Sunday, December 30, 2012

Review: The Pigeon


The Pigeon
The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was really good. It's a novella about how one thing suddenly sets off a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It starts with a pigeon and there's an entire day of flukey bad luck and waves of hate of everything that is finally ended by a rainstorm.

I've had those days.



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Review: The Pigeon


The Pigeon
The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind

My rating: 4 of 5 stars







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Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Review: The Crying of Lot 49


The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



That was just awesome. It's all a conspiracy! At the post office! And that was the oddest sex scene ever, followed by the odd idea of sex in a closet on occasion. That was such a fun romp - though I suppose I don't really have much idea through what exactly.

However back in 2009 I wrote a blog entry all about buying this book and here it is:

How I buy books always strikes me as quite bizarre. More so lately, as I seem to go in when a bit buzzed - post-hashing or post-Cinco de Mayo. Since, for whatever reason, I haven't been in the mood to blog about books I've read, instead I'm going to blog about books I've bought.

Post-hashing I went in and spontaneously bought four used Kathy Reichs books. Fair enough, I've read one of her Brennan books and very much liked it, but I decided to spend that $20 in about ten seconds. I grabbed a couple of chick lit books for when I want pure escapism and two Olivia Manning books ($2 each, very old Penguins) since I liked the first part of the Balkan Trilogy so much. I grabbed a used copy of The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (I've heard about it, though I'm not sure where) - which turns out to be the next book club pick, so that's handy. Amalee by Dar Williams I bought simply because I like her music (and yes, I too wonder if that means that she can write). Then I grabbed three books that are by authors I know and have liked: Stars of the New Curfew by Ben Okri (as a bonus, it was only $3), American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, and The Sopranos by Alan Warner.

Post-Cinco de Mayo I ordered the rest of Kathy Reichs' books, having become quickly addicted, and picked up one book based on its cover and another on its spine. First the cover - personally, I think that judging a book by its cover is often fairly effective. After all, a fair amount of money is spent on choosing covers and sending particular messages. Though I suppose it wasn't the cover that caused me to buy it, so much as the fact that it's an old Penguin Modern Classics book. There's something about the 1950s Penguin look that I like - in fact, I've sort of pondered getting the penguin tattooed on me somewhere (I really want a tattoo, but I really want it to be the right tattoo, so it's taking me ages to decide.) Anyway, basically I now own a copy of Voss by Patrick White. I've never heard of this book, but according to the blurb on the back, it's about crossing the Australian continent for the first time - which dovetails nicely with all the explorers I'm learning about while teaching social studies. Then there was the book that I bought because of its spine. I recently read The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and my copy is an Olive Edition with a very distinctive, striped red-and-white spine. I saw a blue version while I was browsing and I was curious. When it turned out to be a Michael Chabon novel with nothing on the back but a review from Playboy, I couldn't resist. After all, how odd is that? Hopefully The Mysteries of Pittsburgh will be worth the $14.



The one thing that both trips have resulted in is books that I read about in two other books I've read recently: How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster and The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby. Both of the books were great - Foster starts his off by stating that when lecturing his students "a moment occurs in this exchange between professor and student when each of us adopts a look. My look says, 'What, you don't get it?' Theirs says, 'We don't get it. And we think you are making it up.'" That is exactly what I though while sitting through endlessly boring English classes back in high school - though when left to my own devices, I could sometimes find symbolism or patterns. Possibly I was just being my normal resistant-to-authority self. In more recent years, I've often been struck by just how much novels resemble each other or play off of each other. Even random connections, like the fact that the same painting (The Raft of Medusa, Theodore Gericault) was mentioned in The Optimists by Andrew Miller and Fatal Voyage by Kathy Reichs, strike me as fairly fascinating. Hornby's book wasn't just a great book about reading; it was also hilarious. I think if I met him in the pub for a pint I'd very much like him. He reads a lot of stuff that I do, aside from all the football reading, granted. And I don't quite share his lack of love for literary novels. However, who else would write, "So tell your kids not to smoke, but it's only fair to warn them of the downside, too: that they will therefore never get the chance to offer the greatest living writer in America [Kurt Vonnegat] a light."

These two books have led to several more books. Nick Hornby read a biography of Richard Yates and that combined with my recent viewing of Revolutionary Road convinced me to buy The Easter Parade. Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant apparently was the book that inspired Hornby to write and I managed to find a $3 copy. Hornby described Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson as an "extraordinary, yearning mystical work about the dead and how they haunt the living" and combined with numerous recommendations, I could no longer resist. As a result of Foster's book, I've acquired a copy of Nabakov's Lolita, which I really ought to have read by now, and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, which I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of before.



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Monday, December 24, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Review: The Betrayal of Africa


The Betrayal of Africa
The Betrayal of Africa by Gerald Caplan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



That was a great little overview of what's going on in Africa and why, with a helpful list of sources at the back.



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Friday, December 21, 2012

Review: Lost in the Funhouse


Lost in the Funhouse
Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A book that begins by suggesting we are all God's ejaculate and brings to mind thoughts of Odysseus and running is my kind of book. I liked the way Barth was talking about writing as he wrote and I loved all the Ancient Greek references. There were definitely bits I didn't really get, but overall, I'm really happy to have discovered Barth.



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Review: The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye


The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye
The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye by Robert Kirkman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



It was good - since I'm watching the show, there weren't really many surprises and I generally spent my time comparing the characters to their TV counterparts. I find the blam blam scenes of them shooting the zombies boring though.



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Thursday, December 20, 2012

Review: Lolita


Lolita
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I bought a copy of Lolita when I lived in Seoul. Four or five people borrowed it and no one finished it. They all disliked it.

I liked Lolita quite a lot but it's taken forever to read it. I've contemplated that it could be because I read it on my kindle and I sort of wonder if I read slower on it. I've thought it might just be the book because after the first section when the wife dies a lot of the tension leaves the narrative and I had a bit of a sense that I was just waiting for the relationship to end. I enjoyed the travelling sections well enough until Lolita's departure. From there I got quite bored, though that death scene is something else.



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