Rory Gilmore's Bookshelf

Maybe it's because I'm always trying to come up with potential books to pick for book club, but when a good list of books comes up, I can't help myself but to read through it and see if anything strikes my fancy. Plus, I love a good "how many of these have I read?" challenge! The latest list I have found comes from Bust Magazine (a hip feminist mag I recently subscribed to), and happens to involve one of my most favorite TV shows, Gilmore Girls.

It seems I'm not the only one interested in this idea. Check out this blog and this blog for more!  

While Rory Gilmore honestly always bugged me-- I mean, why did everyone think she was so amazing and perfect? Was she really that great?-- but I still can't help myself but to see how I stack up against her bookshelf. Below is the list of books that appeared in the series (c/o this Tumblr). A strike-through means I've read the book, and a highlight means I own it!

 Finally tally-- I've read 28, and I own an additional three. There are some that I'm pretty embarrassed that I haven't read yet, so maybe this list will get me inspired! 

• A Month Of Sundays by Julie Mars

• The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham         

• Small Island by Andrea Levy  

• My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult  

• A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall  

• My Life in Orange by Tim Guest  

• Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett  

• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon  

• The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby  

• How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer  

• The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson  

• Nervous System by Jan Lars Jensen  

• The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer  

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini  

• How the Light Gets In by M. J. Hyland  

• Oracle Night by Paul Auster  

• Quattrocento by James McKean  

• The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan  

• Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris  

• Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi  

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach  

• The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom  

• The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem  

• Old School by Tobias Wolff  

• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri  

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon  

• The Bielski Brothers by Peter Duff  

• Brick Lane by Monica Ali  

• Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger  

• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood  

• The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht  

• Property by Valerie Martin  

• Rescuing Patty Hearst by Virginia Holman  

• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson  

• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie  

• The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander  

• Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito  

• Bee Season by Myla Goldberg  

• Fat Land : How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser  

• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire  

• Unless by Carol Shields  

• Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy  

• When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka  

• Songbook by Nick Hornby  

• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides  

• Extravagance by Gary Krist  

• Empire Falls by Richard Russo  

• The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker  

• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett  

• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole  

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon  

• Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris   **I'm reading this right now! That counts, right?

• Life of Pi by Yann Martel  

• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy  

• The Red Tent by Anita Diamant  

• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd  

• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold  

• Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn  

• Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand  

• The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus                 

• A Passage to India by E.M. Forster  

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley  

• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton  

• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse  

• Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov  

• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco  

• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens  

• The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson  

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott  

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey  

• Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia De Burgos by Julia De Burgos  

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne  

• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray  

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury  

• The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde  

• Night by Elie Wiesel  

• The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse  

• Hamlet by William Shakespeare  

• Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe  

• Beloved by Toni Morrison  

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith  

• A Separate Peace by John Knowles  

• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw  

• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes  

• The Story of My Life by Helen Keller  

• The Awakening by Kate Chopin  

• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank  

• Time and Again by Jack Finney  

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley  

• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas  

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe  

• Sybil by Flora Schreiber  

• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson  

• Cousin Bette by Honore De Balzac  

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad  

• Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut  

• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov  

• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair  

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck  

• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen   **I'm re-reading this right now for the first time since highschool! 

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo  

• 1984 by George Orwell  

• The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker  

• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway  

• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser  

• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller  

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky  

• Lord of the Flies by William Golding  

• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger  

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald  

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte  

• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath  

• The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner  

• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka  

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain  

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy  

• Emma by Jane Austen  

• On The Road by Jack Kerouac  

• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand 

Farm Anatomy

Grad school is tough. It's a life with lots of work and few pleasures. And despite loving what I do (and more importantly what I will do when I actually get a job), sometimes I like to just day dream about quitting life and moving to a farm where I can just grow vegetables, cut fresh flowers, and finally get a dog.

Julia Rothman's picture book Farm Anatomy: The Curious Parts and Pieces of Country Life provides the perfect escape to country life without the complications of quitting my job or moving. Rothman beautifully illustrates everything from tomato varieties to the appropriate methods of stacking firewood.

I gobbled this book up as a source of entertainment and retreat from reality, but I know that I will keep it and refer back to it as a resource. The book offers a deceptively large amount of information among its fabulous illustrations, and would help any farmer-wannabe get started with planting a garden, canning foods, or identifying a piglet from a shoat (guess you'll just have to buy the book if you want to find that out!)

Okay, back to gazing at the pretty pictures. I can't say I plan on planting an orchard any time soon, but a girl can dream, can't she?

101 Books to Read This Summer -- A Flow Chart

I just found this amazing flow-chart of book recommendations thanks to Teach.com. I guess they are recommending that teens find a book to read on here, but I am sure they won't mind if a 29 year old uses the flow chart instead! I have already read a handful-- and our book club has even read at least two! I can't wait to find another one off the list.

Via Teach.com and USC Rossier Online

18th meeting: Stone Butch Blues

On Sunday, the 18th meeting of Eat, Drink, and Be Literary was hosted by Tana-- it also marked her last meeting since she is graduating (color me jealous) and will be moving to Boston to start a post-doc.  For her last book, Tana chose Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg.

Our meeting was small this time-- only five people-- but we had a great discussion of the novel. It is the story (seeming based loosely on Feinberg's life) of a young butch lesbian, Jess growing up in the 1950's-60's in Buffalo as she struggles with her her gender identity and finds a place in the world. It was brutally hard to read at times (emotionally, I mean), but I am so glad I got through it. This book helped me to really take the perspective of a group of people that I haven't ever before.

