the pretty pie kitty pet city book blog

paperBACKswap!

2010-11-01T22:37:00.001-04:00

Oh man, did you remember this blog existed? Thank god because I have some things to say that are not appropriate for my other eight neglectablogs. I have recently discovered how, for merely the price of postage, you can swap books with other strange strangers on the internet. See here, paperbackswap.com. Isn't the internet amazing! Yesterday I had a frenzy of posting every book that has ever annoyed me even slightly. It was a big pile and it turns out a lot of people want these crap books and now it is costing me something like 30 dollars to get rid of them when I could have just put them in the damn recycling bin for free. But I guess I feel good about reusing books/saving our failing post offices. Of course, then I will get a bunch of points that I can use to order other books. But the selection is kind of weird. It seems dominated by chick lit. Jodi Picoult all over the place. I will spare you my rant on Jodi Picoult. I'm not a fan. I guess young mothers have a lot of time to read trashy books and wrap them up in paper and tape and send them to other young mothers. Basically, it is like the selection of books you find at a vacation rental house combined with that first table of new fiction when you first walk into Borders, but from a year ago. But you can put yourself on a waitlist for real books so I hope that works out for me. You can definitely get classics easily but a lot of those are already free for kindle.

In no particular order, these are the books I culled from my crummy ikea bookshelf:

I'm going to memorialize them before I send them away. Each time I wrap one up to send I am tempted to write a personal note like "Enjoy this sucky book, sucker!" It's funny because when I look through, I have actually reviewed a lot of these on this very book blog, literally YEARS ago, and I didn't like them, and I still moved them from NY to Virginia. I guess it is a reminder of those happy days when I wasn't paying rent and I could order giant boxes of books from Powells. I'm not going to re-do the ones I already reviewed. Nor am I going to link to the old reviews, because I don't want to read back-entries of the book blog any more than you do.
Let's take it from the top!

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
This was recommended by a pretentious exboyfriend and it is totally pretentious. It is all these beginnings of stories that don't go anywhere and then it is all "oh, you are so interested in this story, now what will you do that I randomly switched to a different one." I mean it literally tells you that you are intrigued. But I was not! GOODBYE!

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
Andy Lin loves this book; look here if you don't believe me. I started it at least five times and as soon as the folk heroes or whatever start appearing I cannot follow what the hell is going on at all. Maybe I am old, or something.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
I apparently read this book a long time ago, forgot about it completely, bought it a new copy of it, and got halfway through before I figured out that I had already read it. I realize this combined with the previous two reviews seems to indicate that I am much stupider then I used to be, but I prefer to blame the book.

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
I only have this because Chris O got double copies of it for Christmas and then they made a big fuss at Borders when he tried to return one. It's fine.

Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream by some lady
This is a pop science book about the body. I bought it from Borders for $3. If you have been paying any attention to anything for the past ten years you must already know everything in this book. I was quite surprised that it was actually on someone's wish list on paperbackswap. Enjoy this sucky book, stranger!

The Wine Club: A guide to monthly tastings blah blah blah with your lady friends
I guess a wine club is a fun idea if you are not the only scientist in a room full of upwardly mobile lady lawyers.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Bought at Costco based on fancy cover. It's kind of glittery. The book itself is a snoozer. I guess it could be interesting if it were true. Or if you're reveling in your Jewishness lately you might enjoy it.

Julie & Julia by Julie whats her name, the blog one
I really think you get a hint from this book that Julie is kind of a crazy bitch, but then if you read her next book, Cleaving, about her psycho marriage, it is confirmed plus one thousand. Not that I actually read that book because I had enough of her from the first book. I like Amy Adams' haircut in the movie though.

Until I Find You by John Irving
I thought I had read this but now that I have looked at the Amazon review, I guess I haven't, but now I don't want to.

Wideacre and Virgin Earth by Philippa Gregory
These books are such total faux-historical trashy porn. I don't know what weird phase I was in when I was reading these but the brother-sister rape scene in Wideacre (where actually the sister is raping the brother, go girl power) cured me of it.

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
I guess this is supposed to be a humorous memoir but I really just found it depressing. Like David Sedaris but not good.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barberry
This book is actually not bad and I feel sorry for it, being in this pile. It was enjoyable but not too terribly special.

The Folded World by Amity Gaige
I recall being disappointed in this book although the amazon reviews love it so much that I am doubting my memory of it. I'm pretty sure I didn't like the characters and it was godawful slow and obvious.

The rest, I don't even care enough to write a sentence about them. Maybe later I will write a more positive set of reviews for books I did not hate and am not getting rid of. For symmetry, ain't it.

I got two credits for posting my first ten books so I ordered two books from other internet strangers. The Remains of the Day, because the Never Let Me Go movie came out reminding me how I liked Never Let Me Go. I have never seen the Remains of the Day movie but the whole thing just screams ANTHONY HOPKINS so I wonder if that will ruin the book for me.

The second book is Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island. Bill Bryson is so soothing. Having already listened to this book and also A Short History of Nearly Everything on tape a few years ago, read by Bryson, I can now hear his voice in my head when I read his other stuff (I just read At Home on my kindle) and I find that delightful. Actually the fact that Notes from a Small Island is not available for kindle is what got me started on this whole paperbackswap misadventure in the first place and is directly responsible for how it took me 2 full hours to wrap up all these sucky books for people last night.

Hotel for Dogs

2009-01-19T09:04:00.003-05:00

You will be embarrassed to buy tickets for Hotel for Dogs because when you say "Three for Hotel for Dogs" the cashier will say "Three ADULTS?". However, the review that says Hotel for Dogs is like "flipping through five years of dog calendars" is delightfully accurate. Also, there is a dog that looks like a big Oscar, although he only has a bit part. You can take a little nap during the parts about the orphan children as long as you wake up in time for the scenes where lots of dogs are running around.

the last 3 movies I watched from netflix

2008-08-12T18:17:00.004-04:00

Persepolis This was interesting to watch and gave me insight into why the Iranian woman in my lab has such a miserable personality.

Becoming Jane Why do they keep remaking Pride and Prejudice with actresses I hate and why do I keep renting and watching ten minutes of it?

Feast of Love Morgan Freeman and his wife are pretty nosey about everyone else's lives but that turns out ok. I find it highly unlikely that Greg Kinnear ends up being friends with the woman who cheated on him and the dude she was cheating with conveniently just in time for the dramatic final scene. Also, really way more naked boobs than necessary.

Movie Review: Donkey Punch

2008-06-18T18:27:00.003-04:00

My god was this an awful movie. Horror movies, which I rarely watch, must have incredibly low expectations associated with them because Donkey Punch actually got good reviews. The script is terrible. It was all downhill after the soft porno bits, and those are more enjoyable in the comfort of your home than in a movie theater.

Movie Review: La Ragazza Del Lago (Girl by the Lake)

2008-06-12T12:02:00.003-04:00

It was a packed house during this screening of Girl by the Lake, an Italian film that swept the Oscars-equivalent of Italy. It's a murder mystery, but not really like CSI, which, even though I have never even seen a single episode, I imagine is about process and forensics and figuring out the details and such. Girl by the Lake was mostly character studies and psychological inquiries. I liked it but wasn't especially impressed. The direction was kind of stale, the acting was pretty good, and the mystery wasn't all that mysterious. There was a token side story about the detective's own life and struggles, and I find these sorts of correlating side stories really contrived in general. It's not a whodunit, so if that's what you like, you'd be disappointed. Two and a half stars!

Black Books

2008-06-11T09:06:00.001-04:00

I've been watching this series on DVD from Netflix with my mother and we laaaaaugh and laugh.

Movie Review: Vratené Lahve (Empties)

2008-06-10T12:45:00.008-04:00

Empties is a Czech comedy about getting old. It is kind of tragic but also sweet and funny. Incidentally, there were a lot of old people in the audience, one of whom sat right in front of me. I was confused because I just assumed all old people are small, but this woman's gray hair stood tall to block my way. This is problematic for these foreign films because they are subtitled and the subtitles are always at the very bottom. Unlike most people, I generally prefer dubbing to subtitles. I used to think it was because I hated that instead of watching the stuff on screen, I was mostly reading a small line of text. Now I think it might be because subtitles remind me I am short.

Anyway, to the right of me was a cute girl. I think she was taller than me (it was a day of vertical reminders), but she had a kind face and her hair was ponytailed. Just as I'd decided I should speak to her, her boyfriend returns from getting her a soda. I clam up and wait for the movie to begin. It was okay because I later decided she had a) an annoying laugh due to a halting chuckle; b) an unrefined sense of humor due to her laughter in moments that weren't funny.

In all, she laughed (haltingly chuckled) 30 times at an average of 2.1 seconds per laugh. I laughed 22 times at 1.8 seconds per. I didn't hear the old woman in front of me, but her head bobbed up and down, probably due to laughter, and obscured my view the entire time. Your miles may vary.

Book Review: The Year in the Death of Ricardo Reis by José Saramago

2008-06-08T18:39:00.003-04:00

My boss gave me this book; he is a big reader, runs a publishing house in his spare time, and told me this was one of his favorite books. After I'd finished, he asked me, what do you think? And I said, it's okay, and he was incredulous, saying: this is a Nobel prize winning author, one of the great European books of the last fifty years, and you think it's okay?

The book is only 350 pages but it took me a month to read, and it breaks down like this: one week to read the first hundred-fifty pages, another week to read the next hundred-fifty, and then two weeks to read the last fifty. Actually I would've read the last fifty pages on my plane ride back from New York, but I was JettingBlue and there was cable TV and that was more television than I had here or my parents had at home, so I had to watch TV because of its value due to scarcity. I think the book blog spurs me on to finish books, because usually I stop reading pretty close to end, but now I finish so I can review them (even though my reviews are non-reviews; I mostly want to talk about myself. See?)

