2007
December
have you found her. Memoirs are in- they’re the blogs of the reading world, the reality TV of print and the engrossing aspect of all those mediums is easily wrapped up in Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum. We’re taken on a trip through the ups and downs of a recovering homeless teenage junkie and while you hope for a happy solution you just know the minute for-shadowing events in the story won’t allow it. Erlbaum begins this journey with the selfless act of volunteering and finds herself tangled in the life of a complicated and damaged girl. In her quest to find herself, to heal her own battle scars, Erlbaum tries in vain to save a girl who has entranced her. I sometimes found myself questioning this “love” that Erlbaum professes for Sam, but I too was in a trance with her. This story felt like it could easily be worn by anyone. It is so ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. I wonder if it’s that writers are better at bringing forth their everyday lives into a bright and hypnotic light or whether their everyday lives really are so much more interesting than our own. Either way, I can imagine walking into this story on any day and finding myself spun around just like Erlbaum does. It’s a good read with a little lesson in the end- you can only save yourself, but didn’t we already know that? Sometimes we need a little of what we find in others to find all of ourselves. Highly
recommended.
by Janice Erlbaum
October
old school. starts off slow, so much so that i almost put it down. i like the idea of prep school, of the almost college for teenagers who haven't figured out their angst or their voice. this is a smart book that made me wish i was versed in the classics. i can only imagine that an interview with hemingway or ayn rand would be so thrilling.
by Tobias Wolff
middlessex. i din't love this book, but that didn't stop me from reading all 528 pages of it. it is amazingly written. how the author goes through a century of time with the ease and void of reader disruption is inspiring. and it's partly why i didn't love it. i like a story to be about one person from that person's point of view. call me boring. i'll take it. this one delves too much for me in the imagined histories for me to gain a solid connectivity with the characters. in this way it reminded me of Everything Is Illuminated. i have similiar options about both books, beautifully written just not my favorite story.
by Eugenides
September
the dogs of babel. i loved this book almost as much at Time Traveler's Wife. it felt similar in tone and movement though at times the twists of plot were predictable. the tone and writing were both smart and easy and that to me makes a good match. i recommend it highly. and the best bit was at the when in my version the authos gives a list of her favorite books and short blurbs of why she likes them. now, that is one nice author!
By Carolyn Parkhurst
waiting. it's so easy for me to be sucked in by "National Best Seller" and "National Book Award Winner" because i just assumed that works have to be stellar and radiant to every reader. i must the 1% who doesn't love what the impossibly well read and educated judges love. not so say that this book was bad. it wasn't. i just wouldn't give it a national prize. and i blame that on my reading ability and not on the writing. i don't always get the nuissance of humor in good writing. i sometimes can't read between the lines in print materials. and i think my ability failed me on this novel as well. i was waiting for it to be over, to find the darkly humorous ending i was promised in the preview blurbs. i'm a little fascinated with communist china so i think that is what kept me reading, but it took me well over a month and that whas wholely unintentioal.
by Ha Jin
August
stolen lives. i borrowed this from a house where i was dogsitting a few weeks ago. i hadn't heard of it before even though it was an oprah book club book. the tag lines intrigued me. it is the story of Malika Oufkir and her family who lived in Morroco and were imprisoned there for 20 years after her father staged a coup on the king and was killed. it's a story of survival as well as privelige. you couldn't event such dramactic or disperate events which this family endured. strange in it's language because it was written in french then translated to english. i'm sure that the polish of the languages was worn away a bit, but it does not undermine the powerful struggle which the latter half of the book reveals.
by Malika Oufkir with Michele Fitoussi
July
gilead. highly recommended by a well-read friend i came to gilead with high hopes. i wasn't prepared to the quiet of this novel, the subtle tone, the whisper that is almost is. i didn't love the subject matter, wasn't that interested in the characters, but this book is like a poem. one that i will be trying to decipher for a long long time.
by Marrilynne Robinson
rats: observations on the history and habitats of the city's most unwanted inhabitants. i bought this book at a tiny little bookshopg across the street from Magnolia Bakery in the village in new york. it was on a table sitting outside. you know those tables that draw you in with discount prices on slightly imperfect books. i got bitten by the idea of a book devoted not only to the city i love, but to the inhabitants of it's underbelly. it was a good read, interesting, historical and at times very engrossing. i can't look at city garbage or city alleys without knowing what lies beneath the surface or underground.
