October 2018 Mini-Reviews

It's been awhile, I know, but how about time for some MINI REVIEWS! They're like real reviews, only not as good but take less effort from me so right now, I am a FAN. I will try to get some for real, full reviews done at some point. I swear. But the goblin can walk now (/has been able to walk for a couple months now, which is why it's been so long since my last mini-review post) and has found a whole new world of trouble to get into. So that is fun/exhausting

Anyway, let's look at stuff I read almost a year ago.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

You guys know I love me some Mary Roach. Love her humor and enthusiasm for learning about odd things. She already tackled dead stuff in Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers which focused on the more physical aspects of death. This time around she's going for the more metaphysical. Now there's only so much science on the actual afterlife, which is a bit of a let down for her typical offering. The science that focused more on the historic science where people tried to weigh the soul. I don't feel like I learned as much as with some of her other stuff and the narrator (I listened to this as an audiobook) did some accents that I could have done without, but overall I was still entertained.

OK so I'm back. I realize you had no idea I was gone but I was. Because said goblin interrupted this post and then things were busy. But he's napping now. I don't know how long I have but I'll try to get through this.

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

What a great name if you're going to be a mystery/thriller author, right? I tried to look up if it was a pen name or not but then stopped when I went to her website where she lists herself as "one of the world's most popular and acclaimed storytellers" and settle down, Karin. I am all for being happy and confident in our accomplishments (and she has them) but one of the world's most popular storytellers? I think we're talking a long list then. Anyway, I'm getting distracted from reviewing this book.
It was fine. It's a thriller and those are fun. The main character Claire is rich and pretty and bully for her. One day her husband Paul is murdered and Claire is picking up the pieces of this sudden loss. She doesn't have many people to turn to since she and her mother don't have the most open relationship, I don't remember much about her grandmother other than her being hilariously awful, she doesn't speak to her one sister anymore and her other sister went missing years before. Not only is she dealing with this, but there's news of a new missing girl that sounds eerily like the disappearance of her sister so long ago. Saying too much more starts getting spoilery, but let's say there are secrets and answers to questions maybe you wish you hadn't asked. There's a lot going on and it's a bit tropey, there were some surprises and some stuff that you could see coming, and a lot of violence.
Also, if you're curious, Karin rated her own book on Goodreads and gave it 5 stars. Which again, be proud of your work, but that seems odd and I've also never seen another author rate their own book on Goodreads, though perhaps I'm just missing it.

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

I love me some Bryson and this was part of an audiobook collection that included Neither Here Nor There and I'm a Stranger Here Myself/Notes from a Big Country and getting all three for one audible credit was pretty exciting. Anyway. this was a re-read for me, though first time listening and Bryson reads his own stuff, so that's fun. It talks about his travels around Britain, his second home. He had been living in England for almost twenty years when his family decided to head to the US for some time, and so, as a goodbye to this island he loved so much, he travels around writing about it, in his charmingly curmudgeonly way. He talks about ridiculous British place names and round abouts and things being demolished that shouldn't and things being preserved that should and how a boy from middle-America came to live in England in the first place. Even though this audiobook version was an abridgment (sigh) it was still excellent and really, I'd recommend both reading it and listening to it because it's great and you'll probably want to read it multiple times, so give yourself some options.

Good thing I got through those mini-reviews for October because the beast awakens and desperately wants to hit all of the keys on the keyboard. I blame and any all typos on him.

Mini reviews: September and October 2017

Another mini-review post! Look at me, with that follow through.

I was looking through my spreadsheets for what I read but never reviewed in September of last year. Turns out, there's only one book. Everything else in September was an ARC or else a reread and something I had already posted a review for. October was the same. So once again, I decided to combine those months into a single post. I may get through this fast than I anticipated. 

September 2017

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

I mean, it's Bill Bryson, so of course I loved it. Yeah, he's cranky and curmudgeony but that is part of the charm as he travels around England. Or rather straight through, as he picks the longest straight line through the land he can manage. Because why not? Something of a sequel to Notes from a Small Island and just as entertaining. Basically if you like Bryson and/or Britain, something to try. 

Gif rating:

October 2017

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

I'd had this book somewhat on my radar and then saw it in a small bookstore with a note that described it as "The Bluths in NYC". How can that go wrong? Well, it can if the book is nothing like that. I would like to find the employee that wrote that description and ask them to defend this position. Yes, it's rich people in NYC and Arrested Development involves rich people in California but that is not enough to compare the two. ANYWAY, I went into this book with the wrong expectations which I'm sure colored my experience but overall I thought the book was fine. A family fighting over a nest egg they're supposed to inherit and each of the grown children have preemptively spent their portion of what they believe they will be receiving. I thought the book would be funnier than it is and couldn't get the disappointment that it wasn't out of my head. But don't go into it looking for that and overall it's not a bad story. It's fine.

Gif rating:

 

If you're curious, here's the full list of what I read in September and October of last year.

