Books 2017: Quarter 4

Soooo I've been working on getting my "Books 2018: Quarter 1" post together & suddenly realized that I never posted 2017 Quarter 4! Whaaat?? Such incompetence.

Anyway, here it is. Better late than never, amirite?

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Nothing like logging out of work email for the year and curling up by the fire with a good book! The holidays were busy with various family & social events and all kinds of travel, but I still found some time to knock out a few tomes.

As you probably already know, I've been reading a classic a month for the last two years. It started as a one-year project in 2014, but I've enjoyed it enough to keep going with it & will probably continue until it starts to feel like a chore. You can find my past reviews by clicking on the "books" tag at the end of this post, or be my friend on Goodreads. (You can also just go to the site & hunt down my review feed without being my friend, if that's more your speed.)

ICYMI, the classics I selected to read in 2017 are here.

2017 Classics: Quarter 1

2017 Classics: Quarter 2

2017 Classics: Quarter 3

On to the reviews!

Books: The 2017 Classics

BEHOLD! The classic novels I'll be reading in 2017:

JANUARY: The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman. "The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand, despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy that they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through military ranks. He's willing to do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But 'home' may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries." I like to do one true sci fi classic each year & this one got a lot of votes.

FEBRUARY: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt. "Voodoo. Decadent socialites packing Lugars. Cotillions. With towns like Savannah, Georgia, who needs Fellini? Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil takes two narrative strands--each worthy of its own book--and weaves them together to make a single fascinating tale. The first is author John Berendt's loving depiction of the characters and rascals that prowled Savannah in the eight years it was his home-away-from-home. Then, on May 2, 1981, the book's second story line commences, when Jim Williams, a wealthy antique dealer and Savannah's host with the most, kills his "friend" Danny Hansford. (If those quotes make you suspect something, you should.) Was it self-defense, as Williams claimed--or murder? The book sketches four separate trials, during which the dark side of this genteel party town is well and truly plumbed."

Books Update: Quarter 4

Congrats on making it through another year, you crazy diamond, you! This year I read 80 books & over 32,000 pages. We're now at the tail-end of quarter 4, so let's talk about what I've been reading over the last three months.

As you may or may not already know, I've been reading a classic a month for the last two years. It started as a one-year project in 2014, but I've enjoyed it enough to keep going with it & will probably continue until it starts to feel like a chore.

January through April

May & June

July through September

These were my last three classics of the year:

October: The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oliver Wilde (1890, 166 pages). 4 stars. This was my spooooky Halloween read! Young, beautiful, innocent, naive Dorian Gray sits for a portrait for an artist friend, who proclaims the painting his best work. Dorian is suddenly struck by the horrible thought that he will age and lose his beauty while his portrait will remain beautiful and youthful forever. In a fit of panic he desperately prays that his and the painting's roles should be reversed, so that the painting ages while he stays young and beautiful. Not only does his wish come true, but the portrait also begins to reflect the condition of his soul. Creepiness and philosophy ensue. The writing is clever and gorgeous, and Wilde is a master of dry wit & witty repartee, plus it's less than 200 pages so pretty easy to knock out on a plane ride or similar. But, it is worth mentioning that it's still not a light read. Some parts of it are quite dense and heavily philosophical (I found myself carefully re-reading many sections because I didn't catch or process it all the first or second time around), so definitely something to save for when you are fully alert and not distracted.

Books Update: Quarter 3

Fall is finally here, if only officially (did I mention it's been 80s & 90s in San Francisco for weeks? Not okay), and as we close the book on September, it is time once again to speak of, well, books.

As you may already know, I've been reading a classic a month for the last two years. It started as a one-year project in 2014, but I've enjoyed it enough to keep going with it & will probably continue until it starts to feel like a chore.

