There is not a completed book at this time. I'm working on two: The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway (written when he was around my age!) and She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel. The Hemingway is, of course, lovely. It makes me want to go fishing in Spain and drink ungodly amounts of wine. And there's nothing quite like unrequited love involving a impotent American writer and a mercurial, drunken British girl. When the new budget cycle starts, I'm going to buy a new copy of it for the library, as this copy is in pretty sorry shape. I've been enjoying Haven Kimmel's book as well. The highlight so far has been an account of Quaker summer camp.
I also must recommend a movie that I recently saw. It's a very literary movie, so I don't feel like I'm compromising the spirit of the blog by mentioning it here. The movie is called Surviving Desire, directed by Hal Hartley. Only sixty minutes long, Surviving Desire is about a frustrated English professor who falls in love with one of his students. My favorite part of the movie is a homeless women who shows up throughout, asking men to marry her, and muttering "to love and to cherish" to herself.
4.09.2007
3.30.2007
Where did March go?
Recently, I decided that I love Austin so much that I wanted to make things legal. I am proud to report that in less than a month I will be a homeowner. While the prospect of living in a house that I own, and not having a landlord that makes me pay pet rent, is tremendously exciting, I've found myself absolutely swamped with paperwork: insurance paperwork, title paperwork, mortgage paperwork, etc. I'm sure that several trees have sacrificed themselves for the sake of this transaction.
Other recent distractions from my reading and blogging duties include a trip to Houston to visit the boyfriend's parents, a visit from my parents, a trip to the Hill Country for a friend's wedding, and a plethora of birthdays. And then there's work. But then there are days like today, which happens to be gloriously rainy. I have the evening to myself, and I'm going to cook dinner (something involving spaghetti, rainbow chard, grape tomatoes, and cannellini beans) and watch a movie, accompanied by my two special kitty friends.
There will be a book next time, I promise.
Other recent distractions from my reading and blogging duties include a trip to Houston to visit the boyfriend's parents, a visit from my parents, a trip to the Hill Country for a friend's wedding, and a plethora of birthdays. And then there's work. But then there are days like today, which happens to be gloriously rainy. I have the evening to myself, and I'm going to cook dinner (something involving spaghetti, rainbow chard, grape tomatoes, and cannellini beans) and watch a movie, accompanied by my two special kitty friends.
There will be a book next time, I promise.
3.07.2007
Syndication
By the way, if you're a. reading this (which, let's face it, you're probably not) and b. you use some sort of RSS feed reader, you can subscribe to me. Amazing!
3.05.2007
A milestone!
I have just been informed that my friend Andrea links to this blog from her website. This means that two people link to this humble little corner of the Web. This outpouring of attention clearly necessitates a post.
2007 has been a fairly decent year for me, book-wise. I started out the year with A Taxonomy of Barnacles by Galt Niederhoffer. This book had a lot of interesting stuff going on. Maybe too much interesting stuff. One might even call it a "rich text." The book is peppered with binary pairs, which was both endearing and annoying. While reading this book certainly exercised my brain, I would not recommend it if one has been stuck at an airport all day. I read it under those conditions.
The next book that I read this year was Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. If you want to give yourself nightmares, you should definitely read this book. You should also read it if you want a good overview of the situation in Iraq. The author, an editor for the Washington Post, does an excellent job of outlining the chain of events and all of the people involved. It also made me really, really scared, and really, really upset.
I also took it upon myself to finally read The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. I started reading this book about a year ago, and stopped reading it when the thesis monster took over. In case you missed all of the hubbub when it came out, this book is based on the premise that FDR, running for his third consecutive term, is defeated by Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh has been hanging out in Europe, recovering from the tragedy of losing his son, and making friends with Hitler. Lindbergh, after taking office, makes a non-aggression pact with Germany. Meanwhile, America becomes a scary place to be a Jew. The book is narrated through a little boy aptly named Philip Roth, whose family is one of the few to be seriously concerned about Lindbergh's ties to Nazi Germany. The concept is rather ingenious, and the writing is delightful, but the execution of the story was kind of a let down.
