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Saturday, September 30, 2006

Books for September

1. O Pioneers! -- Willa Cather -- 4
   
   • I actually read this in August, but I forgot to note it in last month's books post. I found O Pioneers! better in some ways than My Antonia, which I read a few years ago for the first time -- it was a lot easier to get a sense of the characters, for example, and the story seemed more straightforward. Perhaps for those reasons, it also felt a bit more shallow than Antonia. Overall I liked this quite well; it was a good quick read with what I think must be Cather's trademark ability to make the physical setting of a novel almost a character in its own right.
     

2. Literacy and Longing in LA -- Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack -- 3
   (I'm editing this entry to add this book since I forgot it earlier.)
   
   • I got this because the idea of a woman bingeing on books when she had troubles may have resonated with me just a wee small bit, shall we say. I was a bit disappointed in it, though, for three reasons: 1) slightly amateurish writing. 2) slightly inaccessible characters 3) constant casual references to obscure books and also to places in LA, tossed into the story as if of COURSE everyone knows about xyz but really, uh, no. We don't. And you just completely lost our interest there for a few paragraphs, Ms. Kaufman and Ms. Mack.

3. Anybody Out There? -- Marian Keyes -- 4
   
   • I'm not sure but I think this might have been from August too. But maybe not. Marian Keyes is known for her humorous not-as-fluffy-as-they-feel novels about Irish women -- sort of a Maeve Binchy without the everlasting sameness or the soap-opera overtones. Or, to be fair, the lyrical prose or livably real bucolic settings. Anyway. Anybody Out There centers around Anna (the sister of Rachel of Rachel's Holiday, Claire of Watermelon, and Maggie of Angels -- I think we can safely assume that Helen's book will be coming down the pike before too terribly long), who, for a reason we can't quite figure out at first, has been brought back to live with her family in Ireland whilst she recovers from some physically traumatic experience. As the story unfolds we find out more about the trauma that brought her home, and we witness her full recovery back in New York which is told with plenty of Keyesian humor and insight. Recommended.
     

4. Digging to America -- Anne Tyler -- 4.5
   
   • This is an intriguing look at the way Americans and foreigners interact, as shown through the eyes of two very different families who adopt daughters from China on the same day. You can't read an Anne Tyler book without learning something about yourself and gaining new insights about people who are fictional but who you would swear could live right down the street from you. She has a way of taking people (sometimes very ordinary and sometimes so quirky you wonder at the genius that makes such unreal people so real) and putting them into odd situations whose oddities you only really realize when you think about them later. The resulting stories are just magical, that's all I can say, and Digging To America -- from its brilliant title to its uplifting conclusion -- is no exception. Can a person win the Pulitzer twice in a lifetime? Anne Tyler ought to.
     

5. Atonement -- Ian McEwan -- 4.5
   
   • This is a disturbing, important, brilliant work. It's a truly masterful novel about the disastrous, life-altering repercussions of a rash decision made by an immature person, and about that person's attempt to redeem herself in the only way she thinks she can. It's a story within a story, and it's the kind of book you think about for months after you put it down. It reminded me a bit of The Life of Pi, even though the subject matter couldn't be more different, for reasons that will be obvious to people who've read both.
     

6. Little Earthquakes -- Jennifer Weiner -- 3.5
   
   • I liked this pretty well. The characterization reminded me a bit of Jennifer Crusie (as did the TMI nature of some of the sex bits, unfortunately). The cast of characters was memorable, the descriptions of motherhood apt, and the relationships (of every stripe) truly well-done and believable. It's not a book I'm going to go around raving about, but I'm glad to have read it.
     

7. Goodnight Nobody -- Jennifer Weiner -- 2
   
   • Almost but not quite a waste of time. I don't think Weiner does whodunits very well, and my goodness did I get tired of being slammed over the head with the woman's politics. If I ever find a popular, well-written "chick book" where a conservative woman appears who isn't either an utter tool or an eeevil villain, I may just have to cry for joy. I admit the ending was a surprise, but that could be because it came pretty much completely out of left field and was as contrived as some of the stuff I used to write in the tenth grade, before I figured out that people who can actually write fiction can write it without having to come up with unnatural twist endings in order to finish a story.
     

8. Sense and Sensibility -- Jane Austen -- 5
   
   • Bliss. Yay.
     

