How could I not buy this book after reading this? Illustrations by Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, whose work can be seen here.

As ever, go here to get into the NYT if you’re not registered.

I spent the first years of my childhood in a small Arkansas town, then we moved to one much smaller. My world shrank in all kinds of ways. As I would discover, my older sibs had received a much better education in terms of literature. Before we moved, I used to look through their old textbooks out of boredom as much as anything else. When I found the lit books, I fell into a completely different universe.

At least five members of my extended family used these books, and on some pages, you can barely make out the text, given the bored doodles, underlinings, the circlings of important phrases. Not one picture of a poet or writer has been left alone. All manner of black eyes, dark blue lips, inked eyebrows, furrows on the brows, crossed eyes, extra hair and eyeglasses embellish the portraits. For some reason, they left the drawing of Gunga Din alone. The illustration of The Lady of Shalott is unadorned. Maybe they just didn’t get that far.

Therefore, not too long after I learned to read, I was exposed to the world of Lilliput, Gray’s country churchyard, Kubla Khan, and the use of ‘Childe’ as a first name. I wondered why Lord Byron had two names. This new universe had a completely different language. I had questions, but no one was around to answer. Being the youngest in a family has its advantages, but I felt the disadvantages far outweighed any perks.

Later on, I found Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes’ . When you say the words ‘The silver snarling trumpets ‘gan to chide’ in my part of the deep South, you will be speaking the new language, which was frowned upon or laughed at, so I kept silent. But it bounced around in my head, like many of the phrases both underlined and not.

Was literature taught in my schools? We got a brand new graduate from the university one year, and she taught us Macbeth. I think we spent the entire year on it. We memorized some lines, the farm kids complaining loudly the while. Not once during all those years did I hear the name ‘Keats’ or ‘Coleridge’ or even ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne’. Poe maybe, maybe not.

After seeing Bright Star last night, the lines from Keats came back. (The movie is great, btw, but be prepared to get misted up toward the end.) I was too sad to sit through the end credits, and hear the recitation of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

But I went to the bookshelf today, and took down one of those old lit books. Thumbing through it, I landed straight in the middle of my early childhood, when I was lucky enough not to have a faculty decide what I should or should not read, or could relate to, or comprehend.

In a new book, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, by David Benedictus and Mark Burgess (illustrator), an otter joins the group. Nothing like a character of the female gender to shake things up a bit.

I had forgotten the frenzy that this can be, although we didn’t manage to go till the last day, which is always ‘by the bag’ day. While a lot of the good stuff is gone, there is still a wealth of books there. We got two bags at $5 each. So what did I do? I headed for the cookbooks, which were severely depleted. My stash of mysteries is at an all-time low, and at Palo Alto, the fiction is outside, where I was overwhelmed by the choice. The rest of the cookbooks were mixed in with the fiction, which made no sense.

It is always amusing to watch how people stuff their bags. The younger family members refer to this as ‘bin packing’, and I always thought they were indulging in some sort of codespeak. One day, one of them explained that in all honesty, they learned how to pack enormous amounts of material into small spaces because of some video game they used to play.

Where The Wild Things Are, to the kids gathered for the annual Easter Egg Roll. While it wasn’t the favorite choice in our household, it got picked enough times that I could read it in my sleep, and probably did more than once. And to think those were my younger, energetic days.

In case you missed it, here’s the trailer for the upcoming movie, which looks very promising.

It has been quite a while since I went to one. As I waited in line to buy a couple of bags (standard grocery brown ones, $4 each), the woman in front of me was trying to explain about her shattered bag, and how she wanted one to replace it. The volunteer in charge of bags was having none of it. The woman sighed, looked at her stack of books on the sidewalk, and said again quietly, ‘I can’t help it if the bag came apart. Could you just give me another?’

The volunteer, no doubt crabby from sitting in the cold wind, said, ‘I’m not in the business of giving away bags today.’

Once in the door, I saw three of four other buyers clutching their tattered bags and trying to keep their purchases from tumbling to the floor.

