two motives(a reading blog)

the ideal male protagonist

2008-03-27T01:13:00.003-05:00

(I'm back from wordpress, by the way - even though I liked the layout of the site way better, formatting was a bitch.)

I'm very particular about my favorite male protagonists. I like them a certain way: young, attractive, charismatic, arrogant, lazily aristocratic, somewhat delicate-looking, anti-heroic, blond, pale, precocious, occasionally rather tormented, and, most importantly, devastatingly sarcastic. I also tend to like them more if they're a tiny bit evil or at least really, really self-absorbed. I wonder what this says about me.

Anyway, my favorite fictional characters (I'm not just limiting myself to novels, but I am excluding films) are as follows. This list is by no means exhaustive.

Amory Blaine from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise
I love Amory Blaine. So much so, in fact, that I went through a three month phase where I was determined to name my first child after him (until Mackenzie told me this was way too cruel). Seriously, what's not to love? He's brilliant, careless, and dashingly good looking, goes to Princeton in the 1920s, and says things like, "I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again." Oh, and another one of my favorite lines is when he realizes he has only $24 to his name and observes, "Well, people make money in books and I've found that I can always do the things that people do in books. Really they are the only things I can do."

Zooey Glass from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey
I just read this book for my American Novel Since 1945 class. I always found Catcher in the Rye a little angsty and trite, so I wasn't expecting to really enjoy this much. HOW WRONG I WAS. Zooey is "surpassingly handsome, even spectacularly so," makes people extremely nervous (it's probably all the hilariously cutting remarks), and appears to have the exact same personality that I do. Consider, for example, what his mother says about him: "Neither you nor Buddy know how to talk to people you don't like...If you don't like somebody in two minutes, you're done with them forever." Or perhaps the reason he himself gives for not wanting to get married: "I like to ride in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window any more when you're married." I just can't explain how awesome he is. You'll have to read the book yourself (it's only 200 pages and very tiny, so there's no excuse not to).

Hamlet from Shakespeare's, uh, Hamlet
Okay, I know how pretentious it is to put Hamlet on the list. BUT OH MY GOD I LOVE HIM. I reread it this year for my Shakespeare class last semester and became hopelessly, terribly obsessed. I watched the Lawrence Olivier film version twice in 24 hours. And also the marathon Kenneth Branagh version, which I think is honestly almost five hours long (and has S-E-X. Yesss). So how could I not include him? He's incredibly intelligent, rhetorically gifted, desperate, tortured, and, best of all, quite possibly crazy! Yeahhh. I'd do him.

Light from Death Note
I'm just going to say this and get it over with: yes, this is an anime series. DO NOT JUDGE ME. It is the only one I watch, and I only watch it because it is so dark and sexy and well-written and compelling. Anyway, the best part of this series is the barely suppressed sexual tension between the two main characters, Light and L, both of whom are, of course, stratospherically intelligent, bitingly sarcastic, and completely obsessed with defeating each other with strange little mind games. Except Light is evil and also hotter, so I am clearly on his side. No, seriously, he is unbelievably good-looking. And super evil. And he treats women as expendable. So much to love.

Draco from Cassie Clare's The Draco Trilogy
Since I'm making embarrassing revelations, here's another one. Yes, this is a fanfic series. Yes, I used to read Harry Potter fanfic. So shoot me. 95% of it is absolute crap, but there are a few truly gifted writers in the fandom, and Cassie is one of them. She's a published author now, and even though apparently her original fiction isn't as good, this fic is absolutely outstanding. The trilogy is very, very long (the length of three actual books easily, if not longer), but it's one of the best stories I've ever read. The characters themselves are so vibrant and alive and wonderful - almost as if J.K. Rowling had actually bothered with serious character development (I love her, but she does have her weaknesses). But I'm spending too much time explaining myself. Draco needs no explanation. He's the standard I hold all my other fictional favorites to. See the above list? He meets every single qualification. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Ender from Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game
Is there anyone in the world who didn't like this book? (Except for my little brother, who "didn't get it.") I still cry every time I read it. Poor Ender. I love him so. I'd write more but I'm sooo tired.

Okay, I'm done for the night. But uh, I hope I have effectively communicated how much I love these boys.

some thoughts at 5:08 am

2007-12-29T04:42:00.000-06:00

A few things:

First, I'm going to be moving over to wordpress soon I think, largely because it's easier to use and also more convenient, as I am going to also start music blogging there (www.waitingforthetrain.wordpress.com) with Mackenzie soon. Also, the book log on the side of this page is not correct. I think the box got too full or something because it's eaten part of the list and duplicated other parts of it. I am going to start keeping a separate list in Word.

Second, I posted my Best of 2007 list below and also on Facebook, so please take a look at it and then go read the books! They're all fantastic.

Third, I've been getting a bit of a head start on my 2008 reading challenge. I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy during finals week (meaning I've now read five and a half of the 27 Pulitzer Prize fiction winners since 1980). It was fantastic and I might blog about my feelings on McCarthy later, as I also read No Country for Old Men on the plane ride home. I also bought a few other books on the list. As far as my Booker Prize challenge goes, I also finished Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty a few weeks ago (which, like The Road, makes an appearance on my Best of 2007 list), meaning I've now read three and a half of the 18 winners since 1990 (I just picked that year arbitrarily, but I think I'll stick with it rather than attempting the whole list in one year). I've read a lot more of the shortlisted ones than the actual winners, but ah well.

Fourth, I've acquired a number of new books. I'm going to see if I can remember them all without having to get up and look.
The Sea - John Banville (also on my Booker list)
White Noise - Don DeLillo
Underworld - Don DeLillo
The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
After This: A Novel - Alice McDermott (which was a finalist for the Pulitzer! so that kind of counts)
Fire from Heaven - Mary Renault
One Good Turn - Kate Atkinson (already finished)
The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud (also already finished. Should have included it in my best of 2007 list but I read it after I finished the list)

Shit, I bought at least two more but I can't remember what they were now. I'd go check but I'm far too lazy. Anyway, I'm making another Half Price run later today (last day of the 20% off sale!) and am aiming to pick up about 10 more. The one I usually go to was pretty picked over so I'm going to trek out to the one at 91st and Metcalf with Lanie, which I think is bigger and will hopefully have some of the books I'm looking for. I'd like to pick up Pale Fire (which I've been meaning to read forever), some more Fitzgerald, Amsterdam or Enduring Love by McEwan, and... well, actually, I have a list of about 20 authors I'm looking for. I have got to find a good used book store in New Haven.

