Summer Reading

This is my tentative summer reading list:

• Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
• Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
• The Masterpiece by Emile Zola
• L'Assomoir by Emile Zola
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera (already started this one)
• Lighthousekeeping by Jeannette Winterson
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Of course this list may change as the summer goes on. I started reading the Kundera novel on Wednesday. I'm enjoying this one immensely so far. I love Kundera's style of writing. This is the third Kundera novel I've read and I have to say he is becoming a favorite.

Late to Teen Angst or Why I have Decided to Read Catcher in the Rye

Amazingly, I have never read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I am thirty-something years old, one would think this is a book I would have already read by now. I compare it to someone of my generation who was never watched E.T.. I am guilty of this as well. I am well past the age of teen angst, but I thought it would be interesting to read Catcher in the Rye at this point in my life. I don't expect it to be life changing, as it would have been had I read it as a teenager, but I hope it somehow brings my younger self back to me.

Just Read

I finished reading this last night. I started reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" last week and it was slow going. I kept wondering what all of the fuss was about. Boy was I proven wrong. This novel exploded into something more by part three. I had to force myself to go to sleep at one o'clock in the morning Thursday night as I had to wake up at 5:30 to go to work. It's been some time since I have found myself wanting to forgo sleep in order to finish reading a novel.

Today I...

• watched five episodes of Mad Men in a row from season 1
• came to the realization that I desperately want a telephone bench
  
• finished reading Lynn Barber's memoir An Education
• watched a lovely video from Regina Spektor "Somedays"
• decided to get bangs
• also decided to purchase a Nikon DSLR, perhaps a D5000
• pondering what to read next...perhaps I will read Gogol for the first time
• have spent entirely too much time on the interwebs

From Lynn Barber's An Education

My knowledge of the world was based on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontes and none of them had a word to say about living on a kibbutz or making Molotov cocktails.

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia is a novel about the after effects of the Cuban revolution on three generations of women in the Del Pino family. The story revolves mainly around Celia del Pino, her two daughters Lourdes and Felicia, and her granddaughter Pilar. The story takes place over several years, beginning in 1972 and ending in 1980. Each woman is affected by the revolution in different ways. Celia's belief in the revolution and Communism causes further estrangement from her and her daughter Lourdes, who voluntarily goes into exile with her husband and daughter Pilar. Lourdes despises the ideals of the revolution and feels that her mother has abandoned her once again. Felicia remains in Cuba with her mother, but suffers moments of mental instability throughout the novel. Felicia is indifferent to the ideals of Castro's revolution. Memory, nostalgia, and identity are the major themes explored in Dreaming in Cuban. The differences between mother and daughter and the political events that separate families, both geographically and emotionally, are the foundation for this novel. The language in this novel is so sensual. I loved the descriptions of the island, I could almost feel the heat of the Cuban sun on my face.

As a child of Cuban parents, I found myself enthralled by the history of Cuba. I'm ashamed to say this, but I don't know very much about the country of my heritage. I only know very basic historical facts about Cuba. I definitely need to read up on my Cuban history.

Currently reading

First Post of 2010

It's a new year and time for resolutions. I have resolved to write here more often. I need to practice writing. Sometimes I feel that the words are stuck with nowhere to go. I know what I want to say but the words just don't want to come out. I'm too used to writing in technical terms, direct and specific. I know I can write the same way about literature, but that's not how I want to write. I want to be more descriptive, but it's difficult when the words get lost.

Favorite Passages: The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson

"Love is death’s twin, born in the same moment, each fighting for mastery, and if death takes all, love would do the same. Yet it is easier to die than to love."

"This life, the one we know, stands in the sun. It is our daytime and the stars and planets that surround it cannot be seen. The sense of other lives, still our own, is clearer to us in the darkness of night or in our dreams. Sometimes a total eclipse shows us in the day what we cannot usually see for ourselves. As our sun darkens, other brilliancies appear. And there is the strange illusion of looking over our shoulder and seeing the sun racing towards us at two thousand miles an hour."

"I keep telling this story-different people, different places, different times-but always you, always me, always this story, because a story is a tightrope between two worlds."

"The past is magnetic. It draws us in. We cannot help ourselves and, as with other things that we cannot help in ourselves, we make up elaborate explanations, reasonable rational explanations, to chant away the powerful things that don't belong to us."

