Category: Books

Hah! Only 7 books read this month despite being on vacation for a week.  Could some sort of balance be returning to my reading schedule?  Let’s hope so.  Maybe next month I will only read five books.

Read
Bossypants. 
Tina Fey 
I’ve been staring at this book in the Lucky Day section at my library for many months and I just last week noticed that the hands on the cover are man hands and not hers at all.  I would make a horrible FBI agent as noticing is not my thing.  


This is a very funny book, which I read at the same time I read Sleepwalk with Me by Mike Bribigla and while reading both books my laughter echoed through the house often, causing much commentary by Matt. I spared him the reading aloud of multiple pages, but he would have been the better for it.


The thing I liked about this memoir was that it was full of great stories, but Tina Fey still keeps her secrets.  Her reasons why she does not talk about the attack that gave her the scar on her face was one of the most brilliantly reasoned passages I have read in a memoir and I admired how we continually heard about her ongoing state of virginity, but she never tells us the details of when she crossed that milestone.  Tina Fey is a classy lady and proof that feminists and funny are not exclusive.


Sleepwalk with Me
Mike Bribigla
This was sitting on the shelf of the library right next to Bossypants and I grabbed them both.  Both were laugh-out-loud funny.  Some of this book were things expanded from bits I heard of Bribiglia’s act, some were stories new to me.  I loved reading his response to review published in student publications and his tour of college campuses of the northwest.  Matt got to hear that one read aloud.


Plain Kate
Erin Bow
This falls into the “YA strong female protagonist” genre that is publishing like mad right now.  The story was compelling, but perhaps a little too dark for me.


The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Douglas Adams
Read aloud.
The saga of Ford Prefect and Arthur continues as they bring along Trillian and Zaphod Beeblebrox.  High-jinx ensue, pithy observations are made and funny things happen.

Wonder
R.J. Palacio
Thanks to Sara, I read one of the best books of the year.  This is the story of a deformed child entering a middle school after being home schooled through elementary school.  It’s the awkward middle school transition we all got to experience, but times one-thousand.  The writing is wry and compelling and the characters were very multidimensional.  I am hoping this will win some prizes.

Giovanni’s Room
James Baldwin
Read for Book Group
Eh.  The prose was dry, the forbidding sense of doom became annoying really quickly and I didn’t really like any of the characters.  That  said, it was an interesting glimpse into homosexuality in Paris in the 1950s.  And I was the only one at book group who didn’t like it.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami
So I’m still not sure about Murakami.  As with 1Q84, I enjoyed reading the book, it sort of put me in an altered state.  But when I finished I was again wondering if that was all there was.  I’ll read another of Murakami and maybe that will help me decide if I like him or not.  Or maybe I’ll read all of his books and still have the same feeling.

Started and did not finish.
The Horse and His Boy
C.S. Lewis
Oh god, this series is boring.  Stay tuned to see if I make it through all the books.

Ah-hah!  Only 3 YA (and younger) books this month!

Read
Gay Romance Novel #1
Jan Wilson
My friend gave me a draft of her novel to read.  I loved it!  I’ll let you know when it becomes available for all of you to read.

Pretties
Scott Westerfeld
This is the second book in the Uglies series, we follow along with Tally’s adventures and moral quandaries.  The ending had me reserving the next book in the series.  Unfortunately, there is a line, and it’s proving to be quite long.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
Read aloud.
I’ve not read this since Junior High and I greatly enjoyed revisiting the story.

The Sisters Brothers
Patrick DeWitt
I did not like this book and I spent a lot of time wondering why.  I liked the main character, he was quite sympathetic.  The plot was interesting, and the writing quite good.  The San Francisco Gold Rush setting was  to my liking.  But I never took to it, though I read all the way to the end.

Chloe and the Lion
Mac Burnett & Adam Rex
Funny!  This was recommended by my friend Sara and I got it from the library even though it was a picture book and I don’t usually spend time reading them.  I read it and spent ten minutes laughing out loud alone in the house. Laughing out loud while reading by myself is always an odd pleasure for me.  There’s the laughter, which is great, but then the kind of creepy feeling that I might be a little crazy. After I enjoyed it, I insisted that Matt read it.  Now I’m insisting that you do too. It will take 10 minutes.  Laughter is good for you. Maybe you can read it aloud to someone so you can both laugh together and avoid the creepy feeling.  Just do it.

Women of the Silk
Gail Tsukiyama
Read for Kenton Book Club
This was okay.  I liked that it had a setting that was foreign to me.  I liked that it was about women.  The silk work was interesting.  Other than that, the book never grabbed me.  What was interesting was that during the book group discussion, most of the women did not like the book and most of the men did.  Several people in book group (men and women) had read Samuri Gardens by the same author and recommended that book over this one. I shall perhaps see what that is all about.

Arcadia
Lauren Goff
I greatly enjoyed the author’s earlier works, the Monsters of Templeton, and was happy to read this new novel about Bit, a child growing up on a commune during the 1970s.  The book is divided into four sections, checking in with Bit at four different ages.  I found the first two to be the most compelling.  The last two sections were not as magical as the first two, but that might have been by design.  It was still a good read, with some quite funny observations of 1970s hippie culture.