September

Artemis by Andy Weir

Sociable by Rebecca Harrington

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

Locke & Key by Joe Hill

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

October

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

On Writing by Stephen King

It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree by A.J. Jacobs

Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Everything's Eventual by Stephen King

Bookish coincidences

(This isn't really a real post but it's something odd I wanted to call out and also hey, look, now I have another post done!)

I started listening to Serial the other day. You know the podcast that was a big thing awhile ago? I am amazing at jumping on trends after the moment has passed. But I was up to date on Freakonomics and wasn't in the mood for Welcome to Nightvale but still wanted to listen to something while working and said "Hey, here's a thing that people like and SNL did that parody and PBS Idea Channel had 2 episodes about it, so yeah, let's try that."

I listened to the first 6 episodes while working and later starting to make dinner. That's something like 3 1/2 hours. Then listened to another hour today while cleaning, so yeah, I am enjoying it.

But I'm not (just) writing to be like "Check out this thing I like that you probably know all about already." I'm also writing because I didn't expect there to be overlap between this podcast about a 15 year old murder and A Walk in the Woods but there is! Kinda!

At one point in the podcast the host is meeting with a law professor who runs an organization The Innocence Project, which reexamines cases where it seems the person could have been wrongly convicted. One of the cases she had worked on (not sure if part of that organization or just a case she had taken) was a guy who had been accused of murdering two hikers in Shenandoah National Park. You know, the hikers Bryson mentions in his book as the ones that were killed a few weeks after he and Katz passed through the park.

There isn't anything more to this other than a coincidence but I thought how strange it was that that was the case she had worked on and referenced during the podcast. And of course I recently re-read the book because I was going to see the movie (which I did, and which does not mention the murders because, you know, why would it?)

Sometimes coincidences are a real thing. Get off your throne, Mycroft. 

Something to take from this? Umm, listen to Serial and read A Walk in the Woods. Just cos those are two very cool things. I told you this was a non-post.

Another beloved book is being made into a movie

First there's The Martian (which recently came out with a new trailer) and now there's one for Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods.

Unlike The Martian, which I knew was going to be made into a movie for awhile, this one was new to me. I was recently at the Strand and one of their tables were able books being made into movies and A Walk in the Woods was on that table. For a second I thought perhaps someone had just placed the book there after deciding not to purchase it, but that was not the case. Obviously, because who would decide against a Bill Bryson book? But I guess that didn't make too much of an impression on me.

Then Tom and I are laying around watching TV and there's a commercial announcing a new Robert Redford movie. Because Robert Redford is pretty awesome, Tom tends to be a fan of his stuff and I was about to point out to him that there's a new movie that he's going to want to see when suddenly things start to seem familiar. OK, it's mostly Nick Nolte seems perfect as Stephen Katz, which might be an insult to Katz but kudos to the casting director. I watched the rest of the commercial with my mouth hanging open because OH HEY LOOK AN AMAZING BOOK IS BEING MADE INTO A MOVIE AND SEEMS TO HAVE SOME QUALITY PEOPLE IN IT, LET'S ALL ENJOY.

I'm sure this is going to be fairly different from the book, given the book is a lot of talking and in terms of action it's mostly (only) too middle-aged guys walking. In the woods. If you didn't get that from the title. It's filled with information about the trail and the history and all this other super interesting stuff that doesn't lend itself to a movie, so I'm pretty fine with them making a bunch of changes. I'm sure Bryson is pretty fine with that as well, considering he gets to be portrayed by Redford.

So yeah, I'm pretty excited for my movie options for this fall. 

Whatever else it was, it was one hell of a summer

Back in the beginning of July when Tom and I were in Seattle, we made our way to an indie bookstore (you know OBV) and I found out that Bill Bryson's latest book, One Summer: America 1927 was out in paperback. So I had to pick up a copy. I got around to finishing it by the end of July and now it's September and I'm finally reviewing it.  Whoops.

One Summer: America 1927 is about exactly what the title says. It's about the summer of 1927 in America where a bunch of stuff happened. Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic. Babe Ruth was smashing homeruns and getting close to setting a record, the first talkie was released, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed, lots of stuff going on. And more. And it's lots of stuff that, when listed out like that, I'm not especially interested. But, as I've said before, Bryson could write about paint drying and I'd be intrigued. This time was no exception.

I have never understood what was so great about Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic. That's not to say I don't appreciate the importance of what he did and what it meant for air travel, and it's not to say that what he did was easy in anyway. But man, the world went absolutely NUTS for the guy in a way that I can't imagine now. It's not to say that I know understand and think "Oh OF COURSE this was the world's reaction. It all makes sense now and I can't imagine them reacting any differently" but at least now I can go "Huh, would you look at that? I guess that is how people reacted. This poor guy."

I knew of Babe Ruth, of course, but didn't really know much about him outside of the fact that he played baseball. I knew the names Sacco and Vanzetti and that they were anarchists and that they were executed. I knew Calvin Coolidge was a president. I knew prohibition was a (stupid) thing. But I can't say I knew very much about any of these things or anything else that Bryson goes into before reading this.