9. A Wind in the Door -- Madeleine L'Engle -- 2.5
   
   • When you come right down to it, I'm not much of a sci-fi fan. Or is this more fantasy? It was quite well-written, and I liked A Wrinkle In Time a lot, and it's probably quite Important, but I confess I kept mentally writing a parody as I read it. Or rather the mental parody kept writing itself. When the completely-made-up-words-per-sentence ratio reaches a certain point I just can't stay in the story anymore; I'm bumped right out of the world of the book and reminded quite painfully that I'm sitting (or lying) in a room with pages of words in front of me. Which is not a good place to be. I struggled through this but I don't think I'll go on to the sequel. Which I own, and which I'll keep because who knows, maybe one of the kids will like this kind of thing.
     

10. Rose Madder -- Stephen King -- 3.5
    
    • I hadn't read anything by Stephen King since high school. My mother-in-law and I got talking about his books, and she lent me this one, saying it wasn't just your average imaginative horror story. She was right. Rose Madder describes vividly a woman's escape once and for all from the cop/husband who brutalized her for fourteen years. King still doesn't pull any punches -- I distinctly remember feeling so unsafe when I read his books in junior high, because I was not used to authors who would really actually put their characters all the way through what he did without a convenient rescue or at least an averted authorial eye -- but this is a book with real depth and vivid characters. Not that even his -- well, what a snob like me would call his trashiest books -- not that even those weren't well above the level of other horror authors I dabbled in for a time (hey, I was thirteen; people do stupid things when they're thirteen), but really this is a book I can recommend, WITH THE CAVEAT that there are some truly disturbing and painful mental images herein. And swear words aplenty.
      

11. Confessions of a Shopaholic -- Sophie Kinsella -- 3.5
    
    • Fluff. But fun fluff, with a Good Message even (Don't Run Up Credit Card Debt! not that I would know anything about that, of course), and some moments with which I could definitely identify.
      

12. Night -- Elie Weisel -- 4.5
    
    • Everything I could say about this book has already been said, often, and better than I could say it. I mean, the guy won the Nobel Peace Prize; you think I'm actually going to come up with anything original to say in a review in my stupid little blog? This book will haunt me for the rest of my life, and it belongs on every human being's bookshelf for that very reason. Go buy it if you don't already own it. Even though it has Oprah's name stuck on the front and I can't get it off.
      

13. Little Children -- Tom Perotta -- 3.5
    
    • This wasn't what I expected at all, which is an OK thing. It turned out to be about a man who was trying to reclaim his youth by having an affair, and about a woman who was trying to escape her humdrum life with a detestable husband by having an affair, and if this reminds you of Madame Bovary that's apparently not an accident at all. Throw in a new neighbor who's a convicted sex offender and you have this book, which angered me at times (although it's lighter, on the whole, than I thought it would be) but which overall I'm glad I read.
      

    
    

Friday, September 01, 2006

books for August

1. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH -- Robert C. O'Brien -- 5
   • Read this one aloud onto CD for my dad. I reviewed it here, last year.
2. Assorted short stories -- O. Henry -- 4
   • I'd only ever read his "Gift of the Magi", which I think everyone has read and which I have always loved. I bought a compilation of his stories at Barnes and Noble and have been really enjoying them; they're great for when I want to read something quick and yet complete (duh, Rachel, that's a really new thought about short stories!).
3. Island of the Blue Dolphins -- Scott O'Dell -- 3.5
   • I was fascinated by this book when we read it in the fourth grade. I bought it used because I collect Newbery winners, and read it again this month as I was planning for our upcoming school year and trying to decide what books we'd read as a "class" (all three of us).
4. A Wrinkle in Time -- Madeleine L'Engle -- 4.5
   • I hadn't read this in YEARS and I had forgotten a lot of detail, so when the neighbor kids started discussing it with me I pulled it off the shelf and read it. It was more classically sci-fi than I remembered, and I had never noticed how overtly Christian it was. I think the last time I read this book I was in high school, to tell the truth. Brilliantly done, truly. On to the sequels, which I've never read.
5. There Will Never Be Another You -- Carolyn See -- 1.5 (it would be a 1 except I save that for books I don't finish)
   • Eck. This looked interesting, just reading the jacket flap -- in the very near future (set in 2007, mostly) a doctor is hand-picked to work with the government in case of biological terror attacks. Unfortunately, pretty much the entire thing fell flat, most notably the scenes where the doctor deals with the military, which were so badly done, using every stereotype about military personnel in the book as wel as some of the most heavy-handed writing I've ever seen, that I'm giving the author (and her publisher) the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she meant them as parody. And as the only bits of parody in what is otherwise apparently meant as a serious novel, they just don't work for me. The doctor's personal life is messy and unpleasant, and not a single character in the book is likeable or even memorable. It's supposed to be this angsty see-how-anxious-we-all-are post-9/11 cultural cross-section kind of thing. I am apparently (judging by the Amazon reviews, which are glowing) the only person who thinks it failed completely.
6. The Abortionist's Daughter -- Elisabeth Hyde -- 3.5
   • I think I just felt the earth shift on its axis when I typed that 3.5 there. Truly, though, while this book's politics, if you read deeply between the lines, don't agree with mine, Hyde is very careful not to hit anyone over the head with them. The 'issues' here go beyond the pro/anti-abortion debate; this is a taut whodunit and not a morality tale. It has characters I liked and characters I hated -- notably, it has sympathetic characters on both sides of the issue, which is rare -- and rhetoric I didn't buy (but I don't think I was supposed to) from both sides. I give the author a lot of points for not making a good novel into a Very Special Episode where everyone who was on The Wrong Side realizes their mistakes by the last page and ends up converted. However, I have to take off a point for a couple of very jarringly inappropriate metaphors (inappropriate in a literary sense, not a moral one) near the end of the book.

