The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger.  Dwight makes an origami Yoda. Yoda answers questions with special insight, even though his maker is clueless. How can this be?  And how does this whole middle-school thing work anyway?  Such a cool concept.  Be sure to check out the website for the book, and vote for which figure should star in the sequel.  

Zombiekins by Kevin Bolger, illus. Aaron Blecha.  Anytime we come across a book that all three read with enthusiasm and giggles, we know we have a keeper.  This is one of those books.  The story of a patched-together stuffed animal that comes to life when exposed to moonlight, Zombiekins is creepy good fun.  I still can't get any of them to read Bunnicula.  This is Bolger's second hit in our house. You might recall the Sonar obsession a few months ago with Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger.  

Palazzo Inverso by D. B. Johnson.  A stunningly beautiful picture book that can be read in circles, or all along the bottom pages, then flipped over and read backwards along all the top pages. You can read the entire book at the author's website, but there is real joy to manipulating the book in your hands.  

The Widow's Broom by Chris Van Allsburg.  If you've read any Van Allsburg picture books, you know the art is always spectacular, and this one is no exception.  

The Ultimate Origami Book by John Morin or Teach Yourself Origami by John Montroll.  We had a bit of a paper plane and origami extravaganza going on around here all summer.  Several origami books were dragged into and out of the house, but the Sonars tell me that these two were the best of the lot in terms of the clarity of the instructions and the number of figures they folded from each.

Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor.  Our bedtime-story routine goes like this: one kid chooses a picture book and a poem to read to the others, then I read a chapter out of a bigger book.  They can choose anything they want that they are able to read themselves.  We do not censor.  The choices they make sometimes open up an opportunity for conversation.  They usually choose a short poem, most frequently out of Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein or The Rattlebag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.  But I also bring home poetry books from the library to mix it up a bit.  The Good Poems collection is full of great stuff, grouped thematically.  Imagine my surprise and giggles when a very earnest Sonar X7 recently read "Sonnet" by C. B. Trail out of the section called Lovers.    

The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.  Each Sonar has read at least one book from this series, and I'm sure that they will all read more. Sonar X7 is the leader here, working his way through much of the series over the past two months.  The Winter Knights and Stormchaser were his favorite books this summer.   

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku. You might recognize Kaku from several television and radio appearances, most recently Discovery Science Channel's Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible.  Sonar X10 brought this one home, and though some of the science is above his head, he flipped through and browsed and read significant portions of it before handing it off to dad, who read the whole thing.  Just so you know, the accepted definition of Anti-matter, matter moving backwards in time. You're welcome.  

The Dragon Codices.  These are part of the Dragonlance universe of books.  The codices are a series of middle-grade books focusing on different colored dragons.  So far there are seven books, but ten are planned.  If you're interested, begin with the Red Dragon Codex.  Bronze Dragon Codex was Sonar X5's favorite book this summer. 

What are they reading now?

Sonar X10 has just finished The Monsters of Morley Manor by Bruce Coville and has moved on to The Lost Years of Merlin by T. A. Barron.

Sonar X7 is reading The Hobbit.  

Sonar X5 just finished Zombiekins and hasn't chosen another book yet.  

All-together we're reading Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.  

Books I read out-loud to the kids: 

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling

This was our second time reading these books out-loud.  We've read through the whole series once together.  I think it's the fourth time I read Sorcerer's Stone and the third time for Chamber of Secrets.  I'm not sure what prompted the Sonars to choose these this summer. Perhaps a bit of nostalgia after we caught one of the movies randomly.  The kids have all changed so much in the two years since we read them last time.  These lovely stories hold up to rereading beautifully. I took great delight in watching as the Sonars noticed things they'd missed the first time, as well as details that become important later in the series. So much fun.   

Books I read silently to myself:

Walks with Men by Ann Beattie

This small novel surprised me.  I sometimes found it hard to breathe as I read it, I was pulled in so close alongside the narrator.  I had to stop frequently and stare out the window, wondering, like the narrator, just exactly what was happening.  That's not to say that the prose isn't incredibly crisp, just that life is often deliriously confusing.  Jane is a young and talented writer who begins an affair with an older married man in the early eighties.  The story follows the course of that relationship.  Neil is, of course, a total jerk. Beattie contrasts Neil with Jane's former lover and her father.  I'm not sure whether I liked this story or not.  I can't figure out quite how Jane is changed, her emotional reaction is often very distant and we see what she does, not what she thinks.  I loved the words though.  Beattie's words wrapped me up, blocking out the things around me.    