Currently Reading

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster: Favorite Passages

"By an odd chance-unless we believe in a presiding genius of place-the statues that relieve its severity suggest, not the innocence of childhood nor the glorious bewilderment of youth, but the conscious achievements of maturity. Perseus and Judith, Hercules and Thusnelda, they have done or suffered something, and, though they are immortal, immortality has come to them after experience, not before. Here, not only in the solitude of Nature, might a hero meet a goddess, or a heroine a god."

"George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her."

"She reminded him of a Leonardo more than ever; her sunburnt features were shadowed by fantastic rocks; at his words she had turned and stood between him and the light with immeasurable plains behind her."

"I only wish poets would say this too: that love is of the body; not the body, but of the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah for a little directness to liberate the soul!"

Currently Reading

Can't wait to get these...

The Sandman Cometh!

I am on a mission to read the entire Sandman series by Neil Gaiman by the end of the year. So far so good, but I have to say it was painful waiting three months for volume 3 as a greedy library patron seemed to have kept a magical hold on it for that long. I've requested volumes 4 and 5 that way I can read them back to back.

I am thoroughly enjoying this series. Dream Country, volume three of the series, was wonderful. I particularly enjoyed "Dream of a Thousand Cats." Now I love me some Shakespeare, but it was not my favorite of the four stories. My favorite line out of the four stories though is from "A Midsummer Night's Dream": "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." Spoken by the man of the hour, Dream or Sandman, whatever you'd like to call him, they're all the same. He's a minor character in these stories considering the series is named after him. I think Neil Gaiman is really hitting his stride here in incorporating mythology and folklore into the Sandman stories. I hope this trend continues through the rest of the series.

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

I started reading The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford last Friday and am fascinated by it at the moment. I haven't finished the novel yet, but I'm about half way through. It's pretty brilliant although it took me a bit to get used to the author's style. I've had this on my TBR shelf forever it seems, but it called out to me now to be read. It's funny how that happens.

Quirky Romantic Comedies are my Favorite

I cannot wait to see both of these films. The nerdy romantic in me can't believe her luck.

I need a drink...

This week has been one of the most stressful weeks I've had in some time. I can't wait for it to be over.

Hilarious!

I love Flight of the Conchords!

The Loot!

I had an urge to visit the used bookstore yesterday so F and I went by after a late lunch. Sometimes my local used bookstore does not have a great selection, but this time there was so much to choose from I had to leave several books I really wanted behind. All F. could do was shake his head each time he came by the aisle I was browsing in. The pile in my arms was bigger each time he saw me. He knows once I have my heart set on my stack that there is no going back or trying to convince me that I don't need to buy so many since I have stacks of unread books at home. Alas, I always win (particularly when I point out how expensive his hobby can be, hehe). Without further ado, here is what I took home:

The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
Been Down so Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Farina
Slam by Nick Hornby
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Revolutionary Road by Ricard Yates
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy
The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

It was hard to put some of the other books I had selected back on their shelves, but I decided not to be greedy.

Arrivederci 2008...Buongiorno 2009!

It's already 4 days into the new year and I've already fallen behind on plans I have for the year. I have a list of things I want to accomplish this year. I hate the word resolutions so let's just call them dreams and wishes. I'll post them tomorrow to remind myself that I can accomplish what I feel would help me to grow as a person in the year to come.

A look back at my favorites of 2008...

Favorite books of the year:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Persuasion by Jane Austen

Favorite albums:

M83: Saturdays=Youth
Santogold: Santogold
Kings of Leon: Only by the Night
Coldplay: Viva la Vida
Death Cab for Cutie: Narrow Stairs
The Gaslight Anthem: The '59 Sound
Of Montreal: Skeletal Lamping
She & Him: Volume 1
Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
Ladyhawke: Ladyhawke
Crystal Castles: Crystal Castles
Cut Copy: In Ghost Colours
Adele: 19
Beck: Modern Guilt
Jamie Lidell: Jim
The Darjeeling Limited Soundtrack

Favorite movies:

Pineapple Express
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Manhattan
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Control
La Vie en Rose
August Rush
2 Days in Paris
Once
Bonjour Tristesse
Paris Je T'aime
L'Avventura

Tomorrow I'll post my 2009 list of dreams and wishes.