Amazon Kindle Deals!

Some of you may know that I own a Kindle - and love it. I still predominantly read physical books, but I love the convenience of e-books - as a kid, I used to bring five or six books on long car rides so I had a variety to choose from; now when I travel, I bring fifty or sixty books! 

Amazon is pretty great about having cheap e-books - the trick is to keep an eye on their Kindle Daily Deal page. Four new e-books are offered each day, but they also have monthly deals. I was browsing today and noticed that a few books I really enjoyed are $3.99 or less, so I thought I would share those with you! (Note - you can also purchase these e-books for iPad or other tablets; you just need to have the free Amazon Kindle app.)

Here's what caught my eye today:

• Animal Dreams (Barbara Kingsolver) - I read this a few years ago (I think my freshman year at Baylor) and it immediately became one of my favorite books. I probably need to reread it because I don't remember much about it (which is why I don't include it in my mental list of favorite books anymore), but I do remember that this is an incredibly heartfelt book. Currently available for $1.99!
• In One Person (John Irving) - I wrote about this book in an earlier blog post this year (February, if you're interested), so I won't repeat what I've already said. I admire John Irving for his willingness to write about controversial topics, and this book was no exception. Currently available for $2.99!!
• The Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut) - Vonnegut's books are frequently featured in the Sci-Fi Kindle Daily Deal. The Sirens of Titan is probably one of my top three favorites by him - the book description on Amazon describes it as an "interplanetary Candide" which I think is perfect. If you're a Vonnegut fan and haven't read this one, here's your chance! Currently available for $1.99. 

Enjoy!

High School Revisited

I was inspired by my friend Paige to reflect on high school...but from a reader's point of view. Here is the tale of the books I read for high school English classes, told through a series of lists (each list is in chronological order):

Books I enjoyed in high school and will certainly reread: 

1. Le Morte d'Arthur (Thomas Malory)
2. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
3. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
4. Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
5. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
6. The Devil in the White City (Erik Lawson)
7. The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)
8. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
9. Candide (Voltaire)
10. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Tom Stoppard)

Books I wasn't quite sure about in high school and will reread one day:

1. A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
2. Cold Sassy Tree (Olive Ann Burns)
3. The Awakening (Kate Chopin)
4. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce)
5. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (Michael Dorris)

Books I disliked in high school, but plan to reread: 

1. All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
2. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
3. The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
4. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
5. The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien)

Books I hated in high school and don't plan to ever reread, even though I probably should:

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
2. Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
3. Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
4. Grendel (John Gardner)
5. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

My most loved book from high school: A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

My most hated book from high school: A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)

If you read my last post, you already know how I feel about A Prayer for Owen Meany. So let me just say that I have a real problem with A Farewell to Arms. Which is quite sad, really, because I've been told that I would enjoy other Hemingway books. But nope, you missed your chance, Mr. Hemingway, for writing the lousiest ending in the history of literary lousy endings. It's the type of ending I would expect from a Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks novel. If someone can formulate a really convincing argument, maybe I'll move this book up to the "plan to reread" list, but that has yet to happen. 

February 2013

Books Bought:

• Nineteenth Century Music (Carl Dahlhaus)
• A Composer's Insight: Thoughts, Analysis, and Commentary on Contemporary Masterpieces for Wind Band: Volume 2 (ed. Timothy Salzman)
• The Oxford History of Western Music (Richard Taruskin)
• Music and the Skillful Listener: American Women Compose the Natural World (Denise Von Glahn)

Books Read:

• In One Person (John Irving)
• An Available Man (Hilma Wolitzer)
• Looking for Alaska (John Green)
• This One is Mine (Maria Semple)
• The Book of Music and Nature (Rothernberg and Ulvaeus)
• Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West (Beth E. Levy)

How you can tell that February is a busy time of the semester for a musicologist: I only bought books related to my classes and my thesis, and I only read four books for fun this whole month.

Things you need to know about the books I bought:

1. A Composer's Insight is really neat because it includes basically everything you would need to know to have a solid background about a handful of composers and the pieces they write for band...including David Maslanka. 
2. The Oxford History of Western Music is five volumes and 3,586 pages. It is every musicologist's dream to read it cover to cover (ok, maybe not every musicologist - I might be making that up. But these guys did it.) Richard Taruskin's writing style is wonderful. How did I afford this on a graduate student budget, you may ask...here's how: for every birthday/Christmas, my grandparents send me an amazon.com gift card. I always spend them on books. This year I just combined birthday and Christmas...totally worth it.
3. Dr. Von Glahn is teaching my musicology seminar this semester on music and nature. We're going to read her brand new book! (In this case, by "bought," I actually mean preordered.)

Things you need to know about the books I read:

1. I'm not sure how I missed reading Looking for Alaska in high school, but I did. I decided to remedy that when my sister showed me the book over break, and I was pleasantly surprised...the book is a nice mixture of A Separate Piece and Perks of Being a Wallflower.
2. This One is Mine is nowhere near as good as Where'd You Go, Bernadette (see last month). Overall, I was disappointed.
3. Frontier Figures is one of the best class-assigned books I've ever read. If you are even remotely interested in American music, read this book. It's completely fascinating and almost reads like a novel. And it's not just me saying this - it's not even just musicologists! One of my favorite oboists is in the class with me, and she will tell you the same thing. (Confession: as I am writing this, I haven't actually finished the book...but the last 25 pages are Thursday's assignment, so I'll still have finished the book in February.)

And finally - time to talk about In One Person. If you have ever discussed reading with me, you probably know that John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my all-time favorite books. However, the only other book by Irving that I've read (I think I talked about it on this blog a long time ago) wasn't one I particularly enjoyed, so I was intrigued when I heard that his newest book was the first since Owen Meany to be written in first person. I've had a few weeks now to digest my reactions to In One Person, and I have to conclude that it is probably going to become one of my favorite books if it holds up when the first re-reading comes around. 

The book is narrated by Billy and covers almost his whole life. Billy is bisexual (although for the first chunk of his life he is just confused), and Irving has created a character who I think is impossible to fail to empathize with. Aspects of the plot are very similar to Owen Meany (and many of Irving's other novels) - we've got a narrator whose biological father is out of the picture and a private school for boys in a New England, pre-Vietnam setting, for one thing. More importantly, the second half of this book covers the AIDS epidemic, something we rarely hear about, in the same deftly poignant way that Owen Meany tackles the Vietnam War. 

While I recommend Owen Meany to almost everyone I meet, I'm hesitant to do the same with In One Person - I'm just not quite sure why. Yes, the topic is one that some people might not feel comfortable with, but in my eyes, that's more reason to read this book. (Also, what is the point of reading literature that doesn't make you uncomfortable?) However, I think it's the type of book that readers need to discover for themselves, if that makes any sense. I think two types of people will appreciate this book: people who personally identify with Billy (which clearly won't be just bisexuals) and people who read enough to tackle the deeper meaning behind the topics introduced in this book - readers who recognize when a book should be read slowly and thoughtfully and are patient enough to do so. I read this book over a span of two weeks, which is a fairly long time when I am completely absorbed in a book...I wouldn't recommend reading more than a chapter in one sitting. 

That's all I have for this month - happy reading!