The thermometer hit 60! Break out the books!

Inspired by my Wordless Wednesday photo, the unseasonably warm few days we're having here in New York, AND the fact that my beloved Daylight Savings Time begins this weekend, this post is going to be all about SPRING READING! Yayyyy!

I could probably justify each season being the best for reading in some way. In winter, there's nothing else to do, so why not snuggle up under the covers or in front of the fireplace with a good book? In summer...well, it's not called 'Summer Reading' for nothin'! Beach reads, pool reads, it's always good reading when it's in the sun. Fall...eh, I don't have much for that one. But SPRING! Spring, I think, is my favorite time to read. In the winter, I end up either falling asleep under those warm covers or just watching a movie (my viewing of TV on DVD increases dramatically during this time). In summer, I end up dozing on the beach or by the pool (sleep is a pattern with me, as you can see). But in spring, I can finally get out of the stuffy indoors and plop down on a bench in the park. Back in high school, I used to park myself on the porch swing or in the hammock and read for hours after school. It's probably the biggest thing I miss about the way of life outside of the Big Apple.

I always have a pretty good queue of books to read, but right now I feel like I have a GREAT one...just in time for what I have officially dubbed Spring Reading. On my list (and these are just the NEWEST of the great!):

• Carolina Moon by Jill McCorkle (you know my McCorkle love, and this is only 1 of the 5 or so I have waiting patiently on my shelf)
• The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes by Randi Davenport
• The Bird Room by Chris Killen
• Postcards from a Dead Girl by Kirk Farber
• The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard
• Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb
• The Old Man and Me by Elaine Dundy
• Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger by Lee Smith
• The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley
• The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

Have you read any of these?

What's your favorite reading season? And what are YOU excited to read?

Wordless Wednesday: Spring in the air

For more Wordless Wednesday fun, go here.

Goodbye, Beach

Last week I was here:

Ah, glory. Man, the end of vacation really blows. I'm struggling to get back into the swing of things. Work? Pshh. Grocery store? Eh. All I want to do is lay on the beach and daydream (and by daydream I mean doze off). This was my first grown-up vacation that gave me a break from my normal work week, but after which I still have to return to that normal work week. In college, it was so much different because all of life was pretty much like a vacation. Now I think I appreciate vacation more, but it's also hard to not spend all day every day dreaming up and planning my next one. I also have about zero motivation to write reviews for all the books I've read recently, and the list of things waiting to be reviewed is getting a bit backed up. Time, people. Just give me time.

So in honor of my Dominican vacation, here's a list of books with a Dominican theme (mind you, none of which I have read. Perhaps I should've thought of this before the vacay, but I am more inspired to read them now after having been there).

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz — I know you've heard of it and probably read it. It won the Pulitzer in 2008. Apparently it's about a nerdy Dominican-American teenager that wants to be the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and find love (I'm summarizing from Goodreads).

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez — Set in the Dominican Republic in the 1960s, three sisters are found dead in a Jeep crashed off a coastal cliff. Using the perspectives of the four Mirabel sisters, we get a glimpse into life under the Trujillo dictatorship. I hear great things about this one. Alvarez has several other novels set in the D.R. as well.

Let it Rain Coffee by Angie Cruz — Blending past and present and focusing on a family's escape from Trujillo's regime, Let it Rain Coffee is a novel about loss, love, family, memory, and the culture and history that define an individual. Lots of readers have praised this one for its history.

Unburnable by Marie-Elena John — Lillian Baptiste fled Dominica when she was 14, amidst secrets and scandal. Now she's returning to the island to face the demons of her past. Set in both contemporary America and WWII Dominica, the story weaves together the history and culture of both.

Do you like reading books of places you've been? What's your favorite world lit novel and/or favorite vacation destination?

Review: Bike is a bike is a bike is a bike

David Byrne began riding his bike out of necessity in New York City, but after using this “uncool” mode of transportation in numerous cities throughout the world he grew attached to the new point of view cycling gave him. Bicycle Diaries is a collection of Byrne’s notes and recollections of various cities throughout the world as seen by bike.

I received this book as a gift because I am an avid cyclist. I don’t bike every day, but I generally support the lifestyle cycling promotes. Bicycle Diaries interested me on this level and because I am a huge Talking Heads fan. Don’t expect, however, to read about Byrne rehashing the glory days of “Stop Making Sense.”

The most intriguing parts of this book were when Byrne departed from his travels and drifted in his own memories and philosophies. Byrne’s thoughts are generally quite coherent and interesting—his theories on outsiders in foreign countries really struck me. I am sure he’s had a ton of experience in this field. Bicycle Diaries amounts to a glimpse inside the mind of some level of genius. David Byrne is by no means a cyclist on the level of Lance Armstrong, but he’s had years of experience riding in all sorts of environments. There is certainly some nugget of truth in this work.

