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May 13
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Karen
marked as to-read:
The Girls of Slender Means (Paperback)
by Muriel Spark
bookshelves:
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my rating:
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Karen said:
"Book Club choice for June. It tied with John Fowles's The Magus but had more people put it in second place, so its overall ranking was higher. Such are the subtleties and unwritten rules of our elite organization.
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Karen
gave
to:
Robot Dreams (Paperback)
by Sara Varon
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my rating:
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read in May, 2008
Karen said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Refrain from the dog/machine sex jokes...more
We are going through a robot phase at home, so I grab what I can with pictures about robots. There is a lot packed into this graphic novel, and it's far more novel than graphic, despite the lack of narration.
Refrain from the dog/machine sex jokes.
UPDATE May 13
What a sweet, remarkable, sad little book. It had a happy ending, thanks to the robot, but I don't think the dog ever fully recovers from their estrangement. I think that's because the robot had way more time to reflect and the dog was just running from distraction to distraction.
I cried at the end, but before that I laughed, felt sick to my stomach, and wanted to warn the characters like you see in movie parodies of people at movies. I don't like the title very much, although the robot certainly dreams and the dog dreams of the robot. I really don't know how to respond to this book; I really only have a reaction. It is a very visceral reaction. Maybe it's beauty is that it is a simple enough story that I can project whatever I need to see in the book onto its pages. ...less
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May 09
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Karen
marked as to-read:
Georgy Girl (Paperback)
by Margaret Forster
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Karen said:
"The book I am reading about the Beatles mentions this book's plot. It was interesting enough to look up the movie on IMDb and wow--what glowing reviews it gets, from people who say it has stood the test of time. I always thought it was like Gidget, p...more
The book I am reading about the Beatles mentions this book's plot. It was interesting enough to look up the movie on IMDb and wow--what glowing reviews it gets, from people who say it has stood the test of time. I always thought it was like Gidget, probably because the "Georgy Girl" song became the Barbie theme song. So I asked Mother today if she remembers it and she said it was really quite scandalous. Combined with the wikipedia article about the book (or some other review) that said it captured the mod culture, I am stoked.
And surprised. Why does the library have only one copy of the book? Surely there were more copies at one time. I wonder what happened to them all. Maybe librarians got to take them home when it was decided the book was too old or unpopular. Books do take up shelf space....less
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May 03
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Karen
is currently reading:
Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America (Hardcover)
by Jonathan Gould
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Karen said:
"I took a class on the Beatles in college. It counted as a general ed requirement! I still feel lucky. I do like the Beatles and this will be the second book "about them" that I'll have read (The first was "Shout," for the class). ...more
I took a class on the Beatles in college. It counted as a general ed requirement! I still feel lucky. I do like the Beatles and this will be the second book "about them" that I'll have read (The first was "Shout," for the class). I hope I like it.
MAY 3 UPDATE
This is a great book. The author makes a point early of describing how he wanted this book to differentiate itself from the other books about the band, and his angle was examining the music from a cultural and historical perspective. I love examining things from cultural and historical perspectives! It's like he wrote it with me in mind.
He also points out that it is a biography of the band, not the individuals. That is not something I probably would have noticed, but now that I know this it is holding up true. I am really enjoying it, at least the first sixth of it. It could theoretically tank....less
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May 01
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Karen
gave
to:
A Nomad of the Time Streams: The Warlord of the Air / The Land Leviathan / The Steel Tsar (The Tale of the Eternal Champion)
by Michael Moorcock
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my rating:
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read in April, 2008
Karen said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
I'm sure the "steampunk" genre that this book kicked off is far more interesting. I was so excited to read a seminal work of something, and I felt hip and cool to open the book, but it's a bore fest. And a sausage fest. Seriously--t...more
Ugh.
I'm sure the "steampunk" genre that this book kicked off is far more interesting. I was so excited to read a seminal work of something, and I felt hip and cool to open the book, but it's a bore fest. And a sausage fest. Seriously--there are so few contexts in which a story about only men are interesting, and this was a trilogy. War, war, war. It's enough to make Scarlett O'Hara swear!
