nomadreader

The backstory: Because I'm spending more time driving than taking the bus semester, I decided to browse the audio book cds at my library and decided to start with Very Valentine . I also enjoyed the other Adriana Trigiani book I read, Big Stone Gap ( my review ). The basics: Very Valentine is the story of Valentine Roncalli, a young woman in her early thirties who lives with her grandmother and helps her grandmother run the Angelini Shoe Company, which makes custom wedding shoes. My thoughts: Going into this novel, I wasn't sure what to expect. I was surprised how much I enjoyed Big Stones Gap mostly because of how unexpectedly funny it was. I knew next to nothing going into this book, and I wasn't even sure if it was set in contemporary New York City (it is.) While Very Valentine wasn't funny like Big Stone Gap was, it did have good character development and a mostly interesting storyline. There were times the prose was overly descriptive, but as an infreque...

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine to highlight an upcoming release we can't wait to read.   My pick this week is The Great Night by Chris Adrian, one of The New Yorker 's 20 Under 40 . It was featured in this week's Library Journal pre-pub alert. Here's what LJ had to say: I could be highlighting this latest from Adrian because The New Yorker recently included him among America’s top young writers in its “20 Under 40” feature. But in fact I’m doing it mostly because I’m entranced by the plot: a fresh and wild retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream . It’s Midsummer Eve 2008 in San Francisco’s Buena Vista Park, where Titania, Oberon, and the other faerie folk now reside in exile. Her adopted son dead, a grief-stricken Titania releases terrible forces upon the world—not good news for three mortals trapped in the park and inside the memories of a loved one that each had lost or forsaken. Meanwhile, a homele...

The backstory: Nicole Krauss is one of The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 and Great House is a fiction finalist for the National Book Award. (update: Great House has been longlisted  shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize too.) The basics: Great House  is the story of several people very loosely linked by a gigantic desk with many drawers. My thoughts: I adore the way Nicole Krauss writes. Typically when I read books in print, I opt to take notes and write down my favorite passages on paper. With this novel, I was so glad I had an ARC so I could dogear pages and underline passages. I most enjoy reading her prose slowly, and despite its complexity, it's immensely readable and has the essence of a conversation with a friend. It is conversational and aspirational. Nicole Krauss is a writer's writer:  "I chose the freedom of long unscheduled afternoons in which nothing happens but the slightest shift in mood as captured in a semicolon."  Great House  is broken into...

This holiday season I find myself craving Christmas and wintery books. I've been saving Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes to read during the week of Thanksgiving, when the book is set, and I'd like to continue that tradition for Christmas. I'm not the kind of reader who wants to read a book simply because it's about Christmas. I want to stick with the genres that work for me: literary fiction, literary mysteries and historical fiction. I began asking around, and the one suggestions I keep hearing is Wally Lamb's Wishin' and Hopin' ,which I requested from the library. There have to be other books out there, right? I'm hoping you all will wow me with wonderful suggestions. Here's what I'm looking for: The books don't necessarily have to be about Christmas or include Christmas in the title, but if part of the story happens to take place around Christmas, I'm in favor of it. As a Midwesterner turned Northeasterner, Christmas is...

Happy Sunday! I was grateful for the extra hour of sleep this morning thanks to Daylight Savings time. I'm thrilled to have the night off from work too. It's an incredibly rare treat to have a Sunday off, and I'm planning to use mine to dig into Jaimy Gordon's Lord of Misrule . It's a lovely, crisp, sunny day, and I hope to enjoy a few hours of reading in the backyard. The temperature is in the mid-forties and it feels lovely!  Lord of Misrule  is a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction, and the publisher kindly moved up the date after the finalists were announced. We're only ten days from the winner's announcement, so once again, I probably won't make my goal of reading all of the finalists before the announcement. I finished  Great House by Nicole Krauss, and my review is coming this week. I still have I Hotel  by Karen Tei Yamashita and Parrot and Olivier in America  by Peter Carey to read, and both are on my shelf waiting for me. I'm ...

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine to highlight and upcoming release we can't wait to read. My pick this week is The End of Everything by Megan Abbott, one of my favorite mystery authors. I had the privilege of meeting her at Book Expo America in May, and it was such a joy. I'm thrilled to see Megan being published by Reagan Arthur Books too. Here's the description from Megan's website : In a placid 1980s suburb in the Midwest, thirteen-year old Lizzie Hood and her next door neighbor Evie Verver are inseparable, best friends who swap bathing suits and field-hockey sticks and between whom, presumably, there are no secrets. Together they live in the shadow of Evie’s glamorous older sister Dusty, who provides them a window on the exotic, intoxicating possibilities on their own teenage horizons. To Lizzie, the Verver household, presided over by Evie’s big-hearted father, is the world’s mos...

The backstory: I've been having a wonderful year reading more deliberately in terms of reading award-winning literature, but I haven't followed through on my goal of reading the classics. When I heard about the Meiji-era Japanese Classics tour, I decided to sign up. With the choice to pick anything written in Japan between 1868 and 1912, I chose Natsume Soseki's The Tower of London: Tales of Victorian London. My thoughts: The edition I read, which was translated by Damien Flanagan opens with a lengthy introduction and biography of Soseki. I found it incredibly helpful, as I knew very little about him in general or where this work fell in his chronology. While I probably would have enjoyed this work without the background knowledge, I wouldn't have understood nearly as much of it without Flanagan's introduction. Soseki was one of three writers hand-picked by the Japanese government to spend two years in England. Soseki was not excited to go to London, and had t...