At the video section, I became aware of the soft moaning coming from the elderly gentleman next to me. A closer look indicated he was on oxygen. In the trenches, or rather, the table areas, squeezing between two hefty people firmly parked in their spots was necessary over and over again. People reaching from the other side of the table into the books directly in front of me was common, and no amount of staring down did any good. But it’s all typical behavior at this particular library. I emerged pretty happy.

What did I stuff into my bags? A couple of Harlan Cobens. Three Le Carres. Some Elmore Leonard. A hardback on American antiques. Two books on quilts. A bunch of VHS videos for a friend’s grandchild (A Bug’s Life, Toy Story, Beauty & the Beast, The Little Mermaid, some Poohs). The Dante Club. The Camel Club. The Rule of Four. Flight. In the Bleak Midwinter. A Laurie Colwin. The Killer Angels. Ashes to Ashes. More videos - The Paper Chase. Fly Away Home. Some yoga and exercise ones.

One of the bags started coming apart. It was time to go. Now in the bleak midwinter, I will not run out of reading matter.

Having looked through the photo essay book, No Reservations, over the weekend, I retired at about 6:30 p.m. last night with The Nasty Bits. My system is still trying to get used to the new meds, and was in the process of rejecting the lovely salmon dinner. No fair, the appetite just came back a day or so ago.

The portion I read is excerpted here.

Luckily, there was a copy of Sense and Sensibility nearby, and I dove into it as if my life depended on it.

Christmas is over, time to get on the daily exercise program. I was surprised to see a man reading a book while walking. He didn’t look up, totally engrossed.

In the past, I was almost wiped out by drivers who, while maybe not reading a book, were otherwise multitasking. If the pedestrian is also deeply engaged, I shudder to think what might happen.

When the lab person printed out the stickers to go on the blood vials, I thought, no way. It was a very, very long strip. Longer than anyone else’s in the mostly filled waiting room.

But, as I said, I got into the Coben book and was transfixed by the page-turning wonder that it is. When I realized that people with numbers higher than mine were being processed, I dashed in to take a seat in a cubicle.

Long ago, I learned not to look. Maybe it was during one of my pregnancies when they would take 3 vials of blood at a time. The technician seemed to be taking a really long time. He was not a talker. I had not eaten since 7:00 last night.

Luckily, there was a distraction. The man next to me was being told he had to stay for three hours in the waiting room after. He was not happy. He said he’d just go around the corner and get some coffee. The technician said no, he could not leave the building. I was still pondering what his problem might be when my silent blood person seemed to be finishing up.

Lined up neatly were five vials. Four were for the allergist. I went home to eat. Meat. It’s on the list of approved foods.

If you have to go in for a blood test and anticipate a long wait, Harlan will help. In fact, I missed my number when it came up because I was engrossed in The Woods.

If only they had allowed me to keep reading during the taking of the blood.

For those deer in the headlights moments in a crowded bookstore or library, a long list covering many categories from Publishers Weekly.

Last week I found myself without a list and in great need of distraction. After wandering up and down the aisles, I came out with:

The Minimalist Cooks at Home, Mark Bittman
These Dreams, Barbara Chepaitis
The Museum at Purgatory, Nick Bantock
First Light, Peter Ackroyd
Insatiable, Gael Greene
Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of the World, Buchanan, Yun, Cole
The Woods, Harlan Coben

According to the NYT, that is. Have you read any of them?

Late at night when I do my fun reading, in the minutes before the book flips out of my hand when I fall into a dead sleep, few things strike me as truly funny. Serve the People, a Stir-Fried Journey Through China is an exception, and I highly recommend it, especially if you haven’t had a good laugh the entire day, and will settle for one as you are losing consciousness.

Oh, and if you like real Chinese food, there are recipes.

While I haven’t looked through many of the books she wrote and illustrated, I loved the life she made for herself. She looked like someone from another century, and indeed, felt she was the reincarnation of an 1800s sea captain’s wife.

Some scenes will be painful to watch, but I’m looking forward to the special effects on the Spectors.

