Book Joy

26 July 2011: The end of summer began July 18, or more accurately, the end of my summer reading for fun and enjoyment was over about a month before that… really. I’ve picked up a few pages here and there, but I’ve pretty much been working non-stop from June 25 onward. I’m not whining, just stating a fact. If I were whining, it would be more along these lines: sigh, oh bother, whimper and fuss–I’m not getting to read for fun anymore–ugly fit thrown now.

But I know the WPA job I do is heavy traffic control from July through May… June is not so busy.  And some parts of the Christmas break are peaceful. The rest of the year is just flat out busy. And I decided to teach more than I thought I would this summer–such a good decision, but something had to give–and it was my reading.

I bought two books for fun in Baton Rouge when at the WPA conference, but I only got through two chapters of one of them. Ha. That’s the way it goes. Both look very promising. I expect I’ll have a weekend or two in which to read and pause for a moment–then I’ll pick up those books and a few others from below that I abandoned temporarily while I whooshed through the end of the summer term. And whooshing it is. Y’all know exactly what I’m talkin’ ’bout.

The great thing is that books will wait for me with patience, unchanging, always welcoming, always ready for me whenever I’m ready for them. Blessed, blessed texts that I own. Or maybe they really own me. Not sure I care either way.

Early June: I’m currently reading several books. I’ll just list them willy-nilly and then come back at some point and say something about them when I finish (or not). They cover a range of topics: Victorian lit, math, psychology, science, and mythology… and, of course, writing. Genres will be all over the place, too: mystery, suspense, romance, comedy, epic, short stories. I’m not listing poets or poems here–at least not initially–but I might later on.

I’m not going to link to any book titles at this point, or authors, as I want to get the list going as quickly as I can (I will link talks by authors, though.). And I’m also going to list my all time favorites. The students in any class I teach ought to know my favorite books–reading, after all, is what roped me into this business in the first place–my love of text.

Right Now:

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (been sitting on my shelf for… forever, I think–what’s wonderful about this book is I have no remembrance of how it came to me–I know I didn’t buy it, yet it was on my desk one day–a sign that I needed to read this)–GONE. Off my reading list. I started and crashed about 20 pages in. I’m totally okay with this–see what I just added today!!!

Everyone Can Write by Peter Elbow (just got this a few weeks ago)

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow (I’m been reading this on and off for a year)

Changing Minds by Howard Gardner (also been reading this for awhile–dipping in and out)

The Public Domain by James Boyle (been reading an article by him before getting too deep into the book)

Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates by Adrian Johns (really good but loooong)

Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars by William Patry (not started, but next in the queue)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (an oldie but goodie–I’m really re-reading Chapter IX several times because it haunts me and I need to get a good handle on it)

Neuromancer by William Gibson (this is fascinating but it’s taking me forever to get through it–its dense and complex and way out of my sci fi depth, but two people mentioned it to me in the space of a week, so I had to get this managed–it was a sign)–totally entranced by this one right now.

JUST finished Neuromancer. Finally. I didn’t love it. I was intrigued by it and had to finish it to find out what happened to the characters. I wasn’t mad about Case, the protagonist, but I did really like Molly. And I have to say the Jamaican Naval Space Aviators (or whatever they were)–fantastic. I haven’t spent much time thinking about the big metaphors because I really wanted to read for the story–and enjoyed that. No pen, no notes, no agenda–just reading because it was recommended to me and that was really fine.

My Life in France by Julia Child (I’ve been dipping in and out of this one, too–very nice, but it makes me insanely hungry when I read it)

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And specifically for the WAC class:

Technological Ecologies & Sustainability by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Heidi A. McKee and Richard (Dickie) Selfe (I only just started this one, but I’m hooked by the introduction–it’s fascinating given the reading I’ve done recently on commons and open source software development)

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Just Got These:

EBooks  (17 June 2011):

A Romanian cookbook for FREE via Amazon’s Kindle Store–where they have a “Top 100 Free” books list… Oh, baby.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson (I’ve had a fascination with this 1854 cholera epidemic in London for ages and Dr. John Snow–the reason I started getting into GIS–I teach this moment in history in every Vic lit class–great talk on Ted.com about it, too, by Steven Johnson–who I’ve been crushing on such 2007.)