by Robert Sullivan
dress your family in corduroy and denim. the first time i read david sedaris i didn't appreciate his subtle wit. i loved the stories about his strange siblings. it made me feel so normal and yet wrong in that normalcy at the same time. this latests book is hilarios and i can never get enough.
by David Sedaris
little children. loaned to me by my sister-in-law from one of her friends. my s-i-l did not like the novel and in fact blamed it for her giving up on modern literature. i wouldn't go that far. i don't think this is a representative of modern lit. it is mass culture lit. and for that i found fault, but the writing is smart and fast and smooth. the author is smart and knows how to keep you panting, but the overly active sex lives of the characters killed the story for me. it bordered on disturbing for me, walking that fine edge of dark humor though it doesn't make me give on modern lit. at all.
by Tom Perrotta
mahattan, when i was young. of course i was pulled to this one by the title. a memior about an editor at the New York Times and once Mademoiselle and Vogue, she tells of her life in new york as she graduated from college, married, had children and moved about from house to house all through the village. being born in the 30's there was a multitude of references that were lost on me although underneath it all is a typical semi-nuerotic new yorker and i get that.
by Mary Cantwell
the true and outstanding adventures of the hunt sisters. although the title suggest lightheartedness and tiresome antics, this novel is tinged a bit more heavily in the weight of the reality of cancer. the story of two sisters, one a cynical movie exec. in L.A., the other a boisterous optimistic with cancer. told through letters sent by the narroter to everyone in her professional, personal and familial life the story wraps around nearly a year and a half of cancer treatment and movie production. a good read, engrossing, heavy and lighthearted at times. i even laughed out loud at some points which is very, very rare for me (with a book, i mean).
by Elizabeth Robinson
water for elephants. this is a national bestseller right now and well, why? i heard about it a year ago from friends and NPR. i waited and waited to buy it thinking that a book with such a strange title should surely be somewhat obtuse and altogether wonderful. it's good, it's very readable, but it's mass literature. i'm becoming a book snob. Everything Is Illuminated was too obtuse, this was too transparent. i knew the plot before the next 100 pages divulged it. a good read, maybe one better for the beach. it kept me reading and wanting to know what happens, but i just didn't love it and maybe that's partly to do with the fact that i don't love the circus.
by Sara Cruen
easter everywhere. this memior is by one of my mother's friend's daughter. i know it sounds twice removed, but it's not. she describes parts of her life i never knew about especially the part about her father being a minister. i was more cognizant of the family after the father had left and therefore never really thought he existed. she tells of her religious struggles throughout her life, but in the vien of someone who desperately wants to believe Christianity, but cannot reconcile with it. i get her struggle and the foundation for emotional wavering that she inherited from her family. i enjoyed this book and i think i just might write her a letter.
by Darcey Steinke
June
the second assistant. a great chicklite, beach reading book. this was a smart book with just enough escapism to make it a fast and enjoyable read. i felt like i was in L.A. again, tromping about in the perfect sunshine with all the perfect people. and even though the heorin is besotted with the wiles of hollywood, i found that i could almost understand the selling of your soul to do a job you liked and were good at. of course the typical chicklit trappings apply a la girl gets decent guy and dates others along the way, but this is why you take it to the beach and don't see it on syllabi.
by Mimi Hare and Clare Naylor
a million little pieces. of course i read this after the rise and fall due to Oprah and the legitamacy of this "memior." i have to say that i didn't love it. it kept me going, kept me reading, but this man is one pompous, self-righteous writer. how people were so enthralled by this book before the scandal makes me have little faith in our reading public. and i'm not even talking about the big things like getting a root canal with no drugs at all or the arrests being made up or the fact that the girl in book may or may not have hung herself, or been real at all. no, what bothers me is that the day after capping two teeth and getting two root canals with no medicine, this bulldog of a 23 year-old ate a full breakfast, plate after plate of sausages and bacon and eggs and and and... i'd like to call him on this. and i bet he'd say that for lunch he hand 12 ears of corn on the cob. sure, hindsight is 20/20, but there is something to be said of how arrogance and bravado are simply veils for a weak and unstable psyche. and i feel for him, for being so trouble in the first place and then deceiving his readers like this. sad.
