Book Review: Literary Listography

I would consider myself a fairly organized person, and as such, I tend to gravitate towards lists. While I have several list apps, I also like and use pen and paper lists. Given this and my love of books, Literary Listography seemed like a natural fit for me.

For those aren't familiar with the Listography books, they are an offshoot of the website and app that encourages users to create and share public lists about anything (you can read about it on the Listography website). Since the first Listography book was published in 2007, there have been 12 books in the series that focus on different themes, including friendship, food, and film.

Picture from Listography.com

Unlike other books, the Listography books is very much driven and created by the reader, and Literary Listography is no exception. Billed as a "selection of lists chosen just for the book lover," the book includes 70+ lists that are designed to delight and intrigue any bibliophile. Rather than providing you with lists of books to explore, this book relies on you to interact with it and create lists based on the prompts. With prompts ranging from the expected ("My Favorite Authors") to the atypical ("Fictional Crimes I've Witnessed"), this book is fun and thought provoking. Some of my favorite prompts included "Fictional Characters I'd Go on a Date With" (let's be honest - if you love books, you've probably considered this. For the record, my list includes Gilbert Blythe from the Anne of Green Gables books), "Cultures I've Immersed Myself in Through Literature," and "Words I Love and Hate the Sound Of."

Besides the great list ideas, Literary Listography had a number of features that I appreciated and that added to the experience. Each prompt is accompanied by a full-color picture depicting a book related to the prompt it faces. For instance, a picture of a backpack and hiking books symbolizing Cheryl Strayed's Wild goes with the prompt "My Favorite Memoirs and Autobiographies." Besides this, the physical features of the book make it a pleasure to use. The pages have a nice weight and texture that hold up to even fountain pen ink and resist smudges, and the book pages lie flat, which makes it easy to write inside.

If  you are looking for a book to help you record your reading life and thoughts, Literary Listography could be the perfect book for you. It would also make a great gift for the book lover in your life (just be prepared for him or her to become preoccupied by it).

Foodie Friday: A Review of "Cooking for Mr. Latte"

Despite the name of this post, I have a love-hate relationship with foodies. I appreciate their dedication to cooking and fresh food (they are the anti-Sandra Lee) even as I find some of them holier-than-thou and insufferably pretentious. Consequently, it took me a long time to pick up Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte, which is basically a memoir with recipes. In the super-short chapters, Hesser writes about her love of food while also discussing her relationship with Mr. Latte, who gets his pseudonym because he had the audacity to order a latte after dinner (the Italian rule is that milky drinks are for before 11:00 am).

This anecdote, from the very first chapter, almost turned me off of the book, but since I was stuck on a six-hour train ride and my iPhone wasn't getting great reception, I ended up reading the entire book in one sitting. Reflecting on reading it, I must admit that the first chapter is a very accurate indicator of what will come. The following chapters detail Ms. Hesser's obsession with food, her food-related quirks, and her ongoing romance with Mr. Latte, who isn't quite the foodie she is (besides the latte gaffe, she seems genuinely horrified by his use of Equal and his choice in restaurants). She also includes a few recipes at the end of each chapter.

To Ms. Hesser's credit, she does not shy away from including her foibles and shortcomings. She talks about her perfectionist tendencies in the kitchen and her obsessiveness with all things related to food. However, in the end, you get the sense that she sees her food snobbery as completely justified and right. Not only is she genetically predisposed to her strong opinions about food (her mother and grandmother both appear in the book as wonderful and opinionated cooks), but the recipes often lean towards the gourmet (vanilla beans, prosciutto, and veal abound in the ingredients list).

In some cases, she won me over. Her descriptions of what she brings to eat on airplanes had me thinking about what I might do to make my next trip more bearable (the food on Amtrak is many things, but inspired it isn't). I also loved her essay on eating alone, which I had read before in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant. At her best, she reminded me of the joy and pleasure of cooking good food. At her worst (and most snobbish), she made me want to throw the book off of the train and promise myself that I would never, ever chastise anyone for using produce that came from the frozen food section of the local grocery store (she includes a very stern warning about using store-bought, frozen blueberries in one recipe).

Like my views on foodies, my opinion of this book is rather complicated. As I noted above, there are sections of the book that I truly enjoyed. Also, there is something very refreshing and invigorating about reading someone's passionate opinions on food. That said, there was many a times I wanted to shake Hesser, who sometimes comes off as insufferably elitist. Her view of food (and her world) are definitely not those of someone who is on a budget. While I do recommend this book if you are looking for a light read about love and food (and the love of food), you should definitely be aware that, if you aren't a food snob, this book might either make you one or make you want to distance yourself from anything foodie related.