January through April

May & June

July: A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving (1990, 637 pages). Ahh, John Irving, you got me again! Sweet, depressing, hilarious, & raw. The story follows Johnny Weelwright (1st person narrator) & his best friend Owen Meany (tiny, brilliant, charismatic, & possessed of a bizarrely shrill voice) from their childhood together in a small town in 1950s New Hampshire through early adulthood, while periodically flashing forward to Johnny's middle age in Canada. The relationship between the two is weirdly cemented when uncoordinated, nonathletic Owen somehow manages to hit a baseball at the end of a Little League game that hits Johnny's mysterious mother in the head, killing her. After that, Owen is convinced he is "God's Instrument," with everything & every moment in his life leading to a single purpose. I think it's the sheer audacity & improbability of the whole thing that made it one of the best books I've read in a while.

August: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847, 507 pages). I think sometimes it's difficult to fully appreciate classics because the reason they are classics has mainly to do with the context in which they were written. Reading Jane Eyre for the first time in 2015, I have to admit that I spent most of it rolling my eyes & ready to chuck it across the room. Really? Really, Jane? It's so painfully clear that Mr. Rochester is a dire shitbird, and you are utterly pathetic for not realizing this almost immediately. (Though, I will also admit that she gets a little less pathetic as the book goes on, but he is still a shitbird, and their conversations are honestly kind of gross.) BUT, I do get that it was rather revolutionary and radical for 1847 and (kind of hilariously) was actually lambasted for being anti-God/Church (ie, a woman every once in a while having an original thought and maybe occasionally for half a second not doing exactly what some rando self-important dude tells her to do). Still, a part of me was screaming throughout, JANE, YOU IDIOT! DTMFA!

September: The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair (1905, 335 pages).

Welp, I guess I'll go shoot myself in the face now.

The Jungle is about the trials & tribulations of a Lithuanian family that settles in Chicago to pursue the vast riches and endless opportunity that they have heard are there for the taking in welcoming, democratic, class-blind America. Lololololol. No but really, it's one of the most depressing books I've ever read in my life. I get the historical significance of this book and that the fact that it's completely and utterly depressing as hell is the whole point, so three stars for that. But when you have only one color in your palette (shit-color, for instance), it loses its effect real fast & you stop expecting anything else. Most of the other books I've tagged as "depressing as hell" offered at least a few strokes of other colors occasionally, if for no other reason than to provide enough contrast for the horrible parts to maintain their effect (and presumably to stop you from pausing to kill yourself). Not so here. It's shit sandwich after shit sandwich, and any time things start to look maybe-kinda not so bad for the protagonist, you know that a shit sandwich with an extra-crispy cat litter crust is just around the corner.

OTHER RECENT READS:

I have read a lot of stuff lately but here are the titles I most highly recommend:

The Ocean At the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman (2013, 181 pages). 5 stars. Beautiful, creepy, imaginative, & sad. Essentially: All things Neil Gaiman. More along the lines of Coraline and The Graveyard Book than Neverwhere / Stardust. Hard to explain any more clearly than that.

Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk (1996, 218 pages). 5 stars. I picked this up in the airport because I wanted something short to read on a plane, & having only seen the movie & never read any Chuck Palahniuk, I was curious. Super entertaining & amazingly well-written & well crafted! My only regret is that I wish I'd read it before seeing the movie. I also enjoyed the afterword at the end about how the book began as a six-page short story no one paid any attention to & evolved into an international blockbuster. The question now is, which Palahniuk to read next?

