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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Books for July

1. Body Surfing -- Anita Shreve -- 3
   • This was very readable, and yet somehow also unsatisfying. The main character, whose name I can't remember because I read this approximately thirty days ago and hey, I'm getting older here -- anyway. She is a widow and a divorcee and she's only like 29, and she works as a tutor in a wealthy family, one summer at their summer house in I think... New Hampshire. Was it New Hampshire? It was someplace that I thought was Martha's Vineyard at first, and it was in New England, and it had an ocean. (See how memorable this book was?) And of course she ends up in a relationship with one of the sons of the house, or both, kinda, the sons, of course, being much older than her tutee (I swear that's a word), who is only seventeen. The thing is, this starts out as a literary-feeling kind of chick book, and it winds up as just a chick book about a relationship that fails and the one that takes its place. There's some very strong imagery and some memorable moments, and a few memorable characters and relationships, and I didn't hate reading this, but it wasn't anything that moved me or made me say Wow.
   
   
   
2. Harry Potter and Something or Other -- JK Rowling (duh) -- eh, 3.
   • So I finally decided to give this series a try. At least I don't have to summarize the book, right? Honestly, I found it to be nowhere near the level of the awesome kidlit I love, but it wasn't terrible either. It felt kind of like a hopped-up school story with magic stuff thrown in, whose movie (which I've never seen, so who knows, maybe it IS like this) should look more like the food-fight scene from Hook than anything from The Lord of the Rings.
   
   
   
3. An Artist of the Floating World -- Kazuo Ishiguro -- 4.5
   • I'm too tired as I write this to do justice in a review to an Ishiguro book. If you've read Ishiguro, you know to expect brilliance: delicate story-un-telling, surprising twists that are laid out a phrase here and a phrase there until you figure them out on your own with more of an "ohhhhh..." than an "oh!", and endings that don't settle anything much. This early Ishiguro, a historical fiction piece about a retired artist in post-WWII Japan with a dubious past, does not disappoint. Of course. It didn't grab me like Never Let You Go, and it wasn't as hair-raisingly sublime in its subtlety as Remains of the Day, but it's still several cuts above most anything else you'll ever read, and it'll ruin you for ordinary novels for at least a day or two. If you're like me, anyway.
   
   
   
4. On Chesil Beach -- Ian McEwan -- 3.5
   • This readable little literary novella is, on the surface, entirely about a virginal 1940's couple's sexual anxieties on their wedding night. Beneath the surface, it's a strong character treatment (two strong character treatments, actually) and an incisive study of human sexuality, human frailty, human morality, and the tragic results of the failure to communicate. I can't say much more without giving stuff away. The heavy sexual emphasis was a bit of a negative for me, but (duh) it's what the whole story is about; there's not a gratuitous, tittery moment in the text. You might try it, if you've an afternoon free and an interest in this sort of literature. Jenn, I think you'd really like it.
   
   
   
5. Outlander -- Diana Gabaldon -- 4
   • My only reread this month -- I just kind of got a hankering for it, not sure why. As much as I think Gabaldon went wrong later in the series, I really do enjoy this first book in it. It pales a bit after several readings -- one notices the infodump much more readily, for example -- but overall reading it is still a rippingly decent way to spend lots of hours.
   
   
   
6. Harry Potter and Something Else -- JK Rowling -- 3.5
   • More of the same, but with an extra half-point because I actually laughed out loud twice. I can't remember what about, now.
   
   
   
7. The Railway Children -- Edith Nesbit, read by Karen Savage -- 4.5 for story, 5 for recording
   • Talk about brilliant kidlit. LOVE. THIS. STORY. Plucky Edwardian kids move to the country, win friends, overcome daunting odds, have a happy life, etc. It's recorded for Librivox by a WONDERFUL reader with a British accent that suits the story perfectly. Seriously, I've heard professional audiobooks that were far, far, far less appealing than this gem. Download This Now. This Means You. (as long as you or someone in your household loves a touching, funny, timeless, ageless children's story, that is.)
   
   
   
8. The Story of the Treasure Seekers -- Edith Nesbit, read by Karen Savage -- 5 for story, 5 for recording
   • Also a brilliant story. This one also involves plucky Edwardian children -- this time there's slightly less pathos, and even more humor. Same Librivox reader, also, here.
   