It’s hard to separate David Byrne bicycle aficionado from David Byrne the co-creator of The Talking Heads. I assume Byrne wrestles with this everyday and it is apparent in his writing. Those expecting to read Bicycle Diaries the treatise on cycling as a means of urban transportation will be most disappointed to find only a few passages dealing with cycling as politics. The politics of this debate are tired, it’s nice to read a cycling piece that deals with cycling and the people who it brings together.

Wordless Wednesday: BEACH

All this week's posts are scheduled, and I am somewhere like this right now. HAHAAAAA, enjoy the cold!

For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.

Short cuts

I've moved out of my apartment in Brooklyn due to an impending leak disaster. So I haven't really been able to focus on any reviewing as of such. But in lieu of full out reviews, I just wanted to mention and shortly discuss some rather good books - fiction and non-fiction and drama - I've engaged with. I wish I had more time to go into them more fully, but for now I think this'll suffice.

Cold by Bill Streever (Little, Brown) is a fascinating read. Part travelogue, part memoir, part science discussion, Streevers's book takes you through the world of cold: whether it's on the Arctic Circle in Alaska or on the bitterness of the Middle West of America. Streevers,, who chairs the North Slope Science Initiative's Scince Technical Advisory Panel is obviously not just a scientist - he's a rare-breed: a scientist who can make discoveries - and write! Streevers goes into why people sometimes want to take off their clothing when their blood temperature starts to decrease, how nerves begin to die when it becomes bitter cold, how a group of schoolchildren never made it through a blizzard. There are a lot of entertaining and curious anecdotes. This is well worth the trip.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) tells the story of the young girl Minli who has a heart of gold; unfortunately her parents don't have such wealth. They live nearby a mountain - the Fruitless Mountain, so called because there's not much to reep from it. Minli is determined to have better fortune for her family. When told by a goldfish salesman that goldfish bring good luck, she gives the last of her money to him to purchase a fish. And so begins her epic journey, one that includes dragon companions, solving riddles, and eventually discovering the true meaning of friendship. It's a four-colour book, so the sketches, also done by Lin, are absolutely gorgeous. It's something just to have on the bookshelf, at the very least.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (Simon & Schuster) is probably one of the best paeans to 'writer's block' I've ever read. It certainly gives Nabokov's Pale Fire a run for its money. The concept is simple: a reviewer/professor of poetry, who himself has been published every now and again, is supposed to write an introduction to this anthology of poetry. But he just can't seem to do it. So his special lady friend leaves him. And he has quite the existential crisis. Oddly enough, the book isn't really about this writer - his name is the ridiculous Paul Chowder - but rather about his strong opinions about English language poetry. Which make this ride wonderfully entertaining. It's like listening to a professor rant, but hysterically. (At least you're not in the classroom.) It's brilliantly done. I'm sorry to say that this is the first Baker book I've read.

The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett may have been the best investment I made whilst at Oxford. Though it's sad that it took me until now to read past Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and my personal favourite Play. It's so intriguing to watch Beckett grow as an artist. Not that he needed to grow, per se; but you're able to see how he's able to eliminate character and words more and more through each of his theatre, television, radio, and film work. If anything, this collection makes you respect him more as an artist. Even when the work is tedious, the reader should be able to understand why. Absolutely stunning. And it's gotten me to finish reading his collected shorter prose, which is what's been engaging my mind as of recent.

Review: He has HOW many wives?

David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife is one of those books that has been sitting on my shelf to be read for way too long. But actually, I'm glad I waited this long to read it. I won it last summer during a blog tour at the height of its hype...so pretty much everyone else read and reviewed it in a two month span of time. Now, it may be brand new for you!

The 19th Wife tells two stories interwoven but divided by a hundred years. And can you guess their connection? Yes, polygamy! More generally, the Latter-Day Saints, but more specifically, the Fundamentalists. The book opens in the late 1800s with the story of Brigham Young's infamous 19th wife, Ann Eliza Young. She spent several years in a polygamous marriage with Young before fleeing the church and crusading across the country against polygamy. The other story is of a present-day 19th wife, Becky Lyn, who's a part of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, or the "Firsts." Becky Lyn is in jail and accused of murdering her husband. Her son Jordan, one of the "Lost Boys" excommunicated from the church during adolescence, finds out about his mother from a newspaper article and heads back to Utah convinced of her innocence and on a quest for the truth.

What I loved about this book was that it served as both historical fiction and a murder mystery, though both stories are complete works of fiction. I don't know much about the Mormon faith or its history, but I could completely buy everything Ebershoff wrote as truth. The whole controversial premise was very intriguing to me and led me to Wikipedia many times during reading. I've read some criticism from Mormons about this book, but I found Ebershoff to be very balanced in dealing with such a controversial topic. I found the author to be very clear in distinguishing that this is a subgroup, a minority, of the Mormon faith without generalizations.

Some sections dragged, but overall this was a very thought-provoking read about faith and community. Google search will come in handy after reading this one! I'm kinda interested in what else Ebershoff as written.