Friday, August 04, 2006

books for July

Whoops, REALLY late with these. I kept completely forgetting except when I was away from the computer.

There were only three this month. Bold indicates first-time read, ratings out of five, yada yada.

1. Vanity Fair -- William Makepeace Thackeray -- 4.5
   • This is the reason there were only three books this month, by the way. This thing is HUGE. It's also very, very good, kind of like if Dickens and Austen had a child who grew up to write 900-page novels like his father, which I know was impossible because Jane Austen died (unmarried and hence childless) when Charles Dickens was only five, but whatever. Anyway. Picture Austen-style barbed social commentary and Dickensian characters and wordiness and there you have Thackeray. You also have Becky Sharp, a character who is supposedly One Of Literature's Best-Loved Heroines but who I found, quite frankly, like the similarly-lauded Scarlett O'Hara, to just be a conniving bitch. A really well-written one, but there it is, and I just can't admire her, no matter how tenacious and clever and whatever she was. And now I want to watch the movie with Reese Witherspoon even though I know for a fact I'll be yelling at the TV the whole time because that's just how I roll with movie adaptations.

     By the way, this is subtitled by Thackeray "A Novel Without A Hero" and I almost agree. Becky's what I said she is and Amelia's a simpering, gutless little airhead, bless her heart, (*cough* Dora Spenlow *cough*), and most of the men are jerks, because hey, this is Vanity Fair here; we're supposed to be clucking our tongues over the emptiness and tragic waste and, well, vanity, in an Ecclesiastes sense, that is (was) 19th-century British high society. But Dobbin -- I could love Dobbin if I were a single young woman still prone to literary crushes -- lisp, gangly limbs, awkwardness, and all. Too bad he wasted his life pining over Amelia who would never in a billion years appreciate him properly and who only ended up with him at the end (oops, spoiler) because Becky, wanting to get rid of her and Dobbin so she could continue with her own devious schemes, told Amelia what a faithless loser Amelia's first husband had been.

     Um, yeah. So. Good book. Coming soon at Librivox, too, and since I was reading it anyway I contributed a couple of chapters.
     

2. Second Nature -- Alice Hoffman -- 3.5
   
   • Good, but weird. Quirky, well-written, definitely not just your average chick book. I whizzed through this quickly because a friend lent it to me and said it was good. It honest-to-goodness is about a woman who falls in love with a man who was raised by wolves. Sersly.
     

3. The Bad Beginning (I think this is the title -- first of those Series of Unfortunate Events books) -- Lemony Snicket, which is a pseudonym that bothers me with its obviousness -- 3.5
   
   • At first I had a really hard time wrapping my brain around this book. Dark humor for children? I actually read this because the neighbor kids are always recommending this series to my kids, and since said neighbor children also luuurve Captain Underpants, I wanted to make sure that this was not something revoltingly objectionable. And it wasn't. Pretty well-done, actually, and tasteful, just... dark. And for kids. At the same time. The whole idea just struck me as kind of creepy. Who would do that? Then I went, oh, duh, Roald Dahl. Whom I love(d). OK.
     
