What One Librarian Has Read This Year
Submitted by avmdog on Fri, 06/04/2004 - 09:16
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- Timothy Corrigan Correll, and Patrick Arthur Polk The Cast-Off Recast: Recycling and the Creative Transformation of Mass-Produced Objects Some great photos of recycled art objects, including lots of muffler men sculptures in Southern California muffler shops. Also interesting chapter about craftsmen in Africa who recycle everything in the world. 6/04/04
- Scott Schwartz Faith, Serpents, and Fire: Images of Kentucky Holiness Believers I was disappointed in both the quality of the photographs and the quality of the prose. 6/02/04
- Judith Blackstone Zen for Beginners I'm not too proud to read a comic book introduction to something if I'm interested in it. I could never take any religion seriously though, not even zen. 6/02/04
- David Lodge Nice Work Funny novel about an academic and a factory manager in Britain who are thrown together and have an affair of sorts. Lots of fun. 6/02/04
- Jerzy Kosinski Being There I'm not sure what this was a satire of, to tell the truth. 6/02/04
- Catfish Hunter My Life in Baseball Not too bad for a baseball memoir. Didn't learn too much though. 6/02/04
- Alice Munro The Love of a Good Woman: Stories Still like her a bunch. She has more story collections that I'll get around to one of these days. 6/02/04
- Steve Alford Playing For Knight Alford was an All-American guard who played basketball at Indiana for Bobby Knight and won a NCAA championship his senior year. Not bad for a sports autobiography. What a waste of talent Bobby Knight is. 5/04/04
- D. Graham Burnett A Trial by Jury Professor's story about serving as a foreman of a NYC jury during a murder trial. I did the same thing once so I had my experience to weigh against his. Pretty interesting. 5/04/04
- Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks Little too padded with detail about the types of microphones, and some useless background about the state of the union in the mid-seventies, but enough here for the Dylan fan to enjoy. I had no idea his brother set up the Minnesota recording sessions. 5/04/04
- Rachel Maines The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction She spoke on campus but unfortunately I was out of town so I missed her talk. Learned some things from reading the book - vibrators were initially developed for physicians to relieve the symptoms of "hysteria" by bringing their female patients to orgasm. 5/04/04
- James Aune Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness Kind of had to slog through this one in places - at least it was short. Reads too much like an academic paper at times. He examines the rhetoric behind the free market concept. I did learn some things. 4/23/04
- David Shipler The Working Poor: Invisible in America Not as good as "Invisible Family" or "Nickled and Dimed" (although I only read excerpts of that one). Still worthwhile - tells the stories of individuals and families stuck working nothing jobs for little money and no security. 4/23/04
- Greg Halpern Harvard Works Because We Do Fascinating large book - a photographic essay on the low wage workers at Harvard and their battle for a living wage. Their stories are gripping. 4/02/04
- Sara Nelson So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading Fun book where the author decided to read a book a week for one year and write a book about the experience. If you are a reader then you'll enjoy it. 4/02/04
- Tommy John T.J. : My 26 Years in Baseball The rare baseball memoir that was actually well-written. Reminded me of Ball Four, except not as much dirt, but provides a good explanation of what it's like pitching in the majors. I didn't realize he worked as a baseball coach at University of North Carolina - Dean Smith does not come out well in his stories. 4/02/04
- Jack McKeon Jack of All Trades Became famous (kind of) for leading the Marlins to World Series last year at age 72. But boy he comes off as a jerk in this book he wrote in the 80's. Every other story seems to end with "So I decked him." Should be remembered for trading Ozzie Smith for Gary Templeton. 4/02/04
- Harry Carray Holy Cow Shaggy dog autobiography of the Cubs and Cardinals announcer. Learned a few things about Bill Veeck, Charlie FInley, and how Harry liked to drink and screw around. 4/02/04
- 20 Years of Mountain Stage Large pictorial history of the great public radio show from Charleston. Lots of neat photos of people before and after they became stars - Norah Jones, REM, etc. Enjoyed it. 4/02/04
- Kevin McDermott Elephant House, Or The Home of Edward Gorey A book of photographs of Edward Gorey's house, along with some brief text by a young man who knew Gorey and performed in a couple of his plays. If you like Gorey it's a nice book. 3/11/04
- John Baxter A Pound of Paper : Confessions of a Book Addict Pretty good. An Australian who lived both in England and America, and a guy who did some book scouting and selling, he has lots of stories to tell and most are worth reading. 3/11/04
- Martin Appel Yesterday's Heroes: Revisiting the Old Time Baseball Stars Not very good. Very short chapters on former baseball players - mostly journeymen who were never stars. Very little of substance comes through - you don't get much of a sense of what their playing lives were like. 3/11/04
- Nicholas A. Basbanes A Splendor of Letters : The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World I've read all of his books on booksellers, book collecting and libraries. This one went a little further a field with lengthy sections on ancient writing, medieval manuscripts, etc. But I enjoyed the second half much more when he focuses on modern libraries and collectors. 3/11/04
- David Meyer Memoirs of a Book Snake: Forty Years of Seeking and Saving Old Books I read it in one sitting. True, it's a small book, but I gobbled it up. I love reading about bookstores and people finding signed rare books for a quarter. He has another book on the same subject and now I need to get that one too. 2/23/04
