Library Loot: July 05 2021

Just happened to find myself at the library the other day – a complete accident, I tell you! /jk/ – and these titles happened to make it home with me:

(Top to bottom in photo):

• The Old Curiosity Shop – Charles Dickens (F)
• Seeking Pleasure in the Old Wild West – David Dary (NF/history)
• Women of the Four Winds: The Adventures of Four of America’s First Women Explorers – Elizabeth Fagg Olds (NF/history) (not in pic)
• The Great Gatsby – graphic novel (love this read) – not pictured
• DK Eyewitness Medieval Life
• Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History – S.C. Gwynne (NF/history)

(Can you tell I was roaming the history stacks? It was glorious.)

So what am I reading right now?

Well, these are in line but at this very moment in time, I’m reading an adventure/travel writing book called Side Country: Tales of Death and Life in the Back Roads of Sports by John Branch and then a quick look at a title from the TBR: The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Salvomir Rawicz (1956), a NF about Rawicz who was a young Polish cavalry officer who was arrested by the Russians and, after brutal interrogation and a farce of a trial, he was sentenced to 25 years’ hard labor in the Gulags. In the depth of winter in Siberia, he escaped and crossed the trans-Siberian railway and headed south to freedom. (Supposed to be an amazing read so I’m looking forward to this.)

And my regular summer project of a reread of the AP Style Manual….

Plus – you know: all these library books. 🙂

The (Almost) Halfway Post.

Almost halfway through the year and like other book bloggers, I think it’s fun to see how the reading is going and whether there are any patterns or trends emerging. 

To that end, here is what I’ve read so far this in terms of numbers:

• 54 books in total for a total of 16,142 pages:

• 33 fiction  – Includes short story collections and a play. (Very surprised to see this. I would have sworn that it was more NF but it’s not to be.) 
• 21 non-fiction

Other interesting (perhaps only to me!) stats include:

• 25 books (46%) taken from my TBR – I’d like to up this stat a bit more this year…
• Average number of books read per month: 10.5 books
• Average page count per month: 285 pp.
• Total average page count per month: 2,690 pp. 

How do the demographics look?

• 10 from POC/BIPOC authors (19%) – I’d like to up this stat a bit more this year…
• 23 male authors
• 27 female authors
• 5 mixed gender content

The books themselves:

Oldest book: (Far From the Madding Crowd / Hardy – 1875) 

Newest books: Two from 2020 (Battle of Brothers / Robert Lacey (NF) and Sharks in the Time of Saviors / Kawai Strong Washburn (F).)

Best book so far: 

Hmm. If I absolutely have to commit for both F and NF, I would argue for the following:

• Fiction: Rebecca / du Maurier (or the Hardy)
• Nonfiction: The Best American Travel Writing 2019  / Alexandra Fuller (ed.) 

Autobiographies and biographies have been popular topics, but there are no real leaders, TBH: Other topics have included nature writing, travel, history and the social sciences…. 

.It’s been a good year so far. I hope that you’re having a similar year. Onward and upward!

Incoming.

A few new titles have washed up at Chez JOMP, so thought I’d let you see what they were. (Top to bottom):

• Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin (culinary-related essays, I think). (NF/essays).

• Fraternity: An Inside Look at a Year for College Boys Becoming Men – Alexandra Robbins (NF). I’ve read her earlier work about sororities and thought that to be interesting so this title made the cut. (NF/socio?)

• The Body – Bill Bryson (NF/sci).

• Untold Stories – Alan Bennett (NF/essays I think).

• The Truth About Style – Stacey London (NF/fashion). Complete impulse buy the other day.

• Solutions and Other Problems – Alli Brosh. (Also, unpictured but also bought: Hyperbole and a Half by Brosh.) NF/auto/funny as hell).

• Taste of Home Winning Recipes – Barnes and Noble cheapie bargain book to get ideas for supper. 🙂 (NF/food). I’ve tried a few recipes out of here – good so far.

And, of course. I’m not actually reading any of these right now! 🙂

Library Loot: June 14 2021

Top to bottom, left to right:

• Trees – DK Eyewitness Books (NF/nature)
• An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science – Edward J. Larson (NF/history/geog)
• The Round Tree – Louise Erdrich (F)
• Started Early, Took my Dog – Kate Atkinson (F)
• Dolores Claiborne – Stephen King (F)
• An American Marriage – Tayari Jones (F)
• The Little Princesses: The Story of the Queen’s Childhood by her Nanny, Marion Crawford – Marion Crawford (NF/bio/auto)
• The Secret of the Chimneys – Agatha Christie (F/murder)

Already read and finished the Stephen King book (ok) and now about to start on the then-scandalous Crawford memoir about the Queen’s childhood (and that of her sister). Ohh la la. (Rather a craze on the royals right now. 🙂 )

People you should meet…

Trawling my TBR shelves the other day, I realized that I have quite a few autobiographies and biographies about various people so thought I would gather these titles together in case you might be interested. One caveat: these are TBR which means that I haven’t read them just yet. They look good though!

