reasons why we read what we read

Posted on March 11, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Do you ever think about how you make your choices? I know my fellow book bloggers do: they list the books they’ve picked up and note that this one was mentioned by their favorite author or that one biographies a figure they find relevant for a certain reason. Many times we make reading choices conscious of our reasons, even consciously pursuing new directions: feeling the need to read more diverse authors, read more women, more nonfiction, learn about a subject, or follow an interest inspired by… any number of things, really. Oftentimes my future reading is guided by my past reading. Hemingway has inspired my reading of so many of his contemporaries, for example. The Hellman biography I’m reading now is taking me in so many nonfiction directions; I want to read more about the several waves of the labor movement, for example, and the several waves of communism (and Communism) in the U.S. after reading about Hellman.

But I don’t think we always make our reading choices for conscious reasons. We absolutely do judge a book by its cover sometimes, or cover blurb: a Lee Child blurb will always catch my eye, rightfully or wrongfully (is he being paid for it?). In the library where I work, I see people make reading choices based on their covers regularly. Covers are especially good indicators in romance and so-called chick lit (don’t blame me, I didn’t name it). And while I’m on the subject of the library, this question – how we choose our reading, and whether we’re aware of it – is especially pertinent to readers’ advisory services, where we recommend reading based on what the patron has enjoyed in the past. Joyce Saricks (who doesn’t seem to have a website! but is the author of several books on the subject – go look her up, she’s wonderful) articulates the need for understanding why certain books appeal to us, for reasons outside of subject. For example, a reader is not necessarily interested especially in reading books about murder cases in Los Angeles; she might be more interested in the mood, the atmosphere, the psychological background, even the writing style exemplified by Michael Connelly. All of this means thinking about why we like certain books.

How about for purposes of travel? My parents do a lot of this when they travel. There is the reading of guidebooks, of course, but to me that’s a chore, part of trip planning. The real fun is in reading the history of the place, or fiction set there, and that’s very much at the forefront of some of the reading I’m doing these days, too. Our upcoming trip to the Gila came more or less out of a book – Fire Season – and in planning for that trip I’ve been looking at some reading in turn. Aldo Leopold’s A Sand Country Almanac is on the list, as well as a book I recently made a trip to go view (more on that in a day or two), Some Recollections of a Western Ranchman by William French. And for an upcoming trip to Ireland, I am accepting two books from my mom and my buddy Barrett (who’s going to Ireland with Husband and I, what fun!): one fiction, one nonfiction, I told them. Because of course I’m very busy reading all the Edward Abbey I can find (which interest also came from Fire Season), and I have a stack of books for review from Shelf Awareness, too. That’s another motivator to read specific books: because I have book reviews due!

So I’m looking at the stack of books on my desk right now, and it’s composed like so: two books recommended by a friend (one a gift from same); one sent by an author; eleven from Shelf Awareness, awaiting consideration for review; one biography of an author I admire, checked out from local library; one memoir of a friend of same author; two Ireland travel books; one book by an old favorite author; two books just arrived in my library (where I work) that I’m interested in. I think these represent a variety of reasons why I read what I read.

Why do YOU read what you read?

And for another post – feel free to write this one! – having discussed why we read what we read, the larger question: why do we read? That might be a longer post. 🙂

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movie: To Have and Have Not (1944)

Posted on March 10, 2012 by pagesofjulia

The Howard Hawks movie To Have and Have Not is based loosely on Hemingway’s novel by the same name, which received a lukewarm-at-best reaction from critics. Faulkner was involved in working on the script, making this a pretty literary movie; add to this mix Humphrey Bogart, fresh off the success of Casablanca, and throw in Lauren Bacall’s first movie appearance, and you have a hell of a recipe. Bacall & Bogart met on the set, developing the on-screen chemistry they would be known for, and the off-screen romance that would end Bogart’s marriage to Mayo Methot so that he could marry Bacall.

And Bacall at 19 is a formidable screen presence. It was hard for me to believe her age – although, as Husband pointed out, 19 was a little older then than it is now.

she lights a cigarette for him...

The plot resembles that of the novel, but with a number of changes. The two agree: Harry Morgan (Bogart) is a charter fishing boat captain, accompanied by his drunken mate Eddie. A customer named Johnson has just walked out on his bill after fishing with Harry for several weeks, which financial hardship leads Harry to reluctantly take on the smuggling of illegal passengers onto his island. From here, they differ. The novel’s Cuba becomes the movie’s Martinique, under Vichy rule, just after the fall of France. The Chinese passengers in the novel become a French resistance couple in the movie; and most importantly, Bacall’s character is wholly a creation of the film. Harry’s family life in the book is quite different.

he lights a cigarette for her...