Fifth, after reading an article on the subject (which of course I can't seem to find now), I've started keeping a notebook with two different kinds of lists. The first is a list of words I am unfamiliar with and their definitions and the second is a list of words I know already but would like to start using more in my writing. Also pretteh words, because there are so many of them.

Finally, I've almost settled on a schedule for next semester (pending my impressions during shopping period and advisor/professor approval for some of the upper level English courses):

FREN 115 Elementary French
ENGL 291 The American Novel Since 1945
ENGL 265 The Victorian Novel
HIST 218 Intro to Roman History: The Empire

I'll also be taking one more class. Right now I'm hoping to finagle my way into a junior seminar, either ENGL 206 Shakespeare and His Dramatic Contemporaries (with my favorite prof, Brian Walsh) or ENGL 259 Jane Austen. If that fails, I'll try and get into a freshman literature seminar (Mortality and Immortality), but I'll be honest, I'd sort of prefer not to do that.

So it should be pretty novel-heavy, which I'm delighted about. I also feel like I'm cheating a little because surely I shouldn't enjoy the reading lists this much. Isn't school about taking courses you don't really want to take but feel obligated to? Ah well. Also, after seeing my history grades from first semester, I've decided to stick with the history/English double major after all despite my initial reservations.

That's it! It's so late (er, early), but my sleep schedule is so off lately that I'm not even tired. I think I'll go read for a bit (I really want to get a move on Portrait of a Lady, which has been in my "currently reading" pile for weeks).

Also, I want to post pretty soon about my feelings regarding marking in books. I'm writing this here to remind myself.

best of 2007

2007-12-29T04:41:00.000-06:00

I did this last year too. When I say "of 2007," I mean books I read in 2007, not just ones that were published this year. And I read a loooot of great books this year, so this list is by no means exhaustive. I hope I did these books justice in my descriptions, because they were all amazing. Enjoy!

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
This book was so beautiful. Michael Cunningham and Hollinghurst have both convinced me that gay relationships are just so, so much more interesting to read about than straight relationships. Especially stories about gay relationships that take place in class-conscious 1980s Britain! No, but seriously, this book was sometimes hilarious, often sad, and always lovely.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Seriously, can you believe I didn't read this until after I graduated from high school? Oh well. I read it. It was amazing. I loved it.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfield
I wrote a pretty long post about this in my book blog, but I'll do a shorter summary here. I usually avoid coming-of-age fiction, beacuse that particular period in my life was awkward and horrible enough the first time around and I can't imagine why anyone would be particularly interested in reliving it. Also, they always have warm and fuzzy endings and everyone escapes from their teenage years relatively unscathed, which I feel is not typically the way of things. Fortunately, Sittenfield is totally with me on this one. Don't be put off by the cover or the title - Sittenfield's editors market her books as chick lit for some inexplicable reason. They're anything but.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Quirky. More poignant and thoughtful than her debut novel White Teeth. I still have somewhat mixed feelings about Smith, though I think she's very talented and funny. Someone once described her to me as being a little too aware of how insightful she is (actually, it might have been someone tagged in this note. Who knows!), which really does detract a bit from how much I enjoy her novels. I think it's something she will outgrow, though, as it seems less pronounced in On Beauty. The last few pages of this book were especially beautifully written.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
So scary! I have to admit right off the bat that I am a huge sucker for really well written and well researched literary thrillers. And vampires. And books set in Eastern Europe (for some reason). This was a huge book but it was a fast read, if only because I was racing through it to find out what happened next. It was also TERRIFYING.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
At first I wasn't really crazy about this book. Roth's prose is sort of spare and almost journalistic at times and usually I hate books with child narrators because almost every adult writer apparently has no idea how children actually behave. But it turned out to be reaaally good. It's an alternate history which assumes Charles Lindbergh (the airplane guy) defeats FDR in the presidential election and embarks on a campaign of "folksy anti-Semitism." Very interesting, though I felt a little cheated by the ending, which is perhaps a bit too convenient.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Do I even need to say anything? Apart from the last chapter, it was perfect. LOVE.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
This is an epic, sweeping novel about a single Midwestern family and their attempt to come together for one last Christmas. The plot sounds a bit trite but the book itself is not at all so, I swear. The characters are beautifully drawn and the dialogue is wonderful and hilarious.

The King Must Die by Mary Renault
Okay. I was obsessed with ancient Greece as a kid. Like really, really obsessed. But I had no idea that people were actually writing insanely beautiful and meticulously researched fiction about it! Actually, I'm not sure that anyone besides Renault is, but still. This is the way historical fiction should be done. Elizabeth gave me this for Christmas and I read it straight through. And then went out and bought two other books by her. SO GOOD.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Creepy as fuck and strangely beautiful. It will haunt your dreams, no joke. I'm not crazy about gratuitous violence in general, particularly in the other McCarthy books I've read (No Country for Old Men and a little bit of Blood Meridian), but in this book it seems more appropriate, though still not exactly tasteful. I cried a lot in the dining hall after I finished it.

Hamlet by Shakespeare
Okay, so I've read this before, but I never realized how UNBELIEVABLY AMAZING it was before, largely because I read it in Dr. Ream's class, which was a joke. I love it, okay. I love it. I also love Kenneth Branagh, but that is a topic to discuss later.

Okay. AND NOW for my favorite book of the year...

Atonement by Ian McEwan
This book is hands down one of my favorites of all time. Mackenzie had been recommending it to me for ages but I kept putting it off because I thought the first few pages were boring. MY MISTAKE. It is absolutely amazing. And I cried a ton. And also oh my GOD. Ian McEwan is one of the best writers alive. His prose is just achingly beautiful. Ahh ahhh ahhh. And if the ending doesn't totally destroy you, you don't deserve to read ever again.

2007-11-22T15:00:00.000-06:00

books i just bought:
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Love in the Time of Cholera - Garcia Marquez)
The Road - Cormac McCarthy

authors i intend to read (or read more of) in 2008:
Toni Morrison
Edith Wharton
Cormac McCarthy
Philip Roth
Helen DeWitt*
Vladimir Nabokov*
Salman Rushdie
Ian McEwan*
Kiran Desai
Alan Hollinghurst*
David Mitchell*
Michael Ondaajte*
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

*i am particularly excited about these.
(this list is by no means exhaustive)

other things i intend to do in 2008:
-finish reading the booker prize winners (i've only read 5, but in my defense, i've read a lot more of the shortlisted ones)
-begin reading the pulitzer prize winners. eventually i intend to read all of them, but this year i'll start at 2007 and work my way backwards, with the goal of reading my way to 1980 by this time next year.

Atonement.

