#59 – Why Girls are Weird
Why Girls are Weird
Pamela Ribon
Fiction
Read from 12/29/06 – 12/30/06
My grade: 3
I really wanted to like this. I love Pamie’s website, so I got both her books and prepared to be delighted.
That, um, didn’t happen. It was probably just me, but I couldn’t relate to anything in here – to the point where I didn’t find it believable. I didn’t understand how the online journal entries Anna posted could possibly make Kurt fall in love with her. They were a little funny, I guess, but… Kurt’s reaction to them didn’t make sense to me, and his fan emails creeped me out, rather than seeming sweet. The irony here is that it’s a very slightly fictionalized version of how Pamie and Stee actually fell in love, so I had a hard time believing something that actually happened.
There were two subplots: one involving an internet stalker-type, and the other involving a student at the school where Anna worked. I like the school bit, though it didn’t seem related to the rest of the book at all. And the stalker plot didn’t have much of payoff.
I did like Dale a lot though – Dan is even more awesome than I thought.
I have a note in my book book (not a typo) that I’m looking forward to Why Moms are Weird, since first books can be rough and I know Pamie is talented, etc. Unfortunately, Why Moms Are Weird was much, much worse.
And that’s how I finished the year, and that’s the last entry in my book book, started March 4, 2003!
Filed under: 3, Fiction | Leave a Comment
#58 – Night Watch
Night Watch
Sergei Lukyanenko
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Read from 12/23/06 – 12/29/06
My grade: 6
First in a trilogy of modern fantasy books from Russia, where they are incredibly popular, and also have been made into a TV series – neat! Interesting premise – good and evil have a truce, and they police one another using their magical powers (or shape-shifting abilities, or vampirism, etc.). Set in Moscow.
Each of the volumes in this set has the same basic plot: it looks like evil is up to no good, and our hero, Anton, is at the center of it. But at the last minute it wasn’t actually Evil, or about Anton. That got a little repetitive, though the author got pretty creative with the threats and plots and secret motivations.
I liked the “twilight” – a sort of parallel dimension that the Others can enter. It was neat every time Lukyanenko described it.
Of course it’s in translation, because I don’t listen to myself. So some of the social observations an character relationships didn’t totally make sense to me. And of course I always think I’m missing another culture’s subtext.
Filed under: 6, Sci-Fi / Fantasy | Leave a Comment
#57 – All the Pretty Horses
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy
Fiction
Read from 12/18/06 – 12/22/06
My grade: 10
Oh my God, yes! I love this author and his style so much. It’s like noir plus poetry plus cowboys. I’m looking forward to the next part of this trilogy (in the To Be Read pile as we speak).
This one focuses on John Grady Cole and his friend Rawlings, who run away from home to herd cattle in Mexico (as you do). There’s shootouts, doomed affairs, Mexican prisons (I didn’t think they’d survive that), and lots of horses. John Grady is especially in love with horses.
Like the other Cormac McCarthy I read, it’s not a happy story and it’s not set in a happy world, but the language is so beautiful it tempers the sadness and tragedy.
Filed under: 10, Fiction | Leave a Comment
A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck, The Lady From the Sea
Henrik Ibsen
Drama
Read from 12/9/06 – 12/22/06
My grade: 7
I have no idea where I got this book – maybe during senior year of high school? It’s not even on Amazon anymore, so this isn’t the cover of my edition. I’ve been lugging it around for at least eight years, and I finally broke down and read it. I’m very proud.
These plays are all about the same thing – a third party decides to reveal a family secret, intending to help the main characters have a true marriage.
In A Doll’s House, the secret is debt, and when it’s revealed Nora realizes her marriage is a sham and she leaves to find herself. In The Wild Duck the secret is Hedwig’s parentage and the result is her death and no real change for her putative father (although maybe it does end up helping his marriage). And in The Lady From the Sea, it actually works out – when the husband agrees to set his wife free to choose to go off with the stranger, that freedom allows her to choose to stay.
This whole true marriage thing seemed pretty stupid to me, but I do like reading plays. They are quick, but I find them more accessible than short stories.
Also, Hedwig! Awesome.
Filed under: 7, Drama | Leave a Comment
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami
Fiction
Read from 12/12/06 – 12/15/06
My grade: 6
This was basically Johnny Mnemonic. That is not high praise.
