Gail Gauthier's Blog: Gail Gauthier Reads, page 15

So How Did We Do With Holiday Book Giving? And Getting?

Okay, so let's talk about the important stuff we got and gave for Christmas. Books.

I received a subscription to Bookmarks Magazine, which I'm very excited about. Also a Barnes & Noble gift card and an Amazon gift card, with which I hope to buy masses of things for my Kindle. And 500 Pizzas & Flatbreads, which was unexpected but very me.

I gave:

Fairest Vol. 1 by Bill Willingham

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. The family member who received this and I were making our way through the Discworld books back in 2011 and got sidetracked. I'm hoping to get this as a loaner from him later this year.

When Rain Falls by Melissa Stewart

You Are A Lion and Other Fun Yoga Poses by Taeeun Yoo

Bomb: The Race to Build--And Steal--The World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin This was a gift to the extended family because family lore has it that my husband's grandfather was surprised to receive a citation after WWII thanking him for his contribution to the making of the atomic bomb. Another family member definitely worked on a project in the 50s studying structures that could survive an atomic blast. His group's conclusion? There were none. Bomb is supposed to be passed around among us.

The Case of the Missing Marquess: An Enola Holmes Mystery by Nancy Springer

Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days by Derek Landy. I'm hoping to borrow this one, too.

Sew What You Love by Tanya Whelan

Growing Up Sew Liberated by Meg McElwee

Last, but not least, for the first time I gave e-books, sending them to family members who own Kindle Fires:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity by Joel Stein

Giving e-books, for Kindles, at least, is unbelievably easy. You can order them and have them delivered on specific days, such as Christmas. The books are sent between midnight and 3:00 AM, so the receivers found them ready to download Christmas morning before everyone else was up.

Originally published at Original Content

My Corelli Cookies Or Reading Does Indeed Enhance Your Life

Today I made rosemary shortbread. I read about it last week in the newspaper. It seems that rosemary cookies can be served in a variety of ways--as cookies, spread with jam, or before a meal as an appetizer type thing. I thought they were something I could throw in front of guests on Thanksgiving with some squash soup and made a batch.

I didn't know what rosemary was prior to reading Corelli's Mandolin maybe ten or more years ago. I grew up in a family in which onions and salt were the primary cooking seasonings. I couldn't pronounce "herb" properly until my teenage years or later. I pronounced it like the man's name.

Then came Corelli's Mandolin in which rosemary figures prominently in the early chapters. I was intrigued, tried it, and loved the stuff. My family was not quite so enamored. My sons and husband always referred to it as "pine needles," which led me to start buying it already crushed.

And thus Corelli's Mandolin had a direct influence on Thanksgiving dinner at my house this year.

Some Books Are Better Left In Our Past

Back in 2010, I heard a piece on NPR about Richard Brautigan. Was that ever a blast from the past.

I read several Brautigan books back when I was in high school because I had a wicked crush on my English teacher, and he recommended them. I kept buying more. I remember getting my mother to pick up a copy of The Abortion for me while she was in the big city of Rutland, Vermont and thinking that I was really pushing her buttons. My recollection is that she remained quiet on the subject.

When I was a freshman in college, I read selections from one of Brautigan's books for my Oral Interpretation class.

So when I heard him being discussed on NPR two years ago, I pulled out my copy of Trout Fishing in America and put on my TBR heap. I finally got to it this summer.

I made it to the halfway point. I still remember Trout Fishing in America Shorty with great fondness, but mainly, I think, because he and his creator made me feel rebellious at a time when rebellion was new and exciting. Now I'm used to it.

Does Anyone Need "Catcher in the Rye" At All?

In So Long, Holden at Slate, Jessica Roake argues that Catcher in the Rye is dated and of little interest to contemporary students and suggests a replacement. I'm totally with her assessment of Catcher in the Rye, but, then, I've never liked it. Where I break with her is in the need to replace it in high school classrooms with another so-called "coming of age" novel. With all the literature out there--YA and adult--why is it so urgent that schools hunt for a novel to replace one Roake describes as expressing the "fundamental teenage anguish" "that in life, phonies abound and beauty is a fragile, horrible thing we will forever chase and lose."