The special effects, especially the ones involving Iorek Byrnison are truly remarkable, and I was worried for the young children all around during the fight scenes. The little one next to us breathed a huge sigh of relief after Lyra escaped from certain calamity, to the amusement of those all around.

For those familiar with the book, necessary deletions and combinations of events might be confusing, but it’s a film to be caught up in immediately, and it never lets up.

If you ignore the religious quibbles, and just go because it’s the holidays, when we could all use a little fantasy, then it’s sheer fun. If you’re feeling that it should totally be faithful in every way to the book, you’ll emerge grumpy and humbuggy. But you’ll still like Iorek and Lyra.

Family members have insisted over the years that I must see this or that on the big screen. I much prefer the comforts of home, but for this movie, I’ll be at the theater, squirming with excitement. I may have to go two or three times. Perhaps I’ll read the book again for the third time.

One of the libraries I frequent had The Golden Compass in the children’s section, and The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass in the young adults. After reading the trilogy, I went back to the children’s section, and looked for the Sally Lockhart series. Alas, the library only had The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, and The Tiger in the Well. But I found Count Karlstein. Loved them all.

I spent a lot of time in the kids’ library, what with Harry Potter and all. It was there that I found the film Spirited Away. And of course, the secret of that room was very simple: hardly anyone was at the computers in the evening, as opposed to the packs in the main rooms.

By Ann-Marie MacDonald. Perhaps the darkest of the dark books I read over the summer (others were She’s Come Undone, I Know This Much is True - both by Wally Lamb, The Haunting of L by Howard Norman, and The Geographer’s Library by Jon Fasman.)

At the beginning of the summer I did not say, Well, let’s see how utterly down I can get just through the power of fiction. I went to a library sale or two instead of being guided by shelf placement or book lists. Were these in a bin diabolically arranged by a sadistic librarian?

About halfway through the book, I summarized the plot to a family member, who wondered why I would want to continue if it was bothering me so much. Due to the brilliance of the writing and a mesmerizing cast of characters, I was unable to stop. Their fates will take your breath away. And of course, when it ended, I was bereft.

Was it the roasted beets (been in the fridge a while), the pasta sample at Costco, the bite of mysterious melon at the Palo Alto market from the fingers of the vendor, the bowlful of pistachios after dinner? Whatever, my poor stomach began lurching around at 10 last night. After a few minutes, I realized the cookbook I was reading was not the proper material. Tried The Barbarians are Coming by David Wong Louie, in which the hero is a chef. Bad idea. Salivating a lot.

Took some Pepto-Bismol. Two seconds later, decided that was probably the worst thing I could do. Even when I’m not queasy, taking that stuff kind of repels me.

Got back on the web to see the best approach to stop nausea because throwing up is not my favorite thing to do. Google produced many links with the word ‘vomit’ prominently featured. Really bad idea. Salivating more.

Got emails from friends, one just lost her dad. Set about composing a sympathy note. Unable to focus.

Finally, I just leaned on the bathroom wall and waited. Afterward, I was afraid to go to sleep, thinking I would just have to get up again. A few seconds later, my system said, ‘Get ready, this time it’s going to be coming out one end or another.’ I could have used more specific information, but grabbed Taylor’s Guide to Roses, and went back to the bathroom.

Taylor saved me. I looked carefully at every lovely rose, noted which photos were not in proper register, noted which I’d love to have in my garden, even looked at all the old roses, knowing they would never survive in my shady yard. Meanwhile, the system subsided, and I went to the garage to get a warm 7-up.

All night I dreamed of a screen with the upper third in kind of a noisy abstract of random marks. I had to stay in that upper level in order to be stable. I guess my system was still trying to talk to me.

This afternoon I had to polish a silver spoon and fork for a photo. It is my fate (and that of Ishiguro fans everywhere), perhaps, to think of Stevens from The Remains of the Day whenever I reach for the silver polish. Just as I can no longer listen to Boz Scaggs sing Never Let Me Go without thinking of Ishiguro’s unsettling book of the same name.

At the garage sale down the street, Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much is True was on display. The seller and I had quite a discussion about the pros and cons of the book. We both agreed it was an exhausting read.

