# 14 Read 16 Works of Fiction

When I was dying of boredom, I got the dude to take me to the library, and this is one of the books I got. There's something I love about Peter Whimsy. Gaudy Night is one of my favorite mysteries of all time. Unnatural Death is more of a how-dunnit than a who-dunnit--kind of like Columbo. There is something a little jarring, though, about the 1920's lack of political correctness, or as the new book I am reading, In Other Words, would have it, onderbuikgevoelens (Dutch for socially unacceptable sentiments). Full report when I finish, probably on the bus ride home.

Recently--Mother's Day to be exact--I gave my niece a box of our old books. My contribution was the Nancy Drew novels I had loved as a child and my sister's was some Roald Dahl novels. Yesterday, Lala reported that she's read three Nancy Drew books. They're saying she takes after me. Of course, the books are short and she has way more free time than most of us, but she is only eight.

Fiction: 15

#14 Read 16 Works of Fiction

Ella Minnow Pea

by Mark Dunn

Another in the series of books recommended by Nancy Pearl, Ella Minnow Pea is a "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable." On a fictional island nation off the coast of South Carolina, a government grows steadily more oppressive (linguistically at first) as letters fall from a statue dedicated to the developer of the pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The situation grows increasingly absurd until half the island is in exile. In the past few years I have found reading books about oppressive governments to cause me to feel increasing dis-ease. Especially when so many characters are willing to stand by and let the government do as it pleases. Interestingly, the Kirkus review calls this book "lighthearted" where LJ (in a starred review) compares it to "The Lottery" or "Fahrenheit 451" with "farce and comic relief" stirred in. I have to say I'm on the side of Library Journal. Other reviewers say it's a book for people who love words and wordplay, and I'll admit to you I needed to use the dictionary once while I was reading. It's surprising how obscure words come to the fore when you can't/don't write with the letters q, z, j, and d.

Fiction: 15

#14: Read 16 Works of Fiction

The Friday Night Knitting Club
Kate Jacobs

I won this book in the Craft Magazine/baseball thingamajig. Yesterday, I picked it up when I was in the craft room sewing. I read about 60 pages, and was totally hooked. It's a nice cozy little book about people who hang around in a yarn shop. It's about women's lives and how they form friendships. It's a lot more warm than Whitney Otto's How to Make an American Quilt but less academic? literary? Something really sad happens, but I'm not going to tell you because you should read it.

The dude saw me put the book down and asked how many pages. 345. "I couldn't have read that book today if I had stayed home from work." But I didn't read it all today. And it was just a little cozy book with the big sad thing. But it made me all warm and fuzzy anyway.

Fiction: 14

#14 870 Pages Down

...652 to go. Finished Order of the Phoenix tonight. Maybe I'll go stitch a little as a reward.

#14 More Potter

I finished Goblet of Fire last night after the Di Bruno Brothers cheese tasting we went to for the dude's upcoming birthday. It was English beer and cheese night. Mmmmmmmm cheese.

I have plenty of time to read the Order of the Phoenix before the movie is released.

I have been made aware that I am the topic of lunchroom conversation. That feels pretty weird, but I'll cope. I told the dude of brave astronaut's complaint about the rereading (see comments below), and he agrees. The discussion devolved into how great he is because he has read loads of books--at least one every two weeks--on our commute. (He was kidding.) He does read incredibly widely: authors of classics (The Defense), international Nobel Prize winners (Master of Go and Thousand Cranes), nonfiction (Where I was From), contemporary British fiction (Brick Lane)...just in the past few months alone. But for me, the point was to get back into reading, which I had pretty much stopped all together after grad school. I was nearing illiteracy...which is pathetic for a PhD in English lit. Plus which I have this hobby which you can't do while reading, and competes for the same time in my day.

The heavy load of nonfiction is the effort to stretch myself (and you will note, I'm not making nearly the progress on that). I will turn to it soon...say, the end of July.

#14 More Fiction

A couple of weeks ago, Cheryl in DC wrote to tell me about Confessions of a Teen Sleuth: A Parody by Chelsea Cain. It had been recommended by Nancy Pearl on NPR. Pearl let on that in the book Carolyn Keene had been the real Nancy Drew's roommate at my alma mater, Bryn Mawr, and that clinched it. Plus I was such a huge fan of Nancy Drew when I was a kid (Nancy Drew and Scooby Doo--I still love me a good mystery. And since Scooby Doo is my niece's favorite show, and now that she is reading chapter books, I know just what to get her for Christmas!)

This book was fun and quick. I guess I never realized how annoying those Nancy Drew books were. I loved the chapter where George, now a feminist professor, gathers the heroines of teen mysteries to discuss what kind of role models they were. Some parts of the book are really rather clever. It's entertaining, but never laugh out loud funny. Well worth reading if you read these books as a kid and wondered what happened when Nancy settled down and grew old.