The Year in the Death of Ricardo Reis reads like it is written by a Nobel Prize winner. That is to say it is written in an old-fashioned style, with verbosity, a lot of philosophical bits, some political bits, and a love story because all stories are love stories.

Ricardo Reis is a heteronym of Fernando Pessoa, a famous Portuguese poet, who had many heteronyms. I've never heard of Fernando Pessoa even though Harold Bloom apparently called him, and Pablo Neruda, the most representative Western poets of the twentieth century. I imagine all Portuguese know Pessoa, but I do not. This information would've helped. In Saramago's book, Fernando Pessoa has died but Ricardo Reis is still alive, and the ghost of Pessoa comes around to talk to Ricardo Reis fairly often, and he is trying to reconcile different aspects of his life somehow. It isn't hard to guess that they're the same person or intertwined in some way, but I wasn't sure when I was reading it, lacking this information. That is the problem with translated books. First off, you lose the beauty of the original prose, and instead are reading the talents of the translator (though romance and Germanic languages are probably pretty close; eastern language books, you just have no idea). Then there is historical figures and events. And then there's local customs and colors.

All of these were in this book. There's a historical/political aspect I do not know concerning a revolution and the lead up to WWII. There's a social class aspect of which I only know generally in the love story. Saramago has a style that sometimes has sentences going on for a page or two. He also doesn't believe in punctuation, so there's no way to tell who's talking in a conversation except by figuring it out via context. I didn't mind this too much. He also digresses into philosophical musings without regard for continuity of the story; the book is in third person, but the author/narrator just intrudes in and says whatever he wants, going from third to first person without slowing down at all (I suppose it's Saramago's take on the individual.) I didn't mind this too much either, but Saramago does not quite possess the clarity of thinking that, say, Robert Musil does.

What Saramago does really well is create atmosphere, and I really got a feel for this melancholic surreal Lisbon of clouded memory. I was right there with him beneath a statue by the water, looking at the ships through a shrouding fog and storm. For about fifty pages, I thought the evocation for place was as good as in any book I've read. There is definitely a story, too, and though it is somewhat inconsequential and undramatic, it was still nice to float along with it. It is a poetic book.

On second thought, this book is better than okay. It is not exciting, funny, or entertaining, but it is good, thought-provoking, and often beautiful. For philosophical books without plots, 350 pages is a good length. Next book I read is going to have a plot, though.

Movie Review: Fighter

2008-06-08T18:16:00.005-04:00

Fighter is a Danish film that is basically the martial arts equivalent of Bend It Like Beckham. It isn't as good as Bend It Like Beckham, though watching people fight is probably a bit more entertaining than watching people play soccer. Aisha, the head-strong (and arm and feet strong) daughter of Turkish Muslim parents in Denmark, wants to do Kung Fu against her parents wishes, so she cuts class to sneak to Kung Fu school and falls in love with a forbidden (white) guy, etc, etc.

I had the notion once that Turkish girls were really really hot based on the one Turkish girl I ever spoke to. Aisha is cute, but not really really hot, and I might be slightly scared of her because she can kick my ass.

The movie is really frenetic with trippy music going on all the time and really quick cuts from scene to scene. There is the familial stuff, the fighting stuff (lots of leaping kicks), the all-knowing Chinese Kung-Fu master, the struggle against religion, the part where someone gets beaten up, the running away, the slamming of doors. There is also a stupid recurring scene where Aisha is physically fighting her inner struggle (I hate symbolism and metaphors). There is a tournament, of course, but this isn't the 80s so Aisha-san isn't allowed to win. In the end, her father accepts her, she gets to keep Kung Fu, she gets the boy, and everything turns out for the best.

It's not a bad movie, but really you should just watch The Little Mermaid instead.

Movie Review: Mirage Man

2008-06-08T17:36:00.005-04:00

Mirage Man isn't very good. Often times low budget movies turn out okay because the director knows they can't compete with the special effects, really good looking (expensive) actors, etc., so they have a really good story. But people seem to like Mirage Man for no reason other than that it's low budget.

It has one scene that is funny, and that's about it. I usually don't like to give much of a movie away but since I don't expect you to see this one, the funny scene is when Mirage Man (not yet in Mirage Man garb) chases after some thieves, and when he sees the alley they're hanging out, he hides around the corner and begins changing into his ridiculous homemade costume. This takes him a really long time and he has trouble taking his pants off, and we're just laughing at him. And then he goes beats the guys up and comes back and his regular clothing is gone. Ha!

It doesn't matter that this movie is Chilean and in Spanish; there is a grand total of five minutes of dialogue. It tries to be both realistic and silly and fails miserably at both. There is also a silly side story about the heroes little brother, and how he is mentally ill, and that he needs a hero like Mirage Man to believe in. It's stupid. The whole movie is stupid. See Iron Man instead.

Movie Review: Sukiyaki Western Django

2008-06-08T06:50:00.006-04:00

Sukiyaki Western Django by cult Japanese director Takashi Miike is a remake of the spaghetti Western Django, which itself is a remake of the Kurosawa film Yojimbo. I've never seen Django, but I've seen Yojimbo, which is either my second or third favorite movie of all time. SWD is not even close to as good as Yojimbo but it's immensely entertaining with its strange pastiche of kitsch and color.

The plot really is almost exactly like Yojimbo. Which just means it's like most Westerns, because they all copy Yojimbo. A lone cowboy/samurai comes into town of warring sides, and then kicks everyone's ass and rides off alone. It's neither thicker nor thinner than that, and it's everything else that makes it fun. For example, it's a Japanese movie with Japanese actors (they are so very Japanese) but they all speak in funnily accented English, and then there are subtitles that are also in English (closed captioning, really.) Or: a barrel rolls across the screen, in place of tumbleweed. Or: Shakespeare's Henry VI provides one gang leader with inspiration. Or: Quentin Tarantino makes a strange appearance.

It's all quite the spectacle; a bit long as westerns tend to be but never feels slow. Rating: fourteen honeycrisp apples.

Movie Review: Un baiser s'il vous plait (Shall We Kiss?)

2008-06-03T13:26:00.010-04:00

Last year I volunteered at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) because I'd just moved to Seattle and didn't have a job yet. I saw a lot of movies and got a lot of vouchers to see more free movies, which I need to use up during this year's festival. The problem is I don't have a lot of friends. I don't like to see movies alone, especially romantic comedies, but I went to see this one anyway. All of this is to say that I went to see this french romantic comedy alone because it stars my favorite actress, Virginie Ledoyen (no, Amanda Bynes is my second favorite). It's under a hundred minutes, as most good movies are.

I don't watch a lot of French films. Shall We Kiss is whimsical and lightly philosophical, so does that make it French popcorn piffle? Anyway it's about a torrid but polite love affair. The writer-director Emmanuel Mouret, who bears no physical resemblance to Woody Allen but has a similar mind, casts himself as the lead and gets to take Ms. Ledoyen's clothes off; this makes me want to be a writer-director too. (In fact, Ms. Ledoyen makes a small appearance in my novel, but that is no consolation.)

There is nothing special about the cinematography, special effects, costumes, or that sort of thing, but the repartee (polite, witty, awkward) was sprightly and delightful, even though I'm sure some people go "Oh nobody talks like that!", but I say whatever, most people talk like idiots, people should talk like this instead. Or maybe the French actually do talk like that. Anyway, the whole thing is all very clever, and I think you should go see it.

Book Review: Something Happened by Joseph Heller

2008-05-23T20:54:00.009-04:00

I read about three-quarters through this without finishing it. That was three years ago. I started over and finished it last month. I don't think this says too much about the book because I do this with most books I read. However, the book is much longer than it needs to be. (Catch-22 was my favorite book in high school, and that too was a lot longer than it needed to be.) Joseph Heller thinks he can get away with this verbosity and he almost can (but not quite).

Something Happened is better than Catch-22. It is also more depressive, misogynous, unhappy, corrosive, and cynical. In fact, it is probably the most cynical book I've ever read. And it's hilarious, but only if you think things like: "I do know that girls in their early twenties are easy and sweet. (Girls in their late twenties are easier but sad, and that isn't so sweet.) They are easy, I think, because they are sweet, and they are sweet, I think, because they are dumb," is funny.

Bob Slocum narrates the entire story in something of an internal monologue, and his mind drifts away in pages-long parentheticals. It doesn't matter; nothing much happens to speak of. In fact, this book seems to break every rule about literature, like how there should be a plot, or how the character needs to change, or how there should be conflict. Or whatever. Nope. Slocum is miserable from beginning to end. And he is, if nothing else, very, very honest.

I don't know if I relate to him, but I can understand his point of view. He has a mentally challenged child, and all he does is wish that this child didn't exist. He dreams about all the girls he didn't have sex with. He gains satisfaction from winning arguments with his daughter. You read this and realize (or reconfirm) (or possibly reject) that we are all just selfish at heart, and our base instincts are constantly fighting with what we think is proper and expected of us. Isn't that funny?

2008-05-16T09:12:00.003-04:00

I'm resurrecting the book blog even though no one cares. I changed the URL a little in case any of my previous stalkers are still obsessively checking HELLO I see you there using a proxy server. I am thinking also of making it a book movie music whatever blog instead of just a book blog. What do you think? Oh, you don't care? FINE.

PS I'm still reading War & Peace.

airplane books

2008-02-25T22:01:00.008-05:00

War and Peace was too big to take on the plane so I had to read other things but now I am sorry because I am back to reading it and I just started the "war" part and I can't remember who anyone is.

