This Week in Books, Portland Catch-Up Version: Zadie Smith is a reading addict...

A Prayer Journal

By Flannery O'Connor

Apologies all around for missing the last two "This Week in Books" posts. I know you live for them. It was hard to keep track of what was going on in the world of books while prepping to travel, doing the travelling itself, and then recovering from travelling, but I'm finally back to normal, for a day, and then I prep for a weeked Up North. At the very least I did my best to accumulate some good links the past two weeks, and here they are:

Oprah! Zadie Smith! What they want you to read this summer! Her comments about reading and prison are particularly chilling because that was my primary takeaway from reading Orange is the New Black-- she got to read so many books in prison!

If you, like me, have Joan Didion fever this summer, check out this essay on Play It As It Lays  from Alice Bolin and The Believer. There is a short write-up on it over at The Millions as well, and they recommended it as one of this summer's "Burnt Out Reads."

Hilton Als reviewed the posthumously published Flannery O'Connor book A Prayer Journal. It's behind a pay wall but you can read the intro and if you're a NYT subscriber, you  can enjoy the whole thing (and maybe share some quotes in the comments? Just a thought). This combines one of my favorite contemporary essayists with one of my favorite female authors, so I might even consider paying to read it.

Here's a brief piece on book hoarding from the LA Times. I found it to be abysmally depressing, but that's just me. Also, I tend to read the books I won, so that might disqualify me.

Finally, the thing I am most excited about -- Matter and MSNBC.com are doing a public book club reading of Susan Faludi's recent feminist classic Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women, and have invited plenty of intelligent and inspiring female writers and thinkers to contribute (Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, etc.). You can read along, tweet along, and read their lively discussions of each chapter.

Shelf Hues: Red

Inspired by this week's "What I'm Reading" post on The Autobiography of Red, I gathered together a lovely stack of red books on my radar.

What I'm Reading: 'The Autobiography of Red' by Anne Carson

Autobiography of Red

By Anne Carson

My "To Be Read" list is very long, and normally my reading habits follow a structure. I've got my next several books already queued up next to my bed, easily enough literature to last into October. I'm a pretty serious book buyer, and typically I let my books marinade on my shelves for a few weeks/months before I finally get around to reading them. However, there is always that occasional book that grabs my attention and demands to be read immediately after purchase, and The Autobiography of Red is one of those rare specimens. It's certainly helped by the fact that it is so very short, so very unique and intriguing, and that it was recommended by someone over at Insatiable Booksluts. 

To call it a novella would be to ignore its poetic language, and to call it a poem would be to ignore its novel-like narrative structure and character development. It lands in this really magical middle ground, more like epic poetry, but without the negative associations most of us probably have of reading Homer in college. It is a pseudo-retelling/modernization of the Greek myth about Geryon, a monster whose killing was one of the labors of Heracles, but in Anne Carson's version Geryon is not a monster per se, but a young man struggling with is sexuality and identity.

There's a hefty dose of magical realism and some will probably be frustrated by the prose, but I would advice you to just power through, because although it starts out with a confusing framing device, everything becomes clearer as you delve into the Geryon narrative.

#ReadWomen2014: George Eliot

Most of my recommendations for #ReadWomen2014 have been for relatively contemporary authors, or at least 20th century authors, but this week we're delving a little further back. I've already taken the time to strongly endorse Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch, but as I mentioned then, that book means nothing if you haven't already read Middlemarch, so consider this your second warning. I started it in the fall of last year and although ti's a meaty novel that takes some time to wade through, it was a really rewarding read. It was a world that I just couldn't get enough of, and I was so sad to leave it. It's definitely one of those books I'll revisit again and again, just as Rebecca Mead discusses.

My first foray into George Eliot was with Silas Marner, her shortest book which many people have to read in high school/college. I read it on my own because it seemed a good way to test the Eliot waters without committing to her longer books. At the time I read it, I really really loved it, but now that I've read Middlemarch, it is so obviously an inferior book. If you were to read Sila Marner, which I think you should, you should definitely read it first because it's a lovely little book but it just doesn't compare to her other titles.

I already own a whole stack of her novels and my plan is to slowly knock them out over the course of a few years, which I am really looking forward to. 

This Week in Books: the Ethics of Shelving, Authors on the Internet

The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee

By Marja Mills

I loved this article from The Atlantic about shelving books in book stores. They actually call out the common Gabriel Garcia Marquez foible (I have actually pointed this out to a grateful book store employee before; in the 'M's people!). 

Marja Mills' new pseudo-biography of Harper Lee came out on Tuesday and has been getting tons of press. Harper Lee herself has been against the publication, which she deems "unauthorized," and she reiterated her sentiments this week.

