false 47 421 392 true 5644570 read 0 true 1547205 currently-reading 29 true 1547204 to-read 62 false 1549246 non-fiction 56 false 1550705 classics 36 false 1549287 short-stories 25 false 1549592 memoirs 21 false 1549240 drama 21 false 1552246 humor 19 false 1596365 fantasy-fiction 16 false 1549251 graphic-novels 9 false 1615933 horror 5 false 1552574 poetry 5 false 4285379 children <![CDATA[Tung added 'Girlfriend in a Coma']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/42411376 to: Girlfriend in a Coma (Paperback) by Douglas Coupland
When I browse bookstores looking for new reads, I look for a few things: an interesting cover, strong endorsements/book jacket quotes from people I respect (i.e. NOT Oprah), and opening and closing paragraphs that read well. This book by Coupland had all of the above. It’s the stuff in between the opening and closing paragraphs, however, that I found largely disappointing. The story is about six friends (three girls and three boys) and their connected lives over the course of seventeen years after one of them falls into a coma that she eerily predicts. When she wakes up seventeen years later, the six friends find themselves at the center of the ending of the world. A premise like that is set up perfectly to engage me, and yet I still found this book tiresome. First, the pacing of the book was uneven. The first fifty pages deal with one of the main characters falling into a coma, and how the rest of the friends’ senior year of high school plays out. The next seventy pages breeze through the friends’ changing lives over seventeen years, covering American culture over the eighties and early nineties. Finally, the character in the coma awakens, and the book plods through the remaining hundred pages in this supernatural, apocalyptic plot line. Coupland is trying to make a statement about this generation of adults that were born in the early sixties and reach middle age in the nineties, and so I would think the more valuable use of time would be spent chronicling that seventeen-year period of the coma, and not the sci-fi side of the story. Secondly, the statement Coupland is trying to make is fairly obvious quite early on in the book, and the apocalyptic plotline doesn’t enhance the thesis, so much as drone on about it endlessly. I would have enjoyed more subtlety and less repetition. Not quite a recommended read for me. ]]> <![CDATA[Tung added 'The Basketball Diaries']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72304273 to: The Basketball Diaries (Paperback) by Jim Carroll
bookshelves: memoirs
Per my usual tradition of reading a book by recently-deceased authors, I picked up Carroll’s most famous work after his death in September. The book is essentially a journal of his life from the ages of 13 to 16 when he was both a star basketball player in NYC and completely strung out on drugs and alcohol. It chronicles parties he remembers, some sexual escapades, games he scored 40 points in while high, etc. It also traces his substance abuse from cigarettes and beer to heroin. Overall, I was expecting a lot more from the book based on its reputation, and found it largely disappointing. There’s a reason 13-year-olds don’t get their diaries published – for the most part, their prose sucks and their insights are lacking no matter what adult experiences they might be going through. Similarly, I found the first two years (150 pages) of this book rather tedious. Secondly, the pacing of the entries is uneven. There are stretches where he remembers tons of details and events over a short period of time, and then at the end (when he’s more strung out on heroin) where you want more detail on the progression of his addiction, everything feels quick and rushed. Not quite a recommended read for me. ]]> <![CDATA[Tung recommended the book Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God to Hardy]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book/recommendation/614996 Tung recommended the book Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God to Hardy
]]> <![CDATA[Tung added 'A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/60667676 A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League (Paperback) by Ron Suskind
bookshelves: to-read
]]> <![CDATA[Tung added 'The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/55449115 to: The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread (Paperback) by Kate DiCamillo
bookshelves: children
The Newberry Medal-winner from 2003, and my fourth children’s book of 2009. DiCamillo weaves a fairy tale involving a mouse named Despereaux, a rat named Roscuro, a servant girl named Miggery Sow, a princess, and a boul of soup to talk about love and hope and light and darkness and good and evil. Despereaux is a too-small mouse born with too-big ears and a too-large capacity for curiosity; Roscuro is a dungeon-dwelling rat who longs for something more than darkness; and Miggery Sow is a pitiful girl raised by a bad dad, who ends up serving the princess, and longing for the princess’s life. All three of their paths cross when Despereaux is thrown into the dungeon for speaking to the princess, and Roscuro sets a plan in motion for capturing the princess (by taking advantage of Miggery) to avenge a prior incident. Prose-wise, DiCamillo’s writing is sharp and engaging – although you are doing the reading, you feel as if you are, in fact, being read to. DiCamillo does a good job weaving and balancing several converging plotlines, as well as describing the hearts of the main characters, and why they act and behave as they do. My only criticism with the book is that you look forward to the three plotlines coming together and being resolved, but when they do, it feels rather rushed and abrupt. Not a great ending, but entertaining as it moves toward it. Recommended read. ]]> <![CDATA[Tung added 'Sag Harbor: A Novel']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/58419915 Sag Harbor: A Novel (Hardcover) by Colson Whitehead
