BiblioAddict

I’m working on my reviews of both I AM LEGEND and THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD (yes, I know I had all (three-day) weekend, but I spent it watching DEATH PROOF (terrible), and SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER…SPRING (excellent), and generally lazing around). Since my reviews aren’t ready, and since I haven’t posted anything in three whole days, I figured I’d distract you with the new additions to my library, and to my TBR list.

Additions To My Library:

THE WORST THING I’VE DONE by Ursula Hegi. Simon & Schuster was nice enough to send me a review copy of this novel last week. I guess my terribly late reading of THE LAST DAYS OF DOGTOWN by Anita Diamant wasn’t so bad. I’ll try to do better with this one.

• Friends since earliest childhood, Annie, Jake, and Mason have a special bond. When Annie’s parents die on the same night that she and Mason get married, the three friends decide to raise Annie’s infant sister, Opal, together. Not surprisingly, their bonds of intimacy, already deeply entangled, become strained. As Annie struggles, events take on a momentum of their own. And then, one fateful night, the three friends goad each other into stepping over a line, with shocking consequences for each of them.

THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2007 (Houghton Mifflin) ed. Susan Orlean. You already know how much I love this series. It’s my humble opinion that this is the best armchair traveling anthology around. This year’s collection boasts essays by Elizabeth Gilbert, Ann Patchett, George Saunders, and Gary Shteyngart. I predict soon enough I’ll also be buying THE BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING 2007 and THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2007, both of which will be released tomorrow. I’m also thinking about buying THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2007. What can I say, Stephen King can be very convincing.

• The twenty pieces in this year’s collection showcase the best travel writing from 2006. George Saunders travels to India to witness firsthand a fifteen-year-old boy who has been meditating motionless under a tree for months without food or water, and who many followers believe is the reincarnation of the Buddha. Matthew Power reveals trickle-down economics at work in a Philippine garbage dump. Jason Anthony describes the challenges of everyday life in Vostok, the coldest place on earth, where temperatures dip as low as minus-129 degrees and where, in midsummer, minus-20 degrees is considered a heat wave.

FRAGILE THINGS (Harper Perennial) by Neil Gaiman. The paperback of this edition came out last week, which is the reason why I was in the bookstore in the first place. I’m running out of time on my R.I.P. challenge – did I really promise to read four books in two months for one challenge? – so I ran to the bookstore to pick this one up. I’ve only just started it, and I’m having great fun comparing “A Study in Emerald” to the Doyle’s original Sherlock story.

• Such marvelous creations and more—including a short story set in the world of The Matrix, and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children’s fiction—can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman’s storytelling brilliance as well as his terrifyingly entertaining dark sense of humor. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most unique writers of our time.

MEMORY IN DEATH (Berkeley) and BORN IN DEATH by J.D. Robb (i.e. Nora Roberts). I love the In Death series. It’s the longest running series that I’ve stuck with almost from its beginning. It’s a testament to Robb’s strong characters and to her own writing that, at 23 books (and counting), this series is still going strong, and as far as my own interest goes, there’s no end in sight. That said, I’ve gotten a little behind in my In Death reading – thus the two books. Robb cranks them out so fast, it isn’t hard to wonder if she doesn’t have a gang of talented writers working in her basement. On MEMORY IN DEATH:

• In December 2059, a mysterious woman shows up in Eve’s office claiming to be her “mama.” It’s Trudy Lombard, the cruel foster mom who took nine-year-old Eve in after Eve killed her abusive father. Trudy made Eve take cold baths and locked her in closets, among other torments, and now Trudy wants Eve to pay $2 million to keep her past a secret. Readers of the series will know how Roarke, Eve’s rich, deadly husband, handles the situation; he tosses Trudy out on her ear. When Trudy is found murdered the next day, it’s up to Eve to catch the killer and prove that neither she nor Roarke was behind the bludgeoning. All the action takes place over Christmas, and Eve, being Eve, complains about the foolishness of the holiday, but Roarke et al. continue to slowly teach Eve the virtues of love, family and friendship. This is number 22 in a series that still manages to feel fresh.

