Category Archives: favorites

April 23, 2010   DG&B   children's books, favorites, feedback, fun, Lauren  
13

A literary mystery

by Lauren

Recently I experienced a moment of great joy when a friend spontaneously remembered the name of the girl band we liked in elementary school that no one else seemed to remember. I couldn’t remember any helpful details like the band’s name or song titles or song lyrics or even melodies I could hum. But it turns out they were called BoyKrazy, and they were even worse than I might have guessed.

This is not book-related in itself, but it has come up as a topic of conversation over the last couple years on occasion with my friend Nell, who has her own life mystery to solve. On realizing the joy of solving mine, it occurred to me that I could try to pay it forward by asking for the help of you, our well read audience, to solve hers. Nell loved a children’s book when she was in elementary school that must have been first published no later than 1986, but she suspects it was probably from the mid-to-late 70s or early 80s. Here’s what she remembers:

The main character is a young girl who always paints mustaches on herself. Her teacher tells her that mustaches are for boys and that she can’t paint any more on herself. She has black hair that I think is in a bowl cut with bangs.

At some point in the story, she makes a new friend who has an electric train set in her attic, closet, spare room, or someplace like that. I believe the story takes place in New York City or some other metropolitan area with apartment buildings (I vaguely remember the new friend living in her building), but I may have projected that on my memories from my earliest childhood memories.

The story ends with the girl painting mustaches on everyone in art class, including the girly girl and the art teacher–who ends up laughing about it.

So, please, if this is at all familiar to you, help a girl out in the comments! If you understand the agony of kind of sort of remembering something that no one else seems to know exists, you’ll want to lend her a hand. Thanks!

UPDATE: Mystery solved!!  Nell reports that it was in fact Elizabeth Levy’s Nice Little Girls.   Thank you very much, Rebecca!  Now tell me, do you own the book, or are you the best Google detective of all time?

April 21, 2010   DG&B   favorites, fun, Miriam, Twitter  
19

Twitter and twits…

by Miriam

For some reason (don’t judge) I find Twitter humor irresistible. Maybe it’s because the idea of winnowing human communication to 140 characters at a time seems at once so efficient (in a Dr. Evil sort of way) and so ludicrous, but I can pretty predictably crack myself up trying to imagine those palaverous Victorian authors tweeting about their work.

This fun piece in the Huff Post about historical presidential tweets made me wonder how our bygone literary stars would’ve told their followers about their work in progress. Publishing people have been poking fun at their Hollywood counterparts for their high concept pitches (“When Harry Met Sally meets Jaws”) forever but, as Twitter shows us, there’s an art to boiling down and dumbing down.

RT@MCervantes Almost done with novel about crazy old man and his fat sidekick who like to attack windmills. Feeling good about this one.

RT@LTolstoy This war saga is turning out a little longer than expected. Hope my publisher doesn’t mind that I’m a little over word count.

RT@Faulkner My mother is a fish. That’s a whole chapter in my new book. Twitter has been a great influence.

What would your favorite authors be tweeting?

April 20, 2010   DG&B   Chasya, favorites, fun, lists  
13

Your favorite writers get snarky at each other!

by Chasya

Oh, snap! Straight to you via the New Yorker’s Book Bench blog is this amazing Examiner article listing fifty of the best insults flung at our beloved literary greats by their peers. Don’t get me wrong, I respect these writers just like the next guy, but I do also love a good insult.

My favorite? Mark Twain commenting thusly on Jane Austen: “Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

What’s yours?

April 20, 2010   DG&B   censorship, Chasya, favorites, reading  
16

Censorship

by Chasya

A few days ago EW’s Shelf Life blog linked to the just released American Library Association’s list of top ten books most frequently challenged in 2009. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the list, their site explains that frequently challenged books are those that are formally, through written request, asked to be removed from a library’s bookshelf for inappropriate content.

I looked at the list for 2009 along with the 100 most frequently challenged books of the decade in astonishment. The 2009 list includes most notably, as EW points out, the Twilight series. It takes me back a while. In school we learned that The Catcher in the Rye was at one time censored, and I remember feeling incensed by the notion and proud that those days of narrow-minded censorship were over. But lo and behold, there, staring back at me at #6, was the 1951 Salinger classic. I was aghast to see other titles that shaped and influenced me in my youth on the list: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (#3) and To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (#4). The list of 100 Banned/Challenged books were equally as shocking and included an all time favorite, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle (#90). It was just one among many, many others that I had read and loved as a child. And what was at #1 on the list of 100, you ask? Why it’s the one and only Harry Potter series—a contemporary classic that pretty much introduced a new generation to reading, period. Among the quibbles that they are arguing make the books on the list unsuitable are topics such as Satanism, objectionable religious viewpoints, offensive language and homosexuality. While I will say that it’s true that a book should be age appropriate, and that parents of young children should have the right to determine what that means individually, removing books from the shelves is not today, and has never been, an acceptable course of action. ALA Director Barbara Jones puts it perfectly when she says, “Protecting one of our most fundamental rights—the freedom to read—means respecting each other’s differences and the right of all people to choose for themselves what they and their families read.”

