On My Bookshelf...

On My Bookshelf...

I must be the only person among you all that reads the suspense novels. The last one I read was Up Country by DeMille. It's about a Vietnam veteran returning to Vietnam on a secret mission for his former boss at the Army Criminal Investigation Department. Not only is there suspense, intrigue and slimy bad guys, but there's romance and a lot of information about how the war affected the protagonist and others (both North and South Vietnamese).

I'm now reading In a SunBurned Country. Not sure of the author. It's about a man's travels through Australia. He's written several books - one about his travels in Britain, America, etc... Since I've been to Australia a few times, I can identify with some of his stories.

I'm also reading the third book of the Jewel in the Crown trilogy - The Division of Spoils. I have been reading this trilogy for over a year. Definitely I'm not the historical novel type! Although, the third book is finally making a lot more sense than the first two. The first book was so disjointed and skipped around to all these different characters and stories. The second was a little better. And the third is finally tying a lot of the first two books together.

Not sure what my next book will be. I may have to go to the library and check into some of the books you all recommend.

The Best Novel?

So, the New York Times Book Review decided to name the greatest novel in the past 25 years. Time Magazine has a lovely (and short) article about it here. Even better, Laura Miller, one of the judges explains here why she declined to vote.

The end result almost doesn't matter (but if you're dying to know, it's Toni Morrison's Beloved). It's a bizarre thing to do, gathering a group of judges to pick "the best" novel of any given period. Trying to distill literature into some sort of athletic contest with one "winner" is ridiculous. The picks were also nearly all by white men, though they did ultimately choose a black woman as the author of the "best" book. Overcompensating much? I love Toni Morrison, and I think Beloved is brilliant, but I also think this group of mostly old white guys choosing the best book might have been consciously trying to avoid accusations of favoring other old white guys.

I like what Time Magazine did with their list of the 100 best books since 1923 (Why 1923? Who knows?). It gives room for diversity, for a multitude of experiences and viewpoints, for authors trying to accomplish different things. The NYTBR exercise drives me nuts because literature is collective, not singular, and no one novel can represent all great novels of the last 25 years.

Hey, how'd I get on this soapbox? Can somebody help me down?

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

I just finished this book. It was indescribably wonderful! Thank you, Holly, for suggesting it.

The premise: The island nation of Nollop off the U.S. coast semi-worships their most famous resident, the fictional creator of the pangram (sentence using all letters of the alphabet) "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." They have a statue of Nollop with his sentence inscribed on tiles in the center of town. One day "Z" falls down, and the council of elders determine that this is Nollop speaking from the grave, challenging them by removing "Z" from their written and spoken language. Citizens violating the new alphabet face flogging, banishment, or death. But that's not the only tile to fall. The novel is written entirely in letters between the Nollopians, sometimes letters to out-of-town relatives, sometimes notes left on the refrigerator. Only a few pages are challenging to read because of the letter omissions. The plot is delightful, the character development charming, and the wordplay just plain fun. I can see some readers finding it overly clever, and it's true that the book is built on a gimmick, but it's a gimmick that doesn't prevent endearing characters and suspense. At 200 pages, it's a fairly quick read, and a thoroughly enjoyable one. It's going on the "never throw/give away" shelf next to my Jasper Fforde.

Her Fork in the Road

There's a bookstore on the west side of LA devoted entirely to cookbooks and cooking related tomes. I bought this book--Her Fork in the Road--there several months ago and just started reading it. The book is a collection of stories celebrating gastronomic travel, all written by women who are supposedly some of the best writers in and out of the food and travel fields. The stories meld unique ethnic cuisine experiences with the food's surrounding cultural context. The book is making me hungry--for both food and adventure! It's a different sort of read, but one I'm enjoying on many sensory levels.

Curtis Sittenfeld

I read in the Sunday LA Times that Curtis Sittenfeld has a new book coming out this month called "Man of My Dreams." Did anyone else read her first book Prep? I was initially drawn to the book because the protagonist was supposed to be from my hometown of South Bend, Indiana. The book turned out, in my opinion, to be an extraordinarily well written tale of teenage angst and the desire to be accepted. I'm eager to read her latest effort as well.

Mommy Wars

I recently finished Mommy Wars by Leslie Morgan Steiner. The book is a series of essays by mothers about their choices of whether to stay at home with their children or continue their careers. As a member of a playgroup with both working and non-working moms, I was curious to read the viewpoints of mothers on both sides of the fence. It is obvious, upon reading this book, that no woman can ever be certain she made the right choice and the only way to make peace with that choice is to embrace it entirely.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

I finally finished a book! Mark this day on the calendar!

