Books I Read in October: 2011

I was excited about the new Fall TV season, but I've already given up on so many shows. Sigh. I really don't care about anything new except Up All Night. I've also started watching The Walking Dead. I love to imagine the actors who play zombies being all actorly about their craft: "I love working with Shane. He's a very, very generous actor and never wastes bullets." "I inhabit my character completely. It's what I do. I can't not pull out veins and gobble them up." "People probably think it's easy to stumble around moaning and staring and hungering for human flesh and to be completely honest with you--it is easy--but it's surreal, too."

I have demoted a few shows to "watch while reading" status. After that it's just a few clicks away from "Cancel Season Pass." That's life.

So I read 4 books last month. For those of you keeping track, that's 61 books this year. Here's how I read so much: I'm really, really smart. (Unlike a zombie! FACIAL BURN.) Just kidding. I'm not that smart. But I do make time for reading by having very few friends, hobbies, or interests. It is, obviously, a trade off. 


The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

This is a pleasant and well-written book about a family with three sisters and all the weirdness between them. It's good. Not great, but good (in my estimation). And they're obsessed with Shakespeare, which is fun but something you might hate in real life.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe

I LOVE post-rehab Rob Lowe. He knows everyone and has led a surprisingly interesting life. This is a very entertaining book. I think Rob Lowe seems like a great guy--still married, kind of funny, thoughtful father,  lit-rally one of the nicest guys I know.


Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese

This is such a cool cookbook. It tells you what is worth making from scratch and what you should just go ahead and buy. It's written by our beloved Tipsy Baker and when I say "written," I do mean that she writes the heck out of this book which I read cover to cover. It's interspersed with essays and descriptions of food and mishaps and obsessive chicken and goat acquisition. Hailing from an LDS, northern-Utahn grandmother, Jennifer Reese proves that there is a Mormon mommy blogger in all of us.

See further proof here:

Oh Brandon! Get a Mormon Mommy blog already, would you?

And I just finished A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

This is a clever book. It's smart and well-written and compelling despite it's R-rated nature which is usually a turn-off for me. I don't necessarily recommend it because its depiction of the human condition is just a little bleak for my taste. I don't love this book, but I admire it. It's interesting and modern--it's more modern than post-modern. It's post-post-modern. One whole chapter is a PowerPoint presentation which is super meta. Cool. The book is a series of stories about different people, all somewhat linked, which revolve around youth culture and the music industry.  There's a lot of depravity in it which I don't tolerate well--it gets me down. But it's remarkable in its way.

Plus, Jennifer Egan beat Franzen for the Pulitzer with this book! I hate that guy so, HOLLA.