Read in March 2012

1. Heist Society, by Ally Carter
This was fun. Thanks, Erin.

2. The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield
This gave me a very useful concept, that of Resistance, but I didn't care for his voice or the parts where he waxes metaphysical / quasi-spiritual in these oh-so Romantic directions.

3. Live or Die, by Anne Sexton
This was appropriately opened by the following Author's Note:

“To begin with, I have placed these poems (1962-1966) in the order in which they were written with all due apologies for the fact that they read like a fever chart for a bad case of melancholy. But I thought the order of their creation might be of interest to some readers, and as André Gide wrote in his journal, ‘Despite every resolution of optimist, melancholy occasionally wins out: man has decidedly botched up the planet.’”

4. The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, ed. and trans. Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell
This is a book that I am happy to own. Genius at times. Sorrowful, philosophical, concerned with the mundane, rich with images. I put my Christian upbringing and education to good use catching the biblical allusions that pepper the long poems.

5. Pleiades, by Sui Solitaire
This was heavy with adolescent romantic angst. I liked the last twenty or so pages the best. These missives from Sui's past were interesting partly because I know her now, didn't know here then, but know from her blog some of the context for these writings. Her ear is excellent, and some of these have a distinct spoken-word feeling. Reading this was an oasis in my work day.

Read in February

1. Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover, by Ally Carter
2. Side Show: My Life With Geeks, Freaks, & Vagabonds in the Carny Trade, by Howard Bone
3. A View of the Ocean, by Jan de Hartog
4. Inside Out, by Nadia Shivack
5. A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, by Valerie Zenatti
6. Nothing, by Robin Friedman
7. Red Colored Elegy, by Seiichi Hayashi
8. Dragon Slippers, by Jessica Day George
9. Once Upon a Time in the North, by Philip Pullman
10. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott
11. Click, by [a whole boatload of authors]
12. Burma Chronicles, by Guy Delisle
13. Letters to Children, by C.S. Lewis
14. Paper Towns, by John Green
15. Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta
16. Thin, by Lauren Greenfield

The best:

Red Colored Elegy, a somewhat existential graphic novel about a young couple in Japan. Not the easiest to follow (though not a whole lot happens), but occasionally quite poignant. The artwork is enthralling.

Dragon Slippers is a light, fast-paced fantasy. Quite delightful. Would recommend it to people who like Gail Carson Levine's fantasies.

Traveling Mercies is a series of reflective personal essays on faith and the author's life. Wise and thought-provoking, but she doesn't try to wrap up every story neatly with a moral.

Jellicoe Road, a tangly contemporary young adult novel set at an Australian boarding school. Somewhat dark (though not overall), and very in-sucking. Melina Marchetta is one of my favorite authors, no question.

Thin is a collection of photos and interviews from a residential eating disorder treatment center, and a tie-in to the documentary of the same name. Revealing but extremely sensitive.

Some Monday afternoon linkage

Almost all of you who took my survey (which is still open!) said that you'd like to see a feature like this, so I'm giving it a try. Some favorite stuff picked up from th'internets over the last week:

- This Icelandic photographer's latest pictures remind me of what Duong Thu Huong called "the hallucinatory whiteness" of snow in Russia. More at his flick photostream.

- Colleen at Chasing Ray: "On happy lives". Rather thought-provoking.

- The Pursuit of Harypness is a fairly new blog to me. I don't agree with its writers on all the feminist issues they cover, but where I do, it is tremendously gratifying to me to read what they have to say, because they are so fierce and articulate. "What You've Got in that Bag" is one such post.

- Heather on the Sublime. I like this post because "sublime" is something that I am familiar with feeling, but have never heard explained or even clearly defined before.

- Maureen Johnson is one of the funniest people on my RSS reader, and her Badger Diaries (click for parts one, two, three, four, and five) are hilarious even by her blog's standards.

- Lovely small stone.

- "Homeless Shelter Glossary, Volume 1". The blogger, Tim, oversees a homeless shelter and writes most insightfully about faith and social justice in practice.

- This flickr pool is so great. Even though it fills me with camera envy.

- Very interesting discussion at Anilee's blog on the plausibility of Ally Carter's protagonists knowing fourteen different languages, and a tangent into the issues of what makes something canon and telling versus showing.

Favorites books of 2007

So I'm finally back at school, and in this brief quiet before classes start I looked through my records of books I've read, and out of the ones I read for the first time this year, my absolute favorites were:

Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery -- The kind of story that I finish reluctantly and would want to live in: humorous, warm, and satisfying.
Honeymoon in Purdah, by Alison Wearing* -- One of my favorite books of any year. A beautifully told account of the months the writer spent traveling in Iran, posing with a male friend as a couple on their honeymoon. So poetic and so funny, with a cast of unforgettable characters, and always fascinating. I couldn't put it down. "A delightfully insane jaunt through contemporary Iran."
The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner* -- Cool pseudo-ancient Greek setting, with a seriously well-crafted plot, including an absolutely delicious twist
Blood Red Horse, by K.M. Grant * -- A thoroughly engrossing, perfectly plotted YA novel set in England and the Holy Lands in the time of the Third Crusade
Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale -- Hm...I'm struggling as to what to say, heh.
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman* -- A collection of brilliant essays on all the various aspects of book-loving. Tremendously funny and insightful.
Pyongyang, by Guy Delisle -- A graphic non-novel about the author's time working (he's a French cartoonist) in the North Korean capital. Hilarious and fascinating.

But there were a bunch of others which were also quite good, and I couldn't let those go without mention:
A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor
A Maze Me, by Naomi Shihab Nye
American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang
Culture Shock! Israel, by Dick Winter
A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, by Wendy Shalit
The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo
13 Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen Johnson *
Acceleration, by Graham McNamee *
Avielle of Rhia, by Dia Calhoun
Drowned Wednesday, by Garth Nix
Sir Thursday, by Garth Nix
Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld
Pretties,by Scott Westerfeld
Specials, by Scott Westerfeld
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith *
The Kalahari Typing School for Men, by Alexander McCall Smith
I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You, by Ally Carter
Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, by Ally Carter

*denotes mature/mature-ish content

P.S. I added some blogs to my list over there --> ^