Flavorwire had a nice round-up this week of "The 35 Writers Who Run the Literary Internet." Some of these I strongly agree with (Teju Cole, Roxane Gay), and others I'm very ambivalent about (the number of Twitter followers does not equate with quality level). However, if you're new to the world of contemporary authorship on the Internet, this is a good place to start. Add a few of the mentioned Tumblrs to your RSS feed to become better acquainted (and don't forget that most of these folks have actually physical books that were recently published, if you're a total ludite).

What I'm Reading: 'The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis'

I'm sure I've written before about my long-standing distaste for short stories. It probably stemmed from early adolescence, when I was forced to read 'The Gift of the Magi' one time too many. All of the awful short stories that English teachers make kids read give the impression that all short stories must have some kind of macabre, twist ending. As an adult, I skipped over the short story in every issue of The New Yorker, and it wasn't until I read George Saunders that I really started to enjoy them.

I'm not too proud to confess that I bought The Collected Short Stories of Lydia Davis purely for its aesthetic appeal: it's tiny and thick and the most beautiful blushy-orange color. It looks extremely satisfying on my nightstand, and I'm really enjoying the slow process of consuming it. Some stories are as short as a paragraph or a even a sentence, so it's hard to recommend to short story skeptics like myself, because Davis' stories are an exercise in the dismantling of the genre. Even so, for those who never found short stories appealing, the fact that her collection is so very different may be precisely what converts you. 

This Week in Books: Upcoming 2014 titles, Southern reads, and a 'Wild' trailer

The Millions has a thorough preview of upcoming book releases for 2014, and the list is ridiculous. What I especially noticed was how many authors were defying their normal genres and expectations-- a children's book re-telling by Lydia Davis, a very straightforward narrative novel by Murakami, and short story collections from Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood. There is so much on the list to get excited about. I'll be waist-deep in essay collections from Amy Pohler, Roxane Gay and Lena Dunham

I found this lovely discussion on favorite Southern novels by Southern independent bookstore staffers, and thought it was a nice follow-up to my Flannery O'Connor/ Carson McCullers binges.

It's pretty lucky that the official trailer for 'Wild' (based on the book by Cheryl Strayed), came out this week, a few days  after I posted about how much I loved it. The adaptation looks excellent, and I think Reese Witherspoon is a great choice for the role, but I'm still going to strongly advocate reading the book. Normally I'm not a big stickler about literary adaptations, but the book is so great and very bookish, that I think some of its magic will naturally get lost in the translation. I bought my mom a copy of this book last year, so this might have to be a mother-daughter trip to the movies.

#ReadWomen2014 Non-Fiction: 'Out of Africa' by Isak Dinesen

I have made so many fruitless attempts to read this book, and I think it's finally sticking because I've made it well past the mid-way point. The reason I think I always stumbled over it in the past is that Dinesen's style is only loosely narrative. I guess my younger self had no patience for her very anecdotal retelling of her life on a coffee plantation in Kenya. Each chapter seems randomly divided and each story only vaguely segues into the next. But taken as a whole, she creates a beautiful mood and if you're able to push through the structural frustrations, it manages to paint a really clear picture of her experiences.

Next week I have another non-fiction recommendation for #ReadWomen2014 that is Out of Africa's spiritual twin.

#ReadWomen2014: Hillary Clinton

Living History

By Hillary Rodham Clinton

I have made very little secret of the fact that I love Hillary Clinton and will be supporting her in 2016, when she inevitably runs for POTUS. That said, political memoirs and whatnot are normally not my thing. They often come across as very short-sighted, because they focus so tightly on a micro-world view that reflects only a small chunk of the writer's career. Plus, they are written and released on a campaign schedule as part of a media strategy, which inherently demeans their authority and merits.

I will be the first to admit that Clinton's most recent book Hard Choices is no exception-- it was released in a summer that will almost certainly mark her announcement of her intention to run and the beginning of her campaign, and this is absolutely reflected in the book itself, which seeks to answer the inevitable questions regarding her relationship with Barack Obama, the Benghazi incident, and her husband's role in her career. But all of that aside, she is certainly the most significant female politician in the country, and one of the most powerful women in the world, so her words should carry a lot of weight.

If the politicized nature of Hard Choices is too much for you to stomach, why not go old school and dust off a copy of It Takes a Village, Clinton's volume on American children and families. The proverb in the title has become so ubiquitous and been parodied quite a bit, but the book itself has lost very little of its meaning or impact. And I'd like to point out that no other active FLOTUS has written and published a real book.

Living History was Clinton's attempt at an autobiography, written shortly after her election to the US Senate in 2000. Unlike Hard Choices, Living History is much more focused on her life before she became a politician and provides very a satisfying anecdotal narrative of her formative years and experiences. It serves as a nice reminder of just how incredible, smart, and hard-working she is.  Some critics were disappointed by her lack of candor, but I don't think a candid account of her life and career should be expected until her political life is officially over.