Tag: books

Read in February.

Only five books this month, though I dabbled in many more than that. This was a huge nonfiction month, both due to the Lint Project and to the arrival of a couple of nonfiction books that were on hold. I like nonfiction, but often find that if I read too much of it, I need to retreat to fiction, if only for a book.

Finished
The Mermaid Chair
Sue Monk Kidd

The History of Love
Nicole Krauss

Ready to wear: an experts guide to choosing and using your wardrobe
Mary Lou Andre

Comeback: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey Through Hell and Back
Claire & Mia Fontaine

If the Creek Don’t Rise: My Life Out West With the Last Black Widow of the Civil War
Rita Williams

The Pocket Stylist: Behind-the-Scenes Expertise From a Fashion Pro on Creating Your Own Look
Kendall Farr

Started but didn’t finish.
Secrets of style: the complete guide to dressing your best every day
Editors of In Style
I got started on this, but they spent too much time discussing how to disguise flaws, so my attention wandered.

The look.
Randolph Duke
I enjoyed this book. Randolph Duke had a nice section about “the line” which was good to read. He also had flattering name for body types. No “pears” were mentioned. I read through the work clothing section and wandered off when I got to casual wear.

Didn’t even start.
Truth and Bright Water.
Thomas King

(The remaining books were checked out for research purposes and I finished the research portion of the Lint Project before I got to the books.)

10 Steps to Fashion Freedom: Discover Your Personal Style From The Inside Out
Malcom Levine & Kate Mayfield

Business casual made easy: the complete guide to business casual dress for men and women
Ilene Amiel & Angie Michael

The Lucky Shopping Manual: Building and Improving Your Wardrobe Piece by Piece.
Andrea Linnett

Sam Saboura’s Real Style: Style Secrets For Real Women With Real Bodies
Sam Saboura

Chic Simple Dress Smart for Women: Wardrobes that Win in the Workplace.
Kim Johnson Gross

The Pocket Stylist: Behind-the-Scenes Expertise From a Fashion Pro on Creating Your Own Look

I really liked this book. It is small, so you can take it with you when you shop. The author explains what she, as a stylist does. Aside from dressing movie starts and personal clients, she also is hired by advertising agencies to dress any model you may see in the ad. This is a niche market I never even thought about.

There were some good tips in the book. My favorite was to take your waist measurement and your rise measurement. When looking for pants, bring along a tape measure and use it to decide if you want to try on a pair of pants. The front of the pants should be half your waist measurement. If the rise matches, you have a potential winner. If not, move up or down a size. Genius! She also solved the mystery of taking measurements. I’ve often wondered how tight to pull the tape. I learned for comfortable ease, always add the width of two fingers into your measurements.

If the Creek Don’t Rise: My Life Out West With the Last Black Widow of the Civil War

Rita Williams’ mother died when she was four and after that she was raised by her Aunt Daisy. The book explores their contentious relationship, growing up Black in the middle of lily-white Colorado, their self-sufficiency and their extreme poverty. It was a very sad, yet fascinating story. I would love to find out what happened to Rita Williams after she left her Aunt’s care.

Comeback: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey Through Hell and Back

Claire & Mia Fontaine
One day, Mia Fontaine, the seemingly normal 14 year old daughter of Claire Fontaine, just up and ran away. When Claire found her, she was using drugs. This book, written by both mother and daughter, follows their story as Claire works to get Mia into a treatment program she can’t run away from. It was very gripping for the majority of the book, though the time Mia spent in treatment did drag on a bit. It was interesting to see how Mia’s drug use changed her mother and herself, for good.

Ready to wear: an experts guide to choosing and using your wardrobe. Mary Lou Andre

This is the first book I’ve finished of the slew of wardrobe-choosing books I’ve checked out from the library. I liked it a lot and have made it my main “planning my plan” book for my Lint project. Mary Lou Andre first suggests removing all clothing from your closet and keeping only the items you love and are currently wearing. Then she has you shop in your closet for outfits and write down those outfits on a handy chart she includes in the back of the book. As you shop your closet and see which items are missing, you then make another list of what you need to take shopping with you. This makes sense to me and solves one of my biggest problems, namely going to the store and dithering about what I need.

There are also fun stories from her business and descriptions of essential parts of your wardrobe as well as smart tips. My favorite was that once your tights get a run or hole in them, to slit the label.