Bryson has a way to not only bring the human element of stories to the forefront but also to put things into context so you understand what lead up to certain events. And all of this is done with his trademark humor.

One thing I noticed this book lacked more than his other books is Bryson himself. Obviously I didn't expect this book to feature him as prominently as his travelogues or semi-memoir, but even his books like Made in America about the English language in America and A Short History of Nearly Everything about science featured more of him, talking about the research he did and the people he talked to. This book still has his voice, but he's never quoted directly. I sort of missed that. I think I like Bryson so much cos I feel like I'm talking to a friend tell me about all these cool things he's learned.

It wasn't my favorite Bryson, but "not my favorite Bryson" still ranks really high up there in "excellent books I have read and will probably read again".

Gif rating

Also I tried to find the plaque for Lindbergh that's at the Roosevelt Field Mall (formally Roosevelt field where he made many famous take-offs and landings) but that mall is GIANT and I got distracted by shiny things. At some point I'll find it. Probably.

Title quote from page 428

Bryson, Bill. One Summer: America 1927. Anchor Books, 2013.

That is the thing about Australia, of course - that it is packed with unappreciated wonders

I went through a bit of a reading slump at the end of December/beginning of January. I'm not sure what it was. Probably the holidays coupled with the fact that I wasn't working (or at least I wasn't riding the train) just meant that instead of doing any reading I mostly watched stupid TV. (Also Sherlock. Lots of Sherlock.) So I picked up Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country to help get me out of the slump because 1) Bryson is great and his books are always a fun read 2) it was cold out and I wanted to read about somewhere warm 3) I had recently met up with Kayleigh and she's from Australia so hey, seems like a good choice.

Sunburned Country (or Down Under which is the British title) is about Bryson traveling around Australia, both the cities and the outback. There are a few topics he touches on again and again:

Australia is full of things, animals and environment, that are actively trying to kill you. At all times.
Australia is BIG.
Australia is far away and most of the rest of the world seems to forget it's there. Which is stupid of the rest of the world.

Bryson describes Australia as a fusion of American and British culture.
[Australia] had a casualness and vivacity - a lack of reserve, comfortableness with strangers - that felt distinctly American, but hung on a British framework. In their optimism and informality, Australians could pass for a glance as Americans, but they drove on the left, drank tea, played cricket, adorned their public places with statues of Queen Victoria, dressed their children in the sort of school uniform that only a Britannic people could wear without conspicuous regret.

Overall Bryson loves Australia. Even when he was almost murdered by some dogs in Canberra (or not since you never actually SEE the dogs) he still likes the place. He has nothing but nice things to say about the people, the cities, the deserts, sometimes even the animals. Well maybe not the ones that want him dead, but some of the others. He gets drunk at strange bars in the middle of no where on his way to see the outback, the part of Australia many Australians never even get to visit. He listens to a lot of cricket on the radio. And of course there are lots of historical anecdotes about people who have died horribly trying to cross the huge country. Really everything you'd expect from a Bryson book.

Oh and I feel I should point out that Bryson acknowledges that the (American) title of his book is taken from a poem, except it's changed from "sunburnt" to "sunburned". As he says, it should be called In a Sunburnt Country. But it isn't.

I can't say this is my favorite Bryson BUT this did make me want to visit Australia. Dammit, why are you so far away from me? Really though, you can't go wrong with Bryson. Now I just need to get my hands on his new book.

Title quote from page 288

Bryson, Bill. In a Sunburned Country. Broadway Books, 2001.

I was in a part of the world where you could drive hundreds of miles in any direction before you found civilization

Bryson is one of my go-to reads, whenever I want to read something familiar, but I'm not quite sure what. Last month I took part in Alice's The Woman in White readalong. I didn't want to read ahead of the week's designated chapters. At least not until I had written that week's post. However that left me time when I was done with my WiW reading and needed something else. I very briefly attempted to start Jane Austen's Emma but the styles were too similar. Yes, I know, different period and everything but to my untrained eye I was mixing up characters and took a cue from Greg (aka The New Dork Review via BookRiot), that if I am going to read multiple books at once they need to be very different. At the time Laura from Devouring Texts* was reading Bryson's Notes from a Small Island and I thought reading some Bryson was an excellent idea. I'd just go USA style with his The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America. And here we have it.

Not long after Bryson's father passed away he decided to travel around the US in search of a quintessential American small-town. The kind that you see in 1950s movies, where everything is clean and neat and everyone is happy. Plus this gave him a chance to reconnect with his home country, after living in England for so long. He starts off in his home down of Des Moines, Iowa and first heads east, stops home for a bit to re-energize and then continues west. And he covers most of the continental US, hitting 38 out of the lower 48 and driving 13,978 miles.

