For Your Reading Pleasure On New Year's Eve: Books I Read This Year (Final Installment)

I hope you enjoyed parts 1 and 2. I finished my last book of 2009 a couple of days ago and I do NOT plan on doing any reading tonight--if you know what I mean. (Law and Order Criminal Intent Countdown to 2010!)

21. Weekend Sewing: More Than 40 Projects and Ideas for Inspired Stitchingby Heather Ross. Have I made anything from it? No. But I would, if sewing weren't hard. It's like anything, I suppose: I'd rather read about teaching kids, training dogs, organizing my house, or sewing than actually do any of it.

22. The Gentle Art of Domesticity: Stitching, Baking, Nature, Art & the Comforts of Home by Jane Brockett. This book is about cooking and sewing and quilting and being old-fashioned and cozy. I was inspired by this book to make a lemon chiffon pie. It was good, but I don't really like lemon stuff. I know--not very continental.

*23. 'Tis: A Memoir by Frank McCourt. He died this year. His books are so interesting to me. I don't know what it is about Irishmen named Frank--So much more appealing than those uppity Danes!

24. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle) by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. This book is charming. I liked it. Did you know the author died and her niece finished the book for her? I am intrigued by that. I like imagining which of my nieces might edit my book when I'm dead. I wonder. It's surprisingly fun to think about. Try it.

25. Teacher Man: A Memoir by Frank McCourt. This book is about his teaching career. My favorite writing assignment he gives is an apology letter from Eve.

Re: The Fall.

Sorry dudes--the apple looked good. What do I know? Snakes are like way more persuasive than you might think. Catch you on the flipside in the dark and dreary world! Oh yeah, about that--Sorry.

26. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I liked this a medium amount.

27. Maus I and II by Art Spiegelman. The holocaust is always so disturbing, but these graphic novels are very interesting.



















28. Get Positively Beautiful: The Ultimate Guide to Looking and Feeling Gorgeousby Carmindy. Call me shallow if you want, but I just read a book about the holocaust.

29. The Mother in Me by Karrie Lyn Soper. Amongst many poems about breast milk is one stand-out essay called, Will it Ever Be Enough? An Overwhelmed Mom Trades Perfection for Grace, that is really worth reading. I guess I just don't feel the way other people feel about breast milk.

30. The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World by Susan Linn. I heard this woman on NPR and of course, in theory, we all love this idea about make believe and agree with it. But I have to say, the book isn't that good. Does the book suffer from the pretend conversations Susan Linn has with a puppet duck every few chapters? Perhaps. However, anecdotal observations of my own kids and the way they play disproves almost everything she says. For example, a commercial light saber is not less open-ended or creative than a pretend or a stick one. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

***31. The Parents We Mean to Be by Richard Weissbourd. This is probably the best book I read all year. It talks about how you have to be a good person to be a good parent. I think it's really true and really helpful. Here's a bit about the book from the New Yorker: "If we’re afraid to risk our kids’ ire by criticizing them, how can we expect them to resist peer pressure? Of special concern are parents who try too hard to be their kids’ friends. Weissbourd explains, 'Children have no incentive to become like us, because the message we’re giving is that they already are.'”

32. The Lace Reader: A Novel by Brunonia Barry. This is your basic split-personality tale. Whoops. Gave it away.

*33. Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson. This book basically argues the opposite of Susan Linn's book and I think it is way more persuasive. The increasing complexity of narrative structures in modern TV shows is one of my favorite topics in this book. Too good to acknowledge smart TV? Have fun playing with your stick!

34. Drood: A Novel by Dan Simmons. This book imagines Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins as buddies in 19th century England. I love the idea of this book but can not recommend it because it is about 400 pages too long.

35. Super Puppy by Jill and Daniel Pinkwater. Because I want my puppy to be super!

36. How To Raise the Perfect Dog by Cesar Millan. Because I want my puppy to be perfect!

37. Katz on Dogs: A Commonsense Guide to Training and Living with Dogs by Jon Katz. Sorry Frances. Can't walk you. Too busy--reading.

38. How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend: The Classic Training Manual for Dog Owners (Revised & Updated Edition) by The Monks of New Skete. Because I want to be my dog's best friend! PS Monks are weird.

39. The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl by Ree Drummond. Finally. A blogger makes good.

40. Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman. Every Chuck Klosterman fan swears they are his soul mate; I really am. Christian gave this to me for Christmas. Klosterman is awesome. And so dang cool.

Can you believe I made this into three posts? It's totally boring. But be sure to tell me if you liked any of these books--I already know you'll tell me the ones you hated (which I don't mind). I'm also looking for a reading theme for 2010, preferably one that rhymes with "ten." So send me your ideas. Happy New Year, buds!