The struggles that Jess faced as a child and young adult were horrific, and while this story was fictionalized, I assume that it s representative of so many people's stories. The entire group mentioned how glad we were to be living in a time where women can't be arrested and beaten and raped simply for dancing with one another. While the fight for equality in this country is far from being won, I am thankful that we are closer now than we were 50 years ago.

As happy as I am that I read this, I didn't love all of it. I thought that the first hundred pages were incredibly powerful and eye-opening, but the middle of the book just dragged for me.  A huge part of the novel dealt with the formation of unions and other social movements of the 60's, and while I find this whole era incredibly important and fascinating, I almost thought that there was too much going on in certain points of the book. Too many characters, each with so many struggles I almost became desensitized to them. I guess I just think that the plot could have been streamlined somehow.

Deadlocked... no, really

The latest book in the Sookie Stackhouse series, Deadlocked, is very aptly named as I find myself in a virtual deadlock with the series. While Charlaine Harris' world of "supes" and lusty vampires enticed me for at least seven or eight novels, I'm just over it now. The last two books have lacked any sort of cohesive story line or plot, and I feel like instead I am just "checking in" with all of the characters down in Bon Temps.

So, why am I in a deadlock? I need this series to end; I'm waiting for it to tidily wrap itself up so I don't have to read it anymore. As I have explained in this blog before, I am somehow incapable of quitting a book. I will stop reading it, sure, but I won't ever admit that I'm done, and will keep the never-ender on my bedside table, taunting me every night when I get in to bed and yet again choose something else to read. Well, as it turns out, I am also incapable of quitting series.

So, Ms. Harris, please quit writing these books because I can't quit you! Oh, and p.s., please do not have Sookie end up with Sam because the Sam portrayed on True Blood has ruined his character in the books for me. Okaythankssssss. And while I am on the subject of True Blood... what the heck is going on in this season? Have we abandoned all worthwhile story lines from the books? I'm just not happy with the state of vampire affairs right now, obviously. I just want Eric to wear blue sweaters (see below) and be in love with Sookie. Is that so much to ask?

you are welcome

17th Meeting: Rabbit, Run

The 17th meeting of Eat, Drink, and Be Literary was hosted by one of our newest members, Kelsey. She made her official mark on our book club with a bang, by selecting John Updike's classic Rabbit, Run. Our whole club remarked that while knowing John Updike's name, that we had never actually read anything by him. We were very glad to have righted this obvious wrong!

This novel, the first of the Rabbit series, follows a young man nicknamed Rabbit suffering what we would now refer to as a quarter life crisis. He is 26, married to an alcoholic, has a toddler and a baby on the way, and impulsively decides to leave his home and his life. He runs away from all responsibilities, searches for an identity, and leaves a nothing but uncertainty and destruction behind. 

While I am sure this novel was groundbreaking and scandalous (hence being a banned book) when it came out in the 1960's, for most of us in the book club, it felt like a tired story. We have actually read quite a few novels lately about men suffering crises of virtue and identity, and it is really only palatable in small doses. 

Updike's prose were incredible, though, and it was apparent to all of us why he is a household name. While I didn't love the book, and I especially didn't love Rabbit, I think I might be interested in reading the later books in the series in hopes that I see some actual growth in the character. 

Because of the symbolism of Rabbit's nickname (as a creature without much foresight, and with too much fight or flight instinct), Kelsey suggested that we bring "animal" themed food. I brought radishes from my garden (that's rabbit food, right?), and we had other goodies such as puppy chow, ants on a log, and monkey bread. It was probably the cutest theme yet!

16th Meeting: Love Creeps

Never have I laughed as hard at a book as I did for the April book club book, Love Creeps by Amanda Filapacchi. (Yes, I said April, and yes, it is late June. I'm a little behind. Sue me!) I had high expectations for the book, since my friend Beth picked it, and her last book club pick was our only unanimously liked book-- Willful Creatures.  Luckily this book did not disappoint (well, me anyway-- the rest of the group was mixed, as usual). It was one of the most odd books I've ever read, and riotously funny. 

The book follows a successful New York art gallery owner, Lynn, who is suffering from a "lack of desire". Lynn tries to take a note from her stalker, a schlubby guy named Alan, and stalk someone. Lynn's thought process was that if she pretended to desire someone, the desire would eventually turn real. So, she selects the first man she sees, a tall, dark, and handsome man named Roland, and starts following him. She tries to copy everything her own stalker does, and ends up just forwarding all of Alan's notes (and even some nude photos) without even changing the signatures. While this sounds twisted and dark, it was written in such a matter-of-fact way that the silliness of the situation was the only thing that came through. 

The rest of the novel followed this bizarre love triangle-- the stalked, the stalked-stalker, and the stalker-- through a number of adventures, including an eventual reversal of the stalker chain. Some of the high points of the book for me were the passages told from the point of view of Ray, a homeless former psychologist. Apparently, Ray suffered from "excessive curiosity disorder" and while a therapist, he became so enthralled with his clients' problems that he would call them repeatedly to ask how their relationships were going. This ridiculous condition eventually lost him his job, and landed him in jail on harassment charges. So, once he was out of jail, he lived on the street, and watched the stalk-train walk past. As each of them would stop to give him change, he would whisper advice to them-- "you are being followed" or "get a hobby". It. Was. Hilarious. I clearly cannot do Filpacchi any justice by trying to describe this book, so instead I will just say read this book as soon as possible. Buy it, borrow it, or read it over someone's shoulder on the bus. Just be ready to laugh! As mentioned, the rest of the book club was a bit mixed in their reviews. While everyone agreed that it was funny, a few people didn't think that was enough, and were searching for some sort of meaning behind the silliness. There may have been a point to it, and there may not, but for me, it didn't really matter. I was entertained, and that was enough!