The Blue Girl, by Laurie Foos (2015, 220 pages). 5 stars. A super quick, easy, fairly minimalist read, and at the same time amazingly, gorgeously, breathtakingly written. I'm not sure how you do both of those things at the same time, but somehow Foos pulled it off. A silent blue girl has appeared in an unnamed lake town; after one of their daughters saves the blue girl from drowning, three sad, middle-aged women with sad, middle-aged husbands, teenage daughters, and troubled sons sneak out at night to the cabin in the woods where the blue girl lives with an old woman to feed her the secrets they've baked into homemade moon pies. When the kids catch on, everything changes. Again, I don't understand how she did it, but these 220 dream-like pages weave together some of the most brilliant character development I've read in a while with profound narrative themes & symbolism. Not a wasted word anywhere. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

I'll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson. (2014, 371 pages) 5 stars. This may be the absolute best modern YA novel I've ever read in terms of teenage characters who are actually believable in terms of how they think, act, and (especially) talk. It's also just a lovely, if bittersweet, story about a set of artsy teenage twins trying to navigate their own & each other's tumultuous lives in the wake of their parents' own issues, and manages to strike a nice balance of humor, heartache, sweetness, and raw teenage emotion without veering too much into melodrama (or trying so hard to ape modern teenage lingo that it's painful). Still a *bit* too much schmoopy in places for my taste, but not so much as to make me want to vomit (which more or less seems to be the norm with YA). A great read for 12/13+, but there's plenty going on for adults to appreciate as well.

A Head Full of Ghosts, by Paul Tremblay. (2015, 288 pages) The story follows the Barrett family (out-of-work, hyper-religious John, his cynical, frustrated wife Sarah, and their two daughters Marjorie and Merry, fourteen and eight respectively) as Marjorie descends into (severe mental illness? Demonic possession? A desperate bid to salvage the family's financial situation?). John gets the local minister involved, who in turn gets the family a reality TV deal ("The Possession"), which in turn leads to Complications, all of which is narrated by eight-year-old Merry. The real genius of this book, though, is that it's kind of meta-horror. Instead of telling the story purely from eight-year-old Merry's perspective, Tremblay ups the ante by framing it as told by twenty-three-year-old Merry to a bestselling author who is writing a book about the events, and then interspersing those interviews with blog posts about the reality series "The Possession" written by a quirky & mysterious horror junkie. Because of the reality show, a lot of what happened is on film, but a lot of it isn't; there is also the reliability of Merry's memory to take into account. This all adds up to an undercurrent of uncertainty about what did and did not actually happen and to what extent was the situation was medical, supernatural, or faked by Marjorie and/or the exploitative reality TV producers. Brilliantly written, start to finish.

The Longest Date: Life As a Wife, by Cindy Chupack. (2014, 212 pages) 5 stars. I picked this one up after hearing a podcast interview with Chupack & finished it on a single plane ride. It's pretty short, and manages to be funny and entertaining even when she's writing about some pretty heavy stuff. Even so, she pulls absolutely no punches, laying bare just about every facet of her relationship with her husband, from their courtship as late-thirty-somethings to raising an adopted child at fifty. And I think it's that completely candid openness that makes it such a compelling read. It's not, "Marriage is hard work but if you pick the right person and really love each other and practice gratitude or whatever you'll make it through the tough times." It's more like "I'm the luckiest person alive!" on some days and on others "SWEET JESUS WHAT HAVE I DONE," and for her getting married was agreeing to stick it out, even on the SWEET JESUS days. (That, and coming to terms with the fact that she was a control freak & now had someone permanently in her life that she couldn't control.) If you've ever had a moment when you're like, "Oh god, why can't we be like all those nice, normal people who are super in love all the time & never have any horrible moments together???," this book is a great reminder that nobody is those people, because we are all real, live humans with strengths and flaws and history and baggage, and that's what you sign up for when you marry a real, live human.

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda, by Becky Albertalli. (2015, 303 pages) 5 stars. What a sweet, wonderful, (sadly) subversive book. The last twenty pages or so actually had me kind of weepy (in a good way), and if you know me at all you know how rare that is for a book. This and I'll Give You the Sun have reaffirmed my belief that yes, there IS, in fact, really excellent YA left in the world. Like all the best books (I'm discovering), the marketing copy just really does not capture what makes this one so great. Come down to it, it's basically about gay-but-not-out 16-year-old Simon negotiating all the usual sixteen-year-old orders of business (school, friends, family, extracurriculars, crushes, feeling generally awkward & out of place), but with the added wrinkle of an anonymous email penpal about whom he knows nothing except that said penpal is a fellow gay-but-not-out junior boy at his school. Hijinks, turmoil, laughs, and all the feels ensue. (Also, mad props to Albertalli for a) writing a gay protagonist (1st person) who is just a normal kid and b) handling the whole teen boy coming out / figuring out how to relationship in such an earnest, thoughtful, brilliant way, particularly for someone who, as far as I know, has never been a gay boy)..

Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff. (2015, 392 pages) 5 stars. Oh, man. I don't even know where to begin with this book except that it was amazing. I actually think the marketing copy included a pretty decent summation: Every relationship has two perspectives, and sometimes the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. The relationship in question is that of Lotto & Mathilde, madly in love and married at the tender age of twenty-two after knowing each other for all of two weeks. The first half of the book tells the story of their decades of marriage from Lotto's point of view, and though the writing is utterly gorgeous and the characters dynamic and multi-dimensional, it's on the darker side, without much in the way of comic relief. The second half, though, is Mathilde's story, which fills in a lot of blanks. The genius of this book lies in the juxtaposition of the two voices, addressing issues of destiny, creative potential, and the nature & meaning of marriage. Not a light read, but the complexity and cleverness offers enough relief from the darker nature of the story to make it brilliant.

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Currently Reading:
The Fifty Year Sword, by Mark Z. Danielewski

Currently Listening To:
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

Up Next:

• The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
• A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny (because October)
• The Magician's Land, by Lev Grossman (last in the trilogy)
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson (feels like a perfect Halloween read)

Taking future suggestions as always. :)

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte, Brontë

August's 2015 Classic Read was Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë!

I think sometimes it's difficult to fully appreciate classics because the reason they are classics has mainly to do with the context in which they were written. Reading Jane Eyre for the first time in 2015, I have to admit that I spent most of it rolling my eyes & ready to chuck it across the room. Really, Jane? Really? It's so painfully clear that Mr. Rochester is a dire shitbird, and you are utterly pathetic for not realizing this almost immediately. (Though, I will also admit that she gets a little less pathetic as the book goes on, but he is still a shitbird, and their conversations are honestly kind of gross.)

BUT, I do get that it was rather revolutionary and radical for 1847 and (kind of hilariously) was actually lambasted for being anti-God/Church (ie, a woman every once in a while having an original thought and maybe occasionally for half a second not doing exactly what some rando self-important dude tells her to do). Still, a part of me was screaming throughout, JANE, YOU IDIOT! DTMFA!

The BBC's "The Big Read"

The BBC's top 200 literary works, based on a survey of over 750,000 UK readers! I literally just found out about this & am now compelled to mark up the list with ones I've read (bold) & which are on my imminent 'to read' list.

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien - Junior year of college (too late; I never really got into it & the whole thing was sort of a slog.)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - I'm ambivalent about this book but I feel like I should read it just, y'know, to do it.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - grad school

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Summer between freshman & sophomore years of college

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling - Junior year of college

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - summer 2014

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne - Oh god. No idea. Middle school?

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell - freshman year of high school, mostly under the desk in biology

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis - grad school

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - just finished!

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - summer 2014

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - again...just never been able to muster the enthusiasm

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - 9th grade, for school

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger - 2011ish I think?

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - 7th grade, for school

Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling - junior year of college

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling - junior year of college

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling - junior year of college

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien - junior year of high school maybe?

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy - on the list!

Middlemarch by George Eliot - on the list!

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving - just a month or so ago

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - 11th grade, for school

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - middle school, I think?

The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez early 2014?

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Dune by Frank Herbert - 2010?

Emma by Jane Austen

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Watership Down by Richard Adams - over Christmas 2013

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - 11th grade, for school

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Animal Farm by George Orwell - 9th grade, for school

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens - just last Christmas

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy - on the list!

Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - 6th or 7th grade? Not sure.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck summer between 9th & 10th grade

The Stand by Stephen King

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - summer 2014

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

The BFG by Roald Dahl - elementary school, not sure

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - 2nd or 3rd grade, I think?

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - earlier this summer

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - 12th grade, for school

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

Mort by Terry Pratchett

The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton

The Magus by John Fowles

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - 2008?

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Perfume by Patrick Süskind

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding - early 2014

The Secret History by Donna Tartt - 2005 or 2006 I think

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Ulysses by James Joyce

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson

The Twits by Roald Dahl

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Holes by Louis Sachar

Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - just a couple of months ago

Vicky Angel by Jacqueline Wilson

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - 9th grade, for school

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Magician by Raymond E. Feist

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett - on the list!

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - been on the list for quite sometime actually...

Katherine by Anya Seton

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Girls in Love by Jacqueline Wilson

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie - will read at some point for sure because Salman Rushdie

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome - After reading Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog, I have to admit I'm curious.

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett - I started reading this in college & would like to go back & finish it!

The Beach by Alex Garland

Dracula by Bram Stoker - 2005. LOVE.

Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend

The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - I seriously doubt I will ever read this one

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

The Dare Game by Jacqueline Wilson

Bad Girls by Jacqueline Wilson

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - this year!

Shōgun by James Clavell

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham - on the list!

Lola Rose by Jacqueline Wilson

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski - 2008 or '09 I think?

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - People keep recommending this to me so I suppose I should just read it.

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - A friend loves this one so I may give it a shot.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - In one sitting, junior year of college

Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Girls in Tears by Jacqueline Wilson

Sleepovers by Jacqueline Wilson

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

It by Stephen King

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

The Green Mile by Stephen King

Papillon by Henri Charrière

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz

Soul Music by Terry Pratchett

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Secrets by Jacqueline Wilson

The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey - this year!

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - 12th grade, for school

Kim by Rudyard Kipling - After Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Declare, I'm curious to read this one.

Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville - Let's be real, it ain't happening.

River God by Wilbur Smith

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

The World According to Garp by John Irving - on the list!

Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore

Girls Out Late by Jacqueline Wilson

The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye

The Witches by Roald Dahl

Charlotte's Web by E. B. White - 4th grade maybe?

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 12th grade, for school

They Used to Play on Grass by Terry Venables and Gordon Williams

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway - on the list!

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco - 2007, I think?

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

Dustbin Baby by Jacqueline Wilson

Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - I'll admit I'm morbidly curious.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - meant to read this one last year & got sidetracked, so definitely on the list

The Suitcase Kid by Jacqueline Wilson

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay - on the list

Silas Marner by George Eliot

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - DEF on the list

The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

Goosebumps by R. L. Stine

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera - on the list

Man and Boy by Tony Parsons

The Truth by Terry Pratchett

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

The Once and Future King by T. H. White - on the list

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle - Oh god. 1st grade? Kindergarten? Lord knows.

Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews

Books Update: Quarter 2(ish)

BEHOLD, for it is time to speak of books.

The year is now half over (I will dispense with any melodramatic amazement regarding this fact, I'm sure you've had your fill already) and lo, it is time to pass judgment on the May & June selections of my 2015 Year of Classics. (January through April selections reviewed here.)

MAY: The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy (1997, 340 pages). For a long time I avoided reading any books about India because I know nothing about it and was afraid none of it would make sense to me. But now, having read this one plus two Salman Rushdie books in the last 12 months, I think I'm over that. This book was depressing as hell, yes, but still a beautifully written story about the complications of families, good and bad intentions, and children making sense of a complicated world as best they can. The narration of the story is not linear but jumps back and forth in time and between points of views of different characters. It begins at the end and ends in the middle, revealing more and more details about people and events and their histories and futures each time it circles around, and still keeps you guessing almost all the way to the end. Not a light, happy, fun read, but not a long one, packed with gorgeous language, & brilliantly written all around.

