Can’t win them all

Sometimes you hit the bull’s eye. Sometimes you miss it by a few inches. That’s pretty much where my last book selection landed.

Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail
Caitlin Kelly
240 pages

I thoroughly enjoy biographies. I love to get inside a person’s head and hear their life, their observations, the nuances, the challenges in their voice. I have to say, though, that this time I was anxious to finish this book and get the author our of my head.

I heard part of author Caitlin Kelly’s NPR interview last week and was intrigued by the idea of the book: displaced professional take a retail job to help make ends meet. As the economy continues to try and recover, the media has covered individuals who have been forced to select other professions and lower-paying jobs after losing their jobs.

Kelly is a journalist who has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other big names. The unfortunate part is that by the time I finished this book, I bet I had been reminded of this fact no fewer than a dozen times. In juxtaposing her part-time retail job at a Northface store, she repeatedly and at excess reminded the reader of what her former life had looked like. While some of her observations of her one-day-a-week second job were pithy, the constant reminders of her former life, combined with other repetitive points and details, led me to wonder if at some point she hadn’t run out of things to talk about but had a page count she was required to reach…because she kept having the same conversation with me.

There are a number of legitimate and insightful points made in this book — our lack of respect for those who ring us up when we’ve bought the latest fashions, our weekly groceries and wait on us when we’re out for a meal, as well as much of corporate America’s lack of focus on treating workers with respect and dignity. Unfortunately, these points were nearly lost on me when the author’s voice and tone were more intrusive than educational.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane…it’s a hardback book parking garage

What book lover and library patron wouldn’t want to park next to Romeo and Juliet, Gandalf and Frodo or the Invisible Man? At Kansas City Public Library, they’ve taken books to a whole new level with this parking garage, Community Bookshelf.

I found this shot from Kansas City photographer, Jonathon Moreau:

Patterns of a random odyssey

Raise your hand if this has happened to you…you’re visiting a website, something catches your eye – a headline, a photo – so you click through. Next time you look up, 15 minutes has passed and you’re 10 websites in…barely remembering where you started.

I had one of those this afternoon. One of my new Facebook friends – who happens to be an art director – posted a link to a site called Pinterest.  It’s a visually enchanted site that imaginatively describes itself as “a place to catalog the things you love.” I can’t even begin to explain how fun the homepage alone is…you’ll need to just check it out for yourself. In a matter of moments, I’ve become completely obsessed with this site. I signed up to receive an invitation…and hope it comes soon, as this site is still in the beta testing phase.

Anyway, this image – of a beautiful book, Pattern by Orla Kiely – stopped me in my tracks. And since another obsession of mine is patterns that speak to me, I, of course, clicked through. The image took me to Print & Pattern, a blog that “celebrates the world of surface pattern design.” It includes photos of a number of the book’s pages.

So a number of great things came from today’s random online odyssey, Pininterest, a new book and Print & Pattern. Seems like it wasn’t such a waste of 15 minutes after all.

The next challenge

After completing the 100 book challenge in October, I needed some time off from blogging…though not reading. Ok, it did take me a good week to pick up another book. However, I proceeded at a much more leisurely pace. Some of the books I completed included the balance of the Ender Game series – Children of the Mind, Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant and Ender in Exile. I also read Mistress Anne, Beautiful Lies, Room, Her Last Letter, Wench, The Ritual Bath, Sacred and Profane, Favorite, Leaving Home and Heaven Is for Real…and my first reread in more than a year, A Secret Garden.

When I commit them all to screen, it seems like I was still reading at a pretty regular clip.

I did start my 2011 challenge on January 1…though of course, it took me until now to formally post it here. I’m a couple of books in. Here’s a toast to the alphabet – and my challenge of 26 books by December 31, 2011. (You can definitely assume I’ll read more than 26 books this calendar year…but one author per letter was a different way to look at the year. I’m also trying to read books of substance for the challenge. We’ll see how it goes.)

100 down, 0 to go

I’ve made an executive decision…as part of my personal reward, I’m letting myself off the hook and freeing myself from logging a blog post for each of my last 14 books, and I refuse to feel guilty about it.

Here’s a list of my last 14 books, which means I completed the quest I set forth exactly one year ago!

87. Best Sex Writing 2010 (short story)
88. Civil Disobedience (classic)
89. Speaker for the Dead (science fiction)
90. A Scattered Life (recommendation)
91. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (recommendation)
92. The Member of the Wedding (classic)
93. The Good Good Pig (recommendation)
94. Revenant (recommendation)
95. Botchan (classic)
96. I Feel Sad About My Neck (recommendation)
97. Fahrenheit 451 (classic)
98. Xenocide (recommendation)
99. The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verse (poetry)
100. Owly: Splashin’ Around (graphic novel)

365 days = book challenge success

With just two hours and thirty minutes to go, the book challenge has been completed!

Reading away

Only 27 days until I turn into a pumpkin…that is if I don’t complete nine more books. So in these last days of my oh-so-noble quest, I’m focusing on flipping pages (or more accurately in my case, flipping the screen) rather than blogging about each of my feats. Wish me luck in these final days.

Siddartha = 86 down, 14 to go

Classic
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse
108 pages

This short, but lyrical book takes you along the spiritual journey of Siddhartha as he travels through the lands of India on his search for enlightenment. Through interactions and life experiences, we see him move along the spectrum of his life – but watch him not fully understanding the lessons he encounters until his life comes full circle.

Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.

Yertle the Turtle = 85 down, 15 to go

Recommendation
Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories
Dr. Seuss
96 pages

Yertle the turtle is the king of the pond and not satisfied with his kingdom as it is. So he piles his subjects one on top of another until he can see as far as he can see, convinced of his superiority and ignoring the throne of turtles piled under his four feet:

Your majesty, please…I don’t like to complain. But down here below, we are feeling great pain.

His stands high on his perch until one subject, the unlucky turtle at the bottom who has been trying to negotiate with the king, sneezes and brings the hundreds-tall pile of turtles tumbling down. The king quickly learns his lesson. Dr. Seuss brilliantly shares impactful lessons through engaging, catchy stories that appeal to kids of all ages. I never regret the time I spend with a Dr. Seuss book.

I found this great post on the Lessons Learned from Dr. Seuss. It’s worth a read.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight = 84 down, 16 to go

Nonfiction
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
Alexandra Fuller
336 pages

This book juxtaposes Uzis and land mines against adventure and family, cigarettes, war and mental illness against love, history and  loss. The author is a white African girl raised on the continent during a time of war and racial division. Her father, a farmer…her mother, a horsewoman…her older sister, her friend and tormentor…a number of other siblings lost to disease, tragedy or miscarriage.

The writing is creative and delightful, with portions that are dark and telling as Fuller shares all of the angles of her life. Every single description is vivid and eloquent, including her description of how tied African children are to the land, to their country.

In Rhodesia, we are born and then the umbilical cord of each child is sewn straight from the mother onto the ground, where it takes root and grows. Pulling away from the ground causes death by suffocation, starvation. That’s what the people of this land believe. Deprive us of the land and you are depriving us of air, water, food, and sex.

It’s hard to even begin to determine which parts of this book to share and include here. I enjoyed every page of it. All I can do is recommend you pick it up and consume it for yourself.