eBook Challenge—Finished reading 5/12 eBooks. Yeah, someone’s behind schedule here… (Doggone it. Turns out I still love book books better than eBooks. This isn’t exactly a bad thing, but it’s impeding my progress on this challenge.)
Nonfiction Challenge—Finished reading 6 out of 7-9 books. Excellent! The tough news is that the only remaining categories are things I don’t naturally read, so I’m going to have to get bossy with myself.
Historical Fiction Challenge—Finished reading 8/10. This one’s a stretch for me, but participating in a genre study makes me read the stuff, anyway, and I’m sure it’s even better for me than a low-fat, high-fiber diet.
Completed Challenges
Yes, folks, despite some underperformance on some of the challenges listed above, I've actually checked some others off the list.
Pub Challenge—Finished reading 12/11, of which 6 are fiction. Which means: I’ve checked this challenge off the list in a mere 6 months. Which almost makes up for the shameful performance in the eBook challenge.
I Want More Challenge—Finished reading 2 out of 2-4 books. So I could call this one “done” if I wanted to.
3Rs Challenge—Finished reading 2 out of 1-6. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Yeah, so everything's all light and happy now... but just wait till the 3rd quarter report happens. Then I'll do that freaking out thing. Be sure to tune in.
The Good Among the Great: 19 Traits of the Most Admirable, Creative, and Joyous People by Donald Van de Mark
Here’s a testimonial for this book: It helped me handle one of those annoying airline travel scenarios with calm detachment (and even a little bit of moderate contentment).
Here’s the scene: I was about halfway through this book when I boarded a return flight that was delayed for hours for mechanical reasons, and the airline people were saying things like, “We recommend you call 1-800-THISAIRLINE to reserve a seat on tomorrow morning’s flight.” It would not have been convenient to have been delayed overnight. But also, not the complete end of the world.
While people around me were angrily using extremely foul language and acting out in ways that were rather unbecoming (it was really quite something), I made a phone call, formulated Plans B, C, and D, and then returned to my self-improvement book. Seriously, what else could I do?
(Please bear in mind that I am not always so calm. I can freak out with the best of them.)
So we’ll give this book partial credit for keeping me calm. Credit also goes to my sister and her family, whom I’d just visited; they make me laugh uncontrollably, so I was all loosened up before hitting the airport. I’m thinking that helped.
This book is a great booster-shot sort of a thing. Meaning, I’ve read other books about happiness and living-a-good-life that offered more memorable facts or that made a bigger impact on me. But this book presents similar information with a new spin: dividing up Maslow’s description of self-actualized people into 19 characteristics and exploring each one.
It reinforces the general concepts that float around about how to live your best life.
It’s quite a jolly book (being jolly is one of the 19 characteristics!) and I found it to be a source of encouragement.
I believe it also made me a source of mild annoyance to the hostile man* next to me. With every new announcement from the airline people, he swore a blue streak, and by the 4th round of announcements (each one worse than the one before), I was chortling. (Jolly! Joyous! Hysterical? Naaaaaaa….)
(BTW, the flight happened that night. All that drama and swearing for naught. Seriously, people. Calm yourselves. It's gonna be all right.)
* The dude was on vacation. He wasn't visiting an ailing loved one; he wasn't on an important business trip; he was on vacation. This delay was really ruining his whole vacation, and apparently, his entire life. Perspective, anyone?
Between the name (anything with the word "comfortable" in it is apt to pull me right in) and the button (cute, cute, cute! and with an image variation for the indoorniks among us [that's me]), I knew I'd be doing this challenge.
Then I read the description, and I knew it would be my cuppa coffee. (I'm not that into tea.)
From the Book Dragon's Lair post, here are the parameters:
"There are three parts to this challenge.
Part One: email me your top five comfort books. Part Two: vote (after I post a list) for our very own Top 100. Part Three: READ five from the list, other than your own."
Later this year, the big master list will be posted on her blog, and then we choose 5 books to read during 2012.
I've already sent in the titles of my top 5 comfort reads (maybe I'll tell you them later; maybe I won't).
Since comfort books are basically sure bets, I'm feeling pretty safe placing some of my reading choices in others' hands. I'm actually feeling kind of excited already. About 2012, which sounds all futuristic.
