Read in December 2010

1. The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978, by Sarah Greenough et al.
Jeez. Anonymous snapshots by normal people. I loved this so much; it made my heart feel full. Some of them are startlingly beautiful. The snapshot aesthetic fascinates me. Perhaps it's connotation, but it can be so poignant...

2. 73 Poems, by e.e. cummings
It seems to me that everyone who reads poetry has read and probably liked a handful of e.e. cummings poems. This was my first time reading a significant quantity of him all together. I enjoy his expressiveness, and I really enjoy the way my brain has to work to read his poems.

3. Aesop's Fables, by Leaf Munro
Eh. Not much to say.

4. Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen
I really liked this. I think it's better than the movie. More interesting, less dramatic. Perfect structure: alternates between narration and personal essays about her two years in a psychiatric hospital. Genuinely funny and avoids the pitfalls of 1) getting bogged down in romanticized/sensationalized Sturm und Drang and 2) forcing the experience to be profound in ways that it wasn't or have a climactic "now I have made sense of everything" tidily tied-up takeaway. It's more like: this is what is was like; these are my thoughts.

5. Trickster's Choice, by Tamora Pierce
Coming back to Tamora Pierce's Tortall fantasies feels like coming home to me. Aly's not my favorite; she's a little too perfect and I don't love her mannerisms, but of course I enjoyed the book and read about a hundred pages of it at a time. The character Nawat and getting inside a new culture, that of the Copper Isles, were what I liked best about this one.