false 35 58 51 true 5694250 read 3 true 24953 currently-reading 4 true 24952 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20349715 to: Unaccustomed Earth (Hardcover) by Jhumpa Lahiri
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20349746 to: The Year of Magical Thinking (Paperback) by Joan Didion
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/31660380 to: Gilead: A Novel (Paperback) by Marilynne Robinson
Beautiful account of a family of preachers in the midwest, roughly 1860-1950. Most of the events in the novel take place in the last third, so don't get discouraged by the slow start. Also, plan to learn A LOT about Civil-War era Iowa. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/31660111 to: The Yiddish Policemen's Union (Hardcover) by Michael Chabon
Was this a three-star book? It might be more of a three-star book, I can't tell. Pros: The world of Sitka, which Chabon completes whole-cloth and which is an amazing feat of speculative fiction. Cons: I'm not a fan of his writing style, which always strikes me as self-consciously flowery. On the other hand, nobody else has come close to making such a fresh-feeling novel about the Jewish experience since, what, "Pornoy's Complaint"? So that outweighs the show-offy sentences, at least for me. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/31659416 to: The Great Man: A Novel (Hardcover) by Kate Christensen
A very entertaining, if not exactly life-changing, story about four women and the celebrated male artist at the center of all of their lives. It's frustratingly rare to see women in their 70s treated as fully-formed people, let alone people with active love lives, but Christenson depicts them in an appealingly matter-of-fact light. Like "The Emporer's Children," if all the characters happened to be senior citizens. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/31659712 Jeremy Thrane (Paperback) by Kate Christensen
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7820379 to: On Chesil Beach (Hardcover) by Ian McEwan
Oh man, I don't know how to feel about this book AT ALL. The story is simple -- Edward and Florence, young virgins in the early 1960s, attempt to consummate their marriage -- and McEwen tells it so perfectly that I'd like to give it five stars. Plotwise, it's beautifully executed. But there's this veneer of "let's all be glad we don't live in such a benighted time" over the whole story that strikes me as lazy. It's so easy to ask people to feel cheery about the status quo, especially when it comes to sexual liberation. It feels like cheating to me. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7630420 to: Personal Days: A Novel (Paperback) by Ed Park
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20349405 to: The Uses of Enchantment: A Novel (Hardcover) by Heidi Julavits
What everyone else said: I wanted to like this more than I did. I admired the intricate architecture of the plot but had a hard time caring about the characters. ]]>