April 2006 Book Reviews

I seem to be reading a lot about mental illness and the pressures of modern life lately. I'm not sure what that's about. Possibly Adam's influence? He picked out To Hell with All That for me. Or is there a sudden flood of publishing in this area? Why would that be? Interesting thought to ponder...

Before launching into this month's reviews, I wanted to make a comment on the various blog pages you may be reading this on. I'm publishing the book posts in two places; you may want to select one or the other.

The Grand Tour: book reviews, vacation pics, and assortment of random things that interest me (and hopefully, you). All book-related content is repeated in the book archive.
Book Archives: just books. Lists, reviews, top 10 lists. A better choice if you'd prefer to not see where I went hiking this past weekend.
Crochet to Go: just crochet-related topics.

On to the list:
1. Oh the Glory of It All, Sean Wilsey, Rating: 3.0
I've had numerous people recommend this book. Sean Wilsey is the son of a San Francisco socialite, and (by my calculations) about 35 years old. The book gets off to a running start, detailing the excesses and idiosyncracies of his highly colorful parents. By the half-way point, however, the book has lost its focus. What's the subject? Sean's life? His mother? Boarding schools of the 1980s? Ultimately there's enough good material here to make it a worthwhile read, but you'll have to wade your way through all the surplus writing.
2. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro, Rating: 4.3
The writing in this book is stunning--Ishiguro is definitely one of the better writers out there today. I'd prefer to not reveal the topic (and would caution against reading any reviews of the book). Ishiguro slowly parcels out information, and it's best if you don't really understand what is special about the characters before he's ready to tell you. (One of my coworkers saw the book on my desk and said, "Oh, is that the book about the [deleted]?") Anyway, it's extremely well written, quite moving, and well worth your time.
3. Library: An Unquiet History, Matthew Battles, Rating: 3.9
It's my understanding that this is one of the standards in the world of writing about libraries. It's packed with interesting tidbits, as well as mountains of uninteresting tidbits. This is definitely not for everyone. I'm glad I read it, but it wasn't easy to finish.
4. Girlfriend 44, Mark Barrowcliffe, Rating: 3.5
Witty and trite, this is chic lit written by a man. Originally published in the U.K., the edition I read was packed with Britishisms (not necessarily a bad thing). The humor at times seems excessive, detracting from the plot. One of the better books in the genre.
5. I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith, Rating: 4.4
This book is charming and somehow timeless, despite being over 50 years old. There's a fairly faithful movie adaptation out there, but stick with the book--the male actors in the movie don't live up to the promise of the literary characters. It's a teenage coming-of-age story and a romance, but don't let that stop you from reading it. The author is better known for writing One Hundred and One Dalmations.
6. My World and Welcome To It, James Thurber, Rating: 4.3
I need to read more Thurber--he's hilarious! His writing is definitely not P.C., but I supposed that's a major part of the charm. This book is a collection of some of his best New Yorker writing.
7. To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife, Caitlin Flanagan, Rating: 4.0
Flanagan writes for a variety of publications on various aspects of modern womanhood--having children, having a nanny, balancing work and house cleaning, our desire to be Martha Stewart and CEO, etc. She's very good at calling it like it is. I can't say that I'm going to change anything about my lifestyle as a result of reading her book, but I did find it very interesting.
8. Fragile Innocence, James Reston, Jr., Rating: 2.9
This book is popping up everywhere. Terry Gross interviewed Reston a few weeks ago, and Entertainment Weekly ran a long review. Reston writes about his daughter, who has an unknown disease that has left her without the ability to speak or function above a 9-month-old level. It's intriguing. It's also very flawed, in my opinion. Reston carefully documents the name of every doctor and teacher, but never mentions any at home help (yet makes it clear that he and his wife work full time, and believe it's impossible to leave the child alone). He also makes huge statements and completely fails to back them up in any way. His nervous breakdown gets 2 paragraphs, leaving one to wonder if it was just a figure of speech, or an actual episode? I felt that times that the book was a padded version of his daughter's medical record.

Women Writers

Here's another meme that has been making the rounds of the book blog circuit. I actually like it more than the last one (all female writers). I definitely want to check a lot of these books out. I do wonder who put the list together, though--they included one of Rachel Ray's cookbooks. That's a great work of literature?

Notes: Bold=have read, italics=intend to read, and ???=never heard of (I'm being honest here, and questioning individual books--I have heard of most of the authors).