BUF -> DTW -> SFO: The Book of Lost Things (if that website doesn't give you a seizure, I don't know what will)
Bleh. Basically it's The Chronicles of Narnia with fairy tales instead of christian mythology except it's not clever and it's much too long. It is kind of interesting at the beginning when the kid starts to hear books talking to him and arguing with each other, but then that has nothing to do with anything in the rest of the book. Then there is this allegorical figure of The Crooked Man who is supposed to have existed ever since man evolved and to represent all that is evil, and then at the end the kid kills him, which seemed pretty easy considering that he had survived since the beginning of time. Well, I guess it all turns out to be a dream so it doesn't have to be logically consistent but it would be damn well more enjoyable to read if it were. Sorry for how I just ruined all the plot for you. It is not worth reading though. It's possible that I am warped and I think everything other than 19th century Russian literature is trash, but just go read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe again, ok.

SFO -> DTW -> BUF Into the Wild
I am not pleased with Outside magazine because the March issue has a bullshitty article about how annoying it is to deal with vegetarians and how you should trick them into eating meat because "guilt-free""sustainable" meat is great, etc etc. I don't know why there is a backlash against vegetarianism. People SHOULD feel guilty for eating meat, there is really no reason to convince them it's okay. I guess Outside comes from a purely environmentalist standpoint, but I don't know why they are unaware that some people don't eat meat for ethical reasons. It's not like they're going to make fun of people for their illogical Christian beliefs, so why are they mocking my ethical beliefs? Are they like "haha, those goofy Catholics don't eat meat during Lent! Well why not slip them some free-range beef this Friday!"? I have enough people giving me a hard time without this stupid adventure travel publication encouraging it. Reading about adventure travel is pretty annoying anyway. I was only doing it because it was the only non-car magazine in my mechanic's office.

Anyway, Outside magazine has almost nothing to do with Into the Wild, which is a very interesting book. It spends a lot of time trying to convince you that Christopher McCandless is not a nut. But he so is. I mean, he is not crazy. I know a lot of people who have McCandless-like attributes. But they are kind of nutty though. I have not seen the movie but maybe now I will.

not neglecting!

2008-01-26T10:03:00.000-05:00

This time I am not ignoring the book blog for a year again, but I am reading War & Peace. It is actually not as thick as I thought it would be. Only 1356 pages. I am on page 72. I feel like I have to take notes because there are so many characters and the downfall of me and Russian literature is when I get all the characters mixed up but it so lame to take notes. So I can't take any breaks from reading War & Peace in case I forget something. It says in the introduction that after you read it you will understand everything about life.

I've returned to you, book blog.

2007-12-28T21:42:00.000-05:00

Oh, poor book blog, it is almost its second birthday. It is like a little orphan toddler. Plus the rival book blog is thriving! Ok, not thriving, but not quite as dead. Well, book blog, I have read a lot of books for you. I only really remember the most recent one, but that has never stopped me from having an opinion before.

Last time I deigned to type words into the book blog, there was all kinds of hoopla about The Russian Debutante's Handbook. I liked that book a lot. I wish I knew someone I could nickname Snack Daddy. So I read Absurdistan. Boy, that was a long time ago. Anyway, Absurdistan is not as good as The R. D. Handbook. It is amusing to read, but the author made some choices that irritated me, particularly the choice to create a character of himself in his book. Jerry Shteynfarb. Come on now. That is so corny.

Another book I read a long time ago was The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. It is a retelling of the myth of Odysseus with which I am not familiar (huge gap in liberal arts education) so it was not that exciting but I love Margaret Atwood so she can do whatever she wants and I will read it.

I read "What I Loved" because Powell's recommended it to me. It is about two couples and their friendship, as their sons grow up. The characters are artists and it makes me want some lifelong artist friends. Right when it might start to get draggy towards the end it gets crazy creepy instead.

I read a lot of hype about Bel Canto before I actually read Bel Canto and so I was not that impressed. I didn't really care about most of the characters. Essentially, this is one of those books that you buy at the airport where there is not much of a selection and then you are not particularly happy or sad about it. Then you can recommend it to your dull friends and be sure that it will not confuse them or make them think that you are weird.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is much more gimmicky than I would normally tolerate (it has pictures and creative use of fonts) but I enjoyed it very much. Also I normally have an aversion to books about ISSUES, particularly 9/11, but this time it was okay. Overall this book is quirky and delightful, which are the number one qualities I seek out in everything.

Speaking of quirky but not delightful. For some reason I expected Emotionally Weird to be easy-reading fluff. Like chick lit. I think I based this on the design of the cover. However, I had a nasty shock. Much like Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, there are about nine thousand characters scurrying around doing weird things and I had no idea what the hell was going on any of the time. Plus I kept taking accidental long breaks where I lost the book under the bed for weeks at a time. The characters are introduced in an offhand way so I could not even tell which ones I was supposed to recognize from before the book got lost under the bed. On the positive side, it was a great book to read before bed because I never stayed up too late to see what would happen because I never knew what was happening in the first place. The writing is clever enough to be appreciated on its own so it was still interesting to read. In fact it is dense with cleverness. Probably that is why I was so lost, because I tried to read it too fast. Maybe I will try reading it over again.

So, then I went through a phase where I wasn't reading anything and I was watching way too many Lifetime movies. I needed something easy so I wouldn't strain myself when I started reading again, so I picked up this historical fiction aka complete trash. It's very straightforward. It is not subtle at all. There are no difficult words. (On the other hand, it's narrated by Mary Boleyn, who was actually supposed to have been very bland.) You will be bludgeoned over the head with each plot point, repeatedly. But, it is indeed a page-turner, I stayed up way too late reading it. And it really picks up around page 400. Of course then you will go to wikipedia and learn about how it is completely, horribly historically inaccurate. That was kind of disappointing. Also, the adverb "flatly" is much overused. People are constantly saying things flatly. I'm not sure whether reading this book was more or less mind-rotting than watching Tori Spelling get stranded by a blizzard in her hometown where her heart-of-gold exboyfriend happens to still live, but it was entertaining. I would read another Philippa Gregory novel if I had to spend time at an airport or something.

My next books to read are:
The Book of Lost Things I first heard of this book from the rival book blog so I am not sure if that is a terrible breach of etiquette or what. If it is then I'm sorry I made the book blog so cute, I should have made it look more bad-ass and ready for a fight.
Vegan Freak I am kind of over being vegan, I mean I'm still doing it, but it's pretty easy by now and I don't think about it much anymore, but I wanted to read this book when I was all gung ho about veganism and now I finally ordered it. Maybe it tells you how to not want to slap people when they are acting like jerks about bacon, that would be helpful.
St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories Sometimes I order books just because Powell's recommends them to me. This one sounds quirky and delightful.
At Swim-Two-Birds in honor of Andy Lin.
War and Peace This seems like a book people should read. I mean, it's like a thing, that people do. Plus when I am depressed I like me some Tolstoy and winter is depressing.

A new kind of book review

2007-09-09T23:47:00.000-04:00

I am going to attempt writing book reviews in a different fashion. A friend suggested that I tried comparing the process of reading with other forms of entertainment, since there is such decrying and lament about the lack of reading in society today due to television, cinema, the internet, and other forms of media. So, basically, instead of books reviews that compare books to other books (often of the same author), reviews that compare books to other things. How this works in practice, I am unsure. It would be easy to compare a book to its own movie adaptation, but how about to America's Next Top Model? And just as with books for pleasure (usually genre fiction) and books for knowledge ("literary"), suddenly the whole landscape is littered with many more disparate things. One answer, then, is for the act of reading itself to play a more central role in the review. For example, I am reading a book. It is dinner time. Do I stop to eat dinner? Or do I keep reading? America's Next Top Model is on. Do I watch it? None of this actually happened to me, but I was thinking this might be a way to do it. Though this will probably overrate page turners. Anyone have any ideas?

At Swim-Two-Birds

2007-08-12T20:38:00.000-04:00

Flann O'Brien (aka Brian O'Nolan aka Myles na gCopaleen aka Brother Barnabas) wrote At Swim-Two-Birds in 1939 for my personal enjoyment. I have read it twice, and it is one of my favorite books. It is about a young man who spends most of his time idling in bed while (sort of) writing a novel in between going to College ("weather permitting") and downing pints at the local pub. The novel he is writing is not about Miss Heather Dionne, but about another person writing a novel, whose characters, including Irish folk heroes and cowboys from a Western, come to life when that author is asleep and not paying attention. They start writing narratives for themselves and drugging the author so he stays asleep. Such metafictional bombast! But that's okay, because this book is hilarious and as well written as they come in the way only the Irish can do it. (Does not include Bono who has the Irish talent of masculine pomposity but not of language.)

An excerpt:
It was my first taste of porter. Innumerable persons with whom I had conversed had represented to me that spirituous liquors and intoxicants generally had an adverse effect on the senses and the body and that those who became addicted to stimulants in youth were unhappy throughout their lives and met with death at the end by a drunkard's fall, expiring ingloriously at the stair-bottom in a welter of blood and puke. Indian tonic-waters had been proposed to me by an aged lay-brother as an incomparable specific for thirst. The importance of the subject had been impressed upon me in a school-book which I read at the age of twelve.

...

On the other hand, young men of my acquaintance who were in the habit of voluntarily placing themselves under the influence of alcohol had often surprised me with a recital of their strange adventures. The mind may be impaired by alcohol, I mused, but withal it may be pleasantly impaired. Personal experience appeared to me to be the only satisfactory means to the resolution of my doubts.

...