   
   
9. Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X -- Victor Appleton II -- 4 for story, 5 for recording
   • Tom Swift and Tom Swift Jr. feature in stories that are basically a sci-fi version of the Hardy Boys (indeed "Victor Appleton" and his fictitious son "Victor Appleton II" are pseudonyms for the same publishing syndicate who produced the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew). It's rather interesting, actually, that instead of revising the original texts of the 1930's Tom Swift books to reflect more modern sensitivities in the 50's, as the Stratemeyer Syndicate did with Frank, Joe, and Nancy, they simply created a new character (Tom Swift, Jr.-- whose dad, the original Tom Swift, continues as a character), a new pseudonymous "author", and new stories. I've read some from each era -- this whole book and parts of an original one that I volunteered for at Librivox -- and I do genuinely prefer the Tom Swift Jr series, and not just because the authors eliminated the hair-raising dialectized "Negro"isms of one of the supporting characters in the original books. This particular story is a nostalgic trip to the 1950's (which, let's face it, can't be nostalgic for me because I was born about twenty years too late for them, but whatever), when space exploration was deliciously full of possibilities, most of which involved shiny metallic suits. The details of the story are not terribly important (are they ever in this kind of book?) but this was a pleasant "read" -- made more so by the Librivox reader who truly went above and beyond with sound effects and such. The Ts and I listened to this on the way to and from the observatory, and it made an already-pleasant trip that much more memorable.
   
   
   
10. Wives and Daughters -- Elizabeth Gaskell -- 5
    • Mrs. Gaskell, where have you been all my life? This book has almost all the pleasure of an Austen novel -- maybe a WEE bit less biting satire, but it makes up for it in warmhearted affection between its characters -- with the bonus of being roughly twice or three times as long. I had never heard of it until I volunteered to help with it at LV (it's not done yet); can you imagine the joy of coming across something like this by surprise? BLISS. It was so pleasant to have a lovely, thick, long, engrossing, beautiful story to read that was completely new to me. I heartily recommend it to any Austen fans who haven't discovered Gaskell yet.

Monday, July 02, 2007

books for June

The trouble is, I can't remember most of them, I don't think.

I know I read Three Junes on vacation, and didn't like it much.

I know I finished To Kill a Mockingbird earlier in the month (reread) and, as usual, loved it. Perhaps even more than I have before, as my children are the ages of Jem and Scout nowadays.

Oh, and I read Vanishing Acts, by Jodi Picoult. Ehh. It was OK. I'm getting a wee bit tired of even the good parts of Jodi P right now. I think I'll take a substantial break before I read anything more of hers.

I'm pretty sure there were more, but apparently I need to start writing these down; I'm getting more and more forgetful in my old age.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

books for May

1. The Pact -- Jodi Picoult -- 3.5
   • Now that I have experience with Jodi Picoult she no longer catches me off-guard with her tacky, cheap-shot bait-and-switch endings, and I can enjoy her lovely prose and knowable characters without having the whole thing ruined for me by a low-blow cop-out twist in the last three pages (me bitter? I am looking at you, My Sister's Keeper). This was a good book, one of her earlier ones I think, and now that I knew to be on the lookout for a twist ending, it wasn't twisty at all; I knew what it was going to be about halfway through, except that I thought she wouldn't lay on the foreshadowing so thickly and maybe she was trying to be extra tricky and make us think we knew what would happen when we really didn't. But we (or I) did. I'm not sure if I recommend this or not. I think I do. Just get it in paperback (I don't think there's any other way to get it; it's about ten years old) so that when you feel like throwing it against the wall, you don't break anything. P.S. Maybe I'd been watching "Jericho" too much (O "Jericho", we hardly knew ye) but I totally pictured Pamela Reed and Gerald McRaney as one of the couples in this book.

2. The Patron Saint of Liars -- Ann Patchett -- 4.5
   
   • I HEART ANN PATCHETT'S BOOKS (well, except for Truth and Beauty: A Friendship or whatever it was called). I was shocked -- shocked I tell you -- when I found out this was her first novel, because it didn't have even the slightest tinge of that first-novel inexpert feel that so many first novels, even if they're really brilliant, can't seem to shake. (Now I am looking at you, The Time Traveler's Wife.) No, Ann Patchett was either gifted and completely savvy from Day One, or she had an editor who knew just how to handle her, because wow. The story is truly original, there's not a single character who does what you think s/he'll do every time s/he turns around, there's none of the gratuitous "hey, here's a topic I know a lot about, let's toss in a bunch of pages about that even though it really doesn't fit in the story" stuff that annoys me so, and while it's not perfect -- I felt like we were just getting to know some of the characters when they would shy away and we'd never really get close, but then maybe that was intentional -- it's a darn good read. Get Bel Canto too. yay.