Bacall’s character is Marie but we know her as “Slim” (and she calls Harry “Steve,” for reasons I never grasped). She has shown up in Martinique alone and broke, and immediately she and Harry feel an attraction to one another. She sort of hangs around as Harry’s drama with the French develops. He goes ahead and transports the resistance fighters, out of financial necessity but also out of friendship with hotel owner “Frenchy.” The local Vichy government harasses him for his apparent sympathies. When one of his illicit passengers is shot, he is reluctantly convinced to play doctor, involving him momentarily with the French wife, which makes Slim jealous. Slim briefly takes a gig singing in the hotel lounge, giving us one great scene. Harry has a sweet, not entirely explained loyalty to the drunken Eddie; things wrap up with the three – Harry, Slim and Eddie – about to sail into the sunset together.

Not surprisingly, I was a little disappointed to not find a little more Hemingway in the movie, but that didn’t last long. To Have and Have Not is a snapshot into a moment in film history with iconic stars, smoldering romance, and likeable piano-playing sidekicks. It was very enjoyable.

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looking back on early 2012… looking forward to a new trend

Posted on February 27, 2012 by pagesofjulia

As I wrote at the beginning of the calendar year, I am moving away from challenges and lists and readalongs this year, hoping to follow more truly my reading urges, ideally with an emphasis on my TBR list(s) and shelf (shelves). Well, here we are two months (more or less) into 2012, and I see my reading urges taking shape. I wanted to share what I’m observing, and what I’m looking forward to.

First, what’s happened in the last eight weeks? I’ve read 25 books (wow! that many? really?), but I haven’t had really excellent luck. I really loved eight of them, which is a scant third: not very good stats. I loved:

If you have noticed a pattern above, so have I: I am leaning heavily towards a certain two bearded men whose first names start with ‘E’. (On a personal note, I have been toying pictorially with the three bearded men in my life…)

Ernest Hemingway, Edward Abbey, and my Bearded Husband


My newfound (or newly recovered) interest in Abbey has come out of my love of Philip Connors’s Fire Season, which I called my favorite book of 2011. I’m still not done being moved by it; Husband is actually reading it himself (a truly momentous occurrence), I am planning a reread at the earliest available moment, and we’re planning a summer trip to the Gila National Forest itself, possibly even to meet the author who has graciously been corresponding with me and overlooking my rabid fandom. The unfortunate coincidence of Fire Season‘s publication with the worst drought in Texas’s history, and a series of wildfires including one that touched my family, has had me thinking about some of the themes involved. I’ve read a few other pieces of nature writing this year (Liebenow’s Mountains of Light and March’s River in Ruin – both lovely, and both reviews to come in Shelf Awareness). But mostly I’ve been revisiting Abbey himself, who represents the epitome of nature writing, at least for me in my not-very-well-read experience. I can’t begin to go into what his writing does for me at this moment; that’s another blog post. But he makes me laugh, and cry, and think and feel, and plan trips. I am trying to take to heart his exhortation to “get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and comtemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves…”

And Connors, and Abbey, are shaping my reading, too, of course. I’m working on building my collection of Abbey’s books, and a few books about him; I have Aldo Leopold’s A Sand Country Almanac coming to my local library; and I have my eye on Muir, although with a few reservations. (I did love his Stickeen as a child. If you see it, grab it.) I have a few books on New Mexico and the Gila coming, too, to help plan our trip this summer.

Again, my thoughts on Abbey are large and evolving, and I’m not feeling worthy of trying to communicate them today. But I’m working on it.

And then there’s the other bearded man. I do have still a handful of Hemingway works on his little shelf that I haven’t read; and I have several biographies of him and other related fiction and nonfiction. My love for Hemingway has not faded yet.

So I guess what I’m trying to say, very long-windedly, is that I am finding great joy in my reading these days by focusing on a few areas that are holding my interest: mainly, two authors I greatly respect, and the writings about and surrounding them. I hope to delve more deeply into Abbey (and similar) and Hemingway, as 2012 rolls on by. Of course my reviews for Shelf Awareness continue; but they take 3-4 reviews a month from me, and that makes up a minority of my reading, so I have time to do my own thing. There will always be some variety, too – this weekend I checked out the new Girl Reading by Katie Ward just because it looked good – but I am doing pretty well at putting down the books that don’t work for me, because I know there’s lots more Abbey et al out there for me.

