Those Trees Aren't Going to Kill Themselves, You Know

Gah! Sick! Pregnant! Toddler! Deadlines! Did I already say "Gah!"?

It's going to be a list-y week. (It would seem that, for me, the week starts on Wednesday.) So here's the first instalment.

Like many people who live, work, and love on the internet, Rusty and I have found our attention spans shrivelling to the point where an article that requires scrolling is considered way too wordy to deserve our precious clicking time. So, in an effort to keep our aging brains from further atrophy, we've recommitting to print magazines, which were once the great love of our pre-internet life. Here are the ones we've subscribed to so far:

Dwell
Maisonneuve
Harper's
The Walrus
The Economist

I'd explain why we chose each publication, but that would defeat the entire purpose of the brief list post. I will say that we've been getting them for a couple of months now, and so far we've actually been reading them, pretty much cover to cover. This could be because we keep them in the bathroom, which is one of the favourite retreats of savvy parents of small children. Because while you can't say to your partner, "Hey, watch the kid while I go fuck off with a magazine for half an hour," you can say, "Hey, keep an eye on the boy while I use the facilities, okay?" And then what's he going to do? Dispute it? Time you?

And in conclusion, I win!

I Am a Revisionist Female Character in a Kids' Story, Hear Me Roar

So, this is kind of funny. Not "ha-ha" funny, you understand. More like "huh" funny. Play along with me for a moment.

Realizing that our municipal strike, which has been going on for almost FOUR MONTHS now, could keep going indefinitely -- meaning that, in addition to having garbage piling up in a scary fashion in our shed, we also continue to not have access to the local library* -- I finally caved and ordered Sam some new books:

Lost and Found
"Once there was a boy who found a penguin at his door. From this opening line to the very end, this gentle story of friendship will capture young readers' imaginations."

Tikki Tikki Tembo
"Tikki Tikki Tembo (which means "the most wonderful thing in the whole wide world") and his brother Chang (which means "little or nothing") get into trouble with a well, are saved by the Old Man with the Ladder, and change history while they're at it."

Snowmen at Night
"Not since Frosty paraded through the village square have snowmen enjoyed such a slip-sliding good time as they do in the Buehners' latest flight of fancy."

Now, these are all good stories, and I stand behind them, but note anything interesting? Such as the fact that, in light of my recent complain-y post, NONE OF THESE BOOKS HAVE FEMALE CHARACTERS. Argh. Somebody thump me.

So, to refresh my memory -- and to give myself a one-stop wishlist to refer to next time I shop for kids' books -- I've reviewed all your comments on my original post, and I've compiled a list of stories for pre-schoolers that prominently feature girls. It's a work in progress, but it's a start:

• Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
• The Miss Spider series by David Kirk
  
• Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole
  
• The Frances series by Russell and Lillian Hoban
• The Paper Bag Princess, A Promise is a Promise, Angela's Airplane, David's Father, Millicent and the Wind, Moira's Birthday, Murmel Murmel Murmel, Pigs!, Something Good, Stephanie's Ponytail, and The Boy in the Drawer by Robert Munsch (Here's where I sadly must confess that, so far, Sam is not feeling the Munsch)
• Chrysanthemum, Lily and her Purple Plastic Purse, and Julius, The Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes
• The Little House and Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton
• Helga's Dowry and Adelita by Tomie DePaola
• When I'm Sleepy by by Jane R. Howard and Lynne Cherry
• The Charlie and Lola series by Lauren Child
  
• Big Momma Makes the World and Lucia and the Light by Phyllis Root
• The Princess Knight, plus many other titles by Cornelia Funke (who is now at the top of my list... well, not THIS list, but the list in my head)
  
• The Seven Chinese Sisters by Kathy Tucker and Grace Lin
• The Library by Sarah Stewart
  
• Moonstruck by Gennifer Choldenko
• Roxaboxen by Alice Mclerran and Barbara Cooney
• A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
• The Balloon Tree by Phoebe Gilman
• Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty Macdonald
• Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells
• The Little Princess series (which, trust me, is NOT all princess-y) by Tony Ross
• The Daisy series by Jane Simmons
• Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
• If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Joffe Numeroff and Felicia Bond
• Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
• Ugly Truckling by David Gordon
• Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems (I can vouch for this one. The story is cute and the illustrations are fabulous.)
• Lizzy's Lion by Dennis Lee
• Ganzy Remembers by Mary Grace Ketner
• Mrs. McTats and Her Houseful of Cats by Alyssa Satin Capucilli and Joan Rankin
• Who Said Boo? by Anne Miranda
• Attic of the Wind by Doris Herold Lun and Ati Forberg
• Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink
• George and Martha: One Fine Day by James Marshall
• Maggie and the Pirates by Ezra Jack Keats
• Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne
• Fairy Wings by Lauren Mills
• Dahlia by Barbara McClintock
• Red Riding by Jean Merrilla
• Outside, Over There by Maurice Sendak
• Peg and the Yeti by Kenneth Oppel
• Bullfrog Builds a House by Rosamond Dauer and Byron Barton
• Petronella by Jay Williams
• A Cowboy Named Ernestine by Nicole Rubel
• Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson
• Little Red Cowboy Hat by Susan Lowell
• Eloise by Kay Thompson
• Sleepless Beauty by Frances Minters
• Christina Katerina and the Box by Patricia Lee Gauch
• The Maggie B by Irene Haas
• The Stella series by Marie-Louise Gay (Bonus: She has a little brother named Sam!)

Thanks so much to everyone who left suggestions. Keep 'em coming!

*Understand this: I fully support our librarians. They're getting screwed. Vancouver has a higher cost of living than Toronto. Why, then, do our library workers earn, on average, seven dollars per hour less than their eastern counterparts? Yeah, I think it's a good question, too.

A Meme of One's Own

Hi there! Welcome to Monday! I saved you a seat!