- Jayne Anne Phillips Motherkind: A Novel A West Virginia author who I have read for years. I liked this novel much better than her last. The story of a poet who becomes pregnant and gets married while her mother sickens and dies of cancer. The only thing about it that annoyed me was at the beginning of the book there was too much exposition given in dialogue, like "Remember that...." where they lay out the plot. That kind of thing reads like bad science fiction. Happened a couple of other times when she skipped chronological periods between chapters and the dialogue catches us up. Didn't Monty Python have a character of Mr. Exposition? 2/23/04
- Ved Mehta Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing Yet another book about The New Yorker. Mehta is a blind writer from India who wrote at the magazine for years and years - from the early sixties to the Tina Brown era, when he was let go. Some fascinating glimpses of the inner workings of The New Yorker, although his love for Shawn borders on the annoying. 2/18/04
- Catherine Orenstein Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale Learned some things about the history of the tale. Well-written but could have used some editing to get rid of some repetitions. There's a lot going on in that Little Red Hiding Hood story when you think about it. My favorite is still the Bugs Bunny version. 2/18/04
- Neal Pollack The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature 150 pages of a one-note joke. Funny in places but wears thin after a while. 2/18/04
- Nathan Englander For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories Short stories about Jewish characters. I liked it. 2/18/04
- Alexander Chancellor Some Times in America He was, for a year, editor of "Talk of the Town" for The New Yorker under Tina Brown. I have a thing about reading books dealing with The New Yorker for some reason. This was a pleasant breezy kind of book. He is British and this was originally published in the UK so it was fun to see him explaining America to the British. Some tidbits about the magazine that I didn't know, but most chapters revolve around tangents like going out to lunch, or spending weekends upstate. You think that might be annoying but it wasn't. 2/02/04
- Edward Koren Well, There's Your Problem A book of cartoons by a New Yorker cartoonist. He's the one who does the big fuzzy animals, or the people with big fuzzy hair. Good fun. 1/30/04
- Francis Davis Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael If you enjoyed reading Kael's movie reviews in the New Yorker then this is worth reading. It's a small book of interview/conversation between Kael and a longtime friend and jazz critic (and husband of Fresh Air's Terry Gross - which may explain why features so much jazz on her show!). 1/30/04
- David Cohen Chasing the Red, White, and Blue: A Journey in Tocqueville's Footsteps Through Contemporary America Really good book. He's a British/South African writer who traces Tocqueville's route through the US (mostly) during the dot-com Clinton years. He sees us losing our best feature as a society - our commitment to equality of opportunity. Instead we are becoming a society of winners and losers, and the winners can't be bothered to think about the losers. Religion has abrogated it's responsibility for social justice so there doesn't appear to be much hope. His conversation with the Christian Coalition leader of Alabama is priceless - it's no surprise that they recently opposed tax reform that would have eased the burden on the poor. 1/30/04
- Ethan Coen Gates of Eden One of the Coen brothers, and some of these short stories can easily be imagined as Coen brothers short movies. Better than the average short story collection - I would read more of his stuff. 1/30/04
- Andy Bellin Poker Nation: A High-Stakes, Low-Life Adventure into the Heart of a Gambling Country Not bad, but not that good either. Writes about his life in poker, how to play, some interesting players, etc. I haven't read Positively 5th Street yet - that's supposed to be a very good poker book. 1/30/04
- Zadie Smith White Teeth Two multicultural novels in a row! I'll have to read some Updike to balance things out. I loved some passages in this book and was bored by others. Reminded me of a comic Dickens novel at times. Could have been condensed a bit and been stronger I think. The end seemed a little forced, but then I say that a lot, so maybe it's just me. 1/30/04
- Ha Jin Waiting Really liked this book. A simple story, told simply, but all the stronger for it somehow. 1-13-04
- Penelope Fitzgerald The Bookshop: A Novel Darkly comic British novel about a widow who opens a bookstore in her small coastal town. You can see that it is going to fail but you enjoy the ride. Wonderful characters. 1/13/04
- Leona Rostenberg, Madeline B. Stern Old Books, Rare Friends : Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion The life story of two women who were lifelong friends and shared a rare book business as well as their lives. A nice story. A little sad because neither ever married or had a long relationship, and they swear up and down that they aren't gay, despite the fact that lived together and loved each other very much. 1/13/04
- James A. Miller, Tom Shales Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests This was a lot of fun to read even if it became a little repetitious toward the end. I was more interested in the original cast but there were enough interesting tidbits along the way to hold my interest. 1-13-04
- JK Rowling The First 4 Harry Potter Books A friend predicted I would be mildly disappointed but still glad I read them, and she was pretty spot-on. I thought the first was the best, probably because it was the freshest and everything was new as you are introduced to the whole scheme of wizardry. I liked the 4th one as well, but the 2nd and 3rd were a little boring and the plots a little frenzied, especially at the ends. Reminded me of the end of every Scooby Do episode where someone explains what just happened. 1-13-04
- The Believer (Magazine) The First 8 Issues Strictly speaking these are not books, but I read them all at once while on vacation and since they are about 100 pages each with no ads, I feel like I can list them here. Lots of good interviews and articles, with an emphasis on literary criticism, popular culture, and philosophy. 1-13-04
Reverse chronological order, as you can see. Starting doing this a couple of years ago so I could remember what I've read over the course of a year. Too many bad baseball books. Not enough good fiction.