Babblings of a Muppet-Loving Freak

A truly pathetic number here.

The Marvels - I liked it. It's not a tier 1 Marvel classic, but I still basically liked it. And the Streisand scene was hilarious.
Mary - Mostly okay, but a little odd. Joseph appeared to be wearing trousers at one point.

That's it. I did rewatch some classics: Singin' in the Rain, The Sound of Music, Hello Dolly. I also started the second season of What If . . . ?, which I liked, but I haven't wrapped it up. I need to get back up to speed with the MCU.

As far as books, I warned you about the pathetic number. There were four. I started reading several other books, most of them re-reads (Jane Eyre, The Phantom Tollbooth) and some new ones (Wind in the Willows, Mysterious Benedict Society). My attention span was rotten.

The Life of Rosa Parks - Kathleen Connors - This was banned in Florida. It took all of five minutes or so to read and had nothing a sane person could possibly find objectionable.

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie - I listened to this as an audiobook while doing physical therapy. It was an excellent mystery.

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation - Rosemary Sullivan - Another audiobook, and a good thing because I would never have known how to pronounce all the Dutch words in this. They make a very strong case for one person. This gave me a sense of closure.

The Cat Who Had 14 Tales - Lillian Jackson Braun - A short story collection, all of them involving cats. I have a very low tolerance for sad animal stories, so some of these were too much for me, but several of them were good reads.

I read a lot of textbooks this year, so, blah on that. Among other things I read:

-The 10,000 Doors of January - Alix Harrow - Fun, creative, a little weird, but enjoyable.
-Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman - Wonderful, but by the end I kind of wanted all of them to die.
-The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Suzanne Collins - Interesting look into Snow's psyche as a teen
-Angel - Stacey Abbott - Critical look at all five seasons and the show's place in horror use
-The Body in the Library - Agatha Christie - Not her best. The reveal at the end was supposed to be chilling, but I kept thinking how stupid they all were.
-The Ickabog - J.K. Rowling - This was cute, in a depressing sort of way.

I very, very rarely read recently published books, so this includes some books that are decades old along with some re-reads.

10. Circe - Madeline Miller - One of the minor characters Odysseus meets on his homeward journey is given her own voice here, and I was very impressed by it.

9. Summerlong - Peter S. Beagle - Beagle has wonderful, beautiful sentences, and he creates a strange, almost eerie patchwork of reality and mythology here. Honestly, I wasn't taken with the plot so much, but he held my interest well.

8. Holes - Louis Sachar - I had heard of this book for years, but I completely misunderstood what it was. Somehow, I had the idea it was a comedy, and while there are some absurd elements in this, it's definitely not. It was a very good story, though.

7. Gmorning! Gnight! Little Pep Talks for Me & You - Lin-Manuel Miranda - Pairs of morning and evening greeting from the writer, these usually put a smile on my face each day. I'm re-reading it now.

6. A River in Darkness - Masaji Ishikawa - Non-fiction, autobiography of a boy who was moved to North Korea by his father, eventually growing to adulthood, marrying, having children, and fleeing back to Japan via crossing the river into South Korea. The situation in North Korea is devastating, far worse than I could have ever imagined.

5. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick - Chris Van Allsburg - Probably the strangest format this year, this is a series of prints, not necessarily related, that have a few explanatory sentences, and that's it. Stephen King got the idea for one of his stories from this.

4. The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers - Maxwell King - Biography of Fred Rogers, who apparently really was as wonderful as he appeared to be. Nice to deal with a decent person.

3. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Mildred D. Taylor - Cassie Logan and her family's troubles pretty much terrified me in this. Very intensely written drama about racial tensions in the South.

2. Fish Girl - Donna Jo Napoli and David Wiesner - If you squint hard, you can see "The Little Mermaid" here, but only barely. Mira has been raised to all but worship "Poseidon," but the lies around her start to unravel, and she realizes she needs to become herself. A really good graphic novel that I can't see unfolding equally well in any other genre.

1. The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank - This is the third time I have read this in total, with bits of it at other times. I re-read for a discussion at my college, and I was struck anew with how brilliant she was, how courageously honest. Absolutely stunning and heart-breaking.

According to my Goodreads account, I read 111 books this year, which is admittedly a lot, though that does include reading all 80 Caldecott Medal winners for a talk, so a large number of those were picture books (some of which were wonderful, and some of which were pretty dang awful, actually... The Biggest Bear, I'm looking at you).

So, here are my top 10 that weren't in that grouping, in no particular order. Do note I don't tend to read a lot of books that are brand new.

Becoming - Michelle Obama - I was so not expecting the surprise ending of her slaying Acathla at the end! Kidding. Obviously. This was a very interesting peek at her background, her relationship with her husband and children, and life in the White House in general. She is definitely an intelligent and highly determined person.

