We were a little preoccupied with an office birthday chez Zooba yesterday, but better late than never...Yesterday was World Poetry Day. Celebrate with these collections of verse. Or check out the Emo Haiku Generator for instant gratification! (via Nerve Scanner)
-Coleman Barks, A Year With Rumi
-Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry
-Garrison Keillor, Good Poems for Hard Times
This week, I ate a slice of homemade cake containing Guinness ice cream, Bailey's Irish Cream ice cream, and Jameson's Irish Whiskey-infused whipped cream (thanks again, Erik!). I realized two things: 1. Cake is delicious (seriously, I had no idea), and 2. It's almost St. Patrick's Day! Hence, the Irish reading list...
-Gwendolyn Bounds, Little Chapel on the River
-Frank McCourt, Teacher Man
-Douglas Brinkley and Julie M. Fenster, Parish Priest
Gawker ponders shrinking book review sections in the L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other top newspapers. Apparently, "the only book review in the country that will not be affected is the one that comes in the New York Times."
Yeah, Californians may not read book reviews, but don't forget that they've got literary cred with 826 Valencia and San Francisco's City Lights bookstore.
Wait a minute, that's just northern California...
-Janet Fitch, Paint it Black
-Sean Wilsey, Oh the Glory of It All
-Dr. Connie Guttersen, The Sonoma Diet
Happy International Women's Day, fellow non-males! I've been out of the office all day and haven't had the luxury of scouring through our titles at my desk...Here's an incomplete short list of ladyfolk titles. Any book suggestions to add, readers?
-Margaret Cho, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight
-Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed
-Maureen Dowd, Are Men Necessary?
-Joshua Zeitz, Flapper
*Update: also check out Chelsea Handler, My Horizontal Life
Not to get all Matrix on you, but Jean Baudrillard died at the age of 77 at his home in Paris (via BBC News). Who else but a Frenchman could have masterminded such advances in the field of semiotics?
OK, nerdfest is over. (But, seriously, you should rewatch The Matrix.)
On with it, then. The French reading list!
-Julia Child, My Life in France
-Daniel Young, The Bistros, Brasseries, and Wine Bars of Paris
-Sena Jeter Naslund, Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
This year's Oscars are two gay cowboys shy of being awesome. Nonetheless, don't miss the books that inspired last year's best films.
-James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia
-Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth
-Lauren Weisberger, The Devil Wears Prada
-Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness
I posted an article a couple of weeks ago about how audiobooks are gaining popularity among students. But what about cubicle dwellers on the go?
I've actually rocked some audiobooks on my iPod. And, multitasker that I am, they tend to be nonfiction titles on business, marketing, and new media. Here are my top picks, available from our friends at Audible.com.
-Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick
-Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics
-Chris Anderson, The Long Tail
-Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
I know I've been on a big "international books" tip lately...Maybe it's because American culture is all Anna Nicole Smith right now. Ahem. Anyway, Bookninja points out a surge in Indian literature. Plus, Arundhati Roy is back and better than ever! Here are some great reads from the seventh-largest country in the world (thanks, Wikipedia!):
-Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games
-Thrity Umrigar, The Space Between Us
-Vikram Seth, Two Lives
-Monica Ali, Alentejo Blue
According to this week's New York magazine, Valentine's Day is when sneaky men buy gifts for their wives...and their girlfriends. And, according to Junot Diaz, infidelity sells! Happy Heart Day, everyone!
-Gabriel García Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores
-Karrine Steffans, Confessions of a Video Vixen
-T.C. Boyle, The Inner Circle
Thanks to http://junkmail.chattablogs.com/ for this graphic.
In real-life mystery news, someone swiped The Maltese Falcon as well as "several vintage and signed books by and about Maltese Falcon author Dashiell Hammett" from a San Francisco eatery this past weekend. If you're in the mood for even more intrigue, check out these true crime reads.
-Sebastian Junger, A Death in Belmont
-Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
-Edward Dolnick, The Rescue Artist
Happy birthday to you, Mr. Lincoln, the Dems' favorite Republican! For history buffs, might I suggest Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin and Manhunt by Lincolnologist James Swanson. And, here, a Lincoln comic by Conan O'Brien from back in his Harvard Lampoon days...
Factory Girl, the biopic on socialite and Andy Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick, opened in New York this past weekend. Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce give great performances despite the glib screenplay.
For a more complex look at the tragic lives of bluebloods, check out these rich reads.
-Rich Cohen, Sweet and Low
-Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
-Sean Wilsey, Oh the Glory of It All
Today marks the beginning of New York Fashion Week, which--for us cubicle folk--really only means more traffic on 42nd St. Here's my list of fave fashion-related novels from the poignant and literary (Didion!) to the guilty pleasures (Weisberger).
-Lauren Weisberger, The Devil Wears Prada
-Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays
-Mary Gaitskill, Veronica: A Novel
-Jennifer Egan, Look at Me
-Elmore Leonard, Mr. Paradise
Slate smartypanteses Ron Rosenbaum and Steven Metcalf are discussing Rosenbaum's latest book: The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups.
As a wee bairn, I thought Shakespeare was dull and overwrought. I went to a production of Macbeth, fell asleep halfway through and woke up only because one of the actors slammed a baby(doll) against a table.
Then I took graduate classes and was forced to read Hamlet -- hmm! Not bad. Then I accidentally ended up at a production of Henry IV: tremendous! ...And surprisingly accessible, considering the play was put on more than 400 years after its original performance.
Shakespeare doesn't have to be the lofty prose, ornamented with "symbolism," that was foisted on you by your 11th-grade English teacher. In fact, Rosenbaum argues (successfully, I think) that it's the ultimate cure for self-importance.
So read this. And then, have a little fun already and read this.
The WaPo has published its Fall Reading List, and we're delighted to tell you that we have a whole bunch of books for ya...
but except for Frederick Forsyth's The Afghan, I can't talk about them!
It's all very hush-hush, but we'll be selling a lot of the books on the lsit, especially in the thrillers section...so keep checking back at www.zooba.com and keep happy this fall!