Rachel's Random Recommendation #28: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007) by Michael Chabon

I have to admit, this is one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen on a book. Ever. And the story between the covers? Equally fantastic!

This, my first Chabon novel, was recommended to me by a good friend a couple of years ago. I had wanted to read Chabon, but my TBR pile was huge and I just never got around to it. Until I finally went out and snagged a copy of YPU.

Parabolas, Colors, and Tattered Pages: Creative Ways to Organize Your Bookshelves

A couple of years ago, Rioter Liberty gave you some fresh ideas for how to creatively organize your bookshelves. Because she was right, you know: alphabetical order is so passé!

Well, I’d like to add a few of my own ideas here, since the very thought of organizing things makes me salivate like a hungry bear. I mean, whenever I’ve had the opportunity to reorganize my bookshelves, I had to keep my smelling salts handy for fear I’d pass out from the fun-overload of deciding how to best arrange my literary lovelies.


So here goes:

In Translation: Arabesques by Anton Shammas

Arabesques (1986) by Anton Shammas

I first tried to read Arabesques when it was assigned in my Middle Eastern Lit class in college- that was more than a decade ago. The semester was almost over, I was swamped by all the other reading and writing that I had to do, and I was about 50 pages in when I just abandoned the poor book. It wasn't grabbing me by the shoulders, and its fragmentary nature left me frustrated. I absolutely hate leaving a book unfinished, but it happens sometimes.

I picked up the novel again a few days ago, determined to read it through, no matter what. After all, I've set a goal for myself that I'll read at least one translated book per month. Shammas's story was just as fragmentary and hard-to-follow as I remembered, but I gave it a chance this time, and it payed off.

Books Are Not Data

You might have come across a recent article by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker entitled “An Attempt to Discover the Laws of Literature,” and you might have thought, “huh, the laws of literature? As in, the laws of physics?” Yeah, well, I’m standing up on my soapbox and saying, “hey, books are NOT data, they’re books.”

Now, this article stirred up lots of feelings latent in my brain since I left academia several years ago. I was a literary studies grad student at a time of flux, when “close reading” was falling out of fashion, “distant reading” was a hot new phrase, and the next big Theory of Reading was still on the horizon. And li’l ol’ me, I was just sitting there in seminars and lectures thinking, “what about just reading? What’s wrong with that?”

My Month of Crime Fiction: The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

The Cuckoo's Calling (2013) by Robert Galbraith

(So, just making sure that everyone knows that Robert Galbraith is actually J. K. Rowling. Ok, that's done, moving on.)

I'm admitting here and now that I've only read the first Harry Potter book (many many years ago), but I remember admiring Rowling's clear, descriptive writing. Therefore, I was pretty excited about diving in to The Cuckoo's Calling, especially since Rowling has written a second crime novel featuring Detective Cormoran Strike (out this June).

And yet (sigh). I wasn't too impressed with this book, the last of my "Month of Crime Fiction" novels. I mean, the story was mildly interesting, and the twist at the end was pretty good (though not outrageously awesome), but it just left me feeling...meh. It was like a beautiful, tasty-looking layered cake that was actually just a cardboard shell.

Rachel's Random Recommendation #27: The Anchor Anthology of French Poetry

The Anchor Anthology of French Poetry: From Nerval to Valery in English Translation (1958; 2000) ed. Angel Flores

"Finally!" I hear some of you say. "She's recommending poetry!"

Yes, and happily so. For several years during high school and college, I was a voracious reader of poetry, amassing several anthologies and many books by such favorites as Ferlinghetti, Eliot, Bishop, Reed, Plath, and Collins. For the past few years, though, I haven't read much in the genre, focusing instead on getting up to speed with contemporary literary fiction and the latest biographies and histories of late-19-century America (my favorite time-period).

My Month of Crime Fiction: Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard

Get Shorty (1990) by Elmore Leonard

"...that wasn't the movie, that was real life. He kept getting the two mixed up, Chili's Hollywood Adventure and whatever the other one was..."

How you guys could have let me go 24 years without telling me to read Elmore Leonard I'll never understand. Why, why did you not tell me to read Get Shorty? I mean, I had heard of the movie, but had no knowledge of Elmore Leonard or other contemporary crime writers. No- I was buried in the 19th century, which was fine, but now I'm needing to catch up to more contemporary writing in a big way because a lot of it is pretty awesome.