Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

A more appropriate title would have been "Tales of a Prep School Nothing."

If judging a book by its cover, I would immediately steer clear of this book because of the obnoxious amount of pink on the cover. With its simple cloth pink and pale green belt, the cover shouts "girl book," "superficial book," "book about pointless female blathering." Had I judged this book by its cover, I would have been correct in my assessment.

I only read this because someone in our book club selected this book. Oddly enough, the book was selected by the only male in our book club. He said he was interested in the idea of prep school.

I hated this book. I tend to prefer stories with a bit of depth and meaning, both qualities this book was clearly lacking.

I found this book to be offensive on two levels. As a writer, I was offended that something so badly written was published. As a woman, I was insulted and infuriated by the portrait it painted of young females. Books like this perpetrate the myth that young women care about nothing except their appearance and boys. Shocking as this may sound, there are some women who having bigger, more important interests and goals and place getting laid fairly low on the priority list. Had I not known, I would have assumed this book had been written by a man because you don't expect a man to know any better, but it wasn't. Despite the name Curtis, the author is not male.

The story spans the four years the narrator, Lee, attends prep school. She's on a scholarship and the impression is given that she's going to provide some insight into what it is like to be a poor white girl surrounded by wealthy students with entitlement issues. Instead, the book is mostly about how Lee keeps to herself, never gets involved with anything, never really talks to people, doesn't care about academics, obsessing about what people think about her and has a big crush on a guy named Cross. We hear a lot about how she's unhappy and doesn't fit in, but she never makes any attempt to change her situation. She doesn't seem to have any interests or hobbies, knows nothing about music or current events. She truly is a "nothing".

I have a strong understanding of the "outsider," the kid who doesn't fit in with the "popular" crowd. But usually that student has some creative abilities, she/he is into music or art, or they excel in academics. Lee does none of these things. Something that I found baffling was the fact that she was on scholarship, but had very bad grades. I would assume that to keep a four-year scholarship a student would be required to meet certain requirements, but that never seems to be an issue. Also, if she was on scholarship, shouldn't she have at some point displayed some sort of academic inclination? At least with grades she could have created some niche for herself. She could have been the "smart" girl.

But, as I mentioned, she does develop a crush on a guy her freshman year. For the next three years she has absolutely no contact with him. Then one night for no reason at all, he walks into her room and climbs into her bed. As further proof of her "nothing" status, she allows him into her bed, without question. He then proceeds to fuck her on a fairly regular basis. They have no relationship at all outside of the bed. Lee seems honored that she's being used in such a way. She has no qualms about the fact that Cross acts like he doesn't even know her on campus. You realize later that the sex is nothing more than him making the most of his senior year. "He's really into being a senior," advises Lee's roommate, Martha. Later in the book, it is suggested that he's making his way into the beds of many of the female students, compiling a list with his roommate. Lee exhibits absolutely no self-respect. Without hesitation she gets down on her knees on the concrete floor of an empty classroom and delivers a blowjob when asked.

This story might have been able to redeem itself if the author had provided some element of contrition or regret in her reflections. The story is told as a remembrance of her past, from the viewpoint of an adult. But she seems to have learned nothing from her experience. I felt like even as an adult, she remained the "nothing" that she was in school. If anything, she still provides desperate hints that maybe, just maybe Cross did like her. She confronts him at the end of her senior year, not because she finally realizes that she's been used, but rather because she's upset that he quit showing up in her room for sex. At this point, he has a real girlfriend, someone he talks to and hangs out with in public view. She tells him that he made her feel bad about herself and she walks off, and she seems elated, even looking back on that moment because he called her name as she walked away. Even as an adult, she seems unable to accept the fact that he thought nothing of her.

Aspects like that make this book seem uncomfortably autobiographical. She never acknowledges how pathetic and stupid she behaved. She never seems to realize that she was used, that she repeatedly allowed herself to be used and was considered nothing more than a joke to Cross and his friends. I don't understand how someone could tell a story like this, why someone would imagine a story like this and be so blind to the story she was actually telling, unless she was merely relaying events from her own past.

I never figured out the point of this story. What was the author trying to say? What was there to be gained from reading this? What was I supposed to take away from Lee's experiences? Nothing especially insightful happened. Evidently even Lee gained nothing from her prep school experience.

The story was boring anecdote after boring anecdote. She had a teacher from the Midwest; she cut hair; she taught someone to ride a bike; she nearly failed her math class. A lot of little stories that lacked cohesiveness. Maybe if Lee had been a more interesting or observant person these tales might have been enjoyable, but instead I kept thinking, "Why? Why? You, stupid, stupid girl." The first three years were unbearably boring. I didn't find it interesting until the sex during her senior year and that was mostly for the train wreck effect. So gruesome I couldn't look away. Fittingly, it seemed to be the only thing Lee was truly interested in as well.

The writing was inconsistent and the characters were never fully developed. Sometimes the descriptions were brief, but for some reason anytime the author described a bathroom event she felt the need to be crudely accurate. Sometimes Lee was awkward and self-conscious, but then amazingly clever and funny when finding herself seated at the lunch table with the popular kids. Every once in a while, there would be a line or two of brilliance, like this:

"It was like being drunk, how you so rarely feel drunk enough to do the thing you want to, you still feel pinned back by your own sense of the rational or the proper, but the next day, hung over, you realize just how drunk you were. You had a window of opportunity. If you had used it, you probably would have embarrassed yourself, but in not using it, you wasted something irretrievable."

But lines like that were rapidly negated by pages of nothing. She lost her underwear and someone found it. Then she wanted a flower from Cross but didn't get one and her roommate did, and she sent him one and oh woe is me...

I admit it, I'm bitter. Why does crap like this get published when I know that my friends and even I can write better than this? The rest of us are toiling away at our soul-killing corporate jobs while someone who strings together this mess gets paid to write. Life is not fair.

Left Bank by Kate Muir

I read a review praising this book and subsequently put my name on the list at the library. Well known Parisian couple – a philosopher and an actress – cope with the disappearance of their child. At least that's what I thought it was about. Oh, and the actress is from Texas. I usually love a good story about a Texas girl who gets her ass out of the country and does well for herself.

That was a very misleading review. The child's disappearance, though a catalyst to the main elements of the novel, isn't nearly as dramatic as one might imagine.

This is the story of a married couple, the husband very involved in being "French" (i.e. carrying on numerous affairs because he considered it to be his obligation as a French intellectual). He's trying desperately to be Sartre. WWJPSD he asks himself anytime he faces doubt. His wife, in his mind, and hers as well for a bit, is nothing more than a lovely trophy. But eventually his wife starts to see how false and shallow her marriage is by seeing how it affects her daughter and gradually she pulls away from her husband and starts to find herself ... and as I'm describing the book I'm realizing that it could have been a great story. But it gets so bogged down with the details. The endless descriptions of the husband's favorite cheese and the nanny's erect nipples under her thin blouse and wife's red shoes against the gravel. I just skimmed through the last of the book because I wanted to find out what happened. But I didn't care enough about the characters to ever really curl up with this book and dive in.

I wanted an escape to Paris, a glimpse into the life of the intelligent and the beautiful, but it read like any other bad marriage in which the husband thinks much more of himself and his desires than those of the people who he is supposed to care about. This could have been a story about a doctor and his socialite, model wife living here in Dallas. It could have taken place anywhere. Paris doesn't have a monopoly on self-absorbed men, women in denial or bad marriages. Don't waste your time with this book.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Read this book as our second book club selection. I loved this book. It's about a man who spent the first fourteen or so years of his life thinking he was female. But it's about so much more than that.

This book spans three generations of a Greek family that moves to Detroit from Turkey. Within the 500 or so pages of this novel, topics such as culture (the contrasts between the Greek culture and the American culture) and family and gender assumptions (what really makes a person male or female? Biology or psychology, nature versus nurture) and history such as the wars in Greece and Turkey as well as the history of the city of Detroit are all covered extensively. I found this book to be so interesting.

Our book club could have talked about this book forever. That's why I don't feel especially compelled to write much in this review.

I highly recommend this book though.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Two people at work read this book recently and eagerly proclaimed their love for it. It's been on my very long "reading" list for over a year, so I decided to check it out when I saw it on the shelf at the library the other day.

Initially I was put off by the premise of the book. I'm not a big fan of stories about children. Particularly stories about extremely clever children who think like adults. But I got over that fairly quickly and began to like the book quite a bit. I found the character of Oskar, with all his rambling thoughts and fears and inventions to be endearing. But as much I adored the passages about Oskar, I abhorred the storyline about the grandfather. It was so absurd, and stupid. I realize it was supposed to be quirky or surreal or something like that -- he can't speak because he's too sad, he gradually lost his words and now he carries around daybooks and writes all the time, he remembers a house made of walls of books, to look outside you removed books to create windows, cute, right? Groan. I felt like it clashed horribly with the story of Oskar.

Oskar's dad died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. After his death, Oskar found a key and then decided to try to find the lock that the key would open in hopes of learning more about his father. A significant part of the story is about Oskar's quest as he travels through New York and the five boroughs seeking the lock for this key.

Oskar's observations and contemplations provide some truly beautiful passages of loss and regret and fear. I think anyone, any age can relate to his loss of innocence and his desires.

And the passage that captivated me, the part I had to keep re-reading:

We need much bigger pockets, I thought as I lay in bed, counting off the seven minutes that it takes a normal person to fall asleep. We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families, and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.

Eight minutes thirty-two seconds...

But I knew that there couldn't be pockets that enormous. In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that...

It reminded me of how I feel every time I hear about some tragedy in the world and wish that I could have my friends all right next to me rather than wonder where they are at that moment. Suffice it to say, I loved parts of this book.