I know I finished something else -- maybe two something elses -- but I can't remember what it/they was/were. I'm knee-deep in a bunch of books right now -- To Kill a Mockingbird, A Beautiful Mind, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, just off the top of my head, and I think there are a couple more -- and I just finished a knitting project (pictures later) and I have a new one started, and there's this DPChallenge team contest going on (yes, DPChallenge has again sucked me in), and I'm trying to make time for Librivoxing again now that I don't sound like I have a clothespin on my nose, and I'm generally kind of, um, scattered and dabble-y right now. So. If I remember the other book(s) later I'll edit this post. Off to see where I left my brain now. Bye.

Monday, April 30, 2007

books for April

Ratings out of five; if it's not bold it's a re-read.

1. Persuasion -- Jane Austen, bien sûr -- 5
   • My favorite Austen. Which may make this my favorite book, but that's a phrase I try to avoid because it is inevitably followed by a list. Poor books, they feel bad if they get left out. Seriously, though, Persuasion is biting and romantic and funny and sad and just blissful. I still catch my breath for the letter-reading scene at the end.

2. Villette -- Charlotte Brontë -- 4
   
   • I listened to the Librivox audio version of this (to which I contributed I think three chapters). This is an at-times-heartbreaking book about a young British woman who is essentially orphaned as she reaches adulthood, and as a result travels to the Continent to earn a living in a girl's school. It's beautiful, and especially this time around I really like Lucy -- she's a quiet, unobtrusive woman but she's nobody's doormat either -- but augh the pain. I stop reading it halfway through the last chapter so that I can make believe it ends the way I want it to end.

3. Helpless -- Barbara Gowdy -- 3.5
   
   • This was a truly disturbing and painful book to read, about a girl who's abducted by a, um, very troubled man. The family's pathos, the man's girlfriend's doubts, and most especially the insight into what the man himself and the little girl were thinking and feeling are adeptly handled. I know these people now, and I have a good sense of their surroundings. I enjoyed the author's style (she's new to me). Overall, disturbing and all, this was a good read until right up near the end, when I got the feeling the author took the easy way out.

4. Ten Days in the Hills -- Jane Smiley -- 1
   
   • Well, there it is. My first 1 rating, I think. I really, really tried to get into this book. I did. I gave it pages and pages and pages' worth of my attention, but I couldn't care about the characters or the situation they found themselves in; I couldn't identify with even one facet of anyone's life and I got so, so tired of the long paragraphs and boring dialogue. I really don't care about the angsty lives of wealthy celebrities. I don't. And even if I did, I still don't think this book would have done anything for me. I'm sorry. Maybe in eighty years this will be a classic along the lines of The Age of Innocence, a commentary on the vapid emptiness of the lives of the ruling celebrity class. I will never know, since by that time I will be in a place where I won't care how bad this book was. But I doubt it.

5. Family Tree -- Barbara Delinsky -- 2
   
   • I had never read anything by Barbara Delinsky, but not being a literary snob (well, not TOO much of a literary snob), and finding the premise and cover of this particular book to be interesting when I saw it on the New Books display at the library, and also being short on books for this post for this month, I decided to give this a try.
     
