LJ/School Library Journal and Junior Library Guild staffers (welcome, Molly Hone, breakfast chocolate eater!) made the best of winter woes—unexpected layovers, heinous weather conditions, frozen noses and toes—to grab some reading time this week.
Your intrepid reporter also snowshoed uptown for a red-hot luncheon celebrating Jacky Colliss Harvey’s upcoming book, Red: A History of the Redhead (see box below).
Brad Crosby, Webcast Program Manager, LJ
I’m reading Comedy: ”An Essay on Comedy” by George Meredith & “Laughter” by Henri Bergson (Johns Hopkins Univ., 1980). I’m generally fascinated with why things are funny. I found it in a used bookstore in Soho over the weekend, flipped through it, and thought to myself, “I should try doing standup comedy at an open mic this year. I should probably buy this book too.”
And I’ve got to say, from what I’ve read so far, my general impressions are: this book is way over my head.
Mahnaz Dar, Associate Editor, SLJ Reviews
I’m currently finishing up Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Knopf). Mohamed and his cohorts have just come from Hamburg to Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden, and plans are falling into place. I decided to mix up this very serious reading with something a bit more lighthearted: The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose, collected essays by filmmaker and writer Woody Allen. In a book full of quotable quotes, this is one of my many favorites, from “If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists”:
Dear Theo,
Once again I am in need of funds. I know what a burden I must be to you, but who can I turn to? I need money for materials! I am working almost exclusively with dental floss now, improvising as I go along, and the results are exciting. God! I have not even a penny left for novocaine! Today i pulled out a tooth and had to anesthetize the patient by reading him some Dreiser. Help.
Vincent
Kate DiGirolomo, Editorial Assistant, LJ
I am continuing my journey through the often perilous, sometimes gory, and always theatrical world of European history. This time I’m hanging out in England with the likes of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, one disastrous Edward, and one successful Edward in Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Penguin). I am perpetually fascinated by the surreal lives of crazy monarchs—it’s such a specific type of family drama that bleeds so heavily into politics and reverberates on a global scale—and the Plantagenets have never disappointed. You’ve got a shipwreck, women making serious power plays, a plethora of love affairs, princes trying to take out their fathers, the Black Death…I am eager to read all of that and everything else that makes up this influential dynasty.
“The Plantagenet kings did not just invent England as a political, administrative, and military entity. They also helped invent the idea of England.”
Liz French, Senior Editor, LJ Reviews
My tired reading eyes needed a rest this week, so I’ve been taking short “beauty breaks,” hopping in and out of several art and fashion books. But one of the planned short stops froze me in my tracks and pulled me in: The Grand Budapest Hotel (Abrams), New York magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz’s beautiful and engrossing accompaniment to director Wes Anderson’s 2014 film of the same name. This is no mere “the making of” title, though those components are there (interviews with the director, some of the stars, the score composer, the costume designer, the cinematographer, etc.). The illustrations (by Max Dalton) and design (by Martin Venezky) are sublime, just like the movie. I particularly like the two-page layout featuring the Society of the Crossed Keys concierges played by Anderson regulars Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Wally Wolodarsky, Waris Ahluwalia, and Fisher Stevens, and the excerpts from works by Austrian author Stefan Zweig, whose works inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel. Makes me want to watch the movie again—and to copy Zero’s bellboy outfit for my next Halloween costume.
Molly Hone, Editorial Assistant, Junior Library Guild
I’m reading Chocolates for Breakfast by Pamela Moore on my commute. The bestselling novel was published in 1956 by Rinehart and Company, when Moore was 18. After 45 years out of print, it was rereleased by Harper Perennial in 2013. I chose it from our giveaway shelf based on the title alone (I proudly eat chocolates for breakfast often), not expecting such an absorbing bildungsroman. Courtney is an intellectual teenager who thinks she’s too mature for her peers, and she makes her lifestyle reflect this by having affairs, drinking Scotch, and brooding. The author’s social commentary is so on point that I forget she wrote this at her protagonist’s age. I can almost hear Moore laughing at her characters’ posturing and histrionics, though her portrayal of troubled Courtney is always thoughtful. With my teen years not far behind me, I cringe at my complete understanding of Courtney’s poor choices. Oddly enough, that makes the novel even more of a treat.
Amanda Mastrull, Assistant Editor, LJ Reviews
This week I started reading Ned Beauman’s Glow (Knopf). It’s about Raf, a 22-year-old Londoner with a sleep disorder who attends rave-like parties, where a new recreational drug, glow, is circulating among revelers. There’s also a mystery surrounding the abduction of Burmese immigrants in vans that makes no noise and some odd behavior in foxes. I don’t know how these events are connected yet, but I’m enjoying finding out.
Georgia Siegchrist, Assistant Editor, Junior Library Guild
I’ve been reading In America by Susan Sontag (FSG), the story of a troupe of Poles who head to California in the 1870s to start a commune. The start of the book (Chapter Zero) was rather off-putting, as it seemed like Sontag just wanted to write self-indulgently about her writing process. Luckily, after that introduction the story gets really good. Maryna, the protagonist, is Poland’s most famous actress, but she’s sick of being in the spotlight and wants a more bucolic life. So she convinces her friends and family to travel to the United States with her. They settle in Anaheim, CA, but rifts soon develop between the members of this Brook Farm facsimile. Multiple perspectives, believable dialog, an unusual plot, and funny details make this really enjoyable.