My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro edited by Jeffrey Eugenides

I'm misleading you by including this book in the list.  I didn't read the whole thing.  I'm having an on-again, off-again romance with this book.  It's been going on for months.  I'll bring it home from the library, delight in a few stories, then return it.  Later, I'll see the book, peeking coyly down at me from the shelf, and I'll bring it home to flirt with a few more stories.  The title refers to Lesbia's sparrow in the poems of Catullus.  This book is filled with love stories that hit all along the life-cycle of love, by many different authors. You can check the contents somewhere. I won't bore you with a list.  I was enchanted and heartbroken by the Chekhov this time.  My favorite bit: "Closing his eyes, he saw her as if alive, and she seemed younger, more beautiful, more tender than she was; and he also seemed better to himself than he had been then, in Yalta."  Like any very good collection of short stories, there are lessons to be learned by writers.  If you read no other part of this book though, read the Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides.  He will instruct you in the ways of understanding the love story.  I quoted him a few weeks ago, here. 

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

"For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a Reserved sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her again."  Except that he (Hajime) does see her (Shimamoto) again.  They are essentially strangers.  Strangers with a connection in the distant past, when they were both just twelve years old.  When they meet again they try to build a connection out of those fossils.  But friendship cannot contain the intensity of his desire for her.  She isn't even a whole person.  She is a beautiful and fragile image.  She says she destroys everything she touches.  His deterioration is internal.  His exterior life remains largely unchanged.  His business seems fine.  He has money saved up.  He loves his family.  Someone called this book Murakami's "existential romance," and I have to agree.  I'm never quite sure whether Shimamoto is really there in Hajime's life, or if he has created her in his mind, some secret sharer to manifest his internal turmoil about his guilt and dissatisfaction.  Expect moments right at the edges of the fabric of reality, with incidents left unexplained or unexplainable.  Like Sputnik Sweetheart, someone disappears, someone is broken.  Each character echoes the next as Hajime tries to return to the person he was before he hurt others.  All of the women become some version of the first woman he hurt--Izumi.  All of the men become some version of himself.  The two most compelling ideas in this story are the Hysteria Siberiana, mentioned by Shimamoto, and the differences between only children and their peers with siblings.  Lovely story.  Haunting.  Probably because I read it so recently, I was struck by similarities between this novel and Ethan Frome.  SotBWotS is Ethan Frome without the oppressive misery or the suicide attempt, though there is one moment when Shimamoto considers a suicidal path. 

What I'm reading now:

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

What I plan to read next:

Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman

If you rip through your writing, throw out all the cliches, and get to the heart of it, which is the part that doesn't make you want to throw up?  Write from there.  

A close-up shot of my computer, complete with mustache, inspirational quote, small pictures of the kids, and desk detritus

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1.  My stepfather's boots.  

2.  My Teva sandals and my running shoes.  I'm usually barefoot.  These are the most likely shoes to find on my feet. 

3.  My $3 black heels from Savers in Albuquerque.  The only comfortable pair of heels I've ever had.  I've worn them twice.  

4. Screaming shoes, a.k.a. any shoe for Sonar X7 up to a pair of red Keane's last fall. Child hated shoes for most of his life.  Not just that he didn't want to wear them.  They caused him to melt into a screaming mess as if they were burning his feet.  

5. Brand new white soccer cleats.  I guess these make me a soccer mom again?  Reminds me of an Everclear song.  Except I drive a VW, not a Volvo.  Also no experience in adult media.  *cough* Never mind. 

6. I do not comprehend the fascination of some people with designer shoes.  They look like torture.  Maybe @shaydenFL gets them?  If not he can add them to his list of #shitidontget

7. In middle school I really wanted a pair of huarache sandals.  I got them eventually.  I never ever wanted a pair of jellies though.  Or crocs.

8.  Baby shoes are completely pointless.  Ditto baby socks unless it's cold.  Just one more (small, easily losable) thing to keep up with. 

