“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”

Some of you long time readers of The Blue Bookcase might remember Julie, who reviewed for us back when we were still just a baby-blog in the spring of 2010. What you may not know is that Julie has a personal blog where she writes about her musings on life. This blog happens to be one of my all time favorite blogs to read because Julie is an incredible writer. Her writing has everything I love - strong voice, straightforward wording (not pretentious at all), so many great sensory details and general awesomeness. If Julie ever publishes a book I would buy myself a copy and a copy for all of my friends.
Today is your lucky day, my friends. Here is a taste of Julie's writing:

Post by Julie

I used to read a lot.

Golly, I used to read a lot. I couldn't be bothered to show up to the dinner table unless I had at least three books under my arm--the one I was halfway through, the other one I was halfway through, and the next one in case those two weren't enough in the eleven minutes it took to hold my nose and gulp down the steamed squash pinched from the watery vegetable dish that I had to finish before I could leave the table. Sometimes the eleven minutes would pass and I'd sit there for an hour or more with one edge of my barstool bumped up against the counter and the squash or salad or whatever it was growing slimy and cold on my plate.

Reading was the background, the wallpaper of everything I did growing up. I pined for books in the car at night when it was dark and I wasn't allowed to turn my reading light on for my parents' fear of lower quality night driving vision. I read them at intermission in plays. I spent entire vacations in a house on the beach filled with rambunctious cousins reading paperbacks I had brought, and then reading all the paperbacks they had brought, too. At the end of A Wrinkle In Time, I cried for days. When I came upon A Girl of the Limberlost in sixth grade, I checked it out weekly until I had practically memorized it. I finished Les Miserables, unabridged, 1800 pages, in the middle of a peer tutoring class in eighth grade and slumped over with the weight of it, both front and back covers of the cheap Penguin copy having been replaced with packing tape. I bought Harry Potter 7 at midnight, barefoot, in a Wal-Mart, and was still awake, nauseated with sleepiness, by 4:30 AM, playing the just-one-more-sentence game. I took A Tree Grows In Brooklyn and East of Eden in as my own, MY books, respectively, and hoarded three or four copies of both. When I'd meet a person, a new person, anywhere--rehearsal for a play, a new class, work, anywhere--I would automatically relate them to somebody I knew in a book. Contrary to popular belief, I was incredibly and still am incredibly shy. I would much rather watch you than talk to you, most of the time. No offense. Really I'd rather just read about you. I still really, really, really, really love you. I just know much better how to interpret dialogue than to participate in it.

To read the rest of this post, check out Julie's blog.

Thanks, Julie! We love you!

(Some of Julie's reviews: Marie Antoinette, Paradise, The Dead, Fugitive Pieces, Writing Down the Bones, Top 10 Books on a Desert Island)

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I'd Want on a Desert Island

Hello, all! We here at the Blue Bookcase have decided to embark upon a new weekly adventure.This fine idea was established by our friends over at The Broke and the Bookish. Every Tuesday, we will take turns giving you our top tens regarding specific situations.
Today I, Julie, will favor you with the Top Ten Books I'd Want On A Desert Island!

 Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. I'm sure I'd probably need to be searching for meaning while trapped on a desert island. And this guy knows where it's at.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck. This is the best book ever written. The one I could read weekly. The biblical symbolism and commentary on the origins of sin would probably come in handy as I began a whole new society of my own.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I know, I know, I'd be asking for it taking this to a desert island with me, but I can't help it. It would go, hands down.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Tied for first with East of Eden.

We're going to assume they will eventually anthologize all of Ian McEwan's publications, so that I can include The Complete Works of Ian McEwan in my island stash. Brilliant writer.

A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel. I have never laughed so hard in my life as when I read this book. I'm sure I'll need a little comic relief after those hard days of being threatened by island creatures and gathering rainwater.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.On this desert island, I would have an unlimited supply of bark to write on, and a big box of ballpoint pens. I'd bring this book because it's a fine guide to writing as well as a fine collection of stories.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Never has a book held more wisdom.

The Roald Dahl Omnibus. I know we're all familiar with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, etc, but Roald Dahl also writes stories for grownups that are disturbing and fascinating as all get-out. This is a great collection of them.

What are the books you'd take to a desert island?

Thanks again to The Broke and The Bookish for providing us with this idea. Look forward to our weekly installments!