2007-10-25T16:34:00.001-05:00

Occasionally somebody (read: Mackenzie) will recommend a book to me and I will put off reading it for months and months for some reason or another. And then I will read it and I will feel two conflicting emotions: one, disbelief that I did not read it earlier because how could I have lived without this book in my life, and two, great joy that I did not read it earlier because that meant that I got to read it for the first time now!

Atonement by Ian McEwan is one of those books. Fuuuuck.

I think it was the most beautiful piece of fiction I have read in the past two years. No fucking joke.

John Irving and end-of-summer reading.

2007-08-02T21:51:00.001-05:00

I love John Irving so, so much. And in the light of having finally decided that my FAVORITE BOOK is Irving's The Cider House Rules, I thought I would write a post about him.

First, though, I would like to describe why choosing a favorite book is such a momentous occasion. I despise people who have favorite books, largely because their favorite book is usually something appalling like The Notebook. People are always asking me what my favorite book is (well, sometimes asking me, as most people do not care about books, much less what books I like to read) and I am always at a loss for what to say. I have different favorite books for different moods and sometimes for different months (for example, I feel differently about Michael Cunningham in the winter than I do in the spring - I always love him but I seem to love him more passionately when it's cold out). I have favorite books in many different genres and all of them are so wildly unlike the others that it is impossible to make any kind of comparison.

Yet I realize it is important to have an answer to this question, especially if people are asking you for recommendations (though you should know I try to tailor my recommendations to each individual person, which is also important). If you don't have an answer, then people assume not that you are widely read and thus cannot choose from the many books you have read, but rather that you do not actually read and instead sit in your house accumulating large stocks of books for show purposes. As both of my younger brothers have taught me, non-readers who are flirting with the idea of becoming readers are like very nervous birds. You have to be careful not to make any sudden or threatening movements (i.e. not knowing your favorite book, which is something they assume should be simple) or they will take flight and then you will have lost them forever! I spend a lot of time trying to subtly lure people into becoming readers, so I know that it's best, on the whole, if they wind up thinking it happened mostly by accident.

I spent way more time discussing that than I thought I would. But anyway, onto Irving. I wrote out this huge paragraph about why I love John Irving and why I chose The Cider House Rules, but then it just devolved into this frenzy of superlatives and wild praise and I hate writing things like that, so I will spare you by turning it into a conveniently numbered list (I am limiting myself to 5 general things). Sorry if I'm slightly inarticulate - I'm also watching the Daily Show while I write this.

This is why I like John Irving:
1. He writes the best characters. Period. Homer Wells from The Cider House Rules is my favorite male character in fiction.
2. His writing is so very much a boy's writing, if that makes sense, which means that the unexpected moments of tenderness and heartbreak are all the more poignant.
3. His books are comfortingly familiar (they almost always include some or all of the following: boys' prep schools, wrestling, New England, writers, and European whores) without ever becoming predictable.
4. He does his research. Particularly for The Cider House Rules, which centers around illegal abortions in 1940s Maine.
5. Homer Wells. Seriously. I love him.

Okay. Now let's move on to other things, namely my impending departure for the hallowed halls of Yale. I got a giant cardboard box to put my books in and I am going to tape it up and check it with my other luggage at the airport. Unfortunately we had to take back the bookshelf we originally bought because we had no way to get it to New Haven and downgrade to a smaller one, so I can only fit probably about 40 books. I'm not sure yet how many books will fit in the box, so that might actually determine how many I take rather than shelf space. Anyway, during the course of making this list (which I won't post here as it is much too long), I made a second list of books I need to read before I leave. Most of these I own, though some I will need to borrow from other people. Here it is!

1. Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller (I just bought this yay)
2. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin (also just bought it)
3. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (seriously, it's about time, I've been meaning to do this forever)
5. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
6. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (I read a "young classics" version of this when I was like eight but seriously, it's time for the real thing)
7. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
8. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
9. The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
10. Atonement by Ian McEwan
11. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
12. At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill
13. Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
14. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (I have seriously started this at least three times and have never been able to get into it, but Sarah loves it so I might give it another try)
16. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (I am really excited for this one)

As you can see, I have a lot to do in the next four weeks. I'll keep you updated on my progress. There are a few on that list that I doubt I'll finish - some of them I've already started several times and have never been able to finish, which doesn't bode well for them this time around. But I think I can get through 10 or so if I just read at a moderate pace and restrain myself from rereading old books, which I've found myself doing a lot this summer.

Also, on a final note, I got Jasper Fforde's latest Thursday Next book and it is no good at all. Don't waste your time with it. I got halfway through and quit in disgust.

HP7.

2007-07-23T15:42:00.000-05:00

I can't possibly write about HP7, except to say that I loved it intensely the first time around and am enjoying it even more the second time. There were some flaws (the last chapter alone was almost enough to ruin the entire book for me - good LORD, what was she thinking) and some of my questions still remain unanswered, but overall it was an incredible ending to an incredible story and I am so, so pleased with it. Even so, I spent most of this weekend in a state of utter depression - I just really can't believe it's over.

Ahh, Harry Potter. I am so sad to see this era end.

Harry Potter.

2007-07-07T21:14:00.000-05:00

I'm going to write about Harry Potter, because I just recently had a discussion with another Yale kid about the relative strengths and weaknesses of J.K. Rowling's writing. I should give some kind of disclaimer, though - as I wrote previously, I am incredibly and passionately in love with the entirety of the children's fantasy genre, and Harry Potter is the defining work in that particular genre, for better or worse. For the most part, I believe it's for the better - it has thrust fantasy into the mainstream and given the genre much more credibility and respect (not that it didn't have it before, but, as I discussed previously, I feel it is taken less seriously than so-called "normal" fiction).

But I do have some reservations about the books' overwhelming, unprecedented success. I feel like the Potter craze has inspired editors everywhere to search frantically for the next fantasy bestseller, publishing subpar children's literature simply because it involves boy wizards or magic or evil guys with funny names. This is bad, because it means people like Holly Black get published (Lord save us), who give the genre a shitty reputation because they are shitty subpar writers. Also, I am inherently prone to dislike and/or be skeptical of things that cause such an intense bandwagon effect, ESPECIALLY in the world of fiction. Take for example The Da Vinci Code (just the mere mention of it makes any "serious" writer or reader shudder in horror), which sold at an insane rate and practically created a new genre of books that touted themselves as either discrediting or giving credence to the book's more controversial claims. This is may very well be because I have a superiority complex (hey, I LOVE reading and appreciating books that the general public has never heard of). But I think it's also because I just don't trust the general public's taste in books. They are usually horribly wrong. Harry Potter's popularity is one of the rare instances in which they actually got it right.

