Revamped List? Oh no!

When school started up again in the fall, I barely had enough time to read for my assignments, let alone for pleasure, so sadly I had to take a break from my conquest.  However, this semester has been a little bit lighter, so I can get back into the groove.  I found out that the original “1001″ books list I was working off of had been revamped.  To my dismay, several of the books I had read in the last year were the ones that had been removed.  Just my luck.  So instead of scrapping the old list, I’m going to continue working on that one.  I figure if it was originally on the list, it must still be worthwhile.

I didn’t write reviews for these two books, which I’ve finished since my last update:

• The Crying of Lot 49
• The Buddha of Suburbia

Those will be coming in a bit, and I’m currently working on “Agnes Grey” by Anne Bronte so I can finish up with the Bronte sisters!  I also read Scottoline’s most recent book “Lady Killer”, because sometimes you need a break from 1800’s British Literature and coming-of-age stories.

Daddy’s Girl by Lisa Scottoline

Daddy’s Girl isn’t the first book I’ve read by Lisa Scottoline. I saw her book, The Vendetta Defense on the bargain shelf at Barnes and Noble about five thousand years ago, and so I bought it. Since then, I’ve read all of her books. It kills me that I have one hardcover and the rest are paperbacks, as they’re all lined up on my bookshelf and only one is bigger than the rest. But somehow I deal.

Lisa Scottoline’s books are definitely a guilty pleasure for me. Yes, they’ve won awards, they’re written well, but they’re not all that deep. There I go, sounding pretentious again, but if my intention is to become a well-read individual, bringing up Dead Ringer in the middle of a conversation about meaningful literature won’t get anyone brownie points.

That being said, I love all of them, and Daddy’s Girl was no exception. Scottoline has a way of creating such likeable characters, and I’m always looking for a cameo from her favorite characters. Without spoiling, I wasn’t disappointed in my hunt for Rosato and Associates.

The main character in this installment isn’t a lawyer at all, but a law professor. Basically, she gets stuck in a high-security prison when a riot breaks out, and is left to deliver a message to the wife of a corrections officer that died in front of her. Scottoline gives her characters such vivid details. While I’ve read descriptions about a person’s clothes, house, and lifestyle before, hers are never boring. And no small detail is thrown in without being called upon later.

I’ve gotten to the point where I can predict the basic premise of upcoming chapters in her books, they’re different enough yet they all follow a sort of pattern. I was very, very wrong. I guess I was too confident in my abilities. I read most of this book in the car on the way to South Carolina, and I told the driver of the car “oh, how much do you want to bet there is a car tailing her, and she’s going to be driven off the road?” It seemed so likely, and yet I was glad I didn’t actually bet money on it, because it didn’t happen.

There is a great twist at the end, just when you think it’s all over, that really makes this book stand out for me. Sure, it’s not philosophizing over the division of classes or attempting to be the next great American novel, but it’s a good read. Without fail, I always want to pack up and move to Philadelphia after reading her novels. After Daddy’s Girl, I almost broke out my little duffel bag and said “why not?” She loves her city and that definitely comes through in the writing.

The only reason I wouldn’t tell a legal thriller fan to go out and read this book is because I’d say that they should give her other books a chance first. Start in chronological order, and you can really see how Scottoline has branched out and developed her wonderful characters. She knows her stuff (in both legal matters and otherwise) and conveys her great stories so eloquently.

On a more serious note, I do have another review on the way, another one of the 1001. But I won’t say which one! Please, take a guess.

Beach Books

There’s nothing like laying out on the sand and reading a book on the beach. However, I’m much more likely to be the person splashing around in the water (riptides? undertows? who cares!) than reading on the beach. But on my recent vacation, I found myself doing just that.

I brought three books with me, because we have a fourteen hour car ride (both ways), so I figured I’d have a lot of down time to fill. Lucky for me, I stumbled upon Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog the night before I left. I promptly bought it for my iPod, and I ended up watching that in the car (for longer than I’d like to admit) instead of reading.