Since I've finished all my current knitting projects and waiting for my yarn for the next one to show up in the mail, I read yesterday and finished The Historian. This book is about a professor looking for his advisor who has gone missing. The advisor had become interested in researching whether Vlad Tepes (aka Dracula) really existed and is in fact undead and still walking around attacking people. The search begins all over again with the professor when he starts to look for his missing mentor. Then his daughter starts to look for him when he just takes off. The book is filled with vampire lore from a historical fiction perspective and it is fairly interesting overall. I think the middle third of the book is way too long and way too dry and I think Kostova probably loses many readers at that point, but I forged on and finished and it does end up nicely tying up all the loose ends, leaving with a sort of cliffhanger. But a good cliffhanger, not one where you're mad that the whole thing wasn't completely resolved.

I would recommend it to anyone that likes academic type fiction books or interested in where vampires originated. I think it was well written overall even if she tended to drag it out an extra 200 pages or so.

Now I'm on to lighter fluffier reads...I think I'll read the next two books in Alexander McCall Smith's Ladies Detective Agency series....

Summer reading

So, I've been on a mildly trashy contemporary romance novel kick, and I thought I'd admit to it here :-) These books are so quick to read, and fun, and there are so few surprises that they're comforting in a way. And as the weather gets warm, they're just perfect sometimes. So, if anyone is looking for cute, fluffy reads, Susan Donovan's He Loves Lucy and Rachel Gibson's Sex, Lies, and Online Dating are both very cute and enjoyable. I can also recommend almost anything by those two authors, as well as Jennifer Crusie and Janet Evanovich (who also does the Stephanie Plum books but has been cranking out the romance lately).

The Love Wife by Gish Jen

I stayed up too late finishing this book last night, but it was worth it. I've enjoyed Gish Jen's past novels, Mona in the Promised Land and Typical American, and this one was just amazing. The story begins when Carnegie does two things to disappoint his Chinese-born mother; he marries a white woman "Mama Wong" insists on calling Blondie, and he adopts a child of unknown parentage. Mama Wong's dying wish is for the Wong children to be raised more Chinese, so she arranges for Lan, a distant relative, to be brought over from China to nanny for the children (Carnegie and Blondie have adopted another daughter from China, and have had a late-life biological son). This book is about so many things: Carnegie's conflicted relationship with his mother and Chinese culture in general, Blondie's fears that Lan is the wife Mama Wong had wanted for Carnegie, the daughters' feelings that they are not one thing or the other, Lan's categorizing of everything as "Chinese" and "American" and assimilation attempts, what it means to belong to a family. I also learned a bit about the Cultural Revolution, which Lan lived through.

Excellent book. Like her others, I highly recommend it.

ToB Winner Announced!

Okay so I got bored with myself and my ToB commentary so I haven't posted in awhile. I also have still been knitting. I didn't like the first blanket I made at all, so I have started a new one and am only a quarter of the way done. And I have to have it done by the end of the month. Eek! Hopefully I can resume reading after that.

However, I did want to at least post the Tournament of Books winner for this year. I am utterly shocked, but The Accidental by Ali Smith was chosen. Perhaps I should give my audio book a second chance, perhaps the last four chapters of the book are what really make it. It's just so hard to believe that this is supposedly, in the biased minds of these literary judges, the best book of 2005! I think I will have to read some of the other books they've reviewed. Some of them sound so much better to me than the Accidental. But I suppose my viewpoint is from an entertainment point of view, while the judges may be coming from a more literary point of view.

Anyway, anyone read any good books lately?

ToB continues....

Never Let Me Go has moved on as did Home Land by Sam Lipsyte. The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole and The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova have fallen by the wayside.

I somewhat disagree with The Historian not being moved through to Round 2. I am only half way through the book, but I am really enjoying it. I guess it is somewhat dry and slightly academic (as the judge points out) so it can be a little hard to get through it all. But I tend to glance over paragraphs that get too wordy or boring, looking for the overall picture. I'll give an overall review of it when I finish, if ever. I am currently spending my minimal free time knitting a baby blanket for a friend so reading has taken a backseat.

ToB Round One continues

History of Love won out over The Time In Between.

Today's matchup was:
VERONICA by MARY GAITSKILL vs.
EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE by JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close will be moving onto round two, where it will go up against, History of Love, which ironically is the author's wife's book.

Tomorrow's matchup is:
NEVER LET ME GO by KAZUO ISHIGURO vs.
THE GREATEST MAN IN CEDAR HOLE by STEPHANIE DOYON

Review - The Year of Magical Thinking

My book club book for this month was Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. It's a memoir about the year following her husband's death. But it was graceful and thought=provoking rather than Oprah-Book-Tearjerker depressing. I haven't read her previous books, and at first her writing style bugged me, but I couldn't put this book down. It's a quick read at about 225 pages. It really wasn't what I was expecting at all, but it was beautiful and moving, and the phrases and images she echoes throughout the book really resonate, and keep the book from being self-indulgent. It's a surprisingly grounded account of a year Didion acknowledges that she was kind of crazy. I definitely recommend it.