Nine

I saw the movie Nine last night and here's the bottom line: I would watch Daniel Day Lewis do anything, even sing not very good songs in a distracting Italian accent (even roll around in a wheelbarrow as a spastic quadriplegic). I wish this movie would have been better, but it eventually won me over to a certain degree. I enjoyed it much more than Avatar because it doesn't have any creepy CGI, excluding Sophia Loren. What I was most troubled by in Nine is how fat Fergie looked onscreen. I kept thinking about how much thinner than me she is in real life, and how super fat I would look onscreen. It was discouraging.

She doesn't look fat here. Wait until you see her in Nine.

As for Guido Contini, the main character in the movie--he needs to get some male friends.

What Did You Get?

Usually I had to wait until the next day to call my friends to ask, "What'd you get?" Sometimes we already knew because we were world class snoops. Mind you: for all the gifts I may have "ruined" by snooping as a tween, I made up for by earnestly believing in Santa Claus until 5th grade. I remember some of my friends' best gifts: a duvet (I had never heard of such a thing!), a whole Esprit outfit, skis, a real Cabbage Patch doll, a homemade cabbage patch doll (sorry, dude), a ghetto blaster. Some of my most memorable gifts were: a disco kid record player, a doll with a bed, bath, and infant seat, a corduroy blazer, a puppy that died a few days later, a huge padded cloth box full of doll clothes, a yellow terry cloth robe with red ric rac, and lifesaver books. I love presents! I wouldn't describe myself as shallow or materialistic, but presents make me happy. Here's what I got this year:

• Last year I got myself my own petite hammer for hammering jobs around the house--of which there are many--that I can never complete because I can never find tools in the garage. To my delight my son Sam has become interested and proficient in fixing his bike and messing around with scooters and skateboards this year. He uses my hammer to do this, but then he lost it. I have been complaining about my lost hammer for months. In a thoughtful move, Sam got me a new hammer for Christmas WHICH HE LOST BEFORE I EVER EVEN SAW IT. I would say it's ironic, but irony is when the opposite of what you expect to happen happens, sort of but not really like rain on your wedding day--which could more accurately be described as "disappointing." I'm disappointed that I didn't get my hammer, but it's the thought that counts. I guess.

• On Christmas eve I mentioned offhandedly to my husband that I was glad my Moringa bubble bath was almost gone because the smell "makes me totally sick." On Christmas morning he gave me the bubble bath, lotion, body butter, and exfoliant. Bless his heart for being thoughtful and observant, but I'm a complicated woman.

He also got me:

• Vintage garnet earrings to go with my Paris ring.

• These salt and pepper shakers!

Maybe I am materialistic because part of what makes me love them is knowing HOW EXPENSIVE they are. Seriously, I love them so much. I stare at them. Salt seems savorier, pepper more peppery. They are so red and glossy. I have an irrational fear of them chipping. More gifts (yes, it was quite a haul!):

• A bundle of Ben's homemade books: Apples, The Boy and the Beast, and The Boys and the Beast, A Sequel to The Boy and the Beast, and my favorite Christmas favorite, Stupid Olive. An excerpt: "Olive thinks she's a reindeer. Stupid Olive!"
  
• The Pioneer Woman Cooks--a signed copy!
• 3 Beefsticks
• An almost immeasurable improvement in Frances's behavior.
  

I got lots of other great stuff and it was really fun. I'm basically just writing this to kill time until my kids will play Beatles Rock Band with me again. It was really interesting to see them humor me and then one by one make up excuses to do something else, leaving me playing the game alone by myself. Embarrassing? Hardly. Now they know how I feel all the time, every day--about all the stuff they want me to do.

Going Native: Avatar

I just saw Avatar in 3D and it is, you know--about what you'd expect. All the critics are saying it's an unspectacular movie with spectacular visuals but I personally found the visuals gross. I almost couldn't stand it. Here is a list (by no means exhaustive) of things I hate that Avatar contains:

Moist Fronds
Naked Buttocks
Corn Rows
Reptilian Tongues
Squatting
Chanting
Mysticism
Giant Blue Sigourney Weaver in Cut-Off Tank Top
Beaks
Pointy Incisors
Tails
Anna Lucia
Loin Cloths

I kept thinking the aliens' legs on Pandora looked like pants that David Lee Roth would wear. It distracted me from the subtle messages about the Iraqi war and environmentalism that James Cameron was trying to communicate to me through nuance.

Anyway, I understand why people like this movie but no matter how much you might want to go into World of Warcraft and mate for life with your virtual girlfriend, James Cameron can't make it happen--not even with 500 million dollars.