     I agonized over how I would score this book, because the thing is, it's not a bad premise. A white couple -- he a lawyer from an aristocratic New England family, she a nobody who helps run her grandmother's knitting store when she's not doing interior design -- gives birth to a child who shows definite signs of African ancestry. Family issues ensue. It would have made a good short story in the right hands, but as a 400-page novel, it just doesn't do it for me. It's largely the fault of the really... messy storytelling. I didn't like the narrative voice at all; it seems to have been written either by or for fifteen-year-olds in many places. Worst of all, though, was the handling of the race issue. Not politically -- I don't have any problem with that, really. Even when I disagree with an author's main point about the issues s/he presents, as long as they're handled well, I enjoy thinking about things from a different perspective and I generally come away with a better understanding of myself and the issue(s) than I had when I started reading. But The Issue in this book was clumsily handled. The characters (who, by the way, I otherwise didn't find too badly done) mouthed twenty-first-century platitudes every time they spoke; their dialogue was annoying peppered with stupid things that nobody really says ("Are you a bigot?" -- to one's husband -- for example). I didn't want to give up on the book, at first because I wanted to see if it got better, and then because it was like a freeway accident and I couldn't look away, and then because I wanted to see if my first-chapter predictions about the ending would come to pass (they did), and then because I wondered if the author could go a single page without using the word 'race', 'bigot', or 'African-American' (she couldn't). Characters and incidents were thrown into the story for no other purpose than to rather clumsily and obviously advance the secondary theme of Family Secrets and the Havoc They Wreak.
     
     This story, seriously, as bad as it was, was not completely without good points. I liked a few of the characters, as I mentioned. The baby descriptions were good. I liked the yarn store -- although that is so not my kind of yarn store; any yarn that costs $40 a skein is, um, no, never going to be in my house, I can pretty much guarantee. On the whole, though, I recommend that, unless you're a big fan of the author or her genre, you give this one a miss.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Books for March

I am late with this again. Sorry.

I have a feeling I did some re-reading this month but I can't remember those specifically, only the three new-to-me ones, which are:

1. Eggshell Days -- Rebecca Gregson -- 3
   • I found this kind of randomly and accidentally on the library shelf, and the title and cover image were appealing, so I checked it out because hey, it was free (yay for free libraries!). It turned out to be a pretty good book, about a group of British friends -- I wonder how many books there are about groups of British friends? I wonder what the percentage is of books that are about groups of British friends? -- who all move into one very large, very old Cornwall house together. Two of the friends are not-terribly-happily married to each other and have kids; one is a single mom who's secretly in love with the fourth and last friend, who's brought his girlfriend along on this adventure but only on weekends. The story verged on the soap-opera-ish at times (complete with a "who's the child's father and it's not who you think" storyline), but overall it was an enjoyable read. It actually reminded me more of the pilot of a weekly TV drama-comedy than a soap opera. Verdict: OK for a nice light read, but nothing to rave about.

2. Twelve Sharp -- Janet Evanovich -- 2.5
   
   • I feel an obligation to keep reading this series, because I started it, and because honestly I want to know what happens with Stephanie and Joe. But otherwise I'm kind of over the whole thing. The books aren't bad, it's just that they're so much the same.

3. Love Walked In -- Marisa De Los Santos -- 4.5
   
   • The lovely and kindredly (a word that isn't really a word unless you were kind of in on the creation of it) Kat recommended this book to me, for which I am so very grateful. Any book with one main character whose heroes are Anne Shirley and Sara Crewe, and another who sees her life through Katharine-Hepburn-tinted glasses, has got to be right up my alley. This is a sweet story, but it's not saccharine; it's a romantic-comedy, in a fresh and satisfying kind of way; it's an orphan story for the twenty-first century. The adult heroine, Cornelia, semi-adopts the child heroine, Clare, who happens to be her boyfriend's daughter, when Clare's mother disappears and the boyfriend/father turns out to be a less than ideal dad. The love story ends up being more maternal than romantic, although there's plenty of romance thrown in too. I recommend this, even though I was a bit lost at some of the more obscure movie references Cornelia made (Clare never once left me behind with the child orphan books, though; what does that say about me exactly?)
     
   
   

Saturday, March 03, 2007

books for February

This month I only completed three books and they were all re-reads. I think I might have even reviewed all of them in here somewhere already.

1. Emily Climbs -- L.M. Montgomery -- 3.5
   
   • I like this book but don't LOVE it. However, it has parts that I love.
2. Emily's Quest -- L.M. Montgomery -- 3.5
   
   • Usually I like this one less than the other two in the series. It wasn't so bad this time -- maybe because I'm older, and early-30's doesn't seem like such an elderly age to be striking up a romance. :) I still intensely dislike Teddy, and find myself wishing that LMM had been allowed to leave Emily single like she wanted to. The Teddy bits seem to be tacked on. They probably were. And Teddy is more than a bit of a jerk.
3. Into the Wilderness -- Sara Donati -- 4.25
   
   • I KNOW I've reviewed this one in here; do a search if you're interested. :) I had been reading about the time period in which it's set in my history class and I got a hankering to read it. I'm glad I did. Elizabeth and Nathaniel are among my favorite literary couples. (You know who my favorite literary couple is? Admiral and Mrs. Croft in Persuasion.)
     