If you've read any Bryson before, you have a good idea what you're in for. He gives you a little bit of history about a place, tells you about his adventure (or lack thereof), shares stories about the people he encountered, whether they were lovely or morons and is constantly confounded by the prices he encounters. Bryson manages to make any topic interesting, and his travelogues are especially entertaining. After an evening of carousing with his brother he decides to leave his car in Pennsylvania and take a long distance bus up to NYC.  As he describes: "By and large a ride on a long-distance bus in America combines most of the shortcomings of prison life with those of an ocean crossing on a troopship." The fact that he was nursing a massive hangover may have made the ride that much more of a hell for him (made all the worse by his seatmates) but at least I enjoyed it.

It's not all schadenfreude** however. There are moments when he finds something truly awe inspiring, like his visit to the Grand Canyon or even just admiring the beauty of Iowa's rolling farms. There insights into the oddities of American life, sometimes about something trivial and sometimes more serious. He noted while driving towards Elvis's home that there were lots of large nice homes that were next to tiny shacks. "It struck me as notably ironic that Southerners could despise blacks so bitterly and yet live comfortably alongside them, while in the North people by and large did not mind blacks, even respected them as humans and wished them every success, just so long as they didn't have to mingle with them too freely." I'm not sure how true (more? less? the same?) this is now compared to 1989 when the book was published, but it is an interesting question nonetheless.

This may not be my favorite Bryson book*** but it is fun to watch him experience the variations in sights America has to offer. He may never find a single town to live up to his small-town America expectations (because really, such a town can't exist in the real world and I promise I'm not spoiling anything by saying this, as he comes to this realization fairly early on) but he does find bits and pieces of perfection.

*I didn't realize how many book bloggers were responsible for my decision to read this book. Apparently I don't make any choices on my own anymore.
**Seriously spell check?? You recognize that word but not velociraptor?
***My favorites include Neither Here Nor There, A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and Made in America.

Title quote from page 293

Bryson, Bill. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America. Harper Perennial, 1989.

[Shakespeare] is a kind of literary equivalent of an electron - forever there and not there.

First up, before I get into this review, I want to thank people for the kind words on my reading slump post a couple days ago. I had no motivation to read to read and was feeling down about it. And in my head I was thinking "What if I never feel like reading?" because being over-dramatic is a specialty of mine. So thank you for telling me to take a deep breath, continue watching mindless TV or playing games or whatever and read again when you feel like it. Now, review time!

Bryson and Shakespeare. It's like peanut butter and banana. I love both those things and when you put them together there is extra happiness. I was so excited when I first saw that Bill Bryson wrote Shakespeare: The World as Stage that I didn't even wait for it to come out in paperback, as I normally do. I needed this book and I needed it NOW. Or rather THEN! Because this all happened in the past.

Bryson brings the wit I love to this Shakespeare biography. He's not a Shakespeare scholar which makes this very accessible for the casual fan*. Or the more avid fan who wants something straightforward.

Here's the thing about Shakespeare: we don't really know that much about the guy. Which makes sense when you think about how long ago Shakespeare was around writing and how much time that has provided for documents and details to get lost. As archivist David Thomas says "The documentation for William Shakespeare is exactly what you would expect of a person of his position from that time...It seems like a dearth only because we are so intensely interested in him. In fact we know more about Shakespeare than about almost any other dramatist of his age" (17). While it may be nice to know that we know more about him than other playwrights of his day, that doesn't exactly fill out a biography. Bryson chooses to focus on what we do know, makes clear what we don't know, and looks as the suppositions that are both logical and far-fetched. There's not a lot to go on so it makes sense this book is short.

There's a lot about life in Elizabethan/Jacobean England because of the whole we-don't-know-a-lot-about-Shakespeare thing. But we do have information about the time so we can get a better idea of the world Shakespeare inhabited, even if we don't know much about the man. And we really don't know the man. There are 3 images of Shakespeare: 1 engraving done after he had died by an artist that may have never seen Shakespeare, a good portrait that may not be of Shakespeare, and a statue that had all of the details whitewashed away in the 1700s. We only have six of Shakespeare's signatures and in none of them is his name spelled "Shakespeare".

I don't know that it's important to know who Shakespeare was. You can certainly enjoy his plays and poems without knowing anything about the guy. I mean, really, that's what people are doing now. But it would be nice to have more information. Since we don't have that, it's nice that this slim biography is funny.

One quick note, Bryson mentions how free form writing/spelling was in Shakespeare's day. I never really appreciated this until I took a 16th Century Lit class in college. I assume in a move to justify the large microfilm library the university has, we had to find a piece of 16th century lit not previously published and write a paper on it. I ended up stumbling on a poem that it would seem served as a source for Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew called "A Merry Jest of a Shrewde and Curste Wyfe, Lapped in Morrell's Skin, For Her Good Behavyour" because Shakespeare stuff just finds me. Don't think the spelling in that title is any indication of how difficult it is to read something from this time, in the original text. This wasn't a very long poem (thank God) but it took me a good 8 hours of intense reading to figure out what was written. Every letter could actually be 6 different letters and the same word would be spelled multiple ways on a single page. It's like they were purposefully trying to piss of future readers, which is kind of hilarious if you're not writing a paper. Also don't read that poem because it is not only a bad story (woman is flayed and then wrapped in a salted horses hide to break her) but it's badly written as well.

