{"id":3446,"date":"2005-08-04T15:44:40","date_gmt":"2005-08-04T19:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3446"},"modified":"2022-01-24T22:09:48","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T03:09:48","slug":"summer-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3446","title":{"rendered":"Summer Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

… of the stars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I found this very enjoyable reading. What are “stars” reading this summer? Looks like pretty much everybody is reading Harry Potter (except Harold Bloom who is spending the summer re-reading the god-awful canon of the god-awful Henry James).<\/p>\n

I love the stream-of-conscious way people answer.<\/p>\n

Here’s a good one:<\/p>\n

Isaac Mizrahi, fashion designer<\/b>
\nI just finished Them<\/i>, which is Francine Du Plessix Gray\u0092s book about her monster parents, which is so entertaining. I\u0092m swamped with books about Arthurian legend, because I\u0092m designing an opera of Purcell\u0092s, the King Arthur <\/i>which is at English National Opera next spring. I\u0092ve been reading really boring books like The Grail: A Casebook<\/i>, edited by Dhira Mahoney, and Arthurian Legend for Dummies <\/i>and all kinds of delicious stuff. I just read The Innocents Abroad <\/i>by Mark Twain, and it made me want to go away really badly. I got the new Harry Potter, which I\u0092ll devour next week, and then I feel like I have to get into this Edgar Allan Poe that a friend of mine loaned me called Tales of Mystery and Imagination<\/i>. I forced the new Murakami (Kafka on the Shore<\/i>, which I adored beyond words) on her and she loved it, so I feel obliged to read her pick. Also, I really love Poe. In snippets, I\u0092m rereading The Comedy of Errors<\/i>, the Shakespeare play, because I was talking about it with a group of friends, making a point about it, when I was embarrassed to find I couldn\u0092t remember the storyline. Lovely to be making a heated point about something you\u0092ve completely forgotten. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Michael Musto’s is very funny:<\/p>\n

Michael Musto, writer, gossip columnist<\/b>
\nWhen Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of \u0093A Streetcar Named Desire\u0094 by Sam Staggs. I\u0092m loving it\u0097maybe because I\u0092m a total gay stereotype. It\u0092s a quick read and easy to absorb. You don\u0092t even have to buy it; you can just stand there reading it in the bookstore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also, just check out the titles on this one (pun intended):<\/p>\n

Heather Hunter, porn star, rapper<\/b>
\nEmotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You<\/i> by Susan Forward and Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential <\/i>by Caroline Myss, and XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits <\/i>by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That first book’s title, combined with her chosen profession, just makes me shake with laughter. It’s so revealing of whatever drama she must be going through right now. hahahahaha You go, Heather. Do not let the people in your life use fear, obligation, and guilt to manipulate you!!<\/p>\n

However, the creme de la creme has GOT to be Tom Wolfe’s answer. I don’t know – I just love it. His answer keeps getting funnier and funnier as it goes along:<\/p>\n

Tom Wolfe, writer, I Am Charlotte Simmons<\/b>
\nMaggie: A Girl of the Streets<\/i> by Stephen Crane. If Stephen Crane hadn\u0092t died at the age of 29, he would have been remembered as a giant. I\u0092m literally rummaging around my desk to see what exciting things I have here \u0085. The Abs Diet <\/i>by David Zinczenko. Here\u0092s the thing: I never really had sharply defined abs, even when I was an athlete. I always wanted them to look like a cobblestone street. That was before six-packs; they didn\u0092t have six-packs, but they did have cobblestone streets. My wife said, \u0093You have cobblestone streets, but they\u0092ve been paved over.\u0094 Here\u0092s a real barn-burner: Religion and the Decline of Magic<\/i> by Keith Thomas. This has to do with what I hope to write: a history of the last 1,000 years of the world in 98 pages. It was going to be 100 pages, but 98 sounds so much shorter, don\u0092t you think? No one is interested in this book but me. There\u0092s a book called Status Anxiety<\/i>; the fellow has kind of a French name. [Alain de Botton.] That\u0092s another thing I want to write\u0097 a book about status \u0085.<\/p>\n

And Hemmings Motor News<\/i>, which is a thick periodical\u0097this one I\u0092m looking at is 672 pages. It\u0092s full of ways to either fix up old cars or do things with new cars \u0085. This is all part of my desire and attempt to, as they now say, pimp my ride. I have a Cadillac DeVille, which people think of as a stodgy old-people\u0092s car, but I have the intention to show people that this is a sensational old-people\u0092s car once I pimp it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tom Wolfe expounding on his abs. Too funny.<\/p>\n

Go read all of them though. <\/a> It’s a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

Dad – take note of the Proust answer!! Something about getting “bogged down” somewhere in the middle …<\/p>\n

And Neal Pollock’s answer reminds me that I absolutely have to read We Need to Talk About Kevin<\/i>.<\/p>\n

What have I read this summer, you ask? And what am I still reading?<\/p>\n

Okay, let’s see:<\/p>\n

Adams Vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800<\/i> by John Ferling.<\/p>\n

Re-read Reflections on the Revolution in France<\/i>, by Edmund Burke.<\/p>\n

The Teammates<\/i> by David Halberstam<\/p>\n

A People Adrift : The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America<\/i>,by Peter Steinfels<\/p>\n

(God … I can already tell I need to lighten up a bit. Oh well. This kind of reading is very relaxing for me. What can i say. Onward:)<\/p>\n

Lost Summer<\/i> by Bill Reynolds (story of 1967 red sox season)<\/p>\n

Cary Grant<\/i>, by Marc Eliot (the latest biography of my favorite actor ever.) In a way, though … I think I know all I need to know about Mr. Grant. There’s a reason why he led such a private life – despite the fact that he was in the public eye all the time. I am far more into him as an ACTOR and his process as an ACTOR rather than his marriages, etc. But still: very interesting.<\/p>\n

Faithful<\/i> by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King (the story of the 2004 Red Sox season, told in a series of diary entries and emails back and forth)<\/p>\n

Now I’m reading:<\/p>\n

A room with a view<\/i>, by Forster. I’ve read it before – but I picked it up again. It made me laugh out loud this morning on the bus.<\/p>\n

The Children of the Arbat: A Novel<\/i> – by Anatoli Naumovich Rybakov – a previously suppressed Russian book about life in Moscow at the time of Stalin – in the mid to late 1930s. A chilling book – I’ve read 16 chapters so far. I will definitely be posting some juicy excerpts.<\/p>\n

Life is a Banquet<\/i> – Rosalind Russell’s autobiography. SO wonderful!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… of the stars. I found this very enjoyable reading. What are “stars” reading this summer? Looks like pretty much everybody is reading Harry Potter (except Harold Bloom who is spending the summer re-reading the god-awful canon of the god-awful … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[120,870,992,1620,2208,75,2206,1494,2079,76,174,25,2658,150,263,924],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3446"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173164,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446\/revisions\/173164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}