And that's it for February. I've been knitting and working on schoolwork, and, of course, LibriVoxing. :)

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Books for January

Ratings from five*; if the title's not bold, it's a re-read. (LIKE YOU DIDN'T KNOW THIS ALREADY.)

1. Jane of Lantern Hill -- L.M. Montgomery -- 3.5
   
   • I got kind of a craving for LMM in December, I think because of having read Anne for my dad/Librivox. So I started Jane around Christmas. It's one of the LMM books I read less often than the rest (in other words, it's not the Anne series or The Blue Castle, I guess) so it was quite refreshing to read it again. It's the most modern in feel of all of her books (fitting because I'm pretty sure it was the last one she wrote before she died, right? Or did she do one of the out-of-sequence Annes last?), dealing with marital separation and ping-pong parenting and worries about divorce, and one of LMM's truly bad antagonists, with no redeeming characteristics that I can find. Don't expect Anne, but this is a nice light read with pretty little bits about late-1930's housekeeping, and a girl who takes a lion for a walk, and stuff.




2. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- Mark Twain -- 3.5
   
   • I listened to the Librivox recording of most of this, and then I finished up with my copy of the book (quicker that way, and I could read it in bed. The iPod didn't go with me to bed, or I'd have squished it, and maybe, I dunno, BROKEN IT, and had to send it in FOR REPAIRS). This story was pretty much not at all what I expected. It was a) far far more political than I thought -- Mark Twain hates the idea of an established church and he wasn't too keen on Catholicism either, or chivalry, or, well, England -- and b) much gorier -- in a funny kind of way, and in just a couple of brief parts -- than I had figured it might be. All in all it's a good story and I recommend it if you like historical fiction a lot or Mark Twain even a little. The Librivox recording is quite good, and having just looked at that page I will say that the summary there is far and away better than anything I could write so you should just go read that and skip this review. Oops.

   
   

3. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio -- Terry Ryan -- 4
   
   • I was watching the movie of this when I saw a 'based on the book' notice, and, as always, got a little miffed that I hadn't been made aware of this sooner so that I could have read it first as is my rule (perhaps a little notice in Netflix -- alas, poor Netflix, I knew them well -- where you have to type in a little summary of the book before they'll let you get the movie. *evil cackle*). In this case it wasn't such a bad thing, as the book had a much lighter feel than the movie. The father's problems were there in the book, but in my opinion, they didn't take over the whole mood like they do in the movie. Thank you Hollywood. Anyway, it was good that I hadn't read the book yet because it would have been quite a negative surprise going the other way. And I truly really did like this biography -- it's fun (all the little sprinklings of verse with which Mrs. Ryan won or didn't win her prizes were priceless), informative, interesting, clever, and well-written. Like all good biographies, it provides insight not only into a person's life, but into the times and places (in this case, place) where the person lived. In this case that's the baby-boom Midwest, in a very large family (speaking of baby booms) without a lot of money, but with a great sense of humor and the ability to laugh through adversity -- and make a living at it.

   
   

4. The Awakening -- Kate Chopin -- 3.5 for the book, 4.5 for the Librivox recording
   
   • I tend to think of this book on several different levels. As literature, it's brilliantly written, stirring, evocative. It brings late-19th-century Louisiana to life. As a cultural phenomenon, it's, well, phenomenal. A book with an adulterous, 'liberated' female protagonist published in 1899 is not something you see every day. From what I understand this book pretty much ended Chopin's career, and was not really discovered by the public until 1970's feminists unearthed it. As a blueprint for life, frankly, it sucks. Well, I think it does; many modern women do not and they're fully entitled to that opinion just as I am to mine blah blah blah. Chopin's heroine becomes dissatisfied with marriage and motherhood, falls in love with a younger man, moves out of her husband's house, and determines to live for herself and not for others. Not too shocking by today's standards, but still not the way I personally find fulfilment.
     
