Belles-Lettres: Brilliant, Blue-Ribbon Books 2013

Biggest Surprise of the Year -  I Loved This Book! 

So Big by Edna Ferber; published in 1924

Top Three Non-Fiction Books That Were Entire Educations in Themselves: 

At Home by Bill Bryson; How to Live, Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell; The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey

Top Three Fiction Books (not mysteries): 

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; Equilateral by Ken Kalfus; Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.

Author Most Read: 

Donald Westlake - Six of his Dortmunder capers

Most Delightful Reread: 

Counting My Chickens... by The Duchess of Devonshire

Brothers I Would Most Like to Meet: 

Reggie and Nigel Heath of The Baker Street Letters, The Brothers of Baker Street, and The Baker Street Translation by Michael Robertson

Best Foreign Location: 

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and West With the Night by Beryl Markham

Most Laugh-Out-Loud Dysfunctional Family: 

The Spellman Files and The Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

Dreamiest Tale: 

The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys

Best Road Trip: 

The Lost Continent - Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson

Mystery Writer I Am So Glad I Found: 

Peter Lovesey - The Last Detective, Diamond Solitaire, The Summons, and Bloodhounds. 

As If I Needed More Reasons Not To Go On A Cruise: 

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace.

Proof That The South Shall Rise Again: 

Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White.

Authors I Have Met and Their Books I Read This Year: 

Duffy Brown (Killer in Crinolines), William Zinsser (The Writer Who Stayed), and George S. McGovern (Abraham Lincoln)

So Big by Edna Ferber

Might I suggest that you close the book/books you are reading, return the books you just checked out from the library, ignore your ToBeRead list, and forget the piles of books by your bedside, your reading chair, and on your kitchen table.

My recommendation is that you find a copy of So Big by Edna Ferber and read it right now. It is the Great American Novel. Don't worry if you aren't an American because the tale of Selina Peake is universal. It just happens to take place in and near Chicago in the years just before and after the turn of the twentieth century.

I wouldn't dare give away any of the plot. I will tell you that Ms. Peake is an adventurous soul who is up for anything life has to send her way. She is a sparkling, glittering personality who finds herself in the mud and the poverty of a small truck-farming community south of Chicago. And still she continues to shine. She is a woman who finds beauty in the green and purple cabbages growing in the fields. How she manages to combine her love of beauty and the backbreaking, heartbreaking toil that comes with life on a small, uncompromising plot of land is the tale. 

Ms. Ferber has a lot to say in this novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925. She writes about fertilizer and friendship; poverty and prosperity; asparagus and art; city life and country life; architecture and authenticity; dreams and despair. 

And hands. Ms. Ferber is fascinated with hands. She often refers to the rough, gnarled, scarred hands of the farmers and the soft, white, useless hands of the wealthy. (Guess which ones she admires the most.)

I really can't say enough about this book. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, thinking it would be outdated and fussy. It is anything but. I sometimes grow weary of characters in novels, but I never tired of Selina, the people in her life, and Ms. Ferber's look at the American culture of a century ago.

Highly, highly recommended. It will go on my list of favorite books to be reread and enjoyed. I hope it will go on yours.

A Reading Agenda

Here is my reading agenda for the week:

So Big by Edna Ferber - I was totally captivated with the start of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The prose and the characters are like nothing I expected. And, I learned on the first page what the title refers to which was unexpected as well. I am only one chapter (25 pages) into the story, which begins in Chicago around the turn of the 20th century, and focuses on the life of Selina Peake.

Drowned Hopes by Donald Westlake - Master (well, sort of) criminal John Dortmunder has his work cut out for him in this his seventh caper. An ex-cell mate has engaged Dortmunder to help him retrieve a coffin he buried in upstate New York that holds $700,000 in cash - the bounty from a job. The only problem is that now the coffin is not only in the ground but also under 50 feet of water - thanks to a newly formed reservoir. I have High Hopes for this one!

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace - This was a recommendation by Kevin Smokler in his book Practical Classics (here). The titular piece, one of seven non-fiction pieces included in the book, takes a look at Wallace's 'fun' traveling aboard a luxury cruise liner. This will be my first experience reading anything by this almost legendary author who is probably most well-known for his fiction.

Books Across the Threshold

Three more books wandered (mostly) unbidden across my threshold yesterday.

My neighbor brought over a copy of So Big by Edna Ferber that she and her book club had just read and that she thought I might enjoy. I have not read anything by Ms. Ferber but this book, published in 1924, won the Pulitzer Prize. Ms. Ferber also penned Show Boat, Giant, and Cimarron. All of these novels were made into movies. Surely we have all seen Giant starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean.

Another volume that strolled in was a mystery by a local author Gerald McDaniel. I recently met Mr. McDaniel and he kindly sent me a copy, by way of a mutual friend, of this tale, Night Sweats & Graffiti, which takes place during the tumultuous month of September 2001.

The third book was Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose. Apparently, right now, I cannot get enough of Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery expedition. It was offered on Amazon as an ebook for $1.99. Click.

So my book pile grew by three in the space of just a few hours. Anything of interest find its way onto your stack?