But then you have to go back to the daybook entries of his grandfather who abandoneded his grandmother before his father was even born. He's just so very sad and he left because he was scared to love anyone and didn't want to love the baby. But 40 years later, after learning the son he never wanted to know is dead, he returns, and he's so very sorry. Talk about too little way too late. I despised this character so much, I couldn't get past my distain for him. I suspect that's the sign of good writing if someone can conjure up such strong feelings. But I felt like that wasn't the intended response, instead I was supposed to feel sorry for him, because you know, he's just so sad and he'd lost so much. As I'm reading this though I'm thinking of all the people around him who have lost just as much, who are going on with their lives as best they can and I think he is a pathetic worthless man who doesn't deserve the forgiveness of the family he abandoned. He walked out on a pregnant wife because he never quite got over the death of a pregnant girlfriend and he felt completely justified in his actions, never bothering to consider what his actions would do to his wife -- his wife, who had lost her entire family in the same fire that took the life of his girlfriend. I have no sympathy for people so absorbed in their own pain that they treat those who depend on them so horribly. He returns wanting forgiveness, wanting to know all about the son he didn't want, wanting to become a part of his grandson's life.

Had that storyline been eliminated from this story, I would have liked this book much more than I did. To me it felt like two stories, and when the two storylines do interact, it doesn't seem to play a significant role in the story, point being, had it been left out, it would not have detracted from the main story.

Another thing that bothered me was the formatting of the book. I was annoyed by the blank pages or pages with one sentence. I was distracted by the pages covered with red ink and I didn't think the photos contributed much to the story.

Overall though, I'm glad I read the book.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I re-read Wuthering Heights recently. At work I learned that most people in the office had never read the book, so I suggested we start a book club and this be our first book.

As expected, it broke my heart again. I never know what to expect when I re-visit books from my past. When I re-read One Hundred Years of Solitude, I discovered I no longer loved the book. When I went back to Bell Jar, I discovered it meant more to me that it could have ever meant when I was a teenager. With Wuthering Heights though, I loved it just as much as I remembered loving it.

So much passion and desperation, and so much loss. I found myself hesitant to read it though, I kept stopping not wanting to go further because I knew that the situation would only get worse.

Now, almost fifteen years after the first reading, the story still resonates with me. Not because I've ever experienced anything anything like that, but rather because of my lack of passion in relationships. As a teenager I found myself longing for a feeling that intense, assuming it would be in my future. Now as an adult, I find myself facing that awareness that I'll never feel that. It's another sort of fear, my hope has become loss. What if you never find your soul mate? Do you settle for someone less or do you spend the rest of your life alone?

I've always joked that the book ruined me. Too often I find myself in boring, passionless situations which I then quickly end. I'm not happy in relationships because I'm waiting for my Heathcliff. Heathcliff, after all these years, remains as dark and intense as ever... always waiting for my Heathcliff...

my contribution for my book club:
http://prn-da-book-club.blogspot.com/2006/08/why-i-like-wuthering-heights.html

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler is one of my favorite writers. I enjoy the way she can tell stories about ordinary people and uncover the pieces of their lives that make them special and unique. It's the idea that everyone has a story and no one's life is as it seems from outside appearances.

This novel is about two very different families that adopt children from Korea. They meet at the airport on the day their babies arrive. Over time the two families become friends, realizing that they share something that not many others share.

I liked this book because it's about the idea of family, and mostly the idea of family being about the connections you make, and not necessarily the connects into which you are born. While initially this story is about adopting children, it expands into "adopting" brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and grandparents.

This book also is about struggling with ideas of perception, self-perception, as well as concerns about the way in which others view you. What am I supposed to be? Who do I want to be? I especially loved the character of MaryAnn -- the grandmother who moved to the U.S. from Iran as a young bride. She struggles with her ideas of how she should live. Her pride won't allow her to take steps to alleviate her loneliness because it would go against the image of herself that she is trying to preserve. Her ideas seem rooted in her culture, but upon reading it becomes apparant that most of these feelings transcend through cultures. In the end we're all much more alike than we realize.

This is a nice book that provides a glimpse of a world in which the idea of family does actually mean something more than unpleasant holidays and shouting matches.

Dispatches from the Edge by Anderson Cooper

I heard about this book while watching an episode of Oprah. She had Anderson Cooper and his mother on as guests.

This is a fairly short book. A very quick read. Cooper provides small bits and pieces about his family life as well as his observations about news events he has covered. He tries to explain the connections between his need to travel around the world and witness tragedy and the tragedies that happened in his own family.

It's an interesting book. But it doesn't contain anything shocking or revealing. But if you want to know a bit more about Anderson Cooper, this is a place to start. It won't take up much of your time.

The Minotaur by Barbara Vine

Barbara Vine is one of my favorite writers. I have about three modern writers that I'll read anything they write, Barbara Vine (who also writes as Ruth Rendell), is one of them, the other two being P.D. James and Minette Walters.

This book was not one of my favorites though. I enjoyed it well enough, but I didn't love it.

The story is told by someone who is reflecting back on an event in her life. She's telling a story about a situation that she observed, something that was happening around her, but something that did not directly involve her. She was hired as a nurse for a family to care for their adult son. During her stay, she learns many disturbing family secrets and witnesses many strange events, leading ultimately to a tragedy.

But the story doesn't leave much of a impact. I felt no urgency to finish the book. It didn't arouse any intense feelings, no anger or suspense or fear. It does paint an interesting portrait of rural English life, as do many of her books. I felt like there was too much distance between the narration and the action of the story. Readers were never allowed inside the heads of the people actually involved, so you're left to assumption and speculation along with the narrator.

If you're looking for a good suspense, thriller though, there are several others that I would recommend over this. Two of my favorite Barbara Vine books are No Night is Too Long and Dark-Adapted Eye. I highly recommend both of those. This one, though, not so much.

The Forgetting Room by Nick Bantock

I read this book after I went to Spain. The events in this book take place in Ronda and feature a bridge which I saw on my trip.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, mostly because it's about painting. The Forgetting Room is the room where the narrator and his grandfather before him would enter to become absorbed in their art. Painting is used as a form of escape. I think anyone who paints can relate to the feeling. I forget sometimes how much I love painting, and after reading this book I was reminded of how much I love falling into a painting. It's never about the finished product, but rather the process of creating the work.

This is a nice book, complete with some beautiful illustrations.

Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

I was intrigued by this book because of the use of graphic art -- "comic book" art -- within the novel. I'm something of a comic book fan. But 26 pages into this book, I have decided to stop reading it. After reading a scene in which a fourteen year old girl goes to the school bathroom and tries to slit her wrists with a broken makeup compact, I've decided this book is not for me. The girl is just soooo depressed because her boyfriend broke up with her. She's fourteen! Granted I probably have no sympathy for the situation because I was never a normal teenager, I was always more interested in literature and art and music and sports than in the boys in my school. I dreamed of movie stars and bad boy rockers. I never longed for the smelly kid sitting next to me in study hall.

I couldn't get any further into the book because reading that particular scene sent my mind reeling with angry thoughts. I couldn't focus on the story anymore. What kind of upbringing did this child have that she thinks a boy is worth so much tragedy? How pathetic and empty is her life that she thinks everything is over because of a boy? The beginning of the novel talks about how wonderful her father was at being a stay at home dad, but something was off with this kid. I'm simply not interested in reading this kind of melodrama.

There are so many books I want to read right now, I'm not wasting any more time with this one.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

I picked up a copy of the book at Half-Price Books during one of their big extra 20% sales, but it was another year or so before I got around to reading it. I included this on my reading list at beginning of the year.

When I packed for my week in Spain, I took several books, this being one of them. I decided on this book because on the plane from Dallas to London, I noticed that the movie, Memoirs of a Geisha, was being shown on the return flight. I wanted to have this read before I watched the movie.

This is the story of a young woman, trained to be a geisha. This tells the story of her experiences and the rituals involved in the world of geishas. This is fascinating in that it describes an experience so foreign to most of us. These women, they traveled on this path as a means to arrive at a better life in a society that provided women limited opportunities. They lived in luxury that would have not been available to them otherwise. However, still their lives were completely dictated by the actions and desires of the men they served.

A scene is described in which the woman, years later, is introduced in New York as a former geisha. She said she can tell she's looked at oddly, and can tell that she is being reagarded as a prostitute. But she so accurately points out, were her actions so different than the wealthy wife judging her? The geisha's actions are more formal and precise, the intent more obvious, but so many women follow a similar path. They paint their faces, dress a certain way, act a certain way, all in their attempts to gain the company and adoration of certain men, men with money and prestige, men who will care for them.

Despite the cover quite clearly stating that this book is a "novel" I read the entire thing under the assumption that it was supposed to be a true story. My own fault, I wasn't paying attention to the cover, I was thrown by the use of the word "memoir" in the title. Upon completing the book, I read the pages following the end, the pages explaining the character in the story is entirely made up.

While I found the description of the lifestyle to be interesting, the "love affair" in the book seemed to detract from the story. It wasn't very believable, which makes sense now that I know the story is fiction.

Ovarall though, it's an enjoyable book, especially if you like stories about different cultures and experiences.

Effects of Light by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

This book intrigued me partly because it seemed to be very much about art and people involved in the art world.

