New books!

Look what I got! Untitled is for my brother, though I have to read it before I gift it to him (well, I think it's mostly pictures). House of Leaves, it's all the rage and my friend gave it to me. I will never turn down a free book, and so many people have mentioned that book that I have to read it, though I'm a bit intimidated. If you don't know what I mean by that check it out here . The other two are cook books I bought on sale from Urban Outfitters, the cake one an NPR book (dreams really do come true!!!).

I just finished Eat, Pray, Love. I resisted the book for a long time; to me it belonged in the self help section and who needs that? Definitely not me, I'm so perfect (wah wah). Anyways, it turned out to be a great read once you got passed her annoying self pity, and jealously towards her (she is a writer who gets paid to travel around the world and write about her experiences, that hussy!). Though I can't relate to her heart ache and divorce, I can relate to her restlessness which got me curious about meditation. If the constant moving doesn't solve anything, maybe it's time to stop for a second and figure out why from the inside? I also got this book at a time my interests in Buddhism is creeping up again (I also started Wake Up! by Kerouac which is about Buddhism).

Other book I've started...
Kings of Nonfiction (nonfiction also published by NPR)

American Pastoral continued.

"What are you? Do you know? What you are is you're always trying to smooth everything over. What you are is never telling the truth if you think it's going to hurt somebody's feelings. What you are is you're always compromising. What you are is always complacent. What you are is always trying to find the bright side of things. The one with the manners. The one who abides everything patiently. The one with the ultimate decorum. The boy who never breaks the code. Whatever society dictates, you do. Decorum. Decorum is what you spit in the face of."

That is Jerry tearing a new one to his brother Swede. Never have I loved the word decorum until I read that paragraph. Jerry turned out to be my favorite character in this novel of annoying people trying to live the perfect American life. Though he may be a douche himself, he's honest.

And this book was completely worth finishing (think American Beauty in three parts). I don't want to ruin the ending but it involves a stabbing with a fork.

Nerd alert

One day, I will be able to experience...Thanks Christy for the pictures!

From Caitlin...

i just finished american pastoral. i'm not ready to talk about it yet and i kind of need a hug.

i've been kind of thinking about my top five books for what, months now? i'm not even sure i finished 5 books of 2009 but i'm gonna give it a shot.

the nick adams stories, the compilation of hemingway's semi-autobiographical character. you need to read this, ms han. the only hemingway i'd gotten to was 'the old man and the sea,' so my idea of him was more formed by bar pilar. you read these stories and get the sense hemingway is revealing himself and it's fascinating. many vignettes are barely linked, many are unfinished, which helped me understand the man's process a little bit and gave me a little bit of courage to push on with my own stories.

housekeeping by our girl marilyn robinson. i had to restart it a bunch, and then towards the end all the images came together and the whole experience was overwhelmingly beautiful. i love that it's all about women and the inexorable force of aloneness! everyone in this book comes off as truly alone, and people are only brought together by mutual understanding of that fact. like the antoine st. exupery quote, something about love is not gazing at each other, it's looking outward in the same direction. lookin' out over a lake in fingerbone, waiting for a train.

i picked up Salt by Mark Kurlansky to better understand the foodie brain.... and i found out i pay a lot more attention to world history when there's a common food thread to hold my attention. taken in small doses, (har, har) it was nice to come home from big bear and get my brain off of trying to understand coffee. i did get tired of hearing about fish and caviar towards the end; but i can't get the image of people in poland dancing in underground ballrooms carved entirely out of salt, with statues and religious figures from salt, rowing around the underground lagoons.... miners sliding down 350 foot slides to get to work... it's all pretty fantastic.

i read the first true blood by charlaine harris. it was trashy and i liked it, i'm not proud of myself. an aunt pushed the whole series on me at once and i got into it. you know my thing about bloomingdale's obsession with vampires. i just wanted to fit in.

aaaaaaaand i reread still life with woodpecker, because it is the medium for communicating with my best friend from college. how do you make love stay? it's kind of the only question there is.

Ok, American Pastoral is finally getting better. I made it through part one. Thank God because I was about to give up on it.

Disgrace was AMAZING. I can't remember the last time a book got my attention in the first few pages. This book has so many layers that deal with gender, race, dignity, family relationships and lets not forget the dogs. Yes there are a lot of doggies in this book. This novel was recommended by two people, one of whom I'm not really a fan of but now I hold a little respect for the doooode. I'm not going to go into detail about the book because I believe you must read it if you haven't already. But here is a little about the author and here is a sample of the book thanks to Google books (gotta love the internet).

Disgrace

"He has dinner with his ex-wife Rosalind. They have been apart for eight years; slowly, warily, they are growing to be friends again, of a sort. War veterans. It reassures him that Rosalind still lives nearby: perhaps she feels the same way about him. Someone to count on when the worst arrives: the fall in the bathroom, the blood in the stool."