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updating the TBR lists.

Posted on January 7, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Following up on Thursday’s post about reading intentions, I figured I would go ahead and take a look at my lists and shelves. Updating them here helps me to get this chore done, so here we are.

You may recall the very cool Britannica bookshelves that Husband built me, gosh, almost a year ago? (They were mentioned, and pictured, here and here.) They’re still serving as my TBR shelves, and I have done some cleanup and photographed them for you here.




And then there are the Hemingway shelves, most of which I’ve read (his own work) but a significant portion of which I want very badly to find time for (more of the books about him).


I don’t think I’ll bother listing titles & authors here, but you can click the photo to enlarge. And please feel free to ask questions!

I have also collected some audiobooks on my iPod, so these are waiting in line:

  • Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis
  • Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran
  • Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Touch by Alexi Zentner
  • Juliet by Anne Fortier
  • The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
  • The Likeness by Tana French
  • War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
  • The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck

…and the big one,

  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

which at 38.5 hours is rather intimidating (not to say terrifying). I should be able to get through it in under a month…? But I have been wanting to read it and maybe this is the way. We shall see.

And finally, I’ve edited my ongoing Books I Wish to Read list here at the blog. You will notice that some books on the list also appear in my audio backlog and/or on my shelves; that is a good thing. 🙂

I admire those signed up for the TBR Double Dare; you are stronger than I! As I said a few days ago, I’m not ready for that kind of commitment. But I am going to try to stay a little closer to my TBR lists than I did in 2011, and the first step is cleaning up those lists! Here we go!

Have you set any goals for 2012?

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Reading Intentions – for the new year, or in general

Posted on January 5, 2012 by pagesofjulia

A number of you lovely fellow book bloggers have been posting, alongside your year-end wrap-up posts, your intentions for your reading in 2012. I am interested to see what you intend. I applaud those of you with lists. I wonder at your resolve; will you really stick to them? I couldn’t! I mean, gosh knows I have lists – dream lists (see Books I Wish to Read) – but I don’t do a very good job of reading from those lists. Here, just for fun, let me see… of 139 books in 2011, it looks like 13 were on a list back in 2010. That’s from memory; call it an approximate 10% at best. Now of course I can blame my book review gig at Shelf Awareness for sending me pre-publication copies of lots of wonderful books that are not on any lists! (There’s a conceivable exception to this, if I were anticipating one still to come out, but that doesn’t seem to happen very often.) The other problem with clearing out my TBR lists/shelves is working in a library. New books come flooding through every day, and some – necessarily – tempt me. I also get to shop for and BUY new books for the library, and you can bet some of those tempt me! (If I’m not buying any tempting books I’m probably doing it wrong.) While these are good problems to have, and I read (or listen to) lots of wonderful books that come to me in these ways – from Shelf Awareness (SA), or through the library – I also wish I were making greater dents in my TBR list and shelves.

Does this form an Intention? I’m not sure. I’m not going to give up my SA gig; I enjoy it, and it brings me new and interesting books, which improves the library as well. And I can’t resist picking up new books that come through at work, either; this also improves the service I provide at the library, because it keeps me up to date and better able to answer questions about the newest releases. But those books on my list, and my shelves, are there because I want to read them, and I do regret seeing them languish there. I don’t see myself making significantly more time to read in 2012 than I did in 2011; discovering audiobooks has allowed me to “read” during my daily commute, while running errands, and while working out in the gym and walking, and I already read during enough of my free time that Husband has been known to complain. Also, 2011 was an epic year for injuries for me, finally culminating in knee surgery, and keeping me off the bike for an entirely undesirable amount of time; if my riding & racing career goes the way I’d like it to in 2012, I will actually be doing less reading, not more! (I know!)

So will anything really change? I’d like to make some improvement in the backlog on my TBR list/shelves. Part of that improvement can come through weeding – as I’ve done before. If it’s been on my list for a few years and I’ve forgotten why I was interested, I can let it fade back off again. I’m also getting more and more comfortable with putting down a book I’m not enjoying. I like to tell my library patrons that there are too many amazing wonderful books in the world to waste our precious reading time on those that do not impress us! (I do try and stick with Nancy Pearl’s Rule of 50 in most cases.) And I’ll try to be a little more selective about the books I collect that then build up on my shelves at home…

I think I can expect to make some small improvement in 2012 at reading more books that I have intended and planned to read. It’s all about being selective. I have lists of books I’d like to find, and I have shelves of books that I’ve physically collected, and I have audiobooks downloaded onto my iPod awaiting my attention. I think I can make a vague commitment to choose from these as much as possible, where my schedule of reviews for SA allows. I can do that.

