While on the plane to Oklahoma, I finished a really great book called The Brooklyn Follies. It’s about a man who moves to Brooklyn post divorce and the life he make there and the many intersting characters who enter his life. It sounds boring, but is really really good. Some of the best lines:

 1. (This is the first line of the book) “I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morninng I traveled down there from Westchester to scop out the terrain”.

2. Yes I suppose there is somthing nasty about me at times. But not all the time-and not as a matter of principle”.

3. “Thirty-three years of living under the same roof, and by the time we walked off in opposite directions, what we added up to was approximately nothing”.

4. “One must never own up to a fart in public. That is the unwritten law, the single most stringent protocol of American etiquette. Farts come from no one and nowhere; they are anonymous emanations that belong to the group as a whole, and even when every person in the room can point to the culprit, the only sane course of action is denial.”

5. “Reading was my escape an dmy comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head.”

6. (on parenting) “When all else fails, bombard them with tokens of your love”.

There were so many more great quotes from this book, but reading and writing on the airplane was getting tricksy, so I stopped. As always, Erica, this book is for you and should be read soon if you haven’t already. In other book-related news, I have already gotten some Christmas presents from people and there are three books so far and I can’t wait to read them all. One is by the man who wrote this very book (Paul Auster), the other is by the man who wrote Neverending Story and the third is a Ben Franklin biography that I am practically salivating over. I am pumped and ready for my reading in the new year and I’m pretty sure more books are headed in my direction. In case it wasn’t obvious, Brianne hearts books!

The other day at work I finished my book earlier than anticipated and thus did not have my handy back-up book with me. While this may seem like no big deal, in Brianneland, this is a crisis. So, I looked to my employer’s shelves and decided to try the classic, The Three Musketeers. Having only been acquainted with this story by the classic Disney movie starring Oliver Platt and Keifer Sutherland, I was quite shocked by the actual book but not shocked to learn that Disney made their version a little lighter and more family friendly. There’s a lot of death, both expected and unexpected. There are a great many duels and swordfights and battles. The characters and stories are all darker than I expected. With all that said, it was somehow a light book. Dumas manages to make the occassional side comment to the reader that is both funny and charming and made me feel like someone was telling me the story rather than me reading it. I loved this book and I’m so glad that I accidentally read it. The back of the book called it “the best sword and cloak book ever written” and while I can’t say as I’ve read any others, I’m inclined to agree. If you have some  spare time for a classic, pick this one up if you haven’t read it yet. Definately worth it.

I recently finished the Pulitzer winner, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer. It’s about a boy with big dreams and his attempts to make them happen in late 19th century New York City when the Upper West Side (where I live) was open land and wilderness where people didn’t live. It was so funny to hear him talk about the wilds of the Upper West Side and his new businesses that were opened up in areas no one wanted to visit (West End and Riverside-the two avenues I live between). This book was a very different book from the last two Pulitzer winners I read (Olive and Stone Diaries) in that it was written by a man and a bit more dry. This book left me with questions in a good way as the main character was also left with questions.

Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:

1. “No, the trouble was the wife, Mrs. Louise Hamilton, a buxom bustling handsome dark-haired lady whose large black eyes were skilled in the expression of disdain, outrage, dissatisfaction, and astonished disbelief taht the simplest request had been handled with such ineptitude.”

2. “As a child he had always stopped at the park with his mother, so that the places beyond seemed to him not simply inaccessible but imaginary, like pictures of igloos or cactus flowers. Adulthood therefore was sheer magic: with a wave of the magic wand you summoned a cab and ventured into the imaginary world.”

3. “Every city dweller harbored a double desire. The desire to be in the thick of things and the equal and opposite desire to escape from the horrible thick of things to some peaceful rural place with shady paths, murmuring streams, and the hum of bumblebees over vaguely imagined forests.”

The following is a list of the Pulitzer prize winners for the last 20 years. I have read 13 out of the 20 and have at home 3 more that are on the list of things to read. I have just started 1997’s winner, Martin Dressler and am looking forward to it as it takes place in New York City in the late 1800’s. And, on top of that, look at what the New York Times Book Review had to say about it, “The wonderful, wonder-full bok is a fable and phantasmagoria of the sources of our century.” I’m not even sure what that means, it sounds so lovely.

