…and now I desperately wish I could be there. Damn you Erin Morgenstern! *shakes fist towards Massachusetts*
That is all.
Bookstores and Libraries
My book haul this Christmas
Today, JT will disassemble Christmas in our little house while I’m at work, and when we deliver the (fat, beautiful) tree to the wood chipper later it will officially mark the end of the holiday season.
All of our presents have been exchanged and unwrapped — except for the two that I still haven’t sent to my coworkers in Toronto… whoops — and that means it’s time to take an inventory of the pile of books I was gifted this season.
In no particular order, the books I received are as follows:
- The Back of the Turtle, Thomas King
- The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell
- Cataract City, Craig Davidson
- Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
- In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, Matt Bell
- How Should a Person Be, Sheila Heti
- The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
- Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
What I read this year
Hello lovely readers.
My birthday was on Monday (yay!), which signals the end of one reading year and the start of another. This year I read about 35 books… that I remembered to write down. I know that some were missed.
In my tracking sheet (sorted by completion date below), there is a conspicuous absence of books in March and April, but for the life of me I can’t recall what I was reading then. Oh well. Next year I’ll try to be a bit more dedicated to this tracking process.
Anyway, the actual excel spreadsheet also includes columns for:
- genre
- who/what recommended the book
- my rating from -5 to +5; and
- some additional key notes about the book (e.g. The Book Thief: WWII, wonderful metaphors, sad; Mrs. Dalloway: beautiful writing, insightful, difficult; Breakfast of Champions: Satire, creative, over-hyped, addictive)
…but I thought that would be a bit much to post here. Maybe I’ll add it as a separate permanent page.
| Title | Author last name | Author first name | Completed on |
| Y: The Last Man, Unmanned | Guerra | Pia & Vaughan, Brian K. | 22-Dec-13 |
| Book Thief, The | Zuzak | Markus | 23-Dec-13 |
| Ready Player One | Cline | Ernest | 31-Dec-13 |
| Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | Adams | Douglas | 1-Jan-14 |
| Mrs. Dalloway | Woolf | Virginia | 2-Jan-14 |
| Extraordinary | Gilmour | David | 3-Jan-14 |
| Breakfast of Champions | Vonnegut | Kurt | 10-Jan-14 |
| Divergent | Roth | Veronica | 21-Feb-14 |
| Insurgent | Roth | Veronica | 25-Feb-14 |
| Allegiant | Roth | Veronica | 27-Feb-14 |
| Squirrel Meets Chipmunk | Sedaris | David | 4-Mar-14 |
| Naming, The | Croggan | Alison | 3-May-14 |
| Riddle, The | Croggan | Alison | 6-May-14 |
| Crow, The | Croggan | Alison | 11-May-14 |
| Gone Girl | Flynn | Gillian | 23-May-14 |
| Emancipation Day | Grady | Wayne | 27-May-14 |
| Slaughterhouse-Five | Vonnegut | Kurt | 8-Jun-14 |
| Sense and Sensibility | Austen | Jane | 11-Jun-14 |
| Pride and Prejudice | Austen | Jane | 19-Jun-14 |
| Fault in our Stars | Green | John | 6-Jul-14 |
| Persuasion | Austen | Jane | 14-Jul-14 |
| Northanger Abbey | Austen | Jane | 16-Jul-14 |
| Emma | Austen | Jane | 26-Jul-14 |
| Year of the Flood | Atwood | Margaret | 11-Aug-14 |
| Name of the Wind, The | Rothfuss | Patrick | 4-Sep-14 |
| I Capture the Castle | Smith | Dodie | 14-Sep-14 |
| Room | Donoghue | Emma | 7-Oct-14 |
| Cloud | McCormack | Eric | 17-Oct-14 |
| Y: The Last Man, Cycles | Guerra | Pia & Vaughan, Brian K. | 17-Oct-14 |
| Accidental Apprentice, The | Swarup | Vikas | 12-Nov-14 |
| Flamethrowers, The | Kushner | Rachel | 14-Nov-14 |
| Super Sad True Love Story | Shteyngart | Gary | 21-Nov-14 |
| Animal Farm | Orwell | George | 22-Nov-14 |
| Rabbit Run | Updike | John | in progress |
| Brothers Karamazov, The | Dostoyevsky | Fyodor | in progress |
Book buying: Christmas 2014 edition *UPDATED*
‘Tis the season of gift giving, and I am, of course, a huge fan of giving books.
Books as gifts have many advantages:
1) They are easy to wrap. Seriously. The easiest.
2) It’s an opportunity to show that you really understand what someone likes.
3) It’s an opportunity to force what you really like on someone else… and then get to talk about it with someone (finally!).
4) You get to wander through bookstores.
Being someone who reads a lot and who used to select books for people as a job (*single tear as I remember my bookseller days*) comes with an expectation of book-choosing prowess. Literally four of my family members said, or put on their Christmas lists, “get Sarah to pick out some books — she knows what I like.”
Geez… no pressure there.
But I have met the challenge. See for yourself; below is this year’s attempt at pleasing everyone with books (**SPOILER ALERT** if you are related to me):
- Sister: Zealot by Reza Aslan; My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
- Brother-in-law: A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby; Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris; Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies by Alastair Bonnett
- Mum: the latest Ken Follett; Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
- Dad: The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi; Wool by Hugh Howey
- Cousin: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
- Aunt: The Table of Less Valued Knights by Marie Phillips; The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
- Mom-in-law: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
- Dad-in-law: City Beautiful by Randy Turner
- JT: On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks by Simon Garfield
Book browsing, book buying
You can never have too many books. That’s why, though my bookshelves are overflowing, in the last month I’ve bought 21 “new” books. Peruse my haul below!
The first batch came on the September long weekend. It was our “paper” anniversary, so JT took me to the local independent bookstore and let me go wild.
Cloud by Eric McCormick
Flamethrowers, The by Rachel Kushner
Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
Name of the Wind, The by Patrick Rothfuss
Room by Emma Donoghue
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
Y: The Last Man Book 2, Cycles by Brian K. Vaughan
The second batch came a week later. A local not-for-profit used bookstore and cafe in my area was having a sale — $1 per inch for books. What’s a reader to do?
Better Homes and Gardens Pies and Cakes
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Death in Venice and seven other stories by Thomas Mann
Fire-Dwellers, The by Margaret Laurence
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Name of the Rose, The by Umberto Eco
Selected Poetry by W.B. Yeats, edited by A. Norman Jeffares
Selected writings of the ingenious Mrs. Aphra Behn by Aphra Behn
Sonnets, The by William Shakespeare, edited by George Lyman Kittredge
Thorn Birds, The by Colleen McCullough
What’s Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
The third batch came yesterday. Mum, Sister and I went shopping in the hipster district of our city for Sister’s birthday, and after a few vintage shops with used books, I finally gave in and got a couple.
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood
Meanwhile 