false 15 171 148 true 5961640 read 3 true 1729516 currently-reading 20 true 1729515 to-read 14 false 1765773 read-as-a-kid 12 false 1732340 favorites 4 false 1799945 ugh-could-not-finish http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/28131910 Summer (Thrift Edition) by Edith Wharton
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/27907180 to: The Blindfold: A Novel (Paperback) by Siri Hustvedt
I read The Blindfold for the Constant Reader book group. During the discussion, one of the members pointed to an interview in which Siri Hustvedt says that TB was an exploration of "the uncanny." Well, this woman sure knows her own writing! Reading this book, which consists of three disjointed vignettes and one longer unifying section, is like walking upright in a world turned on its head. The story explores a world in which items that seem mundane, like a photograph or a cotton ball or a Halloween costume, take on slightly altered shapes and shifting meanings, so that they are no longer benign and recognizable, but instead horribly creepy and portentous. It's an awful, beautiful book. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/23176234 to: The Names (Paperback) by Don DeLillo
The Names was enough to make me want to read more Don DeLillo, even after an awful brush with Cosmopolis. I'll admit there were plenty of pages during which I wasn't completely sure I understood what I was reading, but the language alone kept me going. DeLillo's diction was so precise and lyrical in places that particular sentences and phrases didn't even stick out as being especially beautiful-- I wasn't moved by the words themselves but rather the colors, shadows and moods evoked by the them.

The book didn't contain any huge plot pay-offs (except for the one about a mysterious nomadic cult, which actually seemed quite secondary, despite being the apparent inspiration for the book's title), which was initially frustrating. But about 3/4 of the way through I resolved to stop looking for linearity, and instead accept the more amorphous route DeLillo was pursuing, and I ended up with a lot to think about. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/23598375 to: Bridge of Sighs (Hardcover) by Richard Russo
Bridge of Sighs is the latest installment in Richard Russo's unofficial small-town series. The story's geographic base is the once industrial, now carcinogenic town of Thomaston, New York. The novel follows multiple narrative strands -jumping from past to present and from one narrator's perspective to another's- as Russo slowly and masterfully reveals the life stories of Thomaston's current and former residents. The characters follow different life paths, but all are consumed by questions of identity. They write and paint, move across the state and around the globe, all to discover, and often obfuscate in equal part, their self-identity as well as the identities of their parents and lovers.

Of Russo's small-town books thus far, BoS was my favorite. He did, however, venture into what is for him uncharted geographic and racial territory. It was these scenes that felt least true to me, and really were the only notes of dissonance in an eloquent story. The writer from upstate New York is at his greatest when he sticks to what he knows best. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26563618 to: The Enchanted April (Paperback) by Elizabeth von Arnim
I read Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April in record time. It's the story of 4 very different British women who decide to rent a villa in San Salvatore, Italy for a month together. Each is fleeing from Britain for her own reasons -- too many suitors, negligent husbands, loneliness, English gloominess. Once the women arrive in San Salvatore, the novel jumps between the rebirth of the Italian landscape in spring and the rebirth of the 4 renters' spirits. While this story is, in the end, one of hope and renewal, it never turns treacly thanks to von Arnim's Austen-esque ability to write slyly stinging commentary that's delivered with a smile. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/23166894 to: Surfacing (Hardcover) by Margaret Atwood
Surfacing, one of Margaret Atwood's earliest works of fiction, is rich with beautiful language. Physically, the novel is set on a remote, barely hospitable Canadian island, and readers are transported there via Atwood's precise descriptions of geography, wildlife and flora. Psychologically, however, the novel takes place inside the head of Atwood's suffering nameless protagonist. The author expertly navigates this equally treacherous landscape, and the glimpses into the language of a nervous breakdown were some of my favorite passages.

From my point of view, however, Atwood's mastery of descriptive language couldn't save this allegorical tale. The characters seemed to take a backseat to the metaphor, and ultimately I believe this is a theoretical essay parading as a novel. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21083184 to: Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites (Hardcover) by Mitchell L. Stevens
A friend of mine, a grad student at NYU, saw Mitchell Stevens speak and recommended Creating a Class to me. Stevens, an NYU professor, took a year away from teaching to do in-field research on higher ed admissions by working in the admissions office of an East Coast liberal arts college.

I went to a college which resembles the one Stephens worked at, and I volunteered in the admissions office for many years. I also worked two summers at the admissions office of a community college. Plus, I've applied to lots of institutions of higher learning! Very interesting to get an insider's perspective.

While I definitely picked up this book for the look behind the scenes it provided, what is sticking with me are Stevens' discussions of how, even with affirmative action and diversity statements, admission to elite institutions of higher ed is still available to a quite small, and quite homogeneous, segment of the population. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21320507 to: A Day No Pigs Would Die (Hardcover) by Robert Newton Peck
bookshelves: read-as-a-kid
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21055444 The Feminine Mystique (Paperback) by Betty Friedan
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21051604 Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (Hardcover) by Deborah Madison
bookshelves: to-read
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