So I didn’t really get into All Families Are Psychotic when I tried to read it ages ago – for whatever reason – and I tried jPod instead and had the same issue. Then recently I was at Bongs & Noodles reading Girlfriend in a Coma and enjoying it mightily, and I wanted to get it out of the library but they didn’t have it; and I decided to do the same thing I am doing with Salman Rushdie, which is read his books in reverse order of how good I think they’re going to be. This didn’t exactly work…
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Don’t you love it when you re-encounter a book you’d completely forgotten about? I found Well Wished at the book fair, and as soon as I opened it I felt like I had been flashed straight back to second grade. I read Well Wished for the first time in the library of my elementary school, one afternoon when I was stuck there for what felt like forever. I don’t remember why I felt stuck – I like the library – or why I was there at all after school hours, but I remember this book. Well Wished is about a…
4 CommentsAccidentally on Purpose: A One-Night Stand, My Unplanned Parenthood, and Loving the Best Mistake I Ever Made, is a memoir about Mary Pols getting pregnant completely accidentally at the age of 39, from what was meant to be a one-night stand. I got it off the library display case for New Nonfiction yesterday, and read it that evening. Because I like memoirs. Well, I like memoirs but. I like memoirs, but books like this bring up all my serious, grave concerns about memoirs. On the one hand, I want them to be honest – I feel so let down when…
Leave a CommentI just cannot decide how I feel about this book. I read about it at Superfastreader’s blog, and it sounded so lovely I decided to break my longstanding but baseless boycott of Muriel Spark. This rarely happens with my baseless boycotts. Nobody has ever managed to make Gore Vidal, Philip Roth, Vikram Seth, or Iris Murdoch sound appealing enough that I will read their books. But I got A Far Cry from Kensington out of the library. I like to read books about London that talk about streets I know, so I was pleased when she mentioned the roads in…
3 CommentsLook, I’m as fond of my home state as the next person – probably more than many – and this book is set in Louisiana. And although part of me was mad because I read a review that called Thursday’s Children “goopy treacle” and compared it unfavorably with The Dancers of Sycamore Street, and that part of me wanted The Dancers of Sycamore Street to be rubbish, I was mostly hoping that I was about to read an undiscovered gem, and not only would I enjoy it hugely, but I would also feel pleased and proud that it was set…
Leave a CommentThe Fire Fighter is about a guy who is good at putting out fires, so good in fact that he gets taken away from the front in Africa, and has to come back to London and protect these five buildings in London, during the Blitz. He is not best pleased about this as it’s not clear to him what’s so good about these five buildings, and the mysterious Military Intelligence people are extremely vague and un-forthcoming. He has a painful past, worries about his mother and brother, and falls in love with a German woman who works as a translator…
Leave a CommentMeh. I saw this mentioned on Amazon when I was hunting for something else, so I got it out of the library and read it last night. I wish I had read my book about Edward Murrow instead when I was falling asleep. It wasn’t bad at all, I just never connected with it. There’s nine high school students talking about their backgrounds, and then each of them interviewed someone from a different background about 9/11. I wasn’t as much in the mood for it as I thought I would be, although it did remind me that I want to…
Leave a CommentMeg Rosoff’s second book is about a boy called David Case who becomes obsessed with the idea that he is doomed. He changes his name to Justin as part of a general attempt to disguise himself so that his bad fate cannot find him; he makes friends with a boy called Peter; he has an imaginary dog called Boy; he gets taken up by a rather ruthless photographer girl called Agnes; and a number of things happen to him. I have just finished this book, and here are the two thoughts I had about it: 1. Meg Rosoff has written…
4 CommentsSexual ethics are fascinating, aren’t they? But I got tired of this book anyway. It was all disorganized. I was pleased to learn about Sylvester Graham, a completely joyless fellow who advocated bland food, invented the graham cracker, and said that if someone didn’t do something to stop little boys from masturbating, they would grow up and become “a living volcano of unclean propensities and passions”. I swear. Those were his words. I suspect they are burned into my brain forever. But as for the rest, Ms. Horowitz kept teasing me with the promise of a good story, and then…
3 CommentsI read about Charles Palliser on this website, but The Unburied, which is the book she actually reviewed, wasn’t at the library. So I got this instead. It is full of London, so I thought that would be a point in its favor. I think of London almost every day, because I miss it so much and I want to go back. And also it is gorgeous and perfect. London’s lovely perfection is not so much in evidence in The Quincunx. The protagonist, John Huffam, spends a lot of time being really unhappy in (Victorian) London, due to the seedier…
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