Musings

Has there been a breakout nonfiction book this year? You know, one of those titles that everyone is buzzing about, a nonfiction book that even literature lovers feel compelled to try because the word-of-mouth is just so good?

Last year we had The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. That book had a great story — 10 years of research to tell an almost entirely unknown tale of medical ethics and scientific research. And on top of that, it was a great read that everyone seemed to be talking about.

While you’d be hard-pressed to know it by reading this blog, I used to be an avid epic fantasy and science fiction reader. When I was a kid, my mom took us to the library about once every three weeks — the length of the lending cycle at our local library. As my reading speed increased, I started choosing books based on how long they were: I needed a lot of pages to fill the time between visits.

That’s how I managed to pick up Michael Crichton (Congo, Sphere, and Jurassic Park), Carl Sagan (Contact), Diana Wynn Jones (too many to even mention), Brian Jacques (the entire Redwall canon) and Melanie Rawn (the Dragon Prince Trilogy, the Dragon Star Trilogy, The Golden Key, and the Exiles Trilogy).

Ahh, picking vacation reads. Is there anything more awesome than that?

I’m heading up to my family’s cabin to celebrate the 4th of July this weekend, and so of course I spent a long time deciding what books to bring. I haven’t packed clothes or food or other necessities, but I have my books and booze already set aside. Responsibility, thy name is Kim.

While I have no plans to stop carrying around a paper notebook for “to do” lists and other notes — taking items off an electronic list isn’t nearly as satisfying as crossing them off in a notebook — I do want to start using my phone for other more long-term lists or lists I want to access quickly while on the go.

I’ve never had a good system for keeping track of books I want to read. I’ve tried notebooks, Google Docs, Goodreads, LibraryThing, and even my library’s new list feature, but so far I haven’t really been happy with any of them. Rather than pound my head on my desk in despair, I figured I should just source the experts — you guys!

At this moment, I can’t think of anything more luxurious than sitting down to read a book a day for an entire year. Can you imagine waking up each morning with the goal of finishing a book, and having that goal be the driving motivation of your day? Amazing.

The idea has been in my head since Sunday when I finished reading Nina Sankovitch’s memoir Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, which is about her project to read 365 books in 365 days.

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind was howling and the sky was dark, even though the June day had started out lovely. I was alone in my car on one of those stretches of freeway that seems to go on forever. Just me, the road, and a mountaineering adventure story so intense I found myself yelling at my Camry’s speakers like a crazy person. Thank goodness it was too dark for anyone else to see.

A couple months ago I started putting together monthly book lists to keep track of the books I wanted to try at read that month. It seems a little obsessive, but having the list is nice because it reminds me of any review commitments or just books I’m excited about for some reason.

My list for May was pretty ambitious, and, unfortunately, I didn’t have a great reading month. I blame distraction getting ready for BEA (irony?) as well as the end of the TV season. I love, love, love to watch TV sometimes. But anyway, here’s what I finished in May, with books from my original list in bold.

On Friday afternoon I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, NPR MonkeySee’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, which was discussing upcoming summer movies the various participants were excited about. One person mentioned The Help, which will be coming out this August.

I knew the movie was coming out, but hadn’t seen a trailer yet, so popped over to YouTube to find one.

While I haven’t read either of Mortenson’s books, I’ve been following the discussions about this scandal because issues of truth in nonfiction are interesting to me. One particular article by Laura Miller in Salon — Why “Three Cups of Tea’s” lies don’t really matter — rubbed me the wrong way. While I agree with her central argument about the importance of the financial side of this story, Miller is too quick to dismiss the serious issues of Mortenson potentially fabricating parts of her story and discredits other hard-working and honest nonfiction writers in the process.