Howard Hughes.

I finished my latest read, Howard Hughes: The Untold Story. Again my love for old Hollywood stars and their biographies is justified. Such a page-turner! I think the best part is that Howard Hughes was involved with just about every woman in Hollywood at that time. So reading this book was something like reading mini biographies of Ava Gardner, Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, and Jean Peters (to name just a few).

READS 2010.

While we're on the subject of recaps, I thought I'd throw back to all the volumes I've vanquished in the past 12 months. Here's looking at you, kids.








On my To-Read list:

Ulysses by James Joyce (I began this tome about a month ago, but abandoned it. I'll try again soon.)
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
Paul Newman: A Life by Shawn Levy
Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

Summer Reads.

Since it's now officially summer, you probably think I'm spending oodles of time soaking up sun and reading some good books, right? HARDLY. I have somehow managed to work at least 40 hours a week for the past few, and let me tell you that my favorite summer pastime has been almost entirely neglected, except for the one book I read on my last trip to New Mexico..

I was happy to have an unexpected day off today, though (if you don't count working the dinner shift at the restaurant), during which I hit the beaches and finished my current read.
Two down....a LOT to go.


The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky

At the risk of sounding cliche, I am just going to break down and say that this book seriously spoke to my soul. I felt so connected to the character of Charlie, our hero, who writes anonymous letters to an anonymous friend during his first year of high school. Charlie is an observer...a wallflower. And he made me realize that not wanting to join in all the time is actually okay. That being a wallflower is sometimes the best way to understand people.


Little Altars Everywhere
Rebecca Wells

I first read this book the summer I turned 15. I was on a southern-inspired-fiction binge (after reading Fried Green Tomatoes AND Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood), and simply could not get enough. I stumbled upon copies of Little Altars Everywhere and Divine Secrets during my last visit to my favorite used book store a week or so ago, and HAD to buy them both. Reading this book again was wonderful. Rebecca Wells crafts such rich characters, that you feel as though you really know them. I am so tempted to dive right into Divine Secrets again, but I think I'll make myself finish An American Tragedy first..


An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser

An American Tragedy is a somewhat tedious novel, but with a gripping story. It almost makes you wish that Dreiser had paid one last visit to his editor...(in my limited research of the title, I learned that this book was infamously labeled "the worst-written great novel in the world.")
At about 40 pages into Book Two (of Three), I find myself simultaneously bored and riveted by the story of Clyde Griffiths, the pleasure-seeking son of a street preacher, who dreams of a life of luxury, and will stop at nothing on his quest to join the upper-class.

....................................................................

So there are the two books I've actually read so far this summer, and the one that is still in the works. And here are some of the others I hope to tackle before the summer's out:

Ulysses
James Joyce



Fatland: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World
Greg Critser



On The Road
Jack Kerouac



A Certain Smile
Francoise Sagan



Autobiography of a Face
Lucy Grealy


Happy reading, happy summer.

On Reading Good Books

I get addicted and the words become a sweet nectar that feeds my veins. I become wise as I waste my time dreaming and breaking all the rules in my head. I become a secret agent for my wants and forget about the things I actually need. It becomes an addiction, this self-improvement.

I need to be selfish, so I become selfish. I need to be alone, so I ignore. They may knock at my door, but I am not going to answer. It's all the hard work to get back to where I started. And in the end I will only want the simpleness back: the quiet black and white lines on a page that dance and become girls who hate their mothers and miss their fathers. Of children sold to merchant ships and men killing old ladies in their apartments, just because they think they should get away with it.

I become the women whose lovers don't remind them of their husbands, morning dew clinging to bare feet as they let themselves in the kitchen door. I breathe in the mountains of weary climbers, breaking every boundary of human capacity. I eat sprigs of mint and fat grapes with girls whose sharp tongues will get them husbands in the end. I weep for my disgraced sister, and the scoundrel who pretended to love her; for the lost child in the old woman's dusty house, forced into servitude by ignorance and unloved only because he does not know that love exists.
I am the girls who become like their mothers after all, who are invisible steel behind their demure smiles. I ford rivers, marking my snowy path with old clothes I no longer think I'll need. I learn to speak Japanese, not because I want to, but because it is necessary for survival.

I do all these things. And I do them while waiting for my ride to pick me up, or between humdrum lectures in cramped classrooms. I do them while eating pickles and cottage cheese, home alone on a Thursday. I am swept away in the beauty of midnight, and in the small morning hours, too quiet for anything but imagination.

I say, let the world bustle as it pleases--I will read it all as you write it down. And I will remember these black and white dancing lines more vividly than the flashing neon blues that illuminate your bedroom after darkness comes.