Finally, I read Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Honestly, I picked this book up because I read an article in American Libraries about how it has been challenged recently. The author frames both the stories of her father's demise and of her coming out (which are tenuously intertwined) with themes from great literary works, such as Ulysses. If Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, while one of the most exciting things I've ever read, is a book that I can't seem to finish either) were a lesbian who wrote graphic novels, rather than a musically-savvy Franco-Czech guy, he would have written Fun Home. And that's all I have to say about that.
Upcoming: The Sun Also Rises. I developed a chip on my shoulder about Hemingway while I was in school, and I'm working on fixing that.
2007 has been a fairly decent year for me, book-wise. I started out the year with A Taxonomy of Barnacles by Galt Niederhoffer. This book had a lot of interesting stuff going on. Maybe too much interesting stuff. One might even call it a "rich text." The book is peppered with binary pairs, which was both endearing and annoying. While reading this book certainly exercised my brain, I would not recommend it if one has been stuck at an airport all day. I read it under those conditions.
The next book that I read this year was Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. If you want to give yourself nightmares, you should definitely read this book. You should also read it if you want a good overview of the situation in Iraq. The author, an editor for the Washington Post, does an excellent job of outlining the chain of events and all of the people involved. It also made me really, really scared, and really, really upset.
I also took it upon myself to finally read The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. I started reading this book about a year ago, and stopped reading it when the thesis monster took over. In case you missed all of the hubbub when it came out, this book is based on the premise that FDR, running for his third consecutive term, is defeated by Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh has been hanging out in Europe, recovering from the tragedy of losing his son, and making friends with Hitler. Lindbergh, after taking office, makes a non-aggression pact with Germany. Meanwhile, America becomes a scary place to be a Jew. The book is narrated through a little boy aptly named Philip Roth, whose family is one of the few to be seriously concerned about Lindbergh's ties to Nazi Germany. The concept is rather ingenious, and the writing is delightful, but the execution of the story was kind of a let down.
Finally, I read Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Honestly, I picked this book up because I read an article in American Libraries about how it has been challenged recently. The author frames both the stories of her father's demise and of her coming out (which are tenuously intertwined) with themes from great literary works, such as Ulysses. If Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, while one of the most exciting things I've ever read, is a book that I can't seem to finish either) were a lesbian who wrote graphic novels, rather than a musically-savvy Franco-Czech guy, he would have written Fun Home. And that's all I have to say about that.
Upcoming: The Sun Also Rises. I developed a chip on my shoulder about Hemingway while I was in school, and I'm working on fixing that.
1.05.2007
Back in the saddle...
I decided that, in 2007, I would give this blogging thing another try. For some reason, finishing grad school made me extremely lazy. Also, gainful employment enabled me to afford digital cable, which means that I watch altogether too much TV. These developments resulted in not much reading and even less blogging.
Resuming my blog meant that I had to convert to the new Blogger, which proved to be a strange process. For one thing, it make me think that a blog that is most definitely not mine was on my account. Luckily, while I was trying to figure out how to contact Blogger, the mystery blog went away, and all seems to be fine.
Stay tuned as I finish my first book of 2007, A Taxonomy of Barnacles by Galt Niederhoffer.
Resuming my blog meant that I had to convert to the new Blogger, which proved to be a strange process. For one thing, it make me think that a blog that is most definitely not mine was on my account. Luckily, while I was trying to figure out how to contact Blogger, the mystery blog went away, and all seems to be fine.
Stay tuned as I finish my first book of 2007, A Taxonomy of Barnacles by Galt Niederhoffer.
5.03.2006
Book 08
I am now finished with my master's degree, so I am free to read whatever I want. To celebrate my newfound freedom, I read My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. This book is about a thirteen year-old girl named Anna, who was conceived to be a donor for her sister, Kate, who has a particularly aggressive form of leukemia. Kate is in renal failure from having undergone eleven years of treatments, and needs a kidney. Anna has decided that she no longer wants to be Kate's personal organ bank, and sues her parents for medical emancipation.
This novel deals with a lot of tough issues. Which is more important: Anna's right to her own body, or giving Kate a chance to live? Should the girls' parents sacrifice one daughter's well-being to keep the other alive ? Their mom, who practiced law before she had children, decides to represent herself. She's opposing counsel and Anna's mother at the same time, raising all sorts of potential conflicts of interest. Dad is a firefighter and the girls' older brother is a closeted arsonist. Anna's attorney and her guardian ad litem are ex-lovers. You get the idea.