   
   

Friday, June 30, 2006

books for June

June:

Title (bold indicates first-time read) -- Author -- Rating (out of 5)

1. Falling Angels -- Tracy Chevalier -- 4
   
   • I'm writing this review nearly a month after having finished the book. From here, I can say the following: I liked it. It's quite memorable really, with some unexpected twists and turns. Tracy Chevalier has shown herself to be an adept writer of historical fiction (added bonus: she doesn't just stick to one time period and locale; this particular book is set in Edwardian London) and I look forward to reading what she comes up with next.
     

   
   

2. The Ladies of Missalonghi -- Colleen McCullough -- 2
   
   • I picked this up at a flea market because I remembered that there was a bit of a kerfuffle surrounding it. Supposedly McCullough borrowed a bit too freely from one of my favorite books, The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery, in writing this little book set in the Blue Mountains in Australia at (I'm guessing) around the turn of the century. And there are DEFINITELY way too many similarities in the stories (from the sequence of events, to the characters, to some lines of narration) for anyone to believe that they're merely coincidental. I don't know whatever happened with that lawsuit; I don't know if I'd go so far as plagiarism, since there are a great many differences as well, but it's definitely close, in my opinion.

     Not that Ladies comes anywhere NEAR the level of quality of The Blue Castle. The latter is piquant, refreshing, clever, winsome, and at times biting, all in a wholesome and romantic kind of way. The former is just another moderately trashy period romance. In my humble opinion, of course.
     

   
   

3. Queen of Swords (ARC) -- Sara Donati -- 4.5
   
   • reviewed here.
     

4. Tied to the Tracks -- Rosina Lippi -- 4
   
   • Rosina Lippi (who also writes under the pseudonym Sara Donati, which should sound familiar to you) won the PEN/Hemingway award in 1999, and she has more skill at turning phrases than the average bear (or the average modern writer, either. Or most GOOD modern writers, for that matter). She puts her skill to excellent use in this second novel published under her real name, which centers around a documentary-production company hired to produce a piece about a famous Southern writer in her insular Georgia hometown. Which sounds rather boring, until you bring up the fact that the owner of the production company and the new head of the English department at the college where the famous Southern author teaches once spent a summer falling in love and never actually got over it, even though it's been five years and one of them is engaged to someone else. Lippi writes sexual tension so well that the book very nearly vibrates in your hands. This story is edgy and romantic, and the setting is pitch-perfect. This is one of the best-written contemporary novels I've ever read.

     So what's the catch?

     Well, nothing, if you don't mind finding as you near the end of a book that it's becoming An Issue Story -- a Very Special Episode, if you will -- and that the issue involved is one you may not agree with or want to have preached to you (in brilliant prose, I'll grant you). I can't say more without even more completely spoiling the ending, which I don't really want to do. A person without my personal biases and beliefs should probably enjoy this novel unreservedly.

5. The Other Boleyn Girl -- Philippa Gregory -- 4
   
   • I'd had this sitting on my shelf for a few months; it caught my eye this month and I took it down and read it. Overall it was really well-done historical fiction; the life and times of Henry VIII and his (first three) wives came to life for me in a way they never had before (not too difficult, since I could only name one of the wives and really couldn't have cared less, to tell the truth). For the few days I was reading this massive tome I felt like I was living and breathing in 16th-century England (and it stank. But not in a literary way.). Anyone who ever wanted to be a queen in medieval England would more than likely change her mind after reading this book. At first I found the idea of telling the story through the eyes of Anne Boleyn's lesser-known sister was just clever writing; I realized at the end that it was a necessity because she was very nearly the only main character left alive.
     
   
   

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Review: Queen of Swords, Sara Donati (Wilderness series, #5)

This book won't actually be available until October. I just read it already because I'm special. Or because the author is really nice and I used to work for her and she sent me an advance reading copy out of the goodness of her heart; that's probably more like it.