JUNE (Russian Heritage Month): Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866, 545 pages). Though it was a slog at times, I'm glad I stuck this one out because the ending was actually kind of good. Also, most of the beginning was good, too! The middle 2/3, however, were just kind of rambling & difficult to follow. I was expecting this book to be at least semi-awesome because HELLO IT OPENS WITH AN AXE MURDER, but after that I kind of felt like I'd been tricked into reading a parlor book. Just way, way, WAY too many scenes of people sitting around expounding on various class issues & the like whilst throwing shade at each other. Can't bring yourself to read the whole thing? Read parts 1 & 6 & call it good. You'll get the dramatic/interesting parts without missing too much (besides some only semi-relevant subplots).

OTHER RECENT READS:

I have read a lot of stuff lately but here are the titles I most highly recommend:

Reamde, by Neal Stephenson (2011, 1044 pages). 5 stars. Like much of Stephenson's other work, Reamde is ambitious, complex, and features a veritable legion of three-dimensional characters. As with most Stephenson books, I was principally amazed by his ability to keep approximately nineteen bazillion balls in the air in terms of plot & character arc. Likewise, I'm always incredibly impressed with how well researched every single aspect of the story is. But what really made this book for me were all the kick-ass female characters. Like, more than one! With actual distinct personalities! Who, like, do badass stuff to move the plot forward and serve as more than love interests for the male characters! So yeah. Like Neal Stephenson? You will not be disappointed. Never heard of Neal Stephenson but like a really smart, complex, well-written action/thriller/international espionage story? Give it a shot.

The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides (1993, 249 pages). 5 stars. I remember loving the movie when it came out & have always wanted to read the book, and I was not disappointed. Cleverly & poetically written, dark without veering into morbid/depressing, and utterly engrossing from the first page all the way to the end. (Also, now I really want to watch the movie again.) My first Jeffrey Eugenides & now I am curious to read more by him.

The Cider House Rules, by John Irving (1985, 973 pages). 5 stars. Fantastic. To me, this is exactly what young adult literature should be, except it never will be, because the idea of teenagers reading books about other teenagers dealing with actual, real teenage issues in a way that is not soft-focus or whitewashed or pulling its punches makes a lot of adults really, really uncomfortable. I mean no, I would probably not give it to my middle schooler as there is some pretty frank discussion of sex, abortion, & rape/incest (& a fair number of f-bombs), but having taught high school for many years, I don't think it's in any way beyond what most teens in the say 15+ range can handle. In spite of the sobering topics that it treats, the book isn't really about those things. At its heart, it's an absolutely beautifully written story about love (friendship, romantic, parental), finding one's place/"belonging," rules (of all kinds--explicit, unspoken, laws, etc.), and who gets to make what kinds of decisions for who, based on what, and why. Beautiful, meaningful, and tragically sweet in a thousand different ways.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson. (2015, 290 pages) 5 stars. A great read for anyone who's into the intersection of sociology and the media (particularly online social media). Jon Ronson explores the recent phenomenon of epic public shaming, wherein a person makes a joke that comes across wrong or commits some kind of deception and then essentially has their career, life, and online identity soundly annihilated by the masses. Using as case studies such pilloried figures as Jonah Lehrer, Justine Sacco, Mike Daisey, Lindsey Stone, and Hank of the Adria Richards developer conference fiasco, Ronson explores how the semi-anonymous group-think nature of the latest technology has essentially brought back a punishment that was decommissioned in the US hundreds of years ago because its effects on the guilty were deemed too horribly cruel. If you're at all interested in the how-is-tech-changing-our-society question, you'll absolutely want to give this one a read.