I read it on the heels of his earlier work, She’s Come Undone, with another flawed but fascinating main character. Not good choices for light summer reading, but I’m glad I got through both.

The only books that might be classified as such were The Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington, and of course, Scott Smith’s The Ruins. Rose’s Garden by Carrie Brown. The Haunting of L by Howard Norman is too dark to qualify, ditto The Geographer’s Library by Jon Fasman.

After trying to get through award winners from say, the Man Booker awards list, I went back to the random book sale method. All the libraries around here have wonderful sales with by-the-bag days. A couple of bags ($4 - $5 each) will get me through months of reading with happy surprises guaranteed. These generally get donated back to the libraries, so it’s a good situation all around.

In the queue: Harry Potter, a 7-day book from the library which I foolishly checked out just before leaving on vacation, thinking it would be fun on the plane. This was the weighty hardback version, rejected at packing time. There’s a waiting list for Harry, but the deal is, if you can find it on the shelf or a sorting rack, it’s fair game.

After finishing ‘A Certain Slant of Light’ by Laura Whitcomb, I dove into ‘The Ruins’ by Scott Smith. I found the former more intriguing than the latter, but Smith’s band of luckless characters and awful villain kept me up long past my bedtime for three nights.

Perhaps I’ll just finish watching ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ this evening and avoid the stack of books on the nightstand.

Today my head feels the size of a weather balloon. But I can breathe most of the time without sound effects, and have made it through the day napless so far. The two times I dozed off before lunch don’t count. My work was unusually dull plus the effects of all those antihistamines haven’t worn off.

Nory makes me laugh, and that’s something. Yes, I did read Vox, and also Checkpoint. Working my way through all of Baker’s books.

Last night I finished Mother of Sorrows by Richard McCann.

It takes me roughly twice as long to finish an ‘easy’ sudoku when I have a cold.

And the last, if I had my druthers. One son got me a Jamba Juice card for my birthday, the other just ran down to get me a giant Coldbuster, which I am testing immediately. I’ve been told that the Farscape two-parter I began watching last week is not a good idea for someone who is prone to nightmares during colds.

I’ll never forget the last flu I had when I picked up a Harry Potter for some light reading. That night, a host of dementors appeared in the bedroom while I cowered against the wall trying to hide from them.

By James Gleick, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones.

When I’m not doing other stuff that is.

Why you shouldn’t give a striped tie to a business associate in the UK, why a light-colored suit is a no-no in Japan and tips for the job-hunter whose potential employers take him out to a meal.

Such a meal can be a minefield of etiquette testing, and one applicant loses his chances when he wads up the foil around his baked potato and leaves it on the table.

So what exactly is the right way to deal with the foil other than bouncing it off the salt and pepper shakers?

By Haruki Murakami, here’s the first chapter. Last night I got through the infamous Chapter 16, the one some advise that you skip if you don’t care for violence.

By following, I mean got up from his seat to stand next to me as I looked in the stacks, edging ever closer till I turned on my heel and moved off. After giving him time (about 15 minutes) to find what he was looking for and making sure he was no longer there, I went back to the same spot, and here he comes, rising from his seat to try again. Then he lurked near the front as I checked out my stuff.

Hey you. Jeez. You seriously creeped me out.

By the weekend, I should know lots more about adding more umami to my food.

Some eat their young. Some eat their neighbor’s young. Others never allow one twin to survive. And then there are rabbits.

If rabbits could write books, and if rabbits were voracious readers, warren shelves would be filled with such titles as ‘How to Mother in Two Minutes’ or ‘The Two Minute-Mom’, or ‘Two-Minute Mothering for Dummies’. For overachieving rabbits, ‘Mothering in Less Than Two Minutes’.Well, you get the drift. Not to mention the videos. Or the soundtrack to the film version.

Most of my movies come from Netflix these days, but tonight I ran into the library to return some things. Then I found a few books and an old movie on DVD. The movie container has to be opened by a librarian before a borrower can check it out on the self-service machines.

I set the book bags down on the floor at the end of the librarian counter. Mostly because I didn’t want to put them by the machines as they are usually being used.

