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.

Monsters of Templeton

I originally bought The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff because I thought it might be something of a fluff book. A nice easy read. I was partially wrong.

It was an easy book to read simply becasue it flowed so well and her writing was totally captivating. But it was not fluffy. The story was deep and spanned generations with enough of the truly bizarre (a legitimate seamonster that suddenly dies and surfaces in the lake of a small town, a woman who can set fire to buildings simply by being upset, a man born so hairy that his father calls him his "little baboon"), that I was completely engrossed in it. It did take me a while to read, but that was more because of life getting in the way. Not once did I put it down because I'd had enough. The end was a wee bit "tied up with a pretty bow" but Groff made it all better with the epilogue which tells what the monster was thinking on it's last day: "fish and fish and fish and fish...." which made me giggle. (There is actually more to the epilogue, but that did it for me right there).

It might be a good book to read a second time just because there were so many characters and so much geneology that I feel like I missed a lot the first time through or that I wasn't sure which characters where related to which. I definitely recommend it though.

Brida

Yesterday evening I finsihed Brida by Paulo Coelho. I've read a number of his books and Brida didn't disappoint me. The story is about an Irish girl, Brida, who is learning about the world of being a witch. It's difficult to write the word "witch" without imagining ugly green women in black robes and point hats, or people being turned into other creatures with magic potions. This was not that kind of witch. Throughout the book, Brida learns about the world and magic as it has passed down from generations of spirituality. The strong tie to Christianity was very interesting as well.
In every one of Coelho's books there is a passage or two that really striked home with me. This was that passage:
"...the age of miracles was returning, and no one could remain indifferent to the changes the world was beginning to experience. Within a few years, the power of the Tradition of the Sun would reveal itself in all its brilliance. Anyone not already followiung their own path would begin to feel dissatisfied with themselves and be forced to make a choice: they would either have to accept an existence beset with disappointment and pain or else come to realize that everyone was born to be happy. Having made their choice, they would have no option but to change..."
It reminded me of my latest motto: "I would rather be happy". Given any number of choices, whenever possible, I will choose to be happy.
Coelho is a beautiful storyteller and his books are multidimentional. One of the things I like best about them is that if I feel like really contemplating them, he gives plenty to work with, but at the same time his stories can be taken simply as stories.

I saw the bandwagon, it circled my block a couple of times while I toyed with the idea of hopping on, but finally let it pass.

I read the Twilight Saga. It took me two and a half weeks. In all fairness, the first three books took me a week, and the final one was the last week and a half.
I'll break it down a wee bit:
Twilight: so-so. Lots of brooding, lots of whining, lots of swooning. Some story. Definitely an easy read. By the end though, I was interested and wanted to keep going to book two.
New Moon: also lots of brooding, quite a lot of whining, and some swooning. Mostly I just found myself tearing through it to get to the end and the exciting bits. I like Jacob.
Eclipse: Not so much whining. Lots of brooding though. Jacob changed quite a lot...can't say as I liked him much anymore. This was definitely my favorite of the series though.
Breaking Dawn: ...just plain weird. I didn't like it. The characters seemed to have a totally different voice and like all of a sudden Stephanie Meyer didn't have to hold on to any shred of realism anymore and just went hog wild with mystical powers and bizarre events. I'm really not sure how they'll make it into a movie without it being totally grotesque and creepy.

All of that being said, I liked the Twilight movie, and I really enjoyed New Moon the movie (I'm fairly sure I'm branding myself as some sort of creepy perv by saying that Jacob is daaaaaaamn fine! He-llo!).
For your reading enjoyment, check out this blog entry I found online: "Reasons Why Twilight the Movie May Be Better Than The Book".
Points 3, 5, 11, 22, and 27 really hit home for me.

But, as my dear friend Mare said when we were discussing the first two books "Imagine if we'd been reading these ten or fifteen years ago! I'd have my bedroom plastered with Twilight posters!" And I concur.