Here's the basic premise of the story: The two daughters of a college art professor posed nude on a regular basis for their father’s photographer friend, Ruth. After the photos are displayed in a well-known gallery, and gain national attention as a result of the subject matter, the youngest daughter is kidnapped and killed. This is assumed to be connected to the photos. The older daughter becomes angry and leaves. Changes her name, cuts off all contact with her past. Years later, she receives a letter saying she needs to return home to retrieve a package. So she drops everything and returns to Washington state and reconnects with her past. She stays with family friends, and tries to decipher her father's notes about art -- a "ground-breaking" book on which he spent his life working. In her quest for information, she also uncovers several family secrets and love triangles involving her parents and tries to make peace with the loss of her sister and father, who had a fatal heart attack after his daughter's murder.

The present story follows the older daughter, while their past is revealed through first person flashbacks belonging to the younger daughter.

I thought I would enjoy reading about people who view art as a central point of their lives. But instead, reading this book made me aware of what I don't like about people who take art too seriously.

In the novel, the photos, when displayed created a great deal of controversy. People were offended by the use of children in nude photos. When describing this, the book takes a decidedly pro-photos stance. Then, through the characters dialogue, proceeds to explain why people were wrong to be offended, why the photos were not offensive, but rather "beautiful". The children in the book insist that they wanted to do the photos, this was their choice. This goes on for pages, the small child insisting that she loves the photos, they're a huge part to her life, a part of her life that she treasures. But as I read this, I kept thinking, you're only five (or whatever too young age she was)! How does a five year old know what she wants? At that age, children just want to make people happy. The father and photographer discuss at length how wonderful it is that the photos chronicle the children's growth, they show the transformation from a child to a young woman (in the case of the older daughter).

Their defense of the photos is presented in such a way to indicate that anyone who didn't agree with them was simply not intelligent enough to fully understand the importance of art.

Essentially, the book angered me. I do understand art. I appreciate art. I even appreciate different, unusual and controversial art. But I don't think that children should ever be exploited for the purpose of art. As I read this book, regardless of how the photo sessions or photographs were described, I felt like the children were being used as nothing more than props for the photographer and then convinced that they wanted to be objectified. This made me think of the ways in which abuse victims are convinced that they somehow enjoyed or provoked the abuse, when in fact they are too young to know otherwise. The father seemed to be so involved in his theories on art that he was oblivious as to what was happening to his children. As long as they were experiencing "art", nothing else mattered to him.

Another scene that bothered me: the older daughter, as an adult, is confronting her boyfriend, claiming he doesn't really know her and so she's going to show him her real self. To do this, she strips in front of him and and has some bizarre breakdown of sorts, pointing to her naked body shouting "this is me." Her actions seemed to support my belief that by being a prop in photographs, she now views herself as nothing more than a body. It was an uncomfortable scene to read and I almost stopped right there. But I stuck with it until the end, because I was near the end at that point.

I didn't enjoy this book. I don't recommend reading it at all.

Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Magical Thinking, as used in the title of this book, is the idea that your internal thoughts have some sort of control on the outside world. In this case, it was Didion believing that she had to keep her husband’s shoes because he would need them when he came back, after dying at the dinner table of a heart attack.

This book, as most people know, is about the year after Didion’s husband’s death. It is very much about the difficulty of suddenly and unexpectedly losing someone who has always been there. Everything was fine one moment and the next it was over.

Didion does an excellent job of describing the suddenness and the extreme feeling of loss. This is very well written. When I started reading this, I had difficulty putting it down because as absurd as this sounds, I felt as if I was leaving her alone if I stopped reading. And her experience was so awful, I didn’t want to leave her alone. Yet that is what this book is about, being alone for the first time in 40 years.

She describes her marriage as different from the typical marriage. She and her husband were friends and co-workers and they talked to each other in ways that families do not seem to communicate. Maybe this is the trick to being married for so long – not adhering to the stupid ideas society present about marriage – wife stays home and keeps house, husband goes off to the office. Didion and her husband seemed to have a collaboration that worked very well for them. They traveled to places all over the world and they sat down at home and “planned.”
On top of the loss of her husband, the year after his death, she is also dealing with the illness of her daughter, who I believe died after this book was published. This is a sad book, but also, I feel like it is a valuable book. The book provides insight to the process of grief and mourning. It also presents a story of what must have been a happy marriage and loving family, and because of that, I enjoyed reading this.

Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart

I picked up this book because of the title. Silly fact about me – "Myth" is one of my favorite words. I throw it out whenever possible. So the title sounded all dark and mystical. I tend to be much more interested in stories about friendships than romantic relationships and I knew this was a story about friendship. That's all I knew about it.

I didn't realize until I started reading it that it was about a thirty year old looking back on her life -- Someone who didn't feel comfortable in her current setting, someone who was always wanting to run. Suffice it to say instantly I felt a connection with the main character. Also, as I read more of the book, I found it startling that it was about girls growing up in the Southwest and the after effects of living with an abusive mother. Seldom are these situations written about in a realistic manner. There were so many elements in this book that felt like they could have been passages from my life, from driving the west Texas roads to spending your best college days in the newsroom.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I liked the way it explored the depths of friendships, the hold a friend can have over you, the way one’s betrayal can damage you. At what point do you walk away? What do you forgive? And who are you really hurting, what do you have to gain when you do decide it is time to end a friendship?

This is a really nice book. While I've never experienced any sort of situation like the one mentioned in the book, I, like anyone who has ever had a strong friendship, can certainly relate to the themes of holding on and letting go and choosing to forgive or forget.

My only issue with this book was what was an attempt at suspense. What is the package Camaron is taking to Sonia? I suggest you not focus too much on that. It is interesting, but it isn't nearly as important as the buildup presents it to be. The true value of the book is the small details that make the intensity of the friendship feel true.

Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd

I think Maureen Dowd is pretty darn brilliant. She's so very, very smart and funny and really knows what is going on in the world.

Sometimes the universe places in your hands exactly what you need. I bought this book using a gift card someone gave me for my 30th birthday. Talk about being knocked on my ass. That's a rough birthday. This book though did quite a bit in helping me get back on my feet. I didn't get around to reading this book until the Christmas holidays. It was exactly what I needed as I faced my annual holiday depression.

I've hit this age where all of my friend are now tending to their children and husbands and I don't really have anyone to go out with and go places and such. I don't have any interest in the husband and children thing. None at all. I don't say that as a defense mechanism, but simply as fact. I've never understood the allure of it all. I like not being dependent on others. I like making decisions that affect only me. Sometimes though, I don't like being alone. Doesn't mean I want a man, sometimes just a friend who has time to sit and talk would be nice. That rambling there, it is sort of related to some of the ideas expressed in this book. Not to mention that reading this book felt like having a nice conversation with a like-minded girl-friend.

Much of this book is a reflection of Dowd's disappointment over what seems to be the death of feminism. What the hell happened? Now all these women are doing anything and everything possible to acquire a man, to be a wife and a mommy and that seems to be all that matters. Those of us not interested in those things, we're left standing on the side feeling very awkward and confused. What's wrong with us? Why don't we want that stuff?

One of my many dreams, when I was young and naive and had never set foot outside of a small town and still believed dreams were attainable, was to be a columnist. I thought at the time that I actually had things to say that people would want to read. But now that the real world has beat me down, I've become aware of the fact that there are people signifcantly more talented than me saying the things I would like to say, but in much more readable ways.

So when I'm reading Dowd's work, I'm thinking, "exactly, that's just how I feel." Of course, there is no way I could write those thoughts and ideas in such a way. But it is nice to be able to read them.

That's actually another subject on which Dowd touches. Men tend to go after whatever they want, without regard to whether they will fail or succeed. Almost as if they assume they will always suceed and if they don't, they just keep trying. A woman (in general, of course this doesn't apply to everyone) on the other hand, she waits, and waits and waits until she knows she will suceed. In essence she doesn't take chances and probably misses out on a lot of opportunities. I saw myself in this. I don't try things unless I know I'll succeed. Being that I can't see into the future, and very few things provide guaranteed results... We won't even talk about all my missed opportunities.

Overall, though, I felt the underlying message of the book was that men are not essential to a woman's life. Women are quite capable of managing on their own. We don't need men to take care of us, and we don't need men to dictate the ways in which we take care of ourselves and our surroundings. They seem to cause a lot of trouble. In the end, what made me feel a whole lot better about reading this is that I realized, or rather, I had my beliefs re-confirmed that it is very much okay to be single and essentially alone. This whole "finding a man thing" is way overhyped. Simply a product of marketing. There are many other things in life to which I can direct my focus that do not involve men or "hooking up" with men.

I think all women, single ones especially, and probably a few men, would benefit from reading this book.

Read during the week of Christmas, finished on Jan. 1, 2006.

Made in Detroit by Paul Clemens

This book got great reviews. I was under the impression that this was a book about Detroit, and thought it might be interesting.

But I didn't like this book at all. Not one bit. I felt angry reading it. It was a short book, but took me forever to read and I found myself bitching about it to anyone who made the mistake of asking what I was reading. Several people were like, "just stop reading it if you hate it so much."

It was this long, rambling whine about how difficult it was to be a white boy attending private school in a city where whites were the minority. It felt like he just wrote and wrote trying to justify his racist views. He said his girlfriend was raped by a "black" man and therefore he felt justified in being angry that his sister was dating a "black" man. It made no sense to me. Maybe that's because I'm not "white" or a member or any one race, and therefore have never understood how people can justify their racist ideas.

All this time I believed that racism was a southern thing and that people "up north" were more intelligent with regard to race relations. This book proved me wrong. If anything, I learned that from this book.

Some reviews have described the work as "stream of consciousness." But it just seemed like a lack of editing and no real focus to me. I guess what angered me most was the idea that this kind of writing is being published. I didn't find it at all interesting. Nothing especially exciting happened in this person's life. I didn't understand what the actual story was. The author seems to have some real issues he needs to deal with.

