Internet Review of Books

The March issue of The Internet Review of Books is up and, as always, there are several interesting non-fiction and fiction reviews. Also, my review of The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care is in the Brief Reviews section. What caught my eye are the two books about Cuba -- Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost it to the Revolution and Havana Before Castro: When Cuba was a Tropical Playground. Clive Foss, Georgetown history professor and author of a recent Fidel Castro biography, reviews the two together. Sounds like they would make a great Spring Break double header.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Challenge: Colorful Reading

OK, I generally avoid challenges because I have so many reading lists going that I do not like to fracture my attention any more than it already is. But I came across this Colorful Reading Challenge sponsored by Lost in Books and it captured my fancy. I tried to ignore it, but this past weekend (when I was finally unpacking my 800+ TBR books that have been in boxes for the past six months) I realized that I could complete the challenge without acquiring a single book. So I decided to indulge in a challenge with the excuse that it will help me pick from the overwhelming selection. The official rules are "to read 9 books with 9 different colors in the title. Six colors are required, while the last 3 can be your choice. Books may be overlapped with other challenges. At least 6 of the books should be new to you." Reading must take place in 2009. The six required colors are blue, red, white, black, silver, gold. Here is my list, subject to change at whim (like if I find a copy of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates and ditch the cookbook): BLUE: My Blue Notebooks: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan by Liane de Pougy RED: Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith WHITE: White Teeth by Zadie Smith BLACK: Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke SILVER: The Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Rosso GOLD: Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California by Dinkelspiel, Frances GREEN: Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? by Vaclav Klaus YELLOW: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris BROWN: Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosely It was harder than I thought to find the three extra colors, since I have already read A Clockwork Orange and The Color Purple. I had a couple of "scarlet" choices, but I figure that is too close to red.

Bamboo and Barcelona

The one thing that really stuck in my head from reading Greg Bell's Water the Bamboo book is the idea of using affirmations to change behavior. I have run across the concept before, but Bell makes a good, cogent case for changing behavior by changing thinking patterns by using affirmations. He advocates for choosing two or three positive statements and saying them out loud at least every morning and evening for 30 days. That should get these positive "affirmations" lodged in your head enough to make you believe them. Then, because ideas have consequences, your behavior will change to match your new beliefs. Sounds great. I did not sit right down and come up with my affirmations, although I had good intentions to do so (thus proving why I need to do so). But over the past few weeks, I have recognized some recurrent thoughts as being the affirmations I was looking for. We are in the middle of getting settled into a new (old) house and, although we moved in over two weeks ago, workers are still here finishing the remodeling, so furniture is crammed everywhere, boxes are stacked to the ceiling, and workers are there from breakfast to bedtime. We have spent evenings and weekends scrubbing cupboards, unpacking what we can, and trying to organize what we hope will be the house we live in for the duration. Under these circumstances, a couple of thoughts kept bubbling to the top of my head and I have now claimed them as my affirmations. The first is a line from one of my favorite movies, the quirky and adorable Barcelona, where the guy goes around muttering, "Every day in every way I am becoming a better and better person," apparently inspired by the Dale Carnegie books he reads. I repeat this line to myself as I unpack box after box of disorganized clutter that I have hauled around since my first college apartment, vowing to use what I have, fix what is broken, and get rid of what I do not want or need. The second is an offshoot of the first. The phrase "I am marching towards perfection" came out of my mouth when Hubby asked what I was doing, as I was scraping someone else's gooey 1970's shelf paper out of the bathroom drawers. I like the no-nonsense sound of "marching" rather than anything less absolute, like "striving" or, even worse, "struggling" towards perfection. Of course, this one is an aspirational affirmation -- I can only hope to move towards perfection, but can never attain it. The third is the one I practice the most: "I react to my husband with love and happiness." I say it over and over -- sometimes even saying out loud to Hubby before responding to him, although he thinks I'm batty. Other than trying to wallpaper together, or maybe have one of us teach the other to golf, I cannot think of anything as stressful as moving into and living in a house under construction. We'll see how this works. In the meantime, I have boxes to unpack.

The MLA's List of 30 Books Every Adult Should Read Before They Die

This list is the results of a 2006 poll of British librarians conducted by the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), in which librarians around Britain were asked, "Which book should every adult read before they die?"

It looks like the list reflects a split between those librarians who popped off with the name of the book that most recently captured their fancy and those who considered what should really be the one book everyone should read. I mean, The Time Traveler’s Wife was extremely popular, but is it really a book deserving of every adult’s bucket list? On the other hand, The Bible is a space-hogging gimmee. I agree that everyone should read it, but my rule is that all Must Read lists come with a silent caveat: “a list of books other than The Bible . . . .” So take this one with a grain of salt.

Here's the list, with notes for those I've read, are on my TBR shelf, or are available as an audiobook from my library.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee FINISHED

The Bible FINISHED

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien FINISHED

1984 by George Orwell FINISHED

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens FINISHED

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte FINISHED

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen FINISHED

All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque FINISHED

His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman ON OVERDRIVE

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks FINISHED

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding FINISHED

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon FINISHED

Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy FINISHED

Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne FINISHED

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte FINISHED

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (reviewed here) FINISHED MANY TIMES

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger FINISHED

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold ON OVERDRIVE

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran FINISHED

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens FINISHED
 
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho FINISHED

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov FINISHED

Life of Pi by Yann Martel FINISHED

Middlemarch by George Eliot FINISHED

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver FINISHED

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess FINISHED

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn ON OVERDRIVE


NOTES

Last updated last on December 28, 2022. I've read 27 of these 30 books, some of them several times! I could see myself reading the last three and wrapping this one up for good.