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BEA'S 50 BOOKS READ IN 2012
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JANUARY1.
Emily BrontëFinish Date: January 5, 2012
Genre: Literary Fiction - Victorian Era
Rating: C-
Review: This was a re-read for me. I know, I know - it is a classic of World Literature. The book simply was not an enjoyable read for me. I don't mind a book where all the characters are crazy and most of them are cruel. For example, Dostoevsky is fine with me. But I don't want to be expected to like these characters or sympathize with their grand unbridled romantic passions. For me, Heathcliff was a monster I didn't want to spend time with. It's some people's favorite book, so take my comments for what they are worth.
2.
Kazuo IshiguroFinish Date: January 12, 2012
Genre: Literary Fiction - 20th Century
Rating: A
Review: I thought this novel was amazing. I had seen the movie but had very hazy memories of it. The novel is so much more. The story is a chronicle of the thoughts of a very traditional English butler as he approaches the end of his career after WWII. A beautiful but sad book that made me want to live a better life. There are precious few of those.
3.
Charlotte Perkins GilmanFinish Date: January 14, 2012
Genre: Literary Fiction - 19th Century American Short Story
Rating: B+
Review: Edgar Allan Poe meets Kate Chopin in a wonderfully creepy feminist horror story. (I am counting individual short stories as books if they are listed as such in
)
4.
Nikolai GogolFinish Date: January 21, 2012
Genre: Literary Fiction - 19th Century Russian Short Story
Rating: B+
Review: Delicious nonsense beginning when a barber finds a nose in his loaf of bread one morning.
5.
Barbara DemickFinish Date: January 23, 2012
Genre: History/Current Events - North Korea
Rating: A-
Review: Excellent writing and compelling reading. This book tells the story of six defectors from North Korea in an intimate way that makes the tissue of famine, oppression, and lies that was Kim Il Jong's North Korea immediate and personal.
Mod
5a.
Matt Kish(no author photo)Finish Date: January 26, 2012
Genre: Art
Rating: A
Review: I've looked at all the pictures. Now I'm going back to savor it a bit at a time while I re-read the novel. The art might not be for everybody but I found it incredibly powerful. The quotations the artist chooses to illustrate are given and are, if anything, more powerful.
You can also see all the artwork and quotes on Kish's blog, which is fairly easy to find with a search engine. After looking at the blog, I just had to buy the book.
6.
Anne BrontëFinish Date: January 27, 2012
Genre: Literary Fiction - Victorian Era
Rating: B+
Review: They say the slam of the bed chamber door in this novel was the opening salvo of the women's rights movement. Anne Bronte drew a truly courageous female character who stood up for her convictions at a time when women were expected by law, church, and society to submit. I would rate the portions of the novel containing her diary at 5 stars, the parts narrated by her male neighbor were slightly weaker and more melodramatic.
7.
Charlotte BrontëFinish Date: January 31, 2012
Genre: Literary Fiction - Victorian Era
Rating: C+
Review: I was not crazy about this book. It was the only work written by Charlotte after her identity became known. It is also her most autobiographical work. Perversely, this meant she held her heroine's cards very, very close to the vest. Poor Lucy Snowe suffers mightily, but without any details of her back story, it was hard for me to engage fully. Lucy's feelings of superiority to other cultures or religions (the story takes place in a fictionalized Brussels) don't make her any more likable.
I'm going to start a re-read of Moby-Dick and am looking forward to the sea breezes washing away the melancholy of a prolonged stint with the Brontë sisters.
8. February
by
Neal StephensonFinish Date: February 10, 2010
Genre: Science Fiction?
Rating: C
Well, that was a mighty slog ... I knew it was forty-three hours of listening going in, but I didn't know I would be spending 6 weeks waiting for this book to end.
I don't think one has to be a mathematician or computer whiz to enjoy the novel, but a certain fascination with these topics would help.
There are two constantly shifting plot lines (not my favorite style of writing). The first deals with various characters, both Allied and Axis, engaged in code-breaking, emerging computer technology, military operations, high finance on a number of fronts in World War II. The second deals with the present or near future and another large number of characters who are engaged in encryption, state of the art computer technology, and high finance. Some of the characters in the first plot are the ancestors of characters in the second plot. As you get about 2/3 way through the book, it becomes more evident that the plots will converge. I found the pay-off anticlimactic.
9.
by
Oscar WildeFinish Date: February 13, 2012
Genre: Literary Fiction - 19th Century
Rating: C+
Review: This book is filled with quotable epigrams, some of which are quite clever. I found the decadence oddly tiring and the outcome depressing.
I'm off to find something light to cleanse my palate.
As we have discussed, the film may be better than the book!
10.
by
Christopher FowlerFinish Date: February 17, 2012
Genre: Mystery - Police Procedural
Rating: B
Review: Many thanks Jill for your recommendation! I enjoyed this book. The geriatric detectives are fun, the crime was intricate, and I learned some interesting London history along the way.