Anyone who's been reading my blog for a while knows that I really enjoy this series. It's set in late 18th-/early 19th-century New York/Canada/Scotland/now Louisiana, and centers around an ever-growing family founded when Nathaniel Bonner (a character loosely based on James Fenimore Cooper's frontier novels) marries a rather Austen-ish, forward-thinking British schoolteacher named Elizabeth Middleton. The first four novels focus, more or less, on Elizabeth and Nathaniel and their life in the wilderness of New York State, branching out for longer and longer bits into the worlds their children make for themselves as they grow until, in this fifth novel, Elizabeth and Nathaniel are definitely very minor characters, and the story is taken over by Nathaniel's son Luke and daughter Hannah, and Luke's wife Jennet (whose rescue from nefarious kidnappers in the first pages felt at first like it should be the end of a story and not the beginning of one. Which shows what I know, because in actuality that beginning sets the stage for the rest of the family's adventures most effectively). Donati's genius as a storyteller is evident here; all her work over the past few novels in fleshing out minor characters was well-done and extremely necessary, because here those characters who were secondary up until this point not only have their own intriguing stories (as they have in Lake in the Clouds and Fire Along the Sky), they carry almost the entire 560 pages on their very capable shoulders, with only small (but very welcome and well-written) help from their better-known family members. Which, honestly, is probably going to annoy a few fans, but for my part I didn't mind at all. That said, there's talk of a possible sequel, and I do hope it comes to pass, and that it does include a bit more of everyone "back home".

One note: perhaps because it relies so heavily on just a few characters, I kept thinking that this book seemed uniquely capable of standing on its own for people who had never read the rest of the series. Not that I recommend starting with it -- you have a much richer experience if you've read the four that come before it. But unlike most series books, I think a person who found this on a bookstore shelf and went, 'hmm, that looks interesting' and failed to notice that it was fifth in a series could still have a ripping good read without constantly wondering who the heck these people are and why it seems like we should know more about them than we do.

So that you know I'm not biased ;), I'll go ahead and say that the book, great as it truly is, is not perfect. There are a few historical passage which are necessary and quite informative but read a bit like a (very, very good) textbook. Also, in the first section of the book there were a few moments where Donati's prose seemed to fall a bit flat, although recovery was rapid and complete.

Because this review is based on an ARC and the novel itself hasn't been released yet, my review of it has to be absolutely spoiler-free, and I don't know how far I can go into the plot without revealing major points that are (quite successfully) intended to be surprises. Suffice to say that when you reach the last page you'll feel like you've lived in wet, sultry, complicated New Orleans for six months or so, and that Creole culture and the infamous Battle of New Orleans will become real to you in a way that they may well never have been before. (Also, prepare to have Johnny Horton stuck in your head for at least a day or two. I'm just sayin'. In eighteen fourteen we took a little trip...).

Friday, June 02, 2006

Books for May

Forgot to do these yesterday.


Title (bold indicates first-time read) -- Author -- Rating (out of 5)

1. The Tenth Circle -- Jodi Picoult -- 4.5
   • Now that I've read two of Picoult's books I will know for the future that her standard formula is to throw multiple twists at you in the last chapters of her books, and perhaps next time I will be less incensed. This one was not as bad as My Sister's Keeper, whose ending seemed contrived and out-of-place and honestly reminded me of myself in tenth grade, realizing that the way I'd intended to write a certain short story it was going to be way too long so I killed off the male lead with a plot twist and felt smug at my cleverness. The twists in The Tenth Circle initially did make me angry, but they were easier to forgive because they made the story more complex, and gave you a lot more to think about, rather than feeling like an easy way out of a complicated story.
2. Don't Look Down -- Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer -- 3.5
   • This was more pleasant than some of Crusie's books -- she's toned down the over-the-top sex a bit. The co-author thing seems to have gone nicely; there's an action angle to this that I'm not sure Crusie could have pulled off on her own and I am going to guess that that's Bob Mayer's main contribution...? This isn't my favorite chick-lit book but it was a not-unpleasant way to spend some time, even though I did get extremely annoyed at the negative attitude toward homeschooling (of all things, in a fluff novel) that was sprinkled throughout the novel. Let's make this intelligent young individual into a clone of all her peers. Tragic that she should be so at home talking with adults! sheesh.

3. Avalon High -- Meg Cabot -- 3
   
   • Speaking of fluffy chick novels. This one was interesting, with a fantasy sort of twist that would translate well into a movie, in my opinion. As teen books go, it asked a lot of the reader, too -- if you don't know a good bit about Arthurian legends (who me?) you'll maybe be a bit lost for good portions of this story.
     

4. Tending to Grace -- Kimberly Newton Fusco -- 3.5
   
   • Another YA novel, not so fluffy, about a teenaged girl whose depressed mother leaves her off with a distant aunt and takes off to Las Vegas with a loser, which of course enables the daughter to learn much about herself and become the grown daughter the aunt never had. It's a first novel for Fusco and you can sort of tell, but overall it's quite good. It's a strong character study with a good underlying plot, and some surprising developments that add depth.
     