Book Review: Not Quite What I Had Planned

"The universe is full of irony."

Today marked the end of my comprehensive exam, which is basically five-day research and writing marathon. After I turned in the resulting 39-page paper this afternoon, I found that a book I ordered had arrived while I was out. The book was Not Quite What I Had Planned: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Based on the submissions to Smith Magazine by various people, the title accurately describes the book's contents. Smith's challenge to people is to condense their lives into six words. Initially, this seems like a simple task. Some might think "Anyone can think of six words to say to describe himself. What's the challenge in that?" However, accurately and cohesively distilling a life and personality into six words is considerably more challenging that many people expect.

One of the great misconceptions I run into with students is that a longer paper is harder to write and thus is better than a shorter paper. They often have a hard time understanding that more does not always signify better. Perhaps part of that is because of our society. We are a culture that champions that bigger is better and more is always preferred to enough. Consequently, the beauty and power of a six word memoir may be hard for some to see. Not Quite What I Had Planned (which I wish I had thought of - it is an awesome six word description of my life) serves as a testament to the beauty and power that can be found in six words.

The memoirs range from the humorous ("Right place, right time, good lawyer") to the bittersweet ("It's like forever, only much shorter"). Regardless of the tone, almost every six-word memoir gives some idea of what the person who wrote it is like. While it may not provide an exact description, it is possible to look at each of these mini-memoirs and understand, on some level, what has happened to the person in question or what his (or her) philosophy on life might be. Like the PostSecret website, these six-word memoirs give readers the sense that they are not alone and that someone else feels the way they feel. Besides the title, I was particularly drawn to "In a Manolo world, I'm Keds" and Stephen Colbert's submission, "Well, I thought it was funny."

Like the memoirs it contains, Not Quite What I was Planning is a book that has the ability to take on many guises. While I read the entire contents of the book in ninety minutes, I do not delude myself by thinking that I have even started to scratch the surface of what many of these memoirs actually mean. This is a book that invites rereading and reevaluation so that readers can continually try and make greater meaning from each contributor's six words. I, for one, am looking forward to that opportunity and to the challenge of writing my own perfect six-word memoir. Here is my second attempt*: "So tired. Work left to do."

*My first attempt is at the beginning of this post.

Book Review: I Know You're Out There

I'm a sucker for essay collections and memoirs, particularly of the humorous bent. Given my steady diet of David Sedaris, Anne Fadiman, and NPR's "This I Believe" series, it shouldn't come as any surprise that I eventually stumbled upon Michael Beaumier's I Know You're Out There: Private Longings, Public Humiliations and Other Tales from the Personals. In this collection of essays, Beaumier mines his experiences as a personals editor at a Chicago newspaper for both humor and poignancy and manages to find both. Interspersed with stories of his family and his own ailing relationship, Beaumier's work is both funny and sentimental.

If this sounds like the description of a Sedaris book, I completely understand. There are certain similarities between the two authors: both are essayists that concentrate on life's minutiae, both have and write about their somewhat dysfunctional families (Sedaris's seems to win for having more dysfunction), both tend to mix humor and introspection. However, there are some notable differences between Sedaris's and Beaumier's writings. Unlike Sedaris, whose essays are usually full of his witty, dry humor, Beaumier tends to have a harder time skewering his subjects. While some of them seems like easy targets (the married woman who puts in personal ads, the prisoner looking for a companion), Beaumier tends to instill each of them with a quiet dignity that wouldn't be found in Sedaris's essays.

Consequently, Beaumier's writing sometimes defaults to sentimentality (occasionally with a touch of bathos). His failed relationship with his boyfriend as well some of his essays about his clients sometimes turn into a figurative group hug. However, if he does tend to be a little maudlin in places, he is also scathingly funny in others. For instance, his attempts to play matchmaker (literally and figuratively) often have disastrously hilarious results.

While I Know You're Out There is a little uneven, it is still an enjoyable book, particularly if you are having problems with your love life. On a rather random note, this book was one of my first "staff recommendations" when I worked at the bookstore. While some of my "staff selects" didn't do so well (Then She Found Me didn't sell one copy), I Know You're Out There was so popular that they kept it on the recommendations wall for several months after I left.