Beloved: Books that I've Loved

My favorite decorating magazine, Domino, came out with their
first book: Domino The Book of Decorating. At my surprise
birthday party (love you honey:) the gift de jour were gift certificates
to bookstores (my friends know me!) and I swooped up a few things
including this beautiful book, which now lays on my white coffee
table. I love love the pictures, and the layout of the book makes
sense: it starts with overall picture of decorating (lists, references,
websites) and goes from A (hallways, entries) to Z ( guest rooms, wall hangings). My only gripe about this book, whose pages are
so bright and beautiful, is that there isn't a little more 123 detail
on the how- to of decorating for us newbies.

This unusual memoir by George Colt has a delicate, intellectual observational tone that I truly cherished. It is the kind of book I'd like to read when when sick, dying or
otherwise blue; the narrator is so even toned, so endearingly
sentimental and so grounded in nature and human beings
that you can't help but feel comforted. Colt's family has owned a beach side house at Cape Cod for generations, and
the house is about to be sold. Holt returns with his family and takes us on a meandering journey through the story of his family, it's individual members and their shared gravitational pull around this house. His descriptions of the sea and it's surrounding creatures and life are magical.





I first read of this novel on Mcsweeney's Internet Tendencies, went
and looked for it, was interested enough to buy the 600 pages and
was hooked enough to read every night until it was finished. This
novel fascinated me because it took very fantastical elements- a
Noah's flood leaving only a children's hospital afloat, angels, devils,
evil, good- and brazenly discussed them in the matter of fact terms
of day to day life. Adrian writes with the lush detail that I enjoy endlessly when a novel is good, and this is very good. He combines
a seriousness of thought and viewpoint, seamless writing and an almost soap-opera like series of events into one long good hard read.
Yum.