The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton - No, I hadn't read it before. Even as an English major and professor, I assure you there are a LOT of famous pieces of literature I've never read. Thankfully, this is no longer one of them. Excellent voice from the author, realistic, painful, and really likable though flawed characters.

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl - This memoir of a Jewish man who survived the Holocaust but lost pretty much everyone and everything else and how he coped with that could be intensely challenging, but his overall sense of the importance of giving life meaning, and that meaning can come in day-to-day things that add up to more, was amazing. This one is going to stick with me.

Wonderstruck - Brian Selzick - I fell completely in love with the author/artist's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and this is equally good. Partially told in prose, partially through illustrations, we follow two connected lives decades apart, one person born Deaf, and the other recently unable to hear. Amazingly beautiful storytelling.

The Handmaid's Tale - Margart Atwood - Another one of those "supposed to" books that I got around to reading finally, and I'm very happy I did, though this is far from a happy book. The strange thing is, while the books itself and the plot and the world-building were excellent, I didn't always like Offred all that much at times, which is fine, by the way, because she still interested me.

The Complete Peanuts: Volume 1 1950-1952 - Charles M. Schulz - Everyone knows Charlie Brown and Snoopy. But this was how it all started. It was fascinating to see what characters were central originally (Shermie and Violet with Patty, and not Peppermint Patty), the way the kids were depicted, and the way humor changes. Excellent and exhaustive interview with Schulz at the end from the 1980s as well.

Dietland - Sarai Walker - This was a very strange novel for me. It was at times sexually graphic, filled with foul language, and there was quite a bit of violence as well. The main character, Plum, is slowly pulled into a world of radical feminist beliefs, particularly in regards to body image, and it slowly becomes apparent how much of modern culture makes zero sense unless women really are being treated like things. Frightening, weird in places, but definitely something to think about.

The Ways of White Folks - Langston Hughes - I'm much more familiar with Hughes's poetry than his short stories, and this collection was eye-opening. Hughes basically discusses the way white people end up ruining black people's lives in a variety of different ways, or at least attempt to. It's painful in places since not everyone is the stock "racist." Some are people who were perhaps well-intentioned but are actually still guilty of prejudice or treat black people as a hobby. This is the 1930s, so how he got this published without being killed is pretty amazing.

The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros - Another collection of short stories, this time about a family of Hispanic descent living in a house that both embodies their dreams and their nightmares. They're moving up economically, but they're also trapped. Some of the stories are more light, some are very dark, but they paint a clear portrait of their world.

The Joy of Cookies: Cookie Monster's Guide to Life - Cookie Monster (that is literally the credit on Goodreads) - There had to be something delightfully light and fun here, and this is it. I wish I loved ANYTHING as much as Cookie loves his cookies. The enthusiasm is palpable. Furry, even.

For the curious, my 10 favorite Caldecott winners would be A Sick Day for Amos McGee (Stead), The Three Pigs (Wiesner), Flotsam (also Wiesner), Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak), The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Selznick), Locomotive (Floca), The Lion and the Mouse (Pickney), Jumanji (Van Allsburg), Ashanti to Zulu (Musgrove), and My Friend Rabbit (Rohmann).

Well, I had a goal of 81 books this year, but I managed 78. Not terrible, but I would have liked to hit the mark. Regardless, these are the top 10 books, in no particular order, that I read in 2017 (most of which were published earlier).

( Read more... )

I bought 17 22 books for still less than what one new paperback would have cost. I feel little guilt, though I can't figure out where I'm going to put all of them...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Red Tent
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
The Road
The Lovely Bones
Eat, Pray, Love
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
The Kite Runner
The Help
Atonement (can you tell they had a lot of extra book club selections available?)
The Art of Handmade Flowers
Treasured Recipes from the Charleston Cake Lady
Nightjohn
Winnie the Pooh (weirdly, I have never read this)
The Legendary Past: Roman Myths
The Night before Christmas (pop up edition)
College Algebra
Heloise and Abelard: A New Biography
Quiet as a Nun (it's Antonia Fraser, and I've loved her biographies)
Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters
Ben Franklin's Wit and Wisdom

Taken from petzipellepingo, chosen via reader vote. For the heck of it, I'm bolding what I've read and italicizing what I've seen as a film since almost all of these have a movie version, many of them classics.

( I've read very, very few. )
So, read 7, saw 15.
2020: read 8, saw 17
2022: read 10, saw 17

Also, a companion list of Wiki's Top 100 Mystery Novels of the Last 100 Years

( Same deal, bold I read it, italics I saw it )

Read 7 (with another coming soon), saw 12.
2020: Read 8, saw 13.
2022: Read 9, saw 13