Category: book lists

Books In Your Pocket

Karen2 Comments

I only learned about the Libby app a few months ago but it’s one of the best things ever: You can check out ebooks from your local library and read them on your phone (or Kindle, I think).

Since I downloaded it, I’ve read more books in a few months than I think I read all last year–the screenhot below is from my sci-fi kick of the spring. (I’ve moved on to Chief Inspector Gamache novels now, but highly recommend the Martha Wells and Ann Leckie series if you want some space reads.)

 

Since Libby connects to your local library, it doesn’t have everything and sometimes there’s a long wait, but it’s a great thing to do instead of scrolling Instagram. And it’s free!

Be Here Now

Karen

A couple weeks ago I ended up at a tiny online store (to find a shirt I wanted) and clicked around a little before I left. In their “Books” section was Be Here Now by Ram Dass and the illustrations they sampled were astonishing.

I dug a little to find out more. You can read the whole thing online; I haven’t (yet) but I was just taken with the art.  Was that type hand lettered? Rubber stamped?! Turns out it was rubber stamped–I found this article about the making of the book on Fonts In Use:

Ram Daas explained the production process in a 1970 lecture at the Menninger Foundation that was later published in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology:

They start with these four-foot pieces of cardboard and this book is 108 pages and each day they meditate from five to eight in the morning – there’s a group of five of them – and then all in silence … they hand rubber-stamp each page, all the letters of the page, and then the artists do all the sketching around the thing. Then the whole thing is photo-reduced and shipped to Japan where it’s printed on rice paper and hand stitched because it’s an experiential-type document.

As the Fonts In Use article says, “The book is a feat of non-mechanical text arrangement” and pretty amazing to dip in to–both for medium and for message (for this hippie, at least).

(That “Surfing” one made it up to my office wall.)

Wednesday Reading

Karen

I just came across an essay from author Ann Patchett: My Year of No Shopping. I’m in the middle of reading this book (so many blog posts to come) and, combined with thinking more about who made what I buy and where it comes from, this essay really resonated. Some favorite quotes:

Not shopping saves an astonishing amount of time. In October, I interviewed Tom Hanks about his collection of short stories in front of 1,700 people in a Washington theater. Previously, I would have believed that such an occasion demanded a new dress and lost two days of my life looking for one. In fact, Tom Hanks had never seen any of my dresses, nor had the people in the audience. I went to my closet, picked out something weather appropriate and stuck it in my suitcase. Done.

And:

It doesn’t take so long for a craving to subside, be it for Winstons or gin or cupcakes. Once I got the hang of giving shopping up, it wasn’t much of a trick. The trickier part was living with the startling abundance that had become glaringly obvious when I stopped trying to get more. Once I could see what I already had, and what actually mattered, I was left with a feeling that was somewhere between sickened and humbled. When did I amass so many things, and did someone else need them?

I may have to tape “Tom Hanks had never seen any of my dresses” in my closet as a reminder.

Another Book List

Karen

This summer I want to read all the books on my shelf that I’ve either never finished or never really even started. It’s rare for me to buy books (why, if there’s a library and you re-read everything you have anyway?) so I’m not sure how so many ended up in this stack,* but I plan to spend some quality time with them under the pergola or at the pool.

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*OK, I do know how I got Songs of Distant Earth and A Passage To India: They’re on long-term loan from my father. I’ll read those first, Dad.

Books!

Karen
My summer reading bug has finally kicked in, just a few months late. After my last progress report on the “reading a new book a month” thing, I made up for lost time by reading THREE books in ONE month. I was so proud of my reading prowess–until the significant other pointed out, “They are children’s books. And look at the size of the type.” 
Yes, I read The Hunger Games trilogy. The first one was good, the second one seemed to repeat the first, and the the third one got even more violent and didn’t wrap up political parts to my satisfaction. 
But at least I’m reading again. And in the spirit of summer books, I’m keeping everything non-challenging. These are the two I currently have from the library: 
Yes, that is the tenth “novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes” and yes, I have read the rest of them. 
This is about going to college, but it’s Magic College and there’s a lot more swearing and no scarves and it’s set in New York, so it’s nothing like Harry Potter. Nope.
Anyway, to sum up, I’m reading books. Oh my gawd!

3+2 Things: Book Report

Karen

So it’s February 2–how about that goal of reading a book a month? I picked Brideshead Revisited as the first one, as I knew the Granada series from the 80s well but had never read the novel all the way through.

However, it’s slow going: Because I know the plot from the TV series, I’m tempted to skip ahead, and I keep hearing Jeremy Irons in my head as I read. I’m also out of the habit of reading, I think; I tend to open my laptop instead of a book lately.

But I’m pushing through–can’t get too behind on the year of book already!

The Summer Of Sci Fi

Karen3 Comments

After a long spell of just re-reading what was on my shelves, I’ve rediscovered the library and the lure of new books. Since it’s summer and I need to get my geek on somehow, most of the books have been sci-fi:

  • Contact, by my imaginary better half Carl Sagan
  • Dune: House Atreides, by Brian Herbert (who should be disinherited) and some other dude
  • House of Suns and Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds (lots of science and lots of plot but not really the best written books in the world)
  • Altered Carbon, Philip K. Morgan (Raymond Chandler with cyborgs!)

I’ve even sneaked in some things that aren’t space opera: The Name of the Rose and Happy All The Time (Laurie Colwin, whose writing about food I prefer to her novels).

I know you’d expect someone who blogs about “literature” to read, but getting back into the habit felt worthy of a mention. (“The books I’ve read, let me list them.”)