Not nearly as often as I should...

That's the frequency with which I update this portion of the site. However, allow me to compensate somewhat by mentioning that I've been spending lots of time cataloging my books in LibraryThing. I've got almost 850 titles from my library accounted for. Here's a sampling of 50 random covers, thanks to a widget from LibraryThing:

Literature Map

This is a pretty cool and very interesting site:

http://www.literature-map.com/

There are now a great many "what to read next" sites, but this is one that maps out similar authors for you so you can select an author whose works will be similar to authors you already like.

For example, I started with Paul Auster - and the resulting author map/cloud showed me a pretty high percentage of authors I already enjoy - Nabokov, Murakami, Joyce, Kundera, Eco, Atwood, Chabon, DeLillo, McEwan, Marquez, Hesse, Saramago, Borges... not bad for a click.

I recommend checking it out if you want to find some new authors. It certainly won't hurt.

Magical Realism

It's come to my attention that the style of literature I enjoy the most is known as "magical realism." Here's a description excerpted from an Emory student's site:

...magical realism aims to seize the paradox of the union of opposites. For instance, it challenges polar opposites like life and death and the pre-colonial past versus the post-industrial present. Magical realism is characterized by two conflicting perspectives, one based on a rational view of reality and the other on the acceptance of the supernatural as prosaic reality. Magical realism differs from pure fantasy primarily because it is set in a normal, modern world with authentic descriptions of humans and society. According to Angel Flores, magical realism involves the fusion of the real and the fantastic, or as he claims, "an amalgamation of realism and fantasy".

There is debate in the literary community as to whether magical realism is reserved for Latin American literature or other cultures which have a strong background of magical/tribal legend and magic. However, over the course of my research into the "genre" or qualities of magical realism, I've found a solid amount of scholars who maintain that magical realism isn't limited to any specific culture - and that writers from other cultures (like Salman Rushdie or Angela Carter or Milan Kundera) are equally serious and valid authors of magical realism. Another description of magical realism states,

Magic Realist novelists embroider fantastic elements of fable, folklore, and myth -- symbolic indictments of the crazy-quilt insanity of contemporary politics and normalizing ideologies -- then stitch them seamlessly into a conventional narrative. This conscious, playful interweaving of the surreal and the magical within the traditional adult novel confronts the repression of thought-policed cultures and the oppression of modern aesthetics, both of which deny the power of the imaginative world.

Thus, here are some I've read and enjoyed. As I read more, I'll add to the list... and perhaps pop up some reviews as well.

• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Wise Children by Angela Carter
• Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter
• Blindness by Jose Saramago
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
• We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Immortality by Milan Kundera
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
• Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
• The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Reading About Depression

If you or anyone you know is suffering from depression, here are some books I've found to be helpful and have passed along to friends and family in an effort to help them TRY to understand how this illness works...

• The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
• Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression by Nell Casey
• Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness by David A. Karp
• An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
• Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron

Period Pieces

This is a list of novels that are, for lack of better term, period pieces - Victoriana and such. Boys - don't discount them for that reason. But they are, by and large, stories of propriety and nuance.

- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen ♥
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ♥♥
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- Nana by Emile Zola ♥
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte ♥♥
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert ♥
- Fingersmith by Sarah Waters ♥
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte ♥♥
- Ahab's Wife, or, The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund ♥♥
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrellby Susanna Clarke
- Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier ♥
- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins ♥♥

♥ = indicates a slight sentimentality warning.
♥♥ = indicates a strong sentimentality warning. Yeah. I know.

Childrens' Books Worth Your Time (non-picture books)

- the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
- The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
- any childrens' books by Roald Dahl (he also wrote for adults - with titles like Switch Bitch)
- the Merlin stories by T.A. Barron
- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- all of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- The Borrowers series and Bed Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton
- the Mary Poppins books by P.L. Travers
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
- The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
- anything by Cornelia Funke (Inkheart, The Thief Lord, Inkspell, Dragon Rider)
- the Wrinkle in Time/Time Quartet series by Madeleine L'Engle
- The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George
- A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler
- the Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren
- Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald

That's the first list. More to come as I am inspired!

Greetings and Salutations!

I've been struggling with the look of the page. I'm not 100% satisfied, but it's basically a matter of finding my CSS errors at this point.

Without further ado, welcome to the new researchgirl book blog. You'll notice that I'm "repurposing" some content from the old book page but it will now be categorized and organized and, most importantly, frequently updated. It's an easier platform.

If you have any comments or suggestions on how to make this page better, please don't hesitate to contact me via email: eva (at) researchgirl.com.