Reading--Good for Your Health!

I read a couple of blog posts this week about how good reading is for your health--both mental and physically! First, the Pepsi Optimism Project found that 88% of people surveyed said reading a book was the ultimate optimism booster. It didn't say what they were reading . . . I'm guessing it's nothing by John Steinbeck or William Faulkner. Here's the link to the story:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/monday_morning/want_to_feel_better_about_yourself_read_a_book_123891.asp

Then, in light of the raging debate going on over health care, historical novelist Jessica James came up with 5 easy--and free--ways to improve your health in your local bookstore:

1. A book specialist can help you find just the right book--with no co-pay.

2. You don't have to pay a deductible at a bookstore, and the value is unbeatable.

3. Bending over, standing up, crouching down to look at the bottom shelf is good exercise. (Repeat as necessary.)

4. Carrying a large stack of books to your car is great for cardio and muscle-building.

5. Books provide entertainment, promote a sense of wellbeing and insure you will have something to read in the waiting room.

So, if you don't have the cash to go see your shrink, head over for a free recommendation by your local book specialist and read to boost your mental health!

Fashionably Late

Well, I finally met a book I couldn't finish. Nadine Dajani's Fashionably Late sounded like a cute chick lit novel. I picked it up for my latest gym book. The flap copy talked about quarter-life crises, a girl who fails her accounting exam and decides to go to Cuba instead of the trip to Cancun she planned with her colleagues, then, of course, figures out the meaning to life . . . Except I couldn't get past page 40.

First, the brand-name-dropping started to annoy me . . . Christian Laboutin this and Stila that . . . Then, as her boyfriend is proposing and she finds herself unsure how to answer, the main character accuses him of being selfish for proposing when she's waiting to hear the results of her big accounting exam. Then, as if it weren't doomed already, the nail in the coffin: our heroine reveals that she's 22 years old. I almost flung the book across the room from my perch on the elliptical. (My friend and coworker was on the machine in front of me, so I resisted.) Maybe it was bad writing, or maybe I'm just getting old, but I just didn't care about this adolescent's problems!

It's too bad, too. The book has a great cover--as you can see! The dark red and sky blue on the spine is my favorite color combination. Plus, the writer had the most thoughtful opening to her acknowledgments I've ever seen: "A book sitting on a shelf in a store may seem like any other commodity, a thing to be bought and sold. But to those who write, a book is a dream at the end of a long road, one I might have strayed from were it not for the many people who believed in me." Unfortunately, the heroine of the novel was not nearly as thoughtful as the author. Oh well, onwards and upwards. At least this gets a book off my list!

Two Little Girls in Blue

I decided to take advantage of the waining days of summer to read a purely entertaining, beach read. Mary Higgins Clark's thriller/mystery Two Little Girls in Blue was undeniably un-put-down-able! I've read a few of her mysteries--usually over Christmas break--and enjoyed them. But this was the best of hers that I've read! Twin 3-year-old girls are kidnapped one night while there parents are off at a company dinner. They are instructed to pay a whopping $8 million ransom. They do and get instructions on where to find the girls, only to get there and discover one of the girls still missing and a note saying the kidnapper had accidentally killed the other child. Using twin telepathy, the returned twin starts telling her mother that her sister is scared and wants to come home. The rest of the book is a thrilling race against the clock to find the other twin. The characters are engaging, and the plot twists kept me on the edge of my seat!

I've often said that Mary Higgins Clark is a good story-teller, even if she isn't known for her poetic sentences. Other than a few awkward bits of dialogue that were used to divulge some back story, that didn't bother me in this book. I can't remember which book it was--it might have been one of the Christmas stories she co-wrote with her daughter--but she kept annoyingly saying that the character had a container of coffee. I'm pretty sure she meant a to-go cup of coffee from Starbucks, but kept using the word "container." It was very distracting. Where was the copy-editor!? This book, I'm glad to say, used the proper nouns to describe what the characters were holding. I highly recommend.

The Red Queen

The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble was published by the first company I worked for. I had already moved on to my current job, but when I went back to visit, a former co-worker just raved about it and gave me a copy. Well, I don't share her raves. Split into two halves, the first half is narrated by the Korean Crown Princess in the 18th century. Based on a true story, she tells of her life at the palace and how her husband went mad and was executed in a most horrific fashion. It would be a captivating story, but it is narrated by the dead crown princess in modern times. So, while telling her 18th century tale, she talks about later events and philosophies, such as Freud and modern psychology. It was a bit off-putting, and almost seemed like a lazy way for Drabble to be able to include her own modern knowledge. On the other hand, I suppose it could also be considered a creative way to reinterpret a classic text. But it was still off-putting.