After the librarian gave me the DVD, I went about three steps over to where the book bags were. Here’s the dialogue:

Librarian: M’am. M’am! You are to check the DVD out on the machines here.
Me: I will when I pick up my books.
Librarian: I’m sorry, I can’t let you leave this area and go back in the stacks.
Me: I’m not going back in the stacks, I’m picking up my books (bend down to the bags).
Librarian: M’am, I’m not allowed to let you loose back there.
Me: I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here getting my books.
Librarian: You have to use the machines right there, right after I give you the movie. You can’t go back.
Me: I’m not going back. I’m picking up my books. See?
Librarian: Oh. Sorry.

Hooray for Netflix!

Can people really memorize entire books? Individuals can make claims, but how many have actually been tested?

By Dai Sijie. The book on my list was Mr. Muo’s Travelling Couch by the same author, so I got both. Balzac is his first novel.

By Michael Cunningham, close to the end. Next up, The Snowfly by Joseph Heywood.

They have the whole sky to play in.

I managed to steal some reading time this afternoon, William Langewiesche’s A Meditation on Flight. specifically the part where he explains how airplanes turn. For a brief time then, I was also in the sky, leaning, picturing how a plane rolls over so easily, then rights itself.

I went to a different library tonight, and removed myself from the nonfiction section long enough to find the Yann Martel, A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham, and The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman.

For my nonfiction fix, I got Inside the Sky, A Meditation on Flight by William Langewiesche.

But since I no longer have spare time, I don’t know when I’ll get to read them. Perhaps most days, I’ll just stare at the covers, and wish that life would slow down a bit.

By Jordan Crane. What sold me: the scary-looking pink cloud.

In Belgium, librarians are becoming cupids as bib-dating (what the Dutch call library dating) rears its bookish head.

A library spokesman likens it to speed-dating with a twist.

Here’s a sampling.

By Robert Hicks. It just might be the best book I read this year. I finished it last night, staying up well past my bedtime.

Here’s the Prologue.

Mary Poppins, the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit, Peter Pan, Paddington Bear, Mrs. Tiggywinkle - do you see a pattern here? All will be guests at the Queen’s birthday party June 25, as part of a celebration of British children’s literature.

Two thousand kids will be there. I hope they all have cameras. Her Majesty knows how to throw a party!

It would help if my connection problems were over, and I didn’t have to spend the first hour trying to cobble together something that will work.

If only I didn’t have such interesting books (The Widow of the South) that keep me up past a decent bedtime.

The neighbor’s pine tree is dispensing its bountiful load of pollen, and until the antihistamines kick in, I’m unable to do much more than try to breathe. The pills make me sleepy, headachy, and grumpy.

I finished The Good Priest’s Son by Reynolds Price last night (very good), and not having much else to read, snuffled and snorted my way to the library after supper. The route there is lined with acacia trees in full bloom, the carpets in the aisles chock full of the tracked-in pollens. I beat a hasty retreat, but not before finding

The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich
English as She is Spoke by Jose de Fonseca & Pedro Carolino

The pills will make me sink into a profound stupor, from which it will be difficult to wake. I am sticking to the 5:30 a.m. rising time, because I made the resolution.

Do you listen to audiobooks in the car? On the train? On your walk?

Here are the top 10 choices for 2005.

The Good Priest’s Son. Here’s the first chapter.

Boz Scaggs. And everytime I hear the song, I think of the book by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Some people can’t leave a classic alone. Now it seems that some are offended by the author’s photo, which shows Clement Hurd with a cigarette. The publishers recently had the cigarette digitally removed.

Critics are having a field day.

By Jeremy Narby
The Good Priest’s Son by Reynolds Price
Buongiorno! Breakfast and Brunch Italian Style by Norman Kolpas
Encyclopedia of Knitting by Donna Kooler

And maybe the new Michael Crichton, State of Fear.

He doesn’t look a day over - well, he doesn’t appeared to have aged at all!

If only we are so well preserved when we get to 80.

There’s still time to get to the bookstore and pick up a few.