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Reviewed by Julie


Published: 1986

It's about: writing. As Miss Goldberg explains in her introductory chapter, "This book is about writing. It is also about using writing as your practice as a way to help you penetrate your life and become sane...don't just read it. Write. Trust yourself. Learn your own needs. Use this book."

I thought: This book was delightful. Its main idea is that before you do anything else, you should get into the habit of writing from your very deepest insides, without pause, correction, or too much conscious, self-criticizing thought.
The chapters have names like "Composting" and "Fighting Tofu" and "We Are Not the Poem" and "Writers Have Good Figures". Tongue in cheek, Miss Goldberg encourages the budding or re-budding writer to try all kinds of methods to get a writing fire started underneath them.

Verdict: On the shelf!

Interesting information: Goldberg, who's a Jewish Buddhist, uses all kinds of groovy language and is all about meditating and is frequently quoting her friend Dainin Katagiri Roshi and all kinds of other people she's been trained by. Also, she has no shame about emphasizing the actual creative value of the embarrassingly hipsterlike activity of going to a picturesque cafe just to write there. I enjoyed that.

Warnings: Nada.

Favorite excerpts:

"Don't make your mind do anything. Simply step out of the way and record your thoughts as they roll through you. Writing practice softens the heart and mind, helps to keep us flexible so that rigid distinctions between apples and milk, tigers and celery, disappear...your mind is leaping, your writing will leap but it won't be artificial. It will reflect the nature of first thoguhts, the way we see the world when we are free from prejudice and can see the underlying principles. We are all connected."

"We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important."

my favorite chapter is "The Action of a Sentence".

Kindle Review

Ok.
I'll try not to gush, here.
I received my Kindle last week.
There are two versions of the Kindle, the first and second generation. I actually bought a first-generationer (secondhand), and I am loving it. The only differences between the two are a little streamlining in shape, a "shorter page turn", and the second generation doesn't hold an SD card.

Many of the reviews I read before purchasing a Kindle had me worried, because most of them complained endlessly about how annoying it was to have to wait for the page to turn when they clicked the Next Page or Previous Page button. When you turn the page on a Kindle, the screen flickers a bit and then changes. Honestly, it is so much more convenient to hold this tiny white thing in my hand than a book, I don't mind the page turning at all. Many articles I read made the page refresher seem unbearably long, when it really isn't.
Does anyone ever get that terrible cramp across their palm when trying to hold a book open with one hand to read while doing something else?
I do.
The Kindle is great because it's like holding a book that's all contained on one page. I find myself reading quite a bit faster and absorbing quite a bit more information than on a regular book, because turning pages manually has always distracted me. The Kindle also holds your place in the book when you turn it off, so you're easily returned to your page, instead of having to remember whether you were on the left, or the right.
The battery lasts for a couple days turned on, and more than a week turned off. This is invaluable to me, because my phone and iPod are always dying with negligence of charge. The screen is made of digital ink--something like an EtchaSketch. You can read in bright sunlight perfectly clearly.

I do find myself missing the romanticism of paper and spine, but I have determined that the Kindle has yet ANOTHER use. Anything that's public domain (things like Anna Karenina, Frankenstein, etc) is free on a Kindle, and many more like The Three Musketeers are only about $.90. What I believe I will be doing in the future is purchasing/free-purchasing something on my Kindle, reading it, and if I like it, THEN I will buy a hard copy. I've always found it a little discouraging to spend $14 on a book, reading it once, and never reading it again because I just didn't really like it. 

All in all, I do still love my actual books, but the Kindle is a much more comfortable reading experience. If you have attention problems like I do, this kind of a tool is just invaluable. I'm looking forward to purchasing novels I have to buy for class on it in the fall!

Does anyone have any specific questions?

Electronic Renaissance?

 So.

How much do you love the books you own? Do you take pride in your ever-growing collection of literature, and the way you have to triple-layer it on your only bookcase? Are there boxes of books in the basement at your parents' house that you know you'll someday have endless space to store yourself? Are you secretly excited whenever you have to spend the big bucks on armfuls of novels for lit classes? ("Oh, shooooot, I had to spend money on a bunch of novellllsss....guess my bookshelves will just keep getting fullerrrrrr...") Do you dream of that wood-paneled library that we all wish we'll have in our future homes, filled with thousands of books English Patient or Beauty and the Beast-style?

