March 2, 2005
Dreaming In Cuban by Cristina Garcia
This had rather a hypnotizing effect on me in terms of the language and the pace of the book. Also it mentioned my hometown at one point and made me miss dreamy tropical-ness. Most of what little I know about Cuba is filtered through the experiences of the exile population of Miami…or their kids with whom I went to school…so I was glad to get several different perspectives from this story.
March 3, 2005
Buying Solo: The Single Woman’s Guide to Buying A First Home by Vanessa Summers
Oh, man. My friend at work brought this in for me to check out and I burned through it this evening and now my head is full of PITI and escrow and ARM and various calculations of various types of money. It’s good to educate myself, certainly, but it’s certainly very nerve-wracking and scary, even in theory. Plus, what about my Top Secret Plans? Can they co-exist with buying a house? I don’t know. This is very weird, not being able to put down a real-estate book. Imagine what I’ll be like when I actually get around to maybe looking for a place for real? Also: strippers, cocaine, hot tubs, booty-smacking, and bling. Just so I don’t feel too responsible.
March 12, 2005
Persepolis and Persepolis II by Marjane Satrapi
What I really want to write here is some sort of big apology to the world for not finishing more books in the TEN DAYS since I finished a REAL ESTATE BOOK. It’s killing me here. I feel I have failed you. Fortunately for me, I read these two yesterday for book club and at least can feel like I accomplished something. I am getting more interested in this graphic novel thing…I have always loved the Maus books but didn’t realize there were more out there along those lines. It’s a really cool way to make a story…even when the art is simple, as in these books, it’s compelling. Also, these made me realize I seriously know nothing about anything in the world…which makes sense, given how I don’t read books, apparently. Okay, look. I have a couple of plane flights scheduled for the end of March and I promise I’ll do a lot of reading then, okay? Except by the time I post this I will have done already. I hope. The pressure is killing me over here.
March 14, 2004
America The Book: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction by the folks at the Daily Show.
Ah ha ha! Haaaa! Oh, man.Totally. Yeah, that kind of sucks when you put it that way. HA! Heh. Hoo hoo. Man. Daily Show. Heeeeeee! Whoo! Bicameral! Heh! God, I love Jon Stewart.
March 15, 2005
Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant
I got this from the library after reading about it on 50 Books. I was happy to get a recommendation from another short story lover and happy to read such an awesome collection, even though the stories killed me dead. I agree with everything Doppelganger said in her review and have only to add that these stories are brilliant and dangerous to read. You have to be very careful, when you read them, to remember that every single minute of your life matters, somewhere, somehow.
March 16, 2005
The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green by Joshua Braff
This is the kind of book I wish I could write, the kind of book I would like to learn to write one day. I believed in the characters and I enjoyed the various gimmicks…which felt real to me, actually, and not like gimmicks at all and I got scared when the dad got angry and I got upset when the dad did the crazy thing with “LOVE ME!” It always boils down to believing the world of the story, I notice as I look over my last book entries. Even if you don’t know much about the context or if you’ve never been in the exact same situation, you buy it, it makes sense, you can assimilate it into your own schema relatively easy. Also, apropos of nothing, this book was quite visual for me for some reason and I really felt I could see the characters the way the were described, especially Asher the older brother. Interestingly, the only one I couldn’t see too well was the narrator, Jacob. Weird, right?
March 18, 2005
The Circus In Winter by Cathy Day
This was a mellow read that gave me a glimpse into a no longer extant culture and also used several devices I enjoyed greatly, namely the skipping around in a century, multiple narrators, multiple perspectives, and a short story format that works nicely as a whole novel. And of course I am really interested in reading about families, and this is about all different kinds of families, so a good one for me.
March 22, 2005
Little Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt
I’ve never read anything written by this person before, although I’ve seen two movie adaptations of her books. This set of stories, which are weird, frightening, tender, impossible, thorough, maddening, sly, calm, frangible, and tightly stuffed, has made me want to read more of her work. Her language is impeccable to my sensibilities and the plots are mostly internal, which I always find compelling.
March 23, 2005
Half In Love by Maile Maloy
I got this book for my birthday and I enjoyed it very much. Thanks Mom! It’s a small book full of quick stories that are about slow things like friendship and death and towns and growing up. Not to be totally cheesy, but it reminds me that all of us have tragedy and victory in our lives, no matter how boring a cube we work in or how annoying our hair. Do you ever think about the stories of the people driving past you on the other side of the freeway or in the store or whatever, wondering what you don’t know about them? These stories are like that.
March 29, 2005
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
I always like to look at history through a specific lens, and this book certainly is specific, in a rather broad and far-reaching way. I learned about geology, archaeology, anthropology, cooking, chemistry, engineering, marketing, civil war, geography, ethnology, and a whole other bunch of things, all in connection with salt. I liked this author’s writing style very much and in fact I remember reading a set of short stories by him a couple of years ago, which I am now tempted to re-read…which would be a first for 2005! All the books I’ve read this year have been first-reads thus far! Crazy! Anyway, even though I thought the book just sort of stopped instead of ending, I was very glad to have it during a sort of trying plane flight. Plus all those –ologies I learned about.
March 29, 2005
The Final Confession of Mabel Stark by Robert Hough
I liked this book for several reasons, not the least of which being that I’m always amazed by male writers who can accurately write a first-person female character. This happens also in Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and, to some extent, in Till We Have Faces. Interestingly, I can’t think of any books written by women who do the same thing with male characters; can anyone else? Anyway. Uh, let’s see. Well, this book offers a glimpse into several strange worlds: circus life, the years 1906 to 1927, and old age. I don’t remember the page number right now but the narrator says something about the way time changes for old people, how it becomes less linear and more layered than for young people, and how she has to keep remembering to tell her story in a way that younger people can understand. I couldn’t think about that very long because one of my little weirdnesses is my inability to imagine myself any further in the future than about five years from now (homeowner, maybe? World traveler? Expert in the field?), but while I was thinking about it, it was a pretty interesting thought. Also, there really was a real tiger-taming Mabel Stark, and I just love that someone thought to write a book about her for some reason.
March 30, 2005
To The Last Man I Slept With And All The Jerks Just Like Him by Gwendolyn Zepeda
Can it be an impulse buy if you’ve been meaning to get it for a while? I tore through this quickly, as you might imagine I would if I’d been reading Gwen since 1998 or so. It was very funny and sad at the same time and I appreciate the anger and regret that permeate most of the stories. I think I will call them “stories” even though some of its memoir and some of it is other things. I wish I could describe a little better what I liked about this book but you will just have to believe me when I tell you that it is very much worth your while to read it.