I am feeling not so smart right now. It might be the fact that I spent the better part of the afternoon re-caulking the bathtub and shower. (Also: I spent the better part of the day egregiously abusing the word "caulk" in conversation.) It might be the fact that I forced Rusty to watch The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas last night. (Oh, did I forget to tell you? I love Dolly Parton.)

Nonetheless:

toxic fumes x (Dolly Parton + Burt Reynolds + a musical)
= a killer recipe for dumb

I need to get my head back on straight. Hence, a list -- or better yet, a WHOLE BUNCH of lists. Feel free to play along at home!

Five most recent books you've bought for yourself:
Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondaatje
The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco
Short Stories - Leo Tolstoi
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris

Five books you've most recently given other people:
Plop: Recent Projects of the Public Art Fund
Two Towns in France - M.F.K. Fisher
You Remind Me of Me - Dan Chaon
Baby Bargains - Denise Fields
The Rachel Papers - Martin Amis

Five most recent books you've loaned other people, and their status:
Ha! Now I think to make a list.

Last five kids' books you bought:
Madeline's Rescue - Ludwig Bemelmans
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel - Virginia Lee Burton
White Snow Bright Snow - Alvin Tresselt and Roger Duvoisin
Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin - Lloyd Moss and Marjorie Priceman
National Geographic Encyclopedia of Animals

Last five books you looked at on Amazon/Chapters/Powell's/etc.:
100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37)
Plop: Recent Projects of the Public Art Fund
The Prostitute in the Family Tree: Discovering Humor and Irony in the Bible
bills open kitchen
Tokyo: A Certain Style

Top five books on your "to read" pile:
The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishiguro
Alternadad - Neal Pollack
Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert
Animals in Translation - Temple Grandin
The 100-Mile Diet - Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon

Bottom five books on your "to read" pile (I don't know about you, but I had to move some stacks just to get all the way through the pile -- yikes):
The Areas of My Expertise - John Hodgman
I Have Landed - Stephen Jay Gould
Sermons and Soda-Water - John O'Hara
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir

Hm. I don't know if I feel better now, exactly, but I definitely feel different.

LIST: What's REALLY on Your Playlist?

You know how everyone's always posting what's on their iPod playlists, and it's always a list of cool, eclectic music that shows their awesome range of taste and, by extension, illustrates what a hip, open-minded person they must be? Well, I don't have an iPod. And at the rate at which I adopt new technologies, I expect that my first MP3 player will be one of Sam's cast-offs when he's in junior high school.

So, because of the dearth of music-related gadgetry in my life, I have to rely on a tool that people have been relying on since the dawn of time. And so I bring you...

My Playlist, Comprised of Annoying Tunes That Play of Their Own Accord Inside My Head
"Sussudio" - Phil Collins
"What About Love" - Heart
"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" - Anonymous Eliphalet Oram Lyte (Whoops. Didn't realize this was a sore spot for some.)
"I Will Always Love You" - Whitney Houston*
That song from that commercial
"Sunglasses at Night" - Corey Hart
"Stand By Your Man" - Tammy Wynette**
"Safety Dance" - Men Without Hats
"I Touch Myself" - The Divinyls
"She Drives Me Crazy (Ooh Ooh)" - Fine Young Cannibals
"I Know What Boys Like" - The Waitresses
"Mighty Machines" - Theme song from the TV series Mighty Machines

These are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. If you recognize even half of them, you're wincing in sympathy right now. Or you have terrible taste in music.

So what's in rotation on your mental playlist? Tell the truth now. It's okay not to be cool some of the time.

*As with many of the other songs on this list, it's just the title that I hear being sung in my head. Over and over and over.
**I actually like this song, but good god, there's a LIMIT.

Stupid Books That I Have Read and Forgotten but Would Totally Read Again (Despite the Fact That They Are, As I've Already Mentioned, Stupid)

Apropos of nothing... oh, no, the nerds are rioting! Someone wake me up if they get too close to here, okay?

Anyway. Back to this post title.

You know what I'm talking about. Don't pretend you don't. That stupid book you read because you were staying at a B&B or something and it was on the room's meagre bookshelf and you couldn't NOT read it because god knows when a copy of Mistral's Daughter or whatever was going to come your way again. And of course you inhaled it in four hours and it was AT LEAST as spectacularly stupid as you expected it to be. And then, years and years and years later, you couldn't get some aspect of the ridiculously arcane plot out of your head, and now you'd give anything to read this book again, just to see if it's actually as dumb as you remember. But you can't, because not only can you not remember the author's name, you can't even remember the title.

Here is a mere sampling of the myriad plots swirling around the lost recesses of my brain at any given time. Pity me.

UPDATE: Titles! Thanks to you guys! And links! Courtesy of me! (In case you're crazy enough to want to read these, too.)
Stupid Book #1 The Sendai by William Woolfolk
If I recall correctly, this book starts off with a series of stories about a bunch of babies who are born of women who sought treatment at a fertility clinic. In each case, the babies are huge, weighing something like 14 or 15 lbs at birth. And they're covered with hair and have strangely simian demeanours and subnormal intelligence. Someone -- a doctor? a family friend of one couple with such a child? a cop? -- uncovers this string of "coincidences" and begins a secret investigation of the clinic. Their hunt for clues and information gets increasingly dangerous (there may be some unfortunate "accidents" along the way), until they end up in the top-secret subterranean labs beneath the clinic, where they learn -- da-da-DA! -- about a series of grotesque genetic experiments. I can't remember how the book ends, but man, you'd think I would, huh?

