Join the President Obama Book Club!

Check out this presidential reading list from The Daily Beast. Its packed full of what President Obama has been reading so far this year, many of them presidential biographies, some literary fiction and a couple others on very timely topics (read: environmental technology and climate change).

2008 Books read (as of August)

It might be better to start keeping my lists of books read online. I've traditionally kept my list in a notebook, which works perfectly fine, but thought it might be interesting to share what I've read with others.
The list is chronological, starting with most recent first:

1. Isaac's Storm: a man, a time, and the deadliest hurricane in history, Erik Larson
2. When You are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
3. Survival of the Sickest: the surprising connections between disease and longevity, Dr. Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince
4. The Mistress's Daughter: a memoir, A.M. Homes
5. The Size of the World, Joan Sibber
6. The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
7. In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden, Kathleen Cambor
8. In a Country of Mothers, A.M. Homes
9. Jack, A.M. Homes
10. Harley, like a person, Cat Bauer (YA novel)
11. Homeless Bird, Gloria Whelan (YA novel)
12. Godless, Pete Hautman (YA novel)
13. One Good Turn, Kate Atkinson
14. Jessica Farm, vol. I, Josh Simmons (graphic novel)
15. Y: The Last Man, vol. II: Cycles, Brian Vaughan (graphic novel)
16. Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, Diana Gabaldon
17. Daddy's Girl, Debbie Drechsler (graphic novel)
18. The Amber Spyglass, Phillip Pullman
19. Fables: Legends in Exile (vol. I), Bill Willingham
20. Y: The Last Man, vol. I: Unmanned, Brian Vaughan
21. The Subtle Knife, Phillip Pullman
22. Plum Wine, Angela Davis-Gardner
23. The Golden Compass, Phillip Pullman
24. This Book Will Save Your Life, A.M. Homes

Since I've joined the 50 Book Challenge on LibraryThing, I'm falling a little behind, since I should be at around 30-35 books read if I want to make the 50 books by December 31st. Reading 5-10 graphic novels or YA novels should meet that goal!

Book stats

In my zealous quest to catalog all my books (please see post from yesterday) I have tallied up my reading stats from the past several years and give you some selected figures to dwell on (drumroll please):

33 books in 2007 -- I gave birth to my first child and didn't seem to have a lick of time to myself. 'Nuff said.

65 books in 2006 -- This is probably an inflated figure because so many of the titles were graphic novels. But they still count!

22 books in 2004 -- Lowest amount read during the thirteen years I have tallied the books I read. Surprising on the face of it, since I was newly divorced and all, but it is also the year I met Jeff, so there you go...

108 books read in 1998 -- Whew! I looked through my list and had to count again - 108 books in one year?? Wow, impressive. I was also unhappy in my marriage, on a major readers' advisory committee at work where we were selecting all the best books of the year, and lonely in a city where my then-husband and I knew practically no one.

I yearn for the days when I could read 100 books in a year...but wouldn't give up my present life on a bet!

LibraryThing addiction

Yes, its true. I have become addicted to LibraryThing. The social cataloging application is slowly ruining my tastes for other social networking sites and causing me to steadily lose interest in almost anything else besides cataloging my enormous home book collection. My husband bought me a $25 gift card so I could have a lifetime membership - basically its either that or pay $10 a year to have an unlimited number of books cataloged. Its an interesting production; I'm learning quite a bit about myself along the way. It is also forcing me to realize that I have waaaay too many books and need to assess my collection (should I keep all those M.C. Beaton paperbacks my mother-in-law gave me - 35, yikes! - or ditch them since, if I am honest with myself, I will NEVER end up reading them all?).
Sigh, so much to do, so little time to do it. Especially now that I am busily cataloging...

Oprah's Book Club

Oprah's Book Club has been around for so long that is part of the vernacular in the book world. Oprah's latest book is The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, a historical novel set in the Middle Ages.

Swann

Swann, by Carol Shields, was a difficult novel to start (and not the least of which was my difficulty concentrating on a novel while also taking care of my six month old son!). The novel is about the mysterious Mary Swann, a Manitoba housewife who is murdered before the story even begins. Swann is a poet and her works are "discovered" by a feminist scholar, Sarah Maloney, who is manipulative and ambitious, plus much too in love with herself. The irony of Sarah, of course, is her much-too-much attention to her looks and ultimate marriage to Stephen. The novel is about a symposium devoted to scholarship of this unknown poet. The story is narrated by four different characters who are influenced and affected by Mary Swann and her legacy. The aforementioned Sarah Maloney discovered the poet when visiting a remote cabin and on the run from a lover. The second narrator, Morton Jimroy, is an esteemed literary biographer writing about Swann's life, but reduced to stealing a fountain pen from the poet's daughter when interviewing her for his book. The third narrator is spinster librarian (what a cliche!) Rose Hindmarch who supposedly knew the poet best, but actually knows nothing at all. And, finally, narrator four is Frederic Cruzzi, erstwhile newspaper editor and poetry publisher who meets Mary Swann on the day she is murdered and has a secret of his own about her poems.

At the same time each of these characters are narrating the story of their relationship with Mary Swann, pieces of Swann's life are mysteriously disappearing, as if traces of Mary herself are gone. The novel is ambitious and the last section is a humorous send-up of academic symposia, but the whole of the novel tries to convey the nature of Mary's loss -- her murder as well as the loss of any legacy she left behind. It succeeds at conveying the bumbling nature of the four people who supposedly "knew" her the best and the irony of what they did not know.

Reading challenges

These reading challenges always get me. I would love to compete (I think in the past I could have quite easily been in medal contention) but don't have the time -- babies tend to get fussy if their moms ignore them for too long while they read. The one above from Kate's Blog sounds interesting, but what kind of challenge should I give myself?

Here's a thought: try to read all the books by a favorite author in a row. I.e. finish all Carol Shields, one after the other. Move on to A.M. Homes, then finish up the month with all the books Barbara Kingsolver has ever written. And don't let the preceding sentence fool you -- I would never manage to get through all these books in a month! That was foolish. More like the rest of the year...