by James Frey
everything is illluminated. i checked this one out from the library because i've been meaning to read it for quite a long time. first, it has a great cover. second, it got a lot of hype when it came out. and third, i adored The History of Love that is wife wrote. i'm not so sure about this book. i think it's one of those that i need to reread in a year. i don't fully grasp it. is it brilliant? maybe. a lot of people think so, but it might be a little too cerebral for me, a little too ahead of my time. easily readable, just not sure i've pieced all the puzzle pieces together. i'm was hoping that in time, like as i read (past tense) the book, that everything WILL be illuminated. and also, when i read the back cover and discovered that he was born in 1977 and is my age, i felt that i had accomplished nothing in my life.
by Jonathan Saftran Foer
dear exile. a book of letters between two friends, one in nyc, one in africa in the peace corp. a fast, fun read. i found myself comparing the educational system here in urban america to that of kenya, not an easy or even likely comparison, but some sad similarities exist. i ate up the nyc stories too, of course.
by Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery
April
the comedienne. bought off the $2 list at b&n.com, all i knew about the book was that it was from a british writer. it was a fast read about a woman in england searching for the love of her life. we meet her in her home town caring for a frail mother and dating a woman whom she loves, but the woman does not love her back. they break up and the next 20 or so years are dipped in an out of. the main component of the book is the main characters imaginary girlfriend which is a bit odd. i didn't find it exceptionally funny, but a sad sort of tale, a little rough around the edges, a little true to life, a good find for $2.
by VG Lee
March
evidence of things unseen. a beautifully written account of a couple that starts during world war I and ends sometime in the 50's with their adopted son. it took me a long time to finish this book, but it's not because it was well written. it's a slow story, but i don't mean this in a negative way. sometimes books need time to unfold and i think this is one of them. marrianne writes so wonderfully, descriptively and wholly. she brought nature, science, frienship, love, scandal and history together in a cohesive and subtle way.
by Marrianne Wiggins
January
the ha-ha. a story about a vietnam vet 20 or so years after he is wounded and left mute from his sustained head injury. the books takes us through a summer of his life when an ex-girlfriend's son comes to live with him. even though he does not communicate past gesturing the story is told in his voice and the writer does a beautiful job of writing dialogue without writing dielogue. i found myself making lists of things i needed to get dones, but only thinking that i could accomplish them because i couldn't speak. the prose overcame me a bit. a good read.
by Dave King
have you found her. Memoirs are in- they’re the blogs of the reading world, the reality TV of print and the engrossing aspect of all those mediums is easily wrapped up in Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum. We’re taken on a trip through the ups and downs of a recovering homeless teenage junkie and while you hope for a happy solution you just know the minute for-shadowing events in the story won’t allow it. Erlbaum begins this journey with the selfless act of volunteering and finds herself tangled in the life of a complicated and damaged girl. In her quest to find herself, to heal her own battle scars, Erlbaum tries in vain to save a girl who has entranced her. I sometimes found myself questioning this “love” that Erlbaum professes for Sam, but I too was in a trance with her. This story felt like it could easily be worn by anyone. It is so ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. I wonder if it’s that writers are better at bringing forth their everyday lives into a bright and hypnotic light or whether their everyday lives really are so much more interesting than our own. Either way, I can imagine walking into this story on any day and finding myself spun around just like Erlbaum does. It’s a good read with a little lesson in the end- you can only save yourself, but didn’t we already know that? Sometimes we need a little of what we find in others to find all of ourselves. Highly
recommended.
by Janice Erlbaum
October
old school. starts off slow, so much so that i almost put it down. i like the idea of prep school, of the almost college for teenagers who haven't figured out their angst or their voice. this is a smart book that made me wish i was versed in the classics. i can only imagine that an interview with hemingway or ayn rand would be so thrilling.
by Tobias Wolff
middlessex. i din't love this book, but that didn't stop me from reading all 528 pages of it. it is amazingly written. how the author goes through a century of time with the ease and void of reader disruption is inspiring. and it's partly why i didn't love it. i like a story to be about one person from that person's point of view. call me boring. i'll take it. this one delves too much for me in the imagined histories for me to gain a solid connectivity with the characters. in this way it reminded me of Everything Is Illuminated. i have similiar options about both books, beautifully written just not my favorite story.
by Eugenides
September
the dogs of babel. i loved this book almost as much at Time Traveler's Wife. it felt similar in tone and movement though at times the twists of plot were predictable. the tone and writing were both smart and easy and that to me makes a good match. i recommend it highly. and the best bit was at the when in my version the authos gives a list of her favorite books and short blurbs of why she likes them. now, that is one nice author!