Sister
Rosmund Lupton
Gripping mystery set in London.  A friend at work read it, recommended it to myself and another friend at work and we all read it within a week of each other so we could have a mini book discussion group.

Mockingjay
Suzanne Collins
Matt and I read aloud.
As before, the gripping ending to the story.  In the end, everything works out.  It’s just rough going getting there.

Dear Photograph
Taylor Jones
This is a great concept that became popular because of the internet, but which I discovered in the book store.  The discovery in a bricks-and-mortar store over the bits and bytes cheers me.  At any rate, some of the entries are incredibly moving.  This is also one of those good books where you needn’t read much to read it, as it is mostly photos.


Started and did not finish.
I finished everything I started this month.

It’s another big YA month.  Clearly, I should have stayed in library school and clearly, I should be a youth librarian.

Read
The Art of Fielding
Chad Harbach
Two people I know (one virtually, one in person) heartily endorsed this book and their hearty endorsements were spot-on.  This is a fabulous novel, chock full of wonderful characters.  It’s about baseball, yes, but don’t let that scare you off.  It’s about so much more:  friendship and love and loyalty and pressure and that transition from college to adult life.  I feel in love with the characters (Mike Haurbach will live in my heart forever) and when I finished the book, I immediately returned to the first page and read the first fifty pages again just so I could be introduced to the characters one more time.

We the Animals
Justin Torres
A friend gave this to me as a book she loved.  It is a very short book, but was very hard for me to read because I don’t do well with childhood neglect and abuse and this book contains a lot of both.  It’s very well written, for what it’s worth.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis
I can’t say the second book in the series thrilled me.  The plus of this series so far seems to be that the books are only 15 chapters long, and thus can be read quickly.

Bitterblue
Kristen Cashore
All the haters of the “pro-casual sex” message of the first two books can add “pro-homosexual relationships” to the things they will hate about this book.  I however, liked it.  First of all, unlike the first two books, this one has fabulous woodcut illustrations scattered throughout.  I also liked Bitterblue’s conundrum of trying to govern a state while not being able to leave the castle. There is a lot of good teenager identity and tough choices within this novel and the reappearance of characters from the other books is fun too.

Uglies
Scott Westerfeld
I grabbed this book one day to read at lunch, as I had left my newspaper behind. I expected to start it, find it incredibly silly and cast it off as soon as Bitterblue arrived. Instead, I found the story quite interesting and was reluctant to put down either book.  This book has a lot of elements that make up a classic story:  something that seems really great on the surface (everyone gets surgery to look like a supermodel when they turn 16!); the main character feeling isolated and lonely (Tally’s birthday is later than her friends);  questioning (not everyone is so hip to have the surgery); a quest (which I won’t tell you about, due to spoilers); and tough choices.

In most of the fiction written for adults, the main character of this novel would be a boy.  But, thanks to the success of the Hunger Games, a lot of YA fiction features girls setting out on the heroic journey.  I’m waiting for this to trickle up to adult fiction and movies.

Please Don’t Kill the Freshman
Zoe Trope
This book could go on a Goodreads shelf titled: books written by authors I take Pilates with.  However, since Zoe Trope hasn’t yet written a second novel and there are no other authors in my Pilates class, it would be a very thin shelf.  I’ve been interested in this book since its release several years ago (Portland setting! Written by actual high school teenager!) but have just now gotten around to reading it.  It was tough going the first 50 pages.  I almost stopped reading, overwhelmed by the voice that was clearly very smart and clearly very, very disdainful of school.  However, I kept going and was rewarded by that disdain fading and leaving some incredibly delightful prose.  It’s rough and could have used more editing–something that was rejected by the author–but the roughness has its charms and the charms are many.  It’s also nice to see the difference in acceptance of gay teenagers at the high school level ten years after I graduated from high school.

Started and did not finish
Spontaneous Happiness
Andrew Weil
I really liked this book from the very beginning when Andrew Weil discusses the fact that he thinks the title is misleading and that what we are looking for is a general contentment, rather than full-on happiness.  He then discusses various things we could all be doing to feel more content with our lives (eating right, exercising, meditating, supplements, etc.) and discusses his own journey with depression.  There is an 8-week plan for creating more happiness in your life and I’ve made a note in my planner to revisit the book in November, when it becomes more difficult for me to stay in a general state of contentment.

What I talk about when I talk about  running
Hariki Murakami
Still high off of 1Q84, I checked the library for any copy of anything Murakami had written that was actually available (as opposed to something I would have to put on hold and wait for) and came up with this book.  In some ways, it was interesting, giving insight into how Murakami writes and his journey to be a writer, in other ways it was kind of boring.  I’m interested in reading about people’s sports practices, but not that interested.  I kept bypassing it for other books and eventually sent it back to the library.

A lot of book group selections, reading projects and YA stuff here.

