Devourer of Books

 “Have I Got a Guy for You” edited by Alix Strauss

Have you ever wished that “Sex and the City” was a book (okay, other than the actual book called “Sex and the City“)?  If so, perhaps you would enjoy “Have I Got a Guy for You.”

“Have I Got a Guy for You,” is a collection of 26 stories about girls whose moms set them up on blind dates.  Each individual story is clever, well written, and humorous.  Read all at once, however, they get a bit repetitive.  I would estimate that about 75% of the stories are set in New York and at least half of them involve Jewish mothers. 

This book would be great to pick up from time to time, reading one or, at most, two stories in a sitting.  These stories would be great to read after a bad date, when you wish you were having even a bad date, when you want to remind yourself why you’re glad you are no longer dating, or even in a long line at the grocery store. 

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The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Release date: August 5, 2008

Everyone has had the experience. You’re sitting in traffic forever, seemingly for no reason. Suddenly, up ahead, you can see cars start to move again. As you get up to that point, you realize that there has been an horrific car accident on the side of the road and traffic is backed up because everyone slowed or stopped to watch, their curiosity mixed with distaste.

Normally those people drive me crazy but, with Andrew Davidson’s “The Gargoyle,” I was one of those people. Through the first few chapters especially I read in horror and awe, wanting but unable to look away. Within that period of time the narrator actually described both his (literal) ghastly car accident that leaves him horribly burned and disfigured and his (metaphorical) train wreck of a life to that point. In all honesty, during part of those chapters, I felt physically ill.

It is a testament to the author’s skill that I continued to read. Normally books that elicit such a visceral reaction really aren’t my cup of tea. However, Davidson’s writing was as beautiful as the details were disgusting. I was literally unable to tear myself away from the pages, other than to look at the back of the book in disbelief to confirm that, yes, this really IS his first novel.

I truly had no idea where this story was going to go and was surprised to find a very moving love story. Actually a number of very moving love stories. While hospitalized for his burns, the narrator meets a woman named Marianne, a sculptor of gargoyles who is convinced that she and the narrator were married 700 years ago when he was in a different life.

The story is funny, sweet, touching, and unpredictable. I absolutely recommend it, although I do want to warn readers of graphic imagery and language.

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What is reading, anyway? Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? Are they all reading? Only some of them? What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading” — why? If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance.

Although these are not all things that I like to read, they are all reading. Personally, I stick to novels and non-fiction physical books, as well as whatever audio books I can get for free on Librivox. That doesn’t mean, however, that things like graphic novels are not reading. Heck it says ‘novel’ right in the name! I certainly would not want to argue that “Persepolis” is not really reading.

If you had asked me this question 4 years ago, I might have come up with a different answer. “Comic books?” I might have sneered at you, “comic books aren’t really reading.” That changed when I taught 2nd grade in a high-crime, low-income area on the South Side of Chicago. Most of my kids were non-readers. As in they were barely able to read. Motivating them was often difficult as well. Many of their parents were too busy trying to feed and clothe their families to read on their own or with their children. Many of the parents were probably illiterate, or had very low levels of literacy, because they were failed by the same neighborhood school when they were growing up. TV was the babysitter, and kids tended to be more worried about navigating their way safely around their neighborhood than about reading and math. They needed to learn how to survive in their environment, who had time for school?

In this environment, I was desperate to get my kids to learn, and even more desperate to get them to love learning, reading in particular. The name of the game was finding ANYTHING that interested and engaged them. We had “DEAR” (Drop Everything And Read) time in the mornings, during which many of the kids would simply stare blankly at their books as I made my way around the room to try to read with all 25 of them. When some of my boys brought in comic books that enthralled them and kept them reading intently all through “DEAR” time, and even sneaking peaks during the day, do you think I counted that as reading?

Of course I did! With pleasure! If they are engaged enough to push themselves through comic books that sometimes were slightly too difficult, that meant that they were honing their reading skills. Once they had greater command of language, they were more likely to want to pick up other books in the library that before had been too difficult. They were also finally able to read the instructions on worksheets for other subjects, thus boosting their overall achievement.

If there are words, it is reading. Anything you can read, even cereal boxes, can be a stepping stone. I hope that comic books become the gateway drug of choice leading millions of children to a life-long book addiction.

Note: BTTer’s, check out my big giveaway to celebrate my upcoming 100th post!

“How many books do you have cataloged in your LibraryThing account? How do you decide what to include- everything you have, everything you’ve read- and are there things you leave off?”

After going through all of my books with a printed list of my library, I was finally able to eliminate the books I sold back to Half Price Books and have come up with 679 books in my LibraryThing Library.  This includes books I own, books I want, a small number of books I have borrowed, and books I have gotten rid of on BookMooch.

In the beginning I used LibraryThing solely to catalog my books.  Not so much because I was a catalog purist, but primarily because that is what I thought it was for, nothing else.  Then I discovered ‘talk.’  With talk came endless recommendations, so I had to start putting wishlisted books in there, because I would never remember them all (134 right now).  Yes, it bothers me a little that it screws up my connections, etc., but I am far too lazy to switch back and forth between accounts to make a separate wishlist account. 

Then I got my first Early Reviewer book.  It was TERRIBLE.  Terrible.  I got rid of it as soon as someone agreed to take it off of my hands.  However, I couldn’t remove it from my library, otherwise my review would disappear, thus harming my chances for future ER books. Thus I started leaving some books in my library that I did not plan on keeping, in order to leave reviews and ratings on LibraryThing.  I’ve also been leaving in my library books placed on BookMooch, so that I can keep track there as well of what I am having mooched.

Someday, maybe, we will get collections, and then I can keep all of these things separated out. 

Whether or not you use LibraryThing, how do you organize YOUR books?

Post 88:

Have you ever had a book that actually FORCED you to read it? More than persuaded, more than compelled, but grabbed you by the collar and forced your face into its pages?

That is what Andrew Davidson’s first novel “The Gargoyle” is currently doing to me. Honestly, I’m surprised the book allowed me to come and write this post. I’m only 20 pages into “The Gargoyle,” but the first chapter had me absolutely mesmirized. This is all the more amazing, because I do not think I would typically be able to get very far in a book where the first chapter dealt, fairly graphically, with the narrator’s car crash and terrible burns, not to mention flashbacks to a horrific childhood. However, something about Davidson’s writing that immediately drew me in. The one thing I was able to do to break away from the narrative was to repeatedly stare at the back cover. Each time, I expected to read about Davidson’s 25 other award winning books, each time it was simply “‘The Gargoyle’ is his first book.” I’m still not sure I believe it.

I think this book will be big when it comes out this August.

What books have forced you to read them?