Okay. What I really want to talk about, though, is the Harry Potter books themselves. I just finished rereading the first six in preparation for the seventh's release, and I read them pretty much back to back so I've been completely immersed in Rowling-world for the past week. Though it's clear that Rowling's skills have improved dramatically over the course of the six books, I think that she was pretty much a phenomenal writer from the start. I gave her a hard time when I first read them - I remember thinking, "Oh, well, she tells a good story, but she's not a very high quality writer." Now I can acknowledge that I probably felt that because I was incredibly jealous of her talent (and her piles and piles of money). She's unbelievably witty and quirky (Fred and George have some truly hilarious lines, and they're not the only ones). And she writes the best plots I've ever read, period. What the fuck. Who could possibly dream up these things?

But more importantly, she also understands kids in a way that many older authors don't. Philip Pullman's Lyra, for example, is a great character, but I can always tell that she was written by an older male author - she's a bit too serious, a bit too confident, and a bit too responsible. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are not. Most of the time they have no idea what they're doing and often they seriously fuck things up - see book five, for instance, in which Harry gets Sirius killed and nearly ends up dying himself just because he's an idiot and charges off without thinking things through. They don't know everything. They often ask the wrong questions and suspect the wrong people. They break the rules and they get in trouble for it. They have stupid fights and take stupid risks. That's why they're such wonderful characters - because they are so obviously children who have been given a great deal of responsibility and are struggling to come to terms with what that means. They react the same way that probably any of us would have done if we had found ourselves in their situation. They're completely flawed, and I love them and believe in them more because of it.

Mmm. I won't clutter this blog with my predictions about what happens in book seven, because I literally have NO idea - she never fails to completely surprise me. Although I'll be honest, I don't think Snape is evil.

Some thoughts on coming-of-age fiction.

2007-06-25T18:19:00.001-05:00

I am not a huge fan of this particular genre, largely because adolescence was awkward and horrible enough to experience the first time around, and I can't imagine why anyone would be particularly interested in reliving it. The protagonists of these books are invariably ungainly teenagers stumbling around and inevitably ending up in horrifically embarrassing situations, usually involving members of the opposite sex, which somehow conclude in a warm fuzzy ending in which everything is made better and the protagonists manage to escape from the teenage years relatively unscathed.

But I read Prep by Curtis Sittenfield, even though the title alone would normally have been enough to dissuade me, because Mackenzie suggested it and she is rarely (if ever) mistaken in her book recommendations. It was a relatively quick read even though it's a pretty big book - I finished it in a couple hours on the airplane to Amsterdam. It was also excellent, in that it was quirky and funny and heartfelt and sweet in a genre-defying, unsentimental way. The book follows the main character Lee throughout her years at an exclusive and academically rigorous East Coast boarding school. I hate summarizing books, so I won't, but I will say that it was a great book and I have already gone out and bought her second (unfortunately titled The Man of My Dreams - I can't take it out of the house because I'm ashamed of what people will think of me). What I liked best about it, though, is that there wasn't really a warm fuzzy ending. She doesn't end up doing well at her new school. She never really fits in or makes many friends. Her one relationship there really fucks with her head and made me feel sad and sick on her behalf as I read about it. She drifts away from her family and ends up really hurting them. And so on and so on. I'm making it sound as though it's this really tragic story but it's not. She ends up okay, but changed in ways that are not always for the better, which is I think how adolescence affects us all.

Anyway, it was great, so read it.

Things I love.

2007-06-21T18:53:00.000-05:00

I love children's fantasy literature. I think it will always be the one genre I can always return to no matter what age I am - all the collected works of Philip Pullman, Tamora Pierce, Diana Wynne Jones, J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Eva Ibbotson, C.S. Lewis (blatant Christian motifs aside, they're still great books), Neil Gaiman, and so, so many more, although I have a particular weakness for the fantasy epics. So it's odd that I always feel ashamed to admit my love for this genre, especially the books geared towards younger ages.

I've given this a lot of thought over the past few years as I grow up and find myself increasingly expected to read literature of a so-called higher caliber (which, don't get me wrong, I love as well, but in a very, very different way). And what I've come to conclude is that the reason I am embarrassed by my adoration for the fantasy lit of my childhood is because I consider myself a serious reader who reads serious books and thinks seriously about their meanings. And, as a "serious reader", I know perfectly well that most people view fantasy as fluffy, inconsequential writing and don't really believe it can ever be considered true "literature" (if you'll pardon the somewhat excessive use of quotations).

This is something I disagree vehemently with but am always too nervous to voice (I'm petrified people will associate me with the kind of people who read trashy, poorly written murder mysteries or lusty romance novels and the like). Because I believe firmly and unshakeably that writing fantasy literature, especially for older children/younger teenagers, requires a unique skill that most contemporary authors, even the critically acclaimed ones, do not possess. What people don't understand is that writing fantasy literature requires creating the world anew. It demands characters that remain believable and alive and true even as the most extraordinarily unbelievable things are happening to them. Writing fantasy is a process of rewriting - of stepping back and changing every single one of the rules that up until that point had been accepted without question. As such, good fantasy by its very nature necessitates plots so intricately, delicately, and beautifully crafted that a reader is willing to gladly and joyfully suspend their disbelief. Good fantasy literature may be shelved with the children's books, but its basic principles (plot, character, and fantastical setting) are the ones that transcend age; these are the components of a story that is capable of appealing to any reader at any time in their lives.

A lot of the time I read books because I feel that I should (they won major awards or received excellent reviews from reputable sources and so on) or simply because I truly, truly love the act of reading itself. And I would say that I enjoy most of what I read. So many of the books I read are beautifully written and engaging and wonderful. But few evoke the same reactions in me that I felt as a child when I was first discovering the fantasy genre, reactions that I still feel even now when I revisit those books. I remember thinking to myself, "Holy shit!" the first time I read Diana Wynne Jones's books. I remember reading the entirety of Tamora Pierce's collected works (easily twenty or more books) over and over and over and over again as a kid and never tiring of the stories or characters. I still race through the His Dark Materials trilogy, dying to know what happens next even though I already know what's coming. And so on and so forth. I could really talk forever about this particular subject. I could describe in great and complex detail why I love this genre and why it never disappoints me. I could expound at length on what distinguishes great fantasy from mediocre fantasy and why particular authors have or haven't been able to write the former. I could passionately discuss the unique rewards and responsibilities of writing for children. Yeah, I could go on and on and on...

But I won't. There's no time for rambling when there are books to be read.

I don't have time to blog, but I am doing it anyway.

