Meme-holic

You know you do too many blog memes when

• you have a meme for every day of the week, or
  
• you look on meme aggregator sites like The Daily Meme for new memes because you worry there are some you're missing, or
• you start new memes just for something to do, or
  
• you can only tell what day it is by what meme you're filling out.

I do too many memes. Recently I've been participating in

• Musing Mondays
• Tuesdays with Dorie (although that's fizzled a little for me)
• Teaser Tuesdays
  
• Wordless Wednesday
• Booking Through Thursday
• Friday Finds, and
  
• Sunday Salon.

I've considered joining Thursday Tea, and it bothers me that I don't know a book meme for Saturday. (I even started a meme- Tuesday Thingers, a weekly meme about LibraryThing, lived on my blog for 30+ weeks before I passed it along to Wendi's Book Corner.)

Now, memes can be great, especially when you're just starting out with your blog. It's a great way to network with other bloggers and fill in those days when you just don't have anything spectacular to say. Maybe you're in between book reviews, or maybe you just want to add something a little different to your blog. That's why I joined Tuesdays with Dorie, a baking meme based on Dorie Greenspan's wonderful Baking: From My Home to Yours, and why I've considered doing Monday Movies and other non-book-related memes.

But too many memes, and the blog just feels stale- like the blogger is relying on someone else to provide the content instead of taking the time to come up with interesting posts. I know I need to cut back on the number of memes I've been doing. Granted, I was at a conference this week and didn't have time to post, so pre-packaged memes helped me fill in posts for a couple of days that would otherwise lack new content but it depresses me that up till now all I've had this week are meme posts- and I imagine it bores my readers.

So what to do? I have fun with memes. I don't always do every one listed above every week, but I usually do. But it's starting to become a drudgery. So it's time to pare down.

Sunday Salon is a general-update, free-writing meme; that'll stay.

Teaser Tuesdays can go. Same with Wordless Wednesday. Neither meme is really about writing, which is the reason I started the blog. So I'll scratch those.

Tuesdays with Dorie is fun but realistically I'm not going to complete every baking assignment every week; maybe that one will be done on a do-when-I-can basis!

Booking Through Thursday and Musing Mondays are basically the same kind of meme- answering questions about books. So one of those can go. Which one will probably vary.

Friday Finds will probably stay; I like sharing my new books with my blogging friends and it's an added opportunity to talk about books before I get around to reviewing them.

So three memes a week- that's all I'll do. Even if it means fewer posts overall, I'll leave it at that. I swear. Really. Unless I don't want to.

Wordless Wednesday

This is the view from my hotel room in the Ka'anapali Beach Hotel, Maui, January 2006.

Musing Mondays

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about library company…

Who, if anyone usually accompanies you to the library? Is it somewhere you go alone? Or is it a regular outing with family or friends? Which do you prefer?

I almost always go to the library by myself. Once in a great while my husband might come with me but I usually go at daytime times when he's working, since my local branch isn't open past 5:30 most days. He and I are not big library borrowers anyway; we buy or swap most of our books.

Musing Mondays is hosted by Rebecca at Just One More Page.

ABC Book Meme

ABC Book Meme

For this meme, you list a favorite book that starts with each letter of the alphabet. If you don't have a book for a letter (such as Z or X) than you can substitute a favorite book that simply has that letter in the title (ex. The Lost City of Z or Hot Six by Janet Evanovich). However, you can only do this a maximum of 3 times. (Z, X, and Q. But not Z, X, Q, and V.) Books can be of any genre from fiction to non-fiction to poetry to textbooks.