*Unlike a certain Shakespearean scholar who's book took me over a month to finish. I won't name names, but I will link links.

Title quote from page 9

Bryson, Bill. Shakespeare: The World as Stage. Atlas Books, 2007.

More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.

I've already written about two Bryson books on this blog, his domestic history At Home and his European travelogue Neither Here Nor There, and I wasn't originally planning on reading another Bryson so soon. But I was wandering around a lovely independent bookstore and found a copy a The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way on sale for $5. Couldn't pass that up! I've actually read this before but to be honest, I don't remember it. I had bought a copy of this at some point back in college. And also at some point in college I lent the book out to someone and never saw it again. I'm not sure who has it, but I hope they're enjoying.

Bryson's skill is taking a dry topic and making it interesting. How else does a book that goes over phonetic topics such as aphesis, apocope, syncope (which by the way, spell check does not recognize) make for something I want to pick up and pick up multiple times at that? I think there are two things Bryson does that make the everyday exciting: he approaches each topic with enthusiasm and from an amateur's standpoint. It would be easy for a book like this to veer off into the very technical aspects of the history and phonetics of the language and end up requiring the reader to be an expert. You never get the feeling you need to be taking notes, because you're going to be tested when reading Bryson. Even the terminology above is given to sate any curiosity about the technical terms he's describing, but could easily be left out without leading to confusion about the topic at hand. By the way, those terms refer to the dropping of sounds during normal speech, for example looked being phonetically pronounced "lookt", Australia being shortened to "Stralia" and the street in London Marleybone becoming "Mairbun" or even "Mbn". "For the record, when bits are nicked off the front end of words it's called aphesis, when off the back it's called apocope and when it's from the middle it's syncope". (88) For a further (and more amusing) example of this, Bryson uses his humor (the best teacher) to give further example:

"Where the British will say howjado for 'how do you do,' an American will say jeetjet for 'have you taken sustenance recently?' and lesskweet for 'in that case, let us retire to a convivial place for a spot of refreshment.'" (89)

The book discusses the history of English from the time our (very distant) ancestors began making guttural noises, through the Saxon and Roman occupation in England, the dynamic development during Shakespeare's day, the influx of various languages into English during the mass immigration to America in the early 20th century, and through to present day, or at least 1990 when the book was written. "Swearing" might be my favorite chapter, because I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old boy. The first line of the chapter is "Among the Chinese, to be called a turtle is the worst possible taunt," (214). I told Boyfriend he was a turtle, but he just looked at my confused. Apparently he is too far separated from his roots to appreciate such an insult. It is interesting to see what words have always been curses, what words have developed their taboo and which have lost it. Fuck has always been pretty bad, cunt was once "relatively harmless" and used by Chaucer (and spelled queynte and queinte, as well as the typical spelling, which I find fantastic) and in "nineteenth-century England puppy and cad were highly risqué" (217).

If you want to know more about the history, quirks and direction of the English language, you could do a lot worse than this one. It's funny and you don't need a linguistics degree to understand it. I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but I would read a book about paint drying if Bryson wrote it.

Title quote from page 11

Bryson, Bill. The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way. HarperCollins Perennial, 1990.

For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom.

I just finished Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life and I was not disappointed.  Bryson's history books, At Home, A Short History of Nearly Everything and his Shakespeare biography Shakespeare: The World as Stage are less laugh out loud funny than when he writes his own personal anecdotes, either in his travelogues or memoir, but this is hardly to say that this book was devoid of humor.  It's just more understated.  Even without belly aching humor this is a book I'm sure I'll re-read a few times.  History has never been my favorite subject to read and most of the time when reading historical texts I find my mind wandering.

Perhaps because Bryson comes to history from such an amateurs point of view I never feel alienated or bogged down by obscure details.  If anyone else were to write a book that included the history of the modern London sewage system I'm sure I would laugh at the subject and immediately put the book down.  When Bryson does it though I'm intrigued.  He is able to stress the importance of the engineering of this new system of plumbing in a way that I can understand and appreciate.  And of course there's his voice: "Late in life [Joseph Bazalgette] was knighted, but he never really received the fame he deserved.  Sewer engineers seldom do." (location 6213) Bryson appreciates the accomplishments of Bazalgette and others like him and is able to articulate that enthusiasm to a reader like me, who has no natural interest in such topics.

In the intro Bryson describes his purpose of the book

So I formed the idea to make a journey around it, to wander from room to room and consider how each has featured in the evolution of private life.  The bathroom would be a history of hygiene, the kitchen of cooking, the bedroom of sex and death and sleeping, and so on.  I would write a history of the world without leaving home. (location 107)

Most of the time he accomplishes this and you can see how the room he is investigating relates to the history he's sharing.  Sometimes, especially in the final "Attic" chapter, he goes off in such a direction that I was never able to make the connection between the story and the room at the top of a house.  But that never bothered me.  I love the short random stories and it doesn't especially bother me if the stories are not directly related, as long as they're interesting.  I have enough ADD that I have no problem jumping between topics.  For those nervous about this, the book is fairly consistent and of course does have the over-arching theme of how home life has changed over time and what lead to the changes.