2007-06-16T16:36:00.000-05:00

I just finished The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova two days ago and it was super amazing. I love books about history. Or traveling. Or adventure. When I was a kid I read a ton of fantasy (I mean, that and historical fiction was pretty much all I read), which is full of ordinary kids who one day wake up and have great adventures. So I spent a lot of my childhood waiting for my great adventure to start. If someone had told me when I was ten or eleven that I had magical powers or that my family had been kidnapped by vampires or that I had to go questing in some distant world, I would not have been surprised at all. I was ready to go, seriously. I was always on the lookout for talking dogs or weird omens or prophecies. It has been a huge disappointment to get older and realize that fiction really is fictional.

Anyway, The Historian was beautifully written and one of the most exciting stories I've read in a long time (Special Topics comes pretty close, but I think I actually liked The Historian better). It was at times horribly frightening (I was reading part of it on a very, very quiet airplane and when the pilot came on over the loudspeaker I almost jumped out of my skin), but also extraordinarily engaging and well-researched. I read that Kostova spent ten years doing the research for it, and you can tell she really knows her stuff. Plus the settings were really cool (Amsterdam, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Hungary) and very believable.

I would like someone else (ahem Macky, Sarah, or Lanie) to read this so I can discuss the ending with them, which I think was quite possibly my favorite part of the whole book. God. Whenever I read a passage that is particularly well-written or captivating, especially if it's an ending, I get this tight constricted feeling in my chest and it is hard for me to breathe and I have to read it again and again. I seem to experience books in a very physical way.

I said I'd write about On Beauty and The Corrections in this entry, but I have an epic book organizing project ahead of me and there isn't time right now. I am undertaking the huge task of alphabetizing and categorizing my books, as well as drawing up a preliminary list of books to take with me to Yale.

Kate & Jane (with a sneak preview of Jonathan and Zadie)

2007-06-13T18:45:00.001-05:00

Let's begin with Kate Atkinson, because she is wonderful.

I recently finished (hardly even recently anymore oh dear oh dear) Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which was Atkinson's first book but not, in my opinion, her best (I would give that title to Case Histories, which broke my heart). But that does not detract in any way from how wonderful this book was! I always think of Atkinson's plots as a more convoluted version of John Irving's - their writing styles are extremely different, yes, but they both produce plots that are epic and sprawling and incredibly satisfying (or incredibly unsatisfying, which in many ways can be rather satisfying as well). They differ in that Irving focuses on a core group of characters, whereas Atkinson is all over the map - and in her books, everyone is related to everyone else in some strange and fascinating way that is slowly, slowly, slowly revealed throughout the course of the novel. And her characters are so lovely too - they have so much life in them that their personalities are practically spilling out of the book. A lot of the authors I love write either comedy or tragedy very, very well, but Atkinson does both, and she does it beautifully. Read this book.

Now Jane Hamilton!

I'm throwing this one in there because I didn't want you to think that every book I read is amazing. I just love talking about the ones that are. I read A Map of the World on vacation after I ran out of everything else (my mom had brought it along but declared it was "too sad" and gave up on it). I have some seriously mixed feelings about this book. First and foremost, though, I must award this book the somewhat ignominious honor of "Worst Example of Wedge Titling I Have Ever Encountered". Wedge titling is a particular pet peeve of mine. I'm sure there's a real name for this strange and horrifying phenomenon, but this is just what I call it. It's when an author apparently (one can only guess, after all) decides what the title of the book will be before even beginning it, but then in the course of actually writing the novel strays far away from their original ideas of what it would be. Despite the fact that the book they have written is miles away from the book they originally titled, they insist on keeping the original title and, in order to make it relevant, "wedge" in a paragraph that somehow includes the title. Usually this paragraph is almost completely nonsensical and has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the book or plot or characters. I could rant about this for hours, but I'll spare you my fury. Anyway, you really have to read this book to appreciate how annoying the wedge titling is. I can't believe her editors let that sneak through. Seriously. HOW OBNOXIOUS.

But all of that aside, it was an all right book. It idealized farm life in a way that was probably not totally accurate (I hate it when people go on and on about how noble and glorious and wonderful hard work is. These people have probably not ever worked hard and thus are idiots). Plus I loathed the main character Alice, which really made it difficult to enjoy the book. And the plot itself was barely coherent. Basically, it unfolds like this: Alice is babysitting her best friend Theresa's kids (insert wedge titling) when the three-year-old wanders away and drowns (insert reference to previous wedging). The only really well written part is the relationship between Alice and Theresa - it is a fascinating take on grief and the possibility of redemption. I really enjoyed that part (and the brief affair between Theresa and Alice's husband Howard, which was also amazing). Anyway, Alice becomes incredibly (and annoyingly) depressed. Normally I do not find depression annoying, but she is fucking obnoxious. Then, for somewhat weird reasons, she is charged with sexually molesting her students (she's an elementary school nurse) and goes to jail to await trial. Part of the book is told from her husband's point of view, which was a really great break from Alice herself. Her husband is pretty sweet. Anyway, a lot of other shit happens, and that's the book. I just felt like Hamilton was trying to write two books in one: first, a book about guilt over indirectly killing your best friend's kid, and second, a book about being accused of molesting kids and how much that makes people hate you, even if you're innocent. I understand what she was trying to do, but I just didn't really buy it.

I really am being too hard on her. The book was actually beautifully written - she has a gift for imagery and she writes with the same lovely passivity of Margaret Atwood and the like, although she lacks Atwood's other numerous gifts. One passage in particular made me weep a lot. But ultimately, neither the good aspects of the book nor the bad really won. They just sort of canceled each other out, and so as a result I feel mostly neutral about this novel.

Tune in tomorrow (or someday soon, I guess) for the Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith lovefest (both are on my top ten list of authors, which is surprisingly becoming rather stable as of late). And maybe if I have time I will talk about Prep, which is a perfect example of how beautiful and funny and sweet coming-of-age literature can be.

I have written too much and now I must go read The Historian, which is so scary and gripping! Unfortunately, being gainfully employed is really interfering with my reading time.

I am way behind on book blogging.

2007-06-10T21:52:00.000-05:00

But in my defense I have been out of town for three weeks. And now finally I am back and very exhausted but it is important that I at least begin to catalogue the books I have read before I forget them entirely!

In the past seventeen days, I have read the following:
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason - Helen Fielding
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
No god but God - Reza Aslan
A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton
Prep - Curtis Sittenfield
Theft - Peter Carey

And half of The Historian, which is devastatingly good (and creepy, in a Shadow of the Wind type way) so far.

