A Package in the Mail

I came home at lunch yesterday and found a parcel sitting in my mailbox. It was small, shaped like a paperback novel and the return address said "Erin Brinkman". I knew it would be a book, so I unwrapped it quickly to see what she had sent me. The book is Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati. The quote on the front cover is by Diana Gabaldon, one of my favorite authors, so Wilderness has officially bumped its way to the top of my reading list. Thanks Erin!

Kurt Vonnegut...huh...

I just finished the Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm not really sure what to say about it. Weird. I could get all intellectual about it and discuss the theme of free will and how we apparently have none...but I don't think I could do justice to it. I'll sum it up in one word: Bizarre.

While Reading...

While I was reading Travels in the Scriptorium the pages would fall in a certain way and I would be struck by a severely creeped out feeling. Why do I feel like I'm being watched?

I bought a book based on its cover. I judged it by its cover and judged correctly. Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant was exactly as I assumed; bizarre, witty, clever, wonderful. I would go so far as to say this is one of the best books I've read in years. I don't know if it's a case of every once in a while a book comes along and hits you at the right time in your life, but Tortoise certainly hit me. The way Audrey (Oddly) thinks about things and analyzes situations was so strangely familiar to the way I think and notice things. It is chalk full of plays on words. And the chapters told from Winnifred the tortoise's perspective were delightful and adorable, everything from her perspective on being warm, to her thoughts on Shakespeare's writing style and how he "uses so many exponents". The Tortoise was a complete delight to read and I want to read it again. It definitely gets my recommendation.
The enjoyment I got from reading this book may have heightened my disappointment with Jennifer Weiner's Best Friends Forever. I've read a number of her books and they tend to vary from enjoyable to so-so, but this one was a let down all around. The supporting characters were frustrating and the plot was very predictable. I felt like I had seen this book in cheesy tv show or movie format a million times.
Following BFF, I picked up a book I'd been eyeing up at the bookstore for some time. Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster was finally in the discount bin at $2, which was a bit of a red flag for me, but I decided to risk it anyway; for $2.10 after tax, can't go wrong, right? Wrong. The only merit to this book was that it was only 143 pages long. The story was about a man who wakes up in a room and has no idea who he is, where he is or how he got there, but the people that come to his room throughout the day are angry with him to varying degrees. It's all very mysterious, yet very flat. To start with, I didn't care for the writing style, but I went on with it anyway. The story took many different paths and hinted at many different things, and I began to feel really let down when I realized I had about 6 pages left in the novel and nothing had been revealed or wrapped up in the least. Nothing was explained, nothing wrapped up and there appeared to be no point to any of the subplots. Maybe I'm missing something, and it was actually literary genius...but I suspect the people who would refer to it as such are just trying to sound clever. I have only one word for this book: pass.
I think I'm going to move on to to some Vonnegut. I could use a bit more of the bizarre.

One off my list

I finished a book I've been meaning to read for quite a while now; The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. The story, which was made into a movie that I would also like to see, is about a 15 year old who has a love affair with Hanna, a woman more than twice his age, in Germany in the years following World War II. She disappears suddenly one day and he encounters here again years later when he visits a courtroom as a law student and sees her on trial for hideous crimes of war. The story is sad, but mysterious and seems so real and plausible. I found it interesting how a situation that should be so morally wrong could seem almost acceptable from the perspective of the boy. That being said, I still can't quite wrap my head around how Hanna could allow herself to be romantic with a teenage boy...that was always in the back of my mind while I read. It was well written though, and I definitely think it's worth a read. It makes me want to see the movie and how they interpreted the story.

The book I'm reading now is called "Come, Thou Tortoise". It's bizarre, and I'm very excited to get into it!

Reading on Holidays

During our trip to Vegas I made a point of sitting by the pool each day (gotta take advantage of situations when they present themselves) and while sitting by the pool I was reading Spanish Fly by Wil Ferguson. Ferguson is the author of, among others, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, and Generica, both of which I have read and greatly enjoyed. Spanish Fly had the same type of tongue in cheek humour that is present in his other books. I enjoyed it, though at times it seemed somewhat repetitive. The story is told from the perspective of Jack McGreary, a young man living through the depression who gets taken in by two con artists. Much of the story seemed to be talking about the various cons of the era and stories of who had pulled what off, or which con artist had been the first to do which con. It was interesting, but at times, rather than hear about another con, I found myself hoping for more plot. It was definitely an easy read; not quite fluff, but definitely motored along nicely without too much effort, and god knows I love a short chapter! I would recommend it....but I think I would have rather read it in paperback...hardcover is a bit cumbersome for reading by the pool.

When we were leaving Las Vegas (isn't that a song?) I bought a paperback copy of Maeve Binchy's newest Heart and Soul. Binchy stays true to form at all times. I've read a number of her books and each one can be counted on to be charming with some very quirky characters. Heart and Soul is about a heart clinic in Dublin and the people whose lives were effected by it, either by working there, receiving treatment, or a number of other loosely tied in scenarios. I'm not a big fan of short stories, and I was about a third of the way through the book when I realized this particular novel was a series of short stories that all tied in together. Tricky. I have preferred some of her older books that are focused on set characters, but she's such a pleasant story teller, I was willing to let it slide.

Two More for March

In the remainder of March I ripped through two books.

The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland, and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

The Gum Thief seems to be about par for the course for Coupland from what I've read. Weird characters who are almost unlikeable but somehow it feels like a betrayal to dislike them. I wasn't terribly interested in the first third, but the chapters were so simple and short it was hard to not feel like I was making progress (it's one of my little OCD reading quirks: I have to feel like I'm making progress when I read, so I'll look at how many pages I've been through, or how thick those pages are). The second third and into the final quarter (is this measurement making any sense?) was quite good and I found myself genuinely interested in what was going on with the characters. I busted up a few times when Bethany was describing the pigeons in London: "If London is a meal, then pigeons are the parsley on top of it, except instead of being green and crisp, they're grey and hobbling and missing toes, and while they may appear to be technically cute, they also appear to be riddled with disease and mites." The end left me feeling sort of sad again. I'm undecided about it as a whole.

The Lovely Bones was basically what I had heard: really good and about a really terrible topic. I loved the perspective of Susie watching everything from her heaven. I think I finished in about three days (again, my OCD about seeing how much progress I made). I'm really interested to see the movie, though I think that it will be hard to watch too. This is a definite recommended read...but I must say that I awsn't really a big fan of the end with a weird out of body experience, and a less than satisfying ending for the antagonist. I'll leave it at that though.