Updated #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: January Reading Wrap-Up

Honestly? I had no intention of doing a reading challenge in 2016 until I discovered #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks at Estella’s Revenge. For the uninitiated, it’s where you read the books you already own. Sum total. How you choose to interpret it is all you, as suggested in the challenge’s subtitle: “The ‘You Do You’ Reading Effort.”

Can I tell you how much I love this challenge? Continue reading “Updated #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: January Reading Wrap-Up”

Does reading great books ruin you for reading good books?

When I finish reading a Charles Dickens novel, a sort of malaise comes over me. I fret that no other novelists writing in or translated into English could possibly engage my imaginative faculties such that I will enjoy and benefit from reading their novels as much as I do from reading Dickens’s.

*sighs dramatically whilst draping back of hand against forehead* Continue reading “Does reading great books ruin you for reading good books?”

Bookish Literary Characters: A Baker’s Dozen

We have quite a snowstorm underway here in New England. Outside my window, it’s all blankets of white draped across the landscape, swirling winds and snow. It makes me think of gingerbread houses encased in a snow globe.

In other words, it’s the perfect day to curl up under a cozy blanket with a good book and a steaming mug of hot chocolate. And if that book were to feature a bookish literary character, the kind that feels like spending time with a like-minded friend, well, so much the better. Continue reading “Bookish Literary Characters: A Baker’s Dozen”

#ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens

I’ve been meaning to read A Tale of Two Cities for ages … or, at least since October. Thanks to #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks, this title has finally been moved onto the “read” list.

Cue the confetti!

If you’ve never read it, A Tale of Two Cities – London and Paris – is set before and during the French Revolution and follows the fates of three intertwined French families. Continue reading “#ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens”

Three ways #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks is making me a better reader

When it comes to stuff, my general policy is, less beats more. Less stuff means fewer things to look after (meaning dust and organize) and more time to spend reading. Except … all this wonderful logic falls apart at the bookstore.

I have very little willpower when it comes to buying books.

Picture me taking a deep, cleansing breath as I type this: I have 489 books on my Nook. I won’t even hazard a guess as to how many are in my house. Suffice it to say, they number well into the upper hundreds.

You can see, then, why #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks captured my imagination. I’m always saying that I have enough books to last a lifetime, then carrying on buying more and more and still more. It’s alarming, if I’m honest. Besides the irritating amount of dusting required, I embarrassed to admit how many books I have double, and sometimes triple, editions of because I no longer know what I have. Continue reading “Three ways #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks is making me a better reader”

“I Felt Like I’d Never Be Cheerful Again,” Or: Reading “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton

Years ago, I took a Victorian poetry class with a professor who looked like Satan dressed up as Colonel Sanders. He was elfishly tiny and wore an ecru linen suit, complete with black string tie. His neatly trimmed beard created a perfect “V” from his laugh lines to his chin. Among these distinctive features were two more: his southern drawl and his assertion that “There is no such thing as American literature.”

As it happens, I was, at that same time and university, enrolled in a course in post-Civil War American literature. While I didn’t exactly agree with Colonel Satan, I could see why one might wish to renounce American literature, at least of that period. My goodness, it’s an endless parade of horrors with no relief (as Dickens uses humor, for example): Maggie, a Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane, The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic, the dreadful McTeague by Frank Norris. Reading these resolutely hopeless novels made me wonder how American earned her reputation for optimism. I can’t see it having been through her literature. Continue reading ““I Felt Like I’d Never Be Cheerful Again,” Or: Reading “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton”

Literary Places: The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City

My mom, who lives in Manhattan, has the best life. She’s out and about five nights out of seven (conservative estimate), partaking of all the city has to offer. Lucky for me, she’s generous with her time and recommendations. She’ll phone me up and say, “There’s a fascinating [insert event] about [insert (obscure) topic] at [insert institution]. Would you like to join me?”

This familiar scenario took a turn for the thrilling on Sunday, when she phoned me up to say, “Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is on display at The Morgan Library. Would you like to go see it with me?” After I spluttered unintelligibly from sheer euphoria and confusion (how did I not know this?!), we made our plans. And yes, as a matter of fact, she will use this event to remind me that I should always, always listen to my mother. She’s not wrong.

The Manuscript (capital M!) is on display through January 10 in Pierpont Morgan’s library, a room of wall-to-wall books. Gorgeous, beautiful, old books. It’s basically heaven, for readers.  Continue reading “Literary Places: The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City”

5 books I bought in 2015 and will be reading in 2016

If you happened to visit the Internet last month, you may have noticed: December featured bags and bags and overflowing bags of “best of 2015” book pieces. And why not? It’s entirely reasonable, at the end of the year, to take stock, and if this stock-taking culminates in 3,592,743* “Best Books of 2015” articles, well, that just means the world is populated by truckloads – I’m talking huge convoys of eighteen-wheelers – of readers, doesn’t it?

As for me, I’ve been known to make a “best of” list now and again. This year, however, I’m trying something new, in part inspired by a hashtag I saw on Instagram, though it apparently originated on Twitter: #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks. The brilliant idea behind this hashtag is, you know, read your own books, meaning the books you already own and that, thus, already populate your bookshelves (virtual or otherwise, one presumes). As it happens, I have quite a few of these (ahem). Continue reading “5 books I bought in 2015 and will be reading in 2016”

A Poem for New Year’s Eve: “Auld Lang Syne” by Robert Burns

This month, I read three thoroughly enjoyable novels set in Edinburgh, all by Alexander McCall Smith – Sunshine on Scotland Street, Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers, and The Sunday Philosophy Club. One name repeatedly invoked by characters is Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet and the creative mind behind a refrain familiar to New Year’s eve revelers the world over: “for auld lang syne.”

In contemporary language, “auld lang syne” translates to “the good old days” or “back in the day,” and the poem indeed exudes warm nostalgia for the days we leave behind us. Instances of the song in popular culture abound. Continue reading “A Poem for New Year’s Eve: “Auld Lang Syne” by Robert Burns”