Ah me, another book list

I secretly thrill to book recommendations. In my city of frosty passive-aggression, I have found books to be effective at bridging connections between people.

On my list now from the past two weeks:
The Master and Margarita -- M. Bulgakov
I Was Told There'd Be Cake -- Sloane Crosley (cautioned, may get a library copy)
The Tummy Trilogy -- Calvin Trillin
No Logo -- Naomi Klein
The Shock Doctrine -- Naomi Klein
The Lesser Evil: Politics and Ethics in an Age of Terror -- Michael Ignatieff
Dry -- Augusten Burroughs

Another book list: Black fiction for White people

I read on a local periodical's blog a post by its Books Editor noting the segregation of African-American fiction in bookstores and audiences. Most of my friends have read Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and we have a Chester Himes book at home, but now's as good a time as any to cross segregational lines. As one panelist put it at a Book Expo: "Books are the freest media we have—it's the only media where we're not advertising drivel."

Chester Himes
Edward P. Jones
Donald Goines
Nathan C. Heard
James Baldwin
Walter Mosley
Richard Wright
Colson Whitehead

Alice Walker
Zadie Smith
Zora Neale Hurston
Octavia Butler

RIP Tanta of Calculated Risk

Doris Dungey, 47, Financial Blogger succumbs to ovarian cancer

I enjoyed her sassy and informative posts, even though I could understand maybe 40% of what she wrote (some posts were very thick with economic and financial terminology), and didn't quite understand her tendency to pick on Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times and Catherine Austin Fitts of Solari.

A posthumous thanks, Ms. Dungey, for opening my eyes and mind to the financial world behind the front offices of mortgage lenders.

Surprising how few recreational readers there are

My son's classroom window has "what I've read" lists by several of his classmates. Two girls have at least two pages of book lists. I didn't see a list for my son and wondered about that: he does like reading but usually I catch him reading comic strip anthologies, or Astroboy or Pokemon. So I was surprised when his teacher reported his reading capability was well beyond his grade level. Right now he's reading Treasure Island.

Where I live and work books are frequently discussed, and are the most common ice-breaking topic for the otherwise reticent citizens. When they discuss their favourites they usually mention classics, which I have yet to read for pleasure. At a dinner on Tuesday a fellow guest recommended Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita to me. When I used the online library catalogue, I found it had many positive reviews and holds. I take out at least 50 books for me, and 20 books for my son through the local library branches. You'd be surprised how many people here wait in line or take the bus with Dostoyevsky, or George Eliot, or even Charles Lamb.

Harris Interactive Poll: Over One-Third of Americans Read More Than Ten Books in Typical Year.

Maybe my long bus ride to work affords me much more reading time, coupled with the fact that books are still popular where I live (a local company that is now a major online reseller started out selling books). Most of my friends have personal reading libraries whose size and breadth put mine to shame.

This is disjointed, I know. I rarely write more than a few paragraphs. Maybe if I read more offline and less online...

Breast Cancer Awareness month

My letter back from the Breast Health Center says I'm clean! Woohoo! This year my child's friend's Mom is recovering from an aggressive cancer of the breast, and my son's former classmate's mother passed away from breast cancer in late August. Considering my mom and aunt died of cancer, I'm tickled PINK to be clean.

Keep taking the cholecalciferol, Northwest women! Keep eating organic! Keep exercising! Knock back that cod liver oil!

Nobel Prizes for Literature and Canada

Just once, by Canadian-by-birth Saul Bellow in 1976, did Canada have any connection with a Nobel Literature Prize winner.

What's wrong with our literature? Austria, Chile, Sweden can produce winners, why can't we? Nobel Prize for Literature winners, according to Wikipedia.

Does sending my kid to public school in Seattle make me a bad mom?

She: "We really want to buy a home next year."
I: "Buy mine."
She: "I want to send my child to a good school though. We've considered private school."

I have nothing against private schools -- it's true some children do better in them. It was the suggestion that my kid's school isn't good, or there aren't good private schools where I am. If she phrased it as:"my child is gifted and doing really well in her school, and we'd like to buy a house to stay within the neighbourhood" I'd be all for it. It's too early yet to tell how well my kid is doing academically -- he's in an advanced reader group, he's in a math group with his best friend, but he's nowhere near gifted. The truth is that the schools in my area are the best-performing schools in the city.