Fuck it. We did Psalm 1; let’s do Psalm 2. For the past several years, in my old age, I have gotten back into reading what I call my “dragon books” — fantasy novels — to have some semblance of escape in my reading from the horrors of societal life since circa 2015. While it is true I have interspersed them with canon and non-canon “good” literature (not sure where Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem falls in there) as well as great non-fiction (I highly recommend Foner’s Reconstruction, which I read in 2018 according to Goodreads), I always...
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Book Rec: Some Girls
Another entry in my I Judged This Book By Its Cover And Was Only Partly Wrong list. Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, by Jillian Lauren Sounds trashy, right? I thought it would be a guilty pleasure, a fast read. It was a fast read, but there was more to it than I expected. Instead of titillating tell-all or bad romance novel, Lauren’s book is really what it aspires to be: a great memoir. Some Girls is the true story of the time Lauren spent in the harem of the Prince of Brunei, but it’s also a coming...
Continue reading...Late Summer Book Review
The plus side of my rainy Cape Cod trip was that I had plenty of time for reading. I finished two of the books that I brought with me (the one I won’t write about today is Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, which I thought was good but not great). This was the one I liked better: The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver As a former English major, I always have trouble naming favorite books or authors– just too many to choose from. But Kingsolver has been high on my list since high school, when my mom first introduced...
Continue reading...The Girl Who Was Not Impressed
My interest in books tends to vary inversely to the amount of hype, so I had about zero curiousity in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But then both my parents recommended the series highly, and they both have great (and divergent) taste in books, so I figured if they both enjoyed it, maybe I really was missing out in my Stieg Larsson-less existence. So I borrowed Dragon Tattoo, the first novel of the trilogy, and I slogged through the first hundred or so pages before finally finding myself engrossed. I didn’t expect that it would take so...
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I picked up The Myth of You & Me at the library based solely on the title. I was not disappointed. This novel, by Leah Stewart, chronicles the unraveling of a friendship between two women, and more to the point, the intense bond they shared before falling out. The action takes place when the women are adults and looks back on their teenage years in frequent flashbacks. The story is told from the perspective of Cameron, and is propelled forward by several unanswered questions about the demise of her friendship with Sonia– a friendship so close the...
Continue reading...Summer Reading
I’ve been intending for a while to start writing some book reviews for the blog, but hadn’t gotten to it yet. And now it’s summer, which is always the Season of Reading for me, because in my mind if not reality, summer is still vacation time, which obviously means curling up with a good book on the couch, on the beach, in the car, and so forth. If you’re casting about for something to read, here are a couple I’ve read recently and highly recommend: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. This book is superb, and I don’t say...
Continue reading...Why are novels so long?
Charles Stross has a really interesting explanation for why novels are the length they are: Once a trend like that becomes established, it’s hard to stop. Put yourself in the position of a bored browser in front of a supermarket wire-rack, contemplating novels by two authors you’ve never read. They both cost the same, and you have enough pocket money to buy one. The year is 1980; LibraryThing or other internet resources aren’t available. How do you make your mind up? Well, you remember what you’ve heard about the authors, and you look at the cover painting,...
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