We learn and are shaped as people by learning about subject matter that exposes us to the harsher (or truer) realities of life. Some of the most important things I have learned about, I learned from reading books just like these. Many people would be appalled that To Kill A Mockingbird is still on the top ten list. As EW’s Catherine Garcia points out, the objection that it incites racism misses the point entirely. But even books that legitimately tackle subjects that some parents would want to shield their children from are beneficial to us in a way that we may not even know to appreciate. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (#65) is about war, sure. But few other things convey the heartbreak, the magnitude and the ramifications of it the way O’Brien’s words do. It is more than just about war—it’s about people, individuals. And the lessons I took from it were complex, eye-opening, and, dare I say, good for me. As someone who read a whole lot of stuff that was age inappropriate (the first time I became fully aware of sex and attraction it was in Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes, #87, I was 8), I can say that I don’t believe I turned out any worse for it. I felt armed with knowledge that the world was a bigger place, with more for me to learn than I was able to wrap my head around. And personally, I rather enjoyed unwrapping those layers of ignorance; it is much like the satisfaction I feel when peeling away the skins of a tightly wrapped onion.

What about you, readers? Which of these books were you surprised to learn people are objecting to?

April 05, 2010   DG&B   favorites, feedback, fun, Jim, reading  
9

Jim told you what to read: A recap

by Jim

I had a lot of fun/was totally overwhelmed last Monday when I offered to suggest the next book any commenter should read based on the last five titles they had completed.

Beyond the fact that I love telling people what to do, it was an interesting challenge trying to draw connections between titles individuals had read (often without having read those books myself). And coming up with fresh books to recommend each time was tricky. Happily, since 2007, I have kept a list of everything I read.

For me, reading is a great individual pleasure, and there’s something exceedingly exciting about finding a novel on your own that you just tumble head over heels for. But there is something equally invigorating about finding yourself in a community of readers. I thank everyone who took part for sharing what they’ve read and entering that community for a moment. It was also an exciting opportunity to mentally revisit my own reading habits, and I can say that I’ve been browsing my bookshelves quite a bit over the past week. I was surprised to find that I didn’t recommend anyone read Prague by Arthur Phillips, a novel I adore and have tried to convince many people to read over the years. For some reason no one ever takes me up on it. So I’ll offer it as a group suggestion. It has one of my favorite openings ever, and there’s a small scene on a funicular over the river between Buda and Pest that thrilled me so much I can still remember the first time I read it.

One of the most interesting comments (I thought) came from Michael who noted: “Too lazy to check for myself but of all the books mentioned in the last five read list, has any book been mentioned by more than one reader? So much for the idea we all are reading today’s ‘Bestsellers’.”

Good question! I went through all the lists and counted. Five books were read by three people. They were:
Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls
Kathryn Stockett’s The Help
James Dashner’s The Maze Runner (repped by our very own Michael Bourret)
Gail Carriger’s Soulless
Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth (repped by yours truly)

Soulless totally surprised me. Two books that agents here represent makes sense since our readers might share an interest in…you know, us. Wintergirls and The Help are great big books that have gotten tons of attention. Soulless doesn’t seem to have those characteristics, which makes it kind of exciting. Are we seeing a book in the process of really breaking out? Go Gail Carriger!

And then one series truly set itself apart: seven people had read either The Hunger Games or its sequel Catching Fire. Rock on, Suzanne Collins. I haven’t loved a YA series more since Harry Potter. I root for the success of these books as a reader and a fan.

But let’s get to the MOST exciting part of my suggestions: the ones people have already taken! Three people have been in touch so far to let me know that they read what I suggested. How’d it go? Well…two hits and a miss.

Kristi had this to say: “I don’t often read books involving male protagonists but I absolutely loved “Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You.” It was a quick read but has stayed with me for several days and I love it when books do that to me.” Yay! This makes me happy.

About We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Joan offered this: “I loved it from the first page: “Everyone else in my family is dead.” And the magic continued throughout the book where she’d drop in little bombs like that… To me it felt like a mix of two of my favorites, Diane Setterfield’s Thirteenth Tale and Sarah Waters’ Little Stranger. I’m sure you’ve read them, but if not, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.” Hurrah! Success AND other recommendations. I’ve read the Setterfield but not the Waters. Add it to the list!

Peggy was less thrilled with her suggestion. “It was… OK…I’m glad I read something by de Maupassant, though, since he’s one of those authors I was probably supposed to read in high school and never did. I have found, as I have read those sorts of books through the years that most of them are disappointing. I suppose the moralistic tales that can teach us what to be – or not to be – in high school don’t have much effect on us years later.” Drat! Ah well, you can’t win ‘em all!

To wrap it all up, I got a lot out of this exercise and hope others got a bit of fun out of it as well. And I hope that if any more people do read the books I recommended, they let me know what they think, good or bad!