I have no resolutions to read more or less in various genres, in nonfiction, or in classics. I do aspire to read a respectable proportion of nonfiction, and of classics, but I don’t necessarily have a number or percentage goal, and I wasn’t too unhappy with my numbers last year. All I really want to do is read more books I meant to read – but I’m okay with the rest of them, too. New releases will continue to interest me and that’s okay; and it’s certainly more than okay for SA to continue to ship me galleys!

If it seems I’m lacking in significant resolutions, please don’t judge me. For one thing, I have made some non-bookish resolutions, regarding competitive mountain bike racing; saving money; and my home life with the loving Husband and two little dogs. It’s not that my reading life couldn’t be improved upon; it’s more that it’s not an area I want to go messing around with. I find my reading fairly satisfactory as it is, and I don’t want it to be a place of highly structured self-improvement. I want it to continue to be a place of recreation, fun, joy, learning, and relaxation. So that’s my reading intention for the new year: to enjoy reading, and to record it here.

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more movies

Posted on January 2, 2012 by pagesofjulia

We’ve been watching a few more movies; thought I’d share them with you here.

First off, I finally got around to seeing The Goonies (1985), a childhood classic that passed me by. (I may have been a few years too young; also not absolutely in touch with pop culture.) It’s a kids-to-early-teens movie, and when allowances are made for the target audience, it’s really pretty fun. It reminded me of The NeverEnding Story (a childhood favorite of mine), for its imaginary-coming-true element. The premise is that everyone who lives in the “goondocks” are about to have to move; their homes are being bought out from under them (mortgage issues contributing to the problem) to build a golf resort. The kids are naturally bummed; and finding a treasure map in Mikey’s attic offers a natural solution. Mikey and his three buddies, chaperoned by his older brother Brand and eventually joined by two girls Brand’s age (for the romantic element), set out looking for lost treasure. To get there, they’ll have to wrangle with the Fratellis, a slapstick mother-and-two-sons crime team. (There’s a delightfully peverse lesson in family values there I think.) I love that the kids got a chance to save the day! And I love Data. How cute. I like his opening sequence when he enters through the screen door. 🙂 Anybody else remember this one fondly?

Next, Hanna (2011) recommended to me from Jimmy. Hanna is a teenager living in the back of beyond somewhere (did we ever learn where? it’s arctic). She barely remembers her mother, and has been raised by her father without other human contact; he teaches her to fight, to hunt, to survive; everything else she might need to know comes from an ancient encyclopedia. He’s also given her a false identity; she has her home address, school, and the names of her dog and two best friends memorized. Early in the movie they begin considering whether she is “ready”; Dad digs up the black box, they flip the switch, and get ready for all hell to break loose. I won’t tell you any more.

I really enjoyed this movie, but I regretted a few things. For one, I thought the early part of the movie – when it’s just Hanna and her father in the bright white arctic wilderness – was the strongest, and regret that we didn’t spend more time there. And the premises of the world out there that Hanna eventually enters weren’t as fully developed as I’d have liked. If this had been a book and not a movie we might have fleshed out the concepts a little better. Call this a flaw of the format, maybe. At any rate it was definitely worthwhile.

And then one of the westerns loaned me by Catherine & Bill during my post-surgery laid-up time: The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). I wasn’t sure this would work for me, as westerns seem to be one of the genres that fail to penetrate my thick skull (cf. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly). But with the volume turned way up (Clint Eastwood had marbles in his mouth, no?), Husband helping me keep up, and a few rewinds, I followed this one fine, and found it quite entertaining. Maybe I’ll have to give a few more Eastwood classics a try. With subtitles?

PC it’s not, with the Indians and all, but Clint is a tough guy and I gotta say, I eat that shit up. (Jack Reacher, anyone?)

A friend posted this the other day and I have to say I find it apt and amusing…

(Sorry, Twilight fans. Wait, that’s the guy from Twilight, yes?)