• A Girl Named Zippy – Haven Kimmel. This was LOL hilarious when I read it a few years back…
• She Got Up Off the Couch and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana – Haven Kimmel (part two of above auto.)
• Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature – Linda Lear.
• Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald – Matthew J. Broccoli.
• Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter  – Adeline Yen Mah. A powerful autobiography about growing up in China.
• Charles Dickens: A Life – Claire Tomalin.
• The Glass Castle: A Memoir – Jeanette Walls.
• Lab Girl – Hope Jahren.
• The Man Who Caught the Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras – Brantley Hargrove.

• Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard – Sara Wheeler.
• A Promised Land – Barack Obama.
• Becoming Queen Victoria – Kate Williams.
• Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor – Robert Lacey. A fast read of the life and times of QEII (up to 1983, when book was first published). Just finished this. An enjoyable and rather fluffy read.
• Hillary Rodham Clinton: Living History – Hillary Rodham Clinton.
• Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions – David Attenborough.
• Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster – David Attenborough.

• Everybody was so Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story – Amanda Vaill.
• A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812 – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
• The Short and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton: The First Domestic Goddess – Kathryn Hughes.
• The Victorians – A.N. Wilson.
• The English: A Portrait of a People – Jeremy Paxman. (A DNF in the end. Just couldn’t get on with his writing style.)

• The Girls from Winnetka – Marcia Chellis.
• Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle – The Countess of Carnarvon.

Now I just to read them all. HA!

New TBR shelf…

Here are the titles on the new TBR shelf:

• Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience – Shaun Usher (ed.) (NF/socio)
• On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays – Richard Reynolds, M.D. and John Stone, M.D. (eds.) (NF/socio)
• The Girls from Winnetka – Marcia Chellis (NF/bio)
• A Victorian Courtship: The Story of Beatrice Potter and Sidney Webb – Jeanne McKenzie (NF/history/bio)
• Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places – Bill Streever (NF/geog)
• My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell (NF/nature)
• All Things Wise and Wonderful – James Herriott (NF/nature)
• The Book of Not – Tsitsi Dangarembga (F)
• Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card (F/sci fi)
• Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor – Robert Lacey (NF/bio). Read. Good.
• Time and Again – Jack Finney (F)
• On Borrowed Wings – Chandra Prasad (F)
• Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout (F)
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – Anita Loos (F). Read. Good.
• Mr. Chartwell – Rebecca Hunt (F)
• Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World – Rita Golden Gelman (NF/travel). Read. Good.
• Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey – The Countess of Carnarvan (NF/history)
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (F). Read. Good.

As always, the usual guidelines are in place: these are just suggestions for me and I’m happy to go off-piste if I want to. It’s summer time rules here! 🙂

Reading Review: April 2021

The reads for April 2021 included:

• Life After Life – Kate Atkinson (F). Loved this and plan on reading more Atkinson.
• The Happiness Project – Gretchen Rubin (NF). Meh.
• Bird: DK Eyewitness Books (NF). I’m starting to get into a bit of birdwatching but I’m a big novice right now. Thought I’d learn some basic facts.
• Evil Under the Sun – Agatha Christie (F)
• Living, Loving, and Lying Awake – Sindiwe Magona (F/short stories). OK.
• Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life – John Conroy (NF/history/geog). Pretty interesting how it “normalizes” a war-torn society and culture.
• Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families and Their Passage from India to America – S. Mitra Kalita (NF). OK.
• Sharks in the Time of Saviors – Kawai Strong Washburn (F). Despite my aversion to short stories, these worked. Plus it’s on a list of Favorite Reads by President Obama.
• A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles (F). Loved this. Definitely going to read more Towles.
• Dinner ASAP – Cooking Light (NF/cooking). I’ve been cooking some of these recipes – very good and not too complicated for this neophyte chef.
• All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriot (NF/memoir). Just a good read.
• Freddie and Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody – Mike Dawson (GN/autobio). Fairly typical teenaged angst for GNs.  