     As an audiobook, especially as a free volunteer-produced public-domain audiobook, this is amazing. If you are a woman with an iPod (or whatever) I strongly suggest you download and listen to this just to hear the way these eight women bring life to this story. I won't tell you who my favorites were; I'll let you choose your own as I think they all did a brilliant job with this text. I listened to much of it on a long walk around the area where my parents live, taking pictures and just listening and it's not an afternoon I will soon forget.

   
   

5. The Rosary -- Florence L. Barclay -- 4
   
   • I had a few chapters of this to read for a collaborative project at Librivox (hi Ria!). I couldn't find a copy of the book, so one night I thought I'd read a few more chapters just to get some context for the sections I'd recorded. I ended up sitting up reading the entire book online in one night. SO SO ROMANTIC SIGH. It has echoes of Jane Eyre, with a plain heroine who's beautiful in the eyes of the man who loves her but who can't believe it until after he goes blind *ahem*. If you can find this book, read it (Project Gutenberg has it if you don't mind reading from a screen), or wait until the Librivox production is done and listen to it, if you like romantic stories that make you catch your breath from time to time in a Jane-Eyre-in-the-hallway-with-Mr.-Rochester-after-the-fire / Mr.-Darcy-encountering-Lizzy-by-surprise-at-Pemberley kind of way. You know what I am talking about, oh yes.

   
   

6. Emily of New Moon -- L.M. Montgomery -- 4
   
   • Emily is as different from Anne as moonlight is from sunlight. (I didn't make that up, we say it on the KS list all the time.) I recommend this book, even though it has its flaws -- I dislike the narrator's occasional intrusions, personally, and I have never liked Teddy -- because overall it is quintessential LMM. It's more autobiographical than Anne -- whereas Anne writes a little bit here and there for fun, Emily is a writer who MUST write, whose stories and poems seem to come through her. This is something that I personally cannot identify with, but apparently a lot of writery types can and do. Read it, and then tell me whether you think Dean is creepy. It's an ongoing debate, even within my own self. Of course, for the full Dean picture you have to read all three Emily books. Even though the two later ones are not quite as good as this first one, they're still worth the time it takes to read them.

*Here, a rating scheme, for this month anyway:

5: This book is perfect. READ THIS NOW THIS MEANS YOU.
4.5: I love this book.
4: I am enthusiastic about this book.
3.5: Hey, this one's pretty good.
3: Not bad but I'm not going to go around raving about it.
2.5: Almost bad.
2: Pretty darn lame.
1.5: This sucked but I finished reading it.
1: So bad I gave up.
I've never given one, but I suppose a .5 would mean I threw it against the wall as I gave up.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

books for December

Appallingly late with these again. I wasn't putting it off because it was such a daunting task to write this post; I was putting it off out of shame that once again I only finished two books in December. And one of them doesn't really count.

1. Shopgirl -- Steve Martin -- 2.5
   • You know, except for one very brief little chapterette, this entire book was pretty much a waste of time for me. Good thing it's really just a novella. Martin's writing style was surprisingly good -- not that this means it was amazing, just that it means it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be -- and his wry humor comes through in the text. This fact, and the aforementioned chapter, were all that kept me from making this a 1.5 (1 being reserved for books I can't make myself finish because of their utter bad suckiness). So if you open this to the chapter about the main couiple's second date -- I cannot even remember the characters' names -- Mireille? -- anyway, open it to that chapter and read the exchange between them which is, with its narration, possibly the most apt and humorous treatment ever written of the miscommunications that abound in male/female relationships, and you will have gleaned all the good that I did out of this little book. I kind of feel bad, not liking it, because the premise was interesting. It just didn't go anywhere. Or at least not anywhere I cared about. Stylish, but as substance-free as the local public schools.

2. Anne of Green Gables -- L.M. Montgomery -- 5
   
   • One of my top ten favorite books ever. I've read it literally at least two dozen times, probably three. This time I was reading it aloud and painstakingly editing the resulting audio files, which meant that I noticed pretty much every little detail all over again, and the story actually was better for this. Other than that, I have nothing new to say about this wonderful book except that I am going to force my family to listen to it in the car as soon as I have a car kit for my iPod. Bwa ha ha ha.
   
   

So there you have it: my shameful little list of two (2) books for an entire 31 days. To be fair to myself, I did have a lot of other projects going on. Not that I did all of those either.

Posted by Rachel at 01:21 AM in nose in a book | | Comments (2)

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Books for November

I'm a couple of days late with these. Oh, the craziness. Ratings are out of five, bold title indicates first-time read.

1. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood -- Ann Brashares -- 4
   • I actually cried reading this. Granted, it was 3 am and I'm always more liable to cry over a book at that hour, but still. The book focuses heavily on mother/daughter relationships, and some of the bits about girls growing away from their mothers and then back to them had me sniffling. The whole book is pretty good -- I especially liked to see Bridget finding herself a bit. Recommended for light-but-not-inane reading.

   
   

2. Ralph's Party -- Lisa Jewell -- 2.75
   
   • This was fluffy and sometimes a bit amateurish, and rather laden with vulgarity, and what is it with EVERYONE in adult novels smoking marijuana these days? Sheesh! The core story was interesting (six [?] strangers who live in one triplex in London, and their various interrelated trials and tribulations), and some of the characters (particularly Jem) are well-drawn. Still, it was kind of a fun read, although the ending of one of the threads was Not Satisfying to me. It sort of screams FIRST NOVEL at you, but not in the worst way I've ever seen. This is another addition to the "don't mind having read it but won't be re-reading it or passing it around to my friends" pile.

   
   

3. Water For Elephants -- Sara Gruen -- 4.5
   
   • I LOVED THIS BOOK. Sersly. It would have been a five if it hadn't been for the unnecessary vulgarity (again). I sound like a prim maiden aunt saying that word, but really, do I need the mental image of, say, a dwarf having what should be an extremely private moment, etched in my mind forever, in order to be able to enjoy this story? No, I don't. I hope, honestly, that they make a movie out of it and leave in everything except the nasty bits, because it's a brilliant story, very well-told. It's set both in the modern day (the narrator is either ninety or ninety-three; he doesn't know what year it is) and in the deeps of the Depression; in an assisted-living facility for the elderly and in a traveling circus. Both settings are pitch-perfect, truly; I can smell them, know what I mean? The ending is uplifting (possibly the most perfect book ending I've read in years -- original, interesting, almost gleefully happy, and unpredictable -- and it's rare to find a truly unpredictable ending without it being high-art-nobody's-allowed-to-be-happy melancholy for melancholy's sake). It's been weeks since I read it, and Gruen's expert treatment of everything from aging to acceptance of other's differences to spousal abuse to schizophrenia to the care and treatment of large exotic animals is still going around and around in my mind. READ THIS NOW THIS MEANS YOU. Even in spite of the nasty bits.

   
   

4. Happiness Sold Separately -- Lolly Winston -- 3
   
   • I liked this well enough while I was reading it, but in looking back I can't remember much about it other than a very sketchy outline. This is probably not a good thing. It's about divorce after infertility (almost a yawn nowadays), and infidelity, and... yawn. Sorry. Couldn't help it. Truly, it wasn't a bad book. I remember thinking it was quite well-written, and you do get into the characters' heads a good deal, and oh! the little boy! She did a very good job with the boy. I didn't like the ending, though.

   
   

5. Pat of Silver Bush -- L.M. Montgomery -- 4.5
   
   • I like (and, honestly, mildly dislike) different things about LMM's books pretty much every time I reread them. This time I confess I got a wee bit annoyed with Pat's unending devotion to a house, although I can kind of identify with it, especially if I manage to interpret it as undending devotion to the people in the house. Still, I think this is one of LMM's five best books; Pat is the character of hers with whom I can most closely identify, and Hilary is my favorite of her male characters -- in this book, at least, he's as well-defined as Dean Priest in the Emily books, without that is-he-creepy-or-is-he-not factor that makes Dean a bit harder to like.

   
   

6. Mistress Pat -- LMM -- 3.5
   
   • Jingle vanishes for the entire book until the last page (typical of LMM's males); LMM skims over eleven years in not very many pages, and Pat becomes a bit annoying. Which is pretty realistic. I really do like this book quite a lot, especially its portrayal of Pat's relationship with her sister, but it's not on a level with its predecessor.