Not ringing any bells? How about this one:

Stupid Book #2 The Killing Gift by Bari Wood
So it's the 1950s and a pair of rich young newlyweds are on their honeymoon. They get into a car accident, and the woman needs a bunch of X-rays. Unbeknownst to her or the doctors, she's newly pregnant, and the radiation put out by this newfangled X-ray gizmo jangles up the developing embryo's DNA real good. Fast-forward a few years to the young family: father, mother, and happy, normal little girl. OR IS SHE? Something about her is... different. Could it be the fact that she has the power to KILL PEOPLE WITH HER MIND?

The rest of the book follows her through to adulthood. As a middle-aged woman, her husband is killed by robbers during a botched home invasion. The robbers both die of mysterious causes that mystify forensics experts. A senior detective is called in to investigate, and he soon hones in on the woman. As he gets closer to the truth, he realizes that he has three choices: walk away, risk death himself in arresting the woman, or convince her to use her power to work with him to take down the worst criminal elements in the city.

Well, what would you do?

Stupid Book #3 The Mask by Dean Koontz
Er. My memories of this one are pretty sketchy, even by my standards. Something about a young girl being trapped in a cellar, and she's terrified of the spiders in it, and then the house catches fire and she dies? And then years later, she's reincarnated, and this new incarnation has amnesia and doesn't know where she's come from? And she doesn't know that she apparently has some sort of destiny to fulfill, involving killing the woman who's taken her in? And, er, there's maybe something about a cat that goes nuts and attacks his elderly owner?

I may be confusing that last detail with another book. It would seem I've read a lot of crap.

Can you help me out with any of these? It's okay. I'll respect your need to maintain anonymity.

LIST: Books I've Read (but May as Well Not Have, Because I've Forgotten Every Damned Thing about Them)

So, get this. Our refrigerator died on Friday, but lo! Our new refrigerator arose on Monday! Coincidence? Divine intercession? Blasphemy? All three? You be the judge!

Anyway. I was chatting with my friend K8T about books, and she asked me if I've ever read The Englishman's Boy, which she's currently reading. I told her I have, but it was several years ago and I couldn't remember much. She described the plot to me, which lead to the following exchange:

"So that's up to where I'm at."
"Wow. That sounds like a really good book."
"Is any of it coming back to you?"
"Not a bit."

I'm not exaggerating. I literally remember nothing of this book. By virtue of the title, I'm able to extrapolate something about a boy, and I suspect a gentleman of the English persuasion may be involved, but that's about it. Oh, and based on the cover design, something about cowboys.

So I started wondering how many other novels I've read whose plots and characters have completely, and no doubt permanently, escaped me. It turns out, after a quick scan of my shelves, quite a few!

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
This is where titles are helpful. I may not remember anything about this book, but I can still bask in that wintry, discontented vibe when I look at it.

The Long Valley by John Steinbeck
Don't get the impression that I can't remember anything by Steinbeck. I have many chunks of East of Eden and Travels with Charley committed to memory. But The Long Valley? I dunno, dude. Has anyone other than me even read this? Care to refresh my memory?

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
I'm not even one hundred percent sure I read this book. I think I did, because I had to for school. But maybe I didn't. I don't know what to believe any more, man.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens
See above.

Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway
I like a lot of Hemingway a lot. This book? Not so much.

The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
You know how it is when you read a couple of great books by a writer and then you go on a bender and read everything else you can get your hands on, including the lesser books? And then you may as well not have bothered because later you can only remember the first two books anyway? Yeah.

Put out More Flags and Officers and Gentlemen by Evelyn Waugh
See above.

The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster
Er. See above.

The Ghost Writer, Letting Go, Zuckerman Unbound, Deception, Our Gang, and Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
Philip Roth, it seems, is incapable of writing a single memorable word. Wait, that's not quite true. I can absolutely recall the scene in Portnoy's Complaint when the main character describes a moment in his adolescence when he ejaculates into his own eye (by accident, HE CLAIMS) while masturbating. It's easy to see how that scene could stick (so to speak).

Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut
This is a rarity. Generally, Vonnegut creates images that are permanently branded onto, uh, whatever part of my brain remembers these sorts of things. But hey, everyone's entitled to an off day, right?

The Fourth Hand by John Irving
For all I know, this story is about a group of eccentric bridge players. Tell you the truth, knowing Irving, I wouldn't even find it that surprising.

Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler
OR WAS HE?

Man. And that's just a sampling from books I still have lying around the house. I couldn't even begin to speculate on how many have been lost to the ages because I purged them or returned them to the library. Lost. All lost. And don't even try to calculate how many lost reading hours this amounts to. (Answer: A lot.)

Question is: I've still got all these books. Do I re-read them, assuming that, if I haven't purged them, there must be SOMETHING I liked enough to want to keep them around? Or do I assume that, if I can't remember a blamed thing about them, they obviously suck -- or at the very least are tragically mediocre -- and should be tossed to make room for more memorable books?

LIST: Books I Have Lied About Reading

I don't know what you like to do when the weather turns to absolute kack, but me? I like to get soaking wet while running the short distance from my house to the truck, then spend the next half hour steaming up the interior during some exciting (read: scary) highway driving, and finally end up at IKEA, where I proceed to drop a couple hundred bucks on home organization thingummies that promptly disappear into the general clutter as soon as I return home.

Am I the only one this happens to? I picked up all these cool boxes and magazine containers and various bins and tubs, and I was sure that THIS TIME all the loose bits and pieces around the house would finally have a permanent home. I spent today dismantling and sorting and inhaling Hanta-infested dust kitties and wielding an Allen key like no mortal has ever wielded an Allen key.

And now? Well, I guess you can kind of see where the walls touch the floors in some places. And trust me: that is a huge improvement.