In case you were wondering, my favorite books on this list are: The Shipping News, The Hours, Interpreter of Maladies, Olive Kitteridge and The Road. All great books. I also seriously recommend reading The Road before the movie comes out as Pulitzer winning books don’t always make for the best movies and you’ll want to read it before you see it. (Of course, I never think any movies are as good as the books, so I am a little biased). I am looking forward to reading the rest of the winners of the past two decades but, looking only at title, I’m most excited about The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. How great does that sound? The Pulitzer began awarding prizes in 1948 but didn’t award one every year, which I love. It’s like the Pulitzer is a hard-ass and isn’t just going to give you the award if you were the best of the year because it may have been a crappy year for books. I think that’s so fantastic. I’ve read a few of the much older winners such as To Kill a Mockingbird and one of my favorite books of all time, The Old Man and the Sea. Seriously, man, woman, child, whatever you are, you should read this book. It’s about 4 pages long, so you could knock it out in no time at all.

Happy Reading, friends. I only wish that the Reading Rainbow theme would play in the background everytime I talked about books. That would make this blog-reading experience perfect. (Well, as close to perfect as you can get without Levar Burton telling you about the books!)

Last week I finished my third Pulitzer installment and again have to say that it was great. One common thread in a lot of the Pulitzer’s I have read in the past is that they are just pieces of a whole story and while you get enough to be satisfied with what you’ve read, you don’t get a neat little packaged ending. I like that. A lot. This book was great. For those of you who don’t remember, I’ll retype the back cover of the book and then continue with my favorite quotes from the book.

1. “He was thirty-five years old and for every moment of those years he had been someone’s slave, a white man’s slave and then another white man’s slave and now, for nearly ten years, the overseer slave for a black master.”

2. “He believed whistling inside or outside the house was bad luck, but right then, as he worked, he was tempted to whistle.”

3. “She did not know the history of eons about herself; there was only the feeling in her bones that for some time she had been venturing into a place unknown and that feeling made her hope for a road that would not cut too deeply into her feet and her soul.”

4. “He wanted to die but he really didn’t want to catch a cold to do it.”

This book was about a plantation and all of the people working in it, with it and in any way involved with it. That’s a lot of people to keep track of, but the author never mentioned anyone in passing. Someone who was mentioned in an aside in the early pages would come back with an entire story later. While I at first thought the man referenced on the back cover of the book was the main character, the further I got into this book the more I realized that there isn’t a main character. At different times you could say that the plantation owners, the owners friends, the town sherrif, the neighboring slaves were each the main character and that made for a very interesting read to be so invested in what happened to so many people. This was a very well written book and I definately recommend it to all, especially Erica. (Ever wonder what kind of book I could read that would not end in a recommendation to Erica?)

In my continuing Pulitzer Prize-winning book reading, I am now reading The Known World, Pulitzer winner in 2003. I just started it a few days ago, but wanted you all to read the reason I selected this book. And yes, it was based on its cover. It’s back cover anyway:

“He was thirty-five years old and for every moment of those years he had been someone’s slave, a white man’s slave and then another white man’s slavee and now, for nearly ten years, the overseer slave for a black master.”

That’s it. That’s all the information you get. And that was certainly enough information for me to read this book and I must say, so far it’s fantastic. I’ll let you know when I finish.

I just finished another great Pulitzer winner. Perhaps these Pulitzer people really do know what they’re doing when they hand out these awards.

The Stone Diaries by Carol Sheilds, is about a woman and her history starting with just before her birth and ending just after her death. It’s a history that tells of most of her family and the story of her life. Though describing it doesn’t make it sound very interesting.

The following were my favorite lines from the book. Some because they are great quotes and others because of how lyrical the prose was.

1. “His little pauses are sensuous gateways, without which his listeners would fall into a trance”.

2. ” His own society is what he favors. A quite winter room, a chair, a book opened under a circle of lamplight, a comfortable austerity”.

3. “He shrugs with the whole of his small, hardened body and smiles out from the little leather purse of a face”.

4. “Canada is a country where nothing seems ever to happen…a country you wouldn’t ask to dance a second waltz”.

5. “He feels sure that his own life will be a long waiting for the revelation of a terrible truth which he will both welcome and dread”.

6. “She must be mourning for the squandering of herself”.

7. “There are bits of your body you carry around all your life but never really own”.

8. “A choice made when one is flat on ones back is no less a choice”.

9. “The larger loneliness of our lives evolves from our unwillingness to spend ourselves, stir ourselves”.