And so there I was, laying on the beach, with this gorgeous view:

I decided I’d partake in that old pastime: laying on the beach, reading a book. I highly doubt that the book I chose to read was very “beach-worthy”, since I wasn’t by Nicholas Sparks or Danielle Steele. But all in all, the experience wasn’t too bad. I wouldn’t trade in splashing around for reading very often (I can always read at home, I can’t always get crushed by waves), but it was enjoyable.

I think I just needed to change my perspective. I always pictured beach books to involve terribly cliché dialogues and plots, maybe a vampire or two. To me, the symbol of beach reading was always a trashy romance novel, with a cover that might look like one of the shots taken the episode of America’s Next Top Model where the girls pose with Fabio, of all people.

I really just needed to say to myself “it doesn’t matter what book you bring”. I actually think the book I chose had a very aesthetically pleasing cover (you’ll see that later in the week), and while it had some romantic elements, it mostly involved conspiracies and some very eccentric individuals. That’s exactly my cup of tea, and if I so chose to read it on the sand, then so what? Just because I judge what other people read on the beach doesn’t mean they’re doing the same thing to me.

I didn’t tan, though. Tanning just isn’t something I do. I have a faint bathing suit line, and some sunburn on the spot I forgot to apply sunscreen too, but no tan, despite the hour or so I spent just laying there reading.

I finished two of my three books while I was gone, and came home to another book sitting in my doorstep with I’m incredible excited about! When a book is originally banned in the United States for a few decades, it’s probably pretty good.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

I never expected that Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible would help me win trivia night at the bar. But sure enough, one of the last questions involved naming one of the many official languages of South Africa, one that was inherited by the Dutch, etc., etc. I wasn’t sure of the answer, but I contributed “Afrikaans”, since that was mentioned in the part of Poisonwood that I just read. And bingo, we were the only team that got it right. The question only ended up being worth two points, but we didn’t win by much so every point counted. And I believe I was given the name “MVP” after that. Just saying.

The Poisonwood Bible definitely isn’t a beach book, although I read most of it on the rocks in a cove near the St. Lawrence River. The story revolves around a mother and her four daughters, each of them taking turns with the narration. It’s amazing how Kingsolver was able to create five narrating style so different from each other that it was engaging and interesting. Orleanna Price, the mother, tells her part of the story from her home in Georgia, reflecting on the time she spent as a missionary in the Belgian Congo during it’s revolutionary period. The daughters’ narration comes from within the Congo itself, or wherever life happened to take them afterwards.

I really enjoyed the little details that Kingsolver included, her descriptions and ‘native’ characters were painted so well. I’d seen the movie “Lumumba”, so I knew most of the historical background before reading the book, but it was interesting to see the missionary perspective (albeit fictional) of such a chaotic time.

Between the shifting narrations and the natural progression of the book through revolution, coup, and the aftermath, it was definitely a novel that kept me interested. The mirroring of Lumumba’s collapse and the downward spiral of the Price family was a fascinating parallel, and the story had so many layers and themes that all tied together beautifully.

My only complaint is that the ending sections seemed to drag on a bit. Without giving away any crucial plot details, the last two sections of the novel are a little more bland and anti-climactic as opposed to the consistent highs of the first portions (there were seven sections in total). I felt that these parts of the story could have been told in a different way to keep with the rest of the novel’s pacing.

I found myself making constant comparisons to Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, which is a non-fiction narrative about an English woman growing up in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. I’d read that book for a class I took a few years ago, and if I had to choose a favorite, I’d choose Fuller. Kingsolver’s book is excellent and I’d highly recommend it, but the non-fiction aspect of Don’t Let’s just gave it the added dimension that not even the most brilliant prose can match. But instead of turning this into a review for Fuller’s work, I’ll simply end it by saying that Kingsolver’s is also quite wonderful and it’s one that I might not sell back to the bookstore!