The History of Love. Nicole Krauss

Most novels I read are stories. That is, they have characters and a plot and plot devices and everything gets wrapped up in the end. They are sort of like real life, but not really. Real life never really wraps up as neatly as novels. You meet the guy, you find each other and pledge love and at the place where the novel of your life would end there comes a whole life of dishes that need to be done and bills to be paid and work to go to. Even on gray rainy days.

I loved this book because it was a slice of life. In real life people may never know what happened to this or that dropped plot line in their life. They may know each other. They may have said goodbye forever only to discover each other, by chance decades later. They may have a chance meeting with a stranger that connects dots for them. Or maybe everything is murky.

I loved this book because Leo Gursky, the character we meet first, is such a force of nature. An old man, retired locksmith in New York City, never married, who carries a note in his wallet explaining he has no family and where to bury him. Seeing the world through his eyes is a reason to read fiction.

Other characters were also wonderful. I can’t say enough about this book. I don’t even resent that someone the same age as me could create such a perfect thing. Read it.

Read in January.

Seven books read this month, with one of them being 800+ pages. It was a good reading month. I didn’t get a chance to publish these individually, so here is a long entry.

Read.
The Gum Thief
Douglas Coupland
Roger, early forties, alcoholic, works at Staples. Bethany, early twenties, goth girl, works at Staples. Bethany finds Roger’s writings one day, including a short piece Roger wrote about Bethany’s view of the world. They begin writing back and forth to each other and Roger shares his novel, Glove Pond with Bethany, who really loves it.

I liked the relationship between the two characters, which was the rarely depicted between-sexes-friendship. I liked how badly written Glove Pond was. I liked that the story captured the numbness of working at a major chain store. I was confused about the ending. Overall, I enjoyed the book.

Motherless Brooklyn
Johnathan Lethem
What if your main character was an orphan (favorite tv plot device of the 1980s) and suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome? And what if he worked as a quasi-detective/driver for a small time mafia guy in Brooklyn? And what if that small time mafia guy got killed and the main character tried to solve the case?

If you put all those things together, you get this book. I liked the writing style and how I gradually adjusted to Lional’s Tourettic outbursts. I liked that it was essentially a mystery, but not as formulaic and more interesting. I especially liked understanding how Tourette’s Syndrome manifested itself in this character, and it cleared up for me why all people with Tourette’s don’t just take medication, something I’ve often wondered. This was a nice escape-type read.

Dr. Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet
Peter H. Gott
I’ve been not eating gluten and sugar among other things anyway, so I figured I would check out to see what Dr. Gott says about the whole thing. Dr Gott thinks that you just need to eliminate all flour from your diet (so no bread, or pasta or tortillas, etc.) and all sugar and voila! No more excess weight. According to him, once you reach your goal weight, you can start eating bread products again, but not sugar. He does, however, think sugar substitutes are fine, something I find not fine.

It was a pretty simple diet plan and it did inspire me to stop eating what were my calorie bombs of honey, coconut and peanut butter. If you aren’t too attached to flour and sugar anyway, this might be the book for you.

The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters
Charlotte Mosley, Ed.

I got this book because it sounded interesting. Not interesting like, “I want to read that,” but interesting like “I should read that.” When I got it, I groaned. It was huge, 834 pages, and I figured I would start it and wander off about a quarter of the way through.

Boy howdy was I wrong. It was an incredibly engrossing book and I loved every minute of it. The six Mitford sisters, born between 1904 and 1920 started writing to each other in their 20’s and continued throughout their lives. Four of them became authors, one moved to Germany and fell in love with Hitler and his party, one married the leader of the pre-WWII fascist party in England, one moved to the United States and became a communist and one ended up the Duchess of Devonshire. It was fascinating reading their views of history as it happened. The 1930’s correspondence between Unity and Diana was particularly eye opening. I enjoyed this book so much and recommend it for anyone who likes history and reading other people’s letters.

Love in the Time of Taffeta
Eugenie Olson
After finishing The Mitfords: letters between six sisters, I needed something light. This fit the bill. Partway through, I found myself in familiar territory. The main character:

  • Lives in Boston
  • Rides a bike
  • Has a dead-end job
  • Smokes
  • Makes poor choices in men
  • Is generally unhappy.

It was as if the author knew me when I lived in Boston.
Aside from the strange sense of deja vu, I enjoyed this book, particularly the main character’s roommate and her “secret” career.