Title quote from location 6427

Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life.  Doubleday, 2010.  ebook.

It is remarkable to think that people thought of striped fabrics before they thought of doors and windows

When I first started considering eReaders I thought it would help on my daily commute. At the time I was spending about an hour a day on the subway, plus time waiting for the T to show up and I lived off the Green line, so this could account for a lot of time.  This gave me some great reading time but could be a hassle if the book was especially large, such as when I was reading the behemoth Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.  Holding a 6 pound book in my hand while trying to balance on the T was never fun and I would avoid hardback books because I knew I didn't want to have to carry it.

Now I have a Kindle, but in the funny way the world works, I no longer ride the subway for my commute.  I've lost a solid hour of reading time and I don't have the same need for an eReader.  Of course.

Even though my initial reason for wanting the Kindle is gone, I'm still enjoying reading on it.  It is lightweight enough that holding it in one hand, even in the cover I got, is no problem.  I love that it's easy for me to take notes and highlight passages.  I hate marking up an actual book, so if I happen to see a quote I like I just have to hope I remember what it is.  That hardly ever works out for me.  It has a little counter at the bottom of the page to show you how far through the book you are, which I'm enjoying more than I would have assumed.  Buying books is slightly too easy and I'll have to watch myself.  I still plan on reading actual books so I won't be making a full electronic leap but I'm happy with what I have so far.  And with that, onto the book

I'm reading Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life and I'm currently 38% of the way through. (I told you I love that little counter.) I have been looking forward to this book since about last May, when I first heard about it and that excitement increased when I saw him speak at the Boston Book Festival.  Originally I was waiting for the book to come out in paperback but my Kindle has given me the perfect excuse to quit being patient and just get the book now.  I am loving it.  I've said on far too many occasions that I could read about paint drying if Bryson was writing about it and this book practically does that.  Bryson wanders through his English home and gives a history of the house as it has come to be, at least in England and America.  This book isn't quite as laugh-out-loud funny as his travelogues but the humor is still there.  This is much closer in style to his science book A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Because my favorite part of Bryson is his voice, here are some quotes I highlighted

His summary as to the etymology of the word "cabinet"

This explains why this one word now describes both the most intimate and exalted group of advisers in government and the shelved recess in the bathroom where we keep Ex-Lax and the like. (location 1049)

 Explaining how demanding people were on their servants

It wasn't just a question of doing the work, but often of doing it to the kind of exacting standards that generally occur only to people who don't have to do the work themselves. (location 1544)

The cheapness of the Duke of Marlborough.  He can probably also be described by the quote above

The duke was so cheap that he refused to dot his i's when he wrote, to save on ink. (location 2441) 

Title quote from location 743

Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life.  Doubleday, 2010. eBook

Travel is more fun - hell, life is more fun - if you can treat it as a series of impulses

I mentioned in my previous Neither Here Nor There post that the Italy portion of Bryson's journey through Europe is my favorite part and this post would most likely just be a series of quotes.  I gave you a little bit of false hope that this might be something other than that, but nope!  I love Bryson's voice in his writing and I love Italy so I think the best thing to do is to share my favorite quotes from the Italy chapters.  These are the quotes that made me laugh, reminded me of Italy or, most often, a little of both.

I feel I should, at least briefly, explain my Italian infatuation.  First, despite the red hair, I am part-Italian.  I'm originally from Northern New Jersey (think Sopranos locales and please ignore Jersey Shore) so I grew up assuming everyone was at least a little Italian.  And because my grandmother is very proud that she is Italian and my other non-Italian relatives didn't really seem to care too much about their background, I most identify with this portion of my heritage.  Second, I studied in Italy for a semester in college.  My friend and I picked Italy because when I mentioned other countries to my grandma she got nervous (this is her normal state-of-mind).  When I mentioned we might go to Italy she lit up because see, that's not a foreign country, that's "home," so it's not scary to her.  And off we go...

