Booky Ooky!

Ok, here’s the deal. I did it again. Stress, a job hunt, pride weekend, a brief illness, an Internet outage, and a consuming desire to escape and not think about anything has caused me to disappear.

The Internet outage was the worst because Thursday when I got home from work, I was going to report on my successfully finishing the Once Upon a Time Challenge, but I couldn’t. Very frustrating. Friday, I didn’t go to work, so no free Internet there, plus I was busy, so no quick trip to the public library (which, yes, would be where I work, but I’d pick a different branch, duh). Then I was out of the house from Saturday morning until Monday at 1 a.m. (and that’ll be 37 hours) which led to Monday’s illness.

Today I remain tired and have been doing the job hunt thing for 3 hours.

So, while I was not eligible for any fabulous prizes because I could not get my last 2 reviews up on time, I still have the personal satisfaction of finishing the challenge. The final list:

• Ramayana / retold by William Buck
• The Onion Girl / Charles de Lint
• Peter Pan in Scarlet / Geraldine McCaughrean
• Outfoxing Fear: Folktales from Around the World / edited by Kathleen Ragan — I read this because my original Folktales of Ireland turned out to be too dry to get through. This is one that I was going to review Thursday but couldn’t, but I’m going to do it tomorrow or the next day because this book was mind-blowingly good, and I want you all to know.
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream / William Shakespeare — This was also going to be written up Thursday (I thrive on last minute deadlines.) But I’m not going to bother now because, hell, it’s Shakespeare. What could I possibly add? It was as good as the first 3 times I read it.

As it happens and like many others, I can’t stick to a reading list. I read more than 5 books during the time this challenge was taking place, and even though I didn’t write them all up, I made most of my selections in the spirit of reading books that were or that were about fantasy/fairytale/folklore/etc. Relevant selections include:

• Alice in Sunderland / Michael Talbot
• The Black Cauldron and The Castle of Llyr / Lloyd Alexander
• Peter Pan / J.M. Barrie
• The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, and Equal Rites / Terry Pratchett
• The Neddiad / Daniel Pinkwater
• The Tombs of Atuan / Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Great Snape Debate / Amy Berner, Joyce Millman, Orson Scott Card
• The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy and The Morning Star Trilogy / Nick Bantock
• The End of Harry Potter? / David Langford
• Sir Thursday and Lady Friday / Garth Nix
• Go Ask Malice / Robert Joseph Levy

So see, I have been active and loving it, just not always writing it up what with vacation and all those important lame excuses I discussed above. Anyway, even though the ending didn’t work out, I gotta say the challenge was a ton of fun, and I made some super new blog friends.

Also–and this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me–before I left my house for the Neverending Saturday this past weekend, I found on my microwave a surprise gift card to Barnes and Noble for $100! It was from my parents as a Hannukkah gift, and I somehow managed to convince myself that I used it back in January. Shows you how much I clean my kitchen.

So today when I went shopping to take my mind off my crappy job, I got 9 books for 85 cents. (I estimated $100 + tax - B&N member discount to within $1. I’d say I’m a math genius, yes?) Then I went to The Strand and got one more book at low low Strand prices because I needed the number to be 10. ONE MORE BULLET POINT LIST! I promise you only have to look at 10 more of these insufferable pink squares and then I’ll be done. Oh, and before you ask: Yes I am male, and yes I have hot pink sheets. What exactly are you going to do about it?

