Books Read - Winter 2010

1. The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs
2. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery*
3. Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery (#2)*
4. Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery (#3)*
5. How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
6. Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery
7. 21 Days to a Thrifty Lifestyle by Mike Yorkey
8. Candide by Voltaire
9. Essays by George Orwell
10. The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
11. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
12. Every Young Woman's Battle by Shannon Ethridge & Stephen Arterburn

* = in partial fulfillment of my New Years Resolutions

Notes:

- I really enjoyed The Know-It-All, subtitled "One man's humble quest to become the smartest person in the world." A.J. Jacobs also wrote "The Year of Living Biblically" and "The Guinea Pig Diaries," and in those books he alluded to this one, so I've been interested in reading it for a while and was happy when I found it on sale in a paperback edition. This is his story of reading through the Encyclopedia Brittanica from cover to cover (er - covers to covers - I guess it's 32 volumes). He passes on tidbits and facts that he learns through his reading, and he also shares his personal experiences related to this gain of knowledge: other people's opinions towards his project, awkward situations where he blurts out more than he should, the fine imposed by his wife for sharing irrelevant facts, his efforts to live up to his family's legacy of wisdom. Although it may sound dull to read a book about a guy who reads the encyclopedia, this book is highly entertaining and worth reading.

- I read Anne of Green Gables over and over when I was young, but now it has been a long time since I've taken them off the shelf. I remember how Mom bought me the whole set at Costco, and how proud I was to be reading something with a reading level of ten years old when I was only nine. Now as I re-read them I have found that I remembered almost everything from the first book, but I've forgotten almost everything from the next few. None of the scenes in the third book were familiar to me and I never knew what was coming next. That will change a little bit as I progress to the final few books of the series - I have some recollections from them because they were my favorites. But the things I remember the most are the things included in the movies. And I also wonder if the middle books are just less memorable: I already forget details, and I just read them!
Lucy Maud Montgomery changed her writing style a bit between the first and second book of the series. For instance, in the second book she started using ellipses (...) where brackets or dashes would be better suited. Then in the third book she began using dashes where commas would have worked just fine, but luckily that didn't go on too long.
If I met Anne in real life these days, I'm not sure that we would be friends. She would say I have no imagination, and I would say she's too gushy. I've been impatient with that lately - in real life as well as in literature.

- Gourmet Rhapsody (the sequel to The Elegance of the Hedgehog) was fantastically good, but a little anti-climatic. A food critic on his deathbed searches for a long-forgotten perfect taste, but what he finally comes up with, choux, is something I am unfortunately unfamiliar with, as the book is translated from French.

- In an English class anthology, I once read "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell, and it was so interesting that it made me realized that essays don't have to be boring and dull. Unfortunately, many Essays are still boring and dull, and I was so glad to be finished reading this book. Granted, there were some good ones, but after reading fifty pages about English Socialism around the time of the World Wars, I wasn't really taking this book seriously anymore.