5. Assorted Princess Diaries Books -- Meg Cabot -- 2
   
   • When this was a new series I read the first two books, and at that time of my life (when I also dipped into that series that starts with something about Angus and full-frontal snogging) they were the kind of frothy, harmless, light sort of break I needed from whatever was going on in my life. Or something. Because I liked them then. But however many years later, when I happened to be in the YA section and see that there were about four gazillion more of those Princess books, I checked out like four of them and found that they did not hold the same appeal. Or pretty much any appeal at all, to me. I think I got through about one and a half of them before I couldn't stand it anymore.
     

6. Second Honeymoon -- Joanna Trollope -- 3.5
   
   • This was the first Joanna Trollope novel I'd ever read. I was thoroughly snagged in the first chapter by the central character's feeling of loss as her last child left the nest. At first she seems quite a pitiful character (I can see myself in those shoes in, oh, about twelve years, if I don't get on it with the night-class thing), but her development as a character and as a person were brilliantly handled throughout the novel, as her empty nest becomes uncomfortably re-filled. This is almost an "ensemble" novel, if there is such a thing, with the minor characters fleshed out so thoroughly and given such complex storylines that they pretty much become major characters in their own right. I found some of the resolutions a bit unsatisfying, but overall I do truly recommend this novel.
     

7. Brother and Sister -- Joanna Trollope -- 3
   
   • Not as good as Second Honeymoon, but still very well-written. I took off half a point or so because the gender issues that were lightly touched on in SH take on a bit of a bludgeon-ish nature in this novel, and I got tired of being reminded that it's a man's world and doesn't that just suck. Seemed like the author had a bit of a chip on her shoulder as she was writing. Good points: characterization is again quite good. Also, rather than simplifying the issue around which the novel revolves (adoption), Trollope stirs things up into a quite complicated mess that really makes you think. She didn't change my mind, but she made me see some angles I hadn't thought of so clearly before. And that's good literature.
     

8. Girl with a Pearl Earring -- Tracy Chevalier -- 4.5
   
   • Intense, riveting, passionate novel that makes the reader see 17th-century Holland as if Vermeer himself had painted it -- all glowing light and gritty shadows. The central character is unforgettable for her suppressed passions which never find fulfillment in the way you think they will as you read -- which is a good thing -- and for her almost uncannily clear and real voice. The ending is perfectly done. Bravo. Recommended.
     

9. The Virgin Blue -- Tracy Chevalier -- 3
   
   • This is another novel in which Chevalier demonstrates her vivid storytelling skills. I've never read a description of a color that made me see it in my mind's eye in quite the same way as she writes about a particular shade of blue in this story. I found the historical flashbacks to be the most intriguing parts of the book; the modern-day scenes quickly turned into an unfulfilled-wife-tempted-to-have-an-affair cliché, although the mystery angle was quite well-handled.
     
   
   

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Books for April

Oops, I forgot to do these earlier. I also forgot to write down my books this month, and I also lost the page of extensive, insightful, and useful notes about Remains of the Day, which was the first book I finished this month. So now: It was brilliant. You should read it. The end.

I started Possession (by A.S. Byatt) but I couldn't get into it like I did before. It's still a really good book; I just wasn't in the mood for it, I think.

I also read Pride and Prejudice. It was, of course, excessively brilliant. And witty, and clever, and romantic, and ... well, brilliant. The end.

And then I read Northanger Abbey, which struck me as much more brilliant than it did the last time I read it. Scathingly witty in parts, really. Even though Catherine is more than a bit of a clueless ditz, bless her heart.

And I think that was all. But I wouldn't know for sure, because I didn't write them down. Because I'm all on top of things that way.

Friday, March 31, 2006

books for March

Title (bold indicates first-time read) -- Author -- Rating (out of 5)

1. All Things Bright and Beautiful -- James Herriott -- 3
   • This book is not quite as funny or engaging as All Creatures Great And Small, which was written first (I didn't know this until recently; after all, that's not how the song goes. Hmph). That's not to say, however, that it's not funny or engaging at all. I enjoyed reading it. I guess if I had to put my finger on one thing that made this sequel pale just a wee bit in comparison to its predecessor, it would be that Herriott occasionally lapses into a bit of very, very faint self-aggrandisement. Still, there's plenty of humor and warmth to be found here.
     