I thought you would like this series. They are lots of fun and the mystery is incidental to the personalities of the Peculiar Crime Unit members.
MARCH11.
by Martin Gayford (no photo)Finish Date: March 2, 2012
Genre: Biography/Art History
Rating: B-
Review: This book covers the period in which Van Gogh and Gauguin shared a house in Arles. It had been Vincent's dream to create a kind of artist's commune and this was to have been the start. It was a period of enormous productivity for both artists. But their temperaments and goals were very different and Vincent's hold on his sanity was fading. The book is well written but covers the same ground as Van Gogh's letters, which are fabulous. Definitely recommend going direct to the source. Also, this book is illustrated in black and white and I was longing to see the paintings referenced in their full glory.
12.
by
Elizabeth GaskellFinish Date: March 9, 2012
Genre: Literary Fiction - Victorian Era
Rating: B+
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this gentle comedy of manners about a sensitive doctor's daughter who gains a new stepmother and beautiful step-sister at age 17. We are lucky that Gaskell was so near the end of the story when she died. Although another writer had to take over for the last chapter, it was just the happy ending toward which the novel had been building. It's a long book, but the audio version made it fly by.
13.
by
Mary RoachFinish Date: March 14, 2012
Genre: Non-Ficton - Lay Science
Rating: B
Review: This books looks at the many things that can happen to humain remains, none very pretty and some of which you would never have dreamt of in your wildest imagining. The author has done her research but helps the macabre details go down with a large lashing of humor. I wonder about myself at times like these but I laughed out loud not once, but repeatedly. Test question: Have you seen the film Evil Dead II (perhaps to humor a sadistic teenager)? Did you find yourself laughing uncontrollably in spite of yourself? If so, this book may be for you.
Warning: Some of the things scientists have done to dead human cadavers, they have also tried on live animals. While this is not the focus of the book, some of the experiments are described. If you know in advance this will bother you, steer well away from this book.
I read that book several years ago, Bea! Some parts were kind of disturbing (to me) but other parts were really interesting.
14.
by
Nathan RabinFinish Date: March 21, 2012
Genre: Film Criticism
Rating: B-
If you are a aficionado of scathing but humorous reviews of bad films, this may be a good book for those times you can't concentrate on anything deeper. It doesn't beat Roger Ebert's "Your Movie Sucks" or "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie" in the laughs department, however. Not having seen the movies may even make reading them raked over the coals more fun.
by
Roger Ebert
by
Roger Ebert
Another book in that genre is:
by Michael Medved I love to read about really bad film so I might have to look that one up, Bea.
15.
by
David RoseFinished: March 31, 2012
Genre: Humor
Rating: B-
Review: Well that was fun, painless, and will help get the book goal widget off my back. Thanks for the recommendation, Jill.
APRIL16.
Olivia GentileFinished: April 1, 2012
Genre: Biography/Natural History
Rating: B
Review: A view of a beautiful bird in the wild is the closest thing to bliss that I have experienced. On a birding trip or outing, there are many moments of such awe and joy. So, in many ways, I "get" Phoebe Snetsinger, though I will never have anything close to her life list - 85% of the known bird species on the planet. At the time of her death, she had seen more species of birds than any other person.
After a couple of decades of being a unfulfilled housewife and mother, Phoebe was diagnosed with melanoma and told she had six months to a year to live. She immediately took off on her birding adventure and traveled to some of the most exotic and dangerous places in the world in the quest of more and more birds for her list. Her adventure took the next 18 years. In doing so she missed her mother's funeral, her daughter's wedding, and came within a heartbeat of divorce.
Another thing I have in common with Phoebe is having spent considerable time in Papua New Guinea. I worked there for three years. We took a car to go three blocks in broad daylight in downtown Port Moresby. It was on the outskirts of Port Moresby at dusk where Phoebe was gang raped while her guide was held at knife point. The author of this book can't seem to forgive Phoebe for not becoming an emotional wreck, "facing up" to this trauma, and abandoning her quest. Or maybe she should have given up when her boat capsized in Irian Jaya? Or when she broke her wrist in the Philippines?
I, myself, would not have had the courage to even get close to these remote locations, living rough and hiking for hours just for the chance at another lifer. I also couldn't bear being away from my family for up to eight months a year. I can't judge Phoebe for doing it, though, and it kind of irked me that the author chose to harp on the rape and psychoanalyze Phoebe relentlessly.
All in all, if you are a birder or traveler, you won't want to miss this book. I'd like to read Snetsinger's memoirs some time soon.
