BookList 2008

I've been meaning, for quite a while now, to post the list of books I've been reading. For some reason at the start of the year I decided to keep a list of all the book I read this year, by month. So- now that we're nearly at the halfway point of the year and I have a bit of spare time- here goes:

January

***Mammoth, John Varley
****Lucky You, Carl Hiaasen
*****The Android’s Dream, Jon Scalzi
****Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure, Dave Gorman
****A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
***The Alphabet of Manliness, Maddox
*****Old Man’s War, John Scalzi
***Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
****Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick
****Sabriel, Garth Nix
*****The Used World, Haven Kimmel
****Boogers Are My Beat, Dave Barry

February

****Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
****Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
***Boomsday, Christopher Buckley
***Piece of Work, Laura Zigman
****N-Space, Larry Niven
*****Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut
****No Way to Treat a First Lady, Christopher Buckley
***Mirror, Mirror, Gregory Macguire
****Wickett’s Remedy, Myla Goldberg
***Ten Thousand Islands, Randy Wayne White

March

****Possible Side Effects, Augusten Burroughs
***Out To Pasture, Effie Leland Wilder
****Ya-Yas in Bloom, Rebecca Wells
****Quite a Year for Plums, Bailey White
*****The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, Lauren Willig
***The Children, Edith Wharton
*****Square Foot Gardening, Mel Bartholomew
***The Top 10 Myths About Evolution, Cameron M. Smith & Charles Sullivan
**What We Don’t Know About Children, Simona Vinci
***Lady Oracle, Margaret Atwood
***Plainsong, Kent Haruf
*****The Sweet Potato Queens’ 1st Big-Ass Novel, Jill Conner Browne
***The Hawks of Delamere, Edwards Marston
*****Kindred, Octavia E. Butler
*****Elantris, Brendon Sanderson

April

***Gentlemen of the Road, Michael Chabon
*****The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth, Paul Hoffman
****Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norell, Susanna Clarke
*****Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer

May

*****The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, Yann Martel
*****King Dork, Frank Portman
****Beka Cooper: Terrier, Tamora Pierce
***After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away, Joyce Carol Oates
***The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
****Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse, Phyllis Diller
***Insanity, Illinois, Mark Sumner
*****CancerVixen, Marisa Acocella Marchetto

I'm really happy with the diversity this list shows, and while I've gotten busy with work a couple of times and let my reading lapse, I nonetheless am enojoying the leisure time that it takes to read something like Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norell, now that I have graduated.

Dry

I enjoy reading about people who were/ are alcoholics. Augusten Burroughs, giving away his dog because he can't be beotherred to stay sober long enough to train or take care of the poor beast? Ha ha, I'm so glad that's not me!

It is, of course. It's me without my husband. It's me without the one thing, the one person who turns me into a human being. I haven't entirely figured out what this means to me - on the one hand, I'm still pretty close to being that drunk, and I think to myself, "God, if only I was rich - if I was super rich, I wouldn't have to deal with any of this shit, I could just be rich and drunk all the time and who would give a fuck?" And then there's the answer: Ryan would care, and he is the one who makes my life worth living, so I guess I'd better goddamn well shape up and stop drinking so much. And there it is: every time I imagine a bottle of smooth, delicious vodka (approximately every 18 minutes), there is Ryan's face: looking not angry, but sort of confused, and sad. And I can't explain what's wrong to him when I'm drunk, so I guess whatever is going on I have to be able to explain sober. That's the challenge, every day. Call me in a decade and see if it's this hard.

Vegetarian Gourmet

There is something that I've been longing for for quite a while: a gourmet vegetarian magazine. Don't get me wrong, I love my Vegetarian Times, and it certainly fills a need, but it is aimed more at vegetarians in general. I want a magazine like Food&Wine, which is filled with high-end, lustworthy cookware and chef's tools, and offers gourmet recipes and articles on hot new ingredients and cuisines. I want a magazine for the true vegetarian foodie. I want to know how to use the latest tools and ingredients in my own cooking. I want to know how to eat incredibly well around the world. I want restaurant reviews that tell me which chefs can create something more than a fancy salad for my meal. I want to put an end to things like the first recipe in the "vegetarian slideshow" on Food&Wine magazine's website -- a delectable-looking Polenta Gratin with Spinach and Wild Mushrooms which calls for 3/4 cup chicken stock. Come on. That's not even trying.



Also, I totally want to write for this imaginary magazine.

DNA

I am currently smack dab in the middle of reading The Salmon of Doubt, which is a collection of Douglas Adams' speeches, columns, articles, and musings, as well as most of The Salmon of Doubt itself, which was going to be his next novel. (I bought the book as an early wedding present for myself, and I was going to save it for the honeymoon, but frankly, how could you have an unread Douglas Adams novel in your house and not start devouring it immediately?)

I'm a little bit struck dumb by how important and incredible this book is, and extremely frustrated at Adams' early death. Somehow for the Hitchhiker's Guide has always been something of a book out of time; in other words, it just exists and is wonderful and in a way it is so good, the characters so rich and realistic and hilarious and fallible and perfect that I basically had no need to know anything about the other (other than to read everything else he has ever written). (Creepily interesting side note: I couldn't remember how to spell "fallible", as I always seem to misspell it as "falliable", so I typed my incorrect version into Google to see what it would suggest. The very first result that pops up is a BBC site for h2g2, which is the business/ website/ encyclopedia co-created by Douglas Adams.)

So, back to my original point (if it can be said that I had one): I was pretty shocked and saddened to learn that Douglas Adams died in 2001, and was not even 50 years old when he died. I'm mad at myself for not appreciating him more when he was alive, although I'm not sure precisely how that would have made a difference. I'm mostly just mad that now I can't read the hilarious novels, speeches, columns, articles, and musings that he could have written.

Read The Salmon of Doubt. It's worth it.

On top of the world

I'm feeling pretty much invincible right now. (and then, as soon as I typed that sentence, I had a momentary email quandry which knocked a bit of the wind out of my invincibility, but I'll manage).

Things are going really well with my freelance career. I recently received my first good paycheck for a job, which was extremely exciting and gratifying. I've also got a couple more jobs lined up, so I'm feeling very competent. It's been an extremely productive day so far - I took my first final, returned all of my textbooks, took out about 4 loads of garbage, started a load of dishes (which made no discernable dent in the pile of dirty ones), mailed the thank you notes from my second bridal shower, crafted my first ever invoice, created a skype account, and now I'm returning some emails about potential writing jobs. I love feeling so useful. Plus I walked to the mailbox and bought some locally grown produce on the way home, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Is there no end to what I can accomplish today? (Answer to the rhetorical question: I'm not sure if I can make myself finish my final portfolio or study for my other final exam)

The wedding is less than two weeks away now, and I'm getting impatient. People keep asking me if I'm nervous. Uh, no.... I definitely picked the right guy.

Planet Earth

Ryan and I have been watching Planet Earth very sporadically, partly because we know that Mom & Andy are Tivoing it all to burn for us later (minus commercials). Still, every time we turn it on it is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It feels like connections every second; like I'd never have to strew anything but this. Just watching the past 10 minutes or so, we've talked about Latin, humourous scientific names, music, "marine snow", spiders, sea spiders, ant lions, and Jamiroquai (don't ask). I can't wait to have kids to share this stuff with.
I'm actually looking up humourous scientific names right now, I wonder if there was something in the Annals of Improbable Research about that?

I used to think that I had to be drunk, or stoned, or otherwise out of my mind in order to write - I used to believe that creativity flowed only from tragedy. Now, however, now I know that no matter how dark the night was in which I wrote, it was always hope that held the pen.