• The Field Guide / Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black — Anyone read these? I’ve been eyeing them for a long time.
• Mort / Terry Pratchett
• The Hoboken Chicken Emergency / Daniel Pinkwater — I’m reading another by Pinkwater because I like the guy. He’s good people. Also, no book in all literary history has so amazing a title. (It just stole first place in the My Bookshelf Awesome Title Competition from P.S. Your Cat Is Dead by James Kirkwood.)
• The Dirty Job / Christopher Moore — Bringing the number of books on this list in which the main character is Death to two.
• Edition 69 / Vítěslav Nezval and Jindřich Štyrský — 1930’s surrealist Czech erotica. I don’t know why I picked this book up. And when I opened it, I don’t know why I didn’t put it back down. It’s illustrated with penises of terrifying dimension. There are some photographs at the end too that look like Georges Méliès meets Alex de Renzy.
• The Mists of Avalon / Marion Zimmer Bradley — Another I’d like to hear your thoughts on before I get started. I’ve heard mixed things, and it’s like a zagillion pages long, which is why I never bought it before. Today it was free, so I figured it was now or never. I’m gonna do it…. I swear. Right after Jonathan Strange.
• Un Lun Dun / China Miéville — I am so excited about this book I can hardly stand it. I don’t even know why except the awesome cover. I can hardly stand it.
• In the Night Kitchen / Maurice Sendak — Bringing the number of books on this list in which there is depicted a hand-drawn penis to two. I wonder how this book would have fared in the controversy department if it were released in Uptight Today instead of 1970. But seriously, this is a great picture book that I’ve wanted to own since I wrote a paper on it in library school.
• Viking Warrior / Judson Roberts — I bought this book because the guy on the cover is really hot. Like seriously lunchable. I hope the book is good because he looks even hotter on the sequel.
• Soon I Will Be Invincible / Austin Grossman — This is the one I got at The Strand. It’s been getting a lot of press (at least where I look) and I guess I like superheroes enough, so I’m optimistic. I’m jealous of the author’s job and education, though, so we’ll see if I can quell my resentment long enough to judge his work fairly.

Anyway, thanks for taking 9 hours to read my little big update. I’ve made good progress on the job hunt, so I think I can calm down and take it at a more casual pace now. This means consistent updates and hopefully something substantial like an actual book review or something weird like that.

I didn’t mean to, honest I didn’t, but our movie was sold out and the only place to kill the extra hour we had to wait was the Borders right next door, and of course I had two awesome people recommending things to me, so I walked out with a mini-pile of books and the Amy Winehouse CD. It’s not my fault.

That’s a misleading picture, because those two great big boxed sets I have on loan from Brian (one of the amazing recommenders) and the LeGuin — as her name cannot stop finding its way here — was a gift from my friend Chris because he’s the bestest friend of all my friends. So I didn’t buy them all, but I needed to boxed sets and LeGuin to cover up how disgusting my kitchen table is right now.

• Time Cat / Lloyd Alexander — Impulse buy due to extreme cuteness of cover. Unavoidable, really.
• The End of Harry Potter? / David Langford — I needed another, so shoot me.
• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes Nutter, Witch / Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman — Susie-friend reminded me how much I wanted to read this and we both bought it so we match now.
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation / Lynne Truss — On Brian’s cue. About punctuation. It has bears on it.

Greed is a sin.

Ok, I’m back. I was out of town and then back and then out and then back and then lazy. The best part about traveling for me is that it’s very book-centric. All that airport downtime, the plane downtime, the sitting at home downtime. This couple of trips was even better because I discovered Half-Price Books and the magic thereof.

So, as it goes, since there was so much, you’re just getting a digest version because I’m tired and the idea of covering all I was thinking of covering makes me feel small and heavy.

Half-Price Books

This place is fierce. I was in the one in Dallas, and it’s the most ginormous establishment since the creation of the universe. They’ve got everything, and it’s cheap, but in really good shape. I got 11 books for $43. Can you even believe it? I was going to do a nice bookpile picture of them all, but it would seem I already filed them into my collection and to pull them seems like a chore. Tired, remember?

Ugh, fine, I will, stop whining.

Pleased? They are as follows:

• The Hundred and One Dalmations / Dodie Smith — I stumbled upon this and am now aware that I was the only person on earth who didn’t know this was a book first.
• Mrs. Dalloway / Virginia Woolf — I want to read The Hours soon, so this was my prerequisite. I read it. Super good.
• The Final Solution / Michael Chabon — If you haven’t read this man, you haven’t lived. Like-new, hardcover edition, and I got it for next to nothing.
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Stories / Edgar Allen Poe — I bought this for ‘Ligeia,’ which is the basis of one of my favorite modern operas, but the man’s pretty fierce, so I’m glad to have other things of his.
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat / Oliver W. Sacks — I thought the cover was yellowed from age. Turns out, it’s supposed to look like that.
• Confessions of a Pagan Nun / Kate Horsley — Another stumble upon. Neat cover + paganism + Ursula K. LeGuin endorsement = can’t really pass this up.
• Never Let Me Go / Kazuo Ishiguro — Not pictured because I can’t find where I put it, making me the worst librarian ever. And that’s officially.
• Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival / Bernd Heinrich — You’ll soon notice that I like pop science books about fluffy animals.
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell / Susanna Clarke — Every last one of you loves this book. I feel like I’m rejected from this secret society for not having read it yet. Being fatter than my Manhattan phone directory, it scared me off for a while, but at these prices, I knew it was time.
• Gulliver’s Travels / Jonathan Swift — I’ve never felt compelled to read this, but it was a dollar.
• Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences / Ursula K. LeGuin — It’s rare for me to find a book by LeGuin that I’ve never heard of, so I had to pick it up. You can tell it’s obscure because the Amazon page doesn’t even have cover art, I mean what’s that all about?
• Rent Boys: The World of Male Sex Trade Workers / Michel Dorais — Ok, I didn’t get this one at HPB, I got it at a gay bookstore, but I put it in the picture to take the place of the Ishiguro. I’ve wanted to read it ever since I sent a copy to the bindery in grad school (as was my job.)

