Day 97 of the “What are you reading, and why?” project. A regular Babbitt’s customer is now reading The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction, edited by Colm Toibin, and was thrilled to discover it on our shelves. Where it no longer resides.

Published in 2000, this anthology covers a great span of time, and range of writers, including Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, Maeve Binchy (may I just say that my cousin’s baby is named Maeve?!), Roddy Doyle, William Trevor (ah!), Emma Donahue, and Colum McCann. And another decade of Irish writing has gone on since.

Our happy customer had read The Master and The Heather Blazing by Toibin and various works by several of the authors represented in the anthology and was eager to discover more authors and more samples* of those she likes.

Toibin’s newest novel is Brooklyn, which won Britain’s Costa** (previously Whitbread) Book Award in Fiction and was on the Man Booker Prize*** long list in 2009, along with William Trevor’s Love and Summer. (Sheldon is reading the 2009 winner, Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, and so was Mary, in a previous blog entry!)

**Costa Coffee! (This should please Coffee Lovin’ Mom and a number of other addicts. And this, of course, makes perfect sense. If you drink enough coffee, you will not fall asleep reading.)

From reading The Master myself, recommended by Lizabeth, and the reviews of some of his other works, I know that Toibin is a subtle writer, trusting the quiet build in fiction, and knowing the rich complexity of life will present itself if we, the readers, pay attention. So I’m thinking his Irish fiction selections must be attentive, too.

***And now I shall be attentive to the winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize, to be awarded 40 years after the publication of the nominees, due to a shift-in-rules glitch back then, because Shirley Hazzard, one of my favorites, is on the list, although I have not read the nominated book, The Bay of Noon. She is on the short list, winner to be announced May 19, coming right up!!

*Our “regular” (nothing to do with coffee) customer likes the idea of the Irish fiction anthology so she gets a preview of various authors before she spends time and/or money on longer works by someone she won’t like. She pointed to one of the authors listed on the cover and said he was “weird.”

Names have been omitted to protect the unknown. The asterisk has been abused because I am linear-time challenged. I like coffee.

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Day 36 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project.

Candace is reading a book about corn.

And I think I know why. There is a permanent Agriculture exhibit at the museum where she works, and a new exhibit on food & music in the planning, and the Farmers Market will be coming in the summer, and, eventually, lots of corn. And local poets will read poems about corn and farming and food and folk music at the museum sometime this summer. I will announce it here, no doubt. And I have corn earrings.

Late in the summer we have the annual Corn Festival, which used to be in one of our twin cities and is now in the other. A corny transition....

...to a Tale for Two Cities, a local event like The Big Read in towns and cities all over the USA, in which people in our particular twin cities read the same book, and the two public libraries offer multiple copies of it and a series of book-related events.

This year's mutual read in our two cities is: Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference by Warren St. John. We will meet the author, hear experts speak on a variety of topics, meet some Lost Boys of Sudan, and see the movies Bend It Like Beckham, The Cup, God Grew Tired of Us, Kicking It, and War Dance.

Yes, this is a book about soccer! And people! And the world! Ongoing wars and conflicts, the plight of refugees. And small-town America. I started loving it from the introduction, which contrasts the coaching styles of a silent coach who respects her players and lets them play and a "screamer," and I hope my husband will read it, too, as he's a coach and not a screamer.

Meanwhile, Chicago is reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin for the One Book, One Chicago program, and this is something I'll hope to read in the future. I enjoyed his novel The Master, in the style of Henry James. (But whenever I hear "the Master," I think of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, one of my favorite books ever, but one my mom could not finish....She gets impatient with fantasy, so she was probably annoyed when the Devil came to Moscow.)

So now I have mentioned more than two cities: Chicago, Moscow, and our twin cities of Bloomington-Normal (via the library & museum links).

And lest Charles Dickens feel neglected for no real reference to A Tale of Two Cities, I will link for him here to Amazon, add an image because I like the lilies of the valley on this particular cover, and remind us that this whole daily book blog thing began with everybody reading Dickens. And, hey, young man came into Babbitt's yesterday in search of Dickens and found some, leaving happy! And if you too are addicted to books, you will be happy to greet spring at the Normal Public Library book sale this weekend!

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