17 posts tagged “paperback”

I love the cover of this book. Front and back. The simple green background and the bright, chalky letters make me happy.

Even if I had hated this book and David Sedaris, I would have read this one for its cover.

I know there are those who would say that's wrong, but I don't care. I just don't care.

My favorite essay was You Can't Kill the Rooster.

I'm going out and making one of those today!

This was my second book by Murakami. I picked this one up for two reasons. First it's his most popular book in Japan and the book that created his notoriety. Second, it's the only book he wrote that is straight-forward. He said in an interview that his reason for writing this book was to see if he could write a story without magical realism.

This book gave me a better feel for Murakami. In the future if someone asks which book to start with I'll recommend this one.

As in Kafka on the Shore I had a really hard time believing in the characters (they all feel like the same person to me) and caring for them (they feel two-dimensional).

The part that really didn't work was Murakami, a man, writing about female sexual experiences. It just didn't ring true at all. Just one example: two women had sex with one particular man and it was so good they swore off sex for the rest of their lives.

But, as in the previous book, I did appreciate the overarching story. What would it be like to continually know people close to you committing suicide? Or to continually be involved in three-way friendships?

I never had to read this book in high school or college. In fact, I didn't have to read anything by Hemingway in my academic career. I might be the only one...

I picked this one up because pretty much everyone who reads it says they hate it and if I haven't read an author I like to start out with the one people seem to anecdotally hate the most.

Although I have no interest in fishing, I did enjoy this book. I came away learning some things about fishing as well as a few tidbits of wisdom.

And the book was either not as over-the-top macho as I was expecting, or I've become impervious and need to find more girlfriends.

I can't remember the last time I was so gripped by a novel. I loved the way this story was told. There are basically three sections and each section is one day in the storyline. The first part is told from various points-of-view. Sometimes we go forward in the day and sometimes we reverse a bit. The second and third sections are told from the viewpoint of a single, but different, character.

There is so much you could talk about with this book. I am not sure what the main theme is. Crime? Love? Time? One might think from the title that it would be atonement itself?

As a statement about life starting out at one point and ending up somewhere else completely unimagined, it's a wonderful analogy.  We never really know what another person might be thinking or his/her true motives. Even friends. Even family. And there is a certain amount of danger in that. And loneliness.

I started this book back in June, but it ended up being the last book I finished in 2008. The book was mostly one long character sketch written as interlacing short stories. It was an interesting concept, but often felt like an album where each song sounds the same.

Winesburg, Ohio is a story of a Midwestern kid who decides to leave and make his way in the "big city." I could identify with him very much, even down to the detail that he had the same job I did when I lived in that small, Midwestern town. It brought back a lot of memories.

And it drove something home. I was reminded of this fact--first by visiting Ohio this summer--and then by reading this book. Those of us who grow up in the Midwest have to decide whether to leave or stay; whichever route we take we always wonder if the other choice would have been better.

Kids in other parts of the country, I suspect, never feel this way. Whether you grow up in Houston or New York City or Seattle, you have a sense of place. In the Midwest, we feel lost for some reason--and Anderson captured that feeling uncomfortably well.

I remember reading some of e.e.cummings' poetry in high school. All I remember is being unsure of why he didn't want to capitalize his initials. That's all I knew about him when I found this book. It is his memoir of his accidental four month stay at a French concentration camp during World War I. And just like his poetry and his stance on capitalization, I'm not sure I get this book.

At the beginning of the book he and his friend are taken away from their job as ambulance drivers and taken on a string on interrogations and temporary prisons. They are separated but eventually end up together in La Ferte.

The strange part is that Cummings seems to find amusement, even glee, at the situation instead of being fearful, confused, or even wanting to know why they are being held by the French government. (It turns out to be some anti-war sentiment in Cummings' friend's letters he wrote home that a censor did not like and Cummings is guilty by association).

But after the amusement comes acceptance which is followed by bitterness. It just wasn't the flow of emotions one would expect for such a situation.

Even though the book was mostly character sketches of the other prisoners Cummings encounters, it was worth it for illustrating why soldiers and prisoners of war often feel such a comradeship. They never seem to forget one another or feel less tied together--even if they never see one another again. They do not stay imprisoned in the enormous room forever, but an enormous room exists in their minds forever.

