Author: Sumthinblue

Literary Listography

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I love lists, and I love bookish lists even more, so I’m a sitting duck for books like this one: “Literary Listography: My Reading Life in Lists,” which was an impulse buy (ooh, shiny!) at the bookstore. I’m filing this under shelf candy, or books that will look good on my bookshelves.

The Listography books (by one of my all-time favorite publishers, Chronicle Books) are a set of list-making journals by the website listography.com. There are Listography books for various interests (music, travel, food, film, parenthood, friends, love, etc), and for bookish folk, there’s “Literary Listography.”

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Wonder

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I’ve had “Wonder” by R.J. Palacio on my shelf for over a year now, and I’ve been half-afraid to tear open the plastic seal because so many people have been raving about it and I’m always wary of being disappointed.

So last Sunday, I booked a spa appointment for two hours of uninterrupted reading, and I was hemming and hawing in front of my bookshelves when I came upon “Wonder” and decided to finally read it.

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The Old Man and the Sea

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I’ve started on Hemingway for Flips Flipping Pages’ May book discussion, which requires us to read at least one work by Hemingway and one biography (including memoirs, letter collections and the like).

I’ve decided to start with “The Old Man and the Sea,” mainly because I’ve never read it — the only Hemingway I’ve read is “Fiesta”/ “The Sun Also Rises” for my Great Books class in university. I’m still deciding which biographical work I’ll read (also I am trying to recall whether I already have one in Mount TBR).

The book that won him the Pulitzer in 1953 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, “The Old Man and the Sea” is set in the Gulf Stream off Cuba, and tells of an old fisherman, Santiago, who, after a long, dry spell, manages to hook a large marlin.

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Train Man

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I’ve had “Train Man” on my shelf for a while now, and finally cracked open the plastic this weekend. Mainly out of desperation: I was in sore need of grown-up conversation after spending an entire day with a seven-year old (I like kids well enough, but how do moms do it?!?) and got some blessed reading time while the kiddo was still happily occupied by the paint markers I had laid out on the table.

So, anywayyyy… Purported to be based on a true story on the Japanese message board 2channel, “Train Man” by Nakano Hitori features a painfully shy otaku (Train Man) whose life takes on a different turn when a young woman sends him a thank you gift for saving her from a drunken pervert on the train.

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