There was one woman in all three books. It was the same person. She was named "Una Persson" if you can believe it and she was either a consort or a consort. In the last pages of the last book there's some crying because she was unable to stop the bomb from dropping. So we are to deduce that even though she's been trying for three books to change the course of history she is ineffectual. Perhaps the author was making a point that no individual can accomplish anything in a symbolic way (because he puts lots of speeches into characters' mouths to say it explicitly). The woman also appears to mention that there's a whole secret society of time travelers and to take the main character to the League. She is a messenger, here. She doesn't even initiate him herself. Oh, she also delivers some letters from one guy to another. I had observed all these things in the first book and had hoped that the third book--written in the 1980s--would have fleshed out her character a little. Nope. She's just a beautiful tool.
I just lost patience with the franchise. I am sure that steampunk is a creative field with lots of good storytelling and imaginative characters, and so we should credit Moorcock for starting it (or at least thank the fan of his who makes that claim on Wikipedia). I'm just not sure I could stand to read another book by him. Alternate history always disappoints me, and most of the time it has interpersonal relationships and dialogue.
I would conclude that Moorcock had some political issues to work out, and that most of them involved the bomb. And monorails. ...less
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Karen
gave
to:
Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction (Hardcover)
by David Sheff
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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recommended for: Friends and family of addicts, current and recovered
read in May, 2008
Karen said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
APRIL 30
Uh-oh. I am finding it boring. Not bad, not not heartbreaking, but it's been ex...more
Book club selection for May. I's gots to get crackin on this book--I am sharing it with a friend and I have to read it to give her enough to time to read it.
APRIL 30
Uh-oh. I am finding it boring. Not bad, not not heartbreaking, but it's been expanded from a magazine article and I don't think it should have been. There's too much about the father's own drug experiences that elucidate his early denial about his son's addiction problems, true, but are written with a carefree tone and sort of glorify drug use and because he turned out great, who cares?
He probably shouldn't have shared those stories with his kid or smoked a joint with him when he suspected the kid was using but didn't want to believe it. The author (father), however, is admitting this. He's not still in denial. It just feels like filler and it makes the overall tone of the book a little schizo.
Being only halfway through the book I can't say that it's not an artistic choice and a metaphor in writing for what it's like to live with or be an addict. The reviews of this book on Amazon are rave, and they should be with the right audience. But so far the book isn't really working for me as brilliant insight into the lives affected by addiction and I am not reading it from the viewpoint of a person affected by addiction who is grateful to read about his or her own experiences and get reassurance that crazy is normal in this case. It's a pretty blunt retelling of events with some expert interviews and facts about meth thrown in.
MAY 1
OK, it's better. Now that the son is packed up in rehab and the father has time to breathe, he is getting more reflective. He is also staying in the present. I still think there are too many quotes from other authors and expert interviews. It takes away from these moments of clarity and resonance. It could serve, however, as a distancing mechanism, for either the author as he writes it or because some editor recommended it on behalf of the reader. I still think this would make a better article. Maybe a series of articles. Of course, I should stop saying that and read the article he already wrote, that inspired the book. It's referenced. I could find it.
FINAL COMMENTS
I was very, very moved by the second half of the book, because that's where the author really delved into what was happening to him, not his son. I really, really wish they'd cut out all the quotes and song lyrics. The song lyrics were just escapist and the quotes were a way to back off a painful truth--the author would lead up to something, then lapse into citation, letting someone else make his point, and conclude basically with, "Yeah, what she said." I can totally understand the need to protect yourself with someone else's words, but it bumped the reader out of the story and it appealed to an authority that wasn't required.
I don't want to excuse Nic for anything, but he was shafted by his parents. The most telling omission from the book is the connection that Nic started drinking and using drugs when his stepmother got pregnant with his father's new family. Also, in an interview (at OregonLive.com) about the father and son and the books each of them published, Nic makes this comment about his father:
"He sent me a copy before it was published and I read the whole thing without a pause and then burst into tears. I knew in the abstract what I put him and his family through, but to read it was really painful. I'm so sorry for what I did."