Mostly though, I didn't feel like I learned anything about the city of Detroit or the people of Detroit. I don't feel like the author, someone who attended a private school and moved away for college, served as a true representation of a citizen of Detroit. Again, this is just my limited opinion. I really wish I'd not read this book. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead by Christine Wicker

I was reading this book on Halloween weekend, on a plane to New York at 7pm. I'd not bothered to put on any makeup, I'd been at work that day since 6:30 a.m., my hair was pulled up on top of my head, messy, an upside down ponytail of sorts. My nails were painted black, my pentagram ring in its usual location on my left ring finger, and I was wearing a t-shirt advertising a "Transylvanian blood drive." The woman sitting next to me glanced at me uneasily and I became aware of how frightening I must have looked. I never think about my appearance until I see myself through the eyes of others. And I suspect reading about talking to dead people didn't make the sight of me any less disturbing. I felt obligated to say something, make clear that I was somewhat normal and not a complete goth freak. Once we started talking to trip went fine, we talked travel and guys and makeup and hair (she's a beautician). We exchanged phone numbers at the Newark airport.

Back to the book...

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I liked the way in which it was written. This is written by a former journalist who is basically reporting what she sees, without bias. She points out the discrepancies, the possible hoaxes. But she also points out the unexplainable events, the things that might be a result of a spiritual presences, messages from the dead. During the summer, Lily Dale is the home to registered mediums and people travel there to communicate with the dead with the assistance of these mediums.

The tone of the writing was consistent with my own beliefs regarding spirituality. I often have a difficult time trying to reconcile my uncomfortably, sometimes painfully, rational, practical tendencies with my desire to believe in a realm of this world we can=t understand. I need to believe that there is more than this. I need to believe that we have some control over our destiny, that we can generate good will and fend off negativity. I need to believe that there are forces in this world that can assist in such actions. But I can't accept what is presented to me in the traditional books, the stories of the Bible seem as valid to me as Greek mythology. Stories created to scare people into good behavior and obedience, stories created to explain things that people didn't understand. So I seek out less traditional ideas, more basic, older ideas that can provide results and work with nature and the here and now, ideas that can produce results that I can see or feel, not ideas accepted on blind faith.

I would readily recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the spiritual world and the work of mediums. And now that I've read it, I want very much to visit Lily Dale.

Read: Oct. 30, 2005

From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens by 50 Cent

I’m a big 50 Cent fan. I know, I know, very irresponsible of me. I’m supposed to be this hardcore militant feminist, but I listen to rap music. Shame on me. I’m also old enough to know that just because I like listening to someone sing about doing drugs or shooting people doesn’t mean I have to go out and do those things. For the record, I listened to some fairly unsavory stuff when I was a teenager too, and I didn’t turn into a promiscuous, drug user. So I’m thinking if kids are so weak minded that they do everything they hear about they had problems long before they listened to “bad” music.

Anyway, point being I like 50 Cent’s music quite a bit. Don’t know much else about him, so I was eager to read this autobiography. For the most part, this is an interesting book.

I realize that he probably had someone else write it, he tells his story, someone else crafts it into readable form maybe. I also know that famous people don’t always tell the truth. (Big secret here – non-famous people also tell lies.)

Basically this book is about 50’s drug dealing. He’s pretty detailed about the dealing. Preparing the product, marketing the product, the various means of working a corner. At first it was intriguing, after a while it became a bit repetitive. Not being all that versed in the drug world, some of it was a bit over my head. Also, being that some of the information is so detailed and delivered in such a matter of fact, non apologetic way, I began to feel a little dirty reading this – and not the good kind of dirty, it was as if by reading about this I was somehow agreeing that it was okay that he was selling drugs. It’s not, 50, drug dealing is bad.

50 seems like a smart, clever guy. Like I said, I don’t know if some of those statements are from him or he had a good writer, who is credited (I believe his name is Kris Ex, or Kris X). But, just so you know, it isn’t like 50 is claiming he wrote this all by himself.

A few things bothered me though, such as the suggestion that he had no option other than to deal drugs because he couldn’t ask his grandmother for money. It isn’t like he needed this money to survive. I got the impression that his grandparents provided him with a decent home and put food on the table. He wasn’t lacking in essentials. He dealt drugs so that he could own 9 pairs of $100 sneakers and wear super expensive clothes and jewelry and have a dirt bike and some kind of fancy motorcycle. As a teenager he was driving SUVs that he paid for in cash, but had to park around the corner so his grandmother wouldn’t find out. I guess dealing is the easy way to get this stuff, but it isn’t necessary stuff, it is, in fact, quite excessive stuff. Stuff that a lot of us are never going to own, at least not through legal means, unless we want to drown in debt, and there are plenty of people okay with doing that. Seems to be a values issue more than a poverty issue.

Also, he refers to a girlfriend of his as a ho because she sleeps with someone else. But a paragraph before that, he admits that he was seeing other people on the side. So technically, wouldn’t that make him a ho also? Okay for him to mess around, but not his girl? Then there is the bit where he’s so annoyed about being sent to a drug rehab facility and keeps saying, “I don’t use drugs, I sell them.” Um, dude, maybe you should keep that info to yourself because wouldn’t the punishment for dealing be worse than using? Should be, if it isn’t. And while he’s ticked off about getting caught, he does seem to acknowledge that what goes around comes around. He knows he broke the law and I think he knows that he got away with quite a bit and got off fairly easy.

And the other thing that upset me -- again, this would have to do with his relationships with women. He’s always buying his girlfriends stuff – expensive stuff and letting them drive his expensive cars. As a woman, I’m going to say right now, if you have to buy a woman something to keep her happy, then she’s really no better than a prostitute. Women like that give the rest of us a bad name. He mentions one woman who he seems to have some respect for, probably because she eventually becomes the mother of his first son. When he meets her she’s working, going to school, acting like she intends to support herself and you get the impression that he’s attracted to her independence. But then he mentions that things are good between them when he’s got money and not so much when the money is running low. He seems to accept this and feels like things would have worked out if only he’d had the money to keep things going. I am no expert on relationships, but if she lost interest because the money was running out, then you’re better off without her. You shouldn’t have to pay to keep a relationship healthy – that’s not healthy. But what do I know about this stuff? I don’t let people buy me stuff, and I’m also what you might call chronically single. Maybe guys like paying for women… maybe this is why I don't like guys.

Overall, it was interesting read.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

I heard so much about this book before I read it. All glowing reviews – "DaVinci Code for intellectuals", or something like that. I was so excited about this book because I love vampires. Pale and bloody and cold and absurdly intense. Just can't get enough of a good vampire story. But alas, a good vampire story is hard to find. And I didn't find one here.

Maybe it was partially my fault. I started reading the book the same week school started back up and haven't been able to devote any long periods of time to reading. But usually, if a book is interesting enough, I figure out a way to fit it in to my schedule, regardless of how busy I might be. This book though, I never reached a point where I just couldn't put it down. I kept waiting for action, and it never happened. So maybe I'm just too accustomed to flying through books. But these days I just feel like there are so many books I want to read, I don't want to waste too much time on one. I need to dive into my books to escape my reality, and believe me, I've been in dire need of an escape lately, and I was never able to immerse myself in this book. If a book is interesting enough, it doesn't take that long to read, irrelevant of the number of pages it contains. However, I will say that if I'd picked this up in the middle of summer and had long Saturdays to do nothing other than lay out in the sun and read, maybe I'd feel differently about it. Maybe, on the other hand, vampires in 100 degree heat, I don't know about that…

Basically, I just didn't find the story very interesting. I was worried that maybe there was something wrong with me. Maybe I'm not the intellectual I think I am. But after finally finishing this, I read through some reviews on amazon, and am glad to see I'm not the only one who had difficulty with this book. I did finish it, granted, I skimmed through the last two hundred pages and I don't feel like I missed all that much. There are so many documents and so much research and I'm not sure that it was all necessary.

There are two separate storylines going on, the narrator is performing her own quest and while doing so, she's reading about what her father did many years before. But I was bothered by all the coincidences, which I assumed were supposed to reflect Dracula's omnipotent power, but it was never fully explained, or maybe I skimmed over that part.

At one point I walked into my office and someone asked how the book was going and I said "I think I've figured out the big twist, and it isn't that big of a twist. Sure enough, a hundred or so pages later, the revelation was made and I didn't find it all that shocking. I'm not giving it away in case you're planning to read it.

I wanted something more exciting, I wanted something a bit more intense and sexy, I guess. I wanted more Dracula. I wanted more danger. Oh there was plenty of danger I suppose, but it was so bogged down by the words, I never felt the chill or the suspense. Also, I suspect the form in which it was written sort of eliminated any suspense from the get go. She's reading old documents written by her father, so you know he's going to live through the danger he's describing. You know her mother is going to stick around for a while, because well, she's her mother so she's not dying immediately.

I think the book had potential. I think maybe it needed a better editor. Maybe some of those long rambling documents and letters could have been summarized in more of a conversational mode.

Overall, I was quite disappointed. I wanted more out of this book. It didn't deliver on all the hype it received. I feel like I got scammed. At some point I'm going to learn that I never like the books that the entire world claims are wonderful.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

This is a wonderful book. This is the first Nick Hornby book that I’ve read and I really enjoyed it.

I think everyone knows the premise: four people planning to kill themselves on New Year’s Eve run into each other on the same rooftop, talk each other into living for another six weeks and form a bond. The story is thus about this group and how they decide to continue living. It’s four people who would otherwise have absolutely nothing in common and together they provide some very entertaining experiences.