As a note: this particular edition was horrendous in its handling of the plethora of French in the book. The cover is great but it would be better to use another edition if possible.

As with the last few classic books I have read, I am surprised by the dissimilarity between this book and the ideas of the book in pop culture.

Neither Frankenstein nor his creature are anything  alike between film and novel. Frankenstein comes across as shallow and cowardly--at least until it is too late. The scientist reminded me of all those bad horror movies where the female lead is running without thought. Frankenstein needed a plan and he needed to protect his family. Instead, he ran around until he twisted his ankle and fell to the ground.

The "monster" is less like a monster than an exile and an outcast. He is erudite, articulate, and athletic. It took a while to adjust to this "new" image of the creature.

The pop culture images of the creature are actually just the image that the character fights against through the book. It seems Shelley failed to get the point across. Or, we really are more like the humanity Shelley represented in her novel than we would like to believe.

Housekeeping does not have much in the way of plot, but it certainly is haunting. It is rightly considered a modern classic for its beautiful, poetic language.

I love the title of this book too. We have so many underlying notions about that word--many of those preconceptions come up in this book.

I kept thinking of The Secret Life of Bees (a book I particularly loathe) while reading this. In that book the main characters are also females in a situation that is a bit out of the mainstream, but that's where the similarity ends. Housekeeping is powerful where the other book is cheesy. This book deals with loneliness, expectation, and waiting and results in with a life-usually-does-not-give-you-what-you-expect ending. The Secret Life of Bees has an everything-works-out-in-the-end-if-you-just-believe-hard-enough ending.

Generally, books about women with female characters and a domestic plot line are more like Secret Life of Bees. I am glad Marilynne Robinson was able to give us something else.

Never Let Me Go is not on my official book list for the year, but I've been curious about it for a while. I wondered why there is so little information about the plot available. After reading it I understand why. The whole plot is suspended from the idea that a group of private school children are "very special." I think I was about half way through the book before I understood where it was going.

The rest of this will be vague as I don't want to give too much away, and while it's not a topic I'm really interested in, this book found a way to explore the topic that was very fresh--even frightening realistic. I'm as liberal as the next person, but this book gave me pause.

The real beauty and power of this work is in the author's ability to tell the story without comment on the subject matter or even having the character's comment on it.

And finishing this book in Las Vegas somehow made it seem all the more plausible.

I often feel like I'm in a foreign country in Connecticut. I can't relate to the residents' attitudes, thoughts, or behaviors. So when I heard about this memoir of growing up in Connecticut I thought, "Finally, something that will give me some insight into the minds of Nutmeggers."

Further, I have never read a bad review of this book. People always rave about it. I could hardly wait to start reading it.

Maybe I was hoping for too much because now I'm just unsettled. People reading the book often point out how funny it is, but living here it's hard to find most of this funny.

Some examples: a high school teacher gets tired of waiting for a hotel to check the students out and get on the bus so he calls in a bomb threat.
The author's childhood kung fu teacher neglects him on a camping trip and the teacher spends most of the trip getting it on with a woman in his tent.
The author himself tries to drop out of high school and accidentally ends up going to Yale.

If I had never lived here I would say these things sound implausible to impossible. But I see and experience crazy stuff every day, so I know these things could very likely have happened. I think people enjoy this book for the same reason they like Connecticut. It's fun to laugh at the insanity and chaos. But really, it's not so much fun to LIVE in the insanity and chaos.

The author made everything about himself--even his friend's death--which was a bit too much for me. I expected some mention of community or region. But if the author's father hadn't said he hated New Haven and the author hadn't said he was living in Connecticut I would have had no idea where this even took place. Perhaps I'm just upset because I got exactly what I hoping this book wouldn't be--an author who seems to be a typical Connecticut resident with no ability to think about things beyond himself. At the very end of the book the author even makes this point about himself. His father just says "Welcome." The great "revelation" at the end of the book basically makes no sense. I took it to mean, "Great, you've realized you're a selfish bastard, so now you're a man."

One final point, the subtitle to the book is Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia. I often find it funny that people say the entire state of Connecticut is one big suburb or a suburb or New York. I think the thing that really makes you feel Lost in Place while in Connecticut is that it's actually not suburbia. It's not the city or the country either. We call it suburbia for lack of a better term, but it's something else I just can't name that feels as though it has no identity...at all.