I have also made several new acquisitions, in addition to several of the above books, including:
The Twenty Seventh City - Jonathan Franzen, Freddy and Fredericka - Mark Helprin, and one other that I can't remember or find right now. I am putting a freeze on all book buying activities for the next week weeks until I can catch up on my reading. Plus I am starting to work full time, so the buying and reading will all be slowing down. This is excellent news on the financial front but also just good in general

I am not going to talk about any of them tonight because I have to go to work tomorrow (gainful employment!). But you can look forward to hearing about some Jonathan Frazen, a bit of Kate Atkinson, and probably Jane Hamilton as well.

Also, I have got to come up with a more efficient way of tagging my posts.

Of Reza Aslan (again) and a trip to Europe.

2007-05-21T22:19:00.000-05:00

I graduated! That was somewhat anticlimactic but still exciting, even though the ensuing celebrations really threw off my sleeping patterns. And we leave for Europe tomorrow morning, which I'm sure will only further complicate the problem. But I'm excited anyway, especially for Amsterdam, which I have always wanted to visit.

I haven't had any time to read until tonight, but I'm making some headway with No god but God, which continues to be wonderful. I love the Arabic names; they are pretty and interesting. And I really, really love the way he writes. Like this sentence:

"The Ummah was growing and edxpanding in wealth and power at an astounding rate. A mere fifty years after his death, the tiny community Muhammed had founded in Yathrib burst out of the Arabian Peninsula and swallowed whole the massive Sasanian Empire of Iran. Fifty years after that, it had secured most of northwest India, absorbed all of North Africa, and reduced the Christian Byzantine Empire to little more than a deteriorating regional power." - Reza Aslan, No god but God.

I have to go pack! Back in two weeks.

P.S. I gave up on Emma. Not only was it horribly dull, it was also incredibly predictable.

I graduate very soon.

2007-05-17T23:07:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, to be exact. I don't feel very sentimental about it; I just am ready to be done.

I am about forty pages into No god but God, which is wonderful. Reza Aslan is definitely my new political pundit crush (sorry, Fareed Zakaria). He is really cute. And I am so impressed by the fact that he has an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the University of Iowa in addition to his graduate work at Harvard and UCSB in religion. You can tell that he writes fiction from the way his book flows. It is bea-u-tiful. Unfortunately, I'm getting dangerously close to my "nonfiction stumbling point" (usually around page 50 or so), where I begin to rapidly lose interest with the dryness of academic writing and eventually give up entirely. I wish sometimes I had read more nonfiction as a child, because I think I would have an easier time with it now. Facts are all very well, but I need plot, you know? And lovely characters and beautiful imagery.

Books I bought today, because I have a disease:
Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (I keep getting told how much I am going to like him)
Resurrection, Tucker Malarkey. I am thinking I will probably take this one back. It got decent reviews on Amazon and looks really interesting (it is a fictionalized account of the discovery of the Gnostic gospels), but I think it might be too religious for me. But maybe I will skim through it before I decide.

I have to write about fifteen thank you notes to teachers, etc. now, but then I am going to read some more of the lovely Reza Aslan and perhaps some Nathan Englander. Yes, yes.

Finally, I've settled on the purpose of this blog.

2007-05-15T23:25:00.000-05:00

My reasons for creating this in the first place were rather vague. I don't want to review books; I think I just want to keep track of what I read and what I did or didn't like about it. To that end, I want to also include great passages or lines so I can remember them later (I always find myself digging through books I read months or years ago, searching for one bit of dialogue or one particular description that I found especially entrancing). Special Topics really inspired me to want to memorize large chunks of poetry and prose so I can recite it at the drop of a hat, but I don't have time for that, what with working full time this summer, attempting to read every book on my freshman year reading list before the year actually starts, and also covering a good deal of contemporary fiction at the same time. Oy vay.

In actual reading news, Emma is really picking up. Hooray for Jane Austen. I am enjoying it, despite the fact that lately, what with finals and graduation and so on, I've been reading it at a snail's pace (twenty pages or so a day, not a bit more and often less). I adore Mr. Woodhouse; I think he is my favorite character. He is so fretful and old and charming and so hell-bent on convincing everyone else of how healthy gruel is (ew). Emma, though, is a little obnoxious, even though the back of the book describes her glowingly as "irresistible."

In "reading planning" news (I think I enjoy planning almost as much as reading itself), I am finding it difficult to decide what to read next. I'll continue with Emma, but it's definitely one of those books that can be read alongside several others. I need to establish some sort of structure in my reading, but I am SO BUSY right now I can't find time to sit down and do it. The problem is that I recently ordered all of these books from the library and I can only renew them a certain amount of times before I have to turn them in and then check them out again. I think I need to prioritize library books and then move on to the ones I own (last night I went through my bookshelf and pulled out nineteen books I hadn't read yet but desperately wanted to). I can actually feel myself developing an unhealthy obsession with Reading Lists and Summer Challenges. At least I can acknowledge that I have a problem, right?

Library books I have checked out and am really looking forward to reading:

A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya. The author was shot to death in the elevator of her apartment building in a contract killing after allegedly receiving repeated threats from the Russian government. The book is supposed to be awesome and tragic.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I adore Rushdie's writing, even though I've only read a few chapters of a different book. But I have really been looking forward to this one for a long time.

No god but God by Reza Aslan. This guy is so awesome. He was on The Daily Show last week and was so clever and handsome and young. The book is a history of Islam, which is something I'm ashamed to say I've not read enough about.

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander. Short stories, which I'm so fond of. And I've heard such good things.

I feel like I put in a few more holds, but I can't quite recall (I guess I'll find out, right?). I'm debating whether or not it would be too risky to take a library book (or two) to Europe. OH, and my mom just bought A Map of the World, which I have been wanting to read for a long time. I read the first two pages of it yesterday but made myself stop (even though it was really good so far!) because I have TOO MUCH ELSE TO READ AND I WILL NEVER FINISH ANYTHING AT THIS RATE. Oh god and I also started reading The Corrections, which is so terribly witty and funny. But I am taking it to Europe with me, so I will have time to devote to it just a week!

I didn't realize until I wrote this post how absolutely random and scatterbrained my reading habits have been lately. Forgive me, for I have sinned, and will probably continue sinning for the rest of the summer. I fear that working full time is really going to interfere with my full time reading habit. But this entry is reaching epic proportions, so I will save my fears for another time.

