Current Reading: A Monday Update

It was a very busy weekend around here and I never got around to writing a Sunday Salon post, but I am reading a couple of books worthy of an update post. I'm linking up to Sheila's It's Monday! What Are You Reading? meme for the first time.

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

Just past the half-way mark, I'm certain this will be one of my favorite books of the year. I'm both reading and listening... total immersion! Why have I never read Meg Wolitzer before?

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

This is my latest Classics Club Spin book. I picked it up for a preview on Friday and ended up reading the first 50 pages. I read at least that much on Saturday, too, and will certainly finish ahead of the July 7 deadline. I've been meaning to read this book for years (decades?) and am grateful for the extra push.

What are you reading this week?

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The Costumes of Downton Abbey: Downstairs

When planning the route of our recent road trip, I lobbied hard to make a pass through Wilmington, DE.  Winterthur, the former estate of Henry Francis DuPont in the Brandywine Valley and now a renowned museum and garden, is hosting the Costumes of Downton Abbey exhibit until January 4, 2015. All Downton fans within striking distance will want to make this pilgrimage.

If you decide to visit, I would suggest purchasing general admission tickets ahead of time (they were already sold out for the weekend following our visit). The Costume exhibit is included, but timed tickets are being utilized for crowd control and you will be asked to register for a specific two hour window. The earliest slots were full, but we were able to get a late morning entrance time.

These "downstairs" photos seemed deserving of a link to Weekend Cooking. I'll share some "upstairs" scenes for Wordless Wednesday.

Weekend Cooking, hosted at Beth Fish Reads, is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

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Classics Club Spin #6

While we were packing up the Florida condo for renovations and driving home, a new Classics Club Spin took place. The rules are the same, only the were changed. Here's how it works:

• Go to your blog.
• Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club List.
• Try to challenge yourself: list five you are dreading/hesitant to read, five you can’t WAIT to read, five you are neutral about, and five free choice (favorite author, rereads, ancients — whatever you choose.)
• Post that list, numbered 1-20, on your blog by next Monday.
• Monday morning, we’ll announce a number from 1-20. Go to the list of twenty books you posted, and select the book that corresponds to the number we announce.
• The challenge is to read that book by July 7, even if it’s an icky one you dread reading! (No fair not listing any scary ones!)

I've participated in four of the five previous spins and have read:

• The Picture of Dorian Gray  by Oscar Wilde
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles  by Thomas Hardy
• Cheerful Weather for the Wedding  by Julia Strachey
• Middlemarch  by George Eliot 

I was a little disappointed not to have heard about this spin in time to post my list, but then realized that I have used  my original list (with minor adjustments) every time. Monday's spin landed on number 1.  The Bell Jar  by Sylvia Plath has occupied that slot for every single spin, and surely would have been there again this time had I actually made a list.

So... I will participate in Classics Spin #6 and read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

Did you spin this time? What will you be reading?

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Defending Jacob by William Landay

Defending Jacob
by William Landay
Random House, 2012
431 pages
source: purchased ebook


Summary (from goodreads):
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.

Award-winning author William Landay has written the consummate novel of an embattled family in crisis—a suspenseful, character-driven mystery that is also a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying speed at which our lives can spin out of control.

My thoughts:

Uneasy, disquieted, anxious, and more than a little depressed. That's how I felt most of the time I was reading Defending Jacob, yet I could not put the book down. These feelings surely attest to the skill of the author, yet they also remind me why I don't read more psychological thrillers.

As a former DA in the Boston area, Landay is well versed in all aspects of the criminal justice system. He presents an almost too real account of a teenager murdered in a suburban Boston park, and the DA's son is charged with the crime. The ultimate moral dilemma ensues.

The book begs the reader to ask, "What would I have done?" or "How would I react given those circumstances?"

And the ending? Don't even get me started. This is one book I won't forget for a good long time.

Defending Jacob was the latest selection for my book club. They always seem to pull me out of my comfort zone. Unfortunately I was not able to attend the meeting, but this was a popular choice and lead to a pretty lively discussion.

Now it's time for me to get back to literary fiction and classics...

Bottom line:
If you're reading for relaxation, choose a different title.

