2015 reading: here are some numbers.

December 30, 2015

this is why i like the end of the year. >:3

in 2015, i read 68 books*, and here are my top 7 from those 68 (in no particular order) (or, rather, in the order i posted them on instagram, which was in no particular order).

helen macdonald, h is for hawk (jonathan cape, 2014)
alex mar, witches of america (FSG, 2015)
patricia park, re jane (viking, 2015)
rebecca solnit, the faraway nearby (penguin, 2014, paperback)
jonathan franzen, purity (FSG, 2015)
han kang, human acts (portobello, 2016)
robert s. boynton, the invitation-only zone (FSG, forthcoming 2016)

(you can find quotes and reasons why i chose these 7 on my instagram.)

* as of this posting time. i still have two days to read more!

in 2015, i went to 38 book events and readings, and here are 10 i particularly enjoyed.

marie mutsuki mockett and emily st. john mandel with ken chen at AAWW
michael cunningham at columbia
meghan daum with glenn kurtz at mcnally jackson
kazuo ishiguro and caryl phillips at the 92Y
aleksandar hemon with sean macdonald at mcnally jackson
alexandra kleeman and patricia park with anelise chen at AAWW
lauren groff at bookcourt
jonathan franzen with wyatt mason at st. joseph's college
patti smith with david remnick at the new yorker festival
alex mar with leslie jamison at housingworks bookstore

(both franzen events had no-photo policies.)

in 2015, i took 34 photos of books with pie. mind you, this is not the number of times i ate pie. this is simply the number of times i went to eat pie and decided to photograph it with the book i was reading at the time. and by pie, i mean pie from four and twenty blackbirds because their pie is delicious and not too sweet and totally worth going to gowanus for (so, if you're in nyc, go get some!).

here are 5 photos of books with pie because it would be unnecessarily mean of me to torture you with all 34 slices of amazing pie, wouldn't it?

in 2015, i took 38 photos of books with stitch.

i suppose, to provide some context: i love stitch. lilo and stitch is one of my favorite movies (we're talking top 3 here). i've had this stitch for 13 years. i still shamelessly take him with me everywhere (he's in california with me right now). obviously, he popped up every now and then with a book.

here are 5 photos of books with stitch. i'm totally choosing how many photos to post arbitrarily (in multiples of 5, though, so maybe not so arbitrarily?).

in 2015, my book club started, and we read 10 books. we've now eased into a routine of meeting at my friend's apartment and having a potluck, but we were absent this routine the first two times we met, hence the three out-of-place photos. i know; it's making me a little twitchy, too; but we'll have 12 consistent flat-lays from 2016!

marilynne robinson, lila (FSG, 2014)
alice munro, the beggar maid (vintage, 1991) (first published 1977)
kazuo ishiguro, an artist of the floating world (vintage,1989) (first published 1986)
margaret atwood, the stone mattress (nan a. talese, 2014)
jeffrey eugenides, the virgin suicides (picador, 2009) (first published 1993)
ta-nehisi coates, between the world and me (random house, 2015)
virginia woolf, mrs. dalloway (vintage, 1992) (first published 1925)
michael cunningham, the hours (FSG, 1998)
nikolai gogol, the complete tales (vintage, 1999)
nathaniel hawthorne, short stories (vintage, 1955)

(we combined two months, so i didn't have 10 photos, so i included the nachos i ate when we met to discuss munro's the beggar maid.)

in 2015, i became much more brutal with dropping books because life is too short for books that simply don't hold your interest. i intentionally dropped 13 books.

