seven/fifty-two

Do you remember how much I disliked David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice? How I couldn't wait to finish the damn thing and put it away? Well, I read some reviews, and overwhelmingly the reviewers recommended Sedaris's other work as a better introduction to his writing.

So I picked up Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and hoped they were right. And they were. I loved this collection of short stories. Sedaris is funny and dry and tells a good story . . . and you've probably heard this all before.

six/fifty-two

I remember reading Lorrie Moore's Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, thinking, "Okay, I know this is good, I know this is supposed to be brilliant writing and I'm supposed to be wowed, but I just don't get it. I don't like it, it doesn't work with my brain." That's the exact same way I felt reading Things You Should Know by A.M. Homes.

I know I should love this book, this should be one of those "This was a great short story collection, and I loved it because . . . " reviewlets, but I didn't like it, it didn't touch me, I didn't get it. The stories were dark and sometimes strange, bizarre things happened in them, and they all seemed to revolve around need. Sounds like something I'd like, but no. I read the whole collection, but only because they were short stories and I'd just given up on another book, and I didn't want to start a book-quitting trend.

correction

Bookslut's blog is still there, so I'm not sure why I couldn't find it a month or so (?) ago. Probably just because it's not linked from the main page.

five/fifty-two

Gave up on The Fasting Girl: Too dry for me, like a textbook without the fun.

So I reread The Time Traveler's Wife. Is this cheating? I don't care! The whole point of the thing is to READ BOOKS. And I read it. And I loved it just as much, if not more, than I did the first time I read it. I may be idealizing the book, kind of like a crush, only literary, but it is only the third or fourth book I've read as an adult that I've loved with this much fervor.

four/fifty-two

Ah, I love a good non-fiction account that draws me into an event that I normally would not give a rat's ass about.

The Devil in the White City mixes two things together: the story of the 1893 World's Columbian Expedition and the story of a serial killer who used the Fair to his advantage. Erik Larson wrote the book, and he wrote it well. The story was interesting -- a little bit melodramatic as far as the writing style goes, flowery adjectives and the like, but it was good melodrama. Pretty words.

If you go here, you can find some information about the debut (and eventual demise) of the Ferris Wheel, which I found to be one of the more interesting parts of the Fair that Larson discussed. There's also a good review of the book on that site, written by someone who has just a leeetle more knowledge than I do about the subject.

three/fifty-two

I was incredibly disappointed in this selection, so I'm not even giving it my normal smallish review space. Instead, it gets a haiku:

A book I should love:
Bill Bryson's Lost Continent.
Too dick-y for me.

I really love Bryson's other work (the books I've read already, anyway), especially A Walk in the Woods. I forced myself to finish this one, in hopes it would get better. It didn't. Snark can only take you so far, man.

But then, I am a delicate Southern flower. Hee.

two/fifty-two

Ann Patchett's Bel Canto: beautiful, brilliant, I wish I hadn't read the last two chapters. Not because they were bad, but because they broke my heart.

The story: Some rebels break into a fabulous dinner party ("somewhere in South America" -- the country is never named) and take everybody hostage. The guest list includes many people from all over the world, and one very famous opera singer. Their captors are not especially brilliant at their jobs, and eventually the whole thing becomes like one big sleepover -- with guns. I loved the way the characters were written and described; sometimes it's hard for me to imagine the way characters look, but Patchett described them so well it was as if they were sitting next to me.

This is one of those books that I think would make an excellent movie, although the characters' inner dialogues might be lost a little too much in the translation.

I'm really looking forward to reading Patchett's other work now.

sometimes I hate the English language

I'm reading Bel Canto and really enjoying it. HOWEVER, someone needs to wake up an editor somewhere and let her/him know that it's not a VILE of medicine, it's a VIAL. I actually had to sit back for a minute after that one and take some deep breaths. Maybe I shouldn't read so late at night (I have little to no patience at the end of the day), but I was really liking Patchett's story. Damn typos.

Sometimes I wish they didn't bother me so much. Other times I get a little bitchy because I don't see why someone's getting PAID to miss so many glaring errors.

For example: the BtVS story I read a couple of years ago that had so many typos, including incorrect spellings of MAJOR CHARACTERS' NAMES and "facts" about the major characters that were way off-base, that I seriously considered writing to somebody and offering to go through the thing and send them a marked-up copy. I mean, someone approved the thing. WHY? I know seven bucks is not a fortune, but I don't pay for books so that I can sit down for three hours and grind my teeth.

(I want to say that the book was The Wisdom of War, but I'm not 100% sure. It had "sea monsters" in it, but I don't remember it being one of Golden's books. Unless I've blocked that part out because I still want to like Golden.)

so much for that

At least I already finished my book for this week. I'm giving up on Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Reading about all the things that can go wrong with your brain is not for someone who's already paranoid about those sorts of things. Plus my copy had way too many typos for its own good. Cool discovery, though: Someone clipped an article about the success of the book and left it tucked between the pages. I love finding stuff like that. If I would stop being so picky and buy used books more often, I'd probly find more things like that, but these days I much prefer new books.

So I just spent more than I should have on some new ones because I'm running low, and the odds of finding these laying around in a used bookstore here are slim to nil. At roughly $8 a book because of a good 50% off sale, I got:

* Ambulance Girl
* Good Grief
* A Million Little Pieces
* Persepolis
* Something Rising (Light and Swift)
* Truth & Beauty
* The Virgin's Lover
* When Did You Stop Loving Me?

and two copies of The Time Traveler's Wife -- one for me because Rabbit pretty much destroyed my copy, and one for giving away.

one/fifty-two

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (excerpt) is the story of Mormonism and Mormon Fundementalism. It's also the story of the murder of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter, Erica, by two of her brothers-in-law, carried out because the Lafferty brothers believed God wanted this woman and baby to die.

I would have never expected a book on Mormonism to hold my interest all the way through, as this one did. And, really, Under the Banner of Heaven is far more an exploration of the Mormon faith than a true-crime story, even though Jon Krakauer goes into horrifying detail as far as the Lafferty murders are concerned. Its focus on the religion and the faith it inspires makes sense, given that Krakauer's original intent was to explore that faith.

It was all the more fascinating to me since this is new information for me; I know very little about any faith except the one I was raised in due to the bubble that forms around you when you're in the church (especially when you're in a church-school). In any case, this was a book I'd been wanting to read for a while, so I was looking forward to it; it ended up being even better than I expected.

mmm, apples

My last book of 2004: Comfort Me with Apples, by Ruth Reichl (excerpt). It's a continuation of Reichl's story, which she began in Tender at the Bone. Apples is every bit as good as Bone, if not better. It focuses less on her mother and more on her relationships with various men, and it's perfect. Anything I say is going to sound really fawning, so I'll just leave it at that. Love. It was a great book to end 2004 with.