Anachronistic Mom Blog

More Librarything Love - despite the Amazon investment

Check out the Shelfari slamming in this post about Amazon's new acquisitions.  In my humble experience, MANY acquisitions end up on the shelf permanentlly.  Let's hope that AbeBooks stays well and that Shelfari gets its spamming nails trimmed!

Recommended reading for 7 year olds

Here's a nice blog called Teddy Bear in a Suitcase, written by Ellen.  She is a reading specialist and talks about all sorts of books for kids -- for every circumstance! In this post, she talks about taking her 7 year old to broadway musicals and offers book suggestions on the topic.  In particular, I liked Pamela's First Musical by the late playwright (and mom) Wendy Wasserstein. 

I took my squirmy four year old son to the Lion King musical and he was enraptured - the entire time.  Mouth open. Entranced.  And we listened to the music for ages.  "Ariel" clones aside, musicals can be very cool.

Books with female heroines?

Here's a piece in Salon telling you about the Amelia Bloomer Project, which was started to identify books that have strong female characters.  They have a booklist for every level reader - cool, huh?

Here's a description of this year's list:

This year’s list includes books challenging the young women of today to take a new look at what it means to be feminist, showcasing who fought for our rights. These books bring to light the stories of women who break boundaries, from civil war doctors and journalists covering WWII to graffiti artists and girls demanding to be accepted for who they are.  The 32 books on the 2008 Amelia Bloomer Project list encourage and inspire girls to be smart, brave, and proud.

I have to get to work but this is hilarious. Unsuggester on Librarything.

So check this out. I adore librarything. It lets antisocial book lovers like myself get the benefit of a bunch of book-wild friends without ever having to watch them eat or listen to their problems.  Yahoo!

I don't know if this function is new, or if I just found it, but they have a new function called the "unsuggester."  The unsuggester analyzes the 11 million books on Library Thing and picks books that someone who has Book A would NOT OWN.

I tried this with a Douglas Adams book and got more biblical books than I've ever seen in my life, but at the same time, they listed a little "If you like THIS book, you'll HATE this book" on the side panel.

Here are some of their choices:

"Critique of Pure Reason" versus "Confessions of a Shopaholic"
"Common Lisp" versus "Wuthering Heights"
"The Road to Serfdom" versus "The Devil Wears Prada"
"Bitch" versus "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information"
"Clinton's "My Life" versus "Don't Waste Your Life."

Heh.

You know, I never really thought of myself as a geek, but I guess ... after all of those years here in the silicon valley ... I guess I turned into one!

Fear and Loathing on the Bedside Table

So, um, what was the topic again? Is it favorite books? Or is it what I'm reading now?  You know, it's a lot easier writing for a blog with assigned topic days than it is taking a creative writing class.    Beats the pants off of "now take ten minutes and talk about the first time you experienced hormone-related keening sadness," you know?  More fun to read, too.

OK. Let's go.  Books!  I love books.  From the ages of 12 to about 30, my three favorite books were:

• The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966
• Man and Superman
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I'm sure that those choices (and the fact that they didn't change for almost twenty years) say a LOT about me, but I just want to say that immaturity is good, and when you get to middle age, immaturity morphs into what they call "a certain freshness." So there.  Besides, the phrase "Her tongue slid past mine like hot glass" still floats in my brain on occasion, and frankly, "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold" never LEFT my brain.  Shaw is just brilliant.  Snide, savvy, with devastating social criticism skills that leave you snickering into your tea.

Talking about fiction is hard.  It's easier if you use a nom de plume, of course, but still, if it's done properly it can really piss people off. Years ago, I met someone.  She was what was known as the "family intellectual" in her family, and apparently the whole family (dumb as rocks, all of them) would, like, practice their cheerleading routines while she lectured them on her writing tastes.  Within the first five minutes of our meeting, I casually mentioned that John Irving should be burned at the stake for inserting gratuitous sleaze into his fiction as a way to wake up his readers (can you tell me that having your penis bitten off is a classic literary device? I thought not).  Well,  he was her favorite writer in the world, and our social interactions have been of the chilly, handshake variety every since.  Darn. 

What I mean to say is that I will refrain from criticizing your pet books today.  I will be nice.  Soft.  Snuggly.

Here are some of my favorite books:

Confederacy of Dunces
I do not like gratuitous disgustingness in books. And this hero is utterly revolting. But the character and book as a whole fit perfectly together. It will make you laugh out loud.  An awesome book.

Little, Big
A big, beautiful, brilliantly-written fantasy book.

Ngaio Marsh - all of her mysteries
Re-read all of these while nursing.  Note: small paperbacks work best for this. 

The Beekeeper's Apprentice and the rest of the series
Laurie King actually pulls off creating a wife for Sherlock Holmes. Seriously.  This is a very well-written book set.  I like it a lot. Fun.  Take it to the beach.

Robertson Davies: The Trilogies, probably starting with the Deptford Trilogy
I love these books. All of them. Robertson Davies was a brilliant writer and when he died, I kept a clipping on my refrigerator for years.  From them you can learn about the theatre, Canadian history, Jungian archetypes, geeking (as in "carnival"), magic, running a nonprofit, operatic singing, and so forth.  Davies was one of our generation's most profoundly gifted writers. 

The Death of Vishnu
I love this book. Here's my review of it (AND Confederacy of dunces, as it happens) from LibraryThing.com (which I also love).

But let's take a break and talk about tools, shall we?  You're reading this on a computer.  Will you actually write these names down? I don't think so. Let me introduce you to Librarything. If you love books, check it out.  Every time I log into it, I come away with three or four new ideas for what to read, and now I just buy books used online.  Here, for example, are the books that I have tagged as "best" in my personal library. And here is a look at the best and the most-tagged books on the site.  Enjoy. My gift to you.

Currently Reading

In case it's not already clear (or you're not already asleep), I am serious about my reading.  Well, I'll cut this as short as I can. Here are the some of the books open at my bedside.

Freud on the Ganges
A Christmas present from my husband. I first heard of Sr. Salman Akhtar through this amazing speech titled "The Lure of Fundamentalism."  Brilliant cultural insights that give us great insight to fundamentalism all over the world.  "In my way of thinking, to be mentally healthy and to be sane is not an easy thing."

Sally Chapman: Raw Data
Found this at a used bookstore. Sally Chapman has managed to write the best silicon valley mysteries that I've read.  They're a bit dated, but she does a very good job.

Travels with Charlie, by John Steinbeck.  Beautiful book.

Playful Parenting - because my husband beats the pants off at me for sitting down and having "quality play time" with trucks, Pokemon, and so forth. (Luckily, this books says that grabbing my kid and tickling him is good too.)

An awesome, out of print book called "Push Back the Chairs" that I cannot find on the internet. It is written by a teacher of 20 years, who talks about the passion-filled projects that he did with his students throughout the years (and boy could some of our teachers nowadays read this book!)

The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth, because I wanted to re-read the wonderfully hilarious silicon valley novel written as sonnets (honest!) by Seth, who is a genius. 

... about 20 more, but I won't bore you, although check this one out!

So that's it.  Too many books, but it's a typical day.  And how is your reading life, my dumplings?

This first appeared on the Silicon Valley Mom's blog