2006 Book List

[electricland]

So, 2005's library list wasn't quite as lovingly maintained as I could wish, but it's a start. Here's 2006's. This will supplement the Striped Binder of Doooom, where I really am trying to keep track of EVERYTHING I read, or want to read. Pause for hysterical laughter. Thank you.

Feel absolutely free to skip this post, unless you like this kind of thing.

Recently returned (although "recently" is not going to be an especially accurate term for long here):

• Checked out October 14 and 27: Depressing books for work on marketing to kids: Kidfluence, Brandchild, and Consuming Kids. Finally wrote the article and happily returned them.


• Put on hold January 2005, checked out November 21: The Faery Reel: tales from the twilight realm. Had to renew this several times due to time pressure, but when I finally read it it was good stuff, with lots of fodder for books to read and authors to follow in future.


• Put on hold January 2005, checked out November 28: Walking with the wind: a memoir of the movement, by John Lewis. Recommended in strong terms by bodyandsoul_new, and holy shit was she ever right. I'm embarrassed at how little I knew about the civil rights movement. The most moving parts of the book, though, are where he describes his beliefs -- the philosophy of nonviolence, the Beloved Community, and that we're all in this together -- and his vision for the future, and his sadness at the wrong turn America seemed to take after the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.


• Put on hold January 2005, checked out November 28: Wicked: the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West. I think the musical was opening in Toronto around then. Have to admit, I renewed this one twice and it just didn't take. Too bad, but there you have it.


• Put on hold January 2005, checked out December: The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers. To be honest when this one was ready for me I was so frazzled that week I didn't get to the library in time to pick it up. But I really liked Last Call so I stuck it back on the list. It was pretty good -- nice premise, nice twist, nice kicker of a resolution. I like that his heroes never seem to be especially heroic.


• Put on hold January 2005, checked out December: The wave in the mind, Ursula K. Le Guin. Mentioned by pretentiousgit, whom I must thank, because it was lovely, and is now on my Amazon hold list.


• Put on hold February 2005, checked out January: The rose and the beast: fairy tales retold, Francesca Lia Block. elissa_carey recommended this one. I enjoyed it very much; it made a great companion piece to The Faery Reel.

Currently out:

• Put on hold January 2005, checked out January 5: The case for democracy: the power of freedom to overcome tyranny and terror. Anatoly Scharansky. Also mentioned by bodyandsoul_new. I believe GWB was reading it at the time, or something. Irony was involved. (I cannot find any reference to it in Body and Soul, and must assume I read this somewhere else. Making Light maybe?) I'm not sure I'll be finishing this one; it's interesting, but I'm finding his black and white view of things and unbridled admiration for the Bush regime wearing.


• Put on hold February 2005, checked out February 1: Bless me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya. Also via elissa_carey; I believe some school district was trying to ban it.


• Put on hold February 2005, checked out February 1: Cakes and ale, Somerset Maugham. I forget who was reading Somerset Maugham. Possibly copperbadge?


• Also checked out February 1: The Prize in the Game, Jo Walton (papersky). In the paperback twirlers at City Hall branch.


• Also checked out February 1: Charlie All Night, Jennifer Crusie. I needed something fun and fluffy.


• Put on hold February 2005, checked out February 6: The worst witch, Jill Murphy. Clare Coulter is in the TV series and I keep meaning to check it out.


• Also checked out February 6: Tongue in Cheek, Fiona Walker. Yummy trash with no nutritional content whatever. I find her stuff kind of variable, but this one was fun, and I was impressed by the way she regained my sympathy for the main characters -- at one point I was wondering what on earth I was meant to see in any of them.

On hold:
(Obviously a lot of these are left over from last year...)

Holds placed February 2005:

• Howards End, E.M. Forster. Possibly also copperbadge but I'm really not sure. See, this is why I need to keep track.


• Critical condition: how health care in American became big business -- and bad medicine. I *think* this was reviewed in NEJM. Or possibly not.


• Cloud atlas, David Mitchell. Via bookslut. It won or at least did very well in that Ultimate Book Challenge whatever-thing-it-was.

Holds placed March 2005:

• A mighty heart, Mariane Pearl. I think she was going to be speaking at the Women of Influence series and I saw a poster at the gym. Or someone was talking about the book. Something like that.


