BTT: No good...the bad and the ugly

What’s the worst book you’ve read recently? (I figure it’s easier than asking your all-time worst, because, well, it’s recent!) Don't forget to leave a link to your response at Booking Through Thursday.

This is a two-pronged answer.

First up, the last book I read that made me want to rip out all the pages was Interred With Their Bones. There's a mini-review on my blog but suffice to say that I thought it in desperate need of both an editor and a logical plot.

Secondly, I've been slogging through Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. I like Shakespeare and I do think that you have to read the critic that you disagree with in order to forulate a proper arguement. Bloom's book is decent until you get to the chapters on Henry IV, parts I and II; at that point the book swerves into this love-letter to Falstaff and it gets pretty boring. I'm finally past the Falstaff-obsession pages so the book is improving again.

Teaser Tuesday: The Girl Who Played With Fire

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

Just do the following:
- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Mikael got home at one in the morning. He was tired and felt like saying the hell with everything and going to bed, but instead he booted up his iBook and checked his email. There was no new mail of any interest.

~p 270, The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

(story of my life right there - no new mail of interest)

Voting is Finished: LbW results!

The schedule for "Literature by Women" at BNBC will run through March 2010 due to there being a three-way tie for fourth place and my inability to make a decision about which title to cut. Reading is fun, so the schedule is as follows:

September 2009: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
October 2009: The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
November 2009: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
December 2009/January 2010: The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
February 2010: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
March 2010: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

It's a good line-up - come join us!

Musing Mondays: Favorite Houses

Musing Mondays is hosted by Rebecca at Just One More Page...

Do you have a favourite publishing house -- one that puts out books that you constantly find yourself wanting to read? If so, who? And, what books have they published that you've loved? (question courtesy of MizB)

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT on Rebecca's blog with either the link to your own Musing Mondays post or share your opinion in a comment (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks.

I'm very much into having book spines and things that match/are similar - they look soooo pretty lined up on my shelves - so I love lines like Penguin Classics (and Deluxe Classics), HarperPerennial PS, Oxford World's Classics, Norton Critical Editions, or Barnes and Noble Classics. When I'm buying backlist titles, I always look to see what editions are available in imprints that I already own. It's a freaky OCD thing.

When buying newer books (especially hardcovers) I really don't have a "go to" publishing house. I don't usually look at publisher when finding good things to read. I do like to look at the academic presses to see what's new but I don't have a specific example at hand.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

It was my turn to pick the August book for my face-to-face book group (and strangely the hat coughed up my name for September, too) so I chose Jeanette Winterson's Whitbread-winner Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. I read Sexing the Cherry not long ago and loved the vivid fantasy sequences and multiple narrative lines; I really wanted to give Winterson's first novel a try and roping my friends into reading it with me was the perfect opportunity.

OANtOF is an autobiographical tale, based very closely on Winterson's own upbringing within a Pentecostal family. The narrator is even named Jeanette and many of the events in the plot closely mirror Winterson's own life (particularly the decision to embrace her sexuality and leave the church). I have to say I was a little disappointed when I started the book because I was expecting something fantastical like StC and instead got quite a load of realism. It was only a little disppointment, though, because Winterson's gift for description makes Jeanette's story play out as vividly as an event taking place right in front of me. The parallel fantasies and allegories come into play primarily in the latter half of the novel with the orange demon, Winnet, and Sir Perceval. I figured out the meanings of most of the allegory, but I'm a little bit stuck on Sir Perceval; one friend thinks that it's Jeanette's reflection on not being "pure" enough to continue her missionary work. Interesting thought, but I think I'll need to look in my Vintage Living texts Winterson volume to see if that's covered.

I haven't yet decided whether Winterson still identifies with the Pentecostal missionary church because there doesn't seem to be a conscious rejection of that church in the novel. The novel Jeanette seems to waver between the strict confines of the church's doctrine and belonging to the world at large. The end of the novel skips quite a bit through time so it felt like we missed out on Jeanette's thoughts while the allegories took center stage. I did feel that Jeanette wished for acceptance from her church although she is regarded as the biggest sinner of them all because of her sexuality even though several of the church elders were actually robbing the church or actively embezzling money from the converted.

