I spent most of yesterday reading this report, and will spend most of the rest of this evening processing my response. Incredibly useful for anyone wh...moreI spent most of yesterday reading this report, and will spend most of the rest of this evening processing my response. Incredibly useful for anyone who cares about institutional assessment, even if they aren't in libraries.(less)
Working on my fourth attempt at a second full pass through the series. I think this will make my third time reading The Drawing of the Three, this ti...moreWorking on my fourth attempt at a second full pass through the series. I think this will make my third time reading The Drawing of the Three, this time on the Kindle.
2/6/12 - Finished my third time through this volume of the Dark Tower sequence. I don't remember being as affected by the conflict/resolution of Odetta Holmes and Detta Walker in previous reads, or by the developing relationship between Roland and Eddie Dean. My experience could have been colored, however, by the fact that I read the second half of the book while sick, tired, and on the train.
A Visit from the Goon Squad was my book club's pick for November. The book and its author, Jennifer Egan, have garnered a great deal of attention in t...moreA Visit from the Goon Squad was my book club's pick for November. The book and its author, Jennifer Egan, have garnered a great deal of attention in the last year, and three months after finishing the book, I'm still on the fence as to whether or not it's deserved.
I don't know that I would have gotten through this book had I not had the Kindle with me when I was stuck in a very long line at a blood drive. I'm glad I was stuck in that line, however, as it gave me enough time to really get hooked on the story, if not on the characters themselves.
I can say definitively that Egan is a master storyteller. A Visit from the Goon Squad weaves in and out of time, with a number of stories told in layers, folding and unfolding onto themselves. The reader encounters characters at different points in their lives - Benny, the record producer, is seen as a middle-aged wash-up, an energetic rocker at the beginning of his music career, a husband cuckolded by his wife's tennis game, a rock legend. His mentor is a dirty old man seducing teenaged girls, a middle-aged father taking his children and his young girlfriend on a safari, a dying man surrounded by the now-middle-aged girls of his youth. His protégé is a kleptomaniac 30-something, a college student losing her closeted best friend, a mother making art from her stolen treasures. Each of these stories - episodes - windows of time is deftly, though not always gracefully, presented, surrounded by music and an indelible scene, whether it is the Bay area in the 70s, New York in the early 90s, full of optimism, or New York in the near future, recovering but not recovered from 9/11.
I wish I'd written this review closer to finishing the book - or to my book club's discussion - as there are aspects of it that we found problematic that I've since forgotten. Some of the female characters felt flat in comparison to the nuances of the male characters. Some of the scenes feel like they were lifted from a Palahniuk or Coupland novel - a compliment, but also a complaint (see my review of Then We Came to the End).
I finished the book on my friends' couch in mid-November. We were watching their cats while they were out of town getting married, and I was combating a hangover from the previous night's 90s dance party. I'm willing to allow that the latter may have unduly influenced my reaction to the 'enhanced' chapter, in which we encounter the adolescent son of the former kleptomaniac. Her son has become obsessed with the pauses in pop music, and in trying to explain their significance to his father, fails to say all the things he really means to say. Or rather, he says all the things he is feeling, but his dad only hears the (exasperating) parts about the rests. And in that exchange lies the weight of the book, the way we measure the passage of time, all of the things we want to say but can't, all of the things we try to say but fail to communicate, all of the moments in time that slip through our fingers.(less)
Remarkable, challenging, and complex, but then I would expect nothing less from Craig Thompson. I didn't love it as much as I did Blankets, but then ...moreRemarkable, challenging, and complex, but then I would expect nothing less from Craig Thompson. I didn't love it as much as I did Blankets, but then the two are completely different works. Blankets is intensely personal, while Habibi manages to be both pointed and timeless, simultaneously telling the story of two people and that of all of Islam. Thompson's use of religious art as a mechanism of storytelling links this book to a very long history of visual narrative. I found myself wishing I knew more about the mysticism of the Koran - and that I could attempt to understand the layers of meaning encoded in the art.(less)
How have none of my GoodReads friends read this book?! Go pick it up right now!
In the early part of September, The New Yorker published a ...moreHow have none of my GoodReads friends read this book?! Go pick it up right now!
In the early part of September, The New Yorker published a series of brief interviews with contributors about their experience with 9/11 - both the event and the aftermath. The final question in each essay asked which piece of work to emerge from 9/11 has had the most lasting impact on their lives, perceptions, etc. Several respondents mentioned Netherland, so I added it to my list.
Netherland isn't about 9/11, but it's constantly there in the background, the hinge-point for the before and after of one man's life. Which isn't to say that 9/11 caused the novel's subsequent events - rather, it was an excuse for a separation, which then sets the narrator adrift in New York, eventually finding himself - literally and figuratively - in a sea of immigrants on the cricket pitch.
One respondent wrote that Netherland "seems to capture with great poignancy that powerful sense that a certain kind of world has slipped away." This summarizes the book better than I possibly can. It's wonderful and wonderfully written, full of sadness and loss and exploration. I couldn't put it down and now that I'm finished, I can't stop thinking about it.(less)
From Susan Orlean's remembrance of 9/11: "And Lawrence Wright’s astonishing book, “The Looming Tower,” is the most compelling piece of reporting ...moreFrom Susan Orlean's remembrance of 9/11: "And Lawrence Wright’s astonishing book, “The Looming Tower,” is the most compelling piece of reporting I’ve ever read on the subject and on almost any subject."
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