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2011: A Year in Review

Posted on January 1, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Well! I have tended to appreciate other bloggers’ wrap-up posts, so I thought I’d join in. This was my first full calendar year of blogging (I began in October 2010) and I definitely read more books this year than I have in a number of years, maybe ever. Although I’ve always been a big reader, this year was exceptional for several reasons: working in a library filled with tempting books; blogging about them; discovering audiobooks for my commute; and taking on a book review gig with Shelf Awareness, to name a few. (See some of my SA book reviews here.) I read 139 books this year.

Here are a few statistics…

  • 17% were nonfiction
  • 46% were by female authors
  • a whopping 63 of the 115 novels I read were mysteries; 10 were historical fiction and 11 were classics, the rest a smattering of short stories, drama, poetry, romance, fantasy, and “other.”
  • 38 were 100-300 pages; 80 were 300-500; 15 were over 500 pages, and 6 were under 100. Husband asked how many pages I read this year, so for his sake we’ll estimate, using the midpoint of the ranges (which may throw us way off but what the heck), and say I “read” some 50,580 pages this year! (keeping in mind that some were listened to and not read…)
  • 31 books, or 22%, were audiobooks – look what good use I made of my commute/driving/gym time!
  • 60% of the books I read came from the library! the vast majority came from the library where I work, with just a few coming from the Houston Public Library. another 24% came from publishers for review, leaving only a combined 22 books that came from my personal collection, books I was loaned, books I purchased, or (those treasured few) books I was given as gifts.

What fun.

Of these, I did of course have favorites… you can refer back to my premature Best of 2011 post of December 1, to which I’ve since added 11/22/63 and The Home-Maker, for an unwieldy list of 22 (!) books I loved this year. What can I say, I’m full of gushings. In honor of this Year in Review post, I have culled it down (painfully) to my Favorite 11 Books of 2011 (thanks Thomas for the idea, and for sending me two (!) of the books on the list*):

Whew! That’s a year! I see other bloggers discussing reading goals for 2012, and I don’t really have any to contribute… I think I’m going to pass on reading challenges this year. (You may recall that of the three I signed up for in 2011, I completed two and quit the third. I also participated in several readalongs: the Maisie Dobbs series, Gone With the Wind, and Their Eyes Were Watching God.) If anything, I’m most tempted by the TBR Double Dare (to read only books already on my TBR shelves from now til April 1…!), because my house is so full of books I want to read that I feel like I’ll never get to them all! But even if I didn’t encounter new books through my job that I want to read and probably should so I can talk with patrons about them, there’s my book review gig, which I love. So. No challenges. If anything, I’d like to make a dent in my TBR shelves at home; and part of that dent-making may come in the form of giving books away unread. Sigh.

My real reading goal in 2012 is to continue to read a diverse selection of new and old books; to continue blogging; and most importantly of all, to continue enjoying it. The day that reading feels like work will be a sad day, and the day I need to take a break; here’s to not finding that day in 2012!

Do you have reading goals this year? What challenges have you signed up for? (Don’t twist my arm…!) Did you do a year-end post that I may have missed? Please do share!

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a couple of movies

Posted on December 19, 2011 by pagesofjulia

During my week home from work recovering from knee surgery, I mostly read books, but I also watched more movies than usual. You’ve already most likely seen my Gone With the Wind movie review; here’s a quick run-through of a few more.

Mary and Max (2009): Recommended by my buddy Barrett, this animated movie is about a little Australian girl and an older Jewish New Yorker who become pen pals by chance and possibly save each other’s lives. Sad, yes, but also cute and heartwarming by turns. I really enjoyed the animation; it’s either Claymation or a fine computer-done imitation thereof.

Boogie Nights (1997): Lent to me by Laurissa & Drew, because I ❤ Mark Wahlburg. Wahlburg is a youngster in the 70's when he's spotted by a big-time artsy porn director who helps him make it big (ha) as porn star Dirk Diggler; but the sex-and-drugs lifestyle may prove too much for him to handle… Most of it was great fun and sexy times, but in the (unavoidable) spirit of movies like Blow and Studio 54, everything goes rather to sh*t. I ended up a little bummed out.

Crybaby (1990): Johnny Depp stars in a John Waters film that borrows a little from Grease and a little from Rebel Without a Cause. Depp is Crybaby, one of the bad boys, but one of the good girls is attracted to him; cue story book, with all the 50’s hair and leather and rockin’ tunes. Good fun, if quite weird.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966): I confess: I put this on too late at night, while I was on pain pills. So, maybe it was partly me. I know this is a classic. It’s from an age when movies were paced quite differently (read: slooow) and I fell asleep; and even while I was awake I was failing to keep track of who was who. I wasn’t engaged. Further blasphemy: I’ve seen the Star Wars movies repeatedly and still can’t follow them. Similar failure to engage. Sorry. :-/

Funny, I didn’t watch nearly as many movies as I thought I would. I do have a towering stack of loaned DVD’s still sitting at home. We’ll see.