9. When my brother (five years younger) grew to have the same size feet as me.  I was in eight or ninth grade. We shared my huarache sandals for an afternoon. 

10.  White canvas Keds.  This was my go-to shoe for many years.  Cheap and easy.  In high school they were my marching band shoes.  We slathered white shoe polish right on the canvas to cover stains.  When they were too raunchy for marching band, I'd scribble all over them. 

Bonus: "SHOES" by Kelly. Betch. 

Comments:

This list was strangely difficult for me.  I got sort of stuck on details for number one.  A snapshot of the details...

My step-father grew up in New York State, where he started his career as a police officer.  I don't know what kind of shoes he wore there.  Some sort of standard issue glossy black dress shoes, I suppose.  But when he moved to Albuquerque he always wore black cowboy boots with his uniform.  They probably took twice as long to polish as dress shoes.  He had a boot jack to pull them off of his hot feet at night.  When he went to plain-clothes work, he still wore boots.  Usually brown.  Still took forever to keep polished.  He wore his service weapon in a holster on his belt or under a sport coat.  He loved cowboy boots because he could keep a small gun in a clip holster inside the top of his left boot.  Just in case.  Cowboy boots as secret weapon cache. 

What were your 10 Shoes?  What kind of shoes do you wear to work?  Do you have any shoes with a story? 

Ready?

Write down 10 reasons you might steal bags of soap out of the dispensers in public restrooms.  GO! GO! GO!

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My results:

Disclaimer: I wouldn't steal soap, people, nor do I advocate the stealing of soap in any way.  Remember my philosophy over there in the sidebar: Steelers are ok (some of them), but not Stealers or Thieves.  Be good.  

This is an exercise in creativity and imagination.  I also love the phrase "soap stealer."  It hits a sweet spot in my imagination.  It goes well with the phrase "criminal mischief," which, in addition to theft, is what you might be charged with if you do these things.  

1.  To wash my car

2.  Because I can't afford soap at home

3.  Because the scent of the soap reminds me of someone or something important that I have lost 

4. To install in the restroom of my favorite struggling indie bookstore, thus saving the bookstore money

5. To add to a stockpile of soap that will be used to enhance an incident of mass mayhem (NO NO NO)

6. To add to a stockpile of soap that I will use to fill up my bathtub, either to bathe in or to perform science experiments

7.  To make giant soap bubbles

8.  To drive the janitor crazy, wondering what I'm going to do with it

9.  To sell on the industrial-sized, liquid soap black market.  There's a black market for everything, right?

10.  To mix in dye in my favorite color before returning to it's bathroom of origin

Several of these things are not nice. Do NOT try this at home or anywhere else.  Capiche?  

I imagine their noise, not as a buzz, but as a light metallic shimmer, winding from their wings like invisible ribbons.  

If you have not read or heard of these books or their movies go do a google search and come back.  Starring Lisbeth Salander, a petite, introverted, formerly-abused, do-not-fuck-with-her computer hacker, and Mikael Blomkvist, a take-no-prisoners investigative journalist and magazine editor, this is a gritty, violent, dark, occasionally rambling, noir triology set in Larsson's Sweden.  

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

In Sweden it is called Men Who Hate Women.  I'm not crazy about the "girl" motif -- Salander is an intelligent and amazingly resourceful adult -- but I do like the choice in the U.S. titles to make her the focus of the story.  Larsson once said in an interview (before his untimely death from a heart attack) that he wondered what Pippi Longstocking would be like when she grew up.  Lisbeth is a product of that imagination.  

I wasn't very enthusiastic about reading the book in the first place, since I resist bandwagons.  I started and quit this book once, struggling to get through the slow, wordy, relatively uninteresting first forty pages.  I found the story oppressive and irritating.  At the urging of several trusted fellow readers, I gave it another shot, determined to get through this first book, just to see what all the hype was about.  I plouged through the beginning again, pleased, as I broke through the fifty page barrier, that I was already completely taken with the character of Lisbeth Salander.  Apparently it was Blomkvist that was boring me. 

Salander's story is extraordinary. Implausible in the extreme.  Yet we believe in her.  Broken, untrusting, antisocial, but she is the character we support against all others.  We want her to beat the bastards who have damaged her.  It's a long list.  