A: Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood
B: Breadfruit, by Celestine Vaite
C: City of Thieves, by David Benioff
D: The Death of Ivan Ilych and other stores, by Leo Tolstoy
E: Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
F: Frangipani, by Celestine Vaite
G: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
H: Howards End, by E.M. Forster
I: In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
J: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
K: Kaaterskill Falls, by Allegra Goodman
L: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
M: Monumental Propaganda, by Vladimir Voinovich
N: Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
O: Oscar and Lucinda, by Peter Carey
P: Possession, by A.S. Byatt
Q: Queen of the Oddballs, by Hillary Carlip
R: The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood
S: The Secret History of Moscow, by Ekaterina Sedia
T: Tomcat in Love, by Tim O'Brien
U: U and I, by Nicholson Baker
V: The Virgin in the Garden, by A.S. Byatt
W: A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson
X: The X-Files Book of the Unexplained, by Jane Goldman
Y: Yolk, by Josip Novakovich
Z: Zagat 2008 New York City Restaurants

This meme brought to you by Rebecca at Lost in Books!

Friday Finds

This week brought some great books.
I finally bought Luis Alberto Urrea's Into the Beautiful North after failing to win it in a giveaway or otherwise procure it gratis.

The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy, came to me via Bookmooch.

Rachel Calof's Story is a library find- I heard about it in a book club meeting. It's the memoir of a Jewish woman who came to North Dakota from Russia to marry and be a homesteader. It's fascinating.

Finally, I traded with a friend for Songs for the Butcher's Daughter, Peter Manseau's award-winning novel about a fictional Jewish poet.

I think all of thse are going to be winners and can't wait to dive in. I have to go to Chicago for the annual conference of the Association of Jewish Libraries next week, and I want to pack my suitcase full of books!

You can read more Friday Finds at ShouldBeReading.wordpress.com.

Booking Through Thursday: Celebrities

Suggested by Callista83: Do you read celebrity memoirs? Which ones have you read or do you want to read? Which nonexistent celebrity memoirs would you like to see?

I've been known to read celebrity biographies or autobiographies, but rarely. I have be a big fan and I have to be in a giddy mood to spend the money on something fluffy. A while ago I read Duane "Dog" Chapman's autobiography; I really want to read William Shatner's book Up Till Now but haven't gotten around to buying it yet- though now that's it out in paperback, I can more easily justify the dollars! But what I'm really looking forward to is Kathy Griffin's upcoming autobiography, Official Book Club Selection, coming out this fall. I'm a huge fan of hers, and if someone, you know, wanted to send me a review copy or something, I can pretty much guarantee a positive review!

If you like these (or not!) you'll enjoy this video:

You can read more Booking Through Thursday posts here.

REVIEW: Isaac's Torah, by Angel Wagenstein

Isaac's Torah, by Angel Wagenstein. Published 2008 by Random House.

Click here to buy Isaac's Torah from your favorite indie bookstore.

Isaac's Torah is a gently bittersweet comic novel, about one Isaac Blumenfeld, a man who lives through disaster after disaster as history happens to his village of Kolodetz in Eastern Europe. He lives through the fall of the Austrian empire, the rise of the Soviet Union and the atrocities of World War 2 and the Holocaust, trying to hold on to his friends, his family and his sanity. He succeeds and fails to varying, and tragic, degrees.

Isaac's sense of humor- and in no small measure, sense of the absurd- buoys him throughout. Isaac's jokes and metaphors are present throughout the story, to explain, clarify and offer perspective; it's also a deeply cultural and characteristic element of his storytelling, to explain things via folktales and family stories and comes from the rich tradition of teaching through storytelling. Explaining his naivete at the beginning, Isaac says he was ignorant because he hadn't eaten enough herring heads, and goes on to tell the story of a Jew who sells some herring heads to a Pole, claiming that eating herring heads will make the Pole smarter. "Five heads for five rubles," the Jew says, and the Pole agrees. As he eats the herring heads, the Pole changes his mind: "Why did you charge me one ruble per head when a kilo of herring costs half a ruble?" "'Don't you see', says the Jew, 'how you're already getting smarter?'" "So my point," Isaac continues, "is that wisdom comes with experience, in other words, with the quantity of herring heads eaten, if you know what I mean."

Isaac will need his sense of humor as he falls in love and marries, loses his family and suffers mightily through the years, and the book is peppered with asides and jokes like this one. He divides his story into five sections, why the book is his so-called Pentateuch or Torah. By his side is the redoubtable Rabbi Shmuel Ben-David, his best friend and closest confidant, whose adventures and turmoils act as commentary if you will, to Isaac's own.