Phoebe Snetsinger (no photo)
What a fascinating and amazing woman.........though not a birder, I am a bird lover and this book would interest me.(BTW, I have a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers at the edge of my woods, hammering all day long. They are so gorgeous,)
Do you know that I have never seen a Pileated Woodpecker? I am so jealous. I have been in the back of a convoy of cars who saw a Pileated Woodpecker cross the road. I have been with a guide who heard the call of a Pileated Woodpecker but could not locate the bird. They are high on my realistic "most wanted list". I love woodpeckers.I want to read one of these books about the elusive Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. It sounds like quite a story.
by Tim Gallagher (no photo)
by Geoffrey E. Hill (no photo)
They are quite amazing....so large and frankly, look like Woody Woodpecker with that bright red topknot. This pair has been coming back for about four years (I assume it is the same pair)....you can hear them above all the birds as they hammer very loudly. My bird book says that they are "uncommon", so when I first saw them, I was excited. Those books look good and I wonder if those people who have said that they sighted an Ivory-Billed really did or do you think it is actually extinct?
I'm going to have to read and find out what I think! The references I have seen in general birding books say the ivory-billed are considered by most experts to be extinct. Such a pity .
17.
by
Elizabeth von ArnimFinished: April 3, 2012
Genre: 19th Century Fiction
Rating: B
Review: I had never heard of this book or its author but am so glad I ran across it in time to for a spring read. The author was raised in England and married to a German aristocrat. The book is a paean to the simple pleasures of planning and enjoying a garden, with a bit of social satire thrown in for some spice. The book is short and quite delightful. Best not to go in expecting much of a plot.
18.
by
Alexander McCall SmithFinished: April 8, 2012
Genre: Mystery
Rating: B+
Review: I've read all the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books and I think the latest is one of the very best. Mma Ramotswe has a prophetic dream about meeting someone she knows well and yet is a stranger. Her dream comes true and that's just the start of at least four intertwining mini-mysteries. I ended the book with a tear in my eye and sorry that I'll have to wait another year for the next one. I cannot recommend Lisette Lecat, the narrator of the audiobooks, too highly.
19.
by
Edith WhartonFinished: April 12, 2012
Genre: 20th Century Fiction
Rating: A
Review: Edith Wharton, from her perch in 1920, takes a look back at love and family values in the 1870's as practiced by the first families of New York. The story is told from the point of view of a young man who is engaged to one lady, then unexpectedly mesmerized by another, freer, spirit. The writing is exquisite and, especially in the first half of the book, wittily perceptive. The story darkens toward the end and we are left to think about how social strictures shape lives. I'm not so sure anything is so fundamentally different now. You can't always get what you want. Would you want it so much if you could?
20.
by Candice Millard(no photo)Finished: April 17, 2012
Genre: Presidential Biography/American History
Rating: A
Review: I just loved this compelling and interesting book. Millard is a very talented writer who made me fall in love with Garfield about a quarter of the way in so that his shooting and painful death were very moving. I went into this knowing little more about Garfield than that he had been assassinated. I come out admiring the man and knowing a whole lot more about the state of American politics, medicine, and science in the 1870's and 1880's. Highly recommended. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Paul Michael.
Everyone who has read that last book here (myself included) has loved it. Definitely one of the top biographies I read in the last year.
21.
by
Charles Dickens,
Wilkie Collins,
Elizabeth Gaskell, and Adelaide Anne Procter (no photo)Finished: April 18, 2012
Genre: 19th Century Fiction
Rating: B
Review: I enjoyed this collaborative novella or short story that was published in the 1858 special Christmas edition of Dickens' Household Words magazine. The story is not especially Christmasy but is very entertaining. Each of the authors contributed a segment about successive residents of the house and Dickens edited the whole compilation. The stories range from sad to hilarious. This is a fun, short read - nothing deep but entertaining.
22.
by Peter KobelFinished: Msy 18, 2012
Genre: Film History
Rating: B+
Review: This was an entertaining overview of the history of film from its origins in the late 19th century throughout the silent era, which lasted until the late 1920's in the United States. The book covers the major inventors, directors, and stars of the period, and the author is just opinionated enough to add some spice.
One of the book's main strengths is the photos and poster art illustrations. I may have missed out on some of the impact of these by reading this as an ebook.
23.
by Nancy MaceGenre: Health and Medicine/Non-Fiction
Rating: A
Review: I can't imagine a more comprehensive and compassionate book on caring for a loved one with dementia. Even if you are not a caregiver, this will be of interest if you know someone who is or have someone with dementia in your life. The author describes the person is trying his/her best, often making an incredible effort to get through each day and the reasons people with dementia do many of the things they do.
Mod
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss in Later Life (other topics)Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture (other topics)
A House to Let (other topics)
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President (other topics)
The Age of Innocence (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Nancy L. Mace (other topics)Peter Kobel (other topics)
Adelaide Anne Procter (other topics)
Charles Dickens (other topics)
Wilkie Collins (other topics)
More...
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JANUARY
1.
Finish date: March 2008
Genre: (whatever genre the book happens to be)
Rating: A
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