 *Twirls*

Yeah. I am this way. I love my books. I have one bookshelf in my room and boxes and boxes and boxes of books in my parents' basement, as well as stacks of them in the trunk of my car and all over any available floor space. A huge part of reading for me, growing up, was the security of the book in my hand, its (more-often-than-not) cheap gray paper pages covered in potato chip crumbs and its spine wavy from reading it an inch above the bathwater.

I'm getting a Kindle.

Have you all heard of a Kindle? Or its Barnes and Noble twin, the Nook?

Does anyone have one already? They're pretty steeply priced for their usability, for all of you who like to chat/design wedding invitations/read the news/watch a music video/surf the web at the same time, because all the Kindle does is hold books (and a tiny mp3 player), but I'm buying a used one from a friend who made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

Now, I love my books. I LOVE my books. But I am also entirely fascinated by the idea of a device the size and weight of a DVD case that can hold 1500 books at a time.
So, I'm getting one. A review will be up sometime next week, after I've read off it, chewed on it, and seen how well it works as a wakeboard.

What do you guys think about this new way of reading? Think it's worth the $$$? Anyone scared for the day when electronic books are ALL we'll use?

Lemme know what you think. And here's some Kindle reading I found useful when researching to see if I should actually buy one, if you're interested:

Ten reasons to buy or not buy a Kindle.
A great review with huge pictures. I like huge pictures. 
I read everything on this magazine anyway, and this article is funny and very long and very informative. I agree with the author's wife, the Kindle should probably come with a kickstand so you can prop it up and read while you eat. Oh, the possibilities!

Also, if you're going to comment and tell me I should get an iPad instead, don't bother. I don't have $500 and I have a laptop that works perfectly fine, thank you. AND I don't buy first-generation Mac products.

ALSO AGAIN, please become our six more followers on the way to fifty! You could get a nice, real book out of it! With pages! Made of paper!

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

Reviewed by Julie

Published:1996

It's about: Jakob Beer, a Jewish child from Poland, very narrowly escapes the Nazis and is rescued by a Greek man named Athos. Athos takes him to Greece to hide out during the war and becomes his father. He teaches him languages and geology and poetry. The second part of the book (the book is separated into Book I and Book II) follows the narrative of a young man named Ben, who is a fan of the adult Jakob's poetry).

I thought: I know we all went through a Holocaust Thing at least once in our lives and read books like The Devil's Arithmetic, Number The Stars, etc, as younger teenagers. (Both great books for younger readers, by the way). Sometimes the popularity of the Holocaust narrative drives me wacky, because it suddenly became trendy a few years back to write about people having to eat dirt in concentration camps. It seemed as though a lot of authors were just writing about it to write about it.
I have read several books about children and the effect that World War II had on them, and this has got to be top two for me. The prose is gorgeous and all the characters are well-formed--Athos, Jakob, Alex, Michaela, Ben, Naomi, and especially Bella. This book explores the post-traumatic stress disorder of a child of the Holocaust who actually escaped it and was out of the country for most of it, but who experienced just as much trauma as children who had been more directly subjected to it. Very interesting.

I read this book for a class, and we watched the movie adaptation of it over the last couple of weeks. I don't believe I have EVER seen a movie more correctly representative of the meaning of a book. Check it out! It's absolutely stunning. STUNNING.

Verdict: Glue this onto your shelf. Glue it. With superglue. Never let it get away.

Reading Recommendations: Please read this.

Warnings: Nada.

Favorite excerpts:
 "Even when one German walks through a Greek street it's like an iron rod so cold it burns your hand."

"When you are lost to ones you love, you will face south-southwest like the caged bird...their limbs will follow when you lie down, a shadow against your own, curving to every curve like the Hebrew alphabet and the Greek, which cross the page to greet each other in the middle of historia, bent with carrying absence..."

"I wait for daylight before daring to move. The dew soaks my shoes. I walk to the edge of the hill and lie down in the cold grass. But the sun is already hot. I think of my mother's overturned glasses of steam that drew fevers from the skin. The sky is a glass."

The Dead by James Joyce

Oh hey everyone, just here to add my magnet to the refrigerator front of short stories. If we're talking short stories, I'm offering you up my favorite today--and the best part is, it's available to read online!

Published:1914

It's about: Gabriel Conroy, a well-liked, pleasant man in his community, attends a social dinner gathering and ends the snowy night by coming to what Joyce called an epiphany. That's all I'll say. Oh, and his wife's name is Gretta.

