my life in books: a semi review

YA - tally: 4

we were liars by e lockhart
This was a miss for me. starting out as a too earnest love story, I held on because of my previous admiration for the author, and because a mystery was promised to me on the inside cover. When the ultimate reveal occurs, it all seems obvious and too easy for this high quality caliber author.

wonder by r j palacio
What the heck?  The best part of the entire book reviewed above was the notion/inspirational quote of 'be a little kinder than you have to be' and this book is chock full of inspirational quotes, mantras and then culminates with the principals speech asking everyone to be a little kinder.

 

pluto, a wonder story by rj palacio

cashing in on their success, palacio churns out another story that you only wish could be true, but it's woefully missing the real taunts and unavoidable isolation.

all the bright places by jennifer niven

a melodramatic, emotion focused, teen novel that actually panned out at the end by having the appropriate disaster occur at the end.

graphic novels - tally: 6

syllabus, notes from an accidental professor by lynda barry
this book may have changed my life. seriously. i want to move to wisconsin and take a class with their part time professor, my all-time fav comic stripper from NOW magazine back in my highschool days. i can't even describe it here. it's a journey you have to take. i will buy it, and transform myself

this one summer by jillian & mariko tamaki

graphic novel that was sweet enough

 

skim by mariko and jillian tamaki

nice enough coming of age story in graphic novel form. touches on cliques, crushes, and the fickleness of friends at this age - easy come, easy go.

 

walking dead - book 6
walking dead - book 7
walking dead - book 8

god help me i went back to it (cue shame face). watching the tv series and seeing all the ways they change the plot (well not plot points per say, but who the people are that instigate it) made me want to see how they were faring in comic book land...

btw the 'books' are actually 2 paperback volumes collated into one hardbound, so i'm up to volume 16. and yes, it's still being published. groan.

novels - tally: 6

the dinner by herman koch

people who hate this book may be reacting to the morals of the characters (who, yes, are horrible) instead of the skill with which the author lays out the plot. the stilted way the narrator talks reminds you continually that this is not a book set in our country, in our culture. we (the readers) lend the narrator a larger (than usual) portion of empathy as we try to settle into his life and HIS cadence for telling his story. and so we write off his quirkiness as cultural, and not mental illness, and so the first trap of the unreliable narrator is set.
another comment people have made is how shallow the story/characters are. but I would argue this is intentional for a variety of reasons. the narrator's over-sensitivity to the privacy of his son and his wife is continually demonstrated, and makes it difficult for the reader to land on hard facts. again, this approach masks the narrator's illness.

 

woebegone boy garrison keillor

shocking for Keillor to write about sex... so accustomed am I to his being a Christmas presence in out house. but he still knows the core of a rotten heart, and we've all got a piece of one.

 

100 foot journey by richard c morais

another foodie book, so not for me (and maybe colonial in it's 'foodie-ness'. after all the main character gives up his (time intensive) cooking methods for French (time intensive) cooking methods. why would the euro-centric approach be preferred?) plus it was annoyingly instructive in indian culture and vocabulary - like in a pandering, kindergarden way: tiffins, salwar kameez, endearing -ji endings... nothing new to me, and annoying when paragraphs explain things you already know.

 

adult onset  by anne marie macdonald

so excited to see this in the quick-read section, otherwise I'd have been waiting for ages. thought it was about one thing, but it was primarily about something else. had a great quote:

Your parents lived to adulthood before you came along and are thus equipped to recognize themselves in a world without you.  But you have never known a world without them.

 

the city by dean koontz

had to read for a bookclub but it bored me so much that I forgot to finish. yada, yada, the city is a person, the boy is a musical genius with an angry father, a kindly neighbor and a vicious squatter living above him. that description sounds enticing but it wasn't.

I thought maybe this Koonzt guy was supposed to be mystery, but know it think it's more paranormal stuff... not my cup of tea since junior high.

 

the wolf of wallstreet by jordan belfort

well, no wonder they made a movie of this book - it's a roaring soap opera right from the start, and quite funny. this guy belfort has a knack of creating a character out of each person along with catchy & demeaning nicknames like the luscious duchess, the cobbler, the drooler, or the uniblinker. I'm sure it's all exaggerated (hence my putting it under novel and not memoir), and sure, this guy as a huge douchebag, but I laughed aloud over these guys and their antics.

memoirs - tally: 8
(what is with this huge influx of memoirs?! am i getting nostalgic?)

I must say: my life as a humble comedy legend by martin short

typical memoir written by a man - lots of detail and people and (only) surfaces of emotions.  but I guess that's OK. men seem to ID an emotion and that's enough. it's obvious he loved his wife deeply (I read an exerpt in macleans and that's what made me want to read an entire memoir of a 'hollywood' star - not my usual cup of tea) and I guess it's not really name-dropping when these 'stars' are actual friends and neighbours. and maybe part of that exercise was a thank-you note to them.

lit: a memoir by mary karr
i was totally lost in the content of this book. was it too dense in a literary sense (she did date david foster wallace after all), or was she expecting me to have read her earlier memoirs?  whatever the case, i'll be getting out Liar's Club before i try this one again.

lady parts by andrea martin
i read the first few essays; they were a little funny but not overtly, and sort of disappointing considering the glowing reviews it got. and she hardly wrote about her SCTV work so that was disappointing too, especially after relating to most of the work that martin short referenced.

society's child by janis ian

what we love about a Janis Ian song - the singular ability to bring you right back to that moment of rejection, the aching pain that can never be forgotten, that full & satisfying wallow in despair - is the reason her autobiography is horribly narcissistic: a song lasts for 4-7minutes, and this book is 9+ hours.

of wallowing.

she writes like she's still 18 years old, the world is out to get her, and nothing is her fault. she was careful to praise most people on a professional level (be it singer, song writer, producer) but made sure to tar them with unsubstantiated claims like - withholding documents, or taking her money, or 'losing' her baby blanket (yes, it gets that trite). I loved her songs but now they are a tainted by the knowledge of her immaturity and narcissism.

 

three little words: a memoir by ashley rhodes-courter

poorly written but that's not the point of the book - it's an account of someone's life who could easily have become a statistic but rose above it by having ambition and drive. and luck.

 

yes, please by amy poehler

mash-up between funny book and self help. she manages to talk a lot of her divorce without giving any specific details. so probably disappointing to many. not a fan of her self-help sections - essentially she is still in the throws of her maternal drive and it colours her world in wonderful, positive ways, but this is a temporary phenomenon. it was nice to be reminded of it. 

 

as you wish, inconceivable tales from the making of the princess bride by cary elwes

delightful. nothing but happy tales and fond remembrances and some (only-nice) behind the scenes gossip.

 

not that kind of girl by lena dunham

not impressed by this book at all, and was even tempted to drop it before I finished. my complaints are many: she's over obsessed with herself, she over-shares to the point of embarrassment, she relates her vagina to entirely too many things (and thinks yapping on about her vagina is ground breaking. it is not). her segue ways are actually non sequiturs; I can't understand why she places material where she does. and everything, everything (!), contradicts itself.