My rating:

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Not Quite Wordless Wednesday: On the Road

Late last week, we flew to Florida to pack up before the remodeling project gets underway, and to meet with the contractor one last time. This week we're driving the car home and taking a slow, scenic route up the coast.

St. Augustine, Florida

Charleston, South Carolina

Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

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Eat Move Sleep by Tom Rath (audio)

Eat Move Sleep: How Small Choices Lead to Big Changes
by Tom Rath
narrated by Tom Rath
Missionday, 2013
4 hours and 36 minutes
source: purchased (during audible's latest BOGO sale)

Publisher's summary:
From the author of StrengthsFinder 2.0, How Full Is Your Bucket?, Strengths Based Leadership, and Wellbeing comes a beautifully produced audiobook and accompanying online application that will improve your health for years to come. While Tom's bestsellers on strengths and well-being have inspired more than 5 million people in the last decade, Eat Move Sleep reveals his greatest passion and expertise. Quietly managing a serious illness for more than 20 years, Tom has assembled a wide range of information on the impact of eating, moving, and sleeping.

Written and narrated by Tom Rath in his classic conversational style, Eat Move Sleep features the most proven and practical ideas from his research. Eat Move Sleep will help you make good decisions automatic -- in all three of these interconnected areas. With every bite you take, you will make better choices. You will move a lot more than you do today. And you will sleep better than you have in years. More than an audiobook, Eat Move Sleep is a new way to live.

My thoughts:

Our life spans are determined by the sum of our habits, and Tom Rath believes most of us can live to ninety or beyond. The author is not a doctor or medical professional, but rather a researcher and patient determined to share the information he has gathered.

We've all heard it before: You need to make healthy food choices, exercise, and get enough sleep. But when you take that advice to heart and really try to make some changes, the process can seem overwhelming. Where do you begin?

This little book does not offer much new information to anyone already tuned into these topics, but it does offer readers a variety of quick and easy measures to make your overall lifestyle healthier. Set up as a 30 day challenge, the idea is to read a short chapter each day and implement one of the specific challenge ideas presented.

Some challenges are simple (leave serving dishes in the kitchen rather than bringing them to the table), some require a little thinking (each morning, plan ahead to add activity to your daily routine), and others require a bit more effort (aim for 10,000 steps every day or 70,000 per week). This last challenge has convinced me I need a fitbit - if you want to increase activity, it's important to measure how much you move.

Though meant to be read over the course of a month, I listening to the whole book in just a couple of days (while walking). Without a doubt, its primary value is motivation.

You can get more information, view the entire 30 days of challenges, and access other helpful tools at Eat Move Sleep.

A note on audio production:
The author may not be the greatest narrator, but he knows his stuff.

Bottom line:
A great motivational resource that is worth listening to a second time.

My rating:

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Tuesday Intro: The Interestings

On a warm night in early July of that long-evaporated year, the Interestings gathered for the very first time. They were only fifteen, sixteen, and they began to call themselves the name with tentative irony. Julie Jacobson, an outsider and possibly even a freak, had been invited in for obscure reasons, and now she sat in a corner on the unswept floor and attempted to position herself so she would appear unobtrusive yet not pathetic, which was a difficult balance. The teepee, designed ingeniously though built cheaply, was airless on nights like this one, when there was no wind to push in through the screens. Julie Jacobson longed to unfold a leg or do the side-to-side motion with her jaw that sometimes set off a gratifying series of tiny percussive sounds inside her skull. But if she called attention to herself in any way now, someone might start to wonder why she was here; and really, she knew, she had no reason to be here at all. It had been miraculous when Ash Wolf had nodded to her earlier in the night at the row of sinks and asked if she wanted to come join her and some of the others later. Some of the others. Even that wording was thrilling.

The Interestings
by Meg Wolitzer

I started listening to The Interestings a few days ago. Meg Wolitzer is a new-to-me author, and the premise of the novel sounds very appealing. Initially I was unsure about the narrator, but got used to her reading after 30 minutes or so. I also picked up a paperback copy and have decided to make this a read/listen combination.

Summary:

The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. 

The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules’s now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken. 

Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

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