Read in January

At the start of this month I decided I would try and read a book a week for the next year, or at least try. But my problem of always reading more than one at a time creeps up on me ... and right now I find myself at least 100 pages in to four different books. Oops.

This month I did manage to finish all the way through three. For book group, we read The Tracker by Tom Brown, Jr. This is a nonfiction account of Tom Brown, Jr's early experiences in life with tracking, and surviving on his own in the natural world. It's fascinating the amount of information he knows about an animal from reading their tracks, and it made me want to go root around in my back yard and see what is lurking out there.

I am a big fan of memoirs, and food, so it comes as no surprise to me that food memoirs are probably my favorite type of book. The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz falls in to this category. After years of living in the Bay area, and working as a pastry chef at Chez Panisse, Lebovitz decides to move to Paris. The descriptions of food make me want to eat and eat, and his sarcastic writing is entertaining and filled me with wanderlust. His writing reminded me of David Sedaris in some ways. And, as you might have guessed from the title, most the recipes involve desserts, which made me rush to the bakery down the street to get something sweet while I was reading.

Years ago Renata recommended The World According to Garp by John Irving to me. I bought a copy quickly after that, for a few dollars in the backpacking hub of Bangkok. I carried it around for a few months, and sold it, unread before I moved back to Eugene. So hopefully she will be pleased to know that five years later, I finally read it. I would count this among my top favorite books, ever. It took me two weeks to read the last ten pages because I was so, so sad for it to finally end. As the title suggests, it's a pretty epic story spanning the entirety of Garp's life. As is true with every Irving book I've read, there are some very odd, somewhat disturbing elements to the book, but that ends up adding to the whole world of Garp. I have yet to see the movie, but figure I should give myself some time before doing so. Not to mention after recently watching season 4 of Dexter, the thought of seeing John Lithgow in anything might give me more nightmares.

And as mentioned, I am currently in the middle of: Straight Man by Richard Russo, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale. Hopefully I'll finish those by the end of February ...