Category Archives: books

Found!

Yesterday Husband and I went to Baltimore for lunch and an excursion to a favorite indie bookstore,Atomic Books. The occasion for our visit was a stop on the latest Found Magazine tour, the Denim and Diamonds Tour. We could have just waited til evening and gone to the evening appearance in DC at the Warehouse, but the rainy Sunday inspired us to get out of town for a few hours.

You can (and should) pre-order the new Found book, Requiem for a Paper Bag. I got a copy yesterday and I totally recommend it. It’s genius.

Requiem for a Paper Bag: Celebrities and Civilians Tell Stories of the Best Lost, Tossed, and Found Items from Around the World
By Davy Rothbart

Over the years we’ve been able to share thousands of our favorite finds; now, we get to share some of our favorite stories about finding! When we asked our favorite writers, musicians, artists, and entertainers to share stories with us of their most memorable finds, we had no idea we’d be flooded with so many strange, profound, and hilarious tales. The new FOUND book, Requiem for a Paper Bag, contains 67 short pieces from an amazing clutch of contributors, including Chuck D, Sarah Vowell, Andy Samberg, Susan Orlean, Patton Oswalt, PostSecret’s Frank Warren, Tom Robbins, Dave Eggers, Miranda July, Jonathan Lethem, Chuck Klosterman, David Simon (The Wire), Jenji Kohan (Weeds), Katherine Dunn, Jim Carroll, Jesse Thorn (The Sound of Young America), Andrew Bird, Kori Gardner (Mates of State), Mike Schank (American Movie), Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Steve Almond, Paulo Coelho, Billy Bragg, Kimya Dawson, Damian Kulash (OK Go), Devendra Banhart, and dozens of other fantastic folks.

I also snagged a copy of Davy’s short story collection, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas, which he inscribed to me while I giggled happily like the, um, happily giggling fangirl that I am. I’ve only read a couple of stories so far, but I’m enjoying the book a lot. I’m curious which 3 stories Steve Buscemi has optioned to adapt into a screenplay, but I wasn’t thinking yesterday and didn’t ask.

As long as I’m going on and on about Davy Rothbart and Found, you should check out his guest post at the Utne Reader’s AltWire Blog. It’s about YouTube and it contains some fascinating clips.

While I’m doling out reading, watching and listening assignments, you should also check out his This American Life episodes. (I think he’s done 7 of them). I’m going to listen to episode 184 tonight. In Act One. Mr. Rothbart’s Neighborhood, Davy interviewed a group of people about their neighborhood conflicts and then went to see Mr. Rogers and had Mr Rogers mediate the conflicts. I could listen to it and then blog about it, but what sport would there be in that? Plus, I’m about to faint from hunger and I need to flee the computer for the rest of the night. Someone has been roasting a chicken for a couple of hours and I’m getting cantankerous.

Before I go – it would be terribly wrong not to mention Davy’s brother and wildly talented partner in crime on this tour, Peter Rothbart. Peter writes and performs brilliant, funny, heartbreaking songs that are inspired by Finds.

I can’t do their act justice so I’ll encourage you to check out the books and the magazine and listen to Peter’s music and, most importantly, catch the road show next time it passes anywhere near your town. It’s fun to laugh and bond with strangers. It’s also fun to sing along to The Booty Don’t Stop.

(I must admit that I was secretly hoping for Wiggle on the Floor, which we once got to sing-along to 5 years ago with a somewhat perplexed group of Senior Citizens at a Politics and Prose event).

The Onion: "Lovecraftian School Board Member Wants Madness Added To Curriculum"

West’s previous failed proposals include requiring the high school band to perform the tuneless flute songs of the blind idiot god Azathoth and offering art students instruction in the carving of morbid and obscene fetishes from otherworldly media.

Several parents attending the meeting were not impressed by West’s outburst.

“Last month, he wanted us to change the high school’s motto from ‘Many Kinds of Excellence’ to ‘Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,'” PTA member Cathy Perry said. “I asked if it was Latin, and he said that it was the eldritch tongue of Shub- Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. I don’t know from eldritch tongues, but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

Cajun Boy in the City's quote of the day

Don’t know why this got stuck in the drafts file – maybe I was going to obsess over the introduction to the quotation for a while?

I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.

-Truman Capote

via Michele, via Cajun Boy in the City

bookmeme

I’m following Erqsome’s book meme. When I copied & pasted the list I almost left her commentary because I so agreed with her assessments. I think we’ve bonded in the past over our mutual dislike of Catcher in the Rye and Wuthering Heights, but I also think there was bourbon involved so I can’t be certain.

At any rate, feel free to be a copycat, but be sure to link back so I can see your answers!

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read.
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (I like these a lot, but they get kinda turgid)
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (I haven’t read the 3rd one yet cause Husband is hogging it)
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (All of them????)
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy I’ve read some but not all…
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (See 33.)
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (I tried, I was underwhelmed)
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel – I really disliked this book
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon I liked this one a lot.
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding – I tried. It hurt my brain.
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73.The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom (Why is this here?)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I set a fairly high standard for the books I marked “loved”, there were plenty on the list I liked a lot. There were also some I truly hated. I think I’ve marked them accordingly.