The second half is about a scholar who reads the crown princess's memoir on her way to a conference in Seoul. The story moves her, and she visits to some of the palaces and such where the crown princess would have lived, but that's about all the interaction she has with the text. She's a scholar of medicine, so it's not like the memoir is part of her research, just a fun plane read. While the two parts don't seem to fit, the book does finally pick up about 75 pages from the end when the scholar has an illicit affair at the conference.

I think the best part of this book was the epitaph at the beginning:

"The dead weep with joy when their books are reprinted."--The Russian Ark, Alexander Sokurov, 2003

I couldn't help but thinking, so do the living . . .

Petite Anglaise

My latest gym book, Petite Anglaise by Catherine Sanderson, was quite the hidden gem! It looked like a run-of-the-mill chick lit novel, but upon closer inspection, I saw that it was actually a memoir. Catherine decided early on that she wanted to live in Paris. And, after studying abroad in college, she never went back to her native England. She quickly found herself in a committed relationship with a Frenchman--although he wouldn't marry her--and they had a child together. When their daughter was a toddler, their relationship cooled, and Catherine was looking for a creative outlet, so she started a blog and adopted the persona Petite Anglaise.

Of course, her relationship falls apart, and she actually starts dating [spoiler alert] one of her blog readers . . . all of which she recorded in real time as she was blogging. But more than just a recap of what she blogged about, the book talks about how blogging affected her life and her decisions. "I was anonymous," she writes, "I went about my business incognito, and yet there I lingered in the minds of complete strangers." Later, when telling a friend that she keeps seeing a guy she's not that interested in to spice up her blog, her friend says, "You might want to try putting yourself first, and not that blog of yours . . . don't live your life to please your readers."

I haven't read Julie and Julia, but I did just see the movie (which is fabulous!!) and some of the same themes crop up there. Julie's husband accuses her of being self-absorbed as she puts everything else on hold to cook her way through all the recipes so as not to disappoint her readers. Catherine, too, is accused of becoming self-centered and not paying attention to what her friends are going through. As Julie says in the movie, blogs are inherently ego-centric. (Yes, I realize I'm saying this on my blog. Whatever.) I'll be interested to see if more blogs-turned-into-books address the role of the blog in the writer's life. In any case, Petite Anglaise was a great read, and much more captivating than most of the chick lit that's coming out these days.

3 Little Book Gluttons Go to a Book Swap

Goodreads.com sponsored a book swap at Book Soup yesterday. (See here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/08/scenes-from-the-goodreads-bookswap-with-kogi-bbq-at-book-soup.html) I have a growing stack of books to get rid of, now that I'm about 20% through my list (finished book #10 last night and have about 20 pages to go on book #11!), so I e-mailed a couple of friends to see if they wanted to go with me. I know what you're thinking--isn't that like inviting an alcoholic to a free-for-all at a liquor store? Friend #1 was very eager! She, too, has been complaining about how many books she had sitting around. Friend #2 acted like I was asking her to cut off her right arm. "What's a book swap?" she asked. "Does that mean I have to give away some of my books? I love all my books!" I assured her no one would force her to give up books, but--since she's getting ready to move at the end of the month--she did show up with a couple of bags full that she was willing to get rid of.

I have a few friends who can't bear to part with any of their books. Even publishing industry folks who acquire scads of books! I get sentimental over some--don't ask to even borrow my Harry Potters or The Time Traveler's Wife--but most of the stuff I read I donate to libraries or friends as soon as I've read them. I'm afraid my apartment would like the houses of those people you see on Oprah who have that hording disease if I didn't!

We all had a great time at the swap--especially since the Kogi Taco Truck was there, a must try for anyone in LA!--but none of us wanted to take away any books . . . all of us being book gluttons and all . . . Friend #1 did extremely well. She didn't bring home any books--even though she kept going back for one last look to make sure nothing was calling her name. Friend #2, the one who thought I was asking for her first born, took a couple of Friend #1's books. I, too, took a couple of Friend #1's books. One was a collection of short stories by writers I really like--Nick Hornby, Dave Eggers, Melissa Banks--and the other was Curtis Sittenfeld's second novel, The Man of My Dreams. I really enjoyed Prep, and American Wife is on my list, so I figured why not!? No, I won't be adding these to my list. I'm sure there will be a phase 2, since I've found a few unread treasures on my bookshelves at my parents' house . . .

When I'm Done . . .

No, I'm not anywhere near being finished with my list of 59 books. I am, however, close to finishing #10 on the list, and that makes it feel like the end is in sight. Yes, you may need a really large telescope to see it, but it's there. I have this fantasy about what will happen when I've read all the books in my apartment. This is how it goes: I'm sitting at home one evening with nothing to watch on t.v. I decide to pick up a book instead, only to realize I have no unread books! So, I go to the local independent bookstore and start browsing the shelves for something that strikes my fancy . . .