Blomkvist gives me a lot of trouble.  He is smart, intellectually resourceful, and sleeps with a lot of different women.  Women seem drawn to him, but he tends to let women control the course of relationships -- to a point.  He respects them all, is a dedicated friend, but doesn't seem to love any of them.  I'm uncertain that he can love any of them.  Perhaps, like Salander, he is damaged in some way.  He troubles me, but he's a saint compared to most men in the stories.  He fights to reveal truth and injustice, especially in the financial world.  An investigative journalist who makes no compromises and is driven to reveal corruption, even to his detriment. He doesn't rape, torture, abuse--verbally or physically--kill, traffic, or maim anyone.  The other men in the stories take care of all of that.  

Larsson highlights both personal, institutional, and social injustices against women.  Epigraphs that open each section of the books are themed. In the first, the epigraphs are all rape and abuse statistics for women in Sweden.

I really loved the excitement of the story.  There are some incredibly dark moments, gruesome and horrifying details.  Go back to that Swedish title, Men Who Hate Women, and let your imagination run where you think that might lead.  Then let it go a little darker and you might be somewhere in the neighborhood.  The labyrinthine plot, subplot, and subsubplots twist around each other.  The story is really gripping. 

I can't help but feel that this book--as good as it is--might have been even better with some judicious editing.  A sure-handed trim throughout.  

The Girl Who Played With Fire

The epigraphs in this book are all mathematical problems, as we get a peek at the enormous power of Salander's mind.  She takes up Fermat's last theorem as light-reading on the beach.  I had many favorite lines from these books, but this was among the best: "There were not so many physical threats that could not be countered with a decent hammer."  That would be the hammer Salander carried in her bag.  

Questions for me in this book centered more around Blomkvist (no, I still didn't like him, but not because he sleeps with everyone).  Can someone be a feminist male and be promiscuous? As opposed to single and celibate or partnered and monogamous?  Is he really a philanderer?  Do women in the books throw themselves at him? He does have sex with several women in the books.  The women he connects with are all smart, independent, and powerful in different ways.  He is smart, but not physically or intellectually threatening to them.  He lets the women around him set the rules for engagement.  

Strangely I haven't seen anyone take up the question of Salander's sexual engagment, which is just as extensive and more varied than Mikael's.

I was irritated by Salander's boob job and wasn't sure what to make of it.  Is it like her piercings and tattoos? Another way to disguise herself?  Or is it a way of illustrating the discomfort she has with her own body and the often clumsy way she  understands and interacts with social norms?  Salander is very small, to the point that most people think she is far younger and less powerful.  The boob job is also weird considering what we later learn about her experience with hospitals and doctors (or at least psychiatrists).   

Salander reminds me of Batman.  She suffered grievous harm (repeatedly). She survived amid persistent gross negligence, rape, and torture. Then she used her skills to achieve her own freedom and acquire the resources to help others, but not in conventional ways.  She is not -- lest we forget -- normal.  She is physically very small, but repeatedly resists much larger foes and dominates others through the quickness of her mind and body and a certain fearlessness. 

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The final book helps to unravel many of the personal mysteries of Salander's past.  The epigraphs of the final book are all about historical women warriors and soldiers.  Not victimization as in the first book, or mathematical proofs as in the second, but women with power, rising up to fight their own battles.  

I find it difficult to say anything about the third book without spilling big spoilers.   I'll just say that I found the ending very satisfying, and I can see how Larsson could have serialized Salander and Blomkvist in interesting ways if he had survived.  

My problems with the stories

-- There is so much gruesome violence against women in these books.  How does one call attention to a horror without repeating the horror?  

--Words. So. Many. Words. Editor?  

--Locational specificity.  Several scenes have very specific descriptions of neighborhoods and streets in Sweden.  My idea of the geography of Sweden is very very limited, so I just blithely zoomed through this description.  How would my experience of the books be different if I understood where the events were taking place?  Why did Larsson take such care to be so specific about real locations sometimes, but invent entire towns at other times?  Should I have used a map while I read?  

--Political figures and real people.  I know even less about Swedish politics than I do about Swedish geography.  The brief notes in book three help a bit, but I wonder how a better understanding of Swedish politics would change my understanding of the book.  For instance, all of those political coffee cups in the Millennium offices--what was the significance of giving a particular logo to someone? Is Paolo Roberto a good boxer?  