I liked the way Hornby addressed the issues of depression and despair and reaching the point where a person just doesn’t want to continue living. Hornby respects his characters and he doesn’t treat them as crazy or selfish. I felt like he really showed them as people who have simply reached a point where going forward is very, nearly unbearable.

I’m told that there are people in the world who have never contemplated suicide. How nice it must be to be one of those people. That is something I can’t even imagine, much as those people probably can’t imagine what it feels like to want to stop living.

Reading this book provided a sense of validation, an acknowledgment that these feelings are real and other people have them. I know it’s a work of fiction, but the fact that someone was able to write about these things means that probably somewhere, someone has also felt these things. The kind of pain described on these pages, when it’s happening, you’re certain that no one else in the world has ever felt this bad. But reading this, there are so many moments when I was like, “yes, that’s exactly how it feels”.

One thing this book showed is that sometimes all you need is for someone to acknowledge you. You need to know that other people are expecting you. That’s what saves these people, the fact that they have to meet for coffee in a week, or at the pub in another week, another meeting at the end of the three months. When a person reaches the point where no one knows he exists that’s when he realizes it is okay to stop existing. When you realize that nothing in the world will change if you live or die, no one will even notice you're gone, that’s when you know you don’t need to live anymore. I believe the accepted theory is that suicide happens when your pain outweighs your coping resources -- and everyone has different coping resources, which is why it is so difficult for some to understand the act. That night on the rooftop, these four people gained a stronger set of coping resources. Because they ran into each other, suddenly they have a support system that they had not had before.

I also appreciated that there wasn’t a tidy, happy ending. That would have greatly detracted from the story if everyone had lived happily ever after. They aren’t suddenly repaired and well again because of what happened. They are simply living, for now. For another six months at least because that’s when they plan to meet again.

I highly recommend this book. Though, I’m curious as to other’s opinions. How do I put it nicely? I’m curious as how the mentally sane and stable will regard this book. I wonder, if you’ve never been in that position if you can understand what the characters are going through or if you will even find their experiences all that interesting, or will they simply seem absurd and overdramatic?

Read Aug. 22, 2005

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

This book works on two levels. One being that it tells a story of Afghanistan, what the country was like before war and the effects the different wars have had on the people of that country. The second purpose it serves is that of being a story of two young boys and their fathers, a story that is something of a tale of lies and guilt and betrayal and redemption.

Over the past few years I’ve tried to read all I can about stories of the Middle East. I’m a news junkie and the tidbits they feed us on the news makes me crave more. I want to know as much as possible about this part of the world, this section of the world so mired in turmoil, that has such a strong effect on our country. That being said, I really enjoyed the element of the book that described Afghanistan. You learn about the country through the eyes of the people who live there. The book provides a much more personal understanding than can be provided on CNN. What I always appreciate most when reading stories about other countries is the knowledge that ultimately we all want the same things. As different as we may seem, we are very similar. We still take care of our families, we play games, and we have big parties. Another lesson to be learned from the stories of Afghanistan are the dangers that can happen when you allow a country to be ruled by religion. Religion should be a personal and private thing, not something dictated by government.

The storyline involving Amir and Hassan and their fathers, Baba and Ali is also very interesting. This is a well-written book, very much a page-turner. There are scenes in this book that could be very horrible and gruesome, but I felt the author handled them in a way that maintained the necessary horror without making the reading unbearable.

I very strongly disliked the character of Amir, who is the narrator of the story. He’s so weak and selfish and jealous. He does some terrible things, allows terrible things to happen as a result of his inaction. I found myself becoming so angered by him because he has so many chances to correct the things he’s done wrong, before they get worse. Instead he makes things worse and he stands by like a coward. He claims he knows what he did wrong, but still he’s claiming he did it for his father’s love. When in fact, he never seems to grasp how deeply his actions hurt his father – his father, who gave up so much for him. Even in the end when his actions should seem obvious, he’s hesitant and cowardly. “But I have a wife and career in America” – he’s whining in the end, and you just want someone to say to him, “But you ruined so many other lives.”

Near the end of the book though, when Amir returns to Afghanistan and confronts the Taliban, some of the coincidences began to get a little absurd. This I found somewhat bothersome. I thought the story felt very real up to that point. Then I just sort of though, “yeah, right that would happen…”

This is a very, very sad story. Unlike other sad stories that I’ve complained about though, I do think there is much to be gained from reading this.

Finished reading Aug. 22, 2005

New Rules – Polite Musing from a Timid Observer by Bill Maher

I love Bill Maher*. I mean, I really, really love him. I have no problem at all spending my Friday nights at home watching Real Time instead of out partying or whatever people do on Friday nights. I think he’s so smart, and he’s funny and he says things that people need to hear. He seems to be the kind of guy that girls like me wish we could read the paper with over coffee in the morning and watch the evening news with at night. Being that smart makes a man very, very sexy. And he’s the kind of guy that I have absolutely no hopes of ever meeting in Texas. Honestly, if there were more guys like him in the world, I might actually considering dating. But anyway…. Back to the book…

This book is collection of Maher’s New Rules, which he presents at the end of his show on HBO, Real Time with Bill Maher. If you watch the show on a regular basis, you’ve probably heard most of them, maybe all of them. But they’re still really funny to read. In fact, I spent this past Saturday night reading through the book. (Did I mention that I don’t date?) There are worse ways to spend a Saturday.

I like the idea of having this book because I do always think the things Maher says on the show are so funny and I want to tell my friends about it later. With the book, you can turn to the page and say, “you have to read this.” The thing that worries me though, with this book and any sort of news or story that I think people should be reading or watching – the people that need it will avoid it. Those of us that already agree are the ones paying attention. Very much a case of preaching to the choir.

*I know that he has writers who help him come up with some of the New Rules and all that, I know he's not saying all this on his own, but still... I love him... don't spoil my fantasies...


Read Aug. 20, 2005

Zorro by Isable Allende

When I was a child, I was in love with Zorro. He was so mysterious, so dashing, so very sexy. The kind of hero that could ride in sweep you off your feet and whisk you off to a better life.

When I was a teenager, I read a book by Isabel Allende called The House of the Spirits, and I remember liking the book quite a bit. I don’t remember the details, only that it captivated me, moved me, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the novel.

So keeping those two things in mind, I was really looking forward to reading Zorro. I thought it would be a fun read. Something adventurous and exciting. A perfect summer read. Or so I thought…

During the summer I generally read at least two books a week. Usually it’s one on Saturday, and another during the week.

Two weeks after starting Zorro, I wasn’t a third of the way through the book. I just didn’t care about the characters. Something about the writing made it feel so disconnected. Like someone was telling me a story, but they focused too much on unimportant details and used too many names and kept repeating themselves. It felt a bit like reading a history book, a very badly written history book. I was just dragging myself through it. I started skimming through sections, hoping to get to a more interesting part and it never happened.

As three weeks approached, and I started to feel sick thinking of all the other books I could have been reading during that time, I made one last attempt to get something out of this book and decided to just read the final section. After two days of that, and not reading more than ten or so pages, I gave up. I set the book aside and moved on to something else. I hate quitting on books, especially ones that I’ve spend this much time on, but it was a case of cutting my losses.

This was a big disappointment. I found it to be very, very boring, and it just didn’t read well at all. Snoozer, stay away from it. You want some Zorro, rent a movie. You want Allende, read House of the Spirits. But stay away from this.

Gave up – Aug. 17, 2005

Roundup for June and July

Of the books I've read during the last two months these are my favorites and least favorites:

Favorites:
Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman - I just loved this book, can't even explain how much I loved it, I loved it that much.

We Thought You Would be Prettier - This book is so funny. I bought a copy at the bookstore today just so that I can pass it around and make everyone I know read it, it's that great.

Wonder Spot and Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing - These books by Melissa Bank were wonderful. I liked them very, very much. (I haven't posted reviews for these yet, will get around to that soon. )

Least favorites:
Getting Over Jack Wagner - I wanted to just stop reading this book, but instead rapidly skimmed through it, because I feel an obligation to read finish books I start. Not a good book.

Time Traveler's Wife - I shouldn't have read this. I knew that from the beginning, but I thought I would be brave. You know me, so very adventurous (that's a joke). Didn't enjoy this much at all.

Why the book reviews?

My goal in posting these book reviews:

Here’s the thing. I’m one of those people who needs to be doing a few things at once. I have to be busy at all times. I can’t just sit in down in front of the TV and watch. If I’m in front of the TV, I’m also writing, or drawing or reading a magazine. It’s annoying, but hey, that’s me. I’m actually making a purposeful effort these days to sit down in front of the TV for a few minutes each night and do nothing other than eat my dinner. That’s my “slow down” time. During much of the year, I’m busy with schoolwork and attending basketball games and concerts and such, so trying to figure out how to spend time at home is not really an issue. The summer months though, they’re slow. Dirk isn’t even in the country right now and I miss him so much!!

Here’s the thing though… the only thing that really settles me is reading. (Painting also, but that involves the committment of cleanup and setup and such, but you can't take your paints to bed with you at night, or at least you shouldn't. Some people might, but hey, I'm the first to admit I'm kind of boring.) My love of reading goes back to when I was a kid needing so desperately to escape, finding my only solace in Nancy Drew books and later Christopher Pike books. It’s my way of dealing or maybe not dealing. I slip into another world where I can forget the real world for a bit. And summer is the best time for reading. I spend a huge chunk of my weekend doing nothing other than lounging in the backyard with a book. (Yes, I know the sun is bad for you, and guess what, I don’t really care.) I will remain out there for hours in the sweltering heat, tanning and reading. My idea of heaven.