It’s rare that I announce a book club choice before finishing the book. But this book had it all going on. By disc 2 of the audiobook, I was in the mood to foist a copy on someone just so we could discuss.
Here’s how the thing starts: A novelist is visiting New York to drop off her latest manuscript, when she sees a news crawl in Times Square announcing that her rock-star son has been arrested for the murder of his girlfriend.
Yowser.
Then the story gets nicely complex, because there are stories layered upon stories. Octavia’s (that’s the main character) latest book consists of rewrites of the endings of her earlier novels. So here, interspersed with the story of her son Milo and the murder, we get to read the original and revised endings to those books. And that alone is discussion-worthy. Especially since she alludes to her novels each revealing aspects of her own life.
Plus, Octavia and Milo have not spoken for years, and we (sort of) learn why… And there is a terrible tragedy in their family’s past, and we get only glimpses of it until the very end of the book, when the story is revealed.
This is the kind of book that has the power to suck you in and hang onto you until the very end. I love that kind of book.
I listened to the audiobook, and I’m going to read the book, too.
So glad Gary Warren Niebuhr recommended this book on Book Group Buzz. I'd've never picked it up otherwise.
No, they are pilots. Nevertheless, I’m a-gonna review them.
Since this here’s a book blog, we’re going to talk about the flight demonstration as though it were a book. (Books and Blue Angels. What more could a person want?)
Here goes:
Plot: While the flight demonstration has its own plotline, there is a back story to this particular airshow. This was the Blue Angels’ comeback show after a distressing thing that caused the cancellation of some previously scheduled appearances (one of which I had planned to attend—practice show and all; the fact that I was sadder for them than for me is a testimony to the depth of my adoration).
So there was some added drama to the thing because this was their first flight demonstration after the personnel change. Given that fact, and given that it’s still fairly early in the season, I was expecting the formations to be somewhat loose and the maneuvers perhaps a bit loose, also. But man, they looked darn good. There was only one maneuver in which my eye could spot a lack of symmetry. (Oh, it hurts me to say it, but there it was. They’re darn-near perfect, and what they’re doing is hard.)
Anyway, the plot of the flight demonstration itself leads us to the next topic…
Pacing: I’m really not sure how they do it, but it seems to me the Blue Angels just keep tightening up the show, so the time between maneuvers is very short indeed.
So what I’m saying here is: Fast-paced.
We got ourselves an event that just rages forward with a purpose. You shall not be bored. Even if some ingrate were tempted to tune out, the sneak pass would happen, and that’ll get their attention.
At this particular airshow, since the skies were severely overcast and the ceiling low, the Blue Angels did either the low show or the flat show, and I sure as the dickens wish I knew how to tell the difference between the two. So it seemed that we got to see the aircraft up-close a little more than you do when they perform the high show.
Character: It’s in this all-important category that I suffered a disappointment right there on a visit to my home state of Iowa. One of my most favorite things in all the world is to see the Blue Angels on the ground and in the air. And at this show, we didn’t get the full flight-line Blue Angels experience. They took off from another airport and flew in, which always bums me out.
I like to see the walkdown.
I like to see the ground crew.
I like to see the takeoffs.
I like to see the landings.
Doggone it, I like to see the pilots.
However, since my mood on airshow days (see “Tone/Mood” below) is positively altered by jet fumes and general elation, I focused on the characters I could see.
First off, you can, actually, see the pilots, sort of. Check out those gold helmets in those there jets.
That’s CAPT Greg McWherter upside down in #1, LCDR Jim Tomaszeski in #2, MAJ Brent Stevens in #3, and LT Rob Kurrle upside down in #4. The fellas are Double Farvel-ing there; I love it when they Double Farvel.
And here we got LT C.J. Simonsen flying #6 all up into the sky and LT Ben Walborn flying #5 straight and level so as to gain some serious airspeed.
Even if I can only see their helmets as they scream by, I'm still saying hello to them all by name.
And also, I could see the Narrator. On the ground. And that dude’s a pilot, even though he’s on talking duty for a year. He gets to fly the #7 jet, and he does the VIP flights.
