pixiecrinkle | Book Update:

3. Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
I picked this up at a discount shop a couple of years ago when The Poisonwood Bible was all anyone could talk about (I still haven't read that.) This was her first book and it's quite good. A very quick read. I did have some trouble with the plausability of parts of it, but it didn't bother me, I think because while everything worked out completely handily by the end, things didn't just fall into place exactly when they were needed. It's quite a good story. I hesitate to say anything more concrete than that, because it would be very easy to give out spoilers with this.

4. Cheryl Mendelson, Home Comforts
I haven't finished this one yet (it's approx 900 pages!), but I'm going ahead and including it now, because it may take me several months to work my way completely through it. I got this from the library, and have already ordered my own copy from half.com, because I know this is a book I'll refer to for the rest of my life. I had heard of it several years ago, and (wrongly) assumed this was just a housekeeping manual type book. But it's much more than that. Mendelson manages to add in just the right mix of historical context for things like "spring cleaning" and enough stories of her own family history to also make this a very good read. I'm trying to incorporate some of her ideas about a housekeeping routine in my own life. Since I live alone, some of this is overkill, but she's right when she says that far too many people use living alone as an excuse for not keeping their homes nice. And that most certainly has applied to me. I really recommend this to just about anyone, and I may get this for anyone getting married, having a housewarming, etc.

5. Nick Hornby, Songbook
Just finished this one last night. A lot of the reviews I read on Amazon called this book things like "self-indulgent" and criticized it for using the songs which title each chapter as jumping off points for personal essays about Hornby's life. That's the part I liked about it though. It's not *just* a book about pop music, or about the particular songs mentioned (and on the CD), but it's about how those songs (& others) impact his life, and how the impact changes over time. I really think that it took a lot of guts to write many of these essays, because he does include so much of why things personally impact him. No, not all of them work all the time, and I did wish that there was a bit more variety in length of the pieces, but overall, this is definitely worth reading, by anyone who's passionate about music. Hornby calls it "pop" but really, I think most of this applies to songs of any genre. And, unlike all those Amazon reviewers, it didn't bug me that I hadn't heard all the songs--I really don't think that was the point. Yes, I loved the essay about Ani Difranco's "You Had Time" because I do truly love that song, and he absolutely nailed why the pieces of that song work so well with each other. But I also "got" the essays about obscure British punk bands I've never heard (and likely never will) because it was the idea of exclusive fandom that he was talking about more than the music itself. No, I'm probably not going to run out and shell out the cash for a copy of my own of this (the hardcover/CD set is out of print, and is running about $60.00 most places) but I will likely re-read this sometime.

Currently: Re-reading Middlesex for book club, and reading Organizing Plain & Simple