• Cradle to cradle: remaking the way we make things, William McDonough. That has to have been a gristmill_rss rec.


• Paradise, A.L. Kennedy. bookslut again; they rec her often, but I think the timing is related to the kerfuffle over the Orange Prize, or that anthology where the editors said all the women's entries were boringly domestic, or something.


• Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood. Been meaning to get to it for ages.


• Why people believe weird things: pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time, Michael Shermer. No idea where this one comes from but you can see the pattern.


• Necessary dreams: ambition in women's changing lives, Anna Fels. No idea.

Holds placed April 2005:

• Shake hands with the devil, Romeo Dallaire. I think lostvoice went to see the documentary?


• Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin. She died. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.


• The fresco, Sheri S. Tepper. Someone must've rec'd this but I don't know who.


• Off the road: a modern-day walk down the Pilgrim's Route into Spain, Jack Hitt. Might've been referenced in something else I was reading.

Holds placed May 2005:

• Alien sex (anthology). Possibly discussed over at makinglight...?


• Low port (anthology). Because crankygrrl taunted me about the new Liaden Universe novel, and it wasn't in the library system yet.


• Brave new world, Aldous Huxley. I had a reason at some point, honestly.


• Iron Council, China Mieville. Won the Clarke Award.


• Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, Jared Diamond. Was on the library's most-popular list, and I liked Guns, Germs and Steel.


• Blink, Malcolm Gladwell. Also on the library's most-popular list.


• The mysterious flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco. bookslut posted a link to an interview with him, and I really love Foucault's Pendulum.


• Zorro, Isabel Allende. Saw it on the New Releases shelf at Indigo.


• Don Quixote, the new translation. Someone rec'd it ages ago (again via bookslut), but it wasn't on the library's list at the time.


• Invisible women, Dale Spender. Rec'd by ide_cyan.

Holds placed June 2005:

• Small Island, Andrea Levy. Orange Prize again, plus I really liked the sound of it when the Globe reviewed it.


• The wisdom paradox, Elkhonon Goldberg. Someone posted a comparison between this and Blink, which I thought sounded interesting -- must remember to get them together.


• The gift of fear, Gavin de Becker. Rec'd by erbie during the Great Drama of June.

Holds placed July 2005:

• Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, Helen Fielding. Because I was running low on chick lit.

(July was busy. I guess I didn't have much time to think about reading.)


Holds placed August 2005:

• Not one damsel in distress: world folktales for strong girls, Jane Yolen. Started reading her journal (I wish it had an RSS feed, but you should absolutely check it out) around then and this was mentioned in an interview.


• The smartest guys in the room: the amazing rise and scandalous fall of Enron. Saw the documentary, wanted to read the book.


• Inequality reexamined, Amartya Sen. Skimmed through Freakonomics the other night and wanted another view on the world.


• The historian: a novel, Elizabeth Kostova. As recommended by cosmicbob.

Holds placed September 2005:

• Nickel and dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich. Been meaning to read it for a while anyway, and Heather Mallick mentioned it in a column on Katrina.


• Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs. Mentioned by a commenter on makinglight, with reference to the good people of Gretna and the breakdown of the social contract.


• Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Chris Crutcher. doombookshelves loves this guy. Loooooves him. I thought I'd give him a go.


• Hard Choices: How women decide about work, career and motherhood, Kathleen Gerson. See, here I go forgetting again. And I meant to be so good. Suspect this one came from a comment on bitch_phd.

Holds placed October 2005:

• Arthur & George, Julian Barnes. Rave reviews from both the Globe and Mail and peake. What more does one need?


• If women counted: a new feminist economics, Marilyn Waring. Like the Gerson, no idea but possibly from bitch_phd.


• Candy from strangers: kids and consumer culture, Stephen Dale. More depressing work stuff.


• Bangkok 8, John Burdett. Another one from doombookshelves.


• Contempt of court: the turn-of-the-century lynching that launced 100 years of federalism. Rec from texaslawchick; I may not end up getting this one out.