claire messud, the woman upstairs (knopf, 2013): so. boring. nothing. happens.
cheryl strayed, tiny beautiful things (vintage, 2012): i started reading this in earnest, but then i skimmed it with a friend, and then i never went back to it. strayed’s columns are generally hit or miss for me.
atul gawande, being mortal (metropolitan books, 2014): this wasn’t what i was expecting it to be ... though i’m also not entirely sure what i was expecting it to be. i think i was expecting more profundity, and i wasn’t taken by the writing.
renee ahdieh, the wrath and the dawn (putnam, 2015): omg, the sheer amount of adverbs in this made me want to throttle the book. i always read with a pencil to mark passages i like or to jot down thoughts, but i read this with a pencil to cross out all the adverbs and circle all the different variations of “said” -- i want to ban her from using a thesaurus ever again. and limit how many adverbs she's allowed to use.
rebecca mead, my life in middlemarch (crown, 2014): i really liked what i read of this, but i finished middlemarch and didn’t like that that much, so i never did finish the mead.
rabih alameddine, an unnecessary woman (grove, 2014): i just stopped reading this -- like, i put it down for the day and kind of forgot i’d ever started reading it, which was weird because i started reading it on oyster books and liked it enough that i bought the paperback … and then i never went back to it and probably never will.
ta-nehisi coates, between the world and me (random house, 2015): i know; i’m horrible for dropping this; but i did. i never finished reading it for book club, and i didn’t finish it after book club and have no inclination to pick it up again.
jesse ball, a cure for suicide (pantheon, 2015): this tried too hard to be … whatever the hell it is.
virginia woolf, mrs. dalloway (vintage, 1992): ugh. i'm sorry, michael cunningham, but UGH.
emile zola, thêrèse raquin (penguin, 2010): given the plot, this is going to sound bizarre, but i was bored to death with this. it was so predictable.
philip weinstein, jonathan franzen (bloomsbury, 2015): given my unabashed, vocal love for franzen, you’d think i’d be all over this, but, as it turns out -- and i say this in the most non-creepy way possible -- i know way too much about franzen’s bio already. also, my brain kept going off in all sorts of directions because it’s already full with my own critical analyses of franzen, and weinstein’s writing is very flat. one day, i'll write about franzen.
shirley jackson, we have always lived in the castle (penguin, 2006): so. boring. nothing. happens.
nathaniel hawthorne, short stories (vintage classics, 2011): (no comment.)

in 2015, i took a lot of photos of books with food, and i am not going to count them all. here are 5 i randomly chose so that i'd have 7 "in 2015"s instead of 6.

and that's all, folks! stay tuned for my year-end recap coming ... at some point in the next two weeks. >:3 happy new year!

hello friday! (150403)

April 3, 2015

a week-in-review then, because i'd still like to post something on fridays and books are the most comfortable (and obvious) choice!

i finished reading selfish, shallow, and self-absorbed (picador, 2015) today. favorite essays were those by sigrid nunez, anna holmes, danielle henderson, jeanne safer, and elliott holt.
- i would've loved to see an essay or two by people in their late-twenties/early-thirties because i think (or, at least, i like to think) that you can be in your late-twenties and early-thirties and have decided not to have kids -- some of us have known this about ourselves since we were young.
- someone (i'm pretty sure it was laura kipnis) on the panel of contributors at the event on tuesday said there seemed to be a preponderance of writers defending that they liked kids, and, having finished the collection, i agree that there is. i don't doubt that they genuinely love children; sometimes, though, it did feel very defensive; and i admit it was refreshing to come across the writer who baldly said s/he didn't like kids. (this was mostly personal, though; it's hard in general to come across someone who doesn't like children.)
this week, i started doing a buddy read of michel faber's the book of strange new things (hogarth, 2014) with a friend on instagram. this is one of the reasons i can't dismiss social media; i've had the pleasure of meeting some incredible people via the internet; and i love the fact that this friend (who lives in japan) and i can actively read a book together.
speaking of the book of strange new things, faber writes with such ease, and his prose is natural and lovely. his descriptions are vivid and alive, too -- i dreamt i was on oasis because i'd been reading right before going to sleep, and it felt so real, the humidity, the atmosphere, the colors, that i woke up feeling kind of disoriented, wondering, wait, that wasn't real?
books i've been reading off-and-on the last few weeks (yes, weeks):
- cheryl strayed's tiny beautiful things (vintage, 2012): when i was in LA, the illustrator friend and i went flipped through all the columns, and i haven't felt very inspired to go back and give them all a thorough reading.
- rebecca solnit's men who explain things to me (haymarket books, 2014): i'm thrilled this was reissued in hardback with new essays!
- joan didion's white album (FSG, 2009): i love lingering over my didion, taking little morsels and letting them melt into me. (i'm not quite sure how to credit these publication years ... right now, i'm going with when the edition i own was issued.)
- kazuo ishiguro's an artist of the floating world (penguin, 2013): there's such a lovely tension and unease simmering through this book that i'm afraid to find out what the narrator did during the war. this is my book club's next selection, though, so i'll have to grit my teeth and find out!
- catie disabato's the ghost network (melville house, 2015, forthcoming): this is a cheat; i found this ARC at housing works on tuesday and was so very excited; so i had to share.

