Last week, I asked my reading mateys at LJ/School Library Journal and Junior Library Guild about simultaneous reads, especially unusual ones, and this week they responded, either with odd pairs, fun compare-and-contrast combos, or monogamous (biblio-monogamous?) blurbs. See what you think of their combinations (or solo reads) and give that duo or trio on your bookshelf another chance on the dance floor.
Mahnaz Dar, Associate Editor, SLJ Reviews
Lately, I’ve been doing some odd pairing. I’ve been reading some great picture books this week: Daniel Pinkwater (text) and Will Hillenbrand’s (illus.) Bear and Bunny (Candlewick); Liz Rosenberg (text) and Matthew Myers’s (illus.) What James Said (Roaring Brook); and Alison Lester’s Noni the Pony Goes to the Beach (Allen & Unwin). These gentle tales of friendship are fun, sweet reading and have served to strengthen my sometimes flagging faith in humanity. For pleasure I’ve been reading Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away with Murder (Norton) by the late Vincent Bugliosi, best known for prosecuting Charles Manson and for authoring the gripping Helter Skelter. Adorable cavorting animals paired with a discussion of DNA and jury selection: strange bedfellows, yes. On the other hand, sometimes you need a little sour with the sweet.
Liz French, Senior Editor, LJ Reviews
I keep turning to photographer Marcia Resnick and writer Victor Bockris’s Punks, Poets & Provocateurs: New York City BAD BOYS—1977–1982 (Insight Editions, Nov.), a fascinating trip down a very special memory lane. This road is littered with dead boys for sure, most of them (except for Joseph Beuys, Quentin Crisp, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs) dying way too young. Resnick captures the exuberance, beauty, love, and self-destruction of that time and those boys. So many of the photos made me gasp: John Waters was so young (once)! Ditto Gary Indiana, John Lurie, Richard Hell, Anthony Bourdain, David Byrne, et.al. One particularly amusing series of photos features various musicians and poets sporting black eyes. Of course James Chance has double shiners on p. 169….Resnick remarks that all the bad boys (and presumably, girls) came to her to be photographed when they sustained this punk badge of courage.
The nearly complete opposite of this celebration of “live fast, do all the drugs, die young—maybe—leave a beautiful corpse” is Today Show fitness correspondent Jenna Wolfe’s Thinner in 30: Small Changes That Add Up to Big Weight Loss in Just 30 Days (Grand Central Life & Style), which I’ve been taking peeks at and considering. I got as far as step one, drink 20 sips of water before you get out of bed. I balked at step two, keep a food diary and share it with some friends. Hmm. I’m wavering at that part. I can’t help but wonder what bad boys John Belushi (1949–82) or Johnny Thunders (1952–91) would make of Jenna’s health tips.
Molly Hone, Editorial Assistant, Junior Library Guild
When I’m not reading about cataloging for library school (and wondering which side of the MARC/XML debate I will end up on—here’s a link to an LJ article, “MARC Must Die”), I’m enjoying They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War by DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook (LSU Press, 2002). I tend to prefer history books written for younger readers—I like history, but not a tome’s worth—but as soon as I saw this one, with its lady-power title and cover (and manageable page count), I bought it on the spot. I’m glad I did—the book is both fascinating and empowering. It looks at how women on both sides of the war passed as men (or didn’t); how they dealt with life in the ranks; the reasons they enlisted; and their accomplishments on the battlefield. I so admire these women—and the authors who preserve their legacy—because they didn’t let social restrictions keep them from being all that they knew they were: strong, brave, and heroic.