In the past, I’ve not been very adventurous in my reading choices. I tend to read nothing other than crime novels written by British women – three women in particular – P.D. James, Ruth Rendell (who also writes as Barbara Vine), and Minette Walters. Toss in the occasion Harry Potter, Margaret Atwood and Anne Tyler, a few of the classics, some non-fiction/current event type stuff, and that’s about it. I decided years ago that I didn’t have enough time to read books I wasn’t certain I would love.

But I would read reviews of other books and make lists and search the bargain tables at the used bookstores hoping to find something new. I mean, at this point, I’ve read everything by P.D. James and haven’t liked the last two books by Minette Walters, so I was running out of stuff. And there was this new book coming out about Dracula and there’s nothing I love more than a good vampire novel. But I’m trying to conserve money and one of my rules is “never pay full price for books.”

So I went to the library -- located an entire three blocks from my house – yeah, I’m feeling kind of stupid for not having thought of this sooner. And now I have reading adventures a plenty! But serious, since the books are free and I don’t have to find a home for them after reading them, I’m trying out some books I would have never touched otherwise. (And hope to eventually read the rest of the Ruth Rendell books that I’ve not yet read -- there are quite a few at the library that I do not own yet!)

Now you know about my reading habits, but why the book reviews? Because in a past life, one that ended years ago, I had dreams of being a writer. Well, I’ve come to accept that I don’t really have the ability to write much of anything that anyone else will ever want to read. These book reviews are no exception really, but I thought it was a way to combine my newly strengthened love of reading with my desire to write. It is a start of some sort. I’d read these books and want to talk to someone about them, but, well, you finish a book at 3am on Thursday night morning there’s not anyone around to talk to at the moment, so I’d write about them instead. And what I’ve tried to do is edit up those notes a bit and post them here in this blog. (Besides that, I was beginning to think that I was the only person left in the world without a blog. What else can I blog about? The fungus on the rose bushes, the scratch on my car, very exciting, but I’m saving that for the novel … )

I read a book last summer called Reading Lolita in Tehran. It’s an amazing book. I recommend it to everyone. It’s about a woman who educates women in Tehran using the classic literature. The critique of the literature the professor uses sort of wraps around the stories of these women. By talking about the books and way the women view these books, you gain a unique understanding about the lives of these women living is a world so different from ours. The books create a common ground and a new perspective at the same time. Anyway, I mention that book because I loved the way the author was able to write about these lives while at the same time writing about books.

I guess I sort of hope that at some point, my writing of book reviews will evolve into something more significant and profound than “I liked this” and “didn’t like that.” It’s not there yet, not by any means. Right now, it is very much "this is what I liked and this is what I didn’t like." But I’m just getting started.

Well, that’s all for now… I’m going to get back to reading Zorro…

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Many years ago, as a teenager in a dusty West Texas town, I picked up a book at the library called All the Pretty Horses. It wasn’t the kind of book I would usually read. Being that I wanted nothing more in the world than to escape where I lived, I generally chose to read books about places far, far away. I preferred the rainy London streets to take me away from the Texas heat. I’m not even sure why I decided to check out the book, I didn’t have a clue as to what it was about. But it looked interesting and I was curious as to what someone had to write about the area that I reluctantly called home.

Immediately I was sucked into the story and swept away by the main character's adventures. I couldn’t put the book down. It wasn’t just the descriptions of the people and the land that captivated me, but rather the tale of an escape, abandoning everything to find yourself. I think of it as the West Texas version of Catcher in the Rye. I’m sure my love of the book also had a lot to do with the fact that I was in such dire need of an escape as well. I was so ready to leave everything simply to find something.

The thing is, living out in West Texas, you feel very isolated. You can’t understand that feeling if you’ve never lived like that. But you can stay there for your entire life and never have a clue as to what is happening anywhere else in the world. A lot of people are just fine living that way. They believe the world ceases to exist outside of their city limits. But sometimes, living out there feels as if you are hidden, lost, disconnected and abandoned. So the fact that someone had written a book, a beautiful book that spoke so eloquently about an area I assumed no one knew existed gave me a sense of connection. Because of this book, people all over the world were reading about this place. Somewhere in a big city that I could only dream of visiting, a person was reading about San Angelo and Eldorado and Iraan. This land was not completely forgotten, in our pathetic, desperate existence, breathing in the oil and the fumes and burning under the dry sun. For a few pages, we were known to the rest of the world. People everywhere were reading the name of the town, Iraan. I despise Iraan, having spent entirely too many years of my life in that town, but I really do love that book.

So I was looking forward to McCarthy’s latest, No Country for Old Men. The book takes place near the border, revisiting the area covered in All the Pretty Horses. A drug deal goes bad, someone finds some money and runs, the book is about his running and those chasing him. There’s an inexplicably evil killer who wants the money and kills for pleasure and there’s a sheriff from Sanderson who wants to protect the people of his county. The sheriff would be the old man, saddened and fearful of the deterioration of the world around him, the new breed of evil that he sees.

I enjoyed the book. I started reading this book when I got home from work around eight one evening and didn’t go to bed until I finished it. I never found a comfortable stopping point. Also, I feel like a person doesn’t get the full benefit of McCarthy’s writing if they do a lot of stop and start reading. You have to be ready to dive in and let the words carry you along.

This story does just that. It’s a rush from city to city, gunfight to the next gunfight. Brisk. Run, run, run. Don’t stop to look behind you or you’re dead. You never get bogged down in the details.

My only issue with the book was the a few seemingly preachy references to Jesus -- as in the world has gone to hell because of the lack of Jesus. However, it is appropriate for the setting, and I wonder if maybe it stands as symbolic of how out of touch that desolate area of Texas is from the rest of the world. They seem to want to blame everything on a lack of Jesus and not their own ignorance. Too often these people who love their Jesus so much show complete disregard for their fellow humans. This is a place plagued by racism and greed. Also, I was a bit offended by the idea that kids with green hair were to blame for evil in the world.

I thought the setting felt real. Again, I felt the twinge of recognition as the characters traveled to and from towns I knew in my childhood. The characters sounded real. However, the sheriff, I questioned. He seemed quite noble and determined to protect the citizens of his county. My own experiences with West Texas law officers, and the abuses I witnessed around me when I was a resident of that area, leads me to regard the sheriff as very much a work of fiction. Noble and protective are not words I would use to describe a small town Texas law officer.

Most accurately I felt the novel showed the evil that can result from greed. From the beginning, the person who tried to run off with money that didn’t belong to him should have known he would end badly. You don’t walk off with 2.4 million for free. That’s my preachy bit -- don’t take things that don’t belong to you, it will make your life much easier.

My recommendation: If you like fast paced action stories, you’ll probably like this. It’s not going to change your world or break your heart or anything that dramatic. But it will provide a few decent hours of entertainment.

Finished reading the book on August 4, 2005

We Thought You Would Be Prettier – True Tales of the Dorkiest Girl Alive by Laurie Notaro

I was wandering around the bookstore the other day when I first saw the title of this book. Dammit, I thought, that was going to be the title of my book. However, my book exists only as fragments in my head, and a few never-to-be read files on the hard drive of my computer. I wish I could write a book like what Notaro has written.

This book is so funny. Laugh out loud funny. I would read this during my lunch break and just sit there in the break room cracking up – giving my co-workers yet another reason to question my sanity.

From ebay to spam to owning too many books to getting locked in your own backyard– she hits the nail on the head. Finally a book written for girls like me. Laurie refers to girls like this as “The Idiot Girl Club.” I am so proud to know there is a club for girls like me.

I like to say that all I ever wanted was to be “Put together.” You know the type, Dallas is full of put-together girls. Makeup always in place, their hair is perfect, their clothing looks like it was tailored specifically for their bodies because they all have perfect thin, model-like bodies. They never have their lunch proudly displayed on the front of their blouses or lipstick on their teeth or a glob of mascara on the side of their nose. Oh, to be one of those girls.

But this is me: I’m the girl with a salsa stain on her brand new tan skirt. I own one good pair of jeans, every other pair being too tight in the ass and too loose in the waist, making me look either fat or saggy or both. However, there is a white spot on the knee of my only good pair of jeans, there as a result of a drop of my acne cream falling onto it one rushed morning. Yeah, acne cream. I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m applying acne cream and wrinkle prevention serum on my face every morning and night. That’s fair, right?

I’ll never understand the whole “fashion” thing. I can’t get it together looks wise. The more I try the more I fail. Any attempt at following a trend or simply looking nice is thwarted by a bra strap showing, the waistband of my panties on display above my jeans.

I’ve never learned to apply makeup properly. By the time I get done trying to cover up the acne and the wrinkles, I’m exhausted.

No matter how much I spend on a piece of clothing, it’s still too tight in spots and too big in others – same piece of clothing mind you. If I dare to fix my hair, a freakish windstorm will kick up and last only from the time it takes to get from the door of my house to my car.

That’s just appearance wise, I won’t even go into the non-appearance issues an idiot girl such as I deals with on a daily basis.

I am very much what Notaro describes as an Idiot Girl. And I love Laurie Notaro’s writing because she embraces our quirky traits and makes it seem so much less awful and in fact, very, very funny to be an idiot girl.

This is the kind of book you want to hand out to all of your friends just so you can all sit around and laugh together.

For some of Notaro’s writing, you should check out http://www.idiotgirls.com/ .

My recommendation: Read this. It’s wonderful and laughing this much makes anyone feel good. Hands down, the funniest book I’ve ever read.
Finished reading during my lunch break on August 4, 2005..

Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I’m going to start this review by explaining that I probably should have never read this book to begin with. This book is considered to be a love story involving time travel -- and I don’t especially like love stories, and I despise the idea of time travel. But on my frequent visits to the library, I’m trying to branch out some and read some different types of book. It’s on all the displays at the bookstores and Amazon.com keeps recommending the book to me. You’d think Amazon knows me by now. You’d think…

So first I’ll explain my dislike of time travel, which may have severely tempered my opinion of this book. In general, I’m okay with science fiction and fantasy, in small doses. But the concept of time travel is absurd to me. Absolutely and completely impossible. So why bother writing about it or thinking about it? I spend at least 50% of my life thinking about what I would do differently if could do it over. Time travel. That’s the ultimate dream for me. To be eighteen again, so many different choices I would have made, all the times I would have yes instead of no or maybe later. All the chances I would have taken, the things I would do differently. So to read or think about time travel is simply torture for me. A big tease, something so impossible that it can never happen, so why think of it?

This book presents time travel as a type of medical condition. Chronological displacement. A genetic defect that Henry is trying to cure.

The story is quite strange, though the writer begins each section with a date and the ages of the characters, so there isn’t much risk of confusion. But if you stop to think about the story, it sounds a little too bizarre and a bit lacking on the love element. An adult, married Henry travels back in time, meets his wife, Clare, as a six year old. He visits her on several occasions during her childhood, informing her that someday they’ll meet and be married. So as a college student, Clare runs into him, tells him they’re going to be married and they end up together. Call, me silly but I assume a love story should involve a little more choice.

I never felt that any great love existed between the two. I didn’t like the main characters very much at all. They both seemed so completely absorbed with their own small little world. I don’t like people like that and I don’t like reading about people like that. Maybe that’s why I prefer crime stories that involve people trying to make the world a better place. Clare was selfish and immature, her only goal in life was to get pregnant. Henry just wanted to get laid as much as possible.

I think that might have been the biggest turn-off with regard to this book. The sex is blatant, crude and a bit too much. This might be something that other readers enjoy or equate with romantic. To me, it just sounded gross. If a book must include sex, I prefer it be a bit more subtle and leave more to the imagination.

I didn’t like this book. I didn’t find it to be especially intriguing or romantic or enjoyable. The ending was more interesting than the beginning but mired in sadness. I’m beginning to think that branching out with regard to books may not have been one of my better ideas. The next time I consider reading a book because it has so many glowing reviews and so many people seem to love it, I need to remind myself that a large number of people also think George W. is a fine president. The majority doesn’t always know what is best.

My recommendation: A lot of people like this book, so I feel wrong in steering anyone away from it. I didn’t like it and I wish I hadn’t wasted time reading it. But then again, I don’t like romances or time travel.

Something Might Happen by Julie Myerson

Something Might Happen by Julie Myerson is a book about an event, a horrible tragic event that leads to a chain reaction of events. It’s very much about the way a person can fall apart and lose sight of what is important in the face of extreme events.

I like the way this book is written, unencumbered by excess punctuation. English majors are gasping in horror at the thought, but it makes the story flow exceptionally well. I couldn’t stop reading. The style of writing seems to place you directly in the story. You aren’t so much observing from the outside as you are living out the events. Problem is, these aren’t events you want to live through.

This book is unbelievably sad. I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that it is about a woman who’s best friend is murdered. Everyone makes an attempt to move forward with their lives, but something this awful results in the complete upheaval of their world.

I felt the ending was disappointing. I felt like I spent all this time, went through all this tragedy and didn’t have a satisfying resolution. The events in this book sort of went from very bad and horrible to even worse. Because this was so well-written, I ached reading this. But in the end, I didn’t feel like I was given anything in return for my pain. I spent several hours baking in the sun, unable to stop reading. I lost track of time and nearly experienced a heat stroke when I finally got up and went inside. Not a pleasant experience. When I finished the book I was angry. I didn’t feel like I gained anything from reading this book. I’m certainly not opposed to a sad story, but there needs to a point to it. I never saw the point in this story. It just happened and as a reader, you went along for the ride and ended up furious with the driver.

My recommendation: Too sad, without any sort of redeeming value. There are enough sad real events in the world without burdening yourself with some fictional ones.

Take Big Bites by Linda Ellerbee

Linda Ellerbee’s book, Take Big Bites, is about traveling and eating. Mostly, I think it’s about taking chances. Taking a trip alone, rafting the Colorado River, filming in Kabul, being adventurous.

I enjoyed this book, despite the fact that I don’t like food very much. Not much at all actually. I don’t like to prepare food and I don’t especially like to eat food. I would be perfectly content to just take a little pill each day to fulfill all my food needs. Don’t think I haven’t tried that. I was the queen of the diet pills during my younger days. But eventually, you have to eat food.

I don’t know much of anything about high quality food. I eat Lean Cuisine, and it tastes just fine, but the high sodium intake is affecting my blood pressure. Not to mention that after two or so weeks of nothing but Lean Cuisine I develop heartburn just thinking of the little frozen pizza waiting for me in the freezer. The only fast food establishments I’ll visit are Taco Bell and Whataburger. Scoff if you will, but if your life is as dull as mine, you take a certain pleasure in the different taste sensations that accompany the fire sauce and sour cream and cheese-like stuff offered by Taco Bell -- and I only go maybe once every two weeks, when I’m having an especially bad day and don’t care about my calorie intake.

I hate grocery stores and I don’t cook, not at all. Never.

I point all this out to prove what a great book Ellerbee has written. Taking into account that someone like me, who abhors food so much, actually enjoyed reading about food. In fact, reading sections of this book made me crave the food she was describing. Not that I’ll ever try any of it. Despite the fact that Dallas claims to have more restaurants than New York City, I will probably never set foot in most of them because visiting restaurants tends to involve having other people with you willing to go to restaurants. And I don’t have those other people required. Oh sure, I could go alone, and feel like a bigger loser than I am, sitting there by myself surrounded by lovely, happy people with their friends and family, being glared at by the staff because I’m taking up a table that could be used for two or more people who would leave a bigger tip. Visiting restaurants alone is really not even open for discussion for me. To others willing to do that, more power to you, but I’m not that brave. Yeah, I know, I can get on a plane to London all by myself, and stay there all by my lonesome for a week or so, but I can’t walk into Ciudad or Café Madrid alone. Go figure, I’m a dork. I’ve never in my life claimed to make sense.

So there, I like the idea of food. I just don’t like the actual product that is food. Like most things in life, food seems to promise so much, and deliver so little, except for more inches around my thighs. Food for me, again, like most things in life, works better in pictures and print, not reality.

Besides food though, this book is very much about traveling. Ellerbee writes about many different types of travel. Traveling alone, traveling with family, traveling for work. Traveling, I enjoy immensely. I like talking to strangers and I like seeing new places. I like seeing places that I’ve read about, seeing locations where history was created. I like checking into hotel rooms and being far away from home. I like being in a place where no one knows me or anything about me. I like not having a history. It never matters how long I’m away from home, I tend to never want to come back. This probably runs much deeper than a love of travel.

Ellerbee’s enthusiasm for travel made me admire her all the more.

Once the advisor at the my college newspaper walked into the newsroom and found me typing up an email to my boyfriend. She said, "You know Linda Ellerbee got fired for accidentally sending a letter to her boyfriend over the AP wire." I responded with, "Yeah, and look how that ruined her career."

When I was an aspiring young journalism major, I wanted to be Linda Ellerbee. She always seemed so smart and direct and put together. Put together, that’s all I ever wanted to be. From reading her stories, you are even more convinced of her put-togetherness. She’s really an impressive woman. She’s got friends, close family, and a career. I did well in wanting to be her. Unfortunately, I’ve failed somewhat miserably in my aspirations. But at least I can follow along in her book.

As a plus for people who do actually know something about preparing food – a recipe is included at the end of almost every chapter. For a brief moment I considered making the Pho that was described so well reading about it made my mouth water, but then I realized purchasing the ingredients would involve a trip to a grocery store and a visit down aisles other than the frozen food department, so the moment passed quickly.

My recommendation: Read this if you like food or travel and especially if you like both. Very well written, interesting stories.

Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman’s Ice Queen may be the most beautiful book I’ve ever read. With this book, words are worth a thousand pictures. Hoffman doesn’t so much tell a story as she paints images of moments and feelings and creates an intensity that overwhelms the reader.

In the simplest of descriptions, this is the story of a woman made of ice who falls desperately in love with a man made of fire. And the result of that love or more accurately, that obsession is steam, lots and lots of steam.

But this story is about so much more than the melting of the Ice Queen. It’s about family and it’s about memories. This book is about the way we shape the world around us, the world that doesn’t necessarily exist, but rather the world that we perceive, and the way that perception becomes our reality. The events of the story unfold so gradually and so startlingly. You realize, as does the main character how different the world is from what you once thought it was. On the surface, this is about a woman who survives the real world by turning it into a fairy tale, because the woman in the background, the woman who accidentally created this story, couldn’t go on anymore. I found the passage about the ice on the road and being lucky for the first time to be especially moving. I'm purposely being vague because I don't want to give too much away.

If I wrote novels, I would want to write like Hoffman writes. She has the ability to string together words that make me feel things that I didn’t think I was capable of feeling.

Perhaps the effect this book had on me had more to do with the place in which I happen to be at this point in my life – that point being confused and broken-hearted, disappointed, old and scared and tired, very, very tired, in a way that sleep can never cure – but whatever it was, reading this felt like opening up my soul. It felt like my chest was suddenly cracked open and the pain that had been building up for so long just drifted away. Then I knew that I would be okay, if only for a moment, it was a moment more than I’d had before. That sounds hokey and absurd, but I can’t think of a better way to describe the way this book made me feel.