Midnight Twilight? Not For Me

Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but the midnight release parties for Stephanie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn pretty much snuck up on me, despite the fact that I have many friends that are bouncing off the walls in excitement. Probably because I won’t be going.

One thing I realized, however, as I got my Border’s email about the last chance to pre-order the book, is that I really miss being that excited about a book that I need to get it at midnight.

I was a Harry Potterphile, I’ll admit it. Once I’d read the first three I was hooked, and I went at midnight for the rest (first to Barnes and Noble, then Borders after the B&N near me closed). By the time the Half Blood Prince and the Deathly Hallows were released, my obsession had toned down to the point where I went at midnight just so I could get the new book and read it before I was spoiled by every website known to man. But even so, I enjoyed the atmosphere, the kids running around with their costumes and the excitement of those final ten minutes before the bookstore employees could open the boxes of fresh new books.

The first glimpse of footage came out for the Half Blood Prince movie this week, in the form of a teaser trailer. That is my favorite book of the seven, and I’m looking forward to the movie, but I couldn’t even muster up enough excitement to try to find it in HD quality and instead I just settled for the Youtube postings.

I haven’t read any of the Twilight novels, I don’t have a particular desire to see the movie, but I miss getting so caught up in a book that the first glimpse of the cover art, months before it came out, was something to celebrate. I was debating reading Twilight and the other novel last week, so that I could experience the excitement with other people, but I couldn’t bring myself to make the effort. I don’t even know if Breaking Dawn is the third or fourth novel in the series, or what the other titles are. It just wasn’t something I was interested in and I couldn’t force it simply to get caught up in the frenzy of midnight book parties.

Have I grown out of being excited about books? I hope not. It’s just that the books I’ve gotten excited about recently are ones that have been out for years, sometimes decades. No one is going to through a release party for the mass market paperback edition of any book, even Harry Potter or Twilight.

Maybe I’m a book nerd for even entertaining the thought of reading two (three?) novels just so I could go to a book party. But I’m temporarily on antibiotics that prohibit alcohol, so I was in need of some other way to spend my Friday night. Maybe I can hire some kids to run around my apartment in cloaks and host their own trivia contests.

Speaking of trivia contests…that’s another entry on another day, once I’ve finished the book I’m reading now!

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

I read Zadie Smith’s White Teeth on my trip to Italy this past spring (I sound like quite the world traveler, but really it was just me spending my spring break visiting friends studying in Florence). There were lots of plane rides, train rides, and bus rides in which to read it. And even though I read it months ago, I still want to review it because I enjoyed it so much.

Maybe I sound pretentious by reading all of the books that one is “supposed” to read (according to Boxall). Yes, the last six or so books I’ve read have come from that list, but that doesn’t mean I’m not open to other books. However, I’ve found that most of what I’ve read on the list so far has been really enjoyable, so until I hit a couple of clunkers in a row, I’ll keep chipping away at it.

Smith’s novel follows three families across several generations. Each of the characters had a distinct personality that oftentimes had qualities I would dislike in actual people, but they fit the person so well that I just went along with it. The way she was able to intertwine the lives of all three was ingenious, and as cliche as it is, I really found myself having a hard time putting it down (despite the end of the plane/train/bus ride).

I’m a sucker for a good romance in a story (not trashy romance novels, more along the lines of Heathcliff and Catherine), and this story had lots of angst and drama, but not to the point it was overdone. Each couple comes together in their own way, and they all have such unique dynamics. Arranged marriages, unconventional ones, unrequited love, elicit affairs. If there was a checklist for every sort of way for two characters to romantically interact, Smith hit them all. And yet, the story is so involved in other things that you’re not bowled over or smothered by all of the romantic tension.

The story goes from the victory and defeat of combat war to teenage rebellion to the dilemma between religion and science. It transitions from one theme to another beautifully, and it helps that each section of the book focuses primarily on one family over another, to keep things organized. I’m not a literary critic by any means, but Zadie Smith’s first novel is certainly one to beat in subsequent efforts. I haven’t read any of her other books yet but after reading White Teeth she’s definitely made the list of “authors I’d like to read more from”.