First off, I would argue that the fundamental teenage anguish is struggling to accept the passage of time and life and determining how they will live the life and time that they have in a way that will provide meaning and some kind of happiness for them. The last couple of generations have grown up on TV. They learned about phonies at Mom's knee. "...beauty is a fragile, horrible thing we will forever chase and lose?" That's a very particular life view that I don't think is necessarily universal.


I can't make any pretense of knowing what adolescents need to read or enjoy reading. But I do think coming-of-age novels, which tend to be ones, in my experience, that have as their theme introducing young characters to the adult world of death, sex, and general misery, are something adult readers embrace. It's as if the coming-of-age novel is a gateway to the adult world, a world that is oh, so important because of death, sex, and general misery. This is the real world and childhood and adolescence is some kind of fantasy that the young must pass out of to become adults, adulthood being what really matters. Young people may not be so enamored of that concept.


God knows, I am all too aware of the death and general misery aspects of adulthood. (Notice how I'm being coy about sex?) But let's get over ourselves and move on.


I would also like to point out that when essayists write about Catcher in the Rye and the universal experience of reading and loving it, they are talking about a subgroup of the population that experienced a particular college prep sort of education. Not everyone over the age of 40 has read Catcher in the Rye. Not even close. I would argue that there are a lot of people who haven't even heard of it.


Hey, in the world I grew up in, rye was just something people drank.

Reprint from Original Content

Really? High Schoolers Need A New "Catcher In Th

In So Long, Holden at Slate, Jessica Roake argues that Catcher in the Rye is dated and of little interest to contemporary students and suggests a replacement. I'm totally with her assessment of Catcher in the Rye, but, then, I've never liked it. Where I break with her is in the need to replace it in high school classrooms with another so-called "coming of age" novel. With all the literature out there--YA and adult--why is it so urgent that schools hunt for a novel to replace one Roake describes as expressing the "fundamental teenage anguish" "that in life, phonies abound and beauty is a fragile, horrible thing we will forever chase and lose."


First off, I would argue that the fundamental teenage anguish is struggling to accept the passage of time and life and determining how they will live the life and time that they have in a way that will provide meaning and some kind of happiness for them. The last couple of generations have grown up on TV. They learned about phonies at Mom's knee. "...beauty is a fragile, horrible thing we will forever chase and lose?" That's a very particular life view that I don't think is necessarily universal.


I can't make any pretense of knowing what adolescents need to read or enjoy reading. But I do think coming-of-age novels, which tend to be ones, in my experience, that have as their theme introducing young characters to the adult world of death, sex, and general misery, are something adult readers embrace. It's as if the coming-of-age novel is a gateway to the adult world, a world that is oh, so important because of death, sex, and general misery. This is the real world and childhood and adolescence is some kind of fantasy that the young must pass out of to become adults, adulthood being what really matters. Young people may not be so enamored of that concept.


God knows, I am all too aware of the death and general misery aspects of adulthood. (Notice how I'm being coy about sex?) But let's get over ourselves and move on.


I would also like to point out that when essayists write about Catcher in the Rye and the universal experience of reading and loving it, they are talking about a subgroup of the population that experienced a particular college prep sort of education. Not everyone over the age of 40 has read Catcher in the Rye. Not even close. I would argue that there are a lot of people who haven't even heard of it.


Hey, in the world I grew up in, rye was just something people drank.

Connections

I love it when I'm reading something and find a connection in the text to something else I've read or done.

This fall I read The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters. This is the only volume in Peters' Vicky Bliss series that I've read, but it just happens to connect this series to one of her others, the Amelia Peabody books. I'm reading along and the characters are in contemporary Egypt, the geographical setting for most of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century Peabody books, and they enter this house that is being used by some professional group.

This is Amelia and Emerson's house! I realized. And, sure enough, later the main character finds out that it was once their home.

More recently I read Bringing up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman. In one chapter she discusses Walter Mischel, whom she describes as "the world's expert on how children delay gratification." That was a name I recognized because I'd read about and wrote about his work in a post at Original Content relating to self-control and time management.

