The books of February 2011

Since the Oscars are tomorrow and I know that I'll be more concerned with them than posting, I thought I should do this now. I still have one more movie to watch (The Kids Are Alright) to have seen 8/10 of the best pic noms...I'm going to try and see it tonight. I did finally watch The Social Network and was pretty mad that I liked it so much. Darn you, Sorkin! <shakes fist ineffectually at sky>

This month I didn't buy too many books. However, a theme will emerge as you read, that will eventually take this blog into a different spin later this year. Most are still on my to-be-read list: The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance by Elna Baker, At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life by Wade Rouse, The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen, Time Out Rome Shortlist 2011 by Time Out Guides,  Frommer's Naples & the Amalfi Coast: Day by Day by Nicky Swallow, and Hide This Italian Phrase Book by Nadja Rizutti.

The books I read this month constitutes a small list. As I stated last month, I had started reading Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. It took me all month as I read other items to break it up into more bite sized pieces: Every Boy's Got One by Meg Cabot, Time Out Rome Shortlist 2011, Venice Is A Fish: A Sensual Tale by Tiziano Scurpa, and I'm wrapping up the month reading Italy, A Love Story: Women Write about the Italian Experience edited by Camille Cusumano.

Venice Is A Fish is an interesting little book I picked up at the library. The author uses different things to describe Venice and how Venice matches the meaning of those items...like when Venice is a face (or is it mask?), it represents how people mask themselves with their different faces (happy, sad, busy, etc.) even though the place is so small that everyone knows everyone else's business so the masks don't matter. It doesn't stand out to me as something I would normally read, but it wasn't a bad filler item.

The Rome Shortlist 2011 was VERY informative...and kind of overwhelming. I will have to go back through it and take some notes for planning, but mostly, the brief descriptions did help narrow some things down for me, but left me with the feeling that I just want to see it all (impossible in a few days). As far as travel guides go, I did like how this was broken into known sections of the city and included tips on whether or not places took cash or credit and things like that. The pictures, though small, were very pretty.

I own most of the Meg Cabot older-than-teen books. When my friends and I started talking more seriously about travel in Italy, I went and grabbed Every Boy's Got One off my shelf and re-read it...and then gave it to my friends to read as well. The main character in the book is the maid of honor for her best friend who is eloping to Italy to marry the love of her life. If you haven't read any of Cabot's books like this, you should. Her style for a series of slightly related books is to use current technologies as the recording devices of the characters' stories. In this particular book, they are using Blackberries for email and texts, journals and PDAs, and occasionally, just hand-written notes. Given the way most of us live today, it gives the story a feeling of truth...of something you would do yourself. Anyway, bride, groom, maid of honor, best man, and some local Italians comes together for a hilarious, fluffy tale about a wedding that almost wasn't. At the end of the book, there's an author section where Cabot talks about the inspiration for the story: her own elopement to Italy! It is a very fun and entertaining read.

Cleopatra, however, was not a fun and entertaining read. I know that history is spotty at best when it comes to Cleopatra. We tend to take what we've seen in movies, or the HBO series Rome, to be truth rather than fiction. So I was really excited to read a biography about a very strong woman at a time when in most parts of the world, women were pretty much there to breed and take care of the men. And the beginning of the book pointed that out. Cleopatra and the women in her family were indeed, very strong willed, highly educated, politically savvy, and prone to violence and revenge in order to stay alive long enough to make a difference in Egyptian history. I was hooked for a couple of chapters and then I found that I could care less about it...even when I tried to imagine the people who played these historic figures as the actors who portrayed them in HBO's Rome. I figured I would never be bored with those people in my head. I was wrong. I know there's not a lot of actual historical information available about her rule beyond the Latin writings of the era and later, but seriously, if I buy a biography about someone who was real, I would expect more fact than conjecture. I felt like the whole book simply revisited all possible rumors about her and her relationships. Only the fighting was real and documented. Although, thinking about it, maybe that's the point (or should be) of having political leaders...showing a capability to rule and strength in intelligence and battle are good things...knowing about their affairs isn't the point. I don't know...something to think about. It's not like hooking up with Caesar or Marc Antony were bad ideas from a political standpoint...it was actually kind of genius. Overall, I guess I'm glad I read it, but it took me longer than expected and I didn't really care for it.

Hopefully by Monday night, I'll be finished with the book of short essays about Italy written by women I got from the library. I'm on the 5th or 6th one now. All of the stories are different, but so far, my favorite is the girl who went to Milan to meet her summer fling for a week. They stayed with his grandmother. She ended up falling in love with the grandmother and her lifestyle and not really liking the boy at all! Her descriptions of his lame attempts to be like a boyfriend and her comparisons of what she'd rather be doing when they were out (going with him to a fancy restaurant vs eating grandmother's fabulous cooking and watching the Simpsons dubbed in Italian) are hysterical.

Another reason I didn't read that many books this month? I finished a couple of scarves to give away later this year as gifts. Clearly it was a lot easier to knit when the TV was on than it was to read.

Tomorrow night is the Oscars. There should be quite a few friends here to watch it with me. I will probably write some more then...maybe...or I might just sit back and enjoy :)