By now, everyone knows that I like Lauren Willig. I think she's terribly clever and incredibly smart while also seeming like an ordinary, decent girl. All pluses there. So you can imagine my joy when I managed to get an advance copy of her newest book, (which comes out January 31). I don't want to ruin it, or lose my advance-book privileges, so all I'll say is that I loved it, and would put it just behind The Secret History of the Pink Carnation on the list. She wisely avoided the pitfalls of the last couple books and turned out a fun read. (Still though, I'm rooting for Jane. Bring Jane back and give the girl some romance!)
Next up: Ian McEwan's Atonement. It started out sloooow, but now that I'm about 80 pages from the end, it's really picked up the pace. So I have high hopes for a grand finish now.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
30 Great Books in 2007?
So, as the name of this blog suggests, I'm supposed to read 30 books a year. I had a bit of a wake-up call on November 1 when I realized that I'm only on #20 with 8.5 weeks to go before the bells toll for 2008. Can I make it?
The answer is: yes. Or at least, I'm really going to try. I've got to buckle down and read a book a week, plus double up twice. Still, I think I can do it. I met my goal for week one (November 4-10) with The Seduction of the Crimson Rose (post coming next) and I've only got about 80 pages left of Atonement.
So let's start counting down to the new year. 10, 9, 8...
The answer is: yes. Or at least, I'm really going to try. I've got to buckle down and read a book a week, plus double up twice. Still, I think I can do it. I met my goal for week one (November 4-10) with The Seduction of the Crimson Rose (post coming next) and I've only got about 80 pages left of Atonement.
So let's start counting down to the new year. 10, 9, 8...
#20: Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
Overall, I liked this book and would recommend it. And I have to say I like it even more now that I've just looked at the writer's website. Eat, Pray, Love just sort of ended, without a real conclusion, but Gilbert is pretty forthcoming on her site, so now I don't have any remaining questions. (Basically, I was wondering what happened with her and Felipe, and wasn't so sure they'd stayed together based on how she wrote it. But it sounds like all is well.)
Despite some annoying parts -- it seriously bugged me when she writes that she won't divulge the name of the ashram, as if it ought to be all hers -- and the obvious neuroses, on the whole I felt like Elizabeth Gilbert is someone I would probably be friends with. I totally empathized with not wanting to follow the traditional path, and get married or have a baby; I understood wanting to be free and keep traveling. It's how I have lived my life. So despite the minor annoyances, I just bypassed those parts of the story as I would the slightly annoying habits of my friends -- and accepted it as just part of the package.
But mostly, it was a sad reminder that I should have gone to Bali last year when I had the chance. (I got freaked out by the State Department warning.) Oh well. Maybe next year, if I make it to Australia? It just sounds AMAZING.
So, in sum, a thumbs up to Eat, Pray, Love.
Despite some annoying parts -- it seriously bugged me when she writes that she won't divulge the name of the ashram, as if it ought to be all hers -- and the obvious neuroses, on the whole I felt like Elizabeth Gilbert is someone I would probably be friends with. I totally empathized with not wanting to follow the traditional path, and get married or have a baby; I understood wanting to be free and keep traveling. It's how I have lived my life. So despite the minor annoyances, I just bypassed those parts of the story as I would the slightly annoying habits of my friends -- and accepted it as just part of the package.
But mostly, it was a sad reminder that I should have gone to Bali last year when I had the chance. (I got freaked out by the State Department warning.) Oh well. Maybe next year, if I make it to Australia? It just sounds AMAZING.
So, in sum, a thumbs up to Eat, Pray, Love.
#19: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, Brock Clarke
Bleh. Despite the buzz, I just couldn't stomach this book. (I picked it up originally because of the basic premise: narrator Sam Pulsifer burns down the Emily Dickinson Home by accident. And as an Amherst grad, I wanted to see what was being done, even fictionally, to my alma mater.)
Anyway, so we (we being this book and I) started off badly. I just didn't like the narrator. He seemed so pathetic, and incapable of standing up for himself. And since the novel is first-person, it didn't bode well. (I even took this book on a week-long vacation, and had a hard time opening it.) The other problem is the writer's cleverness; once or twice is fine, but Clarke hits you over the head with it every chance he gets.