Books I Read in 2009: Part Twee (Dutch for "Two" Which Becomes Important Later)

Remember how I keep track of the books I read all year? Without further adieu, part two.

*11.The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel by David Wroblewski. This book is a goodie. Here is what my friend and guest blogger Stephen King has to say about it:
"I flat-out loved The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and spent twelve happy evenings immersed in the world David Wroblewski has created. As I neared the end, I kept finding excuses to put the book aside for a little, not because I didn't like it, but because I liked it too much; I didn't want it to end. Dog-lovers in particular will find themselves riveted by this story, because the canine world has never been explored with such imagination and emotional resonance. Yet in the end, this isn't a novel about dogs or heartland America--although it is a deeply American work of literature. It's a novel about the human heart, and the mysteries that live there, understood but impossible to articulate. Yet in the person of Edgar Sawtelle, a mute boy who takes three of his dogs on a brave and dangerous odyssey, Wroblewski does articulate them, and splendidly. I closed the book with that regret readers feel only after experiencing the best stories: It's over,and I won't read another one this good for a long, long time.

Sorry. That was kind of long. Stephen King is always like, "Please Kacy, let me write on your blog!" Anyway, you'll like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Apparently Oprah likes it too, but she was unwilling to guest post for me. Is she getting too big for her britches or what? That's not a fat joke.
*12.The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Warrall. Really, really, interesting book about Emily Dickinson and Mark Hoffman--seem like unlikely bedfellows? Just read it. Mark Hoffman--ew. He's bad.
13. The House That Cleans Itself: Creative Solutions for a Clean and Orderly House in Less Time Than You Can Imagine by Mindy Starns Clark. The author says in this book that all her friends couldn't believe that she was writing a cleaning book because, I guess, she's not all that clean. I wrote her an e-mail asking if she secretly hated those friends because I think it's really rude. She was nice and wrote back. She doesn't hate them. I would. This is a useful book. It's about changing your house so it doesn't get so messy. "Got a pile of stuff on the floor? Put a shelf there," that kind of thing. I like it.

14. Stone's Fall: A Novel by Iain Pears. A story about love, deception, greed, lust, and unbridled enthusiasm. You see, Stone was a simple country boy--some might say a cockeyed optimist--who got himself mixed up in the high stakes game of world diplomacy and international intrigue. It's just the sort of book I like. You probably would too.

15. Darling Jim: A Novel by Christian Moerk. I don't think this book is very good. That said, I did read the whole thing. There are plenty of books I start and never finish (which are not on this list). So it was worth finishing. The story is set in Ireland and about Irish people. Christian Moerk is Danish. I wrote this on Twitter: "Christian Moerk, Why write about Ireland? You're Dutch." I guess Danish and Dutch are different. I make that mistake all the time. Guess who didn't appreciate my Tweet? But you see, Frank Delaney has ruined me for anyone else who tries to write about Ireland. That's why I wrote him a fan letter and that's what I told him. He did not respond. Weird. Christian Moerk responded to my tweet in like five seconds.

*16. Shannon: A Novel by Frank Delaney. Speaking of Frank Delaney, Hi Frank! Remember when I sent you fan mail and you never wrote back? Why do I keep plugging your books when you won't even respond to my email? Isn't it about time I got on board with Christian Moerk? At least he writes back. The Dutch are really good that way.

*17. The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems by Billy Collins. I normally don't go in for poetry. It's just not my bag. But this is great. I love Billy Collins. I like to think that if I wrote him some fan mail he would write back.

*18 Nine Horses: Poems by Billy Collins. Very, very good. You will love.

19. Messies Manual, The: A Complete Guide to Bringing Order & Beauty to Your Home by Sandra Felton. If you are a crazy, messy, hoarder--this book will help. And, incidentally, Sandra Felton writes back when you send her a question about an anecdote in her book. She's good people.

*20. Green Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck. This is another one I read for my 2nd Parents Magazine article, which I guess I should stop talking about because it's embarrassing how they are ignoring me in the manner of Frank Delaney. Honestly, this book is really useful. I recommend buying this to have on hand. It's not just about "being green," but also about being cheap and practical and clean.

Wow. That was a good stretch of reading. Look at all those stars! Stay tuned for the next installment. Oh! Can you stand it?

(I wonder if Christian Moerk is Googling himself right now. I hope not.)
He's very handsome. Maybe I should rethink my review of Darling Jim.

Books I Read in 2009: Part Eins

As you may know, I keep a list of all the books I read and have done so since 1999 (the year I read only 11 books). This year I would like to share an annotated list of books I read in case you are interested. And if you are not, just go here.