Pretty much the only thing I'm fit for right now is making a list, and it seems fitting that, given what a non-starter this weekend has been, I list all the books I've ever lied about reading. In no apparent order, and without any further ado (unless you want more ado, in which case email me and I'll put you on my newsletter list), here they are:

The Grapes of Wrath
The first Steinbeck novel I ever read was The Pearl, in grade nine. I absolutely hated it, and so, not knowing that I'd some day become a huge Steinbeck devotee, when The Grapes of Wrath crossed my path three years later, I wasn't going to be taken in again. But still I had to fake my way through the book, which meant grilling my friends and, of course, reading the ending. And this is what has done me in. I've tried to read it a few times, but I feel this black cloud descend on me every time, and I never get past the first seventy or so pages. All you Wrath finishers, tell me this: if you had known the ending before starting the book, would you still have picked it up?

Tom Jones
In my last year as an undergrad, I took a history of the English novel course, along with Tara, the Artist Formerly Known as Wing Chun. And man, some of those books were friggin' huge. I chugged through Robinson Crusoe and even Clarissa (the unabridged edition, no less), but I just couldn't stick with Tom Jones. Perhaps Tara did: I can't remember. She's a lot tougher than I am, and much better equipped to deal with Fielding's crap. I GET that it was supposed to be some sort of satirical take on the pastoral novel or somesuch, but I JUST DON'T CARE. And after a thousand-plus pages, I care even less. I have no idea how I managed to bluff my way through this one. I have a feeling that my professor wasn't taken in at all, but was too beaten down by all of us dumdums to put up a fight.

Tristram Shandy
Oh my god. See above.

Many of the works of William Shakespeare
I once heard that you can't consider yourself a real student of English literature until you've read pretty much everything Shakespeare ever wrote. I guess that officially makes me a poseur. I like bits of Shakespeare. I really like certain plays, such as Macbeth and Richard III and The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice. And I named my cat Puck, which is possibly (though not definitely) the most pretentious thing I've ever done. But Hamlet? Romeo and Juliet? Come on. They remind me of bad teen angst movies, possibly starring Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson. And at the time I took my token Shakespeare survey course in university, my own annoying teen years -- where I was as sick of myself as I was of other teenagers -- were too close for comfort.

Foucault's Pendulum
I'm dredging my memory for examples of showier lies, but I think most of my literary fibbing has tended to take place in academic environments, for boring, self-serving reasons. I may have lied outside a university setting, years ago, about finishing Foucault's Pendulum. I can't for the life of me remember the exact occasion, but I think it was to someone who claimed to have read everything Umberto Eco has ever written, and I was still young enough to have felt shame that I'd battered my head against Pendulum several times, but Eco's dizzily learned ("That's learned, Pepe, learned.") vocabulary was too much for me. I think it was the second appearance of the word "chthonic" that did me in.

Your turn. Come. Wallow in the shame bath with me. The water's warm. Shamefully warm.

LIST: The Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

"To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor's prohibited list."

~John Aikin

What a great idea! How about we start with this one.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Mein Kampf is a good book. But it's interesting that, in the grand scheme of things, conservative scholars and public policy makers consider it less dangerous than The Communist Manifesto. Because, lord knows, genocide is much more palatable than the equitable division of labour and goods.

What's really weird, though, is that Walter the Farting Dog didn't even crack the list of honourable mentions.

[Thanks, Cap'n, for the link!]

LIST: I Love the Smell of Burned Books in the Morning

It's Freedom to Read Week! Are you as excited as I am?

To kick things off, I think a list is in order. And so I've compiled a list of banned/challenged books that I've read in the past thirty-odd years, despite the fact that very few of them contain the word "scrotum." By some strange coincidence, most of these books are quite good and eminently recommendable. I read a great number of them as a young whippersnapper, and I should also mention (cover your children's ears) that I got most of these from various public and school libraries.

Andrews, V.C. - Flowers in the Attic
Anonymous - Go Ask Alice
Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale
Auel, Jean M. - Clan of the Cave Bear
Blume, Judy - Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Blume, Judy - Blubber
Blume, Judy - Tiger Eyes
Blume, Judy - Then Again, Maybe I Won't
Blume, Judy - Deenie
Brothers Grimm - The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales
Burgess, Anthony - A Clockwork Orange
Carroll, Lewis - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Carroll, Lewis - Through the Looking-Glass
Chaucer, Geoffrey - Canterbury Tales
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Dahl, Roald - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Dahl, Roald - James and the Giant Peach
Defoe, Daniel - Moll Flanders
Eliot, George - Silas Marner
Findley, Timothy - The Wars
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Frank, Anne - Diary of Anne Frank
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Haddon, Mark - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Handford, Martin - Where's Waldo?
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Hemingway, Ernest - The Sun Also Rises
Hinton, S.E. - The Outsiders
Hinston, S.E. - That Was Then, This Is Now
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Irving, John - A Prayer for Owen Meany
Kesey, Ken - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Keyes, Daniel - Flowers for Algernon
King, Stephen - It
King, Stephen - Different Seasons
King, Stephen - The Shining
King, Stephen - Pet Sematary
King, Stephen - The Talisman
King, Stephen - Carrie
King, Stephen - Cujo
King, Stephen - Dead Zone
Lawrence, Margaret - Diviners
Lawrence, Margaret - Stone Angel
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
L'Engle, Madeleine - A Wrinkle in Time
Lewis, C. S. - Chronicles of Narnia
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Lowry, Lois - The Giver
Lowry, Lois - Anastasia Krupnik
Mitchell, W.O. - Who Has Seen The Wind
Morrison, Toni - The Bluest Eye
Morrison, Toni - Song of Solomon
Munro, Alice - Lives of Girls and Women
Nabokov, Vladimir - Lolita
Oates, Joyce Carol - Foxfire
Orwell, George - 1984
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Paterson, Katherine - The Great Gilly Hopkins
Preston, Richard - The Hot Zone
Proulx, Annie - Brokeback Mountain
Rockwell, Thomas - How to Eat Fried Worms
Rowling, J.K. - Harry Potter (the series)
Salinger, J.D. - Catcher in the Rye
Sebold, Alice - The Lovely Bones
Sewell, Anna - Black Beauty
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Snicket, Lemony - A Series of Unfortunate Events
Steinbeck, John - Of Mice and Men
Steinbeck, John - East of Eden
Stine, R.L. - Goosebumps (the series)
Tolstoy, Leo - Anna Karenina
Various authors - The Bible
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt - Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt - Slaughterhouse-Five
Wilder, Laura Ingalls - On the Banks of Plum Creek

I know. You're wondering the same thing as me: only ONE book by that unprincipled slut Laura Ingalls Wilder? What ever happened to decency and community standards?

