BOOKS READ

December 2006
Hilary Mantel – Learning to Talk
Jeremy Mercer – Time was Soft There
Alice Sebold – Lucky
Mike Dash – Thug
Kevin Rushby – Children of Kali

November 2006
Rudyard Kipling – Something of Myself
Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild – Global Woman
Declan Quigley – Interpretation of Caste
Marjane Satrapi – Persepolis
E.M. Forster – A Passage to India
Lionel Shrive – We Need To Talk About Kevin
Edward Said – Orientalism
Pang-Mei Natasha Chang – Bound Feet and Western Dress
C.M. Turnbull – A history of Singapore 1819-1975
Niall Ferguson - Empire

October 2006
Jeanette Winterson – Tanglewreck
Joyce Carol Oates – Rape: A Love Story
Mary Roach – Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Maile Meloy- Half In Love
Jim Crace – Six
Anne Donovan – Hieroglyphics and other stories

September 2006
Diana Wynne Jones – Howl’s Moving Castle
Garrison Keillor – Good Poems for Hard Times
Mark Bittman – The Best Recipes in the World
Julie Powell – Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Gael Greene – Insatiable: Tales From A Life Of Delicious Excess
Philippa Gregory – The Other Boleyn Girl
Jane and Michael Stern – Two For The Road: Our Love Affair with American Food
Harvey Pekar – The Best of American Splendor
Jose Saramago – The Double
Isabel Allende – Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses
Dodie Smith – I Capture The Castle
Zadie Smith – On Beauty
Nicole Krauss – The History of Love
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto – Near A Thousand Tables: A History of Food

August 2006
Tom Perrotta – Joe College
Tom Perrotta - Little Children
Alex Garland - The Coma
Anthony Giddens - Runaway World

July 2006
Jeffrey Steingarten - The Man Who Ate Everything
Ian McEwan – Saturday
Lauren Weisberger - Devil Wears Prada
Steve Martin - The Pleasure Of My Company
Ursula Le Guin - The Earthsea Quartet

June 2006
Luis Alberto Urrea - The Hummingbird's Daughter
Ariel Levy - Female Chauvinst Pigs
Maureen Dowd - Are Men Necessary?
Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness
Donald Antrim - The Verificationist
James Agee - A Death In The Family
Ian McEwan - Saturday
Rick Bragg - All Over But The Shoutin
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Jamie Oliver - Jamie's Italy
The River Cafe Year
Nancy Mitford - Love In A Cold Climate

May 2006
Steven Millhauser - The Knife Thrower and other stories
Best of McSweeney's Vol 1
Barbara Ehrenreich - Bait And Switch
Melissa Banks - The Wonder Spot
A.M. Homes - Things You Should Know
Bao Jiemin - Marital Acts: Gender, Sexuality and Identity Among The Chinese Thai Diaspora
Julian Barnes - Lemon Table
PJ O'Rourke - The CEO of the Sofa

April 2006
John Berendt - Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil
Alice Steinbech - Educating Alice

March 2006
Rattawut Lapcharoensap - Sightseeing
Curtis Sittenfeld - Prep
Charles Bukowski- Post Office
Richard Ford - Women With Men
TC Boyle - The Inner Circle
Orhan Pamuk – Istanbul

Feburary 2006
Nathaneal West - Miss Lonelyhearts; The Day of the Locust
Rudolph Chelminski - The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine
Johana Sinisalo - Troll: A Love Story
Oliver Sacks - Seeing Voices: A Journey Into The World of the Deaf Jim Crace - The Devil's Larder
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Last Tycoon
Jasper Fforde - The Big Over Easy
Sy Montgomery - Journey Of The Pink Dolphins

January 2006
Zoe Heller - Notes on a Scandal
Elliot Perlman - Seven Types of Ambiguity
Mark Salzman - True Notebooks
James Salter - Last Night

Addicted

I was a bit early for my lunch with a friend at Bugis Junction so I took a slow walk through the mall, noticing several men in the perfume section buying last-minute Valentine's Day gifts. The store was abuzz with life, despite it being a Tuesday early afternoon. Couples gazed adoringly into each others' eyes over $22 VDay set lunches, young couples strolled hand in hand, the girl often cradling a small bouquet of roses swathed in a multitude of crepe paper used to make the bouquet look larger than it really is. A good number of people were doused in pink. One girl even wore a pink tube top (with the most hideously dead-looking faux fur trim on the top), carried a pink bag and had a thick layer of pink eyeshadow. I had to quickly walk away before I upchucked my lunch.
Even more strange I find is that friends wish me Happy VDay, like its new year or something. One of them explained that it's a day for friends to express friendship as well.
I'll say it back, just don't expect me to actually wish you first!
I'm a VDay cynic.
I'd like to be the antiCupid, shooting my black arrows at those love bubbles above adoring couples' heads.


Anyway, new haul:

1. Oliver Sacks - Seeing Voices: A Journey Into The World Of The Deaf
(Wanting to read some nonfiction, I was trying to find his other book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, which wasn't available at the library.)

2. Rudolph Chelminski - The perfectionist : Life and Death in Haute Cuisine (which DSD recommended)

3. Johanna Sinisalo - Troll: A Love Story (Translated from Finnish, this book is a recommendation off Powell's)

4. Nathanael West - Miss Lonelyhearts, and The Day Of The Locust
(West died a few years after writing these two books, then virtually unknown. Today they are considered American classics)

I was also tempted to get several cookbooks but decided that lugging them around until I got to work would be too much of a pain.

And so I did it again. Added more books to my (Too Many) To Be Read pile. I should actually write up a (TM)TBR list so that I can live up to reality and admit I have a problem.

Now playing: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Let Me Know