I proceeded home one evening in October after leaving a gallon of half-digested porter on the floor of a public-house in Parnell Street and put myself with considerable difficulty into bed, where I remained for three days on the pretence of a chill.

Conclusion of excerpt.

Go read this book, dammit! It is a strange intoxicating brew to put into your body and you might find yourself in bed for three days, but personal experience is the only satisfactory means to the resolution of any doubts to its greatness.

A mystery break.

2007-07-06T01:13:00.000-04:00

After a plotless book of philosophical musings that read at approximately 20 pages per hour, it was nice to read something that breezed right along at more than twice the pace. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is supposedly the first mystery novel ever written. The only other Wilkie Collins I'd read before was The Woman in White and they are both similar in style (Victorian) and in narrative technique (epistolary-like - a different person picks up the pen and writes a different part of the book.)

I think genre fiction is generally under appreciated for the reason that a quick-paced plot often causes the reader not to pay attention to anything else the author has spent time to put down other than the story: The Moonstone has well-developed characters (especially female, and for its time), an interesting look at opium addiction, a critique (I hope, because that narrator was really annoying) on religious evangelicals. A good thing too because the mystery itself isn't especially great and the whole thing is very anti-climactic, even if the plot is tight. The first half seemed better than the second half, but I think this about almost every book I read because I have a shitty attention span.

I'm not sure what to think: I haven't read much mystery and this is not as stylistic as something hard-boiled like Chandler, as scientifically deductive as Sherlock Holmes, or as gripping as Agatha Christie, but it does character better than any of them, has better-written prose, and combines all the various elements together quite well. It seems conventional at times, but it's hard to hold that against Wilkie as he didn't have convention to draw from. I enjoyed it even though it's fairly long at 500 pages. Yesterday I saw the Transformers movie which was 145 minutes. I enjoyed that too. (If you're going to read a book by Wilkie Collins, though, I think The Woman in White is better.)

The Man Without Qualities, Volume 1

2007-06-21T17:29:00.000-04:00

The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil is one of those great books that no one reads. Among those types of books, this one is less known than most and really I decided to read it just to be able to say I read it. Or at least Volume 1, which is 700 pages or so (in fairly small text). Volume 2, published posthumously and unfinished, is something like another 1500 pages.

For various reasons, one of which is that it's a slow read, it took me so long to read this book that I barely remember the first half of it. It doesn't help that this book doesn't have much of a plot; it is philosophically inclined and a portrait of Vienna just before WWI (and how ridiculous their concerns given what was looming.)

The "man without qualities" (a German pun) is Ulrich, a smart guy who decides he doesn't want to try to be a genius anymore when he reads a newspaper describing a race horse as a "genius" which offends him, because everything was now being referred to as genius. So instead of specializing in engineering and mathematics, he drifts around and gets sucked into affairs political and romantic but none of this really is that important. Mostly, he just muses about the meaning of life with other people who do exactly the same thing. As with the genius example, it was constantly surprising how much a book written eighty years ago is relevant and still applies today. I'm starting to believe that the idea that there was a different time in the past is a myth. Every "present," no matter the date, seems to rebel against the exact same past. Anyway.

The Man Without Qualities isn't really that difficult to read, fortunately, and, if you are into philosophical plotless books, then this is quite good. The sentences are precise and not like Proust where you forget what you were reading at the beginning of the sentence when you're at the end of it a page and a half later. The book is also quite funny in the not laugh out loud sense (i.e. not scatological, slapstick, etc.) but in wit and in absurd insights that seem ridiculous but are true.

Let me randomly open the book. Here is a passage from page 296:

"It is simply my conviction," Ulrich replied, "that thinking is a world of its own, and real life is another. The difference between their respective levels of development at the present time is too great. Our brain is some thousands of years old, but if it had worked out only half of everything and forgotten the other half, its true image would be our reality. All one can do is refuse intellectual participation in it."
"Aren't you making things much too easy for yourself?" Diotima asked ... "Arnheim enjoys theorizing too, but I think he lets hardly anything pass without examining all its aspects. Don't you feel that the point of thinking is to be a concentrated capacity for applying --"
"No," Ulrich said.
"I'd like to hear what answer Arnheim gave you."
"He told me that the intellect today is the helpless spectator of real developments because it is dodging the great tasks of life. He asked me to look at what subjects the arts treat, at what trivia the churches concern themselves with, at how narrow even the perspective of the scholars is -- and I should consider that all the while, the earth is being literally carved up! Then he said that this was precisely what he wanted to talk with me about."
"And what was your answer?"
"I told him that realizing a potential always attracts me less than the unrealized, and I mean not only the future but also the past and missed opportunities. It seems to me our history has been that every time we have fulfilled some small part of an idea, we are so pleased that we leave the much greater remainder unfinished. Magnificent institutions are usually the bungled drafts of their ideas; so, incidentally, are magnificent personalities. That's what I answered. A difference in the angle of perspective, so to speak."

All the intelligentsia in Austria in 1913 apparently speak like that when translated into English. So if you'd enjoy reading 700 pages of that, then you'll love this book. I haven't decided if I'm going to read Volume 2 yet but I'm really glad I can read something else instead for awhile.

What page are you on?

2007-03-02T09:54:00.001-05:00

I am on page two hundred and fifty-three.

BOOK CLUB TIME

2007-02-17T12:43:00.000-05:00

Me and Billo are COINCIDENTALLY both reading The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart.

Don't you think we should ALL read it?

And then we can meet-up on the Wide Wide World of Webs and have a book clubesque chat about it!

I am only on page 30 so you still have time to get in on this action.

it looks like i read a lot if i post twice per year

2007-02-17T12:03:00.000-05:00

I am old and I don't remember anything about any book I read more than two weeks ago. Good thing I started writing this draft last month.

A Confederacy of Dunces
Although I seem to have not written anything about this other than the title. Now it is too late. It was funny. Right-o.

Madame Bovary
This book is like Anna Karenina except it is shorter, the death scene is more protracted, and all the characters are very, very stupid. However it doesn't have a giant boring spiel about Russian peasants at the end. But Anna Karenina is still better.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by that guy, with the huge picture of himself on the cover
I am not really done with this book but I am almost done and I fear that is as done as I am going to get. I have no idea what is happening because everyone is constantly on drugs that are referred to using outdated slang terms so I don't even know what kind of drugs they are on as they scamper around thinly-veiled-Ithaca hallucinating that monkeys are trying to murder them and lacing things with paregoric. Also I don't like thinly-veiled biography where the point seems to be look-at-me-I-am-a-cool-dude. I guess it was interesting for his friends to read about themselves and it was sort of interesting in a historical sense having gone to Cornell but otherwise, eh.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
I take back everything I said about number9dream not really being Murakami-esque because Murakami doesn't do things that are disturbing just for the sake of making an impression.* Remember the good old days when Murakami novels had some nice guy protagonist and then something mildly creepy happened but he would still tell you about some pretty girl he likes or what he eats for lunch? Yeah, all that is over. Kafka on the Shore goes like this: slightly creepy slightly creepy slightly creepy MOST DISTURBING THING EVER. Here I'll tell you what it is because I am mad at Murakami and I don't care if I wreck it for you. One of the subplots is this old man who had something weird happen to him when he was a kid (which has to do with the other plots) and now he can talk to cats, but he is kind of retarded now too, so he goes around and people pay him to find their lost cats. So he goes to this one field where all the stray cats hang out and they are all "oo, watch out for creepy guy" and then he ends up at the creepy guy's house and the creepy guy is HARVESTING SOULS FROM THE CATS which means he gives them drugs that paralyze them but they can still feel pain (a freaking giant deal is made about the pain part) and then he slices them open and takes their hearts out and eats their hearts and chops their heads off and stacks the heads in the freezer. And it is graphically described as he dismembers several cats in front of the old man and the cats try to scream and etc. I think the old man kills the creepy man then. But that is when I stopped reading this book because WHAT THE FUCK. I mean maybe there is some point to it or maybe it is All A Dream or something but I really am not wanting to read graphic dismemberment scenes. I am tired of things that are disturbing for no reason. Actually I am tired of disturbing things in general. Aren't there enough real life disturbing things that I should not have to spend my free time reading something someone made up out of their head with the sole purpose of disturbing me? Maybe there is some other purpose for having a cat dismemberment scene in your novel but it is escaping me at the moment. I guess I cannot say the scene is pointless unless I finish the book but screw that.

This doesn't bother anyone else and all the reviews are "mwah mwah mwah" even though they admit that nothing makes any sense at the end of the book. Murakami wants you to read it over and over and look for the riddles hidden in the text even though he admits there are not any answers. Is the purpose of modern literature to waste my time?

I am now boycotting everything that is unhealthily disturbing.

* Maybe I never even wrote that but that is what I thought. I don't think I ever even wrote about the end of number9dream, I must have just complained about it in real life. Basically halfway through it gets really violent and disturbing, then it drags for a while, then something improbable happens that ties up all the loose ends. But THEN on the last page all of the sudden there is a wacky out-of-nowhere plot twist and everyone may or may not have died in an earthquake. I guess because it is gauche to have a book end neatly in this day and age. Well just tack on an ambiguous natural disaster, done and done! So... it was not very good. Sorry David Mitchell. Good thing you wrote Cloud Atlas or everyone wouldn't be calling you a genius constantly.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
Poor David Mitchell, I have been so mean to him lately. But I really liked this most recent book of his. I liked it even better than Cloud Atlas, because frankly, he is a little too clever in Cloud Atlas. I mean, it was not so great that anyone would read it if they didn't already think David Mitchell was a genius. But still. It was quite pleasant and had a nice ending where everything got resolved for once.