Reading all these titles sure takes me back to my impressionable youth. I'd spend my summer holidays eating fried worms, which would turn me into a malevolent clown who conducted experiments on super-intelligent mice, which I'd whisk up north via my giant flying peach in order to force them to pull sleds in Alaska. And if the team got a little ornery and Curly ended up shredded to bits by the other mice, no matter. I'd just bury him in a secret Indian burial ground (you were allowed to say Indian back then) and he'd come back to life. Sure, he'd be a bit more, well, evil than he was before, but that's okay. He made an excellent pet -- er, I mean companion animal -- for the monster I created in my lab out of the corpses of dead criminals.

And then there was that time I fell through a rabbit hole and became a 17th-century whore, but that's a story for another day.*

Man, remember summer vacations? You always managed to get so much stuff done in a day.

If you want to see how much you've inadevertantly poisoned your mind over the years, check here and here (both are PDF files) and here for some solid lists of banned books, the first two of which are provided by the awesome folks at the Pelham Public Library. And while you're at it, check out the library's excellent anti-censorship blog, aptly titled Fahrenheit 451. And while you're THERE, why not sign up for their Banned Book Challenge? You create your own challenge by setting a goal for yourself to read as many banned or challenged books as you wish between February 26 and June 30, 2007. As soon as I wrap things up here, I'm heading over there to sign up.

*Note that I refrained from making any kind of crack about being locked up in the attic and having sex with my brother. Because that's INAPPROPRIATE.

LIST: Books a Man Has Given Me That Made Me Swear NEVER to Go on Another Date with Him EVER Again

Last week may have been a bit of a, uh, flaccid posting week, but let me tell you, friends, I have been in a nerd frenzy all weekend, first updating my Flickr and YouTube accounts, and then getting caught up with adding all your suggestions to The Big List of Lists. And now I'm so fired up I wish I could quit my day job and just write lists all day. Wouldn't that be the world's most awesome job? But when I called my employer to make this suggestion, they said that wasn't an option unless I filed a bunch of papers to transfer to a different union, and since I hate paperwork, we're going to have to be content with the occasional list. It's nice to dream, though. And it sure beats my regular dreams, which are boring as hell and usually involve me going shopping for shoes. Brown shoes.

It wasn't easy, but I decided to start with one of BabelBabe's excellent suggestions. I'm not exactly sure why I picked this list, since to the best of my recollection Rusty is the only man I've ever dated who's given me books, and he generally does an okay job of it, mostly because I'm really good about keeping my wishlist up to date. What I like about this list idea is that it made me wonder: what books WOULD turn me off a guy if he were to give them to me? What tomes would make me think, on a date, that there is no way I'd be letting this guy get his clumsy mitts anywhere near my delicate flower?

Aha. You see where things get interesting.

• Anything by Charles Bukowski - I like Bukowski just fine, if I'm in the right mood, but the kind of guy who doesn't realize that every young lady has to come by Buk in her own way and on her own time... well, we don't need pushy young gentlemen like this in our lives.
• Anything by Henry Miller - Ditto the above, sort of. The kind of guy who'd give Miller to his female companion on a first date is the same guy who'd try to talk her into a threesome with him and her best friend on the fourth date... you know, because it would expand her horizons and open her mind and all.
• Anything by Anais Nin - Dude is trying way too hard with this one. We ladies can find our own arty porn, thanks.
• Any book that he clearly wants to borrow back as soon as you're finished with it - See also all of the above.
• Ishmael - This book offends every last rational sensibility in my small but sturdy frame, yet it weirdly appeals to some guys. Which is fine, whatever floats your boat, etcetera, but please don't feel you need to pass it along.
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Just... no.
• Chick lit - It's not that I'm denigrating chick lit. I liked Bridget Jones's Diary as much as anybody. But chick lit is iffy territory unless you know it well, and I'm making a wildly sexist guess that most guys don't. Give a female book-lover the wrong piece of chick lit over dinner, and you may as well just say goodbye after you split the cheque.
• Anything with the sticky goop from the bargain-bin sticker still mucking up the cover, or worse, anything with the bargain-bin sticker STILL ON IT - Nobody wants to hook up with a spendthrift for the rest of her life -- and goodness knows I love a book bargain as much as the next person -- but the early phase of a relationship is not the time to demonstrate your awesome frugality.

Notice how I didn't mention Kerouac? I bet you thought I was going to, huh? I think the right sort of guy could give me some books by Kerouac, such as Dharma Bums or Big Sur, so long as he prefaced the gift in just the right way. It's dicey territory, though.

If you're wondering what book would buy you a one-way ticket into my pants (if you're not wondering, I'll understand if you need to erase that image from your brain RIGHT NOW), it would be a recently unearthed, never-before-published novel by Jane Austen. Autographed. To me. If you have one, email me and I'll tell you where I live. But shhh... keep it between you and me. I'm married.

Okay, I've gone first. Now it's your turn to ante up. What books would be -- or have been -- a surefire turn-off for you? (If you're playing along on your own site, be sure to give us the link to your post!)