I could never be a professional critic

2007-05-14T20:25:00.000-05:00

because I love almost every book I read, adore almost every movie I see, and thoroughly enjoy almost every kind of music I listen to. Sometimes I think this is a bad thing (surely I should be more discerning, more harshly critical, etc. - surely that is some kind of mark of intelligence), but generally I feel all right about it. I think I experience things more intensely because I'm not looking for flaws. Yes, there are moments in House or in some of my favorite movies when I think, "I could have written that better." In general I believe that Jasper Fforde could have excuted his ideas more effectively. Sometimes I find Jane Austen dull; often I want Margaret Atwood (my favorite of favorites! my writing idol!) to just get to the fucking point already. And when one of Anita Shreve's novels misses the mark, it really, really misses it. But that doesn't bother me, you know? I read voraciously, starvingly, passionately anyway. I know the authors I love are only human, and I don't usually feel it's necessary to make a huge deal out of their mistakes. I don't want to be a critic; I want to be a voyeur, standing on my tiptoes and looking in through the windows of books, watching my favorite characters living and loving and screwing things up, or not, depending on what kind of story it is.

Mmm. That's what I read for.

Technically, this is a book blog

2007-05-13T11:57:00.000-05:00

but I wanted to write about the movie Half Nelson, which I saw last night.

Wow.

What a freaking amazing movie, seriously. It's about this white inner-city teacher, which sounds like it's going to be one of those inspiring Teachers who Make a Difference in the Lives of Poor Black Kids movies until you hear the kicker, which is that he is also addicted to cocaine. The cinematography alone was just mind-blowingly good. The scenes where he was high on crack (which was pretty much all the time) were shot with weird angles and strange lighting and felt like some kind of neverending fever dream (or nightmare, really). And Ryan Gosling was just absolutely outstanding. I hated him in The Notebook because honestly, what a crappy sentimental poorly written movie that was, but in this one, he was incredible. His character was funny and intelligent and passionate but also desperate, lost, and hopeless in a really powerful and tragic way. He definitely deserved the nomination for best actor. OH and how could I forget to mention the soundtrack! It was written by Broken Social Scene and lends this weird surreal quality to the whole movie. God, it was just really good.

I'm a third of the way through Emma and I am just not enjoying it yet. That style of language/writing takes a while to get used to, but in Pride & Prejudice I was just zipping through it by the time I was 20 pages in. Now, though, I find myself checking to see how many pages are left. I guess I'm just not as interested in this story. Plus Emma as a character is not exactly the most loveable, although she has her moments. I'm just going to hazard a guess: Mr. Elton actually wants to marry her, not Harriet, and ultimately, Emma ends up marrying Mr. Knightley. Macky, am I right?

Finished Gatsby, yay!

2007-05-12T11:07:00.000-05:00

I finished The Great Gatsby last night and almost cried. What a wonderful book. And such clear, succinct writing. I can't wait to read more Fitzgerald - I almost picked up Tender is the Night at Half Price Books last night but decided I could probably get it from the library. I need to be better about not buying books that are available at the library. But sometimes I just really want to own them, you know? So I can reread them or just look at them. Or put them in my LibraryThing.

But anyway, these are the books I bought:
Emma, Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Prep, Curtis Sittenfield
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson

Yayyy. I am very excited about all of them and am currently reading Emma, which is okay so far but it always takes me a while to get into these kinds of books. I need to make a list of the books I want to read in order so I don't keep buying new ones and skipping around and half-starting a lot of them and then moving on, etc. That is messy. I don't want it to be.

Also I am going to change my sidebar from "book recs" to "books completed in summer 2007". That way I can keep track of what I have read. It is going to be great.

I have some sort of terrible cold thing that has rendered me mostly unable to breathe. I really, really have to finish my chem stuff tonight so I can focus solely on my calc final. And I need to email my professor about my summer research paper, which is going to be really daunting because I also have to read 3-4 books (at least) for

I started Herodotus's Histories in Borders last night and it is pretty good (he is actually pretty funny), but it is definitely slow going. And I despair at the thought of having to read something like that AND write a paper on it (what would you even WRITE about? Seriously?) every single week. I am really worried Yale is going to be a lot harder than I think it is. I mean, I know it is going to be hard, but I also feel like it will be manageable. I hope it is not a terrible surprise.

Also, they had no Nabokov at Half Price last night, which was devastating. I really liked Lolita and wanted to read Pale Fire or something along those lines.

I'm eternally ashamed that I haven't read this yet.

2007-05-11T12:09:00.000-05:00

Yeah, that's right, I haven't read The Great Gatsby yet. I just kept putting it off and putting it off all through junior high and high school. But now, in my last days as a high school senior, I will finally read me some Fitzgerald!

I started it last night after putting Interpreter of Maladies aside for a bit (it's an excellent book but whenever I'm reading short stories I need time to digest them individually, and these stories in particular weigh rather heavily on the heart) and got about fifty pages into it. By that time, I was totally hooked (how have I not read this before? Someone remind me?), but it was two a.m. and I wanted to be able to devote my full and wide awake attention to it, so I stopped.

On an unrelated tangent, I found a full time job for the summer, which is both good and bad. It is good in that it will provide me with a source of income to buy books with, but bad in that I will have limited time to complete my Summer Reading Challenge (the details of which I am still contemplating). Oh well, it can't be helped.

Lately I've been reading so fast (about a book a day, give or take) that I worry I'm not actually absorbing anything. My whole life is in overdrive for this last week of school/activities before graduation (oh my god I graduate in a week and two days) and I think my reading has gone into overdrive too. I will probably have to go back and reread the books I've read in the past month. Like Atkinson's Not the End of the World? I picked it up last night thinking that I hadn't read it yet. Then I remembered, after reading the first few pages, that I'd just finished it last week.

Also, I'm sick. That is all.

"If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away." p. 6, The Great Gatsby.

I should be doing other things

2007-05-09T21:23:00.000-05:00

...but I'm here instead. I finished Special Topics last night and it was SO GOOD, although it sort of Shadow of the Wind'd me, by which I mean turned into a terribly frightening thriller with a satisfying-yet-still-not-totally-satisfying conclusion. I could barely sleep, seriously. But it was really excellent. I have a soft spot for literary thrillers, and this book was not only that but also smart and dashing and witty and loveable, even though most of the characters are total asses and only the protagonist is really worth your time (but it was written to be that way, so I guess Pessl succeeded marvelously). It made me want to read all the great classics of the Western canon, which, luckily, is exactly what I'll be doing next year. It also made me want to memorize large chunks of famous and/or beautiful poetry and prose and recite them whenever the occasion arises. So maybe I will add that to my summer to-do list.

My one and only complaint with the book was that the title was almost completely irrelevant to the actual book itself. It was one of those titles where you can tell it's just been shoehorned awkwardly into a really unimportant and mostly unmemorable fragment of dialogue so the author can justify titling it such. But oh well. I had no other issues with it and really liked it a lot.