Night Angel (trilogy), by Brent Weeks. (2009, 1392 pages) 4 stars. I probably only gave this 4 stars because I'm one book away from finishing is more recent series, Lightbringer, which so far is an utter masterpiece of epic fantasy. Night Angel can't help but suffer a little by comparison, but was still a fantastic read. Deft writing. Solid, three-dimensional characters that you kind of love and kind of hate. Complex and clever storytelling that artfully weaves together all kinds of political and personal and mythological history and keeps you guessing throughout who is a reliable source of information and who is not (and to what extent). Dialogue that is smart and witty and tight, and just poetic enough at the right times without getting flowery and cliche. Some of the most intriguing & well-written female characters I've ever read in a book written by a man. And once the thrills start, they're relentless to the end.

Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King. (2014, 436 pages) 4 stars. This book was my first non-Dark Tower Stephen King experience. It didn't strike me as the type of thing I would typically pick up on my own, but the reviews were glowing & coming off of Crime and Punishment I was really feeling the need for something sort of beach-read-y. You guys, I could not put this book down! That almost never happens to me. At every moment, I just had to know what happened next & felt truly put-upon any time I was forced to tear myself away to, like, go to work or whatever. Apparently that Stephen King knows a thing or two about book writing! Who wouldda thunk!?! I don't want to say it's "light" reading (it does open with a psycho killer in a Benz mowing down a crowd of people), but it's not depressingly dark or overly violent or graphic. There are some tense moments but probably nothing that will leave you feeling sick or give you nightmares. Yes, there are predictable moments and more than a few tropes, but it's clearly trying to be a certain type of story (think "NCSI" or "Criminal Minds"), and that, it does exceptionally well.

Where'd You Go Bernadette?, by Maria Semple. (2012, 330 pages) 4 stars. This book is mostly told as a collection of emails, letters, notes, reports, etc. about a high-up fancy tech man, his brilliant, formerly phenom-of-a-young-architect turned stay-at-home-mom/wife, and their precocious thirteen-year-old daughter. Hijinks, crises, and coming-of-age-type situations ensue. At first it struck me as just sort of cute but fluffy YA, but somewhere between maybe half & two thirds of the way through, The Plot Thickened, as did the characters and their personalities and situations. At that point, I had two thoughts: 1) Hm, this is maybe a little too intense in the f-bomby / mid-life-crisis-ey sense for the middle school set, which is too bad, because 2) suddenly the characters & their situations go from kind of flat & banal & boring to multi-dimensional and considerably more interesting, & some really complicated themes are introduced. I feel like a lot of YA books tend to steer clear of darker, tougher, more adult themes (because kiiiiiiiids), which is deeply lamentable in my opinion. Give teenagers a little more credit, huh? Also, hilarious if you've ever been involved with a private school.

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. (2003, 500 pages) 4 stars. The premise seems relatively straightforward at first: Claire's husband Henry occasional becomes "unstuck" in time and spontaneously disappears, materializing into the past or future for minutes/hours/days at a time. The twist, though (not a spoiler), is that Henry first met Claire when his thirty-something self materialized in a meadow near eight-year-old Claire's childhood home where she'd often go to play. Because Henry's travels seem to sometimes latch on to particular places and times, he ends up visiting her in the meadow at different ages every few months or so between the time that she is six and eighteen. At age twenty, Claire meets twenty-eight-year-old Henry for the first time in his own timeline--her with twelve years of memories of visits with Henry at various ages and the knowledge that they end up married, and him knowing nothing at all. The author has clearly done a good job of thinking through even the most minute details and weaving all the questions (and answers) about Henry's time traveling that arise into the story. Some of the relationship stuff was kind of cliche & felt a little bit like a fourteen-year-old's naive ideas about what grown-up dating/sex/marriage/etc. is like (see: the entire wedding sequence, BARF). But, by and large I enjoyed it, even if some parts of it are depressing as hell.

