christmas bounty, and stuff

Sure, it's a week or so late, but I got some great books for Christmas this year and would like to share.

Run - Ann Patchett: I've loved her earlier work (A Patron Saint of Liars and Bel Canto especially) and this was a great opportunity to read her newest novel.

Bowerman and the Men of Oregon - Kenny Moore: A biography of Bill Bowerman, legendary Oregon track and cross country coach. He coached Steve Prefontaine, among others. Oh, yeah, and he helped design the shoes that would eventually form the foundation of a little company called Nike.

Schulz and Peanuts - David Michaelis: I'm still enamored with the Peanuts comics after all these years, and I read a Schulz bio when I was in high school. Supposedly this is a much more in depth bio and paints Schulz is a partly unfavorable light (read: human light, warts and all).

Fledgling - Octavia Butler: Butler is one of my favorite authors and I am starting to collect her work. This vampire novel is her final novel.

Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler: This first of a two book post-apocalyptic series. Apparently writer's block kept her from writing a third. I would love a collection of Butler's notes, if they were detailed and available (or if they existed), but I don't think it would sell well enough to be published.

Not too shabby, huh? And I have $20 in Barnes and Nobles gift cards, which might allow me to pick up a small stack of Elizabeth Bear mass market pb's, if they are all in stock at the same time.

Run!

The NY Times has a review of Ann Patchett’s new (and much anticipated) novel Run.

Below is a brief excerpt from Janet Maslin's review.

“Run,” with a title that suggests many things (including Kenya’s athletic prowess and Doyle’s political drive), and with a watery looking cover that reflects the whole book’s aura of a human aquarium, becomes an elegant mélange of family ties. Ms. Patchett gives her readers much to contemplate when genetics, privilege, opportunity and nurture come into play. And to her credit she is neither vague nor reductive about any of these things; she creates a genuinely rich landscape of human possibility. If she does not wildly exploit the drama of colliding fates on a snowy night and subsequent life-or-death medical crisis, there are plenty of other writers who tell such stories.

“Run” is muted only insofar as its characters are all so accomplished, their natures so decent and their barbs so civilized. It’s as if the story’s racial nuances, which are rendered almost nonexistent, are still present enough to preclude any rough edges.

Ms. Patchett showed no such restraint in “Bel Canto,” a more astonishing book and a less inhibited one. But “Run” still shimmers with its author’s rarefied eloquence, and with the deep resonance of her insights. When Kenya arrives at the Doyle home, a place she has looked at with longing all her life, and is given one of the boys’ white T-shirts to sleep in, Ms. Patchett invokes the image of a ship’s sail. That’s an exquisitely simple image of how much Kenya’s life has changed overnight.