Aaaand, a quick glance to my left has revealed the location of the Ishiguro, snuggled firmly between Mary Shelley and Murasaki Shikibu. Apparently I failed to notice the first letter of his name, which is strange because it’s both my favorite vowel and favorite word.

Anyway, I also read a few things. Brief rundown:

• The Tombs of Atuan / Ursula K. LeGuin — She’s getting a lot of attention today. I’ve read the Earthsea cycle before, and I’m slowly doing it again. A Wizard of Earthsea I reread a few months back, but this is probably my favorite from the initial four in the series. There’s something about LeGuin’s style here that suggests her reverence and respect for the world she’s set up, and that provides a really unique sensation when you’re going through this book. (One might suggest it’s the religious themes in the story, but I think it goes beyond that. I’m not so easily fooled, thanks.) Anyway, I appreciated it more this time than the first time, and now I think this is one of my all-time favorite books. Although for a different crowd, this is just as mature and illuminating as The Dispossessed, which I also heartily recommend.
• The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites / Terry Pratchett — As promised, I gave him another shot, and I’m already satisfied with the improvement. I read them both while languishing bloodshot and sore through a cumulative 7 hours of flight delays, so I don’t have much substantial to say except that I loved Equal Rites because, and this is kind of funny with what I just talked about, it’s such a fun parody of LeGuin’s Earthsea books. Parody’s maybe not the right word because this Rites was decidedly less stupid and silly than the previous two, as though Pratchett realized he could keep the charm and appeal strong while telling a worthwhile story.
• The Great Snape Debate / Amy Berner, Joyce Millman, Orson Scott Card — This was pretty good. The Card essay was probably the best part, but I’m not going to say anything else because, during a monumental nerd episode, I decided I’m going to do a thing pretty soon all about the pre-Deathly-Hallows analyses I’ve read. You’re excited.
• Mrs. Dalloway / Virginia Woolf — NOT a good airport read, but I did it anyway. This book is lovely and dense and it kind of made me feel bad about enjoying shallowness. You should read it. My favorite character was Mr. Dalloway, and the only way I can explain it is “I felt an affinity with him.” I don’t know why, we’re nothing the same.
• Peter Pan in Scarlet / Geraldine McCaughrean — The authorized sequel to Peter Pan. Pretty ok, but I did it for the Once Upon a Time Challenge, so a full review will be gracing your computer screens presently.

Ok, this was supposed to take me 10 minutes, and so far it’s been 1,000 hours. I’m cutting it short. Shorter. Yeah, I had more to say, even for a digest. Get over it and just be happy I’m back even though I know it’s hard to miss something that never really began (unless of course it happens to be uniquely special Joss Whedon space western that never got its due, but that’s neither here nor there.) Bye! Everyone go on vacation and buy a million books for the price of one, you won’t regret it!

I bought these books yesterday. See? Here they are. I had woken up at 6:00 a.m. and had nothing to do, and on days like that, I usually end up at a book store. From top to bottom:

• The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites / Terry Pratchett — I just finished the first Discworld novel, and it was just ok, but they’re supposed to get better so I took a chance and bought not one but two.
• The Neddiad / Daniel Pinkwater — I saw this in passing and remembered one of my blog friends reviewed it, but now I can’t find it so I was probably wrong. But a horrible, harrowing subway experience on the way home allowed me to read the first 80 pages, and I like it so far.
• Tall Blondes: A Book About Giraffes / Lynn Sherr — This is a book about giraffes.