(An aside: It is my fervent wish to somehow, someway, in this life, experience a flight in the #7 jet. I have this theory that my clarinet-playing school days have given me a ridiculously strong diaphragm muscle, which would keep me from passing out. Yes, I know I’m deluded. But really, “nearly-supersonic librarian” is a great concept, ain’t it?)
Anyway, so we got to see #7, LT Dave Tickle, the Narrator. And we got to see #8, LCDR Todd Royles, the Events Coordinator (and also a pilot).(That's them there: LT Tickle on the left, LCDR Royles on the right.)
And the cool thing we saw is the way these two guys work together. I guess, since I’d never seen the Narrator during a show, I never thought about the fact that the guy has his back to the action, so of course he’d need someone to serve as his eyes. That’s #8’s job—he cues #7 when the jets approach, so he knows when to resume the narration (which he has full-on memorized, which is darn bookish; kind of makes me think of the Odyssey and the oral tradition).
Also—and I love this—#8 hands #7 a bottle of water (you can see the water bottles in the picture!) periodically throughout the show. And they do this in a way that you barely even notice—#8 placing the bottle in #7’s left hand, which is positioned behind #7’s back, and then removing it from#7’s hand after he’s taken a drink. (Which, I’m telling you, was necessary. It was about 90 degrees and Iowa-humid out there.)
So we got to see the teamwork, not only in the sky, but also on the ground, even though we missed seeing the ground show.
And it’s the teamwork that I love just as much as the actual glamour of the flight demonstration. The fact that the pilots don’t pre-flight their aircraft, because they trust their crew chief. (Even as a mere private pilot in my younger years, I know this is a huge leap of faith.) The way the ground crew is synchronized in their movements. The way the pilots lower the canopies on their aircraft at the same exact moment.
Tone/Mood: Since they’re complete professionals, the Blue Angels (the ones we could see on the ground, and the ones up there in the sky) don’t allow a person a sense of whether they’re having a wonderful or a terrible day. You gotta love ’em for that. My guess is that they were relieved to be back on the circuit, but perhaps still adjusting after the recent shake-up. But frankly, I ain’t got a clue.
For myself, I get weirdly calm and freakishly positive (“I know it won’t rain”—and guys, it didn’t) on Blue Angels days, so I recovered from the no-ground-show disappointment almost immediately. It helps to have 6 blue jets roaring above in all their splendor.
Language: The Narrator is pretty amazing. The guy’s got 3 different shows memorized, plus different intros, depending on whether there’s a ground show or whether the 6 jets appear out of the clear blue sky (or the cloudy gray sky, in this case). His cadence is distinctive, but it’s also the same cadence from year to year, even though the Narrator changes annually—as last year’s #7 (Narrator) becomes #6 (Opposing Solo) this year, and then becomes #5 (Lead Solo) the following year.
In Summary: If this were a book, I could read it again and again and again. Two days in a row just wasn't enough.
So, if you, too, just need more, here’s what to do next:
4. Read Blue Angels: 50 Years of Precision Flight by Nicholas A. Veronica and Marga B. Fritze (reviewed last year by yours truly).
5.Visit the Blue Angels websiteand click “Show Information” and get yourself to an airshow. (This is the only item on this list that will give you the thrill of having the insides of your ears vibrate.)
Just like you’d expect: Rock ’n’ roll, drugs, and sex. In that order of importance, that’s what we got in this here book.
But here’s the crazy thing: I really didn’t even like Keith Richards when I picked up this audiobook. Every time I’ve seen him interviewed, he’s appeared to be a drug-addled freak. But I just kept hearing great things about the book, so I decided to exit my comfort zone and give it a whirl.
And damn, this thing is good. I’ve become a vexation to my friends, who, I’m quite certain, are completely weary of hearing me talk about Keith Richards and his wonderful book.
Here’s why I keep raving:
The guy can tell a story. He’s got lots of them. The book kicks off with a dramatic drug bust tale, and there are plenty of similar stories here.
But the stuff I really love is when Richards writes about music—performing, writing, and listening to music. There’s such passion there, and it’s beautiful to read (hear).
He says that he and the others talk to the songs while they’re writing them—cajoling them, chastising them. That’s weird and wonderful.
There was a line I just kept thinking about—about how he feels like he’s levitating when they’re performing on stage—and when I checked out Keith Richard’s website, I saw those sentences at the bottom of the page about the book. They’re really quite lovely.