I really enjoyed Isaac's Torah and found it to be a rich and rewarding read. Isaac is very likable and the way he experiences events on such a close, personal level brings the sweep of 20th century European history into perfect focus. I love how Wagenstein shows all of his characters adjusting to the shifting political sands. Isaac's story is Europe's story and the Jewish story in microcosm and I think readers interested in these topics would enjoy the novel. Readers familiar with Jewish folklore and storytelling will appreciate that aspect of the novel and Isaac's unique voice. I read the novel in translation (it was originally written in Bulgarian) and found it fluid and accessible but I can't help but wonder what I'm missing, unable as I am to taste Wagenstein's Yiddishized Bulgarian original. But I'm glad I read it anyway, and I hope you do, too.

Musing Mondays - The Year-to-Date in Books

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about mid-year reading…

Now that we’ve come to the middle of the year, what do you think of your 2009 reading so far? Read anything interesting that you’d like to share? Any outstanding favorites?

So far 2009 has been a great year in books. Where to begin?

The first book I read and really loved was Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson; originally published in the 1930s and recently made into a film, it was delightful.

The first recent book to really grab me was Abraham Verghese's wonderful Cutting for Stone, which I hope everyone will read.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Doghead, The Tricking of Freya and Wild Strawberries also stand out. My favorite graphic novels of the year so far are Siberia and The Photographer.

2009 promises to continue to be a great year for literary fiction. Of course, A.S. Byatt's magnificent new novel, The Children's Book, will doubtless be in my top five favorites for the year. I'm also really looking forward to Kazuo Ishiguro's new collection of short stories, Noctures, and Margaret Atwood's new one as well.

You can read more Musing Mondays responses at Just One More Page.

Sunday Salon

I don't have any big plans for today- it's been a hectic week, and it's nice to just take some time to relax. Which means reading! I have a short stack of paperbacks next to my reading chair- a book club pick, a personal summer-reading challenge book and another just for fun. I'll be armchair-traveling to suburban New York via Binnie Kirshenbaum, to the deserts of Iraq with Millard Kaufman and to the waters of the Atlantic with Patrick O'Brian.

Yesterday my husband and I visited a new used bookstore specializing in science fiction, fantasy and horror- the very nice Seek Books, in West Roxbury, Mass. It's only been open since April; I got an email from the owner last week and decided to go check it out. It's great!

My husband, the resident science fiction buff, tells me the selection is great. The store policy is to have only one copy of every title on the shelf at a time- the better to highlight the diversity of what's available. For example, there are around 250 unique titles in the vampire section alone. The shop also stocks and sells complete series and a whole bookcase of young adult titles. The store's definition of science fiction is broad enough for Margaret Atwood and obscure enough for Cats Have No Lord, a pulp masterpiece I picked up for the title alone. Jeff got some Doctor Who Target novels and a rare Dungeons & Dragons book he didn't know existed.

The store itself is tidy and attractively laid out, with color-coded smiley face stickers denoting price. There are even some nice comfy chairs for browsing. The owner, Brad, is friendly and helpful and offers discounts to veterans. Even non-scifi-buffs like myself would find the shop welcoming and pleasant.

If you're in the Boston area and you like science fiction, fantasy, horror or alternative religion, you have to go to Seek Books. I really hope this store does well and plan on visiting again soon.

You can read more Sunday Salon posts here.

Friday Finds

Here are the books I'm excited about this week:























Owly: A Time to Be Brave, by Andy Runton. Owly is one of my favorite graphic novel series for kids and I'm really excited to be reading #4 in the series.

An Almost Perfect Moment, by Binnie Kirshenbaum, is my July book club pick, about a Jewish girl obsessed with the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Confessions of a Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella. Don't usually read a lot of chick lit, but I was in the K section of the used bookstore looking for the Kirshenbaum book and since I have the movie sitting at home, I thought, "why not?".

Finally, Jarrettsville, by Cornelia Nixon, is a Civil War novel and a surprise arrival from Counterpoint. I'm very intrigued by it and look forward to perusing it soon.

