couldreads

Beers, books and a dramatic reading of Fifty Shades of Grey

Much to my delight, Saturday’s inaugural Book Swap was a resounding (or at least moderate, considering the weather) success, managing to raise a whopping (and very numerically appealing) $123 for Literacy for Incarcerated Teens.

There was no official count—I was far too busy trying out cocktails—but I’d guesstimate that participants had a solid 200+ books to choose from (of which 75+ might have been the byproduct of my coffee-fueled housecleaning, but that is neither here nor there). Most importantly, one daring soul brought an actual paperback version of Fifty Shades of Grey—compete with 20% off Target sticker, if memory serves—and so after a few alcoholic beverages, Book Swap may have devolved into a low-key dramatic reading of some of the book’s [many, many] ridiculous moments.

If you missed out on this Swap, worry not—there will be a Part Deux sometime this spring. In the meantime, here are some photos, to prove I didn’t “host” a “book swap” with “my friends” who are actually figments of a reality-television-addled imagination.

The Books Behind the Oscars

Now that we’ve all recovered from Sunday’s Academy Awards, replete with boring acceptance speeches and Seth MacFarlane’s [honestly guys, not that earth-shattering] sexism, we can all settle comfortably into that post-Oscars glow of temporarily highbrow taste, i.e. “Maybe I will rent Argo instead of marathon-watching old episodes of Wife Swap…” It’s a lovely thing, how a few pretty gowns and well-edited clips can rouse one’s interest in subjects as varied as the emancipation of slaves and, well, the emancipation of slaves. (Big movie year for slavery, no?)

But while last night’s winners paid a lot of lip service to their agents, managers, producers and spouses, not quite as many shout-outs were given to the brains behind the concepts behind the screenplays behind the movies, i.e. the authors whose books, plays or essays were ultimately adopted for the silver screen. (Except Ang Lee, who constantly thanks Life of Pi author Yann Martel. Kudos Ang; you win this round).

So just in case you don’t feel like Googling them (fair enough; it takes some dedication), here are the titles behind this year’s Oscar nominees.

Come one, come all! To the inaugural Sorry Television Book Swap

Advance apologies for the fact that I will almost definitely not finish any books this week. My work schedule has suddenly shifted so that I am now required to wake up at the ass-crack of 7 a.m. for the foreseeable future and my mental state is suffering the consequences: Last night’s attempts to power through the better part of a paperback ended with me snoring into my couch cushions and drooling on my cat.

[Editor’s note: I realize that for other people, most people even, a 7 a.m. wake-up call is completely normal. Guys, you haven’t lived until you’ve worked a 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. schedule.]

But worry not, avid reader: I have a consolation prize*! (*for people in the greater Brooklyn/New York City metropolitan area). This Saturday marks the first-ever Sorry Television Book Swap, a ~~swanky~~ ~~classy~~ sufficiently adult gathering of local readers with a lot of extra books and a penchant for 3 p.m. Bloody Marys.

Here’s how it works:
(non-New Yorkers, you can stop paying attention now, unless you want to experience extreme envy)

At 2:30 p.m. this Saturday, (February 23) gather up as many unwanted books as you can carry, and bring them over to the Pinebox Rock Shop at 12 Grattan St., just off the Morgan L train.

Cost of entry to STBS is $5, moneys that will be donated to Literacy for Incarcerated Teens, a NYC-based nonprofit that distributes books to, obvi, incarcerated teens. Outside of this paltry admission fee (and the price of the aforementioned Bloody Marys), STBS is a fairly low-cost affair. For every book you bring to Book Swap, you’ll get a ticket. For every ticket you have, you can snag a new book (Tickets will also be available for $1 each, for those of you with an admirably manageable addiction to book ownership). As if that weren’t motivation enough, I’ll also be raffling off some prizes (like I bought legit raffle tickets and everything). Good times will be had by all.

Since God hates me for not believing in Him, it’s slated to rain and/or snow this Saturday, but I am putting my faith in hardy New Yorkers to don their galoshes and schlep out to Brooklyn anyway, if only because there’s no better way to spend a crappy winter afternoon than drinking alcohol among friends. I am also willing to beg and/or plead (personalized phone calls available!) for attendance, since my third-greatest fear (after 1) space and 2) waking up 8 months pregnant) is hosting a party to which no one shows up. Especially in this case, since I’d have to drag home all of my own already-read books.

So tell yo friends, and your mom, and your mom’s friends. Throw those old Twilight paperbacks in a garbage bag and come on by.

A Canticle for Leibowitz: Favorite Quotes

Some choice quotes from last week’s read, A Canticle for Leibowitz.

“It was a devil with which he was trying to come to grips, the abbot decided, but the devil was quite evasive. The abbot’s devil was rather small, as devils go: only knee-high, but he weighed ten tons and had the strength of five hundred oxen. He was not driven by maliciousness, as Dom Paulo imagined him, not nearly as much as he was driven by frenzied compulsion, somewhat after the fashion of a rabid dog. He bit through meat and bone and nail simply because he had damned himself, and damnation created a damnably insatiable appetite. And he was evil merely because he had made a denial of Good, and the denial had become part of his essence, or a hole therein. Somewhere, Dom Paulo thought, he’s wading through a sea of men and leaving a wake of the maimed.”

“Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think—as long as they don’t seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste.”

“Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America—burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?”

“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle’s eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”

“Those who stayed behind had the easier part. Theirs was but to wait for the end and pray that it would not come.”

Working title: Monks in Space!

Oh how I wanted to love this book.

A Canticle for Leibowitz was a recommendation from a friend, an avid Sorry Television reader who makes my day every few weeks when we run into each other socially and talk books. After our most recent such encounter, I dug through my memory bank for his long-ago recommendation and promptly ordered it online. What arrived in my mailbox two days later (thank you Amazon Prime) was this, a weighty paperback whose intimidating cover art is paralleled only by its introduction’s promise of frequent use of Latin. Apprehensive and intrigued, I dug in.

It’s difficult to explain what ACFL is “about,” a struggle not entirely helped by my edition’s vaguely worded back cover, which devotes a third of its real estate to phrases like “one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of speculative fiction.” The book opens in post-apocalyptic times—roughly the 26th century—when the human race has long since crippled itself in a nuclear war known as the Flame Deluge. Off the bat, we meet Brother Francis, a monk in the “Albertian Order of Leibowitz,” a monastic order devoted to the preservation of knowledge, a task they accomplish by hoarding, hiding, memorizing and copying books whose value has been drastically reduced by a post-Deluge society that frowns upon literacy. Leibowitz refers to Isaac Edward Leibowitz, a 20th-century electrical engineer employed by the U.S. military, who after being martyred for his devotion to scientific knowledge, was beatified by the Romance Catholic Church (“New Rome”). At the time of the book’s opening, he is a candidate for sainthood. Continue reading “Working title: Monks in Space!”