Now, the reality is that this will never happen for me. Yes, there may come a time when my stack of books to read has actually run dry, but I don't think I'll ever walk into a bookstore and not know what I want to buy. Even now, I have a little mental list of books I want to read once I get through my list. There's another list of books I will read before I get through my list (The Lost Symbol, Audrey Niffenegger's new novel, etc.). But, it's a nice fantasy, nonetheless.

One thing I definitely plan on doing when I finish is rearranging my books. I just read this amusing article in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/21/books-arrange-james-purnell I've been practicing the "cram it in wherever it will fit" method of book shelving recently. But, as I get rid of most of these books as I'm reading them, I look forward to organizing what's left. A friend of mine has organized her books by color--it looks great and she swears she's still able to find things. I'm sort of thinking I'll do mine by genre . . . because I have my really smart books from college prominently displayed, and really, who wants to hide those in favor of all my books with red spines? Granted, underneath my smart books is my collection of children's picture books that I started when I worked for a children's books publisher. I don't know what that says, except maybe that I'm a bit schizophrenic . . . at least as far as my book collection is concerned! We'll see. I think I will have plenty of time to think about this as I work my way through the remaining 49 books . . .

Red River

I'm not sure where I picked up Red River by Lalita Tademy, a historical novel set in Louisiana during the Restoration. It's an advance reading copy (ARC-a paperback book printed ahead of finished books to send to reviewers and bookstore buyers), so I must have picked it up at one publishing event or another. It seemed promising--Tademy's first novel, Cane River, was a New York Times bestseller and an Oprah Book Club pick. Roll your eyes if you must, but Oprah doesn't pick out and out clunkers. Even the way the ARC was produced shows that the publisher had high hopes for the book. Most ARCs have slick, cheaply printed covers and use either Xerox or super pulpy paper on the inside. This one has a matte, embossed cover with flaps, high quality cream-colored paper, and even rough cut pages! (That's when the pages are slightly uneven on the edge--you usually see it on fancy novels or books that are trying to look vintage.)

Well, this book was a bit of a disappointment. I seriously considered ditching it around page 100. The first half of the 400 page book describes a horrible massacre in the town of Colfax, Louisiana. In 1873, blacks are allowed to vote for the first time and they vote in the Republican party--who, I gather from the text (my AP American History Class too distant in the past to be of much help) are sympathetic to the newly free black population. The incumbent government refuses to shift power, and when blacks protest at the town's courthouse, white supremacists blast them out, killing 150 men. Now, I'm not denying that this is an important story that should be told. But this section of the book could (and should) have been cut to 100 pages.

The second half follows the next 2 generations of the Tademy and Smith families, both who played an important part in the courthouse standoff. (The author used her own family's history as a source for the story, so it is based on actual people and events.) This part was a much better read, although I still didn't think the book was exceptional. I assume from the accolades that Tademy's first book, Cane River, was better than this one. Which leads me to believe that my friend, a former children's book editor, is on to something when she says most people only have one good book in them. Of course, when I googled Red River to see how it was received, it had glowing reviews from respectable sources, so what do I know? Still, part of me thinks those reviewers got sucked in by those rough cut pages . . .

The Kindle Debate

The Kindle. It's been quite a hot topic in publishing circles for the past year or so. The industry has been predicting--mostly fearing--the domination of the electronic book for longer than that: I went to NYU's Summer Publishing Institute in 2002 and it was a hot topic then. A lot of bookish people don't like the idea, preferring the feel of a book in their hands, even the smell of the ink and paper. And I was firmly in that camp . . . until my friend, a literary agent, brought her Kindle with her on her last visit. Then my dormant gadget geek kicked in and I decided I had to have one!

The sleek design of Kindle 2.0 . . . the crystal clear type on screen (much easier on the eyes than I had imagined) . . . But what really sold me was when I figured out that I could take a Kindle out in public, and no one would know what I was reading. I was in the midst of the Twilight Saga at this point and hurrying to finish before an upcoming business trip, because I didn't want to be seen reading Twilight on the plane. But with a Kindle, I could read about teenage vampires or any other trash and no one would ever know!

At least one Kindle aficionado has even taken his e-reader along to a book signing, as seen in this story from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/business/media/15kindle.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
Of course, being a David Sedaris signing, the witty author inscribed "This bespells doom" on the shiny plastic surface.

Even as e-readers become more and more popular, I believe paper books will be around for a long time. And, even though the price for the Kindle recently dropped, I still haven't ordered one. Please--I let nearly 60 paper books build up in my apartment. How gluttonous would I be if I could acquire a new book at the click of a button and didn't even have to wedge it onto an already over-stuffed shelf?

Speaking of all those books, I'm nearing halfway through a historical novel called "Red River," but if it doesn't pick up soon, I will ditch it.