murderer in New York in the eighteenth century (I seem to be going for lots of books set in New York’s past these days); and Blood and Roses, by Helen Castor, about a family during the War of the Roses. I’d originally gone into the Strand in search of a copy of A Passage to India, but ultimately wasn’t successful (but they did have multiple, numerous copies of A Room With a View). So here are some books I want to re-read: Sin in the Second City, by Karen Abbott; The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfeld; and Devil in the White City, by Erik Larsen. I’d love to get around to re-reading some of the classics, like The House of Mirth, The Woman in White, and Sister Carrie. I’d also love to re-read the Meaning of Night, but as a rule I don’t re-read books back-to-back.

Through the latest installment of Amazon Vine, I was able to obtain an ARC of a biography of Napoleon—Napoleon: The Path to Power, 1769-1799, by Philip Dwyer. It’s a biography of his earliest years and it looks like one of those books that might appeal mostly to diehard Napoleonophiles. Yes, I made up that word. It’s a book that’s 600 pages in length, minus all the endnotes and bibliography. I’m not completely excited about opening it, but I know that I’ve got to write a review about it at some point. But who knows? Maybe I’ll end up liking it. I’ve finished reading another nonfiction book called The Gangs of New York, by Herbert Asbury, on which the movie is based (paradoxically, the cover says that Leonardo DiCaprio was the star of the movie; and while that’s true, Daniel Day Lewis, who in my opinion is a better actor, was also in it, as Bill the Butcher). Published in 1927, the book is quite dated, but it’s an excellent introduction to the underworld of New York City in the nineteen...

The Winthrop Woman , by Anya Seton A Pickpocket’s Tale , by Timothy Gilfoyle Heyday , by Kurt Andersen Salman Rushdie’s latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence , coming in June Sophie Kinsella’s Remember Me? Coming out at the end of February. John Nichols’s new novel, The Empanada Brotherhood , which I ordered from Amazon Vine and which I’m super-excited about. I LOVED the Milagro Beanfield War. Jennifer Weiner’s new novel, Certain Girls Lady of the Snakes , by Rachel Pastan The latest Idiot Girl book by Laurie Notaro, to be published in June Jen Lancaster’s latest book, Such a Pretty Fat…, coming out in May Love the One You’re With , by Emily Giffin, to be published in May (obviously, the pile of books on my bedside table is going to be quite high this summer). And this is just a starting list…

I promised a few days ago that I’d talk a little bit about the Amazon Vine program, which I was invited to join back in August and which since then has been my best friend and worst enemy. Amazon Vine Voices, as they’re called, are invited to join the program because of the reviews they’ve written in the past for Amazon. I suspect that it’s not necessarily based on the number of reviews you’ve written, or your rank in the system, but the quality of those reviews. Having reviewed about 330 items over a period of nearly three years at the time I was invited, I was obviously honored to be considered. At first reviewers were allowed to request three items. Because the selection of items was so limited (I think there were only five or six items available to be ordered), things went really, really fast, so that many reviewers were shut out that first month. Plus, as soon as one item was reviewed, another could be ordered, which led to a case of “bogus” reviews for products that reviewers wer...