The book is narrated by several different characters: Anna, her sister, her mother, her father, her lawyer, her guardian ad litem, her brother. As we all learned in high school English, you just can't trust a narrator (Exhibit A: The Great Gatsby). Authors like Picoult combat the reader's lack of trust by using multiple narrators, which makes the reader feel omniscient. However, Picoult completely undermines this effect by inserting some major character-driven plot twists. I felt really let down by the end of the book, because none of the heavy issues that are raised in the novel get resolved. The ending was a cop-out.
I'm tired of reading books that are strong for awhile but ultimately can't follow through. With this in mind, I'm going to finally finish The Unbearable Lightness of Being (which I started, oh, last summer), because I know that this particular book won't let me down.
This novel deals with a lot of tough issues. Which is more important: Anna's right to her own body, or giving Kate a chance to live? Should the girls' parents sacrifice one daughter's well-being to keep the other alive ? Their mom, who practiced law before she had children, decides to represent herself. She's opposing counsel and Anna's mother at the same time, raising all sorts of potential conflicts of interest. Dad is a firefighter and the girls' older brother is a closeted arsonist. Anna's attorney and her guardian ad litem are ex-lovers. You get the idea.
The book is narrated by several different characters: Anna, her sister, her mother, her father, her lawyer, her guardian ad litem, her brother. As we all learned in high school English, you just can't trust a narrator (Exhibit A: The Great Gatsby). Authors like Picoult combat the reader's lack of trust by using multiple narrators, which makes the reader feel omniscient. However, Picoult completely undermines this effect by inserting some major character-driven plot twists. I felt really let down by the end of the book, because none of the heavy issues that are raised in the novel get resolved. The ending was a cop-out.
I'm tired of reading books that are strong for awhile but ultimately can't follow through. With this in mind, I'm going to finally finish The Unbearable Lightness of Being (which I started, oh, last summer), because I know that this particular book won't let me down.
4.21.2006
Book 07
I just completed my leisurely stroll through Myla Goldberg's Wickett's Remedy. It's a novel that is mostly about a woman living in Boston during the 1918 flu epidemic, told with some really odd narrative strategies. An Irish girl from South Boston meets a rich medical student while working in a department store. They get married, and she moves out of Southie, and he decides to quit medical school in order to devote himself to Wickett's Remedy. Wickett's Remedy is this thing that he invented, which involves selling bottles of tonic, and then corresponding with the people who bought them. The actual "remedy" is supposed to be the letters; the tonic is more of a vehicle for selling it. Lydia's husband kicks it (he had always been sickly), she moves back to Southie, and her husband's business partner, a fellow named Quentin Driscoll, continues selling Wickett's Remedy. Meanwhile, Lydia deals with the flu epidemic, and decides to become a nurse to help the cause.
Some aspects of this book are really excellent. The main story is compelling, especially once the flu epidemic starts, although I could have lived without the actual Wickett's Remedy part. The book has actual news articles from that time period peppered throughout (mildly interesting), as well as various documents relating to something called Q.D. Soda. While the presence of the latter becomes apparent fairly quickly, I found them kind of tiresome. Goldberg also uses notes in the margins that provide other characters' memories of the events of the book, which are most told through Lydia's point of view. The margin notes were actually interesting, and their presence was more helpful than annoying.
I enjoyed Wickett's Remedy enough that I'll probably read Goldberg's other books at some point. Right now, I'm finishing Waiting for Snow in Havana, and having thoughts of reading Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper.
Some aspects of this book are really excellent. The main story is compelling, especially once the flu epidemic starts, although I could have lived without the actual Wickett's Remedy part. The book has actual news articles from that time period peppered throughout (mildly interesting), as well as various documents relating to something called Q.D. Soda. While the presence of the latter becomes apparent fairly quickly, I found them kind of tiresome. Goldberg also uses notes in the margins that provide other characters' memories of the events of the book, which are most told through Lydia's point of view. The margin notes were actually interesting, and their presence was more helpful than annoying.
I enjoyed Wickett's Remedy enough that I'll probably read Goldberg's other books at some point. Right now, I'm finishing Waiting for Snow in Havana, and having thoughts of reading Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
