#5: Deception Point, Dan Brown

I like Dan Brown. I know this is an unpopular sentiment, but I think the man writes a good thriller. (Besides Digital Fortress, but I believe that was his first, so he deserves some leeway.) This was the only one I hadn't read, so I thought I'd finish up the oeuvre while notching a quickie.

Now, in some ways, it was a little too James Bond for me (or, as it would happen, Tomb Raider, which I watched at some point during my reading). There were a couple of sequences that I just couldn't buy...like when they're sitting on a calving glacier and manage to not only live, but get an SOS out. Please. I've been to Alaska, I've seen those things fall, and it ain't pretty. No one's surfing off one of those chunks of ice and living to tell the tale. Not protagonists Rachel Sexton and Michael Tolland and not 007 and Lara Croft.

But overall it was enjoyable, and I totally thought I had the bad guy figured out...only to be completely wrong. My favorite Dan Brown book remains Angels and Demons but that's okay, it's a tough one to beat. The only outstanding point remaining: When is The Solomon Key coming out?!? I've read that he has writer's block, and as a sufferer myself, I can't really blame him.

Next up: I tried to read two more erudite books, Abigail Thomas' Three-Dog Life and Anthony Doerr's Four Seasons in Rome, but couldn't get into either of them. I haven't given up entirely but since I've had jury duty this week, I've opted for a book that's easy to pick up and put down: Sue Grafton's R is for Ricochet. I think I've only read two of the others in the series; I find them enjoyable, but generally let the books find me. This one comes courtesy of my father.

#4: Dedication, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Congratulations to Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Kraus: Your book might actually be the worst one I'll read all year! I hope you've saved your pennies, ladies, as I imagine once your book contract runs out, you'll never be offered another one again.

I suppose it's my own fault. I read The Nanny Diaries. Yes, it was a bestseller, but it's the subject that sold it, not the writing. I didn't bother to read the second book, Citizen Girl, as it was universally panned. But I hadn't heard anything about Dedication and since I found the premise interesting (the protagonist's ex-boyfriend becomes a major rock star based on songs that are all about her personal business), I thought I'd give it a try. I should have saved myself instead. It's just stupid and entirely predictable. Blech!

Next up: Dan Brown's Deception Point

#3: Museum of the Missing, Simon Haupt

Museum of the Missing is a fantastic book, one that I highly recommend for any fan of art. As the title suggests, Haupt looks at the stories surrounding works of art (paintings mostly) that have been stolen. Some have been located, some are probably lost forever. I suppose I never really thought about why people steal paintings, besides simple monetary value. But there seem to be all sorts of reasons -- a 3,000 pound Henry Moore sculpture was likely stolen for the value of its bronze. Seriously, thieves stole it in the middle of the night and probably melted it down. Can you imagine?

But Haupt also points out that people are often able to steal these works because they're so poorly guarded. And I realized how many times I have been in museums, especially in South America and Eastern Europe, where that's totally true, where no one else is walking the floor and there aren't any cameras. In fact, I have used that to my advantage...to take photographs without having paid the b.s. photo fee at the desk. But it would never have occurred to me to steal a piece of art. And that was a strange, self-affirming realization...thank god, it never has occurred to me.

So anyway...Museum of the Missing, I highly recommend it. It's just a fascinating look at all these individual stories about classic works of art that you'll never really be aware of, because they're gone. Imagine if the Mona Lisa had been stolen as plunder 400 years ago, imagine what we'd all have lost. It just seems crazy.

Book #4: Dedication by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

#2: Baby Proof, Emily Giffin

I really adore Emily Giffin's books. Yes, they're Chick Lit but they're smartly written, have heroines you root for from the very beginning, and avoid the lame endings. I'd read all three of her books previously, and when I saw Baby Proof on the "buy one, get one 50 percent off" shelf at Borders, I grabbed it immediately.

So, yes, for my second book of the year, I returned to a previously read tome. Mostly just as a subconscious backlash against all the crap I read last year.