Also, at the beginning of Track 1 on Disc 19, he describes the acoustic challenges of performing in a large stadium, and the methods by which he and the others make sure they stay in synch with one another. It was so good, so fascinating, so beautiful, I listened to it 3 times.
(Bizarro aside: It reminds me of the Blue Angels—that sense of teamwork. Speaking of whom, the Blues use “Start Me Up” during their run-up… though it quickly becomes nearly inaudible because of the glorious, deafening engine noise. At which point I start shivering with joy. But I digress...)
So this baby won the Audie for Audiobook of the Year, which is well-deserved. It’s just plain amazing as an audiobook.
Other than “It’s amazing,” here are the other things to know about the audiobook:
First—I was expecting the whole audiobook to be read by Johnny Depp, because I’d heard that he was the reader. But he does only about the first quarter of the book, then Joe Hurley takes over as the reader, and then Depp comes back at the end. Not that I’m complaining, because they both are remarkably good at interpreting the story; I just didn’t expect the change of voice midstream. Keith Richards, the man himself, reads the final section. He sounds slightly less clear than the other two, but it’s fascinating to hear his voice. (Also, when he’s reading, occasionally you can hear the pages shuffle, which, for some reason, I really like.)
Second—You really can’t be driving with the car windows open, because the swearing is done with gusto. It’s big, lusty swearing, I’m telling you. I ain’t got a problem with it, but you just want to make sure the child-full minivan that pulls up next to you at a stoplight doesn’t get an earful.
Third—The voice of the narrator (especially Joe Hurley’s reading) has a tendency to stick in a person’s mind (again, not in a bad way). So I’ve been talking to myself with that voice in my head for about a couple of weeks now, and while it’s wildly entertaining, it’s also not the sort of thing you want to do out loud.
So here’s the thing: The guy (and his co-author) can write.
Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan by Del Quentin Wilber
Who knew there wasn’t a book—until now—about the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan? I guess I never thought to look for such a thing.
But now it exists, and it’s a darn good book, especially for the presidential history geeks among us.
Del Quentin Wilber, a journalist at the Washington Post [pause here for impassioned shouts of adoration for said newspaper] did all the good investigative stuff journalists do, and he pieces together an account of the events of March 30, 1981, and the weeks that followed.
And he tells it in that engaging journalistic style that makes you feel like you were there.
The NPR story that alerted me to this book includes an excerpt from the Secret Service radio recording at the moment when Jerry Parr, the lead agent on the scene, realized that Reagan had been shot. (They were already in the car, headed for the White House.) When you hear the calm in Parr’s voice, it really makes a person glad the Secret Service exists.
We all know the folklore about Reagan’s jocularity following the assassination attempt.
But the thing we didn’t know at the time was how close the bullet was to Reagan’s heart. That whole scene could have turned out much worse for him, and now, 30 years later, we’re just getting a better sense of that.
Anyway, to the human interest story…
Keeping in mind that I’m not exactly a fan of Reagan’s policies, I really have to confess I like the guy as a human.
Not only because he walked himself into the hospital with a bullet in his chest, but because he responded with such grace and humor to that terrifying situation. Wilber reminds us how reassuring that was to a freaked-out American public.
His son Ron later said that his father was so jovial during those dire moments following his shooting because he was a performer at heart. Ronald Reagan seemed to confirm this when he said during a 1985 interview, “There was a crowd standing around. Somebody ought to entertain them some way.” (p. 219) I am so weirdly charmed by this.
Plus, the man was just witty, you know? Parr was the Secret Service agent who shoved Reagan into the car and jumped on top of him during the assassination attempt. When Parr retired in 1985, he visited Reagan in the Oval Office. Wilber tells us, “When the president saw him, he said, ‘You’re not going to throw me over the couch, are you?’” (p. 224)
This book was one of my Read-a-Thon choices, which means I read it from start to finish. Since I usually have 5+ books on the go at a time, it’s rare that I (happily) read a book straight through. This one fit the bill.
Here’s how we know how big of a liarhead I really am: I say I detest historical fiction because people back then lived in such discomfort, and I Don’t Want To Experience That.
But… I’m nothing but a sucker for the arctic exploration books. Those puppies are filled with suffering, and I mean lots of it.