   
   


2. When We Were Orphans -- Kazuo Ishiguro -- 4.5
   • I tried to start this just after I finished Never Let Me Go back in January, but I found that Ishiguro is like a really rich dish -- you love it, but you need to savor it slowly or you'll overdo it. So I waited a month and picked it up again. It didn't cast quite the same spell as Never Let Me Go did, but still, this is a brilliant novel -- several million miles above so much of what is out there today. I have never read anyone who makes me work and think and catch my breath with realization quite like Ishiguro does. When I first finished When We Were Orphans, I confess that I kind of furrowed my brow and went -- that's all? Not because of the loose ends, but more because of the unanswered "why" questions. I've been trained by ordinary literature to expect to at least be able to figure out most of what makes characters tick by the end of the book, but Ishiguro doesn't play by those rules. You have to think about what you're reading -- not just while you're reading, but for days and weeks after you're done -- and apparently, there are some things you just might never know. He gives you nothing straight out; he conceives these brilliant stories and worlds and then hides them deep between the lines and under layers of the characters' memories, and you have to extract ideas almost with your peripheral vision. This sounds odd, but it's alluring enough to make it a bit of a comedown to go back to ordinary novels after one of his books.
     
   
   


3. Silver Wedding -- Maeve Binchy -- 2.5
   • Eh. Usually I like Maeve Binchy more than this. This wasn't a bad book; it was just that it was made up very nearly entirely of a series of expository character studies, loosely tied together by an event that makes up a brief last chapter. At times I found it interesting, and of course with Binchy you can count on reading about memorable characters in real-but-quirky circumstances. This one just fell flat for me, and I confess that I'm a bit tired of the Maeve Binchy standard marital-infidelity storylines too.
     
   
   


4. Ginger Pye -- Eleanor Estes -- 4.5
   • I had such fun reading this book. I'd never read it before; when I saw it on a friend's shelf (said friend has four children and so, like me, she has a valid and watertight excuse for reading kids' books, which, let's face it, we'd both do anyway even if we were childless) and she asked if I'd ever read it and I said no, she insisted I take it and read it because I would love it. And I did. It's like you took eight parts Beverly Cleary, for her witty and genuine way of getting inside kids' heads and detailing what really goes on there in a way that's pleasing to adults and children both, and one part Charles Dickens for his wry sense of humor, and one part Enid Blyton for her characters' sense of mystery and adventure, and mixed them up with a little spotted dog and baked them into this really pleasant 1951 Newbery winner. I found it utterly uncanny at times, the way the narration read with exactly the same tone and thought mannerisms that I had myself at that age. Not uncanny, really, when you think about the fact that if I can remember how it was to be nine, Eleanor Estes could too, except she was skilled enough to write about it where I am not, but still. This book does have a plot but that's almost beside the point. The pleasure in these pages for me came in the way they transplanted me into the life of a nine-year-old in a simpler time.
   
   


5. All She Ever Wanted -- Lynn Austin -- 3
   • I admit that with one notable exception (Jan Karon), I generally stay away from the "Christian fiction" genre. I've tried a few of the type of books that abound there -- historical romances and the like -- and have found the writing to be amateurish, even if the subject matter is interesting and wholesome. Honestly, it seems as if the majority of the novels published by the Christian houses would not have made it if not for their niche market -- women who want novels to read that won't contradict their beliefs or fill their minds with un-Christian images. And more power to them and to the authors and publishers who fill the need, truly.

     This book isn't going to send me running to the Bible bookstore to pick up my next series addiction, but it wasn't too bad. The story itself is quite interesting if a bit predictable in general; it's about a middle-aged mother of a teenaged daughter from whom she feels increasingly distant until they take a weekend road trip to a gathering with the mother's estranged family, in the course of which she tells her daughter about her troubled childhood and learns a great deal she never knew about her family history, resulting in a much closer family on the last page. It's some testimony to how interested I was in how everything would play out that I read this 400-page novel in under 24 hours. It does provide a thoughtful look at mother/daughter relationships, the way families tend to fall into patterns of behavior, and the way Jesus will be the catalyst that helps us break those patterns if need be. The writing lacked subtlety at times. But for all its clumsiness it was at times poignant and usually had a believable tone, except perhaps in some of the historical sections, when I couldn't really feel the time period I was supposed to be in and hence kept feeling jolted by the Forrest-Gump-ish insertions of major events into the stories of the characters' lives. There's a murder mystery/mafia angle that's a bit of a stretch (although it's important to the story, I think perhaps the same goal could have been achieved without requiring quite such a suspension of disbelief), and at times when the author was laying on the foreshadowing with a spackling knife I thought, well, duh, does she NOT expect me to catch on to that? What, does she think I'm seven years old?. It's not Jane Austen; it's not Kazuo Ishiguro or Mary Doria Russell or even Jan Karon. I'm not going to go rush out and buy this. But I might recommend it to my mom, and if I see another book by the same author I may well give it a try.
     