Although I do prefer her first two books, Something Borrowed and Something Blue, I'm still a big fan of Baby Proof. One of the main reasons? Lake Como gets a starring role. I love Lake Como. It rocks.

Book #3: Museum of the Missing by Simon Haupt

#1: The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett

Wow, it's March 18 and this is my first post of the year. Yikes!

On the up side, while I may have let the blog slide, I've been a good girl when it comes to reading. We've got 5 entries on tap for today. But on the flip side, those entries are going to be mighty short...I've forgotten most of the details.

So, The Pillars of the Earth. Two thumbs up, I say. It wasn't the greatest book I've ever read, but it was eminently readable. The characters were likable and for a book the size of a doorstop, it rolled along well; there weren't any slow sections. So I see why it's a fan fave. I did try to read the next book though (World Without End?) but didn't really get into it, mostly because uses different characters, and after spending 1,000 pages with the old ones, I wanted them back. So that one will stay on the shelf for another time, when I've forgotten all the major details of the first (oh wait, that's like now...).

Book #2: Emily Giffin's Baby Proof

Atonement and P.S. I Love You (films)

You didn't think I was done, did you? Sucka.

I don't usually dabble in movie reviews here (hence, the title of the blog), but movie reviews of books I've just read (or, in the case of P.S. I Love You, not) seems fair...

I saw Atonement two weeks ago, and I liked it, but didn't love it. (The friend that I went with loved it, though, as did, apparently, the Golden Globe folks.) It followed the book exactly (though the second section, about Robbie's trek through France, was much shorter) and I felt devastated all over again at the end. So mostly I'm just going to blame my ambivalence on Keira Knightly, who I generally can't stand. I don't know why, either, except that instead of seeing her character, I usually just see her. Two thumbs up to James McAvoy, though. I've loved him since Wimbledon (though if googles himself, like all good people do, and sees this, please stop biting your nails! It's very noticeable on film.)

I took my 13-year-old neighbor to see P.S. I Love You on Saturday. She also liked this one better than I. It was an entertaining film for an afternoon, and the men are absolutely yummy (hello, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and the unpronounceable Gerard Butler!), but...I don't know, the writers didn't spend enough time building up any of the relationships so that we really cared. I'm not sure I'd see it again on DVD - which is the true barometer for a good chick flick (my top 5 for a cheering-up, thank you High Fidelity: Wimbledon, How to Lose a Guy in 8 Days, Bring It On, The Holiday, and Catch and Release.)

Clearly I've gotten totally off-track here, so let's move on...

The Final Tally

I realize, of course, that it's not January 1 yet, but I am pretty sure that this is where my list ends for 2007...at #26. I could read another four books in six days if I were to choose the right ones, but speed-reading through books was never the point of this exercise. So, as I wipe away a tear for another year with less than 30 books read, I am going to dive into The Pillars of the Earth, a fat book that I only have from the library until January 9. Two people have told me it's one of the best books they've ever read, so I have high hopes. (I've just read High Fidelity, so I have to do this. Top 5 Favorite Books of All Time, in no particular order: Possession, The Time Traveler's Wife, The Red Tent, In the Skin of a Lion, and A Moveable Feast.)

See you next year!

#26: The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler

If you're thinking to yourself, you like Jane Austen and you like book clubs so this is a book for you, don't be fooled: The Jane Austen Book Club is awful. Blech. I had this one out from the library for quite some time and never got around to it, only to pick it up again to read it before the movie comes out on DVD. (It did actually come out in the theatre, right? I mean, I saw previews, but never actually saw it listed on the board.) Now, I probably won't watch it on DVD, it was that bad.

