Meredith's profile

345 ratings | 21 reviews
avg rating: 3.21

Meredith's bookshelves

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Meredith is currently reading

	01/28 Meredith is currently reading: The Complete Stories (Paperback) by Franz Kafka bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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Meredith's recent updates (rss)

September 16

Meredith gave

to:
The Plague of Doves: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Louise Erdrich
bookshelves: b-plus-reading, writerly

my rating:

read in September, 2008

Meredith said: "Louise Erdrich comes into her own in this book. As always, she has wonderful, difficult characters and a real sense of environment. But in "The Plague of Doves," she's not afraid to really get into the language, the characters. I really lik...more "

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September 05

Meredith took the never-ending book quiz.

questions answered:	343
correct:	257 (74.9%)
skipped:	164
best streak:	8
questions added:	0

beat her score »

Meredith read and liked Leif Erik's review of Stick Out Your Tongue: Stories:

"Lessions learned: Tibet has a host of problems that bumper sticker and 'enlightened' celebrities aren't going to solve.

This is a slight book (five very short stories) that ranks high in my pantheon of all-time depressing work. One of the themes...more "

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Meredith gave

to:
Stick Out Your Tongue: Stories (Hardcover)
by Ma Jian
bookshelves: depressing, good-short-story-collections, good-translated-works, unsavory-but-good

my rating:

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July 24

Meredith gave

to:
The Guy Next Door - Boys Series Book 1 (Paperback)
by Meg Cabot
bookshelves: entertaining

my rating:

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July 21

Meredith gave

to:
A Prayer for Owen Meany (Hardcover)
by John Irving
bookshelves: i-wouldnt-have-read-this-i-had-cabl, overrated, sucky-pop-fiction

my rating:

1 comment

June 11

Meredith gave

to:
Frangipani: A Novel (Paperback)
by Célestine Hitiura Vaite
bookshelves: good-pop-fiction

my rating:

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April 26

Meredith gave

to:
Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel (Paperback)
by Jonathan Safran Foer

my rating:

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New comment on Andrew's review of Middlesex

Meredith wrote: ""unmotivated Gumpy forays into Wikipedia"--great line. Right before Cal ran away, I though...more "

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Meredith read and liked Andrew's review of Middlesex:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

"This would have been better as an NPR story or an episode of "This American Life" than a novel. Or maybe if someone other than Eugenides had written it. An interesting idea, and a few engrossing sex scenes (I like the "crocus" a...more This would have been better as an NPR story or an episode of "This American Life" than a novel. Or maybe if someone other than Eugenides had written it. An interesting idea, and a few engrossing sex scenes (I like the "crocus" and the peep-tank, and the whole long flirtation with The Object drew me in completely), and a nice two pages toward the end when Julie accepts Cal for what he is. But the prose was awful: frequent maneuvers like "And me? That's simple. I was . . . " are really unacceptable. And "Sing, Muse, of Greek ladies and their battle against unsightly hair!" is about as funny as poop.

Except for the incest, the long family-history plot was like a mashup of immigrant dramas from cable TV: Greek family barely escapes home country to make it to the United States, where they wander through 20th century history in a dull procession of unmotivated Gumpy forays into Wikipedia that have no effect whatsoever on their character development. (Now we'll shove these characters through Prohibition! mass production! the Detroit race riots! The partition of Cyprus! San Francisco hippies! the tragedy of Michael Dukakis's helmet moment! and . . . the founding of the Nation of Islam!)

The incest part of the story was good in the beginning -- the early love scenes between the grandparents are wonderful -- and then impressively tedious (Desdemona feels guilt! and then . . . she feels guilt again!). The metaphors are embarassingly bad: The hermaphrodite lives on a street named Middlesex, and eventually finds reconciliation of the two sides of herself in Berlin after reunification. Why not have Desdemona live on "I Feel Guilty For Fucking My Brother Boulevard"?

Cal remains completely undefined as a character, except in terms of her understandably tough time figuring out her own sexuality; I couldn't come up with more than one adjective to define her, and "confused" isn't much of a character. Everyone else in the book fails to exist at all. Jimmy Zizmo turns out to be the founder of the Nation of Islam? Eugenides says self-importantly that "you've probably guessed" that -- no! Not only did I not guess it, it doesn't make any sense, logical or emotional, and it's completely uninteresting. Why not have him turn out to be Richard Nixon? Uncle Mike turns out to be a psychopath who extorts his own family? Why? Who cares?

Cal's lack of voice or character is the worst thing: if you write a book about someone who lives in a world that's somehow dramatically different than your reader's -- a world where gender is fluid, undefined -- you should show us that world. Cal has no voice, no face, no identity. What voice there is is completely inconsistent with her behavior -- the current Cal is reticent, shy, depressed, lonely, and retiring; our narrator is open, boisterous, discursive, ironic, omniscient for no particular reason, and irritatingly jokey.

And the book no more has ideas about sexuality than it does about Cal's character. As one reviewer said, the most disappointing thing about the book is it ends up reinforcing stereotyped, dumb ideas about gender (like "Breasts have the same effect on me as on anyone with my testosterone level" -- as if there were no gays). Callie's pursuit of The Object doesn't make her question categories, it just convinces her she's a boy. There is no middle sex here; there's no middle ground; it's more gawking than Tiresias-like insight. ...less "

13 comments

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Meredith's groups (recent posts)

Goodreads Feedback — 1214 members — last activity 6 minutes ago
This is a place to give feedback about Goodreads. Feature ideas, bugs, or any other suggestion for improvement. The Goodreads staff monitors this gr...more

What's The Name of That Book??? — 819 members — last activity 2 days ago, 06:32PM
Can't remember the title of a book you read a while back? Come post a description on our message board and we can try to help each other out.

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Meredith's friends (12)

	Jason Pettus 978 books 292 friends
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questions answered:	343
correct:	257 (74.9%)
best streak:	8
questions added:	0

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