--Coffee!!  How much freakin coffee do they drink in Sweden?  Will someone please count the number of cups of coffee Blomkvist consumes in his various interviews and stakeouts?  I feel like Larsson must be making a statement about the personal preferences or perhaps mental state of characters when he is so specific about what they are eating and drinking -- whether reheating a Billy's Pan Pizza or making an open-faced sandwich versus a closed one -- I just don't know what that statement is.  Do we need to know exactly how Salander puts away her groceries? Or is the act of putting them away, of planning for the future, what is significant? 

Things I'd love to think about more 

-- Salander's tattoos! Some are big and some are small.  They each commemorate an event in Salander's life.  Note: Bjurman's rape results in a very small tattoo for Salander, especially compared to the dragon. Bjurman's is bigger though.  Oooh, also the notorious boob job happens at the same time she erases the wasp.  Oh tattoos!  There is something in all of the body changes that speaks to Salander's imperfect struggle to change herself. 

-- Salander's relationship to other women.  She seems to have just as much, if not more, trouble trusting women as she does men, though she's never directly betrayed by a woman.  

-- Salander's notion of debt and balance.  When we help someone, what do we expect in return?  When someone helps us, what do we feel we owe, what are we expected to do?  Salander seems to have an easier time understanding her relationship to other people in terms of debt, so a map of her connections to other people and the exchanges they make would be very interesting. 

--Millennium.  What role does the magazine play in the stories?  Why did publicists (?) choose to name the trilogy according to the magazine rather than one of the characters or events?

--Hacker nation.  So much I wonder about Salander's role, comfort, and ability in the hacker organization versus her "real world" interactions.  

--Larsson's biography, the role of investigative journalism, his life experience, his notion of feminism... so much.

So glad I tried the first book a second time.  

Oh, and the first Swedish movie is very good too.  I love Noomi Rapace.  

Here's what I'm going to do.

I will eat whenever I want, or not at all.  I might drink beer with lunch.  I will write all day long.  I will listen to NPR and hear every story from beginning to end.  I will listen to loud music or no music at all.  I will spend all morning in the art museum in front of one painting, then write about it all afternoon.  I will sit on the beach in a sweater when it's cold, writing and eating an apple.  I will run if I feel like it.  I will buy groceries at the speed I choose, with no arguments about cereal.  I will write about the produce manager singing in the deli.  I will read whole chapters and articles without interruption.  I will have tea with friends, uncensored.  Occasionally I will nap.  I will kidnap my spouse for lunch sometimes and make people gossip.  I will hang out at the library for hours, reading and writing.  I will plan and build and write and make.  I will figure out what I'm going to do when I grow up. 

Then I'll be waiting with snacks when the kids rush through the door. 

"It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price.  I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery.  Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."  

Jeffrey Eugenides, Introduction, My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead

Books I read in July (Yes, more than one per week. Summer vacation is awesome.)

This month I will use many incomplete sentences. Deal with it. Also, this is less review and more general reaction. 

Summer Knight (Dresden Files Book 4 ) by Jim Butcher

I loved the changelings in here, and the explorations of the politics of faerie. 

Heat Wave by Richard Castle

I started reading this one last summer.  Check here to read my comments about the preview.  They hold up well for my reaction to the whole book.  A fun diversion.  And if you like this Castle meta-story, check out @WriteRCastle on Twitter for an unfolding mystery.  

Blockade Billy, and "Morality" by Stephen King

This is a baseball novella plus a straight-up morality tale. King's reputation heightened my expectation for the bizarre or the horrible in both of these stories.  No one builds anticipation like King.  Sometimes he builds so well that the climax is disappointing (Helloooo It).  I wouldn't call the end of Blockade Billy disapointing, but the build up to it is better.  My favorite part of the story is the baseball talk.  I felt like I was standing in the dugout next to the narrator in many scenes.  I haven't read any of King's short stories in many years, but "Morality"took me back in time to Skeleton Crew and the like.  No monsters except the human ones.  No evil except that wrought by wrong choices.  Good stuff. 