(image credit: Library of Congress)
This book has that arctic exploration thing happening. And, to add to the suffering… it also has a current-day troubled marriage storyline.
I was entranced.
It doesn’t hurt that the author trots out sentences like this: “She has pegged the washing out on the line, so that the sheets billow fresh white at the edge of her vision like the sails of a ship; she is afloat in the summer morning.” (p. 26 of the eBook)
And, in addition to beautiful sentences, there’s a plot! With two storylines, actually—past and present. Yet the whole story is set up within a single day in the here and now.
The present day has that troubled marriage couple I mentioned: Julia and Simon. She’s the dreamy descendant of a semi-famous failed arctic explorer from the turn of the last century, and she and Simon have moved into her family’s house, which is also home to explorer Edward’s artifacts and journal. Simon’s thinking he just might have an affair.
While he’s contemplating this possibility throughout the day, Julia’s casting back to great-grand-uncle Edward’s life—and his gorgeously romantic marriage to Emily, who waited for his return all her life.
So we get excerpts from Edward’s journal and the story of his ill-fated mission to the Pole, plus the story on the homefront in 1900, as Emily waited.
And deceptions are revealed, and it’s good because you know something’s gonna happen, but you don’t know what. (At least I didn’t.)
And since I love this kind of thing, I'm gonna throw you some read-a-likes:
Antarctic Navigation by Elizabeth Arthur—has an Antarctic (rather than Arctic) thing going on, but it also features a current-day woman researching a tragically-fated polar expedition. 800+ pages of goodness
The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett—a gorgeous novel about a Victorian Arctic expedition and the women who waited for the explorer’s return. (Love that homefront stuff)
Exiles by Ron Hansen—has a tragedy (a shipwreck) at its heart, but also has the sensitive soul (a poet) who is haunted by it. Has the same sort of emotional pull as The Still Point
On a completely different note, here’s one way the Nook Color may be improving my brain: I actually use the built-in dictionary function (Just touch the word and then touch “dictionary”!) to look up words I don’t know, rather than skimming over them, figuring I’ve picked up enough context clues to get the meaning. In this book, I looked up “nacreous,” “alembic,” and “ambit.” I’m wondering: Am I simply dense not to know those words?
The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story by Robert Baer and Dayna Baer
I adore husband-and-wife dual memoirs. When I discovered All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President by Mary Matalin and James Carville many years ago, there was some seriously blissful reading happening.
And here, we got spying going on, so what’s not to like?
Actually, this is the kind of book that could look promising as all heck and then crash and burn.
But it didn’t happen. (You were worried there for a minute, though, weren’t you?)
The authors both have engaging writing styles, plus a great story, so this thing has the power to keep a person reading straight through to page 143 before getting up from her chair to get more coffee. (true story)
It’s practically indecent to love an audiobook this much. This is a 6-star audiobook on a 5-star scale.
It’s by Tina Fey.
Enough said, right?
Yet I go on…
The audiobook version of this book is so fabulous I really can’t imagine reading the (printed) book instead. Because hearing Tina Fey read her own book (with great style, people) infuses the whole darn thing with even more humor than the words on the page would carry. She knows how to deliver a sentence. She delivers a whole book full of them.
The book is a bunch of stories about her life—from tales about her uber-cool dad Don Fey (and a particularly memorable childhood trip when he left her—on purpose—at the store) to her Second City days to SNL and on to 30 Rock. Plus, her early life as a geek girl, her somewhat calamitous honeymoon (there are lifeboats in this story), the challenges of breastfeeding, and her Sarah Palin impression (which emerged out of relatively little preparation and is enormously fun to hear about).
Perhaps my favorite line from the book: “I proceeded with the blithe confidence of a moron.” (disc 4, track 2)Here she’s describing the lead-up to launching 30 Rock, and she compares herself to a baby happily crawling down a busy street with a complete lack of awareness of the myriad perils. It tickles me. It really does.
So I’m superglad this is turning out to be one of those books people are excited about and that’s displayed in airport bookstores. (Usually most of those airport bookstore books really make me happy I’m hauling around my own weight in my own books when I travel.)
The audiobook: 5.5 hours; read by the author
* Witness: Worldwide Pants, Inc.; Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; Spongebob Squarepants
