I want! (ham.)

The Art of Ponyo

If you haven’t yet seen Ponyo, go now! It’s a hand-drawn Miyazaki animated film about a goldfish who turns into a girl. With magic! And she loves ham! She also loves Sosuke, the little boy who pulls her out of the sea. It’s loosely based on The Little Mermaid. My husband and I loved it and now occasionally shout the word “ham!” at each other. Our ham consumption has also gone through the roof. What can I say, we’re susceptible to advertising. (This is another reason we got rid of cable tv.)

The other reasons we got rid of cable? It was costing us almost $100 a month to watch about 3 channels (Comedy Central, HBO, and A&E), plus I was really letting the various criminal-procedure/legal drama shows eat up my precious reading time. I’ve read so many more books since we cut the cord!

On the other hand, I think I spend way more than $100 a month on books now… I do try hard not to buy everything, but with books like these coming out, I can hardly resist:

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

From the author of Birds of America: Stories. Read a review by Shaindel Beers.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

I haven’t read anything of hers since The Handmaid’s Tale (an ARC of The Blind Assassin is knocking around here somewhere, unless I somehow gave that away) but I have wanted to read Oryx and Crake, and The Penelopiad. Now I’m considering pushing those further down the list, since Atwood + dystopia = brilliant! You’ll like this if you liked The Hunger Games (Collins), Unwind (Shusterman), or Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro).

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Speaking of Kazuo Ishiguro, his latest book of short stories hit American bookstore shelves in hardcover this week. A lot of readers will miss the point. Even fans of The Remains of the Day seem to find this collection detached and unsatisfying, but I will read it anyway. I think of it as adding some dietary fiber into my daily intake of Young Adult and Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels (fiber currently provided by David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, thanks to Dale).

Time to go to work… *sigh*. So much harder to resist the temptation when you’re surrounded by thousands of books, and you have a debit card.