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June 09
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Katherine
marked as to-read:
Naked (Paperback)
by David Sedaris
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Katherine
marked as to-read:
Me Talk Pretty One Day (Paperback)
by David Sedaris
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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June 08
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Katherine
marked as to-read:
Walden: (Writings of Henry D. Thoreau)
by Henry David Thoreau
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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June 06
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Katherine
is currently reading:
Timequake (Paperback)
by Kurt Vonnegut
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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June 22
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Katherine
is currently reading:
Hyperion (Mass Market Paperback)
by Dan Simmons
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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June 02
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Katherine
is currently reading:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Hardcover)
by Junot Díaz
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Katherine
gave
to:
The Lost Dog (Hardcover)
by Michelle de Kretser
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Katherine said:
"A shitty book that talks way too much about shit. I'm hard-pressed to even elaborate on it because I almost don't feel like it's worth it. I will just say that for a book about a lost dog, you never get any genuine feeling from the dog loser about hi...more
A shitty book that talks way too much about shit. I'm hard-pressed to even elaborate on it because I almost don't feel like it's worth it. I will just say that for a book about a lost dog, you never get any genuine feeling from the dog loser about his lost dog. Oh, sure, the author throws in that the guy misses his presence when he sees a water bowl or something, but she doesn't sell it. It never feels real. Instead the book is about some guy who loves some artist (who actually has an interesting back story, but it takes so long to unravel the mystery that it barely seems worth it in the end. And it's never even tied up resolutely to boot!) and his shitty childhood and he happens to have lost his dog. There's a point in the book where a shelter worker tells him that if he had a dog on a 20 foot rope and lost the thing, then he doesn't deserve the dog. I think this was supposed to make the reader feel indignant on behalf of the main character, but that was the only line where I thought, "Hey, she's right!"
Instead of focusing on the title character, the book delves into this guys childhood and his relationship (past and present) with his mother and the role that feces plays in that relationship. Who cares!? Not me. Instead of shedding light or making some profound revelations on childhood development, it just describes a lump of shit in a shoe.
I guess I'm not on the same wavelength as this book, and I should stop reading books that The New York Times Review of Books praises for their prose and not their story because I NEVER end up liking them. I mean this thing had awful highfalutin poetry spliced not at all smoothly throughout. I just can't take it when people are all, "oh, look what I can quote" unless it's something like The Holy Grail. Is the problem that I'm too low-brow for this book? Perhaps, but more likely the problem is this book tries to be too "literary" for it's (or the reader's) good. Blech. ...less
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Katherine
gave
to:
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Paperback)
by Haruki Murakami
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Katherine said:
"Murakami is always an interesting, almost anxiety inducing read for me, because I can almost never identify with the characters or predict what they'll do or how they'll feel. I don't mean this negatively, in fact it's one of the things I really enjo...more
Murakami is always an interesting, almost anxiety inducing read for me, because I can almost never identify with the characters or predict what they'll do or how they'll feel. I don't mean this negatively, in fact it's one of the things I really enjoy about his work. There's always a foreign, other-worldliness that is absolutely fascinating.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is no exception to this. The narrative runs mainly through one man who is almost a vessel through which events happen. Sub-stories wind in and out of the main storyline, proving that at heart Murakami is a short story writer and yet can't be contained by the limits of a short story. What I mean is that almost all the pieces could stand alone as engrossing and elegant stories because they are all so complete and so seemingly removed from one another, but Murakami has a larger plan in which he spins them altogether. But for all the characters, there was not one whose actions I could identify with. It was amazing. They were outlandish but convincing. Far-fetched yet plausible in the terms Murakami set for them. Overall, this made for page turner at times, though sometimes a slow and a little a tedious, but such is the curse of multi-line novels. You have the storyline you're attached to and the other ones sometimes feel like they're just taking up space, even when you know it's necessary for the overall coherence and beauty.
Unfortunately, I do have to say that I found the end dissatisfying. I did not feel like all the ends were tied up well enough. I felt like the final climax of action was lacking in depth. A lot remained unconnected (at least in the way I read it) or worse, the connections that were finally made were weak. This surprisingly did not detract too much from the overall good feeling I walked away from this book with. It was a solid read with a lot of imagery and scenes that will likely stick with me for a long time. The ending, however, I've almost forgotten what it was already....less
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April 25
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Katherine
gave
to:
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (Hardcover)
by Neil Shubin (Goodreads author!)
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Katherine said:
"This book delivered exactly what I wanted: an explanation of evolution from fish (and before really) to man in layman's terms, but not moron layman--well-spoken layman. I had so many 'ah-ha!' moments while reading this book that my head began to spin...more
This book delivered exactly what I wanted: an explanation of evolution from fish (and before really) to man in layman's terms, but not moron layman--well-spoken layman. I had so many 'ah-ha!' moments while reading this book that my head began to spin a little, but in a good way. For instance, when I used to think about evolution the hardest part for me to wrap my mind around was the slow progress of body parts morphing from one form to the next. What this book enlightened me to was that it's not just the body parts themselves that are physically changing in particular organisms, but it's the genes that change which cause the bodily structure change. It was a lot easier for me to wrap my brain around slight changes in DNA that cause physical mutations that, if useful, are passed through generations. For some reason I had always put the horse before the cart and thought of evolution in terms of the physical change before the genetic mutation. But even if your questions on evolution are more sophisticated than my unfounded misguidance, you will learn a ton from this book.
Structure by structure. Piece by piece. You can see how we evolved from our aquatic ancestors. This book was more informative and enlightening than all the anthropology classes I ever took in college. It's like getting a free minor in human evolution! ...less
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Katherine, I came back from Europe once on a boat and this English girl simply could not believe the Jersey City accent. A guy from your town was talking to her about Richard Bryd and early church music. It came out as Richard Boid and oily choich music. The girl honestly thought he was putting her on. I told her, "No, that's the way they talk there."