The plot didn’t make a lick of sense, though Murakami seemed to think it did, he spent lots of time on exposition. It’s a weird book – animal skulls, sewer creatures, alternate chapters from inside the protagonist’s head. It had all this crazy stuff in it and it never added up to anything. No more Murakami for me for a long time.
Also, why do I insist on reading so many books in translation? I know I’m losing stuff and missing subtext.
Filed under: 6, Fiction | 5 Comments
The Best American Comics 2006 (I think this might actually be titled “The Best American Series 2006: The Best American Comics” which is right up there with X-Men 2: X-Men United for my favorite redundant title. Moving on…)
Harvey Pekar, guest editor; Anne Elizabeth Moore, series editor
Comics
Read from 11/30/06 – 12/9/06
My grade: 8
Wonderful! I loved everything about this collection – the concept, the choices, even the physical book itself is charming. The only crappy bit was Harvey Pekar’s introduction, which made me wonder how he gets paid to write. The most enthusiasm he can muster is “you may be pleasantly surprised.” His descriptions of the comics included were clunky and boring. There was even an incident of bad grammar.
Anyway, the comics themselves were great. My three favorites are The Amazing Life of Onion Jack , La Rubia Loca, and Portrait of My Dad. Onion Jack is a stick-figure comic about a superhero who really just wants to be a chef. La Rubia Loca is a black and white, realistically drawn comic that tells the true story of a bus tour in Mexico where one of the tourists goes crazy and the others have to get her out of Mexico (lest she be put in a Mexican asylum, shudder). And Portrait of My Dad is several pages in a Chris Ware style (tiny panels, different lengths, etc.), and it feels like random stories about the writer’s dad, including a pictorial resume, a dream the writer had about his dad, musings on his dad’s faith, etc.
My least favorite was Only Disconnect, which was jarringly bad. A one pager where two ladies have a funny (?) conversation. It was worse-than-the-newspaper-comics bad. It was did-this-page-get-put-in-this-book-by-accident bad. I was perplexed.
Most of the comics were black and white, but I loved the orange and yellow used to tell a near-death experience in Passing Before Life’s Very Eyes. Oh, and an honorable mention to the unique format used by Rabbithead – the artist ran one strip on the first page, then it branched off up and down for three strips on the next page, and so on, until there were seven strips going at once, then she collapsed it all back down. Very cool, but the content and drawings were nearly indecipherable.
Filed under: 8, Graphic Novel / Comic | Leave a Comment
#53 – Moral Disorder
Moral Disorder
Margaret Atwood
Short Stories
Read from 12/5/06 – 12/8/06
My grade: 6
This exceeded my expectations. Atwood and I run 50/50, so when I saw it was Atwood AND short stories, I was a little worried. But, it was readable and didn’t turn insane and empty like Oryx and Crake .
The stories cover the childhood, marriage, and old age of Nell, a Canadian bohemian type. She shacks up with a married man, lives on a farm, and learns about real estate. The real estate story, “The Entities” was my favorite.
Obviously there were problems – like Atwood apparently forgot to give Nell’s husband a personality. And Nell was passive throughout, and I never knew why she was living on that farm, or why she was with the husband. The first wife, Oona, was very clear, and her involvement in a plot always helped. (Though she was totally unsympathetic).
I don’t know if I’ll dip into the Atwood well again, but this was an okay finale for us.
Filed under: 6, Short Stories | Leave a Comment
#52 – Making Comics
Making Comics
Scott McCloud
Comics
Read from 11/21/06 – 12/4/06
My grade: 5
This book is written in comics form, which was a neat idea, and works very well. t was enjoyable, and certainly fun to read, but it seemed like ten pages of material spread over 250. The comics form helped, because McCloud could illustrate each point, but it also locked him in, so every sentence has a panel, and most of them are just his character and a speech bubble. He did everything he could to add variety to this, but it was a built-in problem, I think.
