A test
This is mostly a test of posting from my iPhone.
My year in reading
So it's probably a good thing I'm about to embark on library school, since my need to keep statistics on my reading is a growing obsession. Librarians, in case you didn't know, are very into stats -- we keep numbers on everything, from how many people come through the door to how many people use the public access computers and of course how many books of what type get checked out.
Last year, as I reported in this post, I read 62 books. That was a big jump over the year before and, I'm pleased to report, my reading rate keeps accelerating (although that is unlikely to continue what with that library school thing). There are a couple reasons for this big jump, which I may go into in another post. The short version is that a lot of what I read is what a lot of people would call junk.
In 2009, I read 80 books (or, to be scrupously honest, 79 3/4 -- one of them, "Mistress Shakespeare" by Karen Harper, I wound up skimming because it just didn't grab me but I had spent enough time on it that I felt it was OK to include on my list). The vast majority, 67, were fiction. I started working at the public library in late May; 35 of the books I read came from there. Ten, plus two interlibrary loan books, came from the college library, where I worked until May.
The first book I finished in 2009 was "The Private Patient," a novel by P.D. James. The last was "Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife," a work of nonfiction by Francine Prose. Both books came from the public library. This year was a big year for series for me. I read a couple in the Aubrey-Maturin series -- I'm up to 14 now -- and all five published so far in the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik -- the Napoleonic wars in an alternate history approach -- with dragons! I also started the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell and have so far read four of them. I read all three in the Mistress of the Art of Death series by Arianna Franklin and the first three in Tasha Alexander's series about Lady Emily Ashton. The fourth is sitting on my desk, courtesy of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program and I really need to get to it.
I also read quite a few kids' books, one of the benefits of working at the public library. I re-read all of Lloyd Alexander's Taran series and found, yes, they do hold up. I read the first two in Linda Buckley-Archer's Gideon the Cutpurse series and like them a lot.
The best novel I read all year was probably "A Place of Greater Safety" by Hilary Mantel -- which is one reason I'm very psyched to have "Wolf Hall" at the top of my current reading pile. A close second would be "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman, an especially fun read for anyone who loved the Narnia books and Harry Potter, too.
For the best nonfiction book I read last year I'm going to declare a tie between "The Lost City of Z" by David Grann, a book I reviewed for the Miami Herald about Amazon explorer Percy Fawcett, and "Something from the Oven" by Laura Shapiro about women and cooking and society in the 1950s -- it's social and cultural history for laypeople, done really well (and how psyched was I when a paperback copy of "The Can-Opener Cookbook" by Poppy Cannon appeared in the library -- Cannon is a major figure in Shapiro's book and one with whom I can identify).
What am I reading now? I just noticed "Remarkable Creatures," the new Tracy Chevalier novel about fossil hunters in early 19th century Britain, come into the library and snapped it up. I like Chevalier a lot and this subject has interested me since I read Deborah Cadbury's excellent history "The Dinosaur Hunters." I've also started "Wolf Hall," Mantel's Booker-winning latest, which I'm especially excited about because of my longstanding Tudorphilia. I started that just as I was mainlining season 3 of "The Tudors" on DVD; gotta say I'm looking forward to Mantel as a useful corrective -- "The Tudors" is fun in a silly, soapy way but Jonathan Rhys-Meyers has to be the most preposterous Henry VIII ever, especially as he is supposed to be getting older. I'm dipping in and out of "Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading" by Lizzie Skurnick (with contributors including Meg Cabot, Laura Lippman and Jennifer Weiner) and finding it fun. And soon, very soon, my primary reading will be "Foundations of Library and Information Science" by Richard E. Rubin. Doesn't THAT sound like fun?
A few of my favorite things
Since I grew up in an academic household in western Massachusetts, you can take it as a given that I've absorbed public radio all my life. It was always on in the kitchen, in the car, and was a primary source of information and entertainment. When I moved to Miami in 1989, I traded WFCR for WLRN - a different kind of station but still the vital NPR link in my life. I lost it for a few years when I moved to Key West but lucky for me, NPR followed me down and WLRN established a series of transmitters to send the signal all the way down the Keys. The different frequencies along the islands have long been programmed into my car radios. Eleven years ago, when we moved to our current house and ditched the cable, NPR became a primary source of news again and has remained so, through different careers and through the increasing importance of the internet (one of the cool things about the internet is it allows me to listen to WFCR on occasion, when the WLRN signal is out or when I feel like some Baroque music on a Sunday morning -- funny to hear the western Mass. news and weather while sitting in Key West, but nice, too).
This week I got to contribute in more than just membership. I recorded a Letter from Key West for Under the Sun, an innovative new South Florida enterprise started by producers Alicia Zuckerman and Dan Grech. This essay was about one of my favorite Key West events, the city's Holiday Parade. There was a lot you can't squeeze into three minutes -- the sight of City Clerk Josephine Parker dressed as an angel and riding the back of a fire truck; the little kids working so hard on their juggling and gymnastics, the inline hockey team's sticks tapping the pavement. But I got in what I could -- including recording the sound, which was a new challenge but wound up being fun. So here it is. I've been thinking for a long time about attempting the essay; I didn't think it would happen on the radio of all places but that just makes it all the sweeter. Cheers, and special thanks to Alicia Zuckerman for guiding me through the attempt and dealing with my not-all-that-flexible work schedule and to my husband, Mark, for shooting the photos and being the all-around supportive and wonderful guy he is.
If you're not at Book Fair ...
If you can't get to the Miami Book Fair this weekend -- and I can't, dammit -- you can at least live it vicariously by reading some of the many, many talented writers who will appear there. This year I interviewed Mary Karr about her new memoir, Lit, for a piece in The Miami Herald.
I really liked the book -- and I'm not one of those people who devour memoirs. It's honest, it's funny and it's really well-written. It's about Karr becoming an alcoholic, becoming sober and becoming a Roman Catholic. Thus the title -- Lit -- which can refer both to being drunk and being filled with faith. But it was only after I finished the book that I realized the title has a third meaning -- Lit as in literary -- because this book is also about Karr becoming a writer. Somehow she managed, even while struggling with alcoholism and severe depression, to write enough poetry that was good enough to get legendary publisher New Directions to issue a volume of her work, and for her to get a faculty position at Syracuse University -- and that was all before publication of The Liars' Club, her first memoir and the one that made her a bestselling writer. This book recounts all that, up to and including the success of The Liars' Club and what it was like for her to visit her hometown -- not very flatteringly portrayed in the book -- on book tour.
Poetry! We got yer poetry here!
In Key West, when the weather cools and the wind picks up it's time to start thinking about the Literary Seminar. The upcoming seminar focuses on poetry, honoring longtime Key West resident and two-time Pulitzer winner Richard Wilbur. Happily, amazingly, the Seminar is a sellout -- quite a feat in these uncertain times -- if you are planning to attend or just want to read along at home, the Key West Library has books by just about all the panelists and workshop leaders (and it's an impressive bunch). So stop by, check them out and, you know, check them out. There's a lot to read! (And it's never too early to start thinking about 2011 -- when the Literary Seminar will be looking at food in literature -- yummmmmmmmmmm .... )