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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Books for January

Bold indicates first-time read; ratings are out of five.

1. Never Let Me Go -- Kazuo Ishiguro -- 5
   • Amazing, fascinating, engrossing, wonderful book. I could never do it proper justice in a review. It's subtle -- Ishiguro tells you nothing, yet by the end of the book, from dropped hints and reading between the lines, you know everything he wants you to know about what happens in the bizarrely realistic parallel world of this mesmerizing novel. Well, not everything, because things continue to occur to you for days. Weeks. Months, maybe. If you love literary, slightly cerebral books, READ NO SPOILERS, don't even read the book jacket if you can help it, but go get this book ASAP. If you hate it, you can personally send me an email or leave me a comment that says, "you idiot, I totally could not stand that Ishiguro book; where's your brain?" But I bet you won't.
2. The Time Traveler's Wife -- Audrey Niffenegger -- 4
   
   • I loved this book when I read it the first time and I still really liked it on this second reading a couple of years later. This is another novel where you're enjoying the story while you try to figure out what the heck's going on -- which means that it lacks just a bit of punch on re-reading. Alas, even on my first reading I thought it could have used a better editor -- if the author wants to write a book about punk or papermaking, by all means do so, but the long departures into those topics in this novel seemed a bit contrived and out of place; also, the foul language is over-the-top at times and seems largely gratuitous to me. Still, a really good novel, well above average, beautifully written and meticulously thought out, with a truly unique love story (and that's hard to come by these days).
3. Rachel's Holiday -- Marian Keyes -- 3.5
   
   • I think this one, which was a favorite of mine in the past, suffered from two things on this go-round: I read it directly after having read two much more subtle novels, and so I was annoyed by Keyes' rather obvious writing style; and also, I've been a bit re-sensitized (this is a good thing) to excess sexuality and language in novels, and this one has both. So... a good book about addiction and self-worth, still a story with a lot of value and a good amount of humor, but probably not in my top twenty books anymore. For this month, anyway.
4. A Virtuous Woman -- Kaye Gibbons -- 3.5
   
   • I wanted to really like this, and sometimes I almost did really like it, but never as much as I hoped I would. The writer's style is very good -- authentic is a word that comes to mind -- but I had a hard time getting as interested in the characters as it seemed I should. I did like how much they reminded me of my grandparents -- which must be because of the speech patterns and the woman smoker, since they are almost entirely dissimilar in every other way. Interesting.
     

And that's it for January. I also read (with the family) the books of Genesis, Judges, and a goodly portion of Psalms... does that count? :) I think it's THE NIKON -- 2000 pictures in three weeks, that's a lot of shutter-clicking.

Comments

Posted by: Maria at February 1, 2006 12:02 PM

Posted by: mary at February 1, 2006 12:29 PM

Posted by: jenn at February 4, 2006 01:28 AM

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