Don’t Move by Margaret Mazzantini

I read the few chapters of Margaret Mazzantini’s Don’t Move and then abandoned it to finish a few other ones. Not that it wasn’t interesting, but it just didn’t grab my attention right away. I’m glad I went back to it, however, as it ended up being really beautiful.

After I read it and praised it my friend asked me to describe the plot to her. I’m uncreative, so it came out something like this:

There is this surgeon, and his daughter is in an accident. While she’s in surgery he relives an elicit affair he had before she was born, and narrates it to her in his own head.

Not only does that sound really corny and the stuff that romance novels are made of, but it doesn’t do the book justice at all. It’s broken into current-day (the father is sitting waiting for his daughter’s surgery to be completed), and flashbacks. I really enjoy books written in non-linear format, and this one is done in such a way that it flows beautifully.

The object of his extramarital affection is named Italia (Mazzantini is Irish but lives in Italy with her husband, and so the book takes place there). Her initial description completely turns me off to her, and as the story goes on she doesn’t get any more attractive or less…waifish. However, Mazzantini illustrates her (and Timoteo, the adulterer and father) in such a way that they eventually seem perfect for each other, and I find myself rooting for their romance even though she truly has no redeeming or promising qualities.

Italia is probably one of the most interesting characters I’ve encountered recently. She’s essentially floating through life without anyone or anything to tie her down, and even the description of her apartment (if you could call it that), with strange posters and a blind dog, is interesting. I got the impression by reading about her that she’s someone I’d never notice in a bar (where Timo first sees her), and she seems almost transparent, as if she’d disappear if she turned a certain way.

The rest of the characters aren’t really fleshed out, which actually works out quite well. There are descriptions and dialogue from his wife here and there, and from his best friend, but beyond that there isn’t much. Even Angela, his hospital-bound daughter, gets little attention.

The title applies to both Angela and Italia, and one of my favorite parts of the book is how Timo becomes more frenzied with each attempt to sneak away and see Italia, making she she doesn’t move. Not knowing if she’d still be around each time she stopped by creating even more suspense in a novel that is heavily based on character development.

All in all I’d highly recommend it to anyone (I wish I was fluent enough in Italian to read the untranslated version).

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

I didn’t know about the controversy surrounding one of Jonathan Franzen’s interviews before I read this The Corrections, I didn’t even find out about it until I was googling his name to find the image of the book cover. I didn’t even bother reading up on the ‘drama’ because in my opinion, if a book is enjoyable, that’s all that matters. Some may beg to differ, but that’s my philosophy.

After the disappointment that was ‘The Body Artist’, I was hoping to have a good rebound book, and I’m glad this is the one I chose. My family is pretty normal, so I do enjoy dysfunctional ones, whether they be on television (the Bluths come to mind), or in print. The Lamberts aren’t all that dysfunctional, actually, when you break down their core personalities and how they interact as a unit. The younger daughter is struggling for an identity, the middle brother has hit rock bottom and just needs a way out, and the eldest is the stereotypical unhappy husband. And mom just wants them all home for Christmas.

I love living in New York, and suburbia, so I had a hard time connecting with Enid’s intense love for all things Kansas and rural, but that didn’t take away from the experience for me. I was able to appreciate her excessive collection of chatchkas in an attempt to make her humble abode more sophisticated (my sister loves chatchkas like you wouldn’t believe).

Each of her children had their own unique struggles and at times I both liked and disliked them, but I suppose any great character makes you hate them just a little bit sometimes. Gary’s paranoia, Denise’s ability to ruin any good situation she’s in, and Chip’s general disregard for his own personal health were a bit bothersome, but they didn’t suffocate the redeeming qualities of the characters.

The end of the book is nicely done, and I enjoyed the distinction between characters by section, it allowed me to become fully engrossed in one person before hopping to the next.