The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hakins. (2015, 336 pages) 4 stars. I can see why this book appeals to people who enjoyed Gone Girl: the disappearance of a woman under odd circumstances, multiple first-person narrators, palpable tension regarding which ones may or may not be reliable, and more and more criss-crossing secrets hinted at and/or revealed as the story goes on. It's a good mystery and I thought the author did a good job cleverly weaving the storylines, timelines, and points of view in a way that kept me guessing for a good while. Most chapters involved some kind of dropped hint that made me go, "Okay, hold up, what was THAT about?" And sometimes she'd just let it sit for a few chapters while I was all like, "YES BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ____ IN CHAPTER ___???" If you like that sort of book (murder/missing persons mystery, multiple potentially unreliable narrators, cleverly jumping around time in time and point of view to weave an intriguing story), you'll probably enjoy it.

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Currently Reading: Consider Phlebas, by Ian. M. Banks

Currently Listening To: A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving

Up Next: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin, and either The Ocean At the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman, or Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami (haven't decided which yet)

WHAT ELSE IS GOOD, YOU GUYS??

Books: Quarter 1(ish)

The 2015 Classics Project presses on. Here's where we're at so far:

January: A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole (1980, 394 pages). 3 stars. Basically, if you enjoyed Don Quixote, you'll probably enjoy this as well. It is a sort of novel known as a picaresque, which means that the "hero" is a kind of self-righteous man-child type who indulges himself in all kinds of dreamy, selfish fantasies without ever learning about himself, taking others into consideration, or really developing as a character at all. The picaro here is thirty-year-old, early 1960s New Orleans resident Ignatius Reilly, who reluctantly tears himself away from his pages and pages of reflective journaling to take a variety of ill-fated jobs in order to to provide for his single mother. It's cute and clever and reasonably entertaining at times, but the picaro stuff does get old after a while, and I have to admit that I can't really see how it stood out enough to get a Pulitzer Prize.

February: The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison (1970, 216 pages). 5 stars. Last year for Black History Month, I read Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I did not expect to love but absolutely did. (Should be required reading for all Americans. Period.) It seemed like a good tradition to keep up so this year I chose The Bluest Eye, which I've wanted to read for a while anyway. It's the story of a sad, timid, eleven-year-old Black girl in 1941 that explores ideas of racial self-loathing & its origins, as well as the broader idea of facing rejection for something you can't control and what happens when instead of pushing back against that rejection, you accept it as legitimate. Short, sad, and beautifully poetic (because, Toni Morrison, who remains one of the most captivating writers I've ever read).

March: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith (1943, 496 pages). 4 stars. I read this one for Women's History Month. Five stars for being high quality, well-written YA fiction that I suspect would be meaningful to younger teens (and possibly even pre-teens?) without veering into melodrama; three stars for being just not really up my alley. (Then again, I am positive I read it about 20 years too late). So call it 4 on average. I feel like it falls into a particular sub-genre of YA whose theme is, "Life is hard, particularly growing up, especially for poor people, but sometimes good things still happen because FAMILY and LOVE," and those types of books have just never really spoken to me much. Also, I'm not sure why but I found myself constantly comparing it to The Bluest Eye and Angela's Ashes, and...well. That's tough company for any book.

April: The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin (1969, 280 pages). 4 stars. April is Women in Science Fiction Month, and everyone was like, "OMG how have you not read this?!?!?" An envoy from a loose federation of humanoid worlds visits a recently discovered humanoid world with the goal of eventually bringing them into the fold. This planet is unique in that its inhabitants spend 24 of every 26 days in an androgynous/asexual state, and then two days in what they call "kemmer," where pheromonal/hormonal interactions with a potential sex partner cause them to become (unpredictably) male or female. LeGuin wrote the book in order to explore what remained basic to human nature when biological sex was no longer a factor. I had kind of a hard time getting into it at first, but it picked up & ultimately was a good story of friendship, political intrigue, and two vastly different peoples trying to understand each other. It was a ground-breaking book for the time in terms of how gender is treated, and I give her a lot of credit for that.