I thought OANtOF was a great pick for our book club; we'll have lots to discuss (unless Kate and Beth come from out of town then we'll just visit with them - hurrah for visits from good friends). I do think that I like StC better because of the fantasy imagery. I'll probably have to re-read both of them o make a decendt decision.

Cyberbullying Blogger Style

Tonight is a lazy night for me. I didn't close at the store so I've been finishing a few knitting projects (Karma's Poncho is done, yarn ends sewn in, steamed and in the bag, yeah!), having tea and a scone, watching You've Got Mail (because for all my snark I'm also pretty sappy), and occasionally perusing TweetDeck. Oh, we're having a summer storm here, too.

I got totally distracted by series of tweets from BiblioBrat, mjmbecky, and thestorysiren regarding some wing-nut who has Kristi pegged for harrassment (of course, I had to go read all the comments and put in my own two cents). Kristi has been removing some of the more heinous comments from the "crazy person" - who is posting more garbage using the defensive "we" rather than the singular personal pronoun - but the gist of Anonymous/Lena's rant is that Kristi needs to quit hogging the YA books, leave them to the teen bloggers, and just not review YA because Kisti is "old" (Kristi is younger than I am, FYI). In short, the crazy is demonstrating that he/she/they/it has the IQ of a troll and behaves like one, too. The same type of comment-flaming ensued on Tricia's Book Blog this week over the fact that Tricia hit the jackpot and was offered a free bookshelf to test out and review on her blog, lucky her (I have to be slightly jealous of Tricia in a good way because it is a pretty nice bookshelf). And, come to think of it, there was also a crazy person flaming The Yarn Harlot only a few weeks ago; flaming Stephanie is about like self-immolation because we Harlot-ites are militant in our defense of her (and we carry pointy, sharpened needles with us....everywhere).

Either there are multiple flamers running around in cyberspace or one sick individual.

So as I sat knitting the collar for a baby cardie (last piece!) and watching You've Got Mail I was thinking about the inherent community that goes along with reading/loving books and knitting. Those us who love books and love to talk about books - meaning we have blogs and book clubs and various bookish friends in the 21st century - have a very supportive community with all the other bibliophiles out there; we exchange reviews, encouragement, memes, and our love of the written word. Even if we don't agree on a point or have different reading tastes we don't denigrate one another; I don't think I've seen any serious book bloggers get obnoxious with one another (I've not been really active in the blogosphere long, so this could just be a case of not looking in the right places). The same goes for knitters. We all love and admire one another's handiwork, ask about where we got the yarn, support our LYS, and happily troop off to fiber festivals. Look at the Sock Summit that just wrapped up in Portland - if that doesn't say "community" then I don't know what does.

Cyberbullies seem to feed off that community energy; attack one in the community, the community responds with support, and the bully is somehow validated in its sick existence. The more the community backs the bully's victim, the more attention is afforded to the bully. It's a sick cycle and one that is nearly impossible to break. The web affords a cyberbully some veneer of anonymity since one can fake an online ID/persona, at least until the IP address is revealed and then "back-hacked into the Stone Age" (I love Penelope on Criminal Minds). Would ignoring the cyberbully work? It seems responding politely or vehemently only causes more flaming so perhaps pretending the bully doesn't exist will help (and turning on the comment moderation/requiring commenters to have an OpenID or Blogger account). However, remaining silent seems to tacitly agree with a bullying commenter so speaking out against the negativity seems to be the better option.

There isn't a really good way to solve the problem - the best we can do right now is call the cyberbully out and support the bully's target. So keep on blogging, knitting, reading, whatever floats your boat because the community will support you.

The Big Rewind

I love snark. And I love The Onion. And the A.V. Club.

So of course I had to read Nathan Rabin's memoir The Big Rewind. We are both about the same age (he's a few years older) so many of the pop culture references he makes are very familiar to me, the whole Nirvana thing in particular and, although I wasn't a massive fan of grunge at the time it was such a waste to lose Cobain. This is where we diverge because I was about as straight-arrow, normal middle-class, yuppie upbringing as you can get while Rabin's family broke up, his father lost his job, he went to Jewish school for a while before going to Mather (which isn't all that great), wound up in a mental hospital, and then in a Jewish Children's Bureau group home because his father wasn't able to care for him (his dad has MS). I was slightly worried that this would be a depressing memoir but since I like Rabin's writing in The Onion this was only a very small worry.

