Books Purchased:
*The Hours by Michael Cunningham
*The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
*The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
*Lanterns and Lances by James Thurber
*The Road by Cormac McCarthy
*From Time to Time by Jack Finney
*The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood
*Jeeves and the Tie That Binds by P. G. Wodehouse
*The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
*Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
*Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
*The Inn at Lake Divine by Elinor Lipman
*The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
*The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
A Taxonomy of Barnacles by Galt Niederhoffer
Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi
A Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman (not pictured, at work)
The Trouble With Poetry by Billy Collins
Novel Destinations by Shannon McKenna Schmidt & Joni Rendon
A Reader’s Delight by Noel Perrin
Shelf Life by Suzanne Strempek Shea
Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara? by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy
A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick
*This list is pretty embarrassing in size, but in my defense a great number of these were purchased for $1 or $2 at the Friends bookstores at the Kalamazoo Public Library and East Lansing Public Library, or acquired with trade in credit from the Book Nook in Cadillac, Michigan. I’ve put an asterisk by all books I got for $2 or less, or with credit. I also got great deals on all the others (except the last two).
Books Read:
American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling (re-read)
The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Emma by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Here are some thoughts on the books I’ve read that I haven’t already blogged about:
American Bloomsbury was fascinating.. I read some user reviews on Amazon and apparently there are a few factual errors in the book, which is disappointing. Apparently later editions of the book correct the errors. Nevertheless, I loved the book, and I plan on reading many more books about Literary Concord.
Little Heathens is a memoir about growing up on an Iowa farm during the depression. Times were certainly tough for everyone’s finances, but it seems like living on a farm ensured that everyone had plenty to eat, despite any economic problems. What makes Little Heathens so fun is that it’s not a downer depression-era book. Mildred Armstrong Kalish had an absolutely wonderful childhood on the farm, and she lovingly describes her daily life, family members, and the farm.
July marked one year since the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I was thinking about this and realized that I had not re-read it since I marathon read it in less than 24 hours after it was released. So I decided to re-read it, trying to go a little slower this time. I still found myself rapidly turning the pages during the tense parts, unable to slow down because I got so caught up in the action. I had so much fun reading this again. It made me want to re-read the entire series again, 1 through 7, like I did leading up to the release last year. I think I’ll wait a bit longer to do that, since I need to tackle these huge stacks of un-read books.
The Code of the Woosters was my first Wodehouse. The first of many, many more that I plan to read because this one was so hilarious. It’s wonderful to discover you love an author that wrote close to 100 books.
Embroideries was an impulse buy at Strand one day, and I read half of it on the train home. It’s a short little book, I would describe it as graphic novel equivalent of an essay. I really liked it though, and recommend it to fans of Persepolis.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love was amazing. It was a little strange to read, since lately I’ve been reading much longer short stories. I had to adjust to how short his stories are, and how inconclusive most of them are. But I love his style, and I like how human they are. It’s like peeking in the windows of strangers at night. The details vanish before you’re tired of the subject, but what you see is always real and fascinating. I need to purchase his other collections. It’s a bit odd that there’s no mammoth collection of complete stories. Or maybe there is and I just haven’t seen it.
I got through most of A Natural History of the Senses right after I got it, and then somehow got sidetracked with 72 pages left. I picked it up at the end of this month and finished it. I love her writing style and it fits perfectly with the subject matter of this non-fiction tribute to the five senses.
The Jane Austen Book Club was a treat after reading all six of Jane Austen’s novels. I’ve been wanting to read it since seeing the movie (which I loved), but I wanted to read her entire oeuvre first. It was an extremely cozy book to read, and made me wish my best friends were closer so we could do the same thing.
The wonderful thing about Jhumpa Lahiri is that a reader who has never read one of her books could pick up any one of her three books and be wowed and want to read the others. They all are fabulous and hold up in comparison to each other. Many of my favorite authors have one or two books that are better than the others and that I would recommend others to read first. I loved Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake so much that I should have been antsy about Unaccustomed Earth. But for some reason I wasn’t; I trusted her and she didn’t let me down. My favorite stories were the last three in the collection, the ones about Hema and Kaushik that broke my heart. Overall, I’m partial to The Namesake, most likely because it’s the only novel and I got more attached to Gogol, but I highly recommend all three of her books, in any order.
(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)
