The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

It was not long after that everybody was twenty-six. It became the period of being twenty-six.

[N]o artist needs criticism, he only needs appreciation. If he needs criticism he is no artist.

I absolutely could not enjoy the first half of the book. The endless discussion of art and artists had me crawling up the walls. It was when The War happened that she begins describing what their life without the artists was like that I got engaged in the writing and the style. Partly because I recognised the characters and knew their writing, partly because it was not so much about their writing as it was about that period of ex-patriot Americans that I find so fascinating.

The only reason I read this was to knock another book off the Modern Library Non-Fiction list and I'm beginning to think that's not exactly the best motivation for reading a book. I found some appreciation in the last 100 pages, but not really enough to make this a book that I'll keep returning to to find more nuggets of wisdom.

From the Publisher's Weekly 2006 List

I just read through the list of books PW thinks are the best of 2006. Only a few of the descriptions caught my eye.

Fiction
The Roadby Cormac McCarthy
The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos
Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart
A Woman in Jerusalem by A.B. Yehoshua

Non-Fiction
My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme
There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene
Justice For All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made by Jim Newton

It's actually not that many books to conquer, but considering my already very looong to do list, I am feeling very daunted.

Publisher Weekly's Best of 2006 List

I don't know much about publishing, but I do know that mid-November is as good a time as any to release a best of the year list. I guess not many books come out in December? So, it's exactly the opposite of film release strategy?

Here is is PW's Best Books of the Year. I think I've read exactly zero of them. Great.

via Bookslut.

How to Begin

My parents instilled a hunger for words at a very young age. I'm told I started reading at around 2 years old, but that can't possibly be true. Or if it is, it's no wonder I'm really tired. 28 years of reading can really be exhausting.

The first book I remember reading from start to finish on my own without ever having someone read it to me is The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree, an auspicious start if ever there was one. I don't recall how old I was, but I'm positive I wasn't 2.

As of today, the last book I read was My Sister's Keeper so you can see there's been some deviation, some growth and possibly some regression since I began my reading path ever so long ago.

This blog is about the books in between, the books never read, the books I'm reading and the books ahead. I'm notoriously terrible at reviewing books, I generally try to avoid giving too much away about the plot, and I don't have a habit of remember minutia, so this is an excersize in writing for me. Encapsulating a feeling of the book so as to give my impression without giving too much or too little, incidentally two things I think every writer should practice.

I hope you enjoy.