There is one line in the book especially that made me stop reading, just so I could absorb the words, capture the moment and hold it. “Happily ever after doesn’t mean forever.” So simple and yet, reading it like that made everything better. It made me realize that just because something ended doesn’t mean that it never happened. Nothing takes away your memories, your moments. Just because you lose someone doesn’t mean that you’ve lost what you once had with that someone.

So my recommendation: Read this. I can’t imagine anyone not liking it.
Finished reading this on July 15, 2005

Getting Over Jack Wagner by Elisa Juska

I really wanted to like this book. I thought it sounded funny and cute and like something to which I could relate. Girl falls for rock stars, over and over again. Been there, done that. I spent the bulk of my teenage years waiting for Jon Bon Jovi to ride up on his motorcycle and take me away. (Funny, how I write that in a way that makes it sound like I’m not waiting for Jon Bon Jovi anymore ;)

I had thought this would be a book about people like those I know who fall for boys in bands. But the difference is, the girls I know fall for those guys in bands because they know that they aren’t at all what they appear to be on stage. They love the way they turn into hot sexy rockers on stage and then step off the stage and become the nice, sweet guys they’ve always known them to be. I think of my friends who spend their days working in offices and then head out to Deep Ellum later to watch their boyfriend – who also probably spends his days working in an office -- play guitar. That’s the what differentiates girls who actually dates rock stars from the groupies.

But once I started reading this book I realized that Eliza wasn’t so much in love with rock stars as she was in love with herself and some absurd image that she had of what a rock star was supposed to be like. Eliza, though she tried to deny it, was nothing more than a groupie.

Turns out this book isn’t really about a girl loving rock stars. Rather, it is a book about a child trapped in her past, longing for her father. The book implies that the only thing she remembered about the father that walked out on her was that he liked jazz music and I guess she made the connection that he was some sort of rock star. I say “implies’ because, well, it pretty much spells it out that she was wanting the rock star to be her father. The direct explanation was necessary because the connection never made much sense.

This book dwells on Eliza’s past, music boy after boy after boy. I found myself just skimming through theses sections because they were boring and tedious. It was the same story over and over again. She meets a talented guy, thinks he’s great, hooks up, changes her life for him, and then once she realizes he’s normal – stupid things like, he has a caring mother, he has a neat apartment, etc. – she runs and then acts like he’s committed some sort of atrocious crime by being normal.

The main character seemed so childish and silly. Which was maybe the point, mentally she never moved past being a ten-year-old who’s father walked out on her. She was in her late twenties and still trying to dress like a “rock chic.”

If this character really wanted to overcome her problems, maybe, rather than wasting all her energy pursuing and fucking musicians, she should have started searching for the man who abandoned her as a child. It may not have been an overall great experience, but maybe she would have at least arrived at some sort of closure in her life.

I didn’t find this book to be especially funny or clever. I really wasn’t even amused by all the 80s references. Rather than seem humorous, it just seemed very sad and pathetic. It was just another example of being unable to move forward in life.

My recommendation: Stay away from this book. It’s a waste of time. It’s boring and only barely makes sense.

Read: July 3, 2005

What Was She Thinking: Notes from a Scandal by Zoe Heller

On the surface, this book is about a 40 something year old art teacher having a sexual affair with a fifteen-year-old student.

More accurately though, I found this to a study in the effects of loneliness. True, horrible, deep loneliness and the effect it can have on a person. Loneliness is worse than depression. Depression, they can give you a drug to make you think things are better for a little while. But I’ve yet to hear of the doctor that can prescribe you with friends who you can trust and won’t abandon you as soon as the something better comes along.

The story is told through the eyes of another teacher who observes with careful detail the bizarreness taking place around her. The narrator is the one alone. Sheba, the art teacher who commits the crime, has a loving husband and two children and a beautiful home.

But the narrator of the story has only a cat to keep her company and on the holidays she visits her sister and her sister’s family. Her fascination with the details of the story seems unhealthy. I’ve read reviews of the book that regard her harshly. But as someone who can relate all too well to the state of complete and total loneliness, I viewed her fascination not so much as a sign of a mental illness, but rather a lack of anything better to focus on. Most “normal” people live their lives wrapped up in their own private universe, their family and their children and maybe a friend or two and not much else matters unless it directly affects that world. But for those of us without family or close friends, you have to focus on something. Our library books and TV and pets can only occupy so much of our minds. (Though I know people who do spend an unhealthy amount of their energy focusing on their pets, but this only proves my point.) When you don’t have anything else, you dwell on meaningless things. Your heart breaks more than it should when your friends don’t call and you try like hell to convince yourself that you’ll be fine when all along you know that you won’t be.

No one understands lonely unless they’ve felt it. There aren’t words to explain it. You either know it or you don’t. This book really reached out to me, because the writer seems to understand the state of lonely so clearly. I’ve never read a better or more accurate description of being alone than the following two paragraphs that I copied from pages 197-198 of the book.

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out to-do lists -- reorganize linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself -- slices of ice cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while , you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery.

People like Sheba think that they know what it’s like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Of the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her handwriting was the best thing about her. But about the drip, drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don’t know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to sit in the darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can’t bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, “Goodness, you’re a quick reader!” When you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don’t know what it is to be chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor’s hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and school room chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall flailing to the ground. About all this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

I enjoyed this book. I thought the story was interesting. While the subject matter seems salacious, the details of the affair are not graphic. There is nothing in it too offensive or gross.

My recommendation: I'm not even sure what category this books fits into. Not a romance, not a mystery. Just sort of a slice of life story about how someone’s irresponsible actions can turn his or her world upside down. It's quite interesting and well-written, so I'd recommend it.

Die a Little by Megan Abbott

Die a Little by Megan Abbott sounded like an excellent book. Old L.A. film noir. I don't know that the book lived up to its billing though. Simply setting a story in that time period doesn't necessarily elevate it to classic crime noir.

The book was okay. It was a quick read. While it was plenty dark, containing an adequate amount of prostitution and drugs and blackmail, I felt like it only skimmed the surface. It gave you a peek at all the dark nastiness that was old L.A., but it didn't take you that close. The danger was very much there, but in the writing, it was quick, not quite scary enough. I thought this had a lot of potential. I wanted to know more. I wanted to gain a better understanding as to why the things that were happening were happening.

But before you think me too harsh with regard to this book, I should point out that I'm very particular about my crime novels. At this point in my life I only really like mysteries written by three different women (for the record, that would be P.D. James, Ruth Rendell - who also writes as Barbara Vine, and Minette Walters). I'm trying to branch out and the fact that I read this should serve as evidence of my attempts. But this book just made me long for my usual British settings.

I didn't hate the book. I believe it was the author's first novel, so there may be excellent stories in her future. This is a very good start for a debut novel.

I spent a rainy Friday night reading this by the lamplight. (Yeah, I go all out on my weekends...) It served its purpose. The ending was something of a disappointment. I just wanted more intensity, more grime. When I finished the book I was wishing for a more gruesome, violent resolution. As far as I was concerned the villain deserved much worse.

My recommendation: If you like fast-paced mysteries, give it a try. Makes for a very decent rainy night read. The 50's L.A. setting is quite enjoyable.

Rottweiler by Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell delivers, always. The Rottweiler is no exception. This wasn't her best book, but it was, nonetheless, a very good book.

This is the usual murder mystery, set in London. I recently spent time in London and thoroughly enjoyed reading and recognizing the names of the streets. It made the story more vivid. Almost makes me want to go back and re-read other books that I've read that happen to be set in London.

There are several characters involved in this story. Maybe too many. I was a little disappointed with how some of the characters ended up. But it was fitting for the story, I guess.

I read this while working on my tan. If I'm going to be stuck in the Texas heat, I can't think of a better way to pass the day than out in my back yard with a book like this.

My recomendation: If you're a fan of murder mysteries, particularly those set in London, you'll probably like this.

Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

I bought this book a the used bookstore. I thought it was a great buy being that I'd heard so many good things about it. Also, there is a movie that has recieved nice reviews, but I can't comment on that because I've never seen it.

But overall, this book was boring. So very, very boring. I didn't like it much at all.

It's about a family and a small town in Newfoundland. Their lives are very isolated from the rest of the world. Not a lot happens, just everyday family stuff. I kept waiting for the big incident or something like that. As I said, a lot of people really like this book. I just need a little more action. This is probably the result of some form of ADD from which I most likely suffer.

My recommendation: Not really my kind of book. A village, a family and general tedium. I can think of better ways to spend my reading time, but another person, with different tastes, might like it quite a bit.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I read Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale when I was in high school and the book, quite simply changed my life. It opened my eyes to everything a woman needs to see about the world and often choses to ignore. The book made me realize how much we stand to lose, how much we are gradually losing and painted a chilling tale of what our future may hold.

Since then, she's been one of my favorite writers.

With Oryx and Crake she returns to her prolific, Handmaid's Tale form. This book is a tale of science gone mad - completely out of control. The ideas are extreme. This book is brutual in its starkness.

I read most of this book sitting directly in front of my fireplace during the coldest days of winter. It is not exactly a cozy, snuggly kind of book, but then again, I'm not really a cozy, snuggly kind of person. It leaves you with a lot to think about while sitting alone in a cold house on an empty February night. I've lost count of the nightmares I've had that have stemmed from this book.

My only problem was the ending. If you've read Handmaid's Tale, then you are familiar with this sort of ending. She leaves you hanging, guessing. After all that reading, I get to the final page and feel like, "that's it?"

My recommendation: Excellent book. But harsh, paints the picture of a very frightening future. Certainly not for everyone.