My Life in Books

Most people who know me know that I read voraciously. My mental image of myself comes complete with a book in hand. Ironically, I read less while in college than I ever did in my life up to that point. Between working, classes and papers I read hardly anything new over the four years I was in school, spending my free time perusing either old favorites or assigned readings for school (some of which became new favorites, like Revolutionary Road or Mrs Dalloway). When I moved to Portland and started working at Powell's, the floodgates opened. I could get my hands on anything and blow through it. I didn't have classes or papers or (in those first months especially) any social life to keep me otherwise busy! When I realized a few months after working there just how much I was reading, I decided to keep a list of everything I read between August 2008 to August 2009. I realized that with a few exceptions, I read almost exclusively fiction, and mainly literature or sci-fi/fantasy books with a smattering of young adult novels. In my defense, I run the kids section here-I have to read the YA stuff so I know what the hell is going on. And I didn't count picture books, haha. Some of it is out of order, but the last third at least is chronological order. I'm doing it again this year, and hopefully keeping things in better order.

1. White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
2. Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
3. Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman
4. American Gods - Neil Gaiman
5. Empress - Karen Miller
6. The Innocent Mage - Karen Miller
7. The Awakened Mage - Karen Miller
8. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
9. Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman
10. Monsters of Templeton - Lauren Groff
11. Hotel de Dream - Edmund White
12. Book of Other People - ed. Zadie Smith
13. Gods Behaving Badly - Marie Philips
14. Battle Royale - Koushun Takami
16. Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon
17. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
18. An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England - Brock Clark
19. A History of Love - Nicole Krauss
20. Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
21. Fire in the Blood - Irene Nemirovsky
22. The Alcoholic - Martin Ames
23. The Watchmen - Alan Moore/David Gibbons
24. Dragons Wild - Robert Asprin
25. Curious Case of Benjamin Button - F. Scott Fitzgerald
26. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
27. Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
28. American Pastoral - Philip Roth
29. Sabriel - Garth Nix
30. The Swimming Pool Library - Alan Hollinghurst
31. Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters - J.D. Salinger
32. Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris
33. Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
34. Lion Among Men - Gregory Maguire
35. Michel Tolliver Lives - Armistead Maupin
36. I Just Want My Pants Back - David Rosen
37. Wondrous Strange - Lesley Livingston
38. All The Windwracked Stars - Elizabeth Bear
39. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
40. The Toss of a Lemon - Padma Viswanathan
41. Lark and Termite - Jayne Anne Philips
42. Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
43. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
44. Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
45. The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
46. Storm Front - Jim Butcher
47. Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
48. Grave Peril - Jim Butcher
49. The Aleph and Other Stories - Jorge Luis Borges
50. Home - Marilynne Robinson
51. Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
52. No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July
53. The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud
54. The Stranger - Albert Camus
55. Tales of Beedle the Bard - J.K. Rowling
56. Brick Lane - Monica Ali
57. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathon Safran Foer
58. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlen
59. Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade - Diana Gabaldon
60. Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
61. The Great Hunt - Robert Jordan
62. The Dragon Reborn - Robert Jordan
63. The Shadow Rising - Robert Jordan
64. The Fires of Heaven - Robert Jordan
65. Lord of Chaos - Robert Jordan
66. Crown of Swords - Robert Jordan
67. Path of Daggers - Robert Jordan
68. Winter's Heart - Robert Jordan
69. Crossroads of Twilight - Robert Jordan
70. Knife of Dreams - Robert Jordan
71. New Spring - Robert Jordan
72. Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
73. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
74. Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz
75. Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
76. Eon: Dragon Reborn - Alison Goodman
78. Midnight Never Come - Marie Brennan
79. Disquiet - Julia Leigh
80. Black Hole - Charles Burns
81. The Glimmer Palace - Beatrice Colin
82. The Berlin Stories - Christopher Isherwood
83. Stone Junction - Jim Dodge
84. Beautiful Children - Charles Bock
85. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
86. The Piano Teacher - Janice Y.K. Lee
87. The Other Side of Desire - Daniel Bergner
88. The Winter of Our Discontent - John Steinbeck
89. Luna - Julie Ann Peters
90. The Beautiful Room is Empty - Edmund White
91. Od Magic - Patricia McKillip
92. My Most Excellent Year - Steve Kluger
93. World War Z - Max Brooks
94. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life - Bryan Lee O'Malley
95. Swann's Way - Marcel Proust
96. White Teeth - Zadie Smith
97. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
98. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace
99. Reserved for the Cat - Mercedes Lackey
100. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
101. The Accidental Sorceror - K.E. Mills
102. Reflections in a Golden Eye - Carson McCullers
103. To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
104. Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
105. Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy - Robert Leleux
106. The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor
107. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
108. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
109. The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty
110. The High King's Tomb - Kristen Britain
111. A Reliable Wife - Robert Goolrich
112. The Dragon Token - Melanie Rawn
113. I Was Told There'd Be Cake - Sloane Crosley
114. Skybowl - Melanie Rawn
115. Clock Without Hands - Carson McCullers
116. Howard's End - E.M. Forster
117. The Vintner's Luck - Elizabeth Knox
118. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
119. City of Thieves - Dave Benioff
120. Orlando - Virginia Woolf
121. Hero - Perry Moore
122. The Peshawar Lancers - S.M. Stirling
123. On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
124. Livability - Jon Raymond
125. A Long and Happy Life - Reynolds Price
126. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis
127. David Inside Out - Lee Bantle
128. How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - Sasa Stanisic
129. The Vast Fields of Ordinary - Nick Burd
130. Everything is Illuminated - Jonathon Safran Foer
131. The Unvanquished - William Faulkner
132. The Member of the Wedding - Carson McCullers
133. Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin
134. Mysterious Skin - Scott Heim
135. Angels in America, Part One: Millenium Approaches - Tony Kushner
136. A Time to be Born - Dawn Powell
137. Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika - Tony Kushner
138. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower - Marcel Proust
139. Spirit Gate - Kate Elliott
140. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
141. A Generous Man - Reynolds Price
142. Herland - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
143. Wise Blood - Flannery O'Conner
144. Graceling - Kristin Cashore
145. Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller
146. Falconer - John Cheever
147. Gourmet Raphsody - Muriel Barbery
148. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - JT LeRoy
149. Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
150. This is Where I Leave You - Joe Tropper