BOOKS: Well Played, Art Garfunkel

Holy cow, you people deliver. I was expecting a solid handful of list ideas, but you guys have blown my mind. I love how specific some of them are, too, though methinks a few of you are projecting a tad. (I'm looking at you, Sandy D., with "Books Whose Authors Have Gone Psycho on You After a Bad Review." Heh. I think you're required by law to share that story with the class.)

So here's what I'm a-gonna do. I'm in the process of adding your list titles (and consolidating the duplicates) to the list in my original post, which I've linked from the sidebar. I'll keep updating this list, so please keep suggesting ideas. And every time I create a new list, I'll create a link from the master list. That all makes sense, right? How could it not?

One more thing. I noticed a few list suggestions that I think I may have already covered way back in the day. I'm going to add those list titles to the master list as well, and I'll dig through the archives and create links to those posts.

And to answer a few people's question: please do play along, either in the comments section here, or on your own site. If the latter, make sure you post a link here so I can read your lists!

And speaking of lists, I just came across a fantastic new one, courtesy of Bookliness: this complete chronological list of every book Art Garfunkel has read since 1968. Ever since watching part of the 1980 film Bad Timing, in which Garfunkel plays a sexually obsessed college professor, I've been looking for something to pave over the indelible mental image of his naked, fornicating ass.* This list, strangely, helps.

If I had the time, trust me, I would go through the entire list and tally all the books both Mr. Garfunkel and I have enjoyed. And if you're honest with yourself, I think you'll admit that you would, too. Instead, I perused his list of favourite books (also organized chronologically) and couldn't help noting with no small degree of pleasure that the man who brought us one half of the harmonies in "Scarborough Fair" counts Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Razor's Edge, and Vanity Fair among his all-time favourite reads.

Well played, Mr. Garfunkel. I almost forgive you for making me watch you have sex with that dead woman. Almost.

*I may have also sighted the Garfunkel unit, but this image, happily, seems to have been scoured from my retinas.

The Big List of Lists

It's the Official 50 Books 2007 List Challenge! Here's how it works: You give me a list title. I will compile this list of list titles and keep a running list here on this post. (See? Things are getting excitingly meta already.) Each week, or as often as I feel like, I will run with one of these lists in my own imitable way. You, as always, are welcome to join in.

Trust me. It's going to be AWESOME.

Here's the list-in-progress:

• Worst Books Ever, or Five Hours of My Life I'll Never Get Back
• Books I Have Lied About Reading
• Books I Have Lied About Liking
• Book-to-Movie Adaptations Where, Frankly, the Movie Was Better
• Books I Used to Love, of Which I Am Now Ashamed
  
