http://www.goodreads.com/user/updates_rss/77724 en-US Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:27:38 -0700 60 http://www.goodreads.com/ 200 41 http://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/gr_logo.gif 22884336 Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:27:38 -0700 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20698270 Waterland (Paperback)
by Graham Swift
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> 20550429 Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:29:51 -0700 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/10637245 to: Evening Is the Whole Day: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Preeta Samarasan
bookshelves: novels-i-love
I'm going to go ahead and call this my favorite novel of the decade. I've never, ever, EVER, believed in characters as deeply as I believe in the inhabitants of The Big House. You know what - forget the decade! This is as good a novel as I know of, and as intimate and moving a reading experience as I've had, and as rich and vivid a world as I’ve ever read my way into. I don't know if I've ever loved a character as much as I love Aasha. Love though, is not all I feel for this book – and this, I think, is what makes it so seriously, truly, utterly great: it's also unrelentingly painful. It will hurt you. It hurts, even when guided by a loving hand, to look so honestly at the brutality and smallness and meanness of which humanity is capable. It hurts to follow the trails of ruin left by willful blindnesses, shameful prejudices, and faithless underestimations; it hurts to watch small mistakes, no matter how innocently or ignorantly perpetrated, result in huge, enveloping, unrescindable sadnesses – but to be able to look at all of this squarely, attentively, and unsparingly; to depict it fully, in all its ugly complexity; to dwell on the pain, to pick and prod and examine it, to stare into its hideous face with humor and healthy cynicism, but also, somehow, hope – is, I think, the bravest sort of thing a piece of writing can do. I smiled on nearly every page, but never did the novel allow me to indulge the dangerous fantasies of a happy ending – not for everyone, not in a world like ours.

oh yeah - and did I mention that it's got absolutely everything else that anyone could possibly want in a novel - mystery, political strife, domestic intrigue, hilarity, a thrilling loop-the-looping structure, and 339 pages of pure, unadulterated kick-ass-dazzling prose.

In sum:
I friend this book, know or not? ]]> 20843078 Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:37:08 -0700 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19126576 The Great Fires: Poems, 1982-1992 (Paperback)
by Jack Gilbert
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> 20843017 Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:36:44 -0700 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/18739633 So Long, See You Tomorrow (Panther)
by William Maxwell
bookshelves: read-a-novella-tonight
The best (and possibly only) novel I've ever read in under two hours. ]]> 20840179 Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:16:58 -0700 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19124255 to: Saltwater Empire (Paperback)
by Raymond McDaniel
]]> 20839894 Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:15:05 -0700 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19124025 Black Swan Green: A Novel (Paperback)
by David Mitchell
bookshelves: to-read
]]> 20839709 Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:13:46 -0700 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19123863 Continental Drift (P.S.)
by Russell Banks
bookshelves: to-read
]]> 20839369 Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:11:32 -0700 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19123601 Middlemarch (Signet Classics (Paperback))
by George Eliot
bookshelves: to-read
]]> 20601134 Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:25:49 -0700 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/18926364 Atonement: A Novel (Paperback)
by Ian McEwan
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