This book was really great but certainly mostly for women. It’s a book, much like Olive Kitteridge, that seems to ask the question “what has a woman done when she comes to the end of her life?” and seems to leave that answer up to us much like Olive. Erica, as a lover of Olive, I know you will love this book as well and should read it when you get the chance. The rest of you, as you will.

In my post fluff summer, I’ve decided to read some smarter books andhave decided to read the Pulitzer winners that I haven’t read. I just finished the most recent Pulizter winner, Olive Kitteridge. This is a book that’s about this old woman who lives in a small Maine town and several of the other people in the town. It’s a little like a short story book without actually being  a series of short stories. There are 13 different mini-stories in the book that sort of relate to Olive, whose story is told throughout the book.

This book talks about issues of marriage, parenting, dealing with death, family members who are disabled, children who move away, children who are angry with their parents and Olive’s aging process and her withdrawal from society. What I like about Olive is that she’s messed up. She has real problems and doesn’t think warm and fuzzy thoughts and she feeds her dog donuts. She felt like a real person. I also liked that this book wasn’t so much a story with a beginning, middle and an end, but more of a picture of a portion of peoples lives. Usually in books peoples lives have a story that starts, gets mucked up and then gets resolved. As if that ever happens in real life. As if we are ever only dealing with one storyline at a time and that they ever get completely resolved. I liked that his book dealt with the stories that way. I would finish a chapter and think, “I wondered what happened next? I wondered if that girl ever got a job? I wonder if that guy left his wife?” and I liked that I didn’t know, that I only got part of the story. However, I can see how this might bother a lot of readers, so use caution before diving into this book.

Right now I’m reading a collection of the O. Henry short story prize winners from 2008. Stay tuned.

Okay, this is again about the book I just read. Sorry for those of you who skim over the book-related blogs as this is the third one in a row.

In the ninth grade, our World History teacher, Kim Pennington, told us that there was a queen who didn’t like knocking and insisted that people scratch on doors instead. Immediately, classmate Jayson Kennedy raises his hand and says, “But what if you’re vaccuuming?” Needless to say we found this very funny since they didn’t have a lot of vaccuums in Queen Victoria’s time. For most people, that’s where the story would end, but not with me. Amber and I decided to start using the scratch when knocking on one anothers doors when we lived together. This is actually a handy technique because if you are asleep, you don’t typically hear the scratch. This is handy if you’re just checking to see if the other person is awake without having to open their door or knock and wake them up. When I moved in with Meghan, I introduced this to her and she uses it like a champion. So, we have long been proud to carry on this Queen Victoria tradition. Is it funny that this is the take-home lesson I took away from 9th grade World History? Probably.

Anyway, in the Know It All in the V chapter, what does the author tell me he learned but that Queen Victoria made people scratch on doors instead of knock. I should probably let him know that it’s not a long-dead practice, but frequently used on the Upper West Side.

Let’s flashback to 1998, when Zak and I were sophomore’s in high school. Zak had driven to our house in his dad’s super cool orange/tan van. Maren and I were walking Zak out to his car when we noticed the strangest bug on the antenna on the front of the van. Rather than comment on how odd it was and moving on with our life, we decided to trap it in a jar, transfer it to a ziploc bag, and freeze it for further examination the next day.

So, the next day, we looked at it in depth the next day and decided to take it with us to the University of Oklahoma library to look it up in some insect identification books. What we found was rather upsetting. What we had captured and frozen was the Assassin bug. The assassin bug has a long projection on the front of it’s face that it uses to inject lethal saliva that liquefies the insides of the prey, which are then sucked out.  The South American variety, often called the kissing bug, bites humans on the lips and can cause a fatal heart disease. All of this we learned on our scientific investigation that day 11 years ago. Needless to say, we have long been more afraid of the assassin bug than most normal humans. Luckily, we don’t see them very often.

So, we haven’t done much thinking about this long-ago researched bug, until I was reading my book The Know It All and discovered that the assassin bug can also shoot it’s saliva up to 12 inches. That means that it doesn’t even have to be on you to hit you. This I found alarming and immediately called Zak to report this new assassin bug detail.

This is what I love about reading. Random information in a book that might have been glossed over by any other reader, brought back a memory of an adventure that Everyone had 11 years ago. I love that for each reader of any book, different things have different meanings. So for me, this book brought back many great memories of funny things, but for someone else, it might have reminded them of bad things, or happy things, or something completely different. Reading rocks!