Of course, perhaps finding these connections among various things I've read suggests I read too much.

Trying To Save Time For Cybil Reading

I just placed an ILL request for a couple of YA books. I'm hesitant to order too many, because I believe Cybil season starts in a week and a half, and I'd really like to read from the nominee list over the next couple of months.

One of the books I ordered was from 2012. Who knows? It could end up being nominated.

What I Hauled Home From The Library Book Sale

I have always been just a dabbler in library book sales. I wasn't one to spend a lot of time at them. The last couple of years, though, I've been shopping for a couple of elderly relatives from the library sale cart and the real sales. Today I ended up spending an hour scavenging on all the tables for the autumn sale. Yes, I ended up doing the stuff-a-bag-for-ten-dollars thing, though it wasn't a real deal since I only squeezed ten $1 books in.

Only five of them ended up being for the elders, and one of those I'll try myself.

My books:

The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. The TV show Haven is supposed to be based on this book. I don't actually like Haven. However, this book has a very noir cover. And it's short. So I bought it.

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. I remember reading about this book when it was first published.

Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris. This is supposed to be a funny book about office life. I have not had an office life, other than in my cellar, for many years. But if it's truly funny, I can give it to a family member who does.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber. My husband came home from work last week and said one of his partners was talking about this movie. Then I saw it listed as a mini-series on a cable station I don't get. Then I saw the book on the sale table. So I bought it. It is very big.

Just before I left, I felt I should take a look at the children's books because, you know, I'm supposed to be a children's author. They were pretty much picked over, but I found and bought:

Brain Camp by Kim, Klavan, and Hicks, primarily because it's a graphic novel, and I haven't read one for a while.

It could be years before I read all this stuff. I already have books on my TBR shelves that have been there for years. I'm doing a little better now because all I have is TBR shelves. I used to have the shelves and a basket.

I Don't Even Know How To Describe This

In August, 2011, I attended an author luncheon at a bookstore. This was a great event for me. My nose had been to the grindstone finishing a book while working only 3 days a week so I could tend to a couple of older relatives. There was no taking time off for things like author appearances--other author appearances--so getting to this one was significant.

The deal was, you bought the author's book, and you could then attend a wine and sandwich lunch with her. She would talk and sign your book.

The author was marvelous. She spoke well and looked great, things I have problems with at my own appearances. The book sounded wonderful. Her phone rang, and when she looked at it, she found that it was a call from her publicist. She had a publicist! I've published 8 books, and I've never had a publicist.

This woman was so cool. The sandwich was good. I even liked the wine, even though it was white and I prefer red. I left thinking that I had to do this kind of thing more often.

Within a couple of weeks, one of the elders in our family had a serious health crisis, and not only did I not attend any more author luncheons, I didn't work for more than 4 months.

But I had that book. I didn't get around to reading it for an entire year. The knowledge that I had the book to read at some point was marvelous. I was going to read that book at some point, and wouldn't it be marvelous.

I finally read it last month, in August, a full year after I bought it at that luncheon. How meaningful, right? A year to the month?

The book was jaw-droppingly dreadful. Rambling. Filled with pretentious metaphors that didn't mean anything. I started skimming long before the mid-way point. I wanted to finish the thing somehow because I'd paid $25 for it and a sandwich and a plastic cup of wine. There were many conversations that seemed to have some profound meaning, but damned if I could tell what it was. There were sections that seemed to be filled with random words strung together on the page.

Needless to say, the reading experience has cast a pall on the lunch with author experience. Think how much better my life would be if I'd never read the book at all but just held on to it, looking forward to reading it some day.

Time for the Cybils

In all likelihood, my Goodreads Friends are familiar with the Cybils, the Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards. I was a panelist the first year and a judge either the second or third. It was a great time. I pretty much gave up work and read for more than a month that first year.

I can't do that kind of thing these days, but I can nominate books. Nominating books for a Cybil (you can nominate ten, actually, one in each category) is an opportunity to bring more attention to books you believe are deserving.

Nominations aren't open yet, but when I hear they are, I'll post again.