Knopf 100--Day 22

I'm in Oklahoma tonight, and previously I posted from Colorado, so officially this series has spanned three states. Also, we've made it to the 80's! The end is nigh.

81. The Secret History by Donna Tartt, originally published in 1992. I have a long history with this book. The first time I tried to read it was around 1998, when I had just graduated from college, and for whatever reason I couldn't get into it. I tried again around 2003 or so because many of my friends never shut up about it. The third time was the charm, though, and once I dove in with both feet I was hooked. I got it. And it's great. The Secret History features one of my favorite settings for a book, a school campus, and is about a clique of classics students under the spell of a professor. They grow close and their relationships extend beyond the classroom...until things spiral out of control and into dangerous territory.

82. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, originally published in 1923. We'd be remiss not to include this classic on a list of Knopf books. We're approaching its own 100th anniversary and it's a favorite of many, many people worldwide. Gibran's essays are an inspirational philosophy for life. Topics from religion to love to death to knowing who you are in the world make it a moving, personal read for all those who come to its pages. If you're looking for one book to hold up as an emblem of what makes Knopf great, The Prophet would be a good one to champion.

83. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, originally published in 2009. Chris McDougall created magic with Born to Run, a blend of history, science, and personal narrative. What started as an exploration into why his feet hurt when he ran turned into a journey into the history of running and the human anatomical features that make us uniquely able to run great distances. The author talks to Harvard scientists, ultra-marathon runners, and an indigenous tribe in Mexico where running through the Copper Canyons is a way of life. Born to Run also helped ignite a huge barefoot running craze.

84. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, originally published in 2010. Jennifer Egan is high on my list of favorite authors. I met her once and typically was starstruck. I think I grunted a little. A Visit from the Goon Squad is an experimental novel that moves back and forth in the lives of Bennie, an aging music executive, and Sasha, his assistant. Part of the story is told as a PowerPoint presentation and it works; Egan is a genius. Goon Squad gathered up a heap of awards including a Pulitzer Prize.

An Author a Day for 30 Days: Day 30

Well this is it. This is our last post for our “An Author a Day for Thirty Days” idea. Hindsight? Well, this wouldn’t have been so taxing had it not followed directly on the heals of “Thirty Days of Good and Cheap Books,” which followed “Thirty Days of What You’re Not Reading.” That’s sixty ninety continuous days of posting, which means we overextended ourselves by about eighty-eight days.  Admit it, those first two days were pretty great.

So this is it. My last chance to really stick it to Liz, to make her green with envy that I chose an author, a great author, that she failed to recognize. No problem.

Last week I ripped through Claire Messud’s new novel (right now Liz is saying “shiiiiiiiitttt!"). The Woman Upstairs is a little piece of perfection; it’s a showstopper. [Dammit! I was going to write about this book next week! It's amazing.] In short, the novel is about a lonely woman who 'falls in love' with a family. Her relationship to them is all encompassing and awakens her sexually and artistically. The book’s editor promised that this would read ‘like a house on fire,’ and I have to agree, this was really difficult to put down, even more difficult to stop thinking about. It’s a rare book that makes it nearly impossible to start reading a different book, to move on.  This is one of those books.

The Emperor’s Children was my introduction to Clair Messud, a novel about a group of friends struggling with their lives (searching for something better) in the months leading up to the terrorist attacks on September 11^th.

I think of Claire Messud in the same way I think about Philip Roth, Jennifer Egan, Martin Amis, Marilynne Robinson, or Mary Gaitskill. These are a handful of serious writers, really smart, serious writers capturing exactly what is relevant in the world at that exact moment. These are the books and these are the writers you really want to be discussing while guzzling that bottle of wine at book group. Writers like Messud pack layer on layer of what the kids in the 70’s called, ‘some deep shit, man.’

Hey, just realized that Clair Messud has written a couple of novellas. Maybe we should do “Thirty Days of Novellas!” Liz?

[...Shut up Gianna.]

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 10

I think we may have mentioned Nam Le in passing, but still, it's a real travesty we haven't spent more time talking about him and his amazing collection of stories. This young writer only has one book under his belt, an astonishing collection of stories called The Boat (right now Liz is banging her head on the table for not picking this guy before I did). [Seriously. I hate Gianna so much right now.]

These stories are highly emotional, beautifully written, and not just a little different. It’s a book that takes chances, all of which pay off.  Nam Le has been nominated or won about two dozen prizes, and it’s apparent why about five pages into the first story. An Australian by way of Vietnam, he became a lawyer (even appointed to the Supreme Court of Victoria), but you know how love is … he ultimately attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and now he is just making us wait for another book.

If you like Junot Diaz, Adam Haslett, or Jennifer Egan, you will enjoy Nam Le. We just posted a link on our Facebook page to a GalleyCat story, ruminating on which books will still be read one hundred years from now. I would add The Boat to their list. [Yeah. It's better than most of the books on that list. I love this book. I hate Gianna.]