Which was groundless. For all the crap that happened to him as a child/adolescent, Rabin tells his story with a great deal of humor. I kept thinking that I ought not to laugh as he described his fellow residents at the group home; none of the kids had a good situation, but Rabin uses his trademark brand of honesty and snark to bring out the quirkier sides of his housemates, rather than the tragic. I did hoot with laughter at the description of his fellow co-opers in Madison, not just because it's funny but because I'm pretty sure I actually know which co-op he's talking about (I do have friends in Madison who went to undergrad there and still visit there because of my DC duties); that co-op is crazy, particularly as co-ops go. Near the end of the book Rabin muses on the personae he created to deal with certain events in his life (i.e. El Pollo Loco) and how he is comfortable as himself, now, and accepts his past as part of himself.

Rabin opens each chapter with a short description or discussion of a media item, music, movie, or book, and then expands that discussion to cover as section of his life. I particularly loved his thoughts on Catcher in the Rye and adolescent apathy/rejection of authority; Rabin's ideas make the case for why Holden Caulfield is still relevant today (perhaps not relevant to the type-A go-getters but instead for the kids who seem to reject traditional paths). I also enjoyed Rabin's ideas about film criticism, even though those came near the end of the book, but I would be biased about that because I liked his reviews to start. The book does read very well, I finished it in three evenings, and I look forward to more "My Year of Flops" articles at the A.V. Club.

Shelf Discovery

I've developed a love for books written by fellow book-addicted, nostalgic people describing favorite books, or books that saved them, or just about reading books in general. Last year I read Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume and loved it because it brought back all the reasons why I loved JB when I was of the eight and up set (and recc'ed the book at BNBC).

Enter Lizzie Skurnick and Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading. Skurnick writes the Fine Lines column for Jezebel.com (most recently one about A Summer to Die) and Shelf Discovery follows in the column's footsteps. Skurnick and a few contributors (Meg Cabot, for one) write on approximately 100 beloved books we all read as tweens - when I say we, I probably mean women over the age of 25 although I'm pretty sure some guys read a few of these, too - and why we all read those beloved books to tatters. The books covered range from Little Women and Farmer Boy to Deenie, The Girl with the Silver Eyes, and I am the Cheese. The essays range from approximately two pages (a few of the "extra credit" ones) to nine or ten (the "book report" ones) making this a really good book to read while waiting in line.

Skurnick often alludes to having read many of these as a pre-tween and I was right there with her. I wasn't quite sure how Deenie got a "special spot" either as a nine-year-old but I was a shade jealous that she got one and I did not. I had a number of "omg, I loved that part, too" or "that book creeped me out, too" moments while reading Shelf Discovery making the act of reading the essays more like a shared experience rather than a solitary one. I hadn't read about 1/4 of the books described (my Lois Duncan-experience is rather sketchy since I never quite "got" paranormal stuff - "light as a feather, stiff as a board" didn't work on me) but there are a number that I would like to read as well as re-reading some of my favorites.

Those looking for an egalitarian, objective look at classic YA literature might not like Shelf Discovery quite as much because Skurnick injects so much of her own experience into the essays. This isn't a comparative exercise in teen literature but a love-letter to reading and I enjoyed Shelf Discovery all the more for it. In fact, I got a few other bookseller friends of approximately my age to read Shelf Discovery and guess what? They like it, too!

BBAW Meme

BBAW is coming up and the lovely people behind the whole thing came up with a meme, 3 questions for returning participants and 3 for newbies (like me).

1) What has been one of the highlights of blogging for you?
Learning that there are so many book blogs out there and book blogs of so many different varieties! I'd never really looked for many prior to this year; I've had my Blogger account since September 2006 but just got serious about it in the last year.

2) What blogger has helped you out with your blog by answering questions, linking to you, or inspiring you?
Everyone has been so welcoming and inspiring! Rebecca, Bethanne, Jenn, Jennifer, Beth F, Trish, Natasha, Amy, Rebecca, Marie, .... omg, who else?? I'm sure I forgot someone. I've found so many new books, memes, ideas, thoughts, friends....it's been great. And I found Twitter, which let me find everyone else and stalk them around the Internet. Hee-hee. And then all my new Twitter/book-blogger friends introduced me to Google Reader....:)

3) What one question do you have about BBAW that someone who participated last year could answer?
The only burning one I have is related to nominating. Do we have to nominate someone for a category who has already signed up or can we nominate anyone we think would be great in that category? Other than that, I'll probably vascillate between lurking about the edges of BBAW and jumping in head first!