Pets and Owners

In lieu of an actual update, I bring you pictures I found of my cat and I playing with Photobooth. 

One day I'll update this for real again. 

A few thoughts as the year ends

1) "Blogging" is apparently harder than it looks. It takes more energy and focus to sit down and try to write something thoughtful or interesting than I thought. Like most things in my life, it has been far easier to just not think about it and turn my focus to other things. If anyone actually checked this over the past month, my apologies. I will try to do better.

2) There has been a combination of no big news/lots of small things going on. The economy is coming apart at the seams, and as such I'm just hoping not to get laid off. When you work somewhere that depends on travelers to buy your product and people stop traveling because they can't afford to...well, things start to look ugly fast. I'm just trying to keep my head down and do my job and hope everything turns out all right.

3) My timing is awesome. We moved here in time to catch what was by all accounts the biggest snowstorm Portland has seen in 40 years. Coming from a climate where snow rarely ever happened (I can remember 4 snowfalls, and only twice did it accumulate on the ground. Both times it was melted away by the afternoon) this past two weeks have been like nothing I ever thought to experience. Waking up and seeing everything blanketed in white day after day was one of the coolest experiences that I ever had. It sucked for a lot of people, and basically shut down or seriously crippled all forms of transportation, but I was off work already and didn't have to deal with any of it. Walking around and taking pictures of things that I had just seen a few months ago in the midst of summer, and seeing people skiing and snowboarding through the streets of downtown Portland pretty much made my year. That being said, snow is COLD and once it starts to melt and turn to ice and grey slush, is disgusting. I was glad it happened, but I'm equally glad it is all gone and we are back to chilly and rainy. I guess the moral is that snow is pretty when it is falling, but once the sidewalk in front of your house turns into a sheet of solid ice and you start to worry about breaking your ankles, it's not so fun anymore.