The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
I tried to read this book last year but it is rather dull. I only read it this time because I had nothing else to read. I don't really like books where all of the main characters are annoying. I think the best thing about Maugham is how terrible things happen and everyone comes to a terrible end. For example you should totally see "The Painted Veil." Oh, that dastardly cholera. Anyway, no one really comes to a terrible end in this book except for the girl who gets hooked on opium and has her throat slit and is thrown into the ocean, but she is only a secondary character. Lame.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Presumably this book is not as good as White Teeth, which was a good book, but it was pretty good anyway. It was enjoyable to read and that is my number one criteria for books at the moment. It is about a british professor who is kind of a loser and his mixed-race family. It will make Christopher angry because the professor does several stupid spineless things involving adultery. However I think a lot of people do stupid spineless things involving adultery so it doesn't bother me. I think Zadie Smith is good at characters.

the FUTURE

2006-12-23T13:02:00.000-05:00

I have moved the book blog to the new version of blogger so you have to switch to the new version of blogger too or else I don't think you can post. It's better though. Seriously.

Reviewstravaganza!

2006-11-20T23:47:00.000-05:00

I'm very behind in my book blogging, and I don't think I'm going to get around to writing a real review for anything I've read in the past several months. Rather than declare book review bankruptcy, I'm just going to give a one or two line review of all but the most recent book I've read.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
Bearable. I enjoyed the prose but was bored by the story.

Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov
I enjoy this novel almost as much as Lolita. Nabokov has created wonderful full characters and, unlike Humbert Humbert, Timofey Pnin is a character with whom you can empathize without feeling dirty.

Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
How can The Da Vinci Code sell over 40 million copies? I mean... come on! I've always loved conspiracy theory/mystery books, and this is no exception. The story was interesting, and the writing was wonderful.

A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby
The style of narration annoyed me, and the American character seemed a bit like what the English think we're like. Not nearly as good as High Fidelity.

The Coast of Utopia trilogy, (3 plays) by Tom Stoppard
These three plays have sat on my shelf for almost 2 years, and I didn't get around to reading them until this June at the beach. The wordplay is fun, but I really think I need to see this in person to get the full effect. Unlike Travesties or Arcadia, I just wasn't able to visualize the action while reading.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
I've learned the pattern of most Hemingway novels at this point, but somehow the ending still surprised me. I think I could reread this novel (and almost everything else by Hemingway) endlessly.

A Hell of a Mess, (a play) by Eugene Ionesco
Another play that I think I'd have to see staged to understand. I don't like how the passage of time accelerates in the third act. I'd rather stick with The Bald Soprano or Rhinoceros.

The Stranger, by Albert Camus
Everyone was reading it this summer, including our President. I just felt like rereading it. It always bothers me that he starts to feel guilty at the end.

85% of a true review

2006-11-14T23:49:00.000-05:00

It was a truly horrible idea to invite me to this book blog. Sure, I read a good bit and I (claim to) enjoy writing, but there's a small problem: I have no idea why I like the things that I like. My inability to defend my likes becomes most obvious to me when I read books by those who can do this with the greatest of ease. Chuck Klosterman makes it look like cake, which is good, since he's a music reviewer and writer for Spin magazine. In Killing Yourself to Live, he starts with a plan to travel across the country and visit the sites of famous music related deaths, but he spends an equal amount of space writing about his relationships with various women. Most of the time, these relationships are related to music or described using rock music as a metaphor. It's like a self-aware, non-fictional version of High Fidelity with a little more action. Klosterman's writing makes me painfully aware of my own inadequacies in explaining why I enjoy or care about something. I really enjoyed this book so much that I read it in two short sittings, but I have no idea how to begin to explain why it is that I enjoyed it.

should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

2006-11-05T12:03:00.001-05:00

I have finished reading The Paradox of Choice and seriously, everything that is wrong with me comes down to it being society's fault for providing me with too many options.

Anyway, the idea is that people think they want a lot of options, but really more options just make it harder to make a decision because then you are afraid you will regret it and you agonize more and end up being less happy with your decision. For example if there is an optional extra-credit essay and a choice of either six topics or thirty topics, more people choose to do the essay when there are less choices. There are a lot of examples. It's all totally true. I had a massive Paradox of Choice experience at the Apple store with my mother last week. My mother wanted a computer but she only uses it for email so she did not have a lot of preferences. We spent nine thousand years looking at computers until eventually her head was about to explode and she decided she wouldn't get a computer at all and would just write real letters to everyone on paper. This is how people avoid making decisions if the decision is too complicated. Eventually she settled down and decided. I bought a new computer also (it is ridiculously huge and is the reason why I am now obligated to update my blogs often). Then we were offered a free printer. However there were two free printer options. If there were one free printer it would not have been a problem. But there was one which was a better printer but only printed, and one that had a scanner included but was more crappy. Of course I want a BETTER printer, but what if one day in the future I suddenly want to scan something? Deciding between these two printers when I did not even really want a printer nearly made me not take a free printer at all. This is how much I dislike decisions even when it clearly does not matter very much what I decide.

Anyway, an interesting feature of the paradox of choice is that when you take forever and agonize about a decision, you end up being less satisfied with whatever you end up deciding. Then if the decision is reversible (like you can return it to the store) you are even less happy, even though you think you want the option to return things. Because you don't commit to being happy with your decision, instead you keep judging it. So you are supposed to stop being obsessed with finding the best thing and instead just have one that is good enough. Also apparently people are very bad at predicting how they will feel about things in the future, and they will inevitably care less either way than they think they will. These are ALL my problems with relationships. Because I? am indecisive, and also, a jerk.

Also I think people in NYC have this problem because there are so many options for things to do, and it seems to me that NYC people are constantly obsessing about what is the best most funnest thing to do. Wherever they are they are thinking that they could be having a better time somewhere else. In Buffalo there are only one or two things to do ever so it is easier to commit to a decision and therefore Buffalo is overall more fun due to the lack of opportunity costs. I am just making this up and actually know nothing about people in NYC. Tell me if I'm wrong.

Oh, another interesting thing is that when people are forced to write down their reasons for a particular decision, that often influences their decision (even if no one else reads it), AND they end up making a decision that they are less happy with in the long run. This apparently applies both to relationships and to picking out a poster.

In conclusion, it is best not to think about things too much.

Anyway there are lot of other interesting things in this book and you should read it and it may very well help you stop being such a jackass about making decisions. The only thing I found irritating was the constant use of the word "satisfice." Normally I have no problem with made-up words, but the word "satisfice" bothers me. It just sounds annoying or something.

501 Spanish Verbs

2006-10-28T04:12:00.000-04:00

This is not a book review but something book-related that I thought of today:

501 Spanish Verbs must be one of the best-selling books of all time.

you people better write something

2006-10-26T20:18:00.000-04:00

I have been super ready lately. I think it was the power outtage. There was nothing to do but be wrapped in a subarctic sleeping bag and read with a flashlight. Then it was so dark I would lose the book I was reading and be forced to start another one.

Home Land
This book is super and you should read it. Although all of the quotes on the cover about it being a criticism of society and the narrator being a lovable Holden-Caulfield-for-our-time are bullshitty. It is highly entertaining. Well-rounded? Fucking spherical.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
I hated this book. In all fairness I knew I was going to hate it. I read it because Andy Lin told me I should never date anyone who likes this book and I wanted to see what that was all about. And also I specifically recall reading, last summer, in someone's blog: "This book took me apart and put me back together." After reading the book I cannot fathom how it could take anyone apart or put them back together so there must have been some mistake. Because I spent the first half of the book trying to figure out whether the narrator is meant to sound like he is mildly retarded or if that was an accident. Then apparently I am supposed to believe that he writes genius-level book reports when he cannot even put together a goddamn compound sentence in these annoying anonymous letters he writes. I feel like the book wants me to think that the person receiving these letters is very lucky - oh wouldn't it be magical if *I* were chosen to receive letters like this with such amazing clever insights about life? What the fuck ever. How annoying to have some whiny kid expecting you to read all his semi-retarded bullshit where he just narrates his stupid life. Also, the fact that all these kids are constantly going to Rocky Horror leads me to believe that this book is about the annoying musical theater crowd from my high school and I don't want to read about them and their Topical Issues. In conclusion I wish I were more motivated because I could write drivel like this and get paid money.

The Kite Runner
I didn't want to read this book because it makes me contrary when everyone tells me how great a book is. However this was a good book. I finished it at 3am last night but I think that had to do with a cup of coffee that was not decaf. Anyway, there were some plot things that annoyed me. I don't like when it is very obvious fifty pages ahead of time what will happen. Also, although I know almost nothing about the Taliban due to my deplorable lack of interest in current events, it seems to be portrayed in this book as being run by people who use religion and morality as an excuse to indulge their sociopathological tendencies. Maybe that is how it is. Anyway. It was kind of depressing.

Now I am reading these books:

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
This book is super-gimmicky. I am stalled out halfway through.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
I like this book. It is about Cornell. I am on page 5.

The Paradox of Choice
This book is good for me because I am indecisive. It is pop non-fiction about the crippling overproliferation of options and how they paradoxically make your life worse because you worry about missing out on things. Also:

Nor is the “paradox of choice” limited to the shopping aisle. It helps explain why so many people at age thirty are still flailing about, trying to choose a career—and why so many marriageable singles wind up alone. You await a spouse who combines the kindness of your mom, the wit of the smartest person you met in grad school, and the looks of someone you dated in 1983 (as she was in 1983) . . . and you wind up spending middle age by yourself, watching the Sports Channel at 2 a.m. in a studio apartment strewn with pizza boxes.