What are you excited about reading this week? You can find out what others are into at ShouldBeReading.wordpress.com.

Daughters of Abraham Meeting with author Scott Pomfret

As I've mentioned before here on my blog, I belong to a book club called the Daughters of Abraham; started in Cambridge in response to 9/11, the Daughters is an organization made up of Christian, Jewish and Muslim women, who meet monthly in 13 different groups across the Boston area (and beyond) to read books from our different religious traditions.
We alternate between the three faiths, so one month will be a book focusing on Christianity, let's say, and the next month will feature a book on Judaism, then Islam, and then back to Christianity, and so on.

For the month of June, the Daughters group I belong to read Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir, by Boston-based author Scott Pomfret. The book is a funny, snarky and touching memoir, which I absolutely loved and suggested to the club. Although we read books on Christianity every third month or so, it's not often that we read specifically about Catholicism and in addition to the memoir element the book just has a lot of good information about the Catholic faith and the Boston Catholic scene in particular.

When we met last week, we were fortunate to be joined by the author himself. Mr. Pomfret came to our meeting and gamely fielded questions on everything from his take on Sean Cardinal O'Malley to the future of religious orders to the sex abuse scandal that hit the Church to women priests and marriage for priests. We also talked about another prominent local critic of the Catholic Church, former priest James Carroll, whose book Constantine's Sword was proposed for our club at one point.

I know everyone really appreciated the opportunity to get his insights into both the Catholic religion and many of the ongoing controversies surrounding the Church. The photo above is our group along with Mr. Pomfret, top row second from left. It was really a great evening and we all can't thank Mr. Pomfret enough for being gracious enough to join us and answer our questions.

REVIEW: Lost in Austen, by Emma Campbell Webster

Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure, by Emma Campbell Webster. Published 2007 by Riverhead Books.

Click here to buy Lost in Austen from your favorite indie bookseller.

Lost in Austen is not a chick lit novel, nor is it a Jane Austen primer, and nor is it coming to a theater near you anytime soon. What it is, is a hoot.

Lost in Austen is a mix of choose-your-own-adventure and role-play style book, in which you the reader take on the persona of Elizabeth Bennett, heroine of Jane Austen's famous Pride and Prejudice. You are tasked with finding a husband, but not just any husband. At every turn in the story you are given options from which to choose and must follow the right path to marry and marry successfully. And this isn't as easy as it might seem.

Although set primarily in the world of Pride and Prejudice, the story interweaves characters and situations from most if not all of Austen's novels, including Persuasion, Emma, Mansfield Park and others, so some glancing familiarity with them will help you on your journey. For example, it helps to know, for example, that Mr. Elton is a cad to be avoided- but all you really need to know is that you're supposed to marry Mr. Darcy and no one else.

Along the way you will also gain and lose points in a variety of categories- fortune, confidence, and intelligence- which will eventually influence the success or failure of your journey, so keep a piece of paper and a pencil handy as you read. And don't take the very snarky tone of the narrator too personally. For example, at one point you may be asked to play a little music, but you demur owing to your lack of skill. The narrator has this to say: "You're not just being modest; you really do play the piano remarkably ill." And if you fail in your mission to marry successfully, you may be faced with something like the following:

That didn't take you long, did it? You have failed to complete your mission. You didn't even get NEAR completing it, in fact. You deserve to be disfigured. Be ashamed.

Not everyone will be comfortable with this level of brutal sarcasm, so just keep that in mind if you decide to enter the world of Lost in Austen!

I had a lot of fun playing/reading this book. I enjoyed the dark humor and the way all my favorite (and not-so-favorite) characters from other Austen novels make their appearance, all very true to character. The gothic-manga style illustrations give a modern twist and a breath of fresh air to Austen's world. Campbell Watson does a nice job reproducing Austen's tone and style and adapting the story to the choose-your-own-adventure format; it's a very original use of the Austen stories and it's just a really fun way to while away a little time. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I got frustrated, and sometimes I just kept track of points and pages. And when I failed to marry my Mr. Darcy- and I did fail, many times- I could always just flip back to the beginning and start over.