For example, courtesy of page 117:
Anyway, so we (we being this book and I) started off badly. I just didn't like the narrator. He seemed so pathetic, and incapable of standing up for himself. And since the novel is first-person, it didn't bode well. (I even took this book on a week-long vacation, and had a hard time opening it.) The other problem is the writer's cleverness; once or twice is fine, but Clarke hits you over the head with it every chance he gets.
For example, courtesy of page 117:
“Forget the drinks,” Morgan said. “We want you to tell us how to burn down houses like the one you burned down. And after we do, we can write a book about it.”
"An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England," G-ooff said. "We've already come up with the title."
"Why do you even need to be an arsonist to write the book?" I asked. "You could always just pretend to have burned down the houses and write the book anyway."
The paragraph itself is funny, but page after page, the device just gets old. In the end, it's the, well, end, that just ruins the novel. Basically, once Sam gets out of the slammer, he gets married and has kids, and never mentions his crime. But then the son of one of the people killed at the Emily Dickinson House shows up and tried to destroy his life in revenge. At the same time, coincidentally (or not?) someone starts burning down other writers' homes and Sam looks like the culprit. Since he's the narrator, you know it's not him (unless Clarke had decided to pull a Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which he doesn't.)
After bumbling his way through some 260 pages, Sam eventually figures out who did what. But the logic is off. He decides that the real culprit (whose name I will omit, to avoid the spoiler) is the actual culprit because that person utters the exact same sentence as the detective. "As every detective knows, the rhetoric of crime and the rhetoric of crime solving are the very same, and if Detective Wilson were trying to solve the crimes, did that mean that [real culprit] had committed one of them?” What a cop-out.
And in the end, Sam learns nothing. The moral? "Maybe this is what is means to take responsibility for something: not to tell the truth, but to make sure you pick a lie for a good reason and then stick to it.” In the end, Sam stays pathetic and still doesn't stand up for himself. So what was the friggin' point?
Boo. Seriously.
Next up: Eat, Pray, Love#18: Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, Jasper Fforde
Sadly, I've forgotten most of what happened in this book, despite liking it immensely. I think it may actually have been the best in the Thursday Next series since the first one. (Although I have also completely forgotten the basic plots of all of those, too. Alas.) I just looked on Wikipedia, but the plot synopsis is bare. Oh well. On a brighter note, the page says that First Among Sequels is the first in a new four-part series!
Alright, moving on: next up is An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.
Alright, moving on: next up is An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.
#17: This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley
It's been awhile since I've blogged; I actually finished this book at the end of September. Because of the delay, the details are wee bit fuzzy, but I'll do my best.
I picked up This Year You Write Your Novel after I read an excerpt in O -- not only did I generally like what I read, but I felt like Mosley hit upon one essential fact of novel-writing: you have to make the time for it. It may sound like a silly point, but most novel-writing books tend to gloss over this important fact with visions of unending prose and award-winning character development. Mosley, on the other hand, acknowledged how difficult it is to find the time and insisted that you have to do it anyway. I respected his no-nonsense attitude (which incidentally reminded me of his novels). So I picked up the book. Sadly, I could have just stuck with the excerpt. This Year You Write Your Novel is really short, and just sort of introduces the basic concepts of plot, pacing, etc, all of which I'm pretty sure I already knew.
But still, I suppose one lesson is better than none.
Well, lucky me, since I've read another 3 books since I last blogged, I will just move on to the next post...here comes Thursday Next: First Among Sequels.
I picked up This Year You Write Your Novel after I read an excerpt in O -- not only did I generally like what I read, but I felt like Mosley hit upon one essential fact of novel-writing: you have to make the time for it. It may sound like a silly point, but most novel-writing books tend to gloss over this important fact with visions of unending prose and award-winning character development. Mosley, on the other hand, acknowledged how difficult it is to find the time and insisted that you have to do it anyway. I respected his no-nonsense attitude (which incidentally reminded me of his novels). So I picked up the book. Sadly, I could have just stuck with the excerpt. This Year You Write Your Novel is really short, and just sort of introduces the basic concepts of plot, pacing, etc, all of which I'm pretty sure I already knew.
But still, I suppose one lesson is better than none.
Well, lucky me, since I've read another 3 books since I last blogged, I will just move on to the next post...here comes Thursday Next: First Among Sequels.
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