His family. Nic wasn't really part of his Dad's second family and he knew it. Ultimately, I'm siding with Nic, to the extent that you can side with someone in this case (which you really can't). He needed help long before anyone offered anything to him, even before he started dabbling in the narcotic arts at all.
I still don't think I'm going to read Nic's book, Tweak. I already know that meth addiction is bad, and I already know the details. I don't need to read firsthand all of the horrible things that he did and that happened to him, and it's already been established in his father's book that addicts don't make logical choices about rehab. I don't need to learn the exact crazy illogical drugs-talking reasons Nic has had a hard time recovering. In the end, addicts follow uniform patterns of behavior. I don't really have any interest in peering at the specifics of his pain.
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April 27
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Karen
gave
to:
The Sandman Vol. 8: Worlds' End (Hardcover)
by Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Karen said:
"Wow. Just... gosh.
I don't know what to make of this yet. I didn't realize it was number 8 of a series, and I am almost heartbroken to learn that, although it makes a huge amount of sense. I am going to process this for a while.
I first stumbled up...more
Wow. Just... gosh.
I don't know what to make of this yet. I didn't realize it was number 8 of a series, and I am almost heartbroken to learn that, although it makes a huge amount of sense. I am going to process this for a while.
I first stumbled upon Gaiman with American Gods, which was a book club book that didn't make the cut. I saw it on the library's audiobook shelf and brought it on a road trip to Yosemite several years ago. It was the absolute perfect thing to have on that trip and I was an instant Gaiman fan. Five star book. I mentioned it to a friend who waxed rhapsodic about Sandman, which she told me was a graphic novel. I made a half-hearted attempt to track it down and never did. This volume was prominently featured at the library last week so I grabbed it. I thought it was one book. I'll be checking the rest of these out.
And I'll be mulling over this one. The graphic element adds this huge dimension to the story, and I've gone back already to study pictures, but it is too late to seriously reread it. Much more later....less
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April 20
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New comment on John's review of
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
(see all 2 comments)
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April 12
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Karen made a comment on World Without End:
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Karen
gave
to:
World Without End (Hardcover)
by Ken Follett
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Karen said:
"Well, Pillars of the Earth is one of my favorite books and I was looking forward to completely enjoying this without reservation. But way back when it first came out, I stumbled onto an online discussion that cited a passage with anachronistic...more
Well, Pillars of the Earth is one of my favorite books and I was looking forward to completely enjoying this without reservation. But way back when it first came out, I stumbled onto an online discussion that cited a passage with anachronistic vocabulary, which bothered me. It was very anachronistic. So it was a single passage, but it added some reservation to my anticipated complete enjoyment. And then I got to page 15, and there's this conversation that no two people would ever have under any circumstances that served only for the author to show off some detail about the time period. That doesn't bode well, at least not on top of sloppy word choice. Finally, there's a character in this book that might as well be a character from Pillars, which makes me worry that other character types will be recycled. PLUS there's a major plot point hinged on the kind of intrigue that drove the motivations of some characters in Pillars--derivative! derivative! So I have four things in my conscience mind to have to suppress as I am reading. Fortunately, I have been able to do so, at least through the first part of the book.
I am sad that people who are sort of shabby and bumbling are the descendants of people who were just fantastic in Pillars, but I accept that family fortunes rise and fall. I think it will color my feelings about those Pillars characters next time I read the book, but not necessarily my feelings about the book.
UPDATE APRIL 5:
Uh-oh. I had really hoped the Great Mumbo Jumbo Kerfuffle of Aught-Seven was an anomaly, but I just encountered the word "sexy" in a character's thoughts and I'm not even at page 100 yet. Is two a pattern?
UPDATE April 12:
The book tanks. It becomes extraordinarily boring around the plague and then it just doesn't pick up again. The second half of the book is like a checklist of all the social changes that the plague triggers. The characters turn into mirror images of the characters in Pillars, and some of them in that book were a little silly. The final scene between Gwenda and Annet is just goofy; there is a rebellious teenage girl running around with a bad crowd; I skimmed the last 200 pages while fooling around in a chat room.
I will forget I have read this book. I was sad for a while to see what became of Jack and Aliena's descendants, but it doesn't matter. The book is inconsequential.
Also lesbian nun sex....less
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