Since most of the books I buy these days are from secondhand stores, the one I'm reading now is a little old but still good. It's called "The New Kings of Nonfiction," and it was edited by This American Life host Ira Glass. When it was published in 2007, it was heralded as a collection of stories that capture "some of the best storytelling of this golden age of nonfiction."
It includes authors Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Pollan, the late David Foster Wallace and a number of other male writers. Surprisingly, one of my favorite female writers -- Susan Orlean -- is also in the mix. I wouldn't call Orlean a King but rather a Journalism Goddess. Her profiles in the New Yorker have become legendary, full of insights and scenes that make her subjects come alive.
The "New Kings" book includes Orlean's article "The American Man, Age Ten," which she wrote for Esquire Magazine. It's a profile of a boy named Colin Duffy.
A snippet: "Here are the particulars about Colin Duffy: He is ten years old, on the nose. He is four feet eight inches high, weighs seventy-five pounds, and appears to be mostly leg and shoulder blade....I have rarely seen him without a baseball cap. He owns several, but favors a University of Michigan Wolverines model, on account of its pleasing colors. The hat styles his hair into wild disarray. If you ever managed to get the hat off his head, you would see a boy with a nimbus of golden-brown hair, dented in the back..."
After I finish "New Kings" I want to re-read "The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup," Orlean's compilation of some of her favorite profiles. (Her essay on the taxidermy convention is the best!)
I'm just finishing "A Three Dog Life" by Abigail Thomas. It's a memoir about Thomas' effort to build a new life after a devastating tragedy. I so admire her bravery (and beautiful prose.) She finds tremendous comfort from the company of her three dogs, hence the title.
I've also been going through stacks of decor books. Still trying to arrange our little house...
I'm such a computer geek. Of all the profiles I've written, one of my favorites is about Michael Heilemann, who created WordPress' Kubrick theme. I love the backstory of the Internet.
I'm rereading I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. It's such a charming book. I would love to live in that old rundown castle with its mismatched furniture. (I think I'm longing again to have a house and garden.)
Smith wrote the book in the US in 1948. But these days it seems to be enjoying a Renaissance, especially in the UK.
Have you read it?
The book's main character, Cassandra, has a conversation one evening with her sister Rose about whether Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë is better.
"Which would be the nicest," Rose asks, "Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?"
"Fifty per cent each way would be perfect," says Cassandra.
As the latest Jane Eyre movie opened in US theaters earlier this month, filmmakers were busy putting the finishing to touches on a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights.
"The debate of 2011 is shaping up to be: Charlotte or Emily Bronte?" says the Daily Beast's Jennie Yabroff. "Ever since the release of Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights within months of each other in 1847, the Brontë sibling rivalry has been an epic war of words."
So here's the question of the day:
WHICH SISTER WAS THE BETTER AUTHOR?
(My slightly off kilter interpretation of the sisters from here.)
The new Jane Eyre movie opens on March 11 and it looks fantastic. Focus Features has set up a website with tons of info about the movie and the book. I'm excited to see it!
Guardian books columnist Robert McCrum believes "there are times when dullness is exactly what you want from a book."
Here are his favorites:
1. Robert Burton: The Anatomy of Melancholy
2. Robert Musil: The Man Without Qualities
3. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled
4. Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano
5. Virginia Woolf: The Waves
6. James Joyce: Finnegans Wake
7. Thomas Wolfe: Look Homeward, Angel
8. William Thackeray: Pendennis
9. Karl Marx: Capital
10. James Woodforde: The Diary of A Country Parson
Do you stick with boring books or give up mid-way through?
I found a copy of Michael Cunningham's "By Nightfall" at my favorite secondhand bookstore the other day. I loved The Hours, so I'm looking forward to starting Cunningham's new book tonight!
I've been swamped with different work projects this week, plus trying to get everything set for the purchase of the little Victorian house. As a result, my reading materials are really stacking up...but, I did start The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. It's really wonderful!
It's hard to decide between fiction, biographies and decor books. First, I have to disclose that I tend to wait until novels come out in paperback (and show up at my favorite second-hand store) so I can spend my limited book resources on gorgeous tomes like, sigh, the Louis Vuitton trunks book. But I did enjoy the Franzen book in hardcover. I loved the book of letters between Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. I got my hands on an advance reader's copy of Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt and it was wonderful. And then there was that gorgeous Cleopatra biography by Stacy Schiff.
But my favorite book? I'm going to pick something completely indulgent, like a box of multi-colored macarons from Ladurée.
At the moment, I'm reading Edith Wharton's "Italian Backgrounds." I've read lots of travel diaries about Italy, but Wharton's is amazing, like some delicious multi-layered tiramisu. You can't decide which is more lovely -- the subject or the prose.
This is escapist reading at its most, well, ravishing...
The great thing about reading is it takes you places you've never been before or never thought to go. And there's no place where that's truer than in a great secondhand bookstore...
It's a place where tattered best sellers from a decade ago
merge with books that defeat time...
*
And literary journals are mixed with foreign magazines...
Lately I've been buying a book and a magazine (requiring much restraint), and then heading a block down the street to Auntie Em's for coffee and a chocolate cupcake.
Added bliss: sitting at an outside table, reading and watching
the sunset over the Santa Monica Mountains.
ADD: I just realized that this post has received comments from readers in six countries: the US, the UK, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. So lovely to know that the love of wonderful old books is global!
As usual, I have way too many books and magazines. Would you like a box with a mix of new and old? Leave a comment here! The winner will be announced tomorrow!
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