I need to start planning my Summer Reading Challenge (complete with booklistofjoy), but these last couple days have just been so, so crazy. After graduation I will start. Er, or maybe when we get back from Europe. But I need a few suggestions for books to take on the plane with me. It is going to be a really long flight and I think I will take four books (it is tough because we are only taking carry-on luggage, so I can't even store more books in my checked bag). Possibly five. I need to achieve a delicate balance, though. I want to take two classics from my Directed Studies reading list (probably Herodotus's Histories and Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, although I feel like I should take the Iliad) and then three really great "light" books. I'm not sure which three. It's so hard to choose because if they're too light, I'll finish them all on the way there and have nothing to read on the way back. And I can't even think of any contemporary fiction that fits the bill! I feel like I've read it all already. Any suggestions?

A final note: I read an interview with Jodi Picoult (more thrillers! I freaking love them even though they get no respect from Literary Sources!) in which she said that she always forces herself to write every day even if she's just not feelin' it. She said this, which I love: "You can edit bad. You can't edit blank." What a sweet woman.

Some good books, some bad books.

2007-05-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

I have been busy with my reading the past few days. Well, kind of. I finished "Wide Sargasso Sea" (Jean Rhys) and am twenty pages away from finishing "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" (Marisha Pessl), which is a freaking long book. And I read half of "Life Before Man" (Margaret Atwood), but I will not talk about it yet, mostly because I am really distracted by the Simpsons (I know, I know).

Thoughts on Rhys:
I thought I was really going to like this one, as it came highly recommended from both Lanie and Kate Maxwell, who are both usually great sources. But I ended up feeling mostly disappointed. It wasn't terrible and I didn't regret reading it, but I'm not sure I was totally impressed. It's about Rochester (of "Jane Eyre" fame - which I have read, thanks very much, Macky) and his mad wife Bertha (who, according to this book, is actually named Antoinette but got renamed by Rochester for reasons unclear), all pre-Jane. It was weird; that's what I remember most about it. Rhys's Jamaica is one riddled with poverty, racism, and voodoo magic. Her imagery is beautiful and her language is often pure poetry, but even that doesn't manage to get my attention for long. It's short (just under 200 pages) and as a result feels incredibly rushed. There were tons of loose ends that were never tied up (her relationship with Sandi, why her name was changed to Bertha, and whether she's a mental case or just a raging alcoholic, to name a few).
In conclusion: recommended, but not highly.

Thoughts on Pessl:
I FREAKING LOVE THIS BOOK. I'm not done with it yet but it is really, really good so far. It took me about 150 pages to get into the story, but NOW I LOVE IT. I am off to go read it in a few minutes. I love the literary/cultural/etc. references throughout. It made me want to memorize and then recite a lot of poetry. Ahhh and such a thriller. I would write more about it, but.. Macky has already read it.
In conclusion: one of the best books I've read this year. Or last. Possibly ever?

Okay, I need to go finish that book. I wish I were a better book blogger. Oh well, practice makes perfect, eh?

Also, I can't decide if I should do book titles in quotes or italics. Thoughts?

Jesi

Of my deep and abiding love for Margaret Atwood.

2007-05-03T15:42:00.000-05:00

Where should I even begin? I have loved Margaret Atwood passionately (sometimes even borderline obsessively) since I first picked up The Handmaid's Tale my freshman year. I read it straight through in one sitting because it was so gripping and, more to the point, so incredibly and heartbreakingly beautiful. Atwood's writing always reminds me of Vladimir Nabokov's - both write with such careful and meticulous attention to detail that every sentence feels as though it has been labored over endlessly to make it as beautiful as possible. That sounds like it might drag on a bit, and sometimes it does - some of what I consider to be Atwood's "weaker" works (Alias Grace and Surfacing come to mind) are almost too heavy and come dangerously close to suffocating beneath all that figurative language. But Atwood at her best (The Handmaid's Tale, Blind Assassin, and almost all of her short stories) is what I wish I could spend my whole life reading. One reviewer wrote about Life Before Man that "sentences are spare, kept under enormous compression, like a bent bow", and I think that is what I love most about her. I am amazed by such beautiful imagery, written so cleanly and with such clarity and all of it tied together into a narrative so tightly crafted I am almost afraid it will break or blow up in my hands (I never know which to fear more).

My favorite of all of her books, though, is without question Oryx and Crake, which made me cry and also scared the hell out of me. I've always really liked dystopian fiction (except 1984, which I read too many times when I was younger and which I now find incredibly tedious), but this takes my love to a whole new level. It's way more apocalyptic and depressing than Handmaid's Tale and probably about four times as good because you just have no idea what's coming EXCEPT YOU KNOW IT'S GOING TO BE HORRIFIC. I love this book. I love it so much. After I finished it I didn't stop thinking (or dreaming) about it for days. It definitely makes my top five favorite books of all time list (which I am going to write about later! because I have given it a lot of thought!). Even top three. It's that good.

So the moral of this blog entry is that I really, really like Margaret Atwood. I forgive her for having sometimes ponderous plots because she always makes it up to me by being amazing. I hate to describe her in superlatives, but nothing else would do her justice. I love her! I adore her! I want to be her when I grow up!

Jesi

My first entry.

2007-05-02T23:25:00.000-05:00

Hi. I made this blog so I could read books and talk about them, because that is my favorite thing to do ever. I am awful at titling things, so consequently I agonized over the title of this blog for thirty minutes and will probably change it five more times. I also am not one of those clever, witty bloggers, although I do envy them greatly. I just like books.

I just finished the book Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson. I always end up feeling totally deceived by her books because they usually have such nice, friendly covers and then end up being just incredibly creepy. But in a good way. This book was a bit different than anything I'd read by her before because it was a set of interwoven short stories. All of the stories were based around Greek mythology, which I used to read all the time as a kid. The only problem I had with it was that the stories were almost too short - they were almost all beautifully crafted but often felt a bit abrupt.

I liked this line in particular: "Your children were like a knot of fear you carried around inside you all the time". That and the description of the lemons Marianne bought in Amalfi were both jarring and lovely.

Right now I'm working on a number of books, including The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips (difficult to get into so far, but I'll give it another go soon), Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood (I could blog for hours about that woman, and maybe I will sometime), and Napoleon's Buttons by somebody French (it's for AP Chemistry, but it's fairly entertaining in its own right). For my English class, I'm reading No Future without Forgiveness by former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ojibwa Warrior by Dennis Banks, a prominent AIM leader, and Mohandas Gandhi: Essential Writings by the man himself. I always seem to have forty books going at once, but I like it that way.

I keep thinking about things I want to write about, but this is already rather long. Tomorrow I will discuss my Summer Reading Challenge, the rules of which I am still inventing.

Jesi

P.S. If you want to see a (very) small selection of the books I own, check out my Librarything. I am that cool.