Cat Forms Goal to Nap on Every Book in House

Michigan housecat, Tim Gunn, has declared his goal to sleep on every single book in his suburban home.

“It’s hardly the Library of Congress, but it will do,” said the two-year-old Siamese mix.

The cat enjoys sleeping on different types of books because he has a unique experience with each one. “Yesterday, I slept on a leather-bound copy of The Three Musketeers, and oh my Simba, it was heavenly. It smelled like an English lord’s library, and I dreamt of swordfights, castles full of secrets, and ladies in silk dresses. That’s the kind of book I prefer on a weekend when I’m feeling a little extravagant.”

Tim does not require that all of his books be leather-bound or even hardcover. “On Tuesday, I napped on a secondhand copy of The World According to Garp, and it was surprisingly enjoyable. It was the stuff of lazy afternoons with mugs of cocoa and the humans walking quietly around the house in fuzzy socks as snow falls outside.”

To date, his favorite book to slumber upon is in The Collected Poems of John Keats (“It’s like falling into a world where everything is intricate perfection”) and his least favorite is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (“No kitten should sleep on Frankenstein before his first birthday. It left me traumatized with a fear of both scientists and stitches.”).

The cat does not want to neglect a single book in his literary nap-a-thon. “I will dream of enchantments and magical creatures while slumbering on Harry Potter; I will dance through many a neighborhood ball while resting on Jane Austen; and feast upon green eggs and ham while dozing on Dr. Seuss.”

And when his goal is complete, will he pack up and move to the Library of Congress? “Why not?” Tim said. “I hear they could use a cat like me.”

Valentine’s Day Reading

The rom-com:  The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion.

Genetics professor Don Tillman has looks, brains, a successful career, and no social skills.  When Don decides he is ready to get married, in spite of a history of first dates and no second dates, he decides to approach the matter scientifically with a sixteen-page survey to weed out all undesirable women.  As he embarks upon the Wife Project, a meddling colleague and friend asks him to help Rosie, a bartending grad student, find her biological father.  Naturally, the Wife Project and the Father Project are meant to collide.  The Rosie Project is charming and fun and just different enough from your standard romantic comedy.

The culinary love story:  Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.

This novel tells the story of the de la Garza family, where the youngest daughter is expected to remain unmarried and care for the mother until her last days.  Tita, as the youngest daughter, is forbidden to marry her love, Pedro.  Instead her mother marries off Tita’s older sister to Pedro.  Tita is outwardly obedient to her mother, but her emotions come out through her cooking, resulting in poisoned wedding cakes and aphrodisiac quail recipes. Tita’s recipes provide structure for the novel, with each chapter beginning with a recipe that will be central to the story.

True love lost:  A Man Named Ove by Fredrik Backman.

Fifty-nine-year-old Ove is the curmudgeon next door.  He is the neighbor who will tell you when you haven’t disposed of your trash properly or if he doesn’t care for your car.  But Ove was once a young man who took the train two hours in the wrong direction every day just to spend time with the woman who would become his wife.  And while Sonja was alive, she was all the color he needed.  With Sonja gone and retirement forced upon him, Ove’s life has lost both its joy and its purpose, and he wakes each day resolved to kill himself at last.  Life has other ideas for him in the form of unwanted new neighbors and an unwanted cat.  Soon Ove must once again become the man Sonja always knew him to be: “the strangest superhero.”

(The story of a widower is admittedly a strange choice for a Valentine’s Day reading list, but I found the love story of Ove and Sonja, told in chapters that alternate with the main storyline, to be extraordinary.)

The darker Valentine:  Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.

Because sometimes one is not in the mood for a fluffy Valentine’s Day read.  This novel covers 20 years of marriage between Lotto and Mathilde.  In college, Lotto is a womanizer, and Mathilde is studious and keeps to herself, spending her weekends modeling.  Lotto and Mathilde begin dating just before graduation and impulsively get married.  Told from Lotto’s point of view for the first half and Mathilde’s for the second, Fates and Furies is not an optimistic or idealized view of marriage, but more of a look at loyalty and betrayal in the murkier areas of life.  It’s love story with complications.  And secrets upon secrets.

The classic: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Mistaken first impressions are a common starting point for light-hearted romances, but I doubt it has ever been done quite as well as in Pride and Prejudice.  Miss Elizabeth Bennet initially loathes Mr. Darcy.  He snubs her at a dance and discourages his close friend from proposing to Elizabeth’s shy sister, Jane.  Mr. Wickham, a soldier, confirms Elizabeth’s suspicions with stories of lifelong wrongs from Mr. Darcy.  In time, Elizabeth learns she’s trusted the wrong man and her own incorrect impressions. Like all of Austen’s novels, Pride and Prejudice has perfectly developed characters and understated wit.  However, it has something that the other novels lack.  That “something” is, of course, Mr. Darcy.

February Book Review Club: Mosquitoland by David Arnold (YA)

When Mary Iris Malone (Mim) learns that her mother is sick, she steals money from her stepmother and runs away from her Jackson, Mississippi home to return to her hometown of Cleveland and be with her mom.  Mim boards a Greyhound for Ohio, but her bus trip is anything but routine.   With bus accidents and encounters with poncho-wearing sexual predators and homeless teenage bullies, Mim finds herself off course and eventually road tripping with Beck, a college student on a mission, and Walt, a homeless boy with Down syndrome. There are some interesting revelations at the end of the book.  One involving Mim’s mom could be anticipated; the others are more surprising.

Mosquitoland has an escapist appeal, as a road trip book. It’s a story of finding friends in unexpected places.  Mim has struggled with friendships her entire life, but when liberated from the normal contexts of school, family, and home, she finds she can make connections with people.  Her first friend on the road is an elderly woman in sensible shoes who she initially bonds with over shoes.  However, Mim’s experiences are not all carefree.  She faces physical danger at a couple points, managing to escape bad situations with a combination of ingenuity and sheer dumb luck.

The biggest appeal of this book is definitely Mim herself.  Mim is quirky, inquisitive, sarcastic, and fiercely loyal to her mother.  We get to know her quite well between the first person narration and the letters she writes to Isabel through her journey.  While Mim is loveable, she is also a brat. She steals $880 from her working class stepmom, and she has written her own family history so her mother is a wonderful bohemian capable of no wrong and her father is the anxious killjoy.

Mental illness is an important part of Mim’s story.  We learn early on that Mim suffers from mental illness, like her Aunt Isabel, and this is the source of much of the tension between Mim and her father.  Her dad insists on medication, which Mim does not want to take, and switches her therapist when she had already bonded with her first therapist.  I appreciate that YA literature addresses mental health these days.  I went through severe depression in high school, and it was a bit like spending four years as a bat.  I would go to sleep the moment I got home and then wake hours later in the dark, disoriented, and I never felt like I was ever truly awake or interested in anything around me.  I would have appreciated a novel like this in the early nineties.

My only real critique of this book is that Mim’s love interest is far too old for her.  The relationship never gets physical, but the age difference between Mim and Beck is uncomfortable.  Overall, this is a likable, smart, and fast-paced novel, which I highly recommend.

For more  February book reviews, please visit Barrie’s blog:

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@Barrie Summy

FCC Notice:  I read a library copy, and since then, I have purchased a copy for my stepdaughter