Fiction: 8

#14 Honey, Don't

Fiction: 7

#14 Read 16 Works of Fiction

Jennifer Government
By Max Barry

In this post-punk dystopia, corporations literally rule the world which has shriveled in size to three markets: USA (“free market”) countries, non-US economic blocs, and fragmented (ie emerging and hostile) markets. This book takes the reasoning of free trade to a logical but horrifying conclusion: a world where kids attend school funded by Mattel and learn about Barbie releases; where employers names their employees; where identity is supplanted by consumer goods.

I enjoyed this book. I thought it was a pointed critique of cultural and economic dominance of the US. Critics seemed to dislike the “one dimensional characters” but I think it adds to the atmosphere—where people are judged by their things, how on earth can we expect depth? Others complained about the choppiness, but clearly they didn’t see the sort of ad campaign vibe the author was creating.

Oddly, John Nike—the boss John Nike, not his underling John Nike—totally reminded me of this Wharton asshat I dated in college. I wish Jennifer Government had shot him.

Fiction: 6

#14 Read 16 works of fiction

Well, I found a mystery recommended by Nancy Pearl. (She recommends quite a few actually.) I have always enjoyed the A&E (Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton) Nero Wolfe, so it's about time I read the originals. Of course, it's very difficult to imagine anyone but Chaykin as Wolfe and Hutton as Archie, but I enjoyed reading it. Now I only have 72 more in the series. (I'm a huge fan of serial mysteries!)

Fiction: 5

More reading

Part of my dissertation examined the work of Margaret Atwood. She published this book after I completed that project, just when I had given up reading--taking a sort of well-deserved rest. I've read all the rest of her novels, and I usually quite enjoy them, so I wanted to complete the task she has set. And now I find out about the Penelopiad. Nevertheless...

I didn't enjoy Oryx and Crake as much as her other dystopia, The Handmaid's Tale. But O&C did make me think about something--in the end, when you have no need for language, what bits and pieces will be caught in your head? What stories will you remember how to tell? What words will keep you company? Me, I'll probably remember totally useless things about cooking with an oven and all the episodes of Seinfeld and The Simpsons.


I know I said the rest of the books had to be recommended in Nancy Pearl's Book Lust books, but I broke the rule already. I read A History of the African-American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond. I know Jim Kincaid, and I wanted to read it. It was funny, but the scary crazy character who proposed the book reminded me of my old boss, so there was a lot of dis-ease as I read. Some laughter. How come there aren't as many good satires as there ought to be? We all love Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert so why don't we have those types of voices on paper? Writers? Get to work!

Fiction: 4 down

Reading

I have read a couple of mysteries, and I think I've said this before: I don't know if I should count them toward my quota of fiction. They are fiction, but it takes me so much less time and brainpower to read mysteries than to read more highbrow stuff. I read Deadhead, a Dalziel and Pascoe mystery by Reginald Hill and Mrs. Malory and Death in Practice by Hazel Holt. I am also reading Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake; I'll probably finish that tonight, unless I decide to work on some crafts. Maybe I should make some sort of random qualification about what counts toward the fiction list, like the book has to be recommended in Book Lust. I hereby amend the list.

I also finished Mother Tongue from the Bryson list. It's very similar to Made in America, except there's more information on British English and English-around-the-world. It was okay. I have started looking for the other books, and even though I've checked several university libraries, I can't find Palace Under the Alps. I'm not buying it for $60 off amazon.

Well, there are some disorganized thoughts for you. The kitchen floor will be ready Monday. Big excitement!

#14 Read 16 Works of Fiction

1. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby. I don't think this book is quite as bad as people on Amazon are making out to be. It's probably not Hornby's best, but I really liked the idea of it. I kept thinking of that Chris Rock bit where he says you haven't been in love if you haven't planned your spouse's death...if you haven't brought the rat poison...if you haven't bought the rug to roll up the dead body in. I think if you don't like that joke, you won't get this book. I think so many people have thought about their spouse changing--not in truly substantial ways, but what would happen if, say, your husband started cleaning? It sounds good but we haven't thought it through to it's logical conclusion. I do believe this book reaches the logical conclusion, even if there's not that much logic sometimes. Anyway, it made me want to read more Hornby.

2. Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich I read this in one go to take my mind off the pain (I just had bunion surgery). It's funny, but I just had the feeling that I was missing too much because I hadn't read the first book. I think there might be more of a character sketch in that book. As a series lover, I enjoy not having to read those few paragraphs where the characters are set up so that people who don't read the series can catch on. Selfish. Evanovich is a funny one so it wasn't just the percoset that made me laugh out loud while I read this one. It was a light bit of fluff, and I do think I meant books not like this when I set out to read 16 works of fiction.