I don’t think I learned anything about how comics writers tell stories, which was the whole point. But, what McCloud does have to say is interesting and he tells it in an engaging (if often repetitive way). [The repetition isn't just the same panel so many times, McCloud also took a kind of textbook structure, so every chapter tells you what is coming, then tells you the information, then tells you what it told you. It got annoying.] He seemed to want to break comics down, which is totally understandable, but I think he took a wrong turn somewhere. The structures he imposed felt artificial. For example, he says there are basically four types of comic writers – the Classicists (who are in it for the beauty), the Animists (who are in it for the content), the Formalists (who are in it for the form), and the Iconoclasts (the rebels). I just don’t understand the need for this – the types are too broad to mean anything, and every writer is at least two of the types. It just seemed pointless.
The art was fun, but not more than just fun. I feel bad criticizing this, because I did enjoy it, but it was like a cupcake when I wanted a three course meal. Overall, disappointing.
Filed under: 5, Graphic Novel / Comic | Leave a Comment
#51 – All Families Are Psychotic
All Families Are Psychotic
Douglas Coupland
Fiction
Read from 11/27/06 – 11/30/06
My grade: 5
I swear to God, I have no idea what this was. Black comedy? Comedy? Drama? Melodrama? Every time I put it down I had enjoyed it and wasn’t sure if I had enjoyed it the way Coupland intended. Was everyone being sarcastic all the time? Or was no one? Were just some people? By way of example, near the end the family members who are HIV+ (numbering THREE – which, again, is this to be taken seriously?) are cured by a woman from Africa who has some kind of super-immunity. And I have no idea if I was supposed to believe that in the world of the book these characters are now cured. Or was it supposed to be sad that they were hopeful? That sort of question came up every few pages.
After Hey Nostrodamus! this was a huge disappointment. Turns out this is one of Coupland’s least liked books, and most people had the same issues I did, where the characters were unlikeable and it’s unclear if we should care about them.
On the other hand, it read really fast and I kind of enjoyed it even without knowing what it was – like watching a Dutch soap opera.
PS – That “maestro’s ear for dialogue” mentioned on the cover? My ass. One character says “dumb bunny” twice. Do they say that in Canada, Coupland?
PPS – Sorry, Canada, I didn’t mean to burn you! I love you! Call me!
Filed under: 5, Fiction | Leave a Comment
#50 – Witches Abroad
Witches Abroad
Terry Pratchett
Sci-Fi/Humor
Read from 11/20/06 – 11/23/06
My grade: 8
Pratchett always delivers the funny. I like the witches – they are my second favorite character set, after the Wizards. But Granny Weatherwax specifically is a unique character, and my favorite of Pratchett’s creations.
Here, Granny et al. set out to prevent Granny’s sister (the evil one) from making stories come true. Granny doesn’t truck with forced happy endings. They succeed, and the princess doesn’t marry a prince, the frog doesn’t turn into a man, and Little Red Ridinghood’s grandmother lives (and gets a cleaning service to boot).
I loved this bit, from Granny to her sister:
You mean you didn’t even have fun? If I’d been as bad as you, I’d have been a whole lot worse. Better at it than you’ve ever dreamed of.
It was a great character moment. Ditto the final resolution, where both sisters are put in a hall of mirrors and each is told she can escape when she finds the real her. Their different reactions were perfect.
These books are always more complex than I remember them, and this one was one of the best so far.
Filed under: 8, Humor, Sci-Fi / Fantasy | Leave a Comment
#49 – The Turkish Gambit
The Turkish Gambit
Boris Akunin
Detective
Read from 11/16/06 – 11/20/06
My grade: 7
The third volume in the Erast Fandorin series is narrated by Varvara, a young Russian woman who encounters Fandorin during the Russian war with Turkey while Fandorin is trying to smoke out a Turkish spy. It’s a well-constructed mystery, and I didn’t figure it out until just a second before Fandorin (always a good sign, I hate it when you can immediately solve a mystery and the detective looks stupid). But I also found it hard to follow – so much was missing when we only get Varvara’s perspective, and I always want more Fandorin screen time (so to speak). No least because he was the only one who could explain things. I wasn’t even sure what the mystery WAS for the first hundred pages or so. In the end I’m not sure the gains of a different narrator are worth the costs in terms of confusion and occasional frustration.
I did decide while reading to go back and reread all three before moving on, which is a credit to the books, both in quality and complexity.
Oh, and I still heart Fandorin, he might be my favorite literary detective of all time.
