I'm baaaaaaaaack

Happy New Year! Or should  I say, Bonne Année! I'm back in the good old US of A and comfortably ensconced in my daily routine again, though my sleep cycles are still screwed up.

Being in France again was equal parts awesome and frustrating; awesome = gorgeous boulevards, awesome museums and delicious coffee, frustrating = my rusty French, being vegetarian in a meat-lovers paradise, and angry CDG airport employees.  Probably the best moment was being in front of Notre Dame when the clock hit midnight and hundreds of tourists and French people started screaming BONNE ANNEE as we popped champagne and staggered down the streets next to the Seine.  We capped off the night with a nutella-banana crepe and it was amazing.

I could talk about the trip for hours but this is a blog about books not my vacation, so to bring it back on target I want to tell you about my book buying binges in France.  When it was all said and done, we only managed to fit in 2 anglo-bookstores (Shakespeare and Company and The Abbey, a Canadian bookstore) out of the 8 or 9 I had on my list.  However, that turned out to be more than enough to feed my habit.  The most exciting thing about book shopping in Paris is access to all the beautiful UK editions of books, specifically Penguin UK, Picador and Vintage books.  Between the two of us, Jon and I snapped up 4 of Coralie Bickford-Smith's collection of redesigned F. Scott Fitzgerald classics, a beautiful Viking edition of Nicole Krauss’s The Great House, the gorgeous Picador editions of Cormac McCarthy’s Sutree, Outer Dark and Blood Meridian, a Picador edition of DeLillo’s Point Omega, a Vintage Classics edition of Heller's Catch-22, a Penguin UK edition of Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, and a White's Books pocket classic of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

I already owned most of the books that I bought, but I couldn't help myself!  I constantly wonder why UK editions are so much better designed than US editions; not to say that US books aren't pretty, but I always find myself attracted to the UK versions so much more. Do the British just have better taste?  I am seriously considering more vacations to Europe just to buy more UK books (not that I really need an excuse to want to go back to Europe!).

Now that I have quite a few duplicate books, I'm thinking about doing some book give-aways consiting of my (gently used) US copies.  Would anyone be interested in winning free books? FREE! BOOKS! Just need to think of fun little contests, HMMM.

More pictures of the beautiful beautiful books we bought after the jump.

End of the year wrap-up: An OCD girl's guide

So Christmas and the New Year are almost here and I'm about to take off to Paris with Jon for 9 days.  It's been 7 years since I've last been and I'm really excited to look at the city through new, grown-up eyes.  The thing I'm probably most looking forward to (besides gorging on delicious delicious stinky cheese) is checking out the bookstores.  Not just Shakespeare and Company but Village Voice, The Abbey, Tea and Tattered Pages, San Francisco Book Co., and all the rest. Of course this is not including the awesome bookstore/boutique at the Centre Pompidou and all the FNACs I plan on visiting to stock up on cheap french livres de poche.  My partner in crime is giving me hell for thinking about bringing a small suitcase in addition to my large suitcase just in case I buy too many books (or wine). He'll just have to deal.

Anyway, as I think about this year in reading, I have to say I'm slightly disappointed.  Because I'm OCD, I like to keep a list of everything I've read in a year (you probably do too, right?) and it's neat to look over.  Some months I was a reading machine and other months I could barely finish a fluffy book. I read a lot of comics in January and July and surprisingly my most reading-est month was October. I posted my list below in case you're also an OCD list maker/checker (also, post your list in the comments if you keep one, of course I want to examine what you read too!) I also set some "new year" goals for 2011 for reading:

1. I WILL finish The Instructions and start and finish Infinte Jest. I just will.
2. I will find another comic series to devour (maybe Transmetropolitan?)
3. I will read over 100 books again.
4. I WILL READ MORE NON-FICTION
5. Read more published-in-2011 books so reviews and recommendations can be timely.

Regarding #3 - I know, I know, size doesn't matter, but come on. It kind of does. Weirdly, I read the most when I was in graduate school and working a full time job; I think I hit 120 books that year.  So really, I have no excuses. If I can just figure out a way to not fall asleep every time I lay down to read, I might actually accomplish it.

What are your book reading goals, if you have any? Can you recommend any good non-fiction? Do you think I'm weird for having book goals?

My full list after the jump

January 2010

1. Hard Rain  Falling – Don Carpenter

2. Nine Stories – J.D. Salinger

3. A Way of Life Like Any Other – Darcy O’Brian

4. Stitches: a memoir – David Small (graphic novel)

5. A Fair Maiden – Joyce Carol Oates

6. Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1-5 – Bryan Lee O’Malley

7. The Walking Dead Vol. 1-11 – Robert Kirkman

February 2010

8. There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales – Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

9. And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks – Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs

10. The Boat – Nam Le

March 2010

11. Burmese Days – George Orwell

12. Galapagos – Kurt Vonnegut

April 2010

13. Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain

14. Committed – Elizabeth Gilbert

May 2010

15. Fishtown (comic) – Kevin Colden

16. Any Easy Intimacy (comic) - Jeffrey Brown

17. Eat When You Feel Sad – Zachary German

18. Dimanche and Other Stories – Irene Nemirovsky

19. The Plague – Albert Camus

20. Livability – Jon Raymond

June 2010

21. The Chrysalids – John Wyndham

22. The Most Beautiful Book in the World – Eric- Emmanuel Schmitt

23. Hotel Iris – Yoko Ogawa

24. Medium Raw – Anthony Bourdain

25. On a Dollar a Day – Christopher Greenslate & Kerri Leonard

26. How Did You Get This Number – Sloane Crosley

July 2010

27. Mr. Peanut – Adam Ross

28. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne – Brian Moore

29. After the Fall – Kylie Ladd

30. Y the Last Man, vol. 1-10 – Brian K. Vaughn

31. Bad Marie – Marcy Dermansky

August 2010

32. A Common Pornography – Kevin Sampell

33. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy

34. The Group – Mary McCarthy

35. My Abandonment – Peter Rock

36. True Grit – Charles Portis

37. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – David Mitchell

September 2010

38. Freedom – Jonathan Franzen

39. Sourland – Joyce Carol Oates

40. Room – Emma Donaghue

October 2010

41. Await Your Reply – Dan Chaon

42. Skippy Dies – Paul Murray

43. 703: How I Lost More Than a Quarter of a Ton and Gained a Life – Nancy Makin

44. Let the Right One In – John Ajuvide Lindqvist

45. Brooklyn – Colm Toibin

46. Outer Dark – Cormac McCarthy

47. Let The Great World Spin – Colum McCann

48. This is Where I Leave You – Jonathon Tropper

49. The Secret Lives of People in Love – Simon Van Booy

50. We Were the Mulvaneys – Joyce Carol Oates

51. Little Bird From Heaven – Joyce Carol Oates

52. Walking Dead #12

November 2010

53. Celebrity Chekhov – Ben Greenman

54. The World According to Garp – John Irving

55. Devil in the White City – Erik Larson

December 2010

56. Arkansas – John Brandon

57. The Imperfectionists – Tom Rochman

58. Where Men Win Glory – Jon Krakauer

59. Mr. Toppit – Charles Elton

60. Just Kids – Patti Smith

Books I attempted but failed to finish (but still have illusions of finishing)

1. The Instructions – Adam Levin

2. Lords of Misrule – Jaimy Gordon

3. Wuthering Heights

4. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov

5. Foundation I – Isaac Asimov