So to the (rather obsessive!) numbers:

• Total number of books read in April 2021: 12.
• Total number of pages read:  3,656 pages (av. 305). 
• Fiction/Non-Fiction: 5 fiction / 7 non-fiction. 0 plays.
• Diversity:  3 BIPOC. 6 books by women.
• Library books vs. books I owned (and thus removed from the home abode): 6 library books, 7 owned books (whee!) and 0 e-books.

Plans for May 2021 include continuing to include more BIPOC writing on my list. Continue this pace of reading and continue this streak of reading more from my own TBR as opposed to those titles from the library. Sounds pretty doable to me. Plus – it’s the end of the semester and I’m off for the summer. 🙂

Library Loot: April 26 2021

Library Loot included:

• Rules of Civility – Amor Towles (F/drama). Loved his latest, A Gentleman in Moscow, so picked up this earlier novel.
• The Poisoner’s Handbook – Deborah Blum (NF/history). Victorian time and poisons? yes please.
• Fast Girl: A Life Spent Running From Madness – Suzy Favor Hamilton (NF/sport/health). I’m a former serious runner so thought this looked interesting.
• Mind of Winter – Laura Kasischke (F/drama). Supposed to be a good psychological thriller, I think.

I still have some other reads from my last Library Loot but couldn’t resist a quick trip to the library to look at other titles.

I promise that I’ll write more in the near future. The semester is starting to get busy since lots of things are due for grading, but as soon as I get some breathing space, I’ll be back. How is life in your worlds? I do hope it’s going smoothly for you all.

Library Loot: April 22 2021

Library Loot for April 22 2021:

• South Sea Tales – Jack London (F/short stories). Just saw that this is short stories. Bleugh. I am not an aficionado of short stories. What was I thinking?
• The Pale Horse – Agatha Christie (F/mystery). Can’t go wrong with a Christie.
• The Secret River – Kate Grenville (F) Wanted to read some Aussie lit.
• The Lion in the Living Room – Abigail Tucker (NF/bio). We have kitties in our life: what can I say?
• A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towlers (F). (Just finished this. Post to come.)
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly – Anthony Bourdain (NF/autobio). I’m into cooking right and although this is a reread, I remember it as pretty good.
• Cooking Light: Dinner ASAP (NF/recipes) – I know: me with a cookbook but I’m searching for new recipes. 🙂

So – any ideas of what I’ve picked up? Any recommendations?

Review Roundup: London, Humans, Life After Life…

I’ve been reading quite a lot lately. It’s so interesting to see that I have a tendency to fluctuate in my reading levels. Looking back at trends over the past several years, I see that my reading levels falter in January and February and then pick up the pace once it gets into the Spring months. Is it to do with the amount of sun? Is it something to do with the moon? 😉 

I’m not sure but I’m glad I’m back into one of my most important hobbies. So – what have I actually been reading? Let me do a quick round-up for you.

Londoners – Craig Taylor (2011). A nonfiction collection of conversations, really, that Taylor has gathered from a wide range of people who live in, love, hate, or perhaps left London. This was one of those perfect reads at the perfect time for me and I loved it. It was fit in with my temporary Monkey Mind and I could really hear what his interviewees said. This was such a fascinating read and I highly recommend it if you’re searching for a good book to pick up and put down. Loved it.

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde (1895). The play itself. I have been wanting to go to a live play or other cultural event, but the pandemic has put the kibosh on that option right now so I picked up this Wilde read. I haven’t seen or read this one and it was full of Wilde’s sly witticisms and sense of humor. Good. 

Then, still with a bit of a Monkey Mind (and thus lower levels of concentration), I was at the library (shocker!) and saw the most recent edition of the photo collection by Brandon Stanton called Humans. (He did the photo books called “Humans of New York” and has a really good blog, which I reviewed here and this was just as stellar). Stanton takes extremely good photos and allows his interviewees to really talk. Just fascinating if you like that kind of thing. (This is one of the projects that I wish I had done.) 

Life After Life – Kate Atkinson (2014). Looking for a solid good read and wanting to pull a title from my homegrown TBR (as opposed to the library), this was quite a chunky read (and yet I wasn’t scared off by it) – 536 pages. (Normally, I would run screaming from such a high page count but it was ok.) This was such a good read but it definitely plays with time and structure so you need to concentrate. The protagonist, Ursula, reincarnates over and over throughout this story but what is truth? Anyway, a very clever novel and easy to read at the same time. I’m definitely going to pick up more Atkinson at some point. 

So that’s me all caught up re: recent reads. Tell me about yours. 

Oh, and I bought a new rug for my office at home. It makes me very happy! 🙂