• Best Book Titles of All Time
• Books That I Expected to Be Dirtier
• My Real Guilty-Pleasure Reads, and Not the Decoys I Talk About Openly
• Books You Must Read Before You Die, but Would Rather Die Than Read
• Books I Refused to Read for a Long Time Because too Many (or the Wrong) People Recommended Them
• Books I Read Only After Seeing the Movie
• Books I Most Often Try to Persuade Other People to Read
• Authors I Wish Had Written More Books Already
• Overused Plot Points That Drive Me Nuts
• Books I Have Lied About Hating
• Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Plots Gone Wild
• Books in Which I Liked the Secondary Characters Better Than the Main Character, or Books in Which I Wanted to Beat the Main Character Senseless with a Tire Iron
• Books I Lied About Reading and Then Wrote an A+ Term Paper On
• Books I Lied About Reading/Liking Solely to Look Smart/Pretentious
• Books I Wish I Hadn't Finished, or Worst. Ending. Ever.
• Books I Read after Oprah Recommended Them
• Books I Will Never Read Precisely Because Oprah Recommends Them
• Literary Characters I've Developed Crushes On
• Books I Only Read to Impress Other People
• Books I Consider It My Duty as a Parent to Shield My Child from Reading
• Books I've Caught Rusty Reading That Made Me Lose Respect for Him
• Parenting Books That Are Full of Shit
• Best Books Not to Read from Start to Finish, or Best Bathroom Books
• Books I Shouldn't Admit Made Me Cry Like a Baby
• Books I Only Read for the Title
• Books I Re-Read When I Have Nothing Else to Read
• Knee-Jerk Recommendations
• Books People Keep Recommending That, Frankly, Sucked Ass
• Books My Teacher Made Me Read That I Really, Really Liked
• Books My Teacher Made Me read That Made Me Question the Value of My Education
• Books That Made Me Want to Have Sex with at Least One Character
• Books They Let Children Read for Reasons Passing Human Understanding
• Books I Actually Read but Got a Poorer Grade on the Paper I Wrote on the Subject Than My Best Friend Who Did Not Read the Book
• Books I Read Because the Author Looked Hot
• Books I've Read Aloud
• Books I Use as a Booster Seat for My Child
• Books I Love Even Though the Last Twenty Pages Made No Damn Sense
• Books I Have Written a Prequel/Sequel to in My Own Head
• Books I Keep Meaning to Read, but Then I See Something Shiny
• Books I Will Go to the Mattresses for, Even Though I Hate the Writer
• Books You Must Read Because You Must Mock
• Worst How-To Books Ever
• Books That Were on the 'To Be Read' List the Longest
• Books I Hated Having to Read in School, But Love Now
• Books Whose References Have Worked Their Way into My Household Lexicon
• Books I've Never Read But Have Read the Cliffnotes Version
• Books I've Read Because I Liked Their Cover Design/Font
• Books Which, When It Comes Right Down to It, I Would Have No Problem Burning
• Books Which I Read Only for the Sex Scenes
• Books I Pretend to Like So People Won't Think I'm a Snob, or Books I Pretend to Like So I Won't Hurt Your Feelings
• Books with Covers So Embarrassing You Can't Read Them in Public
• Books You Keep Checking out of the Library and Then Not Reading
• Books That Gave You a Hangover
• Books You Are Sorry You Didn't Read Decades Ago
• Books I Have Read at Least Four Times
• Books I Adored as a Child But My Son Thinks Are Boring
• Books That Friends Gave Me That Make Me Question Our Friendship
• Books I Bought More Than Once Because I Forgot I Already Owned It
• Books My Friends Should Give Back: It Was Just a Loan
• Books That I Have Spilled Food On
• Books That Make Me Eat While I Read
• Books I Ruined By Reading Them in the Bathtub
• Books I Read, Then Tried to Imitate While Writing My Book
• Books I Will Never Read but Have a Great Title
• Weird and Wonderful Autobiographies Given to Me by the Author
• Books That Made Me Wish I Was Drunk and/or High While Reading It
• Books That Should Be Made into Movies
• Books That I Have Physically Torn Up Because They Were So Bad
• Books That Make Me Highlite Again
• Books That People Need to STFU About Already
• Movies That Would Have Been Better as Books
• Books I Read Because They Were Alluded to in Other Books
• Books That I Would Tear the Pages out of and Use in a Collage
• Books That Make Me Wish I Could Have Lunch with the Author
• Books That Have Had an Impact on Me and Changed Me or the Way I Think in Some Fundamental Way
• Books I Used to Own, Then Got Rid of Without Ever Reading, but Now Wish I Still Had Because I've Since Heard They Were Good
• Books I Only Picked Up Because the People/Person on the Cover Was Hot
• Books I Only Picked Up Because the Cover Was Sparkly (don't judge me!)
• Books I Only Read Because They're on Every Must-Read List in Existence, Didn't Like at the Time, but Later Grew to Appreciate
• Books I Keep Re-reading, but Only After Enough Time Has Passed That I've Forgotten the Ending (Which Means I Must Not Like Them THAT Much and Should Therefore Not Even Bother)
• Books You've Returned to the Bookstore Because They Blew
• Books You Hope Oprah Never Recommends Because You Love Them and Don't Want Them Ghettoized by Her Sheep-like Audience
• Books That I Have Dreamed Myself Into
• Books That I Read Far Too Young. Why Didn't My Parents Stop Me?
• Books That Affect My Emotional State for Days After Finishing
• Books That I Was Sad to Finish Because I'd Never Get to Read Them Again for the First Time
• Books a Man Has Given Me That Made Me Swear to NEVER Go on Another Date with Him EVER Again
• Best Books to Read on Public Transportation
• Best Books to Take to Jury Duty
• Books I Have Read for Work and Enjoyed/Not Enjoyed
• Books You Have Panned in Your Blog
• Books I Have Hated So Much I Have Alienated Nice People (Who for Some Reason Have the Incredibly Poor Taste to Like These Books)
• Books That Are Better Read While Travelling and/or Away from Home
• Books You Feel Compelled to Own in Two Versions (A Beat-Up Paperback You Read Over and Over and a Handsome Leather Version You Keep on the Shelf)
• Food That Makes You Think of a Specific Book/Character/Author Every Time You Eat It
• Best Places to Read a Book
• Favorite Thing to Do (Other Than Reading) While Reading
• Books You've Put Notes in (or Added to Existing Notes) Warning Other Readers Not to Bother
• Books You Read Despite Finding Notes from Previous Readers Warning You Not to Bother (and Then Wished You Hadn't)
• Books That Are So Terrible, Either in Style or Content, That They Inspire You to Turn Them Over or Put Another Book in Front or on Top of Them at Bookstores in a Guerrilla-Style Effort to Keep Others from Reading Them
• Books Too Depressing to Finish
• Books with WAY Too Many Characters
• Books I've Borrowed and Never Returned
• Books Bought for Me by Loved Ones
• Books That Live in the Bathroom
• Series You Used to Like but Have Now Given Up On
• Books You Wish You Had Written That Make You Question Why You Think You Could Be a Writer
• Books You Put Off Reading Because You Were Afraid They Weren't Going to Live Up to Your Expectations
• Books You Continued to Read Even Though You Would Have Rather Eaten Glass
• Stupid Books That I Have Read and Forgotten but Would Totally Read Again (Despite the Fact That They Are, As I've Already Mentioned, Stupid)

You're excited now, I can tell. Let's be excited together. Chuck your list idea(s) in the comments section and I'll keep updating this master list as we go. Remember: no list idea is too grand or too trivial. In fact, the grander and more trivial, the better.

Let's keep the list love alive in '07! Boo-ya! Also, let's keep "boo-ya" alive in '07! BOO-YA!

BOOKS: Another Year, Another 50 Books

One of the benefits of keeping this site -- aside from the dazzling exchange of ideas, of course -- is getting to go back and revisit books that I've read months ago, books that I would surely have forgotten if I hadn't recorded them here. (Did you remember that I read Lipstick Jungle way back last spring? Me neither!)

As I was glancing through the archives, I noticed a few patterns I hadn't been aware of when I was deep in the murky bowels of 2006:

• I read three books by Douglas Coupland, which isn't something I actively intended to do. I was meh about his new novel, JPod, but I liked Polaroids from the Dead quite a bit, and Hey Nostradamus! was one of the best books I read last year. (See below for my top ten books of 2006.)
• Similarly, I returned to a few other writers more than once: Bill Bryson, Jincy Willett, Matt Cohen, and Alexander McCall Smith. (I'll say this as many times as bears repeating: you simply can't go wrong with the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Angency series.)
• I can't stay away from kids' literature. Awesome writers like Elizabeth Enright and E. Nesbit kept me coming back for more.
• I went a bit nutty for short story collections. They comprised a full one-fifth of the books I read last year. This isn't such a big surprise. My time felt really fractured and fragmented, so short stories were often the only things I felt I could do justice to.