Filed under: 7, Detective Novel | Leave a Comment
#48 – Moneyball
Moneyball
Michael Lewis
Non-Fiction
Read from 11/8/06 – 11/13/06
My grade: 8
A birthday gift from Emily – fittingly, it is about economics.
Delightfully smart. Billy Beane used his Oakland A’s to exploit market inefficiences in major league baseball – but interesting!
The idea that players have talents that the League wasn’t seeing is immensely appealing – like Major League come to life. The fat catcher, the underhanded pitcher, one player actually had a clubbed foot, etc. Everyone loves a misfits do good story. Of course, Beane doesn’t view his players at all sentimentally, and trades them as soon as he can make a good deal for them. He uses stats to find undervalued players, buy ‘em cheap, use ‘em to win games, and then sell or trade them for more than he paid, and start all over. Like Major League meets investment banking.
I loved the occasional cameos – Johnny Damon, Theo Epstein, Jason Giambi (who gets covered in praise, which struck me as a little ironic, as we now know he was on steroids this whole time), Miguel Tejada, even Kevin Youkilis, who has a running subplot!
My only nitpick about Lewis is that he used the construction “person X is a machine for result Y” THREE times in one chapter. I guess that’s really his editor’s fault. I started making up new ones:
I am a machine for sleeping till noon.
My mom is a machine for making yummy beef stew.
Michael Lewis is a machine for saying people are machines for doing things.
A car is a machine for taking people on drives.
Anyway, I liked it a LOT, and it whet my appetite for part two of Emily’s Michael Lewis-themed birthday gift, The Blind Side.
Filed under: 8, Non-Fiction | Leave a Comment
#47 – The Areas of My Expertise
The Areas of My Expertise
John Hodgman
Fake Reference
Read from 10/30/06 – 11/2/06
My grade: 7
Part two of my Daily Show reading. I have no idea how to categorize this. I think it’s shelved in Humor, I guess I’ll do that. I tried to find how I had labeled America: The Book, but I can’t find an entry for that! Alert!
Anyway, hilarious! His tone is unique, and also funny. The hobo history is my favorite part. For flavor, a quote:
They called it the War to End All Wars. They called it the London Fire and the Trail of Tears. But they were all wrong. It was called the Great Depression, and the hoboes saw it coming.
If that didn’t make you laugh, how about this:
And across the country they began a coordinated reign of terror: soiling featherbeds, salting the cornfields, and dancing manic, heavy-footed jigs on parlor floors while ordinary citizens looked on in horror. In Kansas City, a hobo declared himself Duke of All the West and began demanding tithes. They wanted cheap beer and warm hats. They wanted bent nails and pieces of string. They demanded half barrels of swallowfeather sauce, and no one knew what they were talking about.
It goes on, more or less like that, for 255 pages.
I did make a mistake with this book, though, which was to read it all at one go. With his future books (a planned trilogy!) I’ll read a bit at a time. After a while I got habituated, so things that would have made me laugh out loud in minute 16 of reading merely made me grin in minute 114.
Filed under: 7, Humor | Leave a Comment
#46 – No god but God
No god but God
Reza Aslan
Non-Fiction
Read from 10/22/06 – 10/27/06
My grade: 10
Wow, I didn’t know anything about Islam – I guess that’s what happens when your world religions teacher is Mrs. Cranshaw, who came over on the Mayflower.
I am comforted by Aslan’s thesis – that we’re watching an Islamic reformation, not a battle of civilizations. Also, I believe that long term changes tend to be in the direction of more freedom and tolerance. Still, a reformation isn’t necessarily less bloody or fraught than a battle between civilizations.
I’m worried that we (Americans, the West) may have interfered in an ultimately damaging way. Have we created an environment hostile to progress? Saudi Arabia’s example says yes, but the UAE and, surprisingly, Iran, may say no. I can’t believe Iran is our great hope for a democratic Islamic nation. Is that the same as no hope?
There were so many interesting things in this book, but since this isn’t a political blog, I will have to chat about them with Ta, rather than write an ill-informed dissertation. Internet, you dodged that bullet!
Cheers to Aslan, who made an incredibly dense and complex topic readable and clear. The degree of difficultly on this book is about six million. I can’t wait for whatever he writes next. I recommend this book to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Filed under: 10, Non-Fiction | Leave a Comment
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