Here is to a more productive new year and hopes that I will update more often.

And here's a selection of pictures from Snowpocalypse 2008. 

It's true what they say...

It does rain here an awful lot. The difference, of course, is that when I think rain, I think Southern rain, the sort of torrential downpour that soaks everything in an instant and is accompanied by thunder and lightning. This is more like walking through the produce aisle when the mister goes off. It's more like the idea of rain than it is actual rain. The sort of rain where it's almost embarrassing to carry an umbrella, because there isn't really a point. However. It is not cold. Either someone lied about that part or Portland is having a mild winter so far. 

But they were right about the rain. If I don't get some shoes that are at least mildly resistant to water soon I am looking at 6 months of cold wet toes.

The ending is just a new beginning

I have been following the 2008 Presidential race since sometime in 2006 when prospective candidates first began dipping their toes into the pool of national politics. I remember when a Clinton v. Giuliani match-up was considered in the bag, and when McCain was given up for dead. I remember watching Obama pull ahead in the polls, despite all the Clinton firepower being put up against him. I remember not voting in the primaries because I couldn't decide between Hilary or Obama, both of whom I felt would make great Presidents. I remember when Hilary cried, and when Ted Kennedy endorsed Obama. I remember the mixed emotions when Obama clinched the nomination. Sadness that Hilary was out, and a trembling upswell of excitement at the prospect of a Barack Obama presidency. 

And I remember being scared. I'm from the deep South. Democrats don't win where I from. National elections have been moments of great disappointment for me ever since I really became politically aware somewhere around 2000. I was crushed when Kerry lost in 2004, and I was terrified that Obama's nomination would be a noble failure, that perhaps we as a nation had not evolved far enough to accept a dark-skinned global citizen into our nation's highest office. Worried that the things about Obama that drew me to him would drive people away. 

I remember watching with great disappointment as the John McCain that I had such great respect for, the sarcastic and honest McCain of 2000, was replaced by this shell of his former self. This man who after years of refusing to do so, finally sacrificed his ideals on the altar of ambition and teamed up with the same people and the same ugly politics that had so disgusted him 8 years ago. I remember the straw that broke the camel's back, the Palin pick for VP, and being treated to the sight of everything that I had hated about the Bush campaigns (anti-intellectualism, religion mixing with politics, the concept of ultra-conservative backwaters being touted as "true America") being brought back onto the national field. 

And now the Election has come and is gone. After almost two years of worrying and fretting and a building knot of tension and hope and fear deep inside myself, the election was called after only a few hours of watching results roll in. 

I finally got to experience what it feels like to win. I finally get to feel joy when all is said is done. I have hope, for the first time in 8 years. The Bush culture of fear has, at least for now, been replaced by a culture of hope. The real work has begun. 

My Halloween Costume

Quick and easy. Put on a suit and boring tie, comb my hair down, take out my earrings and put on over-the-top G.O.P. campaign buttons and you have an instant Republican costume.

There are few things more frightening here in Portland.

Where's my weather at?

Invariably, the first thing anyone said when I told them I was moving to Portland was either "You know it gets cold there, right?" or "Doesn't it rain a lot there?" I would always reply "Yeah, I've heard that but I like rainy weather, and living somewhere cold would be a nice change."

I will probably regret this in the months to come, but right now I want to know...where is my weather? The weather here has been absolutely beautiful. Clear skies, highs in the mid-to-upper sixties, sunny. It's sickening. I think it has been colder back in Alabama than it has here. Call me crazy, but I want cold weather. I want the rain. I want a real winter.  

Actually, I think what is happening is that there are actually four seasons here. There is a real autumn, with changing leaves, and brisk mornings and everything, as opposed to Alabama where you sort of go from summer to winter in the space of a week or two. 

So I guess I should shut up, go outside and enjoy the beautiful fall weather.