My Top Ten (New) Reads of 2006
Coming up with this list was a tough exercise. I had some incredible luck with my reading selections last year, which is lucky for me because I find slogging through a bad pick demoralizing. And we all know how a run of poor books can completely throw you off your game and headfirst into a book slump. You lose confidence in your ability to choose good material and next thing you know you're scratching your ass and watching Married with Children re-runs. We've all been there, friends.

And so, in no apparent order (or IS THERE?), I give you my favourite non-rereads of the year:

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
The true sign of a book freak is that you'll spend valuable reading time on books written by other book freaks about books THEY'VE read. If that's not a sign of a sick mind, I don't know what is. And yet here we all are. Anyway. Hornby does a great job of demonstrating the ongoing vagaries of a classic book-lover's buying and reading habits over the course of twelve months. This book is a funny, charming, inspiring read -- which reminds me that I need to review it again because I forgot to write down all the titles he recommends that I meant to pick up for myself.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
One of the best, most honest novels about being a kid I've ever encountered. I shouldn't admit this (again) but I liked this better than Mitchell's earlier work, Cloud Atlas.

Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland
The first section of this book gave me cold chills. The novel tells the story of a Columbine-style school shooting and its aftermath from the pespective of three different characters. Amazingly, it manages to be quite moving without being exploitive. JPod may have disappointed, but Hey Nostradamus! has me convinced that Coupland has a truly great novel still waiting inside him.

Jenny and the Jaws of Life by Jincy Willett
I loved these stories, even if they may drive me to therapy. As I mentioned when I talked about this collection last week, imagine Dorothy Parker by way of Kurt Vonnegut and David Sedaris. Why don't more people know about this book? Why did it take me so long to hear about it? What else is the world withholding from me? ENOUGH WITH THE SECRETS.

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
A middle-class English family slowly comes apart at the seams. You want to laugh, you want to cry, but you never want this story to end. I was worried that Haddon wouldn't be able to follow up his runaway first novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but not to worry. I think this guy's going to go places.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
This is my favourite of all Bryson's books. He deviates from his usual travelogue format to write instead about his childhood in Des Moines, Iowa, and the results are hilarious. I can picture myself reading this one again and again.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
If, like me, you enjoyed Jane Eyre and Moulin Rouge (the movie, not the book -- is there a book?), you will really like this novel. If I'm wrong, I can't refund your money or anything like that, but you'll at least have the satisfaction of wiping that smug look off my face.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Masterfully written AND based on Howard's End, one of my all-time favourite novels? You can't lose with this combination. This is probably the third time I've mentioned this, but popular wisdom tells me that Smith's other books (which I haven't read) are kind of underwhelming. Skip them and jump straight to this one. Or if you've already read them, wipe them from your memory and start fresh with this one.

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
I finished this novel a week ago, and it's still troubling me (in a good way). It's a deceptively simple set of plotlines involving a handful of characters in a relatively contemporary New York setting, but there's a moral ambiguity that permeates the entire book that has me still wondering what I'm supposed to think about it.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
In this quietly heartbreaking story, Ishiguro reminds me of why the novel exists and the standard to which we should hold all storytelling. Though if we did, probably a lot fewer novels would get published every year. But would that be so bad? I can only manage to read fifty a year, anyway.

Books I Started but Didn't Finish
I hate calling it quits on a book, but for various reasons, these defeated me:

A Reading Diary by Alberto Manguel
An incredible anthologist he may be, but Manguel's purple, pompous prose drove me loopy. This is one editor who needs an editor.

Middlemarch by George Eliot
Don't attempt this book during a difficult tax season, is all I can say.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Don't attempt this book during your first high-stress real-estate transaction, is all I can say.

The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy
Ms. Binchy, do you have to explain EVERYTHING? Characters, motivations, metaphors -- you lay it all out on the table, which is accommodating of you, but it doesn't leave me with much to do. There's this thing called "subtext." Look into it.

Final Arrangements by Miles Keaton Andrew
Publishers Weekly loved this comic novel about the funeral industry, and the jacket copy claimed that its "offbeat irreverence" was reminiscent of Six Feet Under, one of my favourite shows in recent years. And yet... and yet... was I the only one who noticed that the author uses the word "impacted" within the first dozen or so pages -- and not within dialogue, either? Come on, now. If he's not even going to try to get along, why should I?

Books I Meant to Read but Was Too Chickenshit to Even Pick Up
I won't go into the individual reasons why I was unable to even consider reading these no-doubt fine tomes last year. Death, despair, desolation. I'm a fragile desert blossom these days. Maybe next year.

• A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• The Darling by Russell Banks

Reading Resolutions for 2007
I don't normally make resolutions, but it strikes me that my reading habits definitely have room for improvement. I should try to read more fiction, and I should at least TRY to read books that scare me (see above). It strikes me that, even if one is escaping into excellent fiction, it's still escapism.

Don't get me wrong: escapism has its merits. I'll be the first person to get escapism's back when the going gets tough. But part of the reason I read is to (I hope) understand more about this crazy spaceship we call earth, as well as my fellow spacemen, and I'm not going to get very far if I persist in reading about boring, angsty, middle-class people who are, well, a lot like me.

What are your reading resolutions? And tell me, tell me do, what were your favourite books of the past year?

BOOKS: Introduction to Great Books

I just spent the last four hours wrapping Christmas presents, and man oh man, my back hurts. Also, if my family and friends had any idea how frequently my feet are employed in controlling wayward wrapping paper, they'd probably be a lot less eager to attack their gifts. So let's keep that between you and me.

While I was engaged thusly, I was wondering something:

Say you met someone who'd never read any of the "great" books, but this person expressed to you a keen interest in exploring the classics. Bear in mind that this person is intelligent and literate; they just also happen to be innocent in the ways of fine literature. You'd want your suggestions to be accessible and engaging and, of course, great. What would you recommend? What wouldn't you recommend? Why?