Per usual, skip it if you wanna.
1. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith - Novel about one summer for a teenager in England in the thirties. Kind of old-fashioned (I think it was actually written in the thirties) and very good.
2. Going to Bend by Diane Hammond - Novel about life in a small Pacific Northwest town - Very good.
3. O Rugged Land of Gold by Martha Martin - Memoir written in the 50s about a woman who lived, alone and pregnant, in the Alaskan wilderness - I loved this one. I'm a sucker for books about people who live in the middle of nowhere.
4. The Ladies' Lending Library by Janice Keefer - Novel about a group of women in the early sixties - Well written, but I had a hard time getting into it. Meh.
5. Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman - Ostensibly a book about a cross-country road trip, but it seemed like more of just a vanity project for the author. I get the feeling that this guy thinks he's a lot hipper than he actually is, kind of like Ira Glass. The book got good reviews, but I found it really annoying.
6. The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells. Oh, boy. I guess the title alone should have been a tip-off. I got a ways in and realized that it was better than reading the back of the cereal box, but not by much. The plot itself was okay, but the writing pretty much sucked. I really liked "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" by the same author, so I'm not sure why I found this one so god-awful. It was almost like somebody else wrote it. Moving on ....
7. June Bug by Chris Fabry - Fantastic! If you want to read something entertaining, read this. It's a novel about a young girl who discovers she was abducted as a toddler (or was she?), and it's just really good. All of the characters had interesting back-stories. I really recommend it.
8. Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle. This is "first-person fiction" (that's what they called it on the dustjacket, anyway) based on the true story of the author's grandmother. A great, great read - really interesting. Loved it!
9. Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad - Memoir about growing up with an unstable, controlling father, interwoven with a plane crash - Wow. I really liked this one.
So! I haven't been reading as much lately - Since I bought the house, it seems like every time I sit down to read I think of something else that needs to be cleaned/assembled/put away/repaired. Boy, who knew houses were such a gigantic time-suck? Heee.
Oh, and my birthday is coming up, so I've been scouring my Amazon wish list for a couple of good books to order. Normally I get all my books from the library, but there's some stuff that's not available locally, so this time of year I treat myself and order on-line, because God forbid I not have a good book to read on my birthday and on Christmas day. Am I the only one who does this? Oh, and I "preview" books that I have - read a little bit of each - to make sure I'm not stuck with a dog on the actual days themselves. Because how depressing would it be to be stuck reading a sucky book on your birthday?
God, I'm weird. Just stamp "NERD" on my forehead and leave it at that.
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I've read Nick Hornby's Long Way Down -- it's pretty good. Four people who have separate reasons for wanting to kill themselves "meet cute" while trying to work up the nerve to fling themselves from a building. The rest of the novel is about their unlikely friendship and the touch-and-go next three months of their life as they try to figure out whether life is worth living or not. It's a quick read (lots of shifts of perspective and voice as the tale shifts between the four main characters).
I also went on a Glenn Gold kick -- read both "Carter Beats the Devil" (strongly recommend) and "Sunnyside" (it's ok but not as good as his first novel).
I'm about to read some Junot Diaz, but first I have to finish grading a batch of lamentably bad student papers (which is like tearing my soul out through my nose with a crochet hook). Oh well, every job has its drawbacks.
Nick Hornby? Is that the musician? Oh wait, that's Bruce Hornsby, right? Is he the guy who did "Mandolin Rain?"
Man, I'm all kinds of confused today .....
Sorry about those student papers.
... so then I go to Amazon and look up Nick Hornby and I see he's written a book called "The Polysyllabic Spree" and I'm all, wait, isn't that a band? And no, the band is called the PolyPHONIC Spree, and holy cow those guys were awe-inspiringly weird and whatever happened to them and ....
I need to go lay down. Or is it "lie down"? ....
He's the guy who wrote High Fidelity and About a Boy. I think he's also a rock critic but I haven't personally read any of it.
I am loving that Junot Diaz book in the same way (and for many of the same reasons) that I like Sherman Alexie's work.
Tomorrow I'm going to go to a reading by Darcy Steinke (who wrote Easter Everywhere, which is a book that I think you'd like).
Bridgett, I'll have to look those guys up - thanks for the tips.
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