Whale season: a novel
N.M. Kelby
Another good, light novel to read in a day. I picked this one up when I was near the end of Henry and Clara and things were getting ominous. This was set in a small Florida town and is peopled with a lot of quirky characters. Not overly quirky, so they are annoying, but just unique. Jesus comes to town at Christmas time in a fancy RV. His method of bringing salvation is a bit suspect and the people in the town deal with Jesus and their own problems.

Henry & Clara
Thomas Mallon

I’ve read this before and remember enjoying it and so I picked it up again. It’s the story, based on true events, of Henry Rathborn & Clara Harris, the engaged couple who were the other two people in Abraham Lincoln’s box. The book begins with John Wilks Booth making his escape from Ford’s Theater and then flashes back to Henry & Clara’s first meeting, when Clara was ten and Henry seven. Clara’s father married Henry’s mother three years later and the children were raised as step-siblings. The book follows their lives from that time, through the Civil War, the assassination and it’s aftermath, as well as their married life. Those looking for a happy ending won’t find it, but it is a well written book with an engrossing story.

Started but didn’t finish.
The complete Travel Detective Bible

Peter Greenburg

I didn’t read the whole thing, but I did pick up some good tips from this tome.

Cooking from the Garden: Original and Unusual recipes to enhance your garden harvest.
Margaret Leibenstein
This doesn’t have very many recipes and most of them have too many ingredients for me.

The Structure House Weight Loss Plan.
Gerard L. Musante

I started this, but The Mitfords were distracting me and I never got through the first quiz.

Bandbox.

Thomas Mallon
I couldn’t get into this book set in a magazine publishing office in the 1920s. I may have not given it the proper attention in the first 50 pages.

Checked out and didn’t even read.
I at least started everything I read this month.

Read in December.

There was this holiday this month, you might have heard of it. It’s called Christmas? It cramped my reading style. I only read six books, but I was busy. I think I was sleeping better, too, which is nice, but means less reading time. Also, post Christmas I built shelves, and when I wasn’t doing that I was watching season one of The West Wing. So, not as much reading for me.

I’m pretty happy with Goodreads, though. Not the least because I have a place to put a permanent “to read” list that I won’t use. Thanks for recommending it, Sara. And thanks for the recommendations, April. Keep them coming.


Read this month:
Mrs. Mike
Benedict & Nancy Freedman
Hideous Kinky
Esther Freud

The Year of Living Biblically.
A.J. Jacobs.

The story of General Dann & Mara’s daughter, Griot and the snow dog: a novel.
Doris Lessing.

Accidental Happiness: a novel

Jean Reynolds Page

The Wishbones
Tom Perrotta

Started but didn’t finish:

As cool as I am.
Pete Fromm

I got the feeling things weren’t going to go well for the protagonist. I put down the book and didn’t every pick it up again.

Men’s Health ultimate dumbbell guide: more than 21,000 moves designed to build muscle and increase strength.

I’ve been flirting with the idea of starting a weight training program again and this was the perfect book. Imagine, doing a whole workout at home with just dumbbells. I’ll probably buy this book.

Low-Carbon Diet: a 30 day program to lose 5,000 pounds
David Gershon

I liked this book, it is very slender compared to many “save the earth” tomes. It’s a step-by-step book to reduce your carbon footprint. I’ll revisit this when I have more time.

The Pirate’s Daughter

Margaret Cezair-Thompson

I was really into this book for about half of it. It is a very interesting “suppose if” book. Suppose if Erroll Flynn fathered a child with a 16 year old Jamaican girl. Then suppose that girl grows up during the independence movement. I loved the writing style and the twisty and turn-y details. I just didn’t finish it and back it went to the library. Someday.

Legends of the Fall
Jim Harrison
I hated this movie when it came out so I decided to see if the book was any better. I started reading and became very confused because I was in Mexico, not Montana. I eventually figured out that there were three short stories within the book. I started reading “Legends” on the day it was due as I was taking it to the library and it did seem good. Maybe I’ll get it again soon.

Checked out and didn’t even read:
The Rising Sun.
Douglas Galbraith.

The Colony
John Tayman

Jokeman 8
Richard Melo
Flipped through it and saw some weird font, things going on. Ran out of time and decided to send this back.

The Wishbones. Tom Perrotta.

Engrossing story of a man over the age of 30 who learns to grow up. He loves playing in a wedding band, and has been dating the same girl for 15 years, “off and on” as he likes to say, but when he accidentally proposes to her, and the wedding is suddenly on, he has to come to terms with real life. How he does it isn’t necessarily the textbook way, and I don’t think his marriage will last long, but the story was very real and understandable. I enjoyed this book.