   
   

7. Rise and Shine -- Anna Quindlen -- 3.5
   
   • I would have liked this a lot better if it hadn't been for Quindlen's too-frequent lapses into material that's better suited for her Newsweek column than for a novel. Her thoughtful passages about life in New York, or about the dog-eat-dog social structure among, well, socialites, or the little zingers about politics (especially those) were unwelcome intrusions in a novel that could quite well have been rather brilliant otherwise. I guess it doesn't help, either, that I'm really kind of OVER the whole "of course the only really interesting people live in major urban centers, preferably New York or London but LA will do in a pinch" theme in modern novels, about which I ranted very briefly in I think last month's books post. This is worth a read, though, because Quindlen is really quite a good writer -- she immerses you quite fully in her characters' lives, except for those columnist intrusions -- and because this novel's treatment of sisterly relationships is not exactly standard fare for chick books. I don't have a sister, so I can't say how on-the-money it is, but it was more interesting reading than the usual Ya-Ya (yes, I know they weren't sisters, quibble quibble) kind of simplistic view of things.

Posted by Rachel at 11:38 AM in nose in a book | | Comments (4)

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Books for October

Only five this month, and two of them were for Librivox. I got a big stack of books from the library early in the month, and just couldn't get into most of them.

Bold titles indicate first-time reads, ratings are out of five.

1. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler -- 4.5
   • I've never made a secret out of the fact that I pretty much am Maggie Moran, the protagonist in this wonderful book. Not that Maggie is wonderful; she's amazingly flawed in some very real, humdrum kinds of ways, but the book is wonderful. It covers one day in the life of a long-married but still-affectionate couple consisting of solid, patient Ira and scatterbrained Maggie (that'd be me). I will, however, add a threefold disclaimer to this oft-repeated statement, after this most recent reread. One: I am not a nag. Maggie is a bit of a nag. Two: I am not an airhead. There's a line between scatterbrained-but-intelligent and airheaded, and Maggie crosses it a few times. Three: I don't make up things about people in my attempt to make them do what I want them to. I might have done this when I was thirteen, but not since. However. If you want to know how I see myself, read that caveat and then this book, and you will know. Not to mention that you'll have a great time reading a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

2. Baby Proof by Emily Giffin -- 3.5
   
   • Not what I expected it to be, honestly, which can be a very good thing. For a chicklit romance with a twist, it managed to keep me guessing about the ending rather well, pretty much right up until the ending. The writing was pretty good and the characters were believable, but for some reason this fell just flat enough for me to keep it from being in the 4 range. Note: What is it with modern novels and suburbia? This is [counts on fingers, makes 'thinking' face] at least the third and maybe the fourth book I've read in like two months that had these subtle-or-otherwise slams at the idea of living anywhere but in an urban center, preferably New York. What gives with that? I guess people who still cling to their Mom jeans* (yes, I plan on mentioning those in every post for quite some time, in case you were wondering) just can't understand such things. Give me peace and quiet any day even if it does mean I have to drive a while to get to highly cultured places like Target and Panda Express.

3. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares -- 4
   
   • I liked this. It was fresh and funny and very different. I could tell I was quite a few trips around the sun away from the target audience but who cares. (One spoilery note: I truly liked how the book handled the one girl's loss of her virginity. Much more realistic -- and tastefully done -- to my mind, than all the starry-eyed treatments this topic got in the books I read as a teen. I hope girls who read it can see the truth in it.)

4. Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney -- 3.5
   
   • This is a story of a widowed mother raising her five children on a shoestring, to put it briefly. Paula was definitely right when she commented that this book is syrupy but readable. Maybe if I hadn't been reading it aloud, necessarily taking a couple of months to get through it, I would have enjoyed it more, but when you're reading a book aloud you notice things you mightn't otherwise. For instance, in I think every single chapter in this novel, someone 'screams' a bit of dialogue. Sidney's writing doesn't have the timeless, ageless quality that L.M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott mastered so thoroughly. It's a good book for what it is -- children's literature from the late nineteenth century -- and I liked it well enough, but I don't love it. You can listen to me read it (ack) here.

5. Silas Marner by George Eliot -- 4.5
   
   • This has long been one of my favorite books -- a simple story of a social outcast and the way his life and the lives of his neighbors were changed by a little girl who was "sent" to him. you can listen to me me read it (ack again) here.
   
   

While we're talking about good books: if you like Sara Donati's Wilderness series (and you should), today is the US release date for the most recent novel in that series, Queen of Swords, the ARC of which I reviewed here.

*I am a mom, by the way. Who better to wear them?

Posted by Rachel at 09:23 AM in nose in a book | | Comments (8)

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