Mostly what annoyed me was the disorganization, which I realize is an odd thing to say. But the book's structure is all over the place. I figured this out during the prologue, which is probably when I should have put the book down. The first clue was the narrator, who mostly uses (but not always), "we." But you never figure out which of the main six characters are narrating because even though she's established that it's one of them (page 5), everyone is always spoken about in 3rd person. And then at the end of some of the chapters, Fowler throws in the most random asides that, as far as I can tell, have nothing to do with the story. Take page 77. The chapter that's ending is about Allegra, who's just gone skydiving after breaking up with her girlfriend. Then there's a break, and suddenly a factual page about Austen's struggle to publish Pride and Prejudice. It's like, huh? These little random asides happen at the end of each of the six chapters, but each time they're totally random. One is a small excerpt of Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, the book that Austen's characters are reading in Northanger Abbey; another is a couple of paragraphs about a dog show.

So that's me. From a generalist's perspective, for a novel titled The Jane Austen Book Club, it's not much about Jane Austen's books or a book club. It's all strange, very strange.

#25: High Fidelity, Nick Hornby

Fittingly, I started the year with Nick Hornby, and now I'm (just about) ending with it...although I suppose I could have timed it better to have this be the last book of the year (alas).

Well, I don't have that much to say about this one, as it's EXACTLY like watching the movie. Even the jokes are the same. In that respect, I wasn't that keen on the book since I've seen the movie a million times, but that's not really anything to do with the book itself. The only part that was slightly ambiguous was the ending...do Rob and Laura stay together? It kind of seems like it (and the movie doesn't help, since clearly he gets his act together and they do), but three pages from the end, in response to his marriage proposal, Hornby writes, "'Well, you've asked.' But she says it sweetly, as if she knows that what I've asked is a nice thing, that it has some sort of meaning, even though she's not interested." Hmm. Well, it's Christmas...let's be generous of spirit and just pretend they stick together, shall we?

Next up: The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler.

#24: The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri

I finished The Namesake yesterday, and all I can say is: thank god. I was sure this awful book and the slow march through its pages was totally going to derail my 30 books plan (which would really suck three years in a row, no?). I am absolutely shocked that Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Interpreter of Maladies -- the stories within may be fantastic, but her writing is awful, and that doesn't change terribly much from book to book. (And isn't the Pulitzer a celebration of language, not a harbinger of its demise?)

But back to The Namesake...The story itself was cold; I didn't empathize with anyone, because Lahiri's characterizations were so stiff. It would be like feeling for cardboard. I feel like that part's not even worth discussing, it was so bland. The worst part of The Namesake was the grammar. An example from page 260:

"In the Xerox room, she makes a copy of the resume. She sticks it in the bottom of her bag. Then she types up a new envelope and puts the original in the professor's mailbox." From the syntax, she should be putting the original envelope back into the mailbox -- but no, it's the resume that the character has returned. That sort of bad grammar litters Lahiri's novel, and frankly, destroys it. (Seriously, a Pulitzer?) I had to hold myself back from writing a "Save Yourself While You Can" note in the front of the library book.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but surely that version of The Namesake must be better, right? I should also mention, I tried to read P.S. I Love You as a break a couple of days ago, and that one was even worse. I got to about page 12 before snapping it shut. It was aw-ful. Seriously horrific. Words cannot even describe. (The writer, Cecelia Ahern, is apparently the 20-some daughter of Ireland's former prime minister. Clearly daddy got his little girl a book deal. Though I am wondering if this is the same Cecelia Ahern who is the executive producer of Samantha Who? It's not the most common name, but still, I don't see how it could be possible...)

Every time I read (or attempt to read) books like this, I want to get back to work on my own -- because surely if there are books like this out there and published, mine has a decent shot. So it at least makes me feel better in one regard.

Anyway, so onto happier thoughts...I have six books left to read, and a little over four weeks to read them in. Not so bad. Still, I am torn. Do I read six books that I know will be quick in order to reach my goal, or do I read three to four longer, more complex books and just suck up a final tally in the high 20s? Time will tell, but competing for a spot...in one corner, we have The Golden Notebook and The World Without Us, in the other Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and Sue Grafton.