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 5

We should be ashamed of ourselves. It’s hard to be ashamed because the bar is set so low, but we really should be ashamed that we haven’t written about Amy Hempel. What the hell is wrong with us? More importantly why haven’t our nearly a full dozen devoted readers pointed out this disgusting fact?

And to make this slight even worse? She’s a dog lover. I know. We’re the pits. However, we are going to fix this. Liz is going to buy every single one of you (that’s nearly 10 people) The Collected Stories. Just email her your address.  The Collected Stories is very close to being my desert island book, that’s how much I love it, but I also recommend Reasons to Live and Tumble Home.

If you like Amy Bloom, Jim Shepard, Jennifer Egan, Junot Diaz, or my beloved Gail Caldwell, I think Amy Hempel is perfect for you. 

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 29

Day 29: The authors you'd like to join for dinner

Here we are, so close to the end. Gianna is so upset at the prospect of the 30 Day Challenge ending that she's in mourning. I, Liz, am made of stronger stuff and will soldier on for the good of all humanity. Before Gianna burst into tears and ran screaming from her computer, though, she shared with me her picks. Here you go:

Gianna's perfect dinner party:

Serving cocktails, obviously, Dorothy Parker. No gathering of literary wits should exclude her.

Serving drinks, Dorothy Parker

As for the rest of the gathering, Gianna wants to dine with the funny ladies. I'm sure she's trying to lift her spirits even as she grieves for another book list winding down. She's really quite upset. At first, Gianna just wanted "Tina Fey x 10,"

but then I think she realized that Tina Fey is my doppelganger, and to diffuse that bit of awkwardness she edited her list. Now, along with Tina, Gianna will be joined by Lily Tomlin,

Carol Burnett,

and Gilda Radner.

More than one of these dames snort-laughs before appetizers are served.

Liz's perfect dinner party:

I tend to start twitching in groups larger than about five people, so dinner will be cozy. I like the idea of hanging out with writers who seem like they're intelligent but unpretentious. Jeffrey Toobin, who wrote The Nine and The Oath, seems like he'd be a great dinner companion.

And Jennifer Egan; I've liked all of her books.

Mary Karr needs to be there because we could talk about East Texas and also because I suspect that she might swear.

Michelle Obama...I bet she's a great guest. She doubles as the unofficial bouncer.

Finally, to keep conversation flowing and bind the room together, Jon Stewart will be joining us.

There's a good chance that we'll eat chicken pot pie. Who doesn't love chicken pot pie?

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 9

Day 9: What book did we surprise ourselves by loving?

Gianna:

I am sure that there were many books that I liked more than I thought I would. In my former job I was often assigned books to read and sometimes lacked enthusiasm for books I thought “weren’t my thing.”  Three or four books come to mind right away: Welcome to Utopia by Karen Valby (I thought small town America, who cares?), Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajib Chandrasekaran. I thought it was going to be dry and difficult to get through. Very, very wrong.

Ah, I had no intention (and actually very little desire) to read American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. I was in fact told by my manager at RH that I had to read it due to the fact it was loosely based on Laura Bush and unless I planned on moving my ass out of Texas, the book was a priority for me. Ok, so that is embellished, she just told me to read it.  So I did...in fact, I read it in one sitting. It had just enough literary chops and gossip to pique my interest. 

The book that took me by the most surprise though, was Patti Smith’s absolutely amazing memoir, Just Kids.  I know, ridiculous, but the thing is, I really don’t care for her music and I didn’t think the book would be of any interest to me.  I picked it up on the way home from my dear friend’s funeral, read the first few pages and had to put it down.  It took me about two weeks to finish because of the timing, but it became an instant favorite, and I cannot wait for her next book. 

Liz:

I'm struggling a bit with this topic.  I do have to read a bunch of books that assigned for work, and sometimes these books surprise me because I love them more than I expected. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill, for example, was much better than I'd anticipated for a post-9/11 novel about cricket, written by a guy I'd never heard of before. I hope that I'm pretty neutral about books before opening them (except for Twilight).

One book that definitely surprised me was Look at Me by Jennifer Egan. I'd never heard of Jennifer Egan before this book was nominated for the National Book Award. If I recall, it was a year with several nominees I didn't know, and I confess that for some reason I was confusing Egan with Susan Isaacs (the woman who wrote Shining Through). Don't ask me; my brain does odd things sometimes. I just looked it up, and the 2001 NBA nominees introduced me to Dan Chaon and Susan Straight too; the other finalist was Louise Erdrich, and the winner was Jonathan Franzen for The Corrections. Anyway, I couldn't imagine how the author of a book that was turned into a movie starring Melanie Griffith could be an NBA finalist (because, as I said, I thought she was Susan Isaacs).  I really went in thinking that Look at Me would be the biggest travesty in awards nominating history.

I'm an idiot sometimes. Look at Me remains one of my favorite books, and Jennifer Egan is one of my favorite authors (and now a Pulitzer Prize winner). I love this book so much that I'm willing to guarantee that you'll like it too. If you hate it, tell us, and Gianna will bake you cookies as an apology for my confidence. [Gianna will not bake you cookies.]