BTT: Why so serious?

What’s the most serious book you’ve read recently? (I figure it’s easier than asking your most serious boook ever, because, well, it’s recent!) Don't forget to leave your response at Booking Through Thursday.

Hmmm, depending on the definition of "serious"....

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

A multitude of mini-reviews

Since I'm so behind-hand on this I'll just give some mini-reviews to catch me up.

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather: this is actually from several months ago for "Literature by Women" at BNBC but I forgot to get the review done; suffice to say, if you are looking for a Willa Cather book, and have read My Antonia or O, Pioneers, you'll like this one; it has a looser storyline but wonderful description

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell: also an older "Literature by Women" pick that I missed on the review list; a longer novel by an author contemporaneous to George Eliot and the Brontes; while not having the scope of, say, a Middlemarch, this is a very good look at Victorian families even with the missing chapter (Gaskell died before completing the final chapter, so while the entire story of the novel is intact it is missing the final knot in the bow)

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh: more like an interconnected series of short stories rather than a straight-up novel (shifting narrators, points-of-view, dialectical spellings dependent on narrator, etc); very bleak but also fascinating minatures of Scottish drug culture in the early 1990s under Welsh's very unforgiving microscope; I had to read parts out loud to get comprehension from the Scots-dialectical spelling but it was worth it

And Then There's This by Bill Wasik: interesting (and quite short) account of the rise of viral culture by a man who dabbled in creating viral events (remember the flash mobs?); I borrowed this one because it was in hardcover and, while it was worth reading for the information conveyed, I wasn't likely to cough up the hardcover price for something so small

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers: from "Literature by Women" June; a good mystery (that doesn't even get to the "murder mystery" part until about 60-70 pages in) set in rural England; Lord Peter and his man Bunter are called in to assist in solving the mystery which also revolves around a small town's church bells; I needed the assistance of several online sources to divine the meaning of the campanology terms used throughout the book (the "nine tailors" of the title refers to the nine "teller" strokes tolled to mark the death of a male adult inhabitant of the parish)

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga: this was Kat's pick for our F2F booksellers group from my store; the author uses a very unique premise in allowing the narrator to tell the story; the premise is a little out-there some times but I really enjoyed this novel for its portrayal of the clash between rural poverty and cosmopolitan/Westernized riches and the system that reinforces those extremes

Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell: I picked this up as part of a buy-2-get-1-free sale and it looked intriguing - mysteries and murders surrounding the existence of a lost work of Shakespeare; intriguing this is not; the plot is convoluted, with multiple cloak-and-dagger escapes from bad guys and lawmen, flying around the world in disguise, secrets at the Folger, and . . . the bad guys BLEW UP HARVARD'S WIEDENER LIBRARY (sacreliege); the denouement of the novel isn't any better; pass on this one

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: "Literature by Women" July selection and it was a fantastic book to read in (what was supposed to be) sticky, hot July; I thought Jackson did a great job using the limited 3rd person perspective to let the reader wonder whether Eleanor was nuts or not and whether Hill House was haunted or not; I'd like to read some more Jackson, maybe We Have Always Lived in the Castle

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir: yet another installment in my Weir obsession; this one felt a little dull but I think that was because so much ground had already been covered by Henry VIII: The King and His Court; this was still very readable and I did learn some totally random fact that Anne of Cleves was the longest-lived of all Henry's wives and she was buried on August 3 (my birthday) about a week or so before Mary I died; next up on my Weir list is The Children of Henry VIII

Teaser Tuesday: The Big Rewind

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

Just do the following:

- Grab your current read

- Open to a random page

- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This is a little longer than two sentences, but the whole passage is fantastic:

...Jack and Rob shot me an icy look that said, "Not only are we going to continue kicking your ass, but now we're going to beat up your father too. Then we're going to dig up your grandfather's corpse and affix it to a meat hook so we can use it for a punching bag in our playhouse, just to convey the depths of our hatred of you and your family."
~ p 13, The Big Rewind, by Nathan Rubin