Alcott, Louisa May--Little Women
Allende, Isabel--The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya--I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Atwood, Margaret--Cat's Eye???
Austen, Jane--Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade--Salt Eaters???
Barnes, Djuna--Nightwoodde???
Beauvoir, Simone--The Second Sex
Blume, Judy--Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances--The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte--Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily--Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.--The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.--Possession
Cather, Willa--My Antonia
Chopin, Kate--The Awakening
Christie, Agatha--Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra--The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham--Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia--A Voice From the South??
Danticat, Edwidge--Breath, Eyes, Memory??
Davis, Angela--Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita--Clear Light of Day??
Dickinson, Emily--Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois--I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne--Rebecca
Eliot, George—Middlemarch
Emecheta, Buchi--Second Class Citizen???
Erdrich, Louise--Tracks???
Esquivel, Laura--Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie--Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty--The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne--Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins--The Yellow Wallpaper??
Gordimer, Nadine--July's People??
Hamilton, Edith—Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia--The Talented Mr. Ripley
Hooks, bell--Bone Black??
Hurston, Zora Neale--Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet--Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Jackson, Helen Hunt--Ramona
Jackson, Shirley--The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica--Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn--The Nancy Drew Mysteries
Kidd, Sue Monk--The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica--Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara--The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong--The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella--Passing
L'Engle, Madeleine--A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K.--The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper--To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris--The Golden Notebook??
Lively, Penelope--Moon Tiger??
Lorde, Audre--The Cancer Journals??
McCullers, Carson--The Member of the Wedding??
Markandaya, Kamala--Nectar in a Sieve??
Marshall, Paule--Brown Girl, Brownstones??
Montgomery, Lucy--Anne of Green Gables
Morgan, Joan--When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost??
Morrison, Toni--Song of Solomon
Mursaki, Lady Shikibu--The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice--Lives of Girls and Women
Murdoch, Iris--Severed Head??
Naylor, Gloria--Mama Day??
Niffenegger, Audrey--The Time Traveller's Wife
Oates, Joyce Carol--We Were the Mulvaneys
O'Connor, Flannery--A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge--Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi--My Sister's Keeper
Plath, Sylvia--The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne--Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie--The Shipping News
Ray, Rachel--365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean--Wide Sargasso Sea??
Robinson, Marilynne--Housekeeping
Sebold, Alice--The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary--Frankenstein
Smith, Betty--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie--White Teeth
Spark, Muriel--The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna--Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth--Amy and Isabelle
Tan, Amy--The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah--You're Wearing That?
Ulrich, Laurel--A Midwife's Tale
Urquhart, Jane--Away
Walker, Alice--The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora--One Writer's Beginnings
Wharton, Edith--Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls--Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, mary--A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia--A Room of One's Own

Top 50 Movie Adaptations

I ran across this list on one of those new book blogs. Take a peek--it's very quite interesting. Devil in a Blue Dress? Check. Jaws? Check. But The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie? Am I supposed to know what that is? Must be a British bias.

Book Lists

This is also from Elese--a meme ("unit of cultural knowledge") that's been circulating lately. Here are the general guidelines:
Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of.

I feel like I'm doing pretty well--28 read (out of 39). It also gives me some ideas about what to read next...

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - Scott F. Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
The Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Shadow of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert
Sula by Toni Morrison
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Book Blogs

My best friend, Elese, who you'll probably recognize from previous Europe posts, is currently getting her masters in library science in Chapel Hill, NC. I saw her this weekend in San Diego (more on that later), and requested a list of her favorite book blogs. I'm really only reading about crochet these days, and am feeling rather out of balance. Here's her list:

Some book blogs:
Pages Turned
http://pagesturned.blogspot.com/
(having just skimmed all of these sites, this one seems the most promising)

BookWorld
http://bookworld.typepad.com/book_world/

Blog of a BookSlut
http://www.bookslut.com/blog/

50 Books
http://50books.blogspot.com/

Book Lust
http://storms.typepad.com/booklust/

A few library blogs:
Librarian.net - this is kind of the mother of library bloggers. she doesn't post as frequently anymore but everyone seems to read her.
http://www.librarian.net/

LIS Career
http://liscareer.blogspot.com/

Tales from the Liberry
http://liberry.blogspot.com/

Gypsy Librarian
http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/

One of the frequent features that I noticed is a "what I'm reading next" list--I'll have to posting one.

March 2006 Book Reviews

March was a better than average month--lots of books, many of them quite good.

1. A Time to Run, Barbara Boxer, Rating: 3.1
I read the first draft of this in my Chronicle days, and was pleased by how well the final version was "directed" and edited. The effort is certainly admirable; the book is just okay. It's certainly not bad--just a bit forgetable.
2. Between the Bridge and the River, Craig Ferguson, Rating: 4.0
Entertainment Weekly gave this a decidedly lukewarm review, but I disagree with their comments--it's very funny, often laugh-out-loud funny. The kind of book that you quote from aloud whenever there's someone around to listen.
3. It's Superman!, Tom de Haven, Rating: 3.3
Another Chronicle book (actually, these first three all are), I was really excited to get my hands on this. Unfortunately, it's boring. You'd think the life of Superman would have lots of twists and turns, but I kept waiting for something exciting to happen. Too bad.
4. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough, Rating: 4.6
This is my second time through this book. My mom recommended it when I was in high school--she had read it for the first time while in labor with me. It's trashy and could be considered a romance novel, but as vacation books go (I bought this copy in a thrift shop in Hawaii, having finished all the books I brought with me) you really won't find much better.
5. The Bill from My Father, Bernard Cooper, Rating: 4.1
This was recently reviewed on NPR--a memoir by a man whose father billed him for the cost of his upbringing (2 million dollars). Please be warned that the section of the book dealing with this incident is at most 2 pages. However, everything else is extremely interesting, funny without being cruel, emotional without revealing too much*. It's great.
*With the exception of his relationship with his life partner. Please avoid this book if you're uncomfortable with men admiring and touching each other.
6. You're Wearing That?, Deborah Tannen, Rating: 2.1
Subtitle: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. Which is exactly what this book is about--how moms and daughters communicate, what they say and what they actually mean. This author rubbed me the wrong way--I just didn't buy her credentials and "supporting evidence." She raised interesting points, but the book overall is not a success.