Etta Verma, Editor, LJ Reviews
At ALA in Chicago I picked up a copy of John Boyne’s (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) A History of Loneliness (FSG) and now I want to read all of his novels. Loneliness, the first book by the Irish author to be set in Ireland, is the first-person narrated account of a priest, Father Odran Yates, who slowly discovers that a pedophile priest has been under his nose for years. It’s a wonderful portrayal of a man who has everything he thought he knew torn away, and of the still-too-strong grip of the clergy on Irish society. For a movie companion to the book, try Calvary, which also focuses on the plight of good priests in Ireland.
On my phone—in other words, on the train—I’m reading a Netgalley copy of The Bitch in Your Head: How to Finally Squash Your Inner Critic (Rowman & Littlefield), by Dr. Jacqueline Hornor Plumez. It eschews the self-help tone of too many such books and offers practical advice that’s essential for most women and some men. My main takeaway so far: if I wouldn’t say it to someone I respect and want to help, I shouldn’t say it to myself either. Makes sense.
Wilda Williams, Fiction Editor, LJ Reviews
Traveling to Chicago for ALA Midwinter, I discovered that somehow the airport screening had discombobulated my Nook e-reader, wiping out several digital galleys that I had loaded for the trip. The Friday print edition of the New York Times kept me occupied for the duration of the flight but when I arrived at my hotel I was at a bit of a loss for something to read. But never fear, ALA15 was here with a cornucopia of ARCs to choose from. Picking up a copy of documentary filmmaker Paul Fischer’s A Kim Jong-il Production (Flatiron) at the AAP BookTalk breakfast, I was immediately engrossed in a story so bizarre that you couldn’t, as the saying goes, make this shit up. Shin Sang-Ok was South Korea’s most famous filmmaker; his ex-wife. Madame Choi, was the country’s most celebrated actress. Their success attracted the attention of Kim Jong-Il, the son of North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung; an avid film buff, Kim Jong-Il headed the Ministry for Propaganda, and in 1978 he had his agents kidnap the couple to force them to make Hollywood-style films for his studio. Part film history, part thriller, part absurd farce, Fischer’s deliciously detailed book also offers a fascinating glimpse into one of the world’s most secretive societies. Indeed, this would have made a far better movie about North Korea than Seth Rogen’s The Interview.
Reading Red and Other Hues
Last week we braved arctic winds and black ice to attend a luncheon celebrating the upcoming release (in sunny June) of Jacky Colliss Harvey’s Red: A History of the Redhead (Black Dog & Leventhal). Mockups of the book and excerpt chapbooks were on display, and Harvey gave a short presentation about the book, redhead factoids, and how she fared growing up redhaired. We also learned from Black Dog & Leventhal founder J.P. Leventhal that the company was recently acquired by Hachette Books. Here’s what the author and various luncheoners were reading.
Hachette Books’ Executive Director of Publicity Michelle Aielli has plans to read Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train (Riverhead) as a treat after reading so many manuscripts for work. But she was also pretty excited about an upcoming nonfiction title from Hachette Books, Elle & Coach by Stefany Shaheen. Shaheen is a New Hampshire-based politico and mother to Elle, who has Type 1 diabetes. Coach is the medical alert dog who comes to live with Elle and her family to help Elle with her condition. The book lands in June and Aielli predicts it’ll be a biggie!
Jacky Colliss Harvey lamented the fact that she loaned a friend her copy of H Is for Hawk (Grove: Atlantic) by Samuel Johnson prize winner Helen Macdonald before she was finished reading it, but the art historian/editor/writer is “rereading Herodotus” as consolation.
Becky Koh, editorial director of Black Dog & Leventhal, confessed that she’s ”a crier,” but somehow she has managed to contain her tears while reading All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner). “It’s exquisitely beautiful, a jewel,” she added.
BD&L founder J.P. Leventhal is reading Russell Shorto’s Amsterdam: The World’s Most Liberal City (Doubleday). He added that he likes reading the author’s travel pieces in the New Yorker.
Sarah Meyer, assistant books editor at O: The Oprah Magazine, was also reading historian and academic Helen Macdonald’s grief memoir, H Is for Hawk. Meyer was fascinated by the bird lore and birds of prey info in the title, she said.
Metropolitan Museum of Art publisher and editor-in-chief Mark Polizzotti is busy reading—and translating—French novelist and 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner Patrick Modiano’s Pedigree, originally published in 2005.
Fellow redhead Kyle Smith shared stories of growing up ginger with Harvey. The New York Post film critic is currently reading Lawrence Wright’s Scientology exposé, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Knopf) “for work.”
It was only fitting that BD&L publicist Kara Thornton is reading Red, but she also told us about other colors in her reading rainbow: Golden Son (Del Rey, Jan. 2015) Pierce Brown’s sequel to his debut of 2014, Red Rising (part of the *Red* Rising trilogy).
