I'm back!

Yes, this blog hit a sophomore slump for awhile there. But I have been reading and even reviewing, if not writing about it in this forum. My latest was a book called "Literary Seductions" by Frances Wilson -- I saw it referred to somewhere, looked it up in our catalogue at work and got it through interlibrary loan. Last weekend, I read it. It was OK though not to my standard of high-end literary gossip/lives for regular readers ("Parallel Lives" by Phyllis Rose being my high watermark in the genre). It was kind of a hybrid between academic treatise and layperson read. Maybe that's how they do it in the UK. Anyway a decent read. But not as good as the previous one, "Wild Nights!" by Joyce Carol Oates, which I have reviewed for an upcoming edition of Solares Hill. I know, I know, JCO's prodigious output can be intimidating. And I even made sure to write this review without using the word "prolific." But this is a good one, maybe because it's also on the literary lives vein -- but with the Oatesean twists of eerieness and weirdness pushed a few shoves beyond comfort level.

The stories are all very different from one another, which is good, and makes it difficult to choose a favorite. I might have liked the first one the least, perhaps because of all the writers I've read the least Poe, perhaps because the 19th century diary style was a tad offputting. The Emily Dickinson robot story is savagely funny, the Hemingway story full of pathos. And, in an additional Key West link, the book is dedicated to Joyce and Seward Johnson, of sculpture and Key West Literary Seminar scholarship fame.

I also read "The Princess of Burundi," another Swedish mystery, this one by Kjell Eriksson (and from the FKCC collection). I thought it was a better read than "Sun Storm," and I enjoyed a little brain candy. But I think I'm done with the Swedish mystery genre for the moment -- my list of other reading, for review and for the upcoming seminar, is just too long. Fortunately the next is a combo: Tony Horwitz's new book, "A Voyage Long and Strange," about European interactions in the New World between Columbus and the Pilgrims. "Confederates in the Attic" is one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books, so I'm hoping Horwitz is on form with this one.

Review and reading

My review of Quiet, Please, Scott Douglas' memoir of working in a public library, is in today's edition of Solares Hill and on The Citizen website. I liked the book, but not as much as I'd hoped to. But it's still a great behind-the-scenes look at life in the library. And definitely check out Scott's blog. I also FINALLY finished Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else, a historical novel about Nikolas Tesla and a young hotel chambermaid. It's mostly set in the early 1940s in New York though it contains extended flashbacks, mostly to Tesla's life. I liked it a lot and hope we may see Hunt down here for the 2009 Literary Seminar. It's going to be a great one, and there's lots of reading to do. Lots and lots.

And some really great news: We're getting a lot of new titles onto the shelves at the college library, from donations and other sources. Every day I go in and find a new book I just have to read. Since I don't finish a book a day, this is a bit of a problem. But at least they're library books so I have to give them back and they won't add to the book storage issues already occupying my house. (And I always assume people know this but many don't: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A COLLEGE STUDENT TO BORROW BOOKS FROM US!!!!!)

A few notes

After a good start to the year, my reading pace slowed considerably -- but I wanted to make a few notes. 1) I just finished "Quiet, Please" by Scott Douglas, which I'll be reviewing very soon for Solares Hill. I found the book an enjoyable read, though my expectations were raised a little too high because I so like the author's blog, Speak Quietly. Still, good to see young librarians out there telling stories. I'm about halfway through The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt, which I like a lot so far despite the fact that the author seems to be the hot new thing, went to my high school, is a couple years younger than me AND lives in Brooklyn. (Also, check out her website from the link on her name -- it's very cool.) And last weekend, I accompanied a bunch of birders to the Tortugas (for more on that trip, you can read my husband's column in the Citizen) -- the trip reminded me of a book I liked a lot and reviewed for Solares Hill a few years back: "Assassination Vacation" by the multi-talented Sarah Vowell. Vowell writes about being seasick on the trip to see Dr. Mudd's cell at the Tortugas but the really good parts of the book, to me, were about lesser-known assassins, namely the guys who shot McKinley and Garfield.

Let's eat ... food!

Just can't get away from the book reviewing habit -- recently I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan's most recent book, In Defense of Food, at work (yes, it's in the collection of the FKCC Library!) and found it a quick, engaging and interesting read -- so engaging I started taking notes. Next thing I knew, I was reviewing it for Solares Hill and the review appears in the current edition (that link takes  you to a PDF of the entire issue). The review is also available on the Citizen's website, where Solares Hill's book review appears each week, down at the bottom of the page. The book is a great, easily understood and entertaining take on America's dysfunctional attitude toward food. Plus Pollan's up there in my personal nonfiction pantheon -- along with the likes of Calvin Trillin, Ian Frazier, and Tony Horwitz (hmmm ... must add some women to that list*). I'll read almost anything these guys write and it's almost all great. Check it out -- here at the college library, from your local bookstore or from the Monroe County Library system -- they have two copies, in Marathon and Big Pine, both currently checked out. And here's to healthier eating!

*I feel compelled to add here that it's not like I don't read and admire women who write nonfiction -- Joan Acocella, Margaret Talbot, Melissa Fay Greene -- "Praying For Sheetrock" is one of those books that every nonfiction writer should read every year -- and of course my personal pantheon of Annie Dillard and Madeleine Blais -- I just think of them as more literary and less reporterly. I wonder if that's some sort of internalized sexist classification system. Got kind of a love-hate thing with Susan Orlean -- for instance, I thought "The Orchid Thief" was one of the world's great magazine articles, but stretched too thin as a book.

A very literary movie weekend

All three of the movies at the Tropic Cinema right now started out as books -- on the big screen is the big seller, "The Kite Runner," based on the novel by Khaled Hosseini. But the other two movies, both based on nonfiction books, have been getting boffo reviews: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," the true story of a French editor who suffers a stroke and manages to write a book through a system of the only voluntary motion he has left -- blinking one eye. Because I'm a documentary fan, I'm looking forward to "The Rape of Europa," based on the 1994 book about the Nazi pillaging of European art during World War II. See you on Eaton Street ...