Now for last week’s additions to my TBR wishlist. I warn you, it’s ummm…quite extensive:

SHAKESPEARE: THE WORLD IS A STAGE (Eminent Lives) by Bill Bryson. Bryson on Shakespeare? ‘Nuff said. To be released on October 23.

DEATH OF A WRITER (Bloomsbury USA) by Michael Collins. “Collins, whose The Keepers of Truth was shortlisted for the Booker, presents a sardonic view of academia in this literary crime novel.”

THE FAMILY THE COULDN’T SLEEP: A MEDICAL MYSTERY (Random House) by D.T. Max. When I was younger, I suffered from insomnia. It hasn’t bothered me since high school but not sleeping is still my second greatest fear (losing my ability to read, is my first). “Victims of fatal familial insomnia lose control of neuromuscular function, existing in a merciless limbo between sleep and wakefulness until they die of exhaustion.”

POET’S CHOICE (Harcourt) by Edward Hirsch. See below in the previous post why this title was added to my list.

‘ISMS and ‘OLOGIES: ALL THE MOVEMENTS, IDEOLOGIES AND DOCTRINES THAT HAVE SHAPED OUR WORLD (Vintage) by Arthur Goldwag. “From Platonism to New Historicism, humankind is constantly coming up with fresh schools of thought to help explain (or at least describe) the mysterious world around us. Here is the ultimate guide to over 450 of the most significant intellectual terms, movements, and religions that help shape the society we live in.”

ONE FOR SORROW, TWO FOR JOY (Pocket) by Elise Juska. “Elise Juska is so good at describing people, places, and moments that you not only picture them, you feel them. A novel of heart, humor, and intelligence, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy is a true pleasure to read.” — Curtis Sittenfeld, bestselling author of Prep

THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY: ONE MAN’S HUMBLE QUEST TO FOLLOW THE BIBLE AS LITERALLY AS POSSIBLE (Simon & Schuster) by A.J. Jacobs. I enjoyed Jacobs’ THE KNOW-IT-ALL, so I’m excited to see if Jacobs’ sophomore effort is just as entertaining. “Make no mistake: A.J. Jacobs is not a religious man. He describes himself as Jewish ‘in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.’ Yet his latest work… is an insightful and hilarious journey for readers of all faiths… Jacobs chronicles 12 months living a remarkably strict Biblical life full of charity, chastity, and facial hair as impressive as anything found in The Lord of the Rings. Through it all, he manages to brilliantly keep things light, while avoiding the sinful eye of judgment.”

TELEVISION (Dalkey Archive Press) by Jean-Philippe Toussaint. “‘I quit watching television.’ Thus begins this amusing, absurdist seventh novel by Toussaint (The Bathroom; Monsieur), in which an academic on sabbatical in Berlin struggles to shut off his set, only to become hyper-attuned to the medium’s pervasiveness.”

PETROPOLIS (Viking Adult) by Anya Ulinich. “When a coming-of-age novel is truly different, it can send shock waves through unsuspecting readers. This brave blend of satire, farce, and heart-wrenching realism delivers the necessary voltage to do just that. First-novelist Ulinich sets out as if she intends to lampoon the whole idea of coming-of-age.”

THIRD CLASS SUPERHERO (Harvest Books) by Charles Yu. “Issues of identity and insecurity simmer throughout Yu’s debut collection, an imaginative excursion into the burrow Kafka built…There is abundant humor, though, and Yu allows the reader to feel pathos without patronization; a neat trick, in a compulsively readable collection.”

GET DOWN: STORIES (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Asali Solomon. “Here is a debut that will make you laugh and cringe in equal measure. Set mostly in middle-class black Philadelphia during the crack and Reagan years, the stories in Get Down are antic, poignant, and utterly universal—they’ll bring back memories for anyone who has ever stood in the corner of a darkened school gym wondering whether to dance . . . or duck for cover.”

Sigh. This is why I always overspend in the bookstore. It’s the only way to keep up with my unbelievably growing TBR list.