Lisa Peet, Associate Editor, News & Features, LJ
Clearly I am easily influenced by the subtle autosuggestions imbued in Liz’s WWR columns—not only this week’s call for literary juxtapositions, but last week’s query about dogs. I didn’t plan it like that, honest, but right now my two concurrent reads are Lost Cat and Fifteen Dogs. I was looking for an undemanding, shortish bedtime read over the weekend and picked Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology (Bloomsbury) off the bookshelf pretty much at random as I drifted by—I gave it to my partner a couple of years ago, but had never read it myself. The book, by Caroline Paul, tells of her mission to discover where her beloved cat Tibby disappeared to for five weeks—and then came home well fed, smug and sleek, with newfound kitty confidence. It’s illustrated by Paul’s partner, Wendy Macnaughton, who’s a favorite artist of mine—she did a wonderful graphic essay on the San Francisco Public Library—and the book is utterly charming, not to mention full of cat surveillance tips.
On a completely unrelated basis, I started André Alexis’s Fifteen Dogs (Coach House) on Monday. It’s on the Giller Prize longlist, and a Canadian friend and I are long-distance simul-reading some of the finalists (this is the kind of thing I do instead of belonging to an actual book club). Fifteen Dogs is something of an existentialist think piece, beginning with a bet between Hermes and Apollo (made while drinking in a bar in Toronto): “I’ll wager a year’s servitude, said Apollo, that animals—any animal you choose—would be even more unhappy than humans are, if they had human intelligence.” The unlucky recipients of this intelligence are 15 dogs in a veterinary clinic—note my use of the word “unlucky” here. While I’m only halfway through, it would look like Apollo was right. This is not a cuddly, feel-good dog tale. The dogs here are brutal—because dogs are, yes, brutal—and also beset with a Shakespearean host of species-inappropriate questions about guilt, faith, power, ambition, and morality. It’s not a kind and gentle read, and if you want to know its DTDD™ rating, let’s just say: Most of them, by page 75. The first, early in, almost made me put the book down for good. But I’m glad I didn’t—it’s a grimly fascinating novel, well written, and I do want to see what befalls the poor beasts.
Georgia Siegchrist, Assistant Editor, JLG
I am solo-reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics) for the first time (it’s the 75th anniversary of the book’s publication). Like the other Greene I’ve read, this is a nice combination of history, politics, and intrigue. I’m always impressed by Greene’s ability to be very literary while having a truly engaging plot, something I often find lacking in modern literature. So far I’m really enjoying the book, and was surprised to read in a blurb on the back that the first film version of The Power and the Glory was made by John Ford and called The Fugitive—that would be a very confusing mix-up for anyone looking for the Harrison Ford movie!
Henrietta Verma, Editor, LJ Reviews
This week has been a whirlwind in every way. I’ve been doing my usual late-night guilt-reading about every facet of the Duchess of Cambridge’s life (I’m thinking of publishing a supplement to LJ about her new haircut—shake things up a little). I’ve also been reading Jenny Lawson’s Furiously Happy (Flatiron)—if you only read one book this year that makes you snort coffee on your fellow commuters, make it this one. Finally, I’ve been reading, on and off, Molly McCaffrey’s You Belong to Us, a story of an adopted young woman who meets with her birth mother. I’ve done that myself, and am finding this memoir a refreshing antidote to the usual “happily ever after” adoption fare.
Ashleigh Williams, WWR emerita
I had to put off my current book until it could be a solo read because, well, gender and sexuality critiques pair almost too well with some of the disappointingly limited gender roles in erotica. But even on its own, Leora Tanenbaum’s I Am Not a Slut:Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet (HarperCollins) is challenging me in a lot of great ways. In this updated version of her 1999 book Slut!, Tanenbaum speaks with adolescent and collegiate girls for a more timely commentary on the term, and its shifting usage in the advent of the digital age. Particularly notable so far are her nuanced distinctions between slut-bashing and slut-shaming, and acknowledged discrepancies regarding the perceived sexuality of white women and women of color. My hackles are raised by certain feminist theories regarding “slut” and its inability to be reclaimed, considering other words that have followed a similar path with arguable success (“bitch” being one such example, according to Tanenbaum). Still, the challenge feels productive, and the experiences of her interview subjects are simultaneously frustrating and familiar.