April 02, 2010   DG&B   favorites, fun, lists, opinion, Rachel, reading  
13

Sisters on pages

by Rachel

I have an older sister I keep in constant contact with–daily phone calls, emails, texts–it’s a relationship only other people with sisters can understand. I hear, “You’re calling your sister again?” on a regular basis. We’re sisters, we’re close! So being a sister makes me incredibly interested in reading about the different sisterly relationships out there.

Thanks to Lauren, I’ve come across a list of the five most memorable portraits of sisters from Zoe Heller’s article in the Wall Street Journal. A great list, I’ve got to say. But where is The Color Purple? Sense and Sensibility? Do you agree with her top five? Do you have further sisterly recommendations that might bump her chosen titles?

March 29, 2010   DG&B   advice, favorites, fun, Jim, lists, reading, Tournament of Books  
109

Jim will tell you what to read

by Jim

A few days back, John Warner, one of the commentators for The Tournament of Books, offered up a service. If you listed the last five books you had read, he would tell you what you should read next.

It sprang from a discussion about how we decide to choose what we read when we each know darn well that we’ll never get through every book out there. So a lot of folks stick with what they expect to like and might miss out on some great reads.

Unable to turn down something like this, I listed the last five books I had read (that weren’t work related). Warner suggested I read Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon. I groaned a bit since I had read a collection of Chaon’s short stories a few years back and was underwhelmed. I wouldn’t have picked his new novel up on my own without the recommendation, but I grabbed it that night and finished it this weekend. It’s a literary whodunit that is enervating and upsetting, beautiful and bleak. I loved it.

All of this said, the Tournament of Books commentators and readers seem to have a distinct literary fiction bias. The proportion of readers who included Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask in their past five was very telling (which is not an insult—it was in mine!). Knowing that we have readers who write across genres and for very different target audiences, I’d love to try to recreate Warner’s experiment here and see what the results are. What I’ll try to do (and I have no idea how this will work in practice) is recommend a little outside the box. Maybe an adult novel to someone whose last five reads were YA. Or a thriller to someone who skews more romantic. Or maybe there’s another book just like the ones you list that I’ll think you absolutely have to read. I will try to recommend only books that I have read but may have to turn it over to colleagues or our readers if I feel stumped. So let’s see if this works: just promise that you’ll let me know if and when you actually read the book—y’all can find my email address!

Update: A little confusion–sorry for my lack of clarity! Post the titles in the comments, and I’ll give the recommendation there. You should email me if you read the book and/or want to chat about my choice!

February 26, 2010   DG&B   favorites, Lauren, opinion, reading  
7

Capturing the present

by Lauren

Since reading this Guardian article from earlier this month featuring Julian Gough’s criticism of fellow Irish novelists, I’ve been feeling torn. On the one hand, I do get his point that contemporary Irish novelists tend to be backward-looking, that “reading award-winning Irish literary fiction, you wouldn’t know television had been invented.” Yet, as a book lover with a Masters in Irish Studies and an on-the-record Colum McCann fanatic, I want to have a strong argument against Gough’s claim. While I don’t have an exhaustive knowledge of Irish lit by any means, I have studied it and have even worked in an Irish bookstore, where Irish content is generally separate from similar sections, so that Irish fiction gets a separate set of bookcases from fiction, and so on. I feel I should be able to call to mind some great literature that feels present rather than past. Gough doesn’t necessarily assert that they aren’t writing good novels, merely that they aren’t reflecting contemporary culture. Now, no doubt novels set in the past still often reflect the ethos of the time in which they’re written, but it does seem unusual for a culture not to directly document the contemporary world in novel form.

So help me out, folks! I’d love to be able to leap to the defense of the subjects of my academic study, even if only in my own head where Gough’s objections are lingering.

February 24, 2010   DG&B   favorites, fun, historical fiction, lists, reading, Stacey  
2

Historical fiction

by Stacey

I came across this list of favorite historical novels compiled by Seattle Times readers , and thought I’d share it for those of you who enjoy a good piece of historical fiction, or for those of you who write in this category. I tend to do better with contemporary novels, but this is a varied and eclectic list that looks like a lot of fun, and I’m reading The Help now for our next DGLM book club, so I’m looking forward to weighing in on that book’s amazing commercial success and positive reader response. If you have any favorites (this batch focuses only on those set in the U.S.) that are note on the list, please share.

February 19, 2010   DG&B   about us, favorites, fun, Rachel, Twitter  
12

Tweeting sentences

by Rachel

I’m one of those readers who underlines everything in my books. I can’t help it. I see a great sentence and I have to make a note of it. So, I was happy to find this Vulture post by Sam Anderson which explains his new project of tweeting his favorite lines from books. Also, I’m a library member, and not being able to underline favorite sentences in books is starting to drive me mad, so perhaps putting down that highlighter and finding a new place to log all my favorite sentences is the way to go.

Just out of curiosity–because I love finding or hearing about unique and interesting sentences in books–do you have a favorite sentence from a book you’ve read?

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