MISCELLANEOUS JANUARY READING

Best Food Writing 2007 and Best American Essays 2005: I’m sure I have told you many tiresome times how I am always tempted by anthologies, how they are perfect for airplane reading (I started both of these during the Thanksgiving/Christmas travel season and finished them off in early January), and how they amuse me in the short term but leave me feeling mildly unfulfilled (since there’s no chance to get in-depth/obsessed with any one story or writer’s voice). I have several more on my TBR list, but have to be sure to space them out over the course of the year to mitigate that nagging pointless feeling.

Out of the Wild, by Sarah Beth Durst: Sequel to Into the Wild, which I read a few months ago—not the Everest book, but a clever YA riff on fairy tales. The sequel was equally inventive and enjoyable, but didn’t leave me wanting more like the McKay book did.

SAFFY’S ANGEL

This is the first book in a YA series by Hilary McKay about the eccentric Casson family. It’s in the same old-fashioned, precocious, gently loony vein as Jeanne Birdsall’s Penderwicks books, but a bit more complex and mature. I picked it up on a whim after hearing nothing but glowing mentions on book blogs, was skeptical for the first few chapters (the title and plot sounded suspiciously cheesy), then found myself utterly caught up and placing the rest of the series on hold at the library (I have already read the next one, actually). These books feel so much like all the charming vintage messy-large-family classics I loved in my youth, it’s disconcerting to be reminded that they were all written in the last eight years, complete with occasional references to e-mail and cell phones (still, as with the Penderwicks, TV barely seems to exist for these kids; they have much better things to do).

SHAKESPEARE WROTE FOR MONEY

An excellent Christmas gift from S and the last (sniff!) of Nick Hornby’s fabulous “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns for The Believer (after The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. the Dirt). Hornby is such a smart and entertaining nonfiction writer, I’ll gladly read his descriptions of just about anything, from soccer (Fever Pitch) to songs (Songbook), but he is, foremost, a reader after my own heart—full of both joy and exasperation at how many books there are in the world, sometimes doubting and rationalizing and restrategizing his course, sometimes following his curiosity, both enjoying and lamenting the way one book can unexpectedly lead you to another and another. Even though I’ve read very few of the books he writes about, I can completely identify with his meditations on reading in general, and I’ll miss his comfortable, casual Believer voice (with its hilarious running-gag allusions to the magazine’s editorial board, “the Polysyllabic Spree, the forty-seven literature-loving, unnervingly even-tempered yet unsmiling young men and women who remove all the good jokes from this column every month”).

CORALINE

I saw the movie a few months ago and really liked it, so of course I had to track down the book and see what was different. As usual, the book was better, although the amazing animation in the movie (which made the Other Mother even more terrifying than Neil Gaiman’s description) makes it a closer call than you might expect. The movie does have one huge difference, however: it adds a male friend for Coraline who (although he does serve a few interesting functions in the story) ends up detracting from her independence/bravery/self-reliance as shown in the book. I don’t think it was as much of a “Why does the strong female character have to get saved by a boy?” travesty as some fans of the book would have you believe, but I’m not sure such a big change was necessary. The book didn’t blow me away, but it was efficient and nicely Gothic-creepy, and had a great central character. This was my first Gaiman book (I know) and I’ll probably seek out more down the road.