(* = Extra Good/You Should Read)

*1. Extremes: How to Keep Your Virtues from Becoming Vices by Robert Eaton. This is a good book. When I saw it in the library I immediately thought of several people I know whose virtues have become vices because they are so extreme and weird. I read this book to justify my judgment of those people. Probably not what the author intended. Still, thumbs up!

2. The Somnambulist: A Novel by Jonathan Barnes. A good book about freaks in Victorian London.

3. Absolutely Organized: A Mom's Guide to a No-Stress Schedule and Clutter-Free Home by Debbie Lillard. I'm obsessed with organization books and this one, while lovely, is not very helpful. Don't buy it. I wish I hadn't.

4. Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business by Danny Goldberg. Very awesome with some boring parts in the middle--but worth reading for the Led Zeppelin and Kurt Cobain insights.

*5. Preparedness Principles: The Complete Personal Preparedness Resource Guide for Any Emergency Situation by Barbara Salisbury. I recommend buying this book. I am always discouraged about food storage because 1,000 lbs of grain per person per day or whatever it is overwhelms me. And then I think, what if I have to flee? Am I supposed to have food for that? Will we be on foot or in the car? And so I just don't even try. But this book breaks preparedness up into components which are manageable and make sense. It is truly helpful. Better than reading it--give it to your mom for Christmas and tell her you are coming to her house in case of an emergency. She'll get everything ready, like potable water and all that crap.

6. Counter-knowledge by Damian Thompson. I liked this book. It's interesting. You might not want to read it if you're really into homeopathy, but you probably should.

7. The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections by Amanda Blake Soule. I got this book when I was doing some research for another article Parents Magazine wants me to write. Incidentally, I sent them the article but have not heard back for like 3 months. What do you think that means? DON'T ANSWER THAT! Hope springs eternal for my publishing "career." Anyway, Amanda Blake Soule is a totally famous blogger that I didn't even know about before I read her book. So now I check her blog every day. She's really great and inspiring and knits a lot. I think she might believe in homeopathy, but I'm not sure. She has a lot of doable projects in her book. I actually made some of them. It's a good book.

8. Be the Pack Leader: Use Cesar's Way to Transform Your Dog . . . and Your Life by Cesar Millan. I have read all of Cesar's books. I find him very interesting. So does Malcolm Gladwell. I think he's right about dogs, but his advice doesn't always help me that much. You kind of have to be him. Cesar Millan is just one of the reasons I freely welcome immigrants to our country.

*9.Ireland: A Novel by Frank Delaney. I don't know why. I can't explain--I love Frank Delaney. I actually sent him a fan letter this year (more on that in a later installment). The only other fan mail I've written is to David Letterman. I went on an American History Tour in 12th grade. We were in New York during a writer's strike and I was so disappointed that I wouldn't get to go to a taping of David Letterman. But enough about Dave. Let's talk about Frank. I love his writing and I recommend this book. I don't particularly care about any of the the aforementioned books, but I actually care about this book and it will hurt my feelings if you don't like it. That said, I'm not sure you will like it as much as I do. It's kind of weird how much I love Frank Delaney.

*10. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. Another book I care about. So good. Please read.

There you have it! The first ten books I read this year. Can you stand to wait for the next ten? Isn't the anticipation DELICIOUS!

Tonight

Tonight Christian and I kept hearing a man's voice. As it turns out, it was the kids' computer telling us it was about to shut down. But in between hearing the voice and figuring out what the voice was, I imagined what it would be like to hear the voice say, "I am the voice you thought you just heard and I am the devil." That would be one of the most freaky things ever.

TrendWatch: Buffalo Plaid

Hello, Buffalo Plaid. And so we meet again.

In the 80s you kept me warm and sloppy. And then--in an ironic twist--I wore you as a fancy jumper with a lace dickie and/or denim shirt. My most vivid memories of you are in mustard yellow--I don't know why. You were very thick and coarse. I think people of the grunge persuasion did not wash you. Ever. I remember you in purple and black with high-waisted and peg-legged--sorry, "skinny" jeans. One wonders, are they "jeans" if they are wool? And, perhaps even more perplexing--are they "jeans" if they are flannel? On thing is for sure--flannel "jeans" require an elastic waist band.

I can't help but envy the under-20s who are meeting you for the first time with no baggage, no incriminating pictures from school dances. And yet--though our relationship is complex and spans two decades--it is enduring and special.

And so I will let bygones be bygones. Can we start over? To plaid!

Here's someone I found on the internet who I think feels the same way. Look closely at the pants.
Hey young hipsters, this is how it really was. Do you dare go truly retro?

Albi the Racist Dragon

I'm totally against racism. I'll probably start a Facebook movement against racism. Then I'll be able to tell who is against racism because they'll join me in my cause. Otherwise, how will I know if they support me?