#23: Falling Out of Fashion, Yampolsky

I'm going to keep this one short, for two main reasons:
1. I finished this book about 10 days ago and have almost completely forgotten what happened.
2. I am no longer allowed to bitch about these awful chick-lit books if I'm going to continue to read them, knowing full well that they're going to be awful.

So, Falling Out of Fashion: in a word, ridiculous. The book was written by Karen Yampolsky, Jane Pratt's former assistant. (For those not in the magazine world, Jane Pratt was the editor of Sassy and Jane.) I am not intimately familiar with the details of Pratt's story, but from what I know and could tell, Yampolsky followed her bio pretty closely. I got the feeling that Jane Pratt signed a promise-not-to-bitch contract when she left Jane, so her assistant decided to write a defensive book for her. And clearly the assistant loved Jane Pratt; she is portrayed as an absolute angel whose vision was destroyed by the corporate machine. (Personally, I loved Sassy as a teen, but thought Jane was awful. It was like the white kid who wears his baggy jeans around his knees, hoping to convince you he's an absolute bad-ass, and just ends up looking pathetic. Jane deserved its early retirement.)

Having said all that, Yampolsky put together a well-written book. Hopefully next time she'll just create original material.

Next up: The Namesake, which I finished yesterday afternoon.

#22: Atonement, Ian McEwan

I picked up Atonement because the ads for the movie look good, and I generally try to read the book before seeing the adaptation on screen. So there we were...

At first, I was totally disappointed, and didn't know how I was going to get through the entire thing. The book is written in three sections, and the first part is more or less the literary version of Godsford Park (though now that I think of it, I believe that was its own book). The story was pretty tedious -- Atonement is about a rich British family in the 40s, and their relationships and the falling apart of the clan. I didn't really identify with anyone: the mother, Emily, was cold; Cecilia (Keira Knightly's character) was a strange combination of supercilious and flighty; and the protagonist, Briony, was a spoiled little girl. I felt throughout the first section that it was taking way too long to get to the main event, the crime, the details of which we could more or less anticipate from the book jacket.

But then my feelings completely changed in the second part. Robbie, Cecilia's disgraced love, is packed off to fight in France from his jail cell. I don't know why I suddenly liked this part better, except perhaps that his trek to reach the beaches of Normandy, which is more or less what this section was about, was fascinating. He desperately wanted to reach the beach to get home, to get back to Cecilia, and it carried him -- and me -- along.

By the end, I was hooked, and I have to say, this is one of the saddest books I have ever read. It seems like things are about to reach a decently happy conclusion, and even though there are small signs that that's not how Atonement's really going to end, you want so much for it to. But you begin believe it, and it's even worse when it doesn't come to pass. I suppose it's also that the people who most deserve a happy ending don't get it, and the true criminal goes on to live a long and successful life -- as if there isn't any justice (or poetic justice) in the world. (Or karma, I'm a big believer in that one.) I wish I could pinpoint exactly what McEwan does here, because it's powerful.

So I'd give Atonement two thumbs up, and then some. I'd even give the book as someone to a gift, and my list of gift-books is a pretty short one.

Next up: Falling Out of Fashion, which I've already finished.

#21: The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, Lauren Willig

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.

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...

#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.

#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:

“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.

#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.

#16: Angels, Marian Keys

I liked this book when I read it a couple of years ago, and since I have been tired of reading blah books, I decided to pick it up again. What can I say? It's a sweet novel about romance and Los Angeles, a great choice for a sunny day at the pool.

Next up? This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosely. I'm about halfway through it already.

Alarming

Last month an AP-Ipsos poll found that 1 in 4 American adults haven't read a book in the past year. That's like 7 million people. And for people that had cracked open a book, the median number was 4, while women who classified themselves as readers generally read 9. Wow. Suddenly I am feeling much, much better about my blog.

CNN link: http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/08/21/reading.ap/