Best Sellers

I recently finished four best sellers. Stephen King's CELL, Robert B. Parker's SEA CHANGE and two by Sarh Dunant, THE BIRTH OF VENUS and IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN.

I don't own a cell phone and neither does Stephen King or so he says. After reading CELL, I'm not certain I really need one. This is King at his usual scary best although I was disappointed w/the ending. Too much left undone.

SEA CHANGE is another good example of Parker's writing. Taut dialog with a sarcastic edge. Tough characters with all too human frailties and a rather shocking denoument. All Parker's books are quick reads that leave you wanting more. He has three detective series going so it seems there promises to be more.

Sarah Dunant's historical novels are extremely well researched w/bibliographies at the end. I guess that means she's a SERIOUS writer. These two books are set in 15th and 16th century Italy, Florence and Venice. You learn that life was very different and very difficult than today's existence. The plots center around events of the times and actual people you learned about in school have roles in the books. For those of you with an interest in Art History, THE BIRTH OF VENUS has an intriguing appearance by Michaelangelo. In THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN gives you insight into the huge amount of time and effort it took to practice the oldest profession. You learn that appearances ARE everything but in the end family values endure.

ToB starts tomorrow!

For those of you who are intrigued, the Tournament of Books begins tomorrow. Each day of the week you can go to the website and they will have a review of each day's matchup. From the ToB website:

"The first of many judgment days is tomorrow (a new judgment published each weekday until the tournament’s done), with judge Choire Sicha deciding between the highly regarded—and highly PR-machine’d—The History of Love by Nicole Krauss and Dave Bergen’s stealth bomber, The Time in Between. It’s guaranteed to be a joyful bloodbath. Welcome to the 2006 Tournament of Books."

TOMORROW’S MATCH:
KRAUSS'S THE HISTORY OF LOVE VS. THE TIME IN BETWEEN BY BERGEN

If anyone has read either of these and would like to give your own review. Please post a comment.

Review--The Accidental

The Accidental by Ali Smith is one of the books from the Tournament of Books. I listened to the audiobook of this. I'm not sure if I would have had a different impression from actually reading the book. It has been hyped by several publications and it won the Whitbread award so I was anticipating a very good book. However, I found it to be only an okay book.

An English family is vacationing and a stranger enters their world and possibly changes their lives. The book is written where each chapter is from a different character's point of view. I liked the first half of the book and enjoyed hearing the different characters viewpoints. But I just didn't see where the story was going and I got bored. So I admit, although it is very against my nature to abandon a book, I did not listen to the last four chapters.

I will be curious to see how it does in the bracket and what the judges thought of it. Maybe I'm just not literary-minded enough to have grasped why this is supposed to be such a great book. I did look up other reviews of it and they are pretty mixed. Seems like you either love it or you hate it.

I am currently reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I am not incredibly far into yet, but I am really enjoying it.

ToB Bracket announced!

If you click on the Tournament of Books link in the sidebar, you will see the list of judges and a place to download the tournament bracket. I have to say, I'm really amused by The Morning News writers. I think their explanations of their process are great and they don't take themselves too seriously. Which I love!

Anyway, check out the bracket, I may post a running commentary of the tournament and see if any of you have read some of the books on the list and your opinions of them. And whether or not you agree with the judges choices.

Review - The Big Over Easy

I finished The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde, and I really enjoyed it. If you've read his Thursday Next series, you may find it difficult not to agonize over the connections between The Well of Lost Plots (in which most of these characters make an appearance), but it's an enjoyable debut to his new series, and I'll definitely read the second book, which comes out this summer.

The book opens up in Reading, England, where Mary Mary is assigned to work with Jack Spratt in the Nursery Crime Division, which investigates crimes involving gingerbread houses, giants, and most significantly for this book, the murder of a large egg. Humpty Dumpty has been murdered, and suspects abound. Jack must make his way through a tangled web of corporate greed, ex-wives, and mad scientists to solve the murder. To make things more difficult, Reading is a world where police not only have to solve crimes, they have to make them readable, and Jack has always been an outsider, devoted to justice rather than ratings. Fforde does a great job creating fun characters and an outrageous world for them to play in.

Zooba.com

Has anyone tried this? I recommend it as a way of acquiring books you are interested in but don't have time to read at the moment. It's like Netflix. You keep a running list of books you'd like to read. Each month Zooba will send you the book at the top of your list. You can rearrange, add or delete books from your list whenever you want.

Seven Deadly Wonders

Just finished 7 Deadly Wonders by Matthew Reilly. WOW! Talk about nonstop action and adventure. The book is a Sinbad, The Sailor movie from my childhood. A team researches the seven ancient wonders of the world and then actually finds them all usually one step ahead of the evil USA and Europe. Yes, the USA and Europe are the BAD GUYS in this story. An interesting twist. Each ancient wonder site is filled w/hazards for those brave enough to try to find the elusive treasure left behind by none other than Alexander the Great.A high adventure read for a blustery winter afternoon.