"The Italians appear to have devised a way of having sex without taking their clothes off, and they were going at it hammer and tongs up there.  I had an ice cream and watched to see how many of the lovers tumbled over the edge to be dashed on the rocks below, but none did, thank goodness.  They must wear suction cups on their back." (133)

"I love the way Italians park.  You turn any street corner in Rome and it looks as if you've just missed a parking competition for blind people...Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap." (134)

"Italians are entirely without any commitment to order.  They live their lives in a kind of pandemonium, which I find very attractive.  They don't line up, they don't pay their taxes, they don't turn up for appointments on time, they don't undertake any sort of labor without a small bribe, they don't believe in rules at all." (135)

"[Italians] are too busy expending their considerable energies on the pleasurable minutiae of daily life - on children, on good food, on arguing in cafes - which is just how it should be." (136)

"I stood there for ages, perhaps for an hour and a half, then turned and walked back toward my hotel and realized that I had fallen spectacularly, hopelessly, and permanently in love with Italy." (153)

"I passed the Istituto Tecno Commerziale [in Naples], where a riot seemed to be in progress both inside and outside the building.  Students were hanging out the upstairs windows, tossing down books and papers and holding shouting exchanges with their colleagues on the ground.  Were this was some sort of protest or merely part of the daily routine I couldn't tell." (155)

"I walked down to the Uffizi Palace and around the Piazza della Signoria and the other fixtures of the old part of town and it was the same everywhere - throngs of people, almost all of them from abroad, shuffling about in that aimless, exasperating way of visitors, in groups of five and six, always looking at something about twenty feet above ground level.  What is it they see up there?" (160)

"I remembered reading that it was near Lake Como that Mussolini was found hiding after Italy fell to the Allies, and I figured it must have something going for it if it was the last refuge of a desperate man. (174).

Title quote from page 131

Bryson, Bill.  Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe.  HarperCollins, New York.  1992.

I loved the idea that you could never be sure of anything in Europe

I want to start my posts about Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe by saying this is one of my favorite books and one I have read multiple times.  If I start relentlessly gushing, just keep in mind I am unable to give an unbiased review.  Though now that I've typed that I realize that suggests that I believe my other reviews/posts/whathaveyou are unbiased and I don't really think that's true.  Well, now that I've spent the entire intro contradicting myself, onto the book.

If it wasn't clear from the title, the book is about Bryson's travels through Europe. (Though if it wasn't clear, perhaps you should move along. Maybe lie down for awhile.) He somewhat retraces the trip he had taken years earlier with his friend Stephen Katz, a character you may remember from A Walk in the Woods. He tells stories about his first trip, describes his trials and tribulations navigating new cities, and describes all the wonderful and frustrating things about Europe.

It's the style that gets me.  Bryson has the best voice for a travelogue. At least in my opinion, having hardly read any other travelogues.  None that I can think of right now anyway.  I don't really want to read about spiritual journey about self-discovery, I want to hear a funny story by a clumsy, not-very-suave guy as he goes to places that I want to see.  I've traveled a little around Europe (some Ireland, some Italy) but my current financial situation means I won't be jetting off to the continent whenever my little heart desires.  This acts as a nice stand-in if I get the urge to travel but the ATM makes a sad trombone sound when I check my balance.  And let's face it, when I travel my experiences are much closer to the awkward situations Bryson finds himself in than any journey of enlightenment.

The book is a quick read, one of the reasons I've read it so many times.  And I tend to pick it up if I've just read something I didn't enjoy or if I want to go back to something familiar.  I know all the funny situations in the book, yet they make me laugh every time.  Bryson has a fantastic way of describing events or general observations in this amazingly witty way.  I know I've said it before but I'm pretty sure he could write about paint drying and I'd still be cracking up.  Here's a quick example of his view on countries living up to their stereotypes:

"Germans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let on to the invention of the automobile." (35)

The book isn't Bryson going to a city, telling you where he ate, what museums he say and providing travel recommendations. You'd need a Lonely Planet book if that's what you want. He'll discuss the basic feeling of the city: the abundance of hippies in Amsterdam, the air of sophistication and wealth in Aachen, the fact that all Parisian drivers want him dead.  He breaks up his current journey with tales of his previous trip with Katz, as well as stories from the cities history or of his own history or just small bits of advice while traveling, such as the importance of making sure a German restaurant does not have a polka band that will surprise you during your meal.  As he says; "It should have been written into the armistice treaty that the Germans would be required to lay down their accordions along with their arms," (73).

I'm almost to my favorite part of the book, when he gets to Italy.  Reading this part always makes me long to go back.  I'm thinking that post will possibly just be a series of quotes because I'm not sure I can say anymore that I haven't already shared, yet I'm not quite finished talking about it yet.  Perhaps I'll come up with something incredibly insightful in the time being but I wouldn't count on it.

Title quote from page 35

Bryson, Bill.  Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe.  HarperCollins, New York.  1992.

Boston Book Festival, Full Frontal Feminism and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

It's a busy post so let's get started.

Bill Bryson at the Boston Book Festival
Saturday was the Boston Book Festival and who was there by Bill Bryson! I know, exciting.  I've mentioned before that he's one of my favorite authors and one of my go-to's if I want a quick read that I know I'll like. Earlier in the Spring I heard he had a new book coming out soon but it wasn't out just yet.  At Home is available now, though like Fforde's Shades of Grey I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback.  Bryson read a couple excerpts out of the book and talked about how little we know about the little things that are all around us.  Why is it "room & board", why is it salt & pepper that are always on the table?