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson (I love him based on other works, but I’ve missed these two books before…. not now–got them on my iPad Kindle app in less than 30 seconds.)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Determined to read this for fun over the July 4 holiday break.)

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Remember reading this with joy and fondness a LONG time ago, it’s free, so now it’s on my iPhone and iPad–maybe part of the July 4 weekend.)

The Art of War by Sunzi (Just posted about war, so I think it would be good to revisit this book from my past, also free from the Kindle Store.)

Hard Copy (16 June 2011):

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall (my son read this in a couple of hours; now it’s my opportunity–third in a series of very fun family reading).

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Favorites:

Harry Potter and ________ by J.K. Rowling (any HP any time–I loved these so much I’ve read them many times–the first one 8 times, the last 3 times)

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (10 times in a row–perhaps the one text that had the most impact on my for a sustained period–10 times in a row, in a ROW)

Okay–I’m hitting a wall as I look around and see 40 books I could list. Uh-oh. Perhaps this wasn’t the wisest decision ever. I’ll see where this takes me over the next few weeks, but right now, I think I have to quit. Just looking at the Julia Child book is making me think I need to eat.

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HOW could I have forgotten A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens? Good heavens. I did. I wrote all the above this morning (13 June 2011), and now it’s almost 5 pm, and I feel like a total loser for dissing the Inimitable One.

So along these lines, then I can easily start to include some other favs that were alluding me before. Plus, I’ve had time to ponder. Like all the stuff on this page, there’s no special order to these; I’ve just jotted them down in the order they happened to come to mind.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers–all by Malcolm Gladwell (I’m a big fan)

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

Pendennis and Vanity Fair–both by William Makepeace Thackeray

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials–the whole series) by Philip Pullman

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Anything by Jasper Fforde–starting with The Eyre Affair.

Anything by Alexandre Dumas

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder

Anything by Edgar Allen Poe

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Anything by Neil Stephenson, but esp. The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer

So there. I’ve gotten a few more on here. But I have loads more. Just can’t think anymore about who or what… However, I have to mention a few modern (20th and 21st century) authors–they are all ones I’ve read and read, again and again, and would read yet again (some are really on the fence between centuries, too, but so are the above–let’s not worry about traditional literary divisions here):

• Arthur Conan Doyle
• Robert Ludlum
• Helen MacInnes
• John LeCarre
• Dick Francis
• Agatha Christie
• Len Deighton
• Raymond Chandler
• Elmore Leonard
• Michael Connelly
• Ken Follett
• Isaac Asimov
• Robert Heinlein
• Ursula LeGuin
• Martha Grimes
• Dorothy Sayers
• Alexander McCall Smith
• Dashiell Hammett
• Carl Hiaasen
• Linda Fairstein
• M.M. Kaye
• James Clavell
• John Jakes
• Michael Chabon

I loved a good spy novel or mystery wen I was growing up–still do. Also the hard-boiled detective novel or story–can’t get enough. I watched Dragnet with my Grandfather when I was VERY young and, of course, have watch on TVLand reruns–love Jack Webb: “This is the city. Los Angeles, California. I work here. I carry a badge. My name’s Friday. The story you are about to see is true; the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” Maybe I loved it because I grew up in LA and its environs, but somehow the spreadoutedness of LA just lends itself to the kind of detective story I enjoy, but I never limit myself, as you can see.

Give me a big sweeping epic novel, too, and I’ll get lost for hours, days, weeks–however long it takes, I’ll take the time to invest. Reading was something I was very good at all my life (not a lot of TV channels when I was a kid), and I still love to get lost in reading. Now I can get lost in writing, too. What a gift reading has given me in that way, especially after I learned to read like a writer.