BiblioAddict

In the interest of full disclosure I figure I should tell you that I finished Anita Diamant’s novel THE LAST DAYS OF DOGTOWN a couple of days ago. I haven’t posted my review yet for two reasons: one, because I liked to the book so much that I wanted to let it marinate before I wrote about it (it’ll be up some time this week – I promise!), and two well, because I feel like procrastinating.

So….

I’m going to take a page out of Matt’s book, and list my biblio-covets of the week (weak pun intended):

• THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Diaz. I came across this title while I was searching for a title for the reading group I’ll be hosting here.

“Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukœ-the curse that has haunted the Oscar’s family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.”

Our reading group members will vote on which book they’d like to read, and personally, if THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS by Dinaw Menegestu doesn’t win, I hope this title does.

• THE MAN WHO FORGOT HOW TO READ by Howard Engel. I read about this title two days ago on Lotus Reads. After suffering a stroke, Engel, the author of 12 bestselling detective novels, woke up one morning to discover he couldn’t read. If I had to think of my greatest nightmare, Engel’s condition would be it.

“One hot mid-summer morning in Toronto, bestselling crime novelist Howard Engel got up to fetch his morning paper and discovered he could no longer read it. The letters had mysteriously jumbled themselves into something that looked like Cyrillic one moment and Korean the next. “Was this a Serbo-Croatian version of The Globe?” he wondered. Overnight, while he slept, Engel had experienced a stroke and now suffered from a rare condition called alexia sine agraphia, meaning that while he could still write, he could no longer read. Engel’s gentle humour and matter-of- fact tone set the stage for this extraordinary memoir that traces the writer’s journey through a life-changing episode.”

Currently this title isn’t available in the US, but I’ve no money now anyway, so I suppose that’s a good thing.

• HORNET’S NEST by Edyr Augusto. I read about this on Literary Saloon. I always enjoy reading novels set in various countries, so this mystery set in Brazil and newly translated into English is right up my alley.

“As fireworks explode over Our Lady of Nazareth church in the Amazonian city of Belém, a family gathered for a local festival is gunned down in cold blood. In New York, the boyfriend of an international pop star disappears after receiving a disturbing message. A football referee stumbles upon some politically devastating documents. A woman whose life has been destroyed by an ambitious and corrupt politician exploits Brazil’s ruthless underbelly for revenge. With these taut threads, Augusto weaves a thriller that does for crime writing what Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction did for the cinema, set in a Brazil far from the beaches and favelas of the big cities.”

A reviewer for the Latin American Review of Books described it as “a deep-fried rib of revenge with a lusty hot sauce cooked in a steaming Amazonian boiler – then served up with blood.” I don’t know about you, but I’ll read anything with the words “deep-fried rib of revenge” in its review. Hummm, ribs…

Ahem. Excuse, me. As I was saying, this book also hasn’t been released in the States yet, but it will be in October (when I can afford it, hopefully).

Well, that’s my biblio-covets this week. Now on to other diversions:

The Times Online has concluded that the reason why polls consistently reveal that girls are reading more books than boys doesn’t have anything to do with something as complicated as cognitive psychology. The reason is simple: boys are judging books by their ‘girlie’ covers and being put off.

“Attempts by parents and teachers to persuade boys to read more are being undermined by publishers whose insistence on using lurid “Barbie” pink covers on books is turning away young male readers in their droves…Whereas girls were not put off boys’ books, which tended to have primary colours, few boys dared to be seen reading a pink or purple book, even though they might otherwise enjoy it…

Amanda Craig, a children’s book critic for The Times, said that…“Publishers are quite lazy on this issue. They know that girls are more likely to enjoy reading, so it’s easier for them simply to target them. They don’t seem to realise that boys are capable of just as broad a range of reading as girls, once they get started,” she said.”

And parents thought they had to develop various strategies to engage their children in the pleasures of reading. It turns out, all they need to do is invest in a nice set of book covers.

But, for the rest of us looking for something to read (as if you don’t already have enough), this is a really cool recommendation website: What Should I Read Next? All you have to do is type in a book you liked, then the program will generate a list of similar books you might also enjoy. I can’t say for sure whether some of the books it recommended for me are any good, but I’m sure looking forward to finding out.

Have you heard of this: Booksfree.com? It’s Netflix for bookworms. The only difference I can see between this and simply going to your local library is that you get to keep the books longer with Booksfree (?). I’m thinking about joining this service, but really. Do I need anymore books? No, you’re probably right. I don’t.