On library loots and too many books to read:
It appears that today is library loot day, and boy do I have a mountain for you. I may not have been blogging much in that last month or so, but I’ve spent a lot of quality time in the library checking out books I can’t possibly find the time to read. So, without further ado, my list of books which the New York Public Library has so kindly let me borrow:
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles. First lines: ”My name is Benjamin R. Ford and I am writing to request a refund in the amount of $392.68. But, no, scratch that: Request is too mincy & polite, I think, too officious & Britishy, a word that walks along the page with the ramrod straighteness of someone trying to balance a walnut on his upper ass cheeks. Yet what am I saying? Words don’t have ass cheeks! Dear American Airlines, I am rather demanding a refund in the amount of $392.68. Demanding, demanding, demanding.”
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. First lines: ”So Mom got the postcard today. It says Congratulations in big curly letters, and at the very top is the address of Studio TV-15 on West 58th Street. After three years of trying, she has actually made it. She’s going to be a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid, which is hosted by Dick Clark…. And then there’s the due date she’s supposed to show up, scrawled in blue pen on a line at the bottom of the card: April 27, 1979. Just like you said.”
The Making of African American: The Four Great Migrations by Ira Berlin. First lines: “More than any other single event, the Middle Passage – the transit from Africa to America – has come to epitomize the experience of people of African descent throughout the Atlantic world. The nightmarish weeks and sometimes months locked in the holds of stinking ships speak to the traumatic loss of freedom, the degradation of enslavement, and the long years of bondage that followed. But the Middle Passage also represent the will of black people to survive, the determination not to be dehumanized by dehumanizing circumstances, and the confidence that freedom would eventually be theirs and that they – or at least their posterity – would take their rightful place as a people among peoples.”
Nobody Move by Denis Johnson. First lines: ”Jimmy Luntz has never been to war, but this was the sensation, he was sure of that – eighteen guys in a room, Rob, the director, sending them out – eighteen guys shoulder to shoulder, moving out on the orders of their leader to do what they’ve been training day and night to do. Waiting silently in darkness behind the heavy curtain while on the other side of it the MC tells a stale joke, and then – “THE ALHAMBRA CALIFORNIA BEACH-COMBER CHORDSMEN!” – and they were smiling at hot lights, doing their two numbers.”
Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban American by Beryl Satter. First lines: ”Growing up in Lawndale, children learned the word gang as soon as they learned to talk, my father wrote of his West Side home in the 1920s. ”The neighborhood taught them little cultural. There was more of a constant fight so as not to be afraid to be outside the house.” In years to come, many would bemoan the transformation of a middle-class have to a rough working-class ghetto, but in truth Lawndale was never the respectable enclave whose loss they lamented.”
Stitches by David Small. First lines: ”I was six. Detroit. Mama had her little cough. Knh! Once or twice, some quiet sobbing, out of sight… or the slamming of kitchen cupboard doors. whap! Whap! WHAP! That was her language. The mere moving of her fork a half-inch to the right spelled dread at the dinner table. Her furious, silent withdrawals could last for days, even weeks at time. Because she never spoke her mind, we never knew what this was all about. We two boys didn’t, at any rate.” (note: this is a graphic novel, so at least half of the “exposition” is missing.)
The Anthologist by Nicholson Barker. First lines: “Hello, this is Paul Chowder, and I’m going to try to tell you everything I know. Well, not everything I know, because a lot of what I know, you know. But everything I know about poetry. All my tips and tricks and woes and worries are going to come tumbling out before you. I’m going to divulge them. What a juicy word that is, ‘divulge.’ Truth opening its petals. Truth smells like Chinese food and sweat.”
The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays by Chinua Achebe. First lines: ”The title I have chosen for those reflections may not be immediately clear to everybody and , although already rather long, may call for a little explanation or elaboration from me. But before I get to that, I want to deal with something which gives me even more urgent cause for worry – its content. I hope my readers are not expecting to encounter the work of a scholar. I had to remind myself, when I was invited to give this address, that if they think you are a scholar, it must mean you are a scholar of sorts. I say this “up front,” as Americans would put it, to establish the truth quite early and quite clearly in case somehow a mistake has been made.”
And the following two books are what I picked up on the way home from work today:
The City & The City by China Mieville. First lines: “I could not see the street or much of the estate. We were enclosed by dirt-colored blocks, from windows out of which leaned vested men and women with morning hair and mugs of drink, eating breakfast and watching us. This open ground between the building had once been sculpted. It pitched like a golf course – a child’s mimicking of geography. Maybe they had been going to wood it and put in a pond. There was a copse but the saplings were dead.”
The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconstitutional Minds Elect Presidents, Control Market, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives by Shankar Vedantam. First lines: “In the Spring of 2004, The Washington Post assigned me to track Ralph Nader in New England as he campaigned for president. When I got to Boston, several of Nader’s own aides, mindful of the consumer advocate’s role as spoiler in the disputed 2000 election between George Bush and Al Gore, told me they were going to vote against him. Since Nadar’s campaign was going nowhere, I took a break from the political story and called a local psychologist I’d heard about.”
You know, now that it’s listed out like that, it doesn’t look bad at all. It looks almost… manageable. I’m almost positive that I won’t be able to complete all of these before the due date (I also checked out The Big Machine by Victor LaValle, but I didn’t get to read it before the due date, and now I have to return it since it’s on hold, which makes me sad), but a girl can dream, right?
** Library Loot is a weekly meme hosted by Eva at A Striped Armchair and Marge at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader.
Happy reading all.
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War Dances will be my first Sherman Alexie book. Umm, do I need to tell you how excited I am? I am truly hoping that this will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Of course, I’m almost sure it will be given how many of you have raved about Alexie’s other books. And finally, I was extremely surprised to see Mary Karr’s Lit just sitting on the shelf yesterday. Earlier in the year, when I thought about placing this book on hold, I believe there were something like 400 people who were waiting on 12 copies to be returned. I figured I’d be waiting for ages to get a copy so I didn’t even bother adding my name to the list. But there it was yesterday, just sitting there all unassuming-like. Needless to say, I scooped it up.
So early last week, the winners of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize were announced. True to form, I paid pretty close attention to the Letter, Drama, and Music category in which 
1. Investigative Reporting. This is definitely my favorite journalism subcategory. This year’s prize was awarded to two different newspapers. Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman of the Philadelphia Daily News received the prize for a series of articles called “