Holds placed November 2005:

• The thrifty decorator, Jocasta Innes. Parliament branch had this out on display when I went to pick up To Kill a Mockingbird. (See how these things get all circular?) I figured, hey! Thrifty! Crafty! House-related! What more can one need? The rate we're going this will come up in its natural cycle in about September 2006, just when we're ready for it. /cynical

Holds placed December 2005:

• Heavy Metal and You, Christopher Krovatin. Recommended by doombookshelves.


• A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin. Haven't given it a go yet.


• Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land, John Crowley. Recommended from lots of places.

Holds placed January 2006:

• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, Jeffrey Sachs. Damn, can't remember where this one came from.


• Gifts, Ursula K. Le Guin. Because I finally read The Wave in the Mind.


• Bodyguard of Lies, Robert Doherty, nom de plume of Bob Mayer, co-author of Jennifer Crusie. Say no more.


• Babel-17, Samuel R. Delaney. Mentioned in coffeeem's great essay on The Female Geek.

Holds placed February 2006:

• Black Easter, or Faust Aleph-Null, James Blish. Recommended by colleague – we’d been talking about the Catholic Church’s white wizards, disbanded in the 50s. The sequel does not appear to be available for loan.


• Firethorn, Sarah Micklem. Recommended in this review, cited by truepenny.

Comments

[pretentiousgit.livejournal.com]

1. Score! I re-read LeGuin often. And I appear to be reading half your list for my class on the Fairy Tale.

2. Dworkin? ... really? Because honestly, you should, but when I get together with the other radical crazy femini-terrorists, we never invite her to the tea-party. She's kind of extreme. But, um, in a world-changing way where you never want to actually offend her because she's your ancestor but really, do we have to?

3. I heartily recommend The Gift Of Fear as well, though I haven't gotten around to it.

4. Wicked never took for me, either. Nor did his other book, "The Something Stepsister" which is about Cinderella and is, if possible, even more grim. I just prefer my tales more fairy and less, um... pastiche? It worked sort-of for the Wiz because it's the great American fairy tale, but his formula really falls flat for me in his other works.

5. I borrowed Nickle-and-Dimed from a friend of mine and you'll have to tell me how it works out for you. I think she's got some good points but is a whole lotta condescending and unthoughtful about 'em to start with. I'm not sure, but I may still have a copy of it around somewhere. It's on Mac's coursewares.

6. Hee. The Worst Witch. Honestly, when I saw Harry Potter for the first time, I thought it was a rip on this series, which I first saw on YTV in 1998 when I was stuck in suburban Muskoka for a summer. Believe it or not, such a place exists.

7. Curse you! Now I must start one of these!

8 My further recommendations: The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. It contains Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System Of The World, and it's 3,000 pages long and takes a lot of commitment to get through, but it's also a fascinating take on how the world fundamentally and rapidly changed during the Baroque/Enlightenment period. I'd start with Cryptonomicon, though, just so as to get used to his writing style and to be able to pick out the made-up characters from the "real" people.

I think that's it for now. I miss reading.

how convenient, a numbered list!

[electricland.livejournal.com]

1. Hurray! The Language of the Night is decidedly one of my all-time favourite books about books and writing.

2. Yeah, I know. But I read Germaine Greer and Susan Faludi and stuff in university and was too wimpy for Andrea Dworkin and I do figure I should at least know what it is I'm too wimpy for. I suppose I should read some Betty Friedan now too.

3. Will let you know how it goes...

4. The Other Sister, wasn't it? No, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. I liked that one all right, but it was dreary. I am not a fan of dreary, unless there's a reason for it.

5. Hm, interesting. See 3.

6. Oh you poor thing! And really, Ursula K. Le G. has JKR dead to rights when she says "I wish she'd been a little more gracious about her predecessors" -- and also that the critics were entirely within their rights to love the book, but off their heads when they were going on about how marvellous and original and unique it was.

7. Mouahahahahaha.

8. I have been thinking the same thing. I got halfway through Cryptonomicon when it came out and just got exasperated by the length and the slowness and the ALL CAPS EMAILS. But I know so many people who ADORE it and its successors that I do feel I should give it another go, this time knowing what to expect (i.e., nothing like The Diamond Age or Zodiac or Snow Crash).

And my wounded mother is home, so I should go... but I hope you get to read again soon!

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Andrea Dworkin is a genius. Try her Online Library if you want a sample of her writing.