I thought: Part of Dubliners, a collection of equally awesome short stories, this tale leaves me ready to write pages and pages whenever I'm done reading it. Really, it's that good.This is a pretty common read for English majors, assigned by many professors. It's really long, novella-like, and if you haven't read it (which I'm assuming you already have) I really suggest that you do. And don't worry--if you've tried to stumble through Ulysses or other equally confusing books/stories of Joyce's, I promise that this short story is the opposite of confusing. It's beautiful, poetic, and psssst--you can read it online. Did I mention that before?


I have the last two paragraphs of this story memorized. See if they goosebump you.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf or Rubbish Bin? SHELFSHELF

Reading Recommendations: Mortality is a central theme in this tale, so if you're looking for hopping bunnies and mystical musical purple singing unicorns and shiny pink babies, go read something else. But read this instead.

Warnings: Nada.
Favorite excerpts: 

"The morning was still dark. A dull, yellow light brooded over the houses and the river; and the sky seemed to be descending. It was slushy underfoot; and only streaks and patches of snow lay on the roofs, on the parapets of the quay and on the area railings. The lamps were still burning redly in the murky air and, across the river, the palace of the Four Courts stood out menacingly against the heavy sky."




Don't forget to enter our book give-away contest!

Paradise by Toni Morrison

Reviewed by Julie

Published: 1997

It's about: The book follows a little town called Ruby, founded by a group of people interested in keeping themselves private and self-sufficient as a community. Most of the book takes place in the 1960s-70s. These people are the descendants of slaves and plan on staying as purely "eight-rock" as possible. Just outside their town is the convent, which actually isn't a convent, but a large school built for Native American girls decades beforehand. The convent now houses an assortment of lost women, having run from all kinds of interesting things. Paradise begins with the shooting of one of these women by a townsman, and leads you through narratives of each and every woman to end where it began.

I thought: This book was great. Hard to get into, and depressing (you can always count on Morrison for a good old depresser) but very informative, with characters as rich as you'll ever read. Each of the women in the convent, Ruby, Gigi, Mavis, Seneca, and Divine, all follow terribly interesting paths to get to where they end up. Each of their voices is distinct and flowing in the river of all the other voices in the book. Seriously, great. You know those books you jot down phrases from, because of the beautiful wording? This is one of those books.

Verdict: Stick this baby on the shelf.

Warnings: There is no actual SEX, but there are truckloads of insinuations. This isn't a book for someone looking for a light read, very heavy and emotional, but just darned beautiful.

On another note, I ran across a book yesterday I'm dying to read--here's where I found it and here it is on Amazon. I'm a sucker for essays and food, both.

Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser

Reviewed by Julie

Published: 2001

It's about: This chunky book details the entire life of Marie Antoinette, from her childhood in Austria until her beheading after an interesting journey as the Queen of France. (If anyone didn't know she got beheaded...sorry about that unceremonious spoiler. Haha.)

I thought: I've grown up reading a lot of historical fiction, which was a delight for me, but have stayed quite away from historical non-fiction because, well, it's real. Real can equal boring. War facts, government stats, etc, can all become very old very quickly. But Fraser, who is known for her thoroughly engaging historical non-fiction (The Six Wives of Henry VIII, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605) didn't disappoint. In 458 pages, she describes not only the standard facts of the life of a royal in eighteenth-century France, but tiny details contributed by dozens of first-hand witnesses to the queen's activities, temperament, wardrobe, choices of friends, political involvements, etc. The story jumps out at you and smacks you in the face with interestedness and you really can't stop reading.
I've called this my "dessert" book, since I've been reading it in my spare time for months, but it's really quite remarkable. No fluff at all. Besides the fact that she's a dem good researcher, Fraser's writing style reminds me of an essayist's, as opposed to a stuffy old textbook writer's.


Verdict: On! The! Shelf! On! The Shelf! My copy is borrowed; I'm buying one of my own, stat.


Reading Recommendations: If you're interested in these people already, Louis, Marie Antoinette, their children, Madame Campan, the old empress, Du Berry--this book will delight you to pieces. If you're not really interested in them, it will probably still delight you. Don't try to read this fast and/or all scholarly-like, the details will bury you quickly. Just enjoy it.


Warnings: Very long! Many dates. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't reading this for a class and that I was allowed to forget most of the specific dates and remember favorite quotes from the queen and tidbits from her life.