bookshelves: to-read
]]> <![CDATA[Tung added 'The White Tiger']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/54520155 to: The White Tiger (Paperback) by Aravind Adiga
The Booker Prize-winner from 2008, The White Tiger is a page-turning exploration of the dark side of India. Unlike other books by Indian authors (I’m thinking of God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, and the Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, both of which I disliked), this book doesn’t describe India as this exotic location; rather, the book focuses on modern Indian society rather than the scenery, and the classism and corruption that are rampant. The protagonist is Balram Halwai, a man born into the “Darkness” – Balram’s term for the wretched poverty that most of the country find themselves trapped in. Balram seeks a better life for himself, and does so by becoming a driver for a wealthy family. In an interesting narrative structure, the prose is told as a letter from Balram to the premier of China who is going to visit India. Balram completes the letter over a series of seven nights, and describes his current successful career and how he got there – by killing his former employer. We are told all this in chapter one, and the rest of the book is his early life and how it drove him to murder – and more interestingly, why that murder is justified and why in current Indian society, murder might have been the only way to reach success. Adiga claims his writing was influenced by Richard Wright’s Native Son, and the influence is clear – especially in the similarity in how both Bigger Thomas in Native Son and Balram essentially were “forced” into their crimes by the soul-eating and hopeless circumstances of their lives. I actually found an equally strong similarity between Balram and Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment), especially late in the book leading up to the murder of Balram’s employer in the way the book details Balram’s state of mind and emotions. The prose throughout is fast-paced and engaging. Recommended read. ]]> <![CDATA[Tung added 'The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/54218489 to: The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them) by Peter Sagal
bookshelves: non-fiction
The Book of Vice is a nonfiction exploration of some human vices – from pornography to gluttony to gambling. Sagal (an NPR host) attempts to explain why people pursue these vices by visiting establishments of said vices, experiencing the vices (to some degree), and interviewing the people who partake of, cater to, or enable these vices. Sagal is smart and witty, and his descriptions of his experiences with these vices is often insightful, and almost always amusing in a dry wit sort of way. The book does suffer from a few issues. First, as is common in this genre of nonfiction accounts, the author assumes he/she must serve up as many smarty alecky comments as can fit into a page, which gets annoying in places (not as annoying as Mary Roach in Stiff, but similar). Second, in several of the chapters, Sagal’s insights are interesting, but unpersuasive (the chapter on gambling, for example, where he links gambling to American faith). In other chapters, there doesn’t even seem to be an exploration of the “why” behind the vice, and Sagal merely discusses his experience with it (the chapter on eating or lying, for example). But these are minor criticisms overall, and I still found it an entertaining read. My guilty pleasure read of the year. Recommended. ]]> <![CDATA[Tung added 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/53041886 We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Paperback) by Shirley Jackson
bookshelves: to-read
]]> <![CDATA[Tung added 'The Girl on the Fridge: Stories']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/51912604 to: The Girl on the Fridge: Stories (Paperback) by Etgar Keret
bookshelves: short-stories
There’s a certain genre of short stories where the two main adjectives I’d use to describe them are “quirky” and “surreal”. This genre is not for everybody; personally, I’m a fan and try to read a collection or two of such stories each year (last year it was No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July and Insects are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings by Kuzhali Manickhavel). These stories often present slices of life (or in some cases, slices of slices of life) filled with strangeness meant to emphasize the absurdities of life and life’s situations and the emotions that fill these situations. The Girl on the Fridge is my first read of the year in this genre, and overall, I found it uneven (often the case for short story collections in this genre). There are some stories in here that showcase how the quirkiness can be used to great effect. The title story, for instance, is about a woman who has commitment issues that spring from the fact that when she was a child and her parents went to work, they put her on top of the fridge to keep her safe, and her time on the fridge formed a pathological need for solitude. In another (a story called Freeze!), a man with the power to command people to do whatever he wants them to do, uses his power to get women, only he’s unsatisfied with all of the women who listen to him because of his power rather than because they truly loved him. Unfortunately, there were also a number of stories whose surreal situations express nothing, and illuminate nothing. Readers not used to this type of genre will find this collection rather frustrating, I think. I found it uneven, but very readable. ]]>