By Carolyn Parkhurst
waiting. it's so easy for me to be sucked in by "National Best Seller" and "National Book Award Winner" because i just assumed that works have to be stellar and radiant to every reader. i must the 1% who doesn't love what the impossibly well read and educated judges love. not so say that this book was bad. it wasn't. i just wouldn't give it a national prize. and i blame that on my reading ability and not on the writing. i don't always get the nuissance of humor in good writing. i sometimes can't read between the lines in print materials. and i think my ability failed me on this novel as well. i was waiting for it to be over, to find the darkly humorous ending i was promised in the preview blurbs. i'm a little fascinated with communist china so i think that is what kept me reading, but it took me well over a month and that whas wholely unintentioal.
by Ha Jin
August
stolen lives. i borrowed this from a house where i was dogsitting a few weeks ago. i hadn't heard of it before even though it was an oprah book club book. the tag lines intrigued me. it is the story of Malika Oufkir and her family who lived in Morroco and were imprisoned there for 20 years after her father staged a coup on the king and was killed. it's a story of survival as well as privelige. you couldn't event such dramactic or disperate events which this family endured. strange in it's language because it was written in french then translated to english. i'm sure that the polish of the languages was worn away a bit, but it does not undermine the powerful struggle which the latter half of the book reveals.
by Malika Oufkir with Michele Fitoussi
July
gilead. highly recommended by a well-read friend i came to gilead with high hopes. i wasn't prepared to the quiet of this novel, the subtle tone, the whisper that is almost is. i didn't love the subject matter, wasn't that interested in the characters, but this book is like a poem. one that i will be trying to decipher for a long long time.
by Marrilynne Robinson
rats: observations on the history and habitats of the city's most unwanted inhabitants. i bought this book at a tiny little bookshopg across the street from Magnolia Bakery in the village in new york. it was on a table sitting outside. you know those tables that draw you in with discount prices on slightly imperfect books. i got bitten by the idea of a book devoted not only to the city i love, but to the inhabitants of it's underbelly. it was a good read, interesting, historical and at times very engrossing. i can't look at city garbage or city alleys without knowing what lies beneath the surface or underground.
by Robert Sullivan
dress your family in corduroy and denim. the first time i read david sedaris i didn't appreciate his subtle wit. i loved the stories about his strange siblings. it made me feel so normal and yet wrong in that normalcy at the same time. this latests book is hilarios and i can never get enough.
by David Sedaris
little children. loaned to me by my sister-in-law from one of her friends. my s-i-l did not like the novel and in fact blamed it for her giving up on modern literature. i wouldn't go that far. i don't think this is a representative of modern lit. it is mass culture lit. and for that i found fault, but the writing is smart and fast and smooth. the author is smart and knows how to keep you panting, but the overly active sex lives of the characters killed the story for me. it bordered on disturbing for me, walking that fine edge of dark humor though it doesn't make me give on modern lit. at all.
by Tom Perrotta
mahattan, when i was young. of course i was pulled to this one by the title. a memior about an editor at the New York Times and once Mademoiselle and Vogue, she tells of her life in new york as she graduated from college, married, had children and moved about from house to house all through the village. being born in the 30's there was a multitude of references that were lost on me although underneath it all is a typical semi-nuerotic new yorker and i get that.
by Mary Cantwell
the true and outstanding adventures of the hunt sisters. although the title suggest lightheartedness and tiresome antics, this novel is tinged a bit more heavily in the weight of the reality of cancer. the story of two sisters, one a cynical movie exec. in L.A., the other a boisterous optimistic with cancer. told through letters sent by the narroter to everyone in her professional, personal and familial life the story wraps around nearly a year and a half of cancer treatment and movie production. a good read, engrossing, heavy and lighthearted at times. i even laughed out loud at some points which is very, very rare for me (with a book, i mean).
by Elizabeth Robinson
water for elephants. this is a national bestseller right now and well, why? i heard about it a year ago from friends and NPR. i waited and waited to buy it thinking that a book with such a strange title should surely be somewhat obtuse and altogether wonderful. it's good, it's very readable, but it's mass literature. i'm becoming a book snob. Everything Is Illuminated was too obtuse, this was too transparent. i knew the plot before the next 100 pages divulged it. a good read, maybe one better for the beach. it kept me reading and wanting to know what happens, but i just didn't love it and maybe that's partly to do with the fact that i don't love the circus.