   
   

   
   

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Hello. My name is Rachel and I'm a libraryoholic.

I just got a lump in my throat reading a blog post about library catalog cards. You know that sentimental, nostalgic feeling that people have for the schools they attended? I have that feeling about our local library (or any library will do, really, but ours is best). I spent whole days there more often than not in the summers for many years, and after school I could always find solace in the quiet, cool place filled with my beloved books, where nerdiness was an advantage, or at least a non-issue. I could entertain myself for free all day long, and I did. I read my way through entire shelves of the Youth section, and when I go there today just the sight of the same plastic-covered spines sitting there in a row can make me choke up and smile at the same time.

Part and parcel of the library experience when I was younger was the card catalog. It's definitely convenient to have library catalogs computerized now, but I confess that I miss the soft thump-thump sound of a search through the rows of cards, the precision of the alphabetization, and the smooth heavy slide of the drawers opening and shutting. I tell my children about card catalogs and it's like telling them about cash registers that went ching-ching instead of beep-beep, or about, say, Atari game systems, or the Revolutionary War. All are equally unreal for them.

It's been years since my library had a card catalog and I'm sure they disposed of the cards long ago. Which is a shame -- or, rather, it's a shame I didn't think of this before -- because if I could get them I'd love to have the cards from the books I loved to read twenty years ago, or from the classics I so enjoy in adulthood (not to mention the really old cards displayed on this site; our library was only constructed in the sixties and early seventies so I doubt there's much chance of its catalog having had anything handwritten in it). Bookmarks, wall decorations, greeting cards even. What a missed opportunity.

However, this makes up for it in some small degree. Believe it or not, a guy wrote a program (thank you thank you) that generates a graphic of an authentic-looking old-style catalog card for any book you've looked up at the website for the Ann Arbor District Library. I don't think a printed version would have the effect I'm looking for, but at least I can have these (and so many others -- oh dear, I must pull myself away or I'll get nothing at all done today) popping up in my screen saver now:

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Books for February

Just one completed book this month, and one short story. I've read partway through several others but not finished any. March's book post will be all the fatter for that. :)

Title (bold indicates first-time read) -- Author -- Rating (out of 5)

1. All Creatures Great and Small -- James Herriott -- 4


• I can't put this in bold because I read it years and years ago -- I'd say I was under ten. I barely remembered it, so in many ways it was like reading it for the first time. Still, rules are rules. ;)

  Reasons not to read James Herriott:
  

  • He's light on plot; his stories are highly anecdotal by nature.
    
  • He's not edgy.
    
  • There's no Really Deep Meaning to be found in these pages.
    
  • There's no foul language, sex, violence, or foulness, other than the biological sort inherent to his profession.
    
  • He sticks his arms inside the orifices of large animals and tells you about it.
    
  
  If this won't bother you, at least for an occasional light read, then by all means DO read Herriott. I really enjoy his books. His stories about the humor and frustration found as a country veterinarian in pre-WWII northern England may not have been PEN award material, but his writing style is unpretentious and cheery, the bucolic lifestyle he tells about appeals to me, and, well, he's really funny. I may have wondered at the ethics of laughing loudly enough to wake the family at a description of an episode wherein Herriott's partner gets covered in bovine, um, digestive secretions during an operation on a constipated cow, when we've taught our children that Potty Humor Isn't Nice -- but I definitely wondered while I laughed. (It's worth noting that it's not all like that. That was just one very memorable incident.)


2. Rikki-Tikki Tavi -- Rudyard Kipling -- 5 (short story)


• I had forgotten how much I loved this story. I think reading it as an adult is especially rewarding because now I notice just how brilliant Kipling's writing style was. It makes me want to read the rest of his works. This would be a wonderful family read-aloud; I'm planning on doing it next time we have a car trip. :)

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