Regardless of Franzen’s comments (I never took the time to read what was ‘controversial’ about what he said, or whom he said it to, for that matter), the book is a great read. Not one I could finish in one session, but it definitely made several trip on the train fly by, and that’s quite a feat.

Recycled Reading No More

My friend told me about this great used bookstore nearby called “Recycled Reading”.  You bring back your used books, they give you credit towards their store, and you buy more used books at a discount.  It sounded pretty wonderful, so we went while I was on lunch.  I had three books to sell back (one of which I just reviewed and the other two have reviews coming), and I figured I could pick up another book or two for some good vacation reads.

First, they were doing construction so we dealt with a one-lane road and I was subsequently late getting back to work (not to worry, I usually take half an hour but I get up to an hour, I was back in exactly sixty minutes).  We get there, and there is this sad little sign on the door saying that the store is closed (permanently!)  and that they’ll be doing “charitable” book work coming this October, twice a month at some mall or another.

I was disappointed, as was my friend who had been talking Recycled Reading up for a few days.  I asked around and apparently there is another good used bookstore in the opposite direction, so we might have to go there when I return from vacation.  It’s probably for the best, since I forgot the dust jacket to one of the books, as I hate having them on the book when I’m reading it so I’d placed it in my desk drawer.

I suppose I’ll have to go to Borders tomorrow and purchase a book at full price, as much as it pains me to do so.  I think it’s time for another half.com spree as well.

The upcoming books on the menu are as follows (in no particular order).  If you have any suggestions (such as “don’t read that one!”), do tell.

• The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver (what a great last name!)
• Cocaine Nights, by J.G. Ballard
• The Buddha of Suburbia, by Hanif Kureishi
• The Trick is to Keep Breathing, by Janice Galloway

The Body Artist by Don DeLillo

I read some reviews on Amazon.com before I picked this book to read. Some of the reviews for Don Delillo’s The Body Artist said:

[It] is simply a rare escapade into the world of literary realism. There is so much harmony in this book that it I found it difficult to disassociate myself from the hypnotic force of its words.

Some may dismiss “The Body Artist” as a minor work after DeLillo’s sprawling masterpiece “Underworld.” In heft, this is a lighter work, an easy evening read. But in style and subject, DeLillo breaks new ground with this novel and achieves surprising poignancy.

It sounded promising.

What I seemed to have looked past, however, are the reviews that more accurately describe my feelings of the novel:

The Body Artist is a very thin story written in dense, wandering thoughts. DeLillo’s craftsmanship with prose is a redeemable quality, but due to my lack of interest in the characters or plot, it won’t linger.

There it was, my entire opinion of the book summed up in two sentences, put far more eloquently than I could ever state. The bottom line was that I had no emotional investment in anyone involved.

The first eighteen pages are about the main character and her husband eating breakfast. That, I didn’t mind so much. It kept me intrigued, and I figured that if the rest of the book was like that, I’d be okay. I had high expectations going into the second chapter.

The rest of the book involves two characters, one being the wife (the title character, she’s a contortionist or something of that nature), and this random, emotionless man who she happens to stumble upon. He has no name and no personality to speak of, and I can’t bring myself to want to read anymore about him past the initial physical description. And when you don’t care about half the people in the book, it drags by slowly. Lauren, the other main character, seems to waste her life away in the brief amount of time covered in the book. Her thoughts are repetitive, and while they’re interesting and thought-provoking the first time, they’re simply redundant after the third or fourth.

I’ll give DeLillo credit in that the prose is beautiful, he’s clearly a talented writer and I’ll be giving him another shot. The plot just seemed arbitrary and in an attempt to be artsy became too disconnected to be enjoyable. It seemed to take forever to get through, and the entire book clocks in at only 128 pages. I’m not sure I could have gotten through it had it been any longer.

I’m not one to abandon a book halfway through. If I’ve started it I’ll finish it unless it’s too horrible to go on. This wasn’t the case, I won’t give The Body Artist a failing grade, but it won’t be on the list of books I reread, and it won’t be on the list of books I recommend to anyone else.