by Sara Cruen
easter everywhere. this memior is by one of my mother's friend's daughter. i know it sounds twice removed, but it's not. she describes parts of her life i never knew about especially the part about her father being a minister. i was more cognizant of the family after the father had left and therefore never really thought he existed. she tells of her religious struggles throughout her life, but in the vien of someone who desperately wants to believe Christianity, but cannot reconcile with it. i get her struggle and the foundation for emotional wavering that she inherited from her family. i enjoyed this book and i think i just might write her a letter.
by Darcey Steinke
June
the second assistant. a great chicklite, beach reading book. this was a smart book with just enough escapism to make it a fast and enjoyable read. i felt like i was in L.A. again, tromping about in the perfect sunshine with all the perfect people. and even though the heorin is besotted with the wiles of hollywood, i found that i could almost understand the selling of your soul to do a job you liked and were good at. of course the typical chicklit trappings apply a la girl gets decent guy and dates others along the way, but this is why you take it to the beach and don't see it on syllabi.
by Mimi Hare and Clare Naylor
a million little pieces. of course i read this after the rise and fall due to Oprah and the legitamacy of this "memior." i have to say that i didn't love it. it kept me going, kept me reading, but this man is one pompous, self-righteous writer. how people were so enthralled by this book before the scandal makes me have little faith in our reading public. and i'm not even talking about the big things like getting a root canal with no drugs at all or the arrests being made up or the fact that the girl in book may or may not have hung herself, or been real at all. no, what bothers me is that the day after capping two teeth and getting two root canals with no medicine, this bulldog of a 23 year-old ate a full breakfast, plate after plate of sausages and bacon and eggs and and and... i'd like to call him on this. and i bet he'd say that for lunch he hand 12 ears of corn on the cob. sure, hindsight is 20/20, but there is something to be said of how arrogance and bravado are simply veils for a weak and unstable psyche. and i feel for him, for being so trouble in the first place and then deceiving his readers like this. sad.
by James Frey
everything is illluminated. i checked this one out from the library because i've been meaning to read it for quite a long time. first, it has a great cover. second, it got a lot of hype when it came out. and third, i adored The History of Love that is wife wrote. i'm not so sure about this book. i think it's one of those that i need to reread in a year. i don't fully grasp it. is it brilliant? maybe. a lot of people think so, but it might be a little too cerebral for me, a little too ahead of my time. easily readable, just not sure i've pieced all the puzzle pieces together. i'm was hoping that in time, like as i read (past tense) the book, that everything WILL be illuminated. and also, when i read the back cover and discovered that he was born in 1977 and is my age, i felt that i had accomplished nothing in my life.
by Jonathan Saftran Foer
dear exile. a book of letters between two friends, one in nyc, one in africa in the peace corp. a fast, fun read. i found myself comparing the educational system here in urban america to that of kenya, not an easy or even likely comparison, but some sad similarities exist. i ate up the nyc stories too, of course.
by Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery
April
the comedienne. bought off the $2 list at b&n.com, all i knew about the book was that it was from a british writer. it was a fast read about a woman in england searching for the love of her life. we meet her in her home town caring for a frail mother and dating a woman whom she loves, but the woman does not love her back. they break up and the next 20 or so years are dipped in an out of. the main component of the book is the main characters imaginary girlfriend which is a bit odd. i didn't find it exceptionally funny, but a sad sort of tale, a little rough around the edges, a little true to life, a good find for $2.
by VG Lee
March
evidence of things unseen. a beautifully written account of a couple that starts during world war I and ends sometime in the 50's with their adopted son. it took me a long time to finish this book, but it's not because it was well written. it's a slow story, but i don't mean this in a negative way. sometimes books need time to unfold and i think this is one of them. marrianne writes so wonderfully, descriptively and wholly. she brought nature, science, frienship, love, scandal and history together in a cohesive and subtle way.
by Marrianne Wiggins
January
the ha-ha. a story about a vietnam vet 20 or so years after he is wounded and left mute from his sustained head injury. the books takes us through a summer of his life when an ex-girlfriend's son comes to live with him. even though he does not communicate past gesturing the story is told in his voice and the writer does a beautiful job of writing dialogue without writing dielogue. i found myself making lists of things i needed to get dones, but only thinking that i could accomplish them because i couldn't speak. the prose overcame me a bit. a good read.
by Dave King
posted by Anna at 7:41 PM
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