Read
Whiteout
Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber
Matt and I read aloud.
I wish I read the afterword before I read the book because in it Lieber discusses the various ways he used to depict the Antarctic.  That would have been interesting to observe while I was reading the book.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Ransom Riggs (no really, that’s his name)
A great combination of good storytelling influenced by old photos.  It feels like there is probably a sequel coming, but this is still a good stand-alone book.

Rilla of Ingleside
L.M. Montgomery
I read the edition edited by Benjamin Lefebvre and Andrea McKenzie.  I had to special order it from Canada as American booksellers don’t have it yet.

I’ve now read all eight books in the Anne series, and I can say that this is by far the best one.  I liked the Anne books only somewhat as I found Montgomery strong on character and incredibly weak on plot in most of the books.  This, however, was an actual novel that was gripping to read.  Clearly World War I had a great impact on the author and she channeled her feelings into this novel, with great results.  It has such a clear plot, it could even be read without reading the other seven books in the series.

This edition also includes a handy glossary to define WWI era things that have gone out of our collective memory.  My favorite entry is “soup tureen.”  I figured people still knew what that was.  However, I saw one at the Goodwill the other day and asked Matt if he knew what it was and he did not.  Granted, he’s probably not the best representative as he continues to put “salad roaster” on shopping lists.

The Human Experiment: 2 years and 20 minutes inside Biosphere 2
Jayne Poynter
One of the crew of the initial Biosphere 2 mission tells her story.  This was interesting to read after reading Dreaming the Biosphere  as Poynter gives her view of the split that happened with the eight-man crew.  I also got a better picture of her work at Synergia Ranch and around the globe in various Synergian ventures.  Now to read the book written by the couple in the other faction.

Trask
Don Barry
Read for Kenton Book Group
This is a really fabulous early settler/Indian Oregon narrative that is also a gripping story. It’s slow to start (in fact, several people in the book group commented that it was a bit slow, but they liked it even though they hadn’t yet finished it.  Every single one of them had stopped around page 50) but picks up rapidly after that. The book included great characters, what I felt was a sympathetic portrayal of Oregon cost Indians circa 1840.  I’m not sure why this is not required reading in various high schools around Oregon, but it should be.

The Silent Boy
Lois Lowry
I grabbed this one day to read during lunch because I forgot my newspaper. It uses historic photographs to supplement the story.  Lowry is a darn good storyteller so this is a good story and with a non-standard character as it includes an Autistic boy in the early 20th century.  When I was younger, I never saw anything but “regular” children in the books I read, so I came away with the impression that people with cognitive disabilities didn’t exist except in the present.

The Magician’s Nephew
C.S. Lewis
And I’m off on another children’s series.  I can’t say I loved this book as it was fairly paternalistic, but it went quickly and had some memorable images, notably Jadis standing on top of the handsome cab whipping the poor horse through the streets of London.

Blue Pills
Read for Kenton Book Group
As mentioned several times before, the graphic novel is not my genre.  However, it was very nice to have a book group book I finished in about three days (rather than three weeks) and which explored an interesting topic.  Because the Kenton Book Group is made up primarily of people who don’t read graphic novels, we had quite a lively discussion, where I found myself championing the genre.  There’s some really great “early relationship” stuff in here and though the woman in the group who identifies herself as an artist said she would have given the author a bad grade because he couldn’t draw, I loved the art.

Happily, one member had never read any graphic novels before and was so taken with the genre he made it a priority to select another graphic novel for us to read next year.

Started and did not finish
Blackbringer
Lani Taylor
I like fantasy, I think.  But the I read something like this and wonder.  Do faeries (even somewhat bad-ass ones) sink the story for me?  Perhaps.

I want my MTV
Marks and Tannenbaum
This is the second book every which I have desired to read in some electronic format with internet connection (the first being 1Q84 because the darn thing was HEAVY.)  Reading this book, I greatly desired the internet as I was reading because I wanted to watch the videos as they discussed them.  Because watching videos while reading a paper copy involved me getting up out of my chair and booting up the laptop (which is chained up so I can’t bring it to my chair)I didn’t watch as many videos as I would want to.  Once I get that whole issue worked out, I will happily finish this book because it is FAN-TAS-TIC especially for me who came of age watching MTV during the time period the book covers (1981-1992)

The format is excerpts of interviews with people involved in MTV, the creation of the station, the VJs, the bands, the people making the videos.  It is very hard to stop reading, especially when you get multiple viewpoints of a single event.  This is pure delightful candy.

Only three YA books of seven this month?  Not bad, not bad.  Book of note:  even if you aren’t interested in Biosphere 2, Dreaming the Biosphere is a great piece of nonfiction.  I hope to read more by Reider.

Four “grown up” books and five young adult books read this month. Apparently, I should have become a youth librarian. Darn you, early twenties ill-thought choices.

There was a lot of reading this month, but it’s January in Portland, Oregon. This means cold and rainy. Scrolling through, I see that there were several YA selections, some of them quite good. Quite good YA selections can be read in a 24 hour period easily. Would you like to read a very good YA book? Pick up The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. You won’t be sorry.