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movie: Gone With the Wind (1939)

Posted on December 11, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Well I finally got around to it. I think I was the last person alive who had not seen this movie; and having finally read the book just this year as part of the Great Gone With the Wind Readalong (thanks Erin!), and then being laid-up post-knee-surgery, what better time?

It’s certainly an amazing movie. The score and the cinematography were outstanding; dated, yes, but obviously classic and absolutely admirable even in late 2011. Vivien Leigh made a lovely Scarlett and Clark Gable made a perfect Rhett. If anything, I found Ashley an even more obviously weak man, and Rhett a more obviously handsome and preferable pick, onscreen. I loved the Technicolor! It was beautiful to look at. If I have some criticisms, they are only the obvious and unavoidable ones: even in an almost-four-hour movie, the format clearly doesn’t allow for the inclusion of ALL of Mitchell’s 1000 pages of details. (This is why I always struggle with movies made from books. I am attached to ALL those details.) But to be fair, the movie did a pretty wonderful job of sketching the book in broad strokes; they included just about all the important bits. And if they sometimes felt a bit rushed-together – Scarlett makes her “I’ll never be hungry again” speech immediately upon reaching Tara, giving it less power than it had in the book, after months of suffering there – this method did give the movie the same epic, sweeping, long-time-line feel that the book had. I thought it was awfully well done, considering the obvious limitations of the format. The most blatant exclusion, for me, was Scarlett’s two children from her first two marriages. But maybe this just underlines how important poor little Wade and Ella weren’t to Scarlett in the book!

love the Technicolor!


The greatest divergence from the text, and the only one that really bothered me, was Rhett’s constant declarations of love. The great drama of the book is arguably Rhett and Scarlett’s failure to connect their love for one another in time and space, their passing as two ships in the night, their missing of the opportunity to share their love. Without consulting my text, I’ll venture that Rhett never declared his love, in fact denied it, declared he’d never love Scarlett, until it was too late. This changed things somewhat in the movie and bothered me some. (This is why I mostly avoid movies made from books; they disappoint me.) But you know? It didn’t ruin it for me. This was a beautiful and enjoyable movie.

Poor Melanie’s plainness was emphasized clearly enough; she definitely had some bags under her eyes here and there. The slaves were played as fools in a way that I found faithful to Mitchell’s work, which is also to say kind of cringingly offensive to my eyes today. Rhett was a dish. Ashley was a bore. Melanie was sweet; Scarlett was impressive, powerful, beautiful and conniving; Mammy was a nag, and Ellen was grand. And before I neglect, let me also say, I thought both Tara and Atlanta were very well-done, despite receiving very little attention in the movie compared with the book. We get a few shots of Atlanta as (respectively) booming, powerful, covered in dead and dying troops, crumbling and burning, and being rebuilt, which painted Atlanta-as-character very effectively in very little screen time.

If Gone With the Wind, the book, was a masterpiece – and I say it was – Gone With the Wind, the movie, starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, was every bit a masterpiece in its own right, and surprisingly faithful to the book. I’m impressed. It was a fine way to spend a few hours. If there’s anyone else out there who hasn’t seen it yet, I recommend it.

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best of 2011: year’s end

Posted on December 1, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Yes, I know there’s some time left. Perhaps I will add to this if the final weeks change anything, but I wanted to get this up with some time to spare, and maybe inspire you to share YOUR best books of the year! In no particular order, I give you the best books I read in 2011.

Those published in 2011:

Those published previous to 2011:

I’m so glad to know such great recommenders!! Thomas sent me a copy of Some Tame Gazelle as a prize for having cute dogs, and Simon recommended Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. My editor at Shelf Awareness, Marilyn, assigned me Hemingway’s Boat and The Barbarian Nurseries. Raych doesn’t know it but she inspired me to read Rebecca, and a series of blogs influenced me to finally get around to In Cold Blood and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (I’m sorry I can’t remember who you all are… but you made a difference!). And finally, Amy has recommended several great books to me this year, most notably Kushiel’s Dart. Thank you all so much; you make it all worthwhile!

So how about it? Please tell me you have a best-of post to come, hmmm? Post a link here so we can all share around. And thanks for the recommendations! 🙂

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