Yes! Why am I a flailing and marriageable single? I will let you know.

murakami-esque: sucks

2006-09-18T22:44:00.000-04:00

I'm almost done reading Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell. Oh sorry, apparently it's "number9dream" according to whatever dorky person has put his book report on wikipedia (I have an inexplicable antagonism towards wikipedia). However my copy says "Number9Dream." Anyway it's David Mitchell's second book, and his third book is Cloud Atlas which is one of my favorite books, and his first book is Ghostwritten, which is the book I really wanted to read but which they did not have at the used bookstore in Ithaca. Also I guess now he has a fourth book so I guess I should be grateful to wikipedia since I didn't know that until I just read it there, especially since it is a bildungsroman, those are my favorite.

Anyway (N/n)umber9(D/d)ream is described as, and is indeed, very Murakami-esque, which I don't think is a good thing. Unless you have read every Murakami novel in existence and are in a desperate state where you need a Murakami fix. I mean, I really like Murakami but he is so distinctive that it feels derivative. Plus, one of the great things about Murakami is that his characterization is excellent and his characters are very likeable. The guy in Number9Dream is awkwardly put together and I don't really give a shit about him. He has no sense of humor.

Also, there are a lot of things that turn out to be not really happening in this book, which is supposed to make it surreal or disorienting or science-fictiony or something, but which makes me irritated. Ohhhh it was all a dream? Well thanks a lot for making me read three pages of useless bullshit then. I mean it would be fine once or twice but every goddamn five pages there is a page or two of something that is not really happening. I get tired of plowing through it. I guess it would be worth it if the things that were fake-happening were very clever and original and not so Murakami-esque.

So I'm going to finish it even though I have a premonition that the ending or lack thereof is going to be annoying. But I think I'm going to go for the fourth book instead of the first book next. Maybe the Cloud Atlas momentum was still going.

PS Apparently I spoke too soon, because right after I wrote this I read another chapter and I noticed that (1) I'm not "almost done" at all, I am more like halfway done and (2) promptly at page 200 it becomes way less Murakami-esque and way more gruesomely violent and bizarre. So...

annoying little children

2006-08-15T22:17:00.000-04:00

On a Saturday night a while ago, I realized that I hadn't read for a while. So I sat down and read a book Anosha had lent me, Little Children. I was up until about 4 am finishing it, which highlights yet another area of my life where I lack moderation.

It was a reasonably entertaining read. The thing I liked about it the most was that the "little children" of the title were such unimportant background characters. The only time they figured into the story really was when they were needed to explain or justify one of the adult character’s actions. My latest fixation is on having babies, even though I know it will have to be a while before I can actually have them, what with grad school and getting a job after that etc., etc. But that doesn't stop me from thinking about it all day, every day. Babies, babies, babiesbabiesbabiesbabies. Babies. Sweetie is understandably bored with my obsessive anxieties about the subject, and we have boiled down my freaking out whiny conversation about it into: me: "babies." him: "babies". That saves some time. So I liked reading this story because it made me think about the fact that once I do ever have babies, they will no longer be the source of all my annoying anxiety-riddled energy, in fact I am sure that the coupon I let expire without using it to save $2 on toothpaste or trying to get a stain out of a rug from cat hairball vomit will probably be more pressing of an issue once the little darlings actually exist.

There is also an unnecessary and annoying subplot involving a convicted child molester that moves back into the neighborhood. It just felt like it didn't really fit into the story in any way. So in conclusion: eh.

no one loves you, book blog.

2006-08-04T00:21:00.000-04:00

I finished reading all of my books about bees. Robbing the Bees actually was good and I learned a lot of historical things. There are only two annoying things about it that I can remember, one of which is about how you should eat pollen, which I think you should not because it is not a natural thing to do, oh, and also how the author puts honey in her eyes - like a drop on the eyeball. I think that is a very bad idea, to be putting sugars in your eyeball. Maybe it is not a bad idea, honey is theoretically sterile, but it still seems like it will somehow lead to fungus of the eyeball. And also she references that stupid study about how B.t. corn kills monarch butterflies. Not that I am pro-Monsanto and anti-environment or anything, but that study is referenced everywhere and it is horribly designed because they fed the caterpillars a zillion times as much B.t. corn pollen as they would ever see in real life. So that goes to show you that you can do a sloppy study and as long as the media picks it up and everyone likes to talk about it, you can get your point across. Anyway, yeah, that was a good book about bees.

Then I read that novel that everyone loves so much, The Secret Life of Bees. I guess it was okay seeing as how I read the whole thing but I was annoyed because why does that kid like the narrator so much? She seems boring. I don't like when people are all fascinated with other people for no reason in books. It is all too glib.

Lately I am kind of depressed so I am re-reading all of my old L.M. Montgomery books that I read when I was 11-15 that were up in the attic and are all cripsy and yellowish. You know, the author of "Anne of Green Gables." Although the Anne of Green Gables series is on the lame side, Gilbert Blythe is kind of a sap. Not that I haven't read them a million times. Anyway she has a lot of other books and I read them all over and over when I was in my early teens when I should have been out doing things like getting a prom date or whatever. Anyway they are all very soothing and about lonely orphans on Prince Edward Island and there is a lot of glorification of rural life and farming. My new five-year plan is to re-enter grad school (at my current lab so that my life doesn't change at all except I have to stay for four years and take a pay cut) and save at least half my money. Then after four years I will have $40k and I will buy a house with a few acres, a chicken, a pet goat, and a pottery wheel, and my rural lifestyle will be complete. The bad thing about L.M. Montgomery books is that people only fall in love with other people that they knew when they were young. I don't know anyone from when I was young because I spent all my time at home reading L.M. Montgomery books. So, I guess I will just have some bees.

update

2006-07-10T21:20:00.000-04:00

As a result of pressure from my mother I am now reading The Secret Life of Bees.

a bee grows in brooklyn

2006-07-06T23:01:00.000-04:00

I finished reading Food in History. Ta-da! I can finish something I start after all. Anyway I didn't love it that much. It was interesting. But I wanted it to be more INSIGHTFUL. Instead it was just kind of a catalogue of facts. I guess that is what happens when you write a book about an enormous subject.

Now I am reading a 1943 copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that I found in the attic. I always thought I should have read this book. Also I think I should have read Catcher in the Rye. However I think I am too old for both of them now. Does anything ever happen in this book or does it just keep chattering along?

Look how a hardcover book used to cost $2.75. Now a hardcover book costs $27.50. Is a hardcover book going to cost $275 sixty years from now?

Also I am halfway through Robbing the Bees (a freaking ridiculous overblown website for a book) because I am all about beekeeping now. I refused to read this book when it first came out because I already KNOW about bees, like how I refuse to read that novel about bees. What's it called. The Secret Life of Bees. But now that I am personally responsible for my bees I find it comforting to be told things I already know. I think this book is quite informative although a few pages ago I started to wonder how it could be so long when she has already told us everything about beekeeping almost, and then she started going on this huge seven page flowery (NO PUN INTENDED) poetic rant about watermelon pollination which I hope is not a foreshadowment of the rest of the book. Also do not read the introduction because it says things like "after decades of living in honeyless ignorance I added these divine insects and their delicious produce to my recommended daily allowance of magic and wonder." Overall there is too much sap about magic and several references to the bees being "joyful" which irritates me but the actual book is much better than the introduction.

petty flooer

2006-06-23T21:55:00.000-04:00

Hey, remember, a freaking long time ago, when I was all ho ho ho "Food in History" will never affect my restful sleeping? Yeah, I guess I forgot how I'm a vegetarian and killing animals gives me an anxiety attack (in fact "the killing of animals" is my number two source of anxiety attack right after "time travel," that's right, Audrey Niffeneggar, you jerk) and then I guess I forgot humanity has spent most of its history eating every imaginable animal that ever has existed or else just tormenting them. Like did you know the Mongols didn't like to make fires on the plains because of how someone would come attack them, so they would just pierce a vein in their horse and drink some of its blood every day? Oh, how it's okay to eat rabbit fetuses on Friday because they don't really count as meat. Oh, or how roving gangs would kill travelers in during the middle ages and sell their roasted flesh to other travelers? Or how Canadians used to like to eat "woodchuck casserole (with biscuits)"? That last one doesn't sound disturbing to you but that it because you do not work on a campus that is overrun with woodchucks and their little baby woodchucks which look just like big woodchucks only 1/5 the size.

Anyway I am almost done with this book which is interesting even though it disturbs me. Now I am at the part where it's the Industrial Revolution and they are trying to make canned goods but they keep poisoning everyone and all the foods are adulterated, like the cocoa powder is mostly brick dust, and the candy is colored with lead and copper sulfates.

Also I have finished reading "Beekeeping for Dummies" which I give an 8/10 in "spoon-feeding of information" and a 9/10 in "biasing information in order to generate profits for the author's bee-supply-selling website."

Right, and I finished "The Year of Magical Thinking" a long time ago. Uhhhh. It's not like it was particularly philosophically insightful but I guess that was the point. Which maybe makes you feel better if you are dealing with death because you can relate to Joan Didion, but which does not help me in my attempts to out-intellectualize my anxiety disorder. So. Thanks for nothing, Year of Magical Thinking.

I am a reading machine!

2006-03-26T02:04:00.000-05:00

Poor, poor neglected book blog. You probably think nobody loves you anymore. But I do! I have read many books lately. And by lately I mean since January so I am not really reading that much but it seems like it when I write about all the reading all at once.

Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld - This book is about life at a fancy boarding high school. Lots of teenaged angst and drama. It was a fun and quick read, except I got bored during the last 75 pages, so that part took longer. Anosha lent it to me, and she actually went to a fancy boarding high school, so it was interesting to read thinking about what her experience must have been like. I still can't imagine what it would be like to be independent at such a young age.

Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood - This is the first Margaret Atwood book that I have read, and I am definitely going to go and get some more. According to the notes in the Reader's Club section of my book, this is her most autobiographical book. She had a crazy childhood, camping all over the place while her dad did research on forest insects. I really liked how she focused on how mean little girls can be to each other, that is so true. My first best friend (who I am still friends with now) was very dominating, I remember when she would ask or tell her parents something where she didn't want me piping up she would stand beside me and pinch the back of my arm while she was talking, and do you know how bad that hurts to get pinched hard right there? Holy mother of god. I also liked how Margaret Atwood described the main character's paintings, the imagery was wonderful.

Mirror Mirror: A Novel, by Gregory Maguire - This book is craaaaazy. It wasn't at all like I expected it to be. I haven't read his other books, so I don't know if it is similar to those. His imagining of the dwarves was especially wacky but also intriguing. Very unpredictable, which is unusual for most of the books I read.

I have also been plodding along with Everything is Illuminated, and all of a sudden I am in love with it! So exciting! Maybe there is a reason it was a New York Times Bestseller after all. I am not even halfway through, but now that I like it, I should be able to finish it soon. Here is the paragraph that changed my mind:

"So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love - loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist."

wherein I accomplish nothing

2006-03-03T22:21:00.000-05:00

Oh, hello, book blog. Uh, sorry I'm late. Not that I have finished reading anything. But now I am reading different things again. Why am I incapable of finishing any book without getting distracted? But anyway, I went to the book-and-music store this week to buy this cd by my boyfriend (apparently in 2003 everyone thought he was going to be the next big thing, guess that didn't work out, sorry sweetie), and anyway, I got suckered into buying MORE books. So now I am reading The Year of Magical Thinking, which is a memoir by Joan Didion about the year that her husband died suddenly and her daughter was very ill (she died right after the book was published). This is an interesting choice of book for me to read because of the way I sometimes give myself panic attacks thinking about death. But I think it is good for me. Although so far it is making me feel a little anxious. Anyway!

Also I stupidly got The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 because I thought maybe short stories are the way to go for my short attention span and apparently I forgot how much Dave Eggers irritates me. He is so smug and pretentiously clever. I couldn't even stand to finish the first two stories I started reading, they were so bloated with self-important quirkiness. Aren't we strange and creative! Oh yes you are!

I have lost interest in everything else I was reading but I am going to finish all of it before the end of the year. Except the one with all the metaphors. That book is out.

Dead birds that are enjoyable

2006-02-23T00:30:00.000-05:00

Yes, I am super pathetic that it has taken me so long to write about this book.

The Book of Dead Birds by Gayle Brandeis

The only reason I bought this book was because it had a quote from Barbara Kingsolver on the back, and she is one of my favorite authors. And I am glad I did, because I enjoyed it very much. The imagery is wonderful, much like Barbara Kingsolver's, which I guess is why Barbara Kingsolver liked it. Also, many of the Very Important Themes it addresses are close to my heart, such as Mother and Daughter Relationships Are Hard, Children of Immigrant Parents Have a Tough Time, and my favorite, When Mothers Don't Want Their Daughters to Make the Same Mistakes They Did but then Mess Them Up in Another Way Instead. Whew, that last one is a mouthful.

The book is about a young woman growing up with a Korean mother who came to the U.S. with a white soldier who then leaves her because the baby is black. The daughter, Ava, has a habit of accidentally causing the death of her mother's birds, and her mother keeps a scrapbook of all the birds she has killed and how she killed them, which is included throughout the book. (All of this is on the back cover, so I'm not really giving anything away.) The fact that I can remember what happened so well even though I read it a while ago now is a testament to how good this book is. If either of you want to read it, let me know and I will send/bring you my copy.

never let me go for three weeks at least

2006-02-22T20:51:00.000-05:00

Oh, it's pathetic! It's been three weeks and I have finished one book and it's not even the same book I was reading three weeks ago. I blame my unfortunate tendency to start doing useless, soul-sucking things in the evenings, like watching Friends reruns, or reading craigslist personal ads. (I have a plan for rejuvenating my life, but I'm going to try to stay on topic here. It is tempting to ramble on and on in the book blog, because of how no one actually reads the book blog, but I can be strong.) But I am going to update the book blog once a week whether I have read anything or not. At least that way I will remember that I was reading something...

Anyways, I finished Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Ishiguro's genre is apparently "British quiet desperation," which I am totally into. Some reviews I've read say that this book is boring and improbable. It is sort of boring, but that is all part of the pacing that makes it really horrifying at the end. I was a little disappointed that everything is not completely explained at the end (from a science perspective), but, I guess it couldn't have been because of how it is narrated, so, I forgive it. Basically, you should read it, because it will make you feel creepy, and when you are done, you will feel that you have read a book that is a cohesive piece of art instead of a made-up rambley story.

I'm still working on A Field Guide to Getting Lost, but it's a little hit or miss. There was a good essay about explorers getting lost in the New World and how the ability to reinvent yourself is the key to surviving. Then there were a couple that I didn't relate to. Then there was one that irritated me because it was about being in love with a man who was "like the desert," you know, with the tough exterior but sensitive inside, and personally, after having been in a relationship with that man for three years, I don't want to hear it, because really, the tough/senstive man is really just a man with Issues and I have no patience with romanticizing it. I guess that essay had some decent metaphors for how being in a relationship is like being a hermit crab, but still, I am in no mood. So I've got two more essays and then I might read the good ones over again and then I will let you know what parts you should incorporate into your life philosophy.

I'm sort of still reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but, sadly, it is boring.

I'm reading Food in History before I go to sleep, which is super, because, oh you say, they cultivated millet in China in 4000 BC? ZZzzzzzzzz...

See you next week, book blog!

lost

2006-01-31T21:17:00.000-05:00

Lately I feel kind of philosophically ungrounded, which maybe has to do with living upstairs from my parents and being treated like I am 17 again, or maybe has to do with having no long-term plans other than a vague idea that I should get some kind of career sometime, or maybe has to do with getting older and feeling like I wasted the entire last year of my life living a giant lie and maybe I shouldn't do that again. Anyway, what this means is: I feel like reading a book that will Change My Life. I have actually never read a book before that has Changed My Life, but I do not see why I can't start now. The book that I currently hope will Change My Life is "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" by Rebecca Solnit.

It is a series of autobiographical essays. The theme is, that in getting lost, or in losing yourself, you surrender control and able to be fully present and then you can be enriched by your embrace of the unknown. Or something. I don't completely understand it, because it's supposed to like literally getting lost, like getting lost in the woods, and it's supposed to be good for you to get lost in the woods as long as you know how to survive there, but I mean, seriously, who has a lifestyle these days that permits getting lost in the woods for indeterminate amounts of time. Because I have to go to work on Monday. Also I would like to find my car again at some point.

However, I do think that my primary personal philosophical, and perhaps psychopathological, problem is that I am much too obsessively attached my "self." I mean, not that I am in love with myself (mwah mwah, self). But, for example, I have a lot of death anxiety, that I think stems from a fear of losing my "self." So, in theory I think this book should be good for me. Maybe I will become less neurotic. Although then, I simply do not know what I will blog about.

(Here is a quote about science, from where she is really talking about artists trying to find the unknown: "Scientists too...'live always at the "edge of mystery" - the boundary of the unknown.' But they transform the unknown into the known, haul it in like fishermen; artists get you out into that dark sea." I like the idea that all the stupid yeast facts I pursue at work all day are swimming around somewhere like little fishes waiting to be caught.)

Anyway, the first essay is about getting lost, and the second essay is about distance, and longing, and how things that are distant are special, and once you have them, they become different, so you should appreciate them while they are far away and not be impatient to bridge the gaps. This is also good for me to think about because I am wanty and impatient. The only thing I did not like is how there are a lot of descriptions of paintings I have never seen at the beginning of the chapter. (But now I just realized I can look them up on the internets. Here is one. The idea is that things in the distance look blue, but they are not really blue. And the blue is pretty, but once you get up close it is not there, and something else in the distance is blue. So, you see.)

Now I'm on the third essay, but I realized that reading this book before bed makes me not sleep well because I am busy pondering my neuroses (I like to blame my delicate temperment instead of how I drink a giant cup of coffee every afternoon). My other book ("Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell," second in my series of "Harry Potter for Adults" books) is also unsuitable because it gave me a bad dream after I read a creepy chapter about bring a dead woman back to life and the creepy faeries. So now I'm going to start a third book, fourth if you count my book on CD that I listen to during my commute to keep my head from exploding (people so cannot drive here), fifth if you count the Freaking God of Rampant Metaphors. But anyway, there is no way this book can disturb my sleep even though I am such a petit fleur. Unless it makes me hungry.

What Jennifer is reading

2006-01-28T00:46:00.000-05:00

In my typical style of trying to do too much at once, I am reading many books right now. It is my goal to finish them and then start reading only one book at a time.

Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer - I do NOT like this book so far. But I rarely ever leave a book unfinished, so I am going to try my best and finish. I might have to light it on fire when I'm done.

Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - I am listening to the audiobook of this, and my cute little orange MP3 player is broken (it didn't like its Diet Coke bath, such a wimpy gadget) so I was listening to it on Bryan's in the car when we did all of our Christmas Journey driving. But now there is only 35 minutes left and I never have a way to listen to it. I have enjoyed it so far.

Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood - this is the book I am most into right now. I have never read any of Margaret Atwood's books, and since Heather likes her so much, I had to see what I had been missing. I have been missing a lot.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis - I read this when I was little, but I have forgotten most of it, so I wanted to read it again. We downloaded it from audible.com in September when we drove to Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks. I am sad that we wasted $16.37, because I cannot stand the narrator. I have tried to listen to it a few times, but I end up turning it off right before my head explodes with anger. I will either try to finish listening to it while I knit or just go buy the paperback and read it.

20 Something, 20 Everything, by Christine Hassler - I bought this book the day I had my big "review of 2005, goals for 2006" meeting with my crazy boss, and we talked about how I have a problem with moderation. Well mostly I talked about it and my boss nodded. So I went out to Barnes and Noble and looked through all the self help books, and settled on this one. The parts I paged through seemed pretty good, and it has "balance" and "direction" in the subtitle, so I thought it would be helpful to me. So far not so much, and I don't know if I am really having a "quarter-life crisis" or not, but I will keep reading and doing the fruity journaling exercises to see if I can fix my crazy all-or-nothing-ness.

The Procrastinator's Handbook: Mastering the Art of Doing it Now, by Rita Emmett - Another book purchased after the "let me tell you how much you suck even though you already know how much you suck" meeting. I am halfway through, and it has quite a few useful tips so far. Now the challenge will be to not put off finishing it . . .

Billy's reading list

2006-01-24T21:45:00.000-05:00

Currently reading:
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Books to read (sitting next to my bed):
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnett
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
Selected Plays of Eugene O'Neill
The Coast of Utopia Pts I-III (Voyage, Shipwreck, Salvage), Tom Stoppard
The Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, dinner, Baseball, Travels, The Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World since 1953
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (audiobook, purchased from iTMS or audible.com, can't remember which )

Books to re-read (sitting next to my bed):
The Theater and its Double, Antonin Artaud
Three Uses of the Knife, David Mamet

Books to buy:

Recently finished, recommended:
Anansi Boys, Neal Gaiman, read by Lenny Henry (purchased from audible.com)
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, read by Tim Robbins (purchased from audible.com)

eleven days and thirty pages later...

2006-01-24T20:06:00.000-05:00

Oh book blog, no one loves you! I blame the horrible book I'm reading. Ten days ago I had a burst of progress, and after that I was almost immune to the oppressive metaphors and the only the sentence fragments were still making me crazy. But I still disliked this book so much that I started doing other things at lunch, like "chatting" with my "co-workers," or reading cnn.com ($12 million for sex.com!), or perusing boring papers about boring science. And now it's been too long and I will again experience metaphor-shock upon re-entry. I have some books coming from Powells though. So maybe then I will not hate reading anymore.

I am, however, on the third of ten audio CDs of The Golden Compass (hello, could that link give away the entire plot a little bit more), which is billed as "Harry Potter for adults." It's a trilogy and apparently the next two books are much worse, so I hope it ends at a reasonable spot.

See, wasn't that a mediocre entry? That's right! Standards are low here at the pretty pie kitty pet city book blog! Jennifer!

a rogue economist; a dogtesticle metaphorfest

2006-01-13T22:07:00.000-05:00

So! I finished reading Freakonomics a few days ago, making it one of the sadly few nonfiction books that I have read all the way through without getting bored in the middle.

Now, I'm not really sure that I would say that this book exposes the hidden side of everything. Also I am not sure I buy it all. The chapter on parenting, in particular, seemed a little glib. But I did enjoy learning about how my name is the #2 most common low-income white girl name, after Amber, which is a totally trashy name. Thank you, parents. So, I found this book to be interesting and pleasant to read, and if you have free time during which you need to read something, like say your lunch hour, then you should read it, but if you are a busy person, then you should just find someone else who has read it and get them to tell you the punch-line of every chapter. But I was sorry today that I had finished it, because I had nothing to read at lunch, so I had to read a paper about Cdc24, which was not enjoyable.

Anyway, I'm reading The God of Small Things full-time now, which I forgot to take to work with me. Not that this book is better than a paper about Cdc24. In fact I hate it. It won the Booker Prize, and John Updike says it is a "Tiger Woodsian debut," but I am only on page 27 and it is making me really mad. I personally think that a sign of something being well-written is that you don't notice the writing. This book, every sentence there is some odd thing that trips you up. Like weird rhyming ("a viable die-able age") and weird capitalization. Also the faux-poetic word usage - dullthudding? wetgreen? Put a damn space in there. I keep hoping I will get used to the writing style and stop noticing it so much, but it is not happening.

And there is sooo much imagery, it makes my head hurt. Must we really have five metaphors in one paragraph? Must we have sentence fragments with multiple metaphors for the same thing? "The two things fit together. Like stacked spoons. Like familiar lovers' bodies." "It was always there. Like a fruit in season. Every season. As permanent as a government job." Fruit! Spoons! Lovers! Civil Service! GAH! Freaking pick the best one already and take the rest out! Save some for the next chapter!

I especially hate when imagery makes no sense - "her eyes spread like butter behind her thick glasses" - "He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past." Since when do octopuses squirt TRANQUILIZERS? I have taken creative writing class and I already know this trick where you throw in all sorts of random imagery to make things seem Imbued with Meaning.

Seriously though, this is so ridiculous:

"As [an old dog] lay dying on his cushion, Estha could see the bedroom window reflected in his smooth, purple balls. And once a bird flew across. To Estha - steeped in the smell of old roses, blooded on memories of a broken man - the fact that something so fragile, so unbearably tender had survived, had been allowed to exist, was a miracle. A bird in flight reflected in an old dog's balls. It made him smile out loud."

Let's ignore for a moment the pretentious synesthesia-bullshit "smile out loud," and how I have no idea what "blooded on memories of a broken man" even means, but shiny purple dog balls? Shiny? Like christmas tree ornaments? Look, the thing about metaphors, is they are a short-hand. They evoke a complicated mood, or they precisely describe some aspect of something, that would take a long time to describe without the metaphor. So metaphors are supposed to make whatever they are describing more clear and precise, not more weird and confusing.

So this book makes me angry but I guess I will keep reading it since it is my only book option at the moment. I think they should have edited out all the fake words and half of the adjectives and had a strict one-metaphor-per-object rule, and then it would be a short story instead of a novel and I would like it better.

it's not you, it's me

2006-01-07T22:27:00.000-05:00

Is it bad luck for my first entry to be about a book that I am temporarily abandoning?

Okay, so, I used to have this tradition with myself. Whenever I had a traumatic break-up, I would read a very long classic novel with a central theme that had something to do with inability to escape tragic destiny, and then as soon as I finished the book, I'd stop moping about the relationship. Something about reading about the timelessness and universality of being miserable is very therapeutic. For example, the best ever break-up recovery book is Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. (A fantastic book, about a man who has a club foot and is not talented enough to be an artist and he becomes obsessed with this awful woman, oh it is lovely. You can read the whole thing online right here in case you are having some kind of breaking-up crisis right at this moment.) Tess of the d'Urbervilles is another good one, or anything by D.H. Lawrence (other than Lady Chatterley's Lover, unless porn cheers you up). Or Anna Karenina. Ah, I fondly remember spending an entire weekend in bed reading Anna Karenina after breaking up with some crummy wannabe-DJ in Boston.

Anyway, so last month I was at this horrible bookstore chain here in Western New York. In fact it's going out of business, which it completely deserves. The only books they sell are Oprah's Book Club, romance novels, and school reading list books. So I picked up The Idiot by Dostoevsky: it is long, it is classic, it has a nice blurb on the back about an honest man unable to survive in the moral emptiness of society. And I could carry on my tradition of finding solace in great works of literature while emotionally unstable.

But there are some difficulties. One is that I didn't start reading soon enough after my break-up. I was no longer in the proper depressive mind-set where I wanted to stay in bed all day and read. So that means it's taking forever to read this book, which means that I have no chance whatsoever of remembering all the secondary characters and keeping them straight. See, all the action takes place in someone's sitting room and every single character shows up plus some new ones and they have a dramatic discussion. (There are a million characters in Anna Karenina too, but at least sometimes there is a scene with only two or three of them at a time. And the scandal gets going a lot faster.) Yevgeny Pavlovich? Ivan Fyodorovich? Yeah, I don't ever know which is which or how they are even different. Same thing with Ippolit and Kolya. Who is married to Lizaveta Prokovyevna? I have no idea. I'm on page 366 now (of 697) and I've had no idea what was going on for the past 50 pages or so. And I have zero interest in going back to the last place where I wasn't confused and rereading. But I don't want to abandon The Idiot entirely. So I guess I'll be saving it for my next traumatic break-up.

But if you haven't read Of Human Bondage yet, you really should.

Booksicus thatjenniferwantstoreadalotta

2006-01-02T00:20:00.000-05:00

Saving Fish from Drowning, Amy Tan
The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
Willful Creatures: Stories, Aimee Bender

Books I Probably Should or Want to Read in 2006

2006-01-01T23:07:00.000-05:00

The Penelopeliad by Margaret Atwood (this book is supposed to not be that great, but Margaret Atwood is my favorite... )
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro DONE! (You should read it.)
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke ABANDONED DUE TO BORINGNESS
The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte (up next! not ordered yet tho.)

Food in History by Reay Tannahill DONE (You should get someone else to read it and tell you the interesting parts - frankly I think this is my opinion on every nonfiction book I have ever read. I guess I am too lazy to learn on my own.)
Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion DONE! (Only read it if someone close to you has just died.)
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit DONE! (Somewhat insightful; somewhat annoying.)

The Trouble with Poetry: and Other Poems by Billy Collins