The Giver by Lois Lowry

When I finished the book: an empty feeling. No, a sense that my feelings were drifting. Sadness.  The mild confusion that I wasn't sure what happened. Why had no other Giver chosen this path?  I had never read this book before, in spite of its presence on so many You-Must-Read-This-Now lists.  I've been trying to convince the kids to read it.  Now that I've read it, I think only Sonar X10 would enjoy it.  Maybe.  It is the story of a seemingly utopian future, told from the perspective of a boy who slowly becomes aware of the problems and the ugliness all around him.  There is one shocking and horrifying scene in the book.  I felt like I should have expected the harsh moment, but it surprised me in its starkness and the absolute calm with which it happens.  Which only makes it more horrible.  Trying not to spoil only makes my comments obtuse.  Let me just say that the story might be difficult to follow for younger children and some parents might not like the idea of kids reading about killing babies. Oops. So many possible lines of discussion in the book. I can see why it's a popular classroom choice. 

Death Masks (Dresden Files Book 5) by Jim Butcher

This one included the Shroud of Turin and explored and expanded some ideas about the magic of faith.  Can an atheist be a Knight of the Cross?  Apparently so. Rock on.  The patterns of the Dresden books are well set, a little predictable, but that predictability can be cozy sometimes.  This one felt less humorous than the others, or more like the humorous moments were forced.  I did love the use of the Cabbage Patch Doll and the wind-up duck.  But why did Dresden have those things?  Especially the duck in his pocket?

Sold by Patricia McCormick 

2007 National Book Award Finalist. This is the story of a young Nepalese girl named Lakshmi who is sold into sex slavery in India.  McCormick tells the story from Lakshmi's perspective in a series of short vignettes.  Many of Lakshmi's experiences are brutal, but McCormick's prose feels gentle, helping provide a barrier for the reader against the torment Lakshmi experiences.  I find it profoundly sad and frustrating that many girls and women around the world are having similar experiences every single day.  The story ends with hope, with Lakshmi's triumph over the violence and despair.  Would that all girls like her could find the same hopeful ending. 

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

When I read this book in high school, I threw it across the room on the last page.  I suspect that the teenage me wanted the characters to escape and thwart expectation.  The thirtysomething me was still disappointed in the weight of the ending. This time I was suffocated by the poverty and oppressive convention enveloping the Fromes.  By Ethan's downward spiral of pain and repetition.  

Grave Secrets (Harper Connelly Book 4) by Charlaine Harris

I haven't read anything about Harris's intentions with this series, but it feels like this was the conclusion.  Or maybe it doesn't start out that way, but the hasty summary of the last few pages make it so.  Harper figures out what happened to her sister.  Commitments are made.  She doesn't say "happily ever after,"more like "the road goes ever on, in a happy way." My favorite character is Manfred, and I felt like he was sort of thrown under the bus.  I can always hope that Harris will give him his own novel.  

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

"Do you know the difference between a symbol and a sign?" This is a story of the semiotics of longing and loss.   Each characters stands in for another as an object of desire.  Some characters are split--by magic? by intention?  I loved this book.  It is among my favorite two or three books I've read this year.  Murakami's prose is so crisp, his plots so elegant that I don't always realize how I'm being wrapped up by the complexity of the ideas.   

The Four Arguments by Don Miguel Ruiz

Be impeccable with your word.  

Don't take anything personally.  

Don't make assumptions.  

Always do your best in each moment.  

This is a book of guidance about transforming life using ancient Toltec wisdom.  I love the idea of the (hard) simplicity of the four agreements.  I was less interested in the spiritual guidance and explanations of them, but it is a straightforward little book that many might find comforting. 

Throw Out Fifty Things by Gail Blanke

Another book from the self-help section.  I was cleaning house, so it caught my attention.  Blanke is a motivational speaker and her approach to decluttering lives is interesting.  The first part of the book is a room-by-room guide to getting rid of the physical clutter in our lives.  The second is about getting rid of mental and emotional clutter that might be stifling us.  This second half is much more important for Blanke.  The physical clutter is really a symptom of the mental clutter.  Getting rid of the junk piled around us can make the entry into personal improvement a little easier.  I only kept a list through 27.  I threw out a lot more stuff than that, but didn't write them down.  Blanke didn't get me to do anything I hadn't already planned, but reading her book as I worked made me feel like I had a cheerleader on my side.  

*I don't really mean that, of course. I love you Pilkey.  Have you read your Underpants today?