march reading recap will be up by the end of the weekend! have a great weekend, all!

hello monday! (150309)

March 10, 2015

this post comes from california -- hello from california! i'm here for the week on holiday, spending time with family and friends and eating way too much good food and filling the in-between spaces with reading -- and i suppose i'd like to say something about these books here, at least the ones i'm currently reading because i'm savoring them both, taking them slowly, piece by piece, which works because one's a collection of essays and the other's a collection of columns: alex ross' listen to this (FSG, 2010) and cheryl strayed's tiny beautiful things: advice on love and life from dear sugar (vintage, 2012).

i'm loving listen to this, which is a collection of pieces ross has written for the new yorker. i'm not reading the essays in order but skipping around and reading the ones that catch my fancy (usually the ones about composers and musicians i know and like), and there's nothing fancy or particular about alex ross' writing -- he simply writes well, and he writes about music without getting lost in terminology or being overly technical or, even, too sentimental -- and i thoroughly enjoy reading him because he genuinely loves and appreciates music, and that comes off the page.

(you know, i have to say that i love the new yorker's non-fiction. this isn't to say that i dislike its fiction but that i have a particular soft spot for its non-fiction because fiction allows for more leeway in style and voice [as it should], but its non-fiction takes different writers and their voices and brings them under the overall tone and voice of the new yorker. which, yes, all magazines [should] do, but i really enjoy the new yorker's voice because it's smart without being too intellectual, intelligent without being academic or dull, proud of its identity without being full of itself. i can't confess to reading every single piece in every single issue [or even to reading every issue every week because i tend to amass issues then sit down with a pile of them for a lovely evening of marathon reading], but i love having the new yorker and think its worth every penny of my subscription.)

and cheryl strayed -- oh, strayed as dear sugar is abso-fucking-lutely brilliant. she's blunt and honest but generous and kind and sympathetic, and she makes me laugh and cry and nod my head in vehement agreement. i was introduced to her from a link to her column on envy, which is wonderfully paired with her column on writing like a motherfucker, and i'm happy that they made this into a book to have and to hold. i only wish there were a hardcover of this (i believe it was only published in paperback? please correct me if i'm wrong).

there's more i actually want to say in regards to those two columns linked above, though, and specifically about craft and querying and writing, but i shall save that for another week. i've been having these wonderful meandering conversations with my illustrator buddy about all those things, so there are lots of thoughts bubbling around in my head, which i shall endeavor to get down into articulate words, but i suppose i shall leave y'all with this: write because you love it. create because you can't help it. pursue the art because not to pursue the art is simply not an option. and, if you decide to make something of it, to pursue publication or production or whatever it is your art deems "professional" and "a career," then go into it knowing that it's going to hurt like hell and your heart is going to be broken over and over and over again and that you're going to have to pick up the pieces over and over and over again. do it because it's worth the pain (and it will be pain), because you want it so bad it fucking hurts, and it's the trying that makes it worthwhile, the attempts that make you a better writer, a better artist, a better creator that truly count. do it because the work itself brings you joy, not the desire for recognition or fame or a huge advance. do it because you must.