I know Bryson is originally from Des Moines, Iowa and that he's lived in England for years but his accent still through me.  It's a mix of the two of them but after years of reading his book and not hearing what he sounds like I guess I made up my own version of what he sounds like.  He is a riot and he writes like he talks.  I was starving during the talk so roommate and I got linner instead of waiting around for book signing.  As I said I'd prefer the paperback version and while I like autographed copies of books I decided I didn't want to buy a hardback version and fight the crazy line while my stomach was crying for a sandwich.  But overall fun, windy times at the Boston Book Festival!

Update!: Both Brother and CurlyGeek04 pointed out that Bryson was on The Colbert Report so I found it on OnDemand.  If you're a fan of Bryson, or want to be, check this out.  It's pretty fantastic

Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters by Jessica Valenti
I first heard of the book on The Broke and the Bookish blog, so this is the second case where I read a book I heard about on a book blog.  (The first book was This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper.) I was going to use the quote "Keepers of the all-powerful hymen" (86) as the title of this post but because this is about more than just FFF so I went with my planned subtitle.  I laughed out loud when I read the quote, which was a little awkward seeing how I was sitting in a Texas airport at the time.  I read in public often so you'd think I'd be used to this by now but I still end up laughing and then fake-coughing.  It's pathetic, I know.  I was already getting odd looks from the guy across from me when he saw the cover so who know what he was thinking when I started laughing.

Anyway, this book is wonderful and I want to share it with everyone.  Feminism gets a bad rap when, as a past professor explained it, it really just means equality between the sexes.  It doesn't mean anger or that men are awful.  It's things that most people seem to agree with but the backlash against feminism prevents people from self-identifying as such. Valenti addresses stereotypes as well as problems within the feminist movement, goes into topics such as women in politics, beauty and media, reproductive rights and the "rape schedule".  There's nothing completely new and groundbreaking but the book serves as a wake-up call that things are better than they were but they aren't fixed and there is still more to do.  I want to reiterate that everyone, especially young women, should pick up this book.

My initial thoughts on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
*There may be some spoilers.  Not about the mystery in general but I will discuss certain plot points. So if you don't want to know them, I'll see ya next time! I'm on page 332, version details below*
I understand why the original title was Men Who Hate Women. That is a theme throughout obviously the Lisbeth Salander's encounters with her new guardian and even the stories of marriage in the Vanger family.  Parts 2 and 3 include statistics such as "Forty-six percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man" (139) and "Thirteen percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship" (299).  And I don't like rape scenes.  I can deal with ridiculous violence; I read American Psycho and while I disgusted by a lot of it (like the rat) I didn't want to throw the book down at any point.  But I don't like rape scenes, violent or otherwise.  On top of that I, so far anyway, don't care about the mystery.  I don't feel like the character of Mikael Blomkvist is well developed and I don't actually care about the mysterious disappearance of a women over forty years prior to the story.  I heard the story is slow in the first 100-150 pages, but that it really picks up after that.  It's not a hard read and I'm making it through but I'm hoping it picks up and I start to care soon.

Larsson, Stieg.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Vintage Books, New York.  2008.

Valenti, Jessica.  Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters. Seal Press, Berkeley. 2007

Book Blogger Hop II

I enjoyed last week's hop so I figured I would give it a go this week as well.

This Friday's Book Blogger Hop question is who are some of your favorite authors and why?  I have 3 favorite authors, at the moment anyway.

Bill Bryson: A friend of mine (the same one that recommended Kitchen Confidential and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) lent me Bryson's book Made in America: A Brief History of the English Language in the United States and I have been hooked since.  I'm pretty sure he could write about paint drying and it would be funny.  He mostly writes travel books but he has a few language books, a memoir and even a science book.  I constantly re-read his work.  It's my go to book when I'm in the mood to laugh.

Jasper Fforde: Another author I was introduced to do via a lent book.  It's my favorite way to learn about new works.  Anyway, his works are generally a mix of satire, dark humor, fantasy, lots of literary allusions and overall hilarious.  One of the first books I re-read for this blog is The Eyre Affair the first book in the Thursday Next series, which I'm pretty sure I've read at least 5 times.  I anxiously await his latest work Shades of Grey to come out in paperback.

Christopher Moore: This is a relatively new favorite author, for me anyway.  A co-worker had been bugging me to read Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal for months before I finally got around to it and I don't know what I was waiting for.  I loved that book.  I've since read 6 of his other works and have had to hold myself back from buying more each time I go to the bookstore.  I'm taking a little break to read someone else's work, at least for a little while.  I wrote a couple entries about his book Coyote Blue for this blog.

One other thing I love about these authors is they all reference Shakespeare and I love Shakespeare.  Bryson wrote a biography on him, Shakespeare: The World as Stage.  Fforde references Shakespeare in at least some small way in all of his books I've read so far and Hamlet is even a character in Something Rotten (see, there's one of those references).  And Moore retells the story of King Lear from the point of view of the Fool in his book Fool.  Fool is a close second to Lamb as my favorite Moore book.

If you are looking for a book, I recommend anything by the author's above.  I'm yet to be let down.