Bookshop Bumblings

The Images of America series has been out for a while. They basically take old pictures of a city/county/college/regional sports events tack on extended captions and call it a book. I haven’t really been interested in too many that I’ve seen because most of them have been South Carolina oriented. However, I am a big sucker for Appalachian culture. In fact, a lot of time I think about going back to school to get a graduate degree only there’s nothing I want to do for the rest of my life. But if I could get a job in something pertaining to Appalachian folklore or culture only if I would only be able to make a very meager living at it I would drop everything for it in a heartbeat, especially if I could work with someone named “Jim Bob”.

Most of this volume contained information I already knew but photos that I quite enjoyed. I finally got to see a picture of the failed steamboat they thought would be able to run up and down the French Broad River – ha! Also, I learned that whenever a tragic calamity happened there was nothing southerners loved more than getting gussied up and posing for the camera in front of it. There were all these pictures of horrible looking train wrecks and here were all these people primly dressed smiling for their posterity. I guess it was the equivalent to my family reunions.

This was my beach read on my trip to Edisto Island with my boyfriend’s family. Of course, I can’t read while actually on a beach so I missed going outside and being roasted in the hot sun to read this book. That kind of dedication deserves a reward – something along the lines of an aloe kiss on the nose.

What this book did the most was make me realize that I missed reading russian literature. About seven years ago I went on a kick of sorts and fell in love. However, I never touched Gogol which is a theme of sorts in this book, and now I feel lacking. So, now I shall set out and get my hands on some Gogol to rectify that flaw in my literacy. Of course, it also makes me want to get my hands on Lahiri’s first work as well.

I was given this little gem of a ya book by Miss Laurel, and read it on my plane trip back from New York. I have discovered that I CAN read on planes as long as it’s something esy and quick to get into. Otherwise, I get bogged down and start noticing my motion sickness. Like the time I tried to read Slaughterhouse 5 on the plane. Now that was a nightmare.

This little book is about a girl whose father has been brutally murdered in the very large house they live in. After her father’s death, her mother moves her two daughters to another wing of the house while letting the rest of the mansion go untouched until it falls into slight disrepair. The main character wants to be a ballerina, but the family can no longer afford lessons. Yet, she still practices.

It is a young adult novel so there is the requisite punchy younger sibling who is always toeing the lines, and quirky next door neighbor who longs to have a life like they do. All in all it’s a cute story even if a tad predictable.

Isn’t it horrible to go on a trip and accidentally leave behind the book you were reading? Isn’t it all that more fantastic when you discover that the person you’re staying with has that book on their shelves? This is why it is important to visit well read friends with wonderfully stocked shelves.

This was the first work of Le Guin’s that I’ve ever read, and I quite liked it. Also, the cover work rules.

Remember when Laurie Halse Anderson wrote phenomenal literature that when you finished it you felt changed and thought, “Everyone should have to read this book!”

Yeah, well, not anymore.

On June 14th, Elizabeth Kostova’s book “The Historian” will go on sale, and you (yes, you) should read it. Even if you’re too poor to shell out the $25.95 that it takes to support your local independent bookstore who cultivates literacy while strengthening your community, you should go harass one of those do-gooder librarians for a copy to borrow.

It is one of the most well written captivating books I have read ever with a rich detailing of the history and culture of eastern eurpoe. Sure, when someone asks you what the book is about you’ll have to lower your voice and kind of slur your words so they don’t understand you’re saying “Vampires” but really the novel is a lot more than just that. Plus, it overshadows and completely diverges from any modern vampire tales. Trust me – it’s good.

Also, I hope that I’m the only one who hypes it up because I would be a little crushed if people began to see it as overrated or overdone.

In the interest of becoming a more well-rounded bookshop girl, I am eating more ice cream. I’m also having to catch up on my Young Adult selections. The subtitle to Ida B is “and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World.”

It is a cute, especially for girls who have semi-recently graduated from Junie B Jones books. However, I’d rather have a book that saved me a brownie than the world. I’m selfish like that these days.

Well, I figured I ought to read one of this years Booksense Book Of The Year winners before the national booksellers convention in less than a month. Heaven knows that I’ll have to do hand exercises before I can even lift Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, much less read it.

Chasing Vermeer is illustrated by Brett Helquist who I once briefly stalked until I discovered he lived in Brooklyn. As I’ve said about Ben Marcus, I would follow him to the ends of the earth, but I put my foot down at Brooklyn. Ew.

But I digress.

I’m smitten with Brett Helquist’s illustrations – especially when they’re of a raven curly haired girl in glasses. XO, Helquist, XO.

The book is now available in paperback, but if you buy it you simply MUST get the hardback. When you remove the lovely illustrated dust jacket, you find the two Vermeer paintings central to the plot of the novel are the cover art. (One on the front, and one on the back. No title or anything else marring the show.)

Although “Chasing Vermeer” isn’t the type of young adult novel that I most love, I can definitely see why it’s become so championed. It’s about two children who are new friends to each other who, through a series of puzzling “coincidences” piece together the mystery of a recently stolen priceless Vermeer painting. It’s well written and fun.

However, I must confess: puzzles bore me. Well, except for the one about people STILL wearing white jeans. That puzzle terrifies me to the very marrow of my bones.

What is it with these Japanese authors killing themselves? If they commit suicide right after writing a book what’s to keep me from thinking of doing the same after reading it – especially when they compare a woman’s lips to a row of leaches?

By the time I got into Snow Country it was halfway finished. Not to say that it wasn’t good. It’s just that at first I wasn’t smitten by the writing style as I’ve never been a fan of short choppy sentences. I believe this is what the book blurbs on the back call, “Beautifully economical”. Oh Times Literary supplement – how you make everything so poetic!

The ever-so-foxy Tara sent me this so I figured that this blog would be an apt place for it
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Character? If any of members of The Basic Eight were real I would have been arrested for stalking years ago.

The last book you bought is?
It was a present for someone and you don’t want me to RUIN that here do you?

The last book you finished is
These Demented Lands by Alan Warner.

What are you currently reading?
“Arundel” by Kenneth Roberts and “Snow Country” by Yasunari Kawabata.

You’re inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book would you burn?
Nicholas Sparks oeuvre

Five books you would take to a desert island?
Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past/In Search Of Lost Time (all volumes)
Pynchon’s Gravity Rainbow
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
100 Years In Solitude by Marquez
The Bible

I figure with these books that I’ve been trying to read for years but haven’t ever been able to finish most of them that I’d have no choice but to desperately find a way back to civilization ASAP.

Which book would you memorize if you were on a desert island?
The bible. Yet, nothing like being a raving but delightfully tanned lunatic screaming bible passages to fish to pass the time.