Monday, December 31, 2007

Book List for 2007

Because I know you've been looking forward to it, here's a list of the books I've read in 2007, set out alphabetically in standard MLA format. Anything marked by an asterisk is a library book.


Adams, Douglas. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story. New

York: Gramercy, 2005.

Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. New York: Anchor, 1996.

Atwood, Margaret. The Blind Assassin. New York: Penguin, 2002.

de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1953. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, Everyman’s Library, 1993.*

Berridge, Kate. Madame Toussad: A Life in Wax. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.*

Bombeck, Erma. If Life is a Bowl of Cherries—What Am I Doing With the Pits. New York:

Fawcett Crest, 1983.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. 1953. New York: Del Ray, 1993.

Briggs, Kenneth. Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American

Nuns. New York: Doubleday, 2006.*

Brockmeier, Kevin. Things That Fall from the Sky. New York: Vintage, 2002.

Byatt, A.S. Babel Tower. New York: Random House, 1996.*

Byatt, A.S. The Matisse Stories. 1993. New York: Vintage International edition, 1996.*

Clapp, Patricia. Jane-Emily. 1969. New York: Harper, 2007.

Clark, Clare. The Nature of Monsters. Orlando: Harcourt, 2007.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. 1902. Mineola: Dover, 1992.

De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an English Opium Eater. 1822. New York: Heritage Press,

1950.*

Drewe, Robert. Ned Kelly. [Orig. Our Sunshine] 1991. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. trans. William Weaver. 1980. New York: Knopf

(Everyman’s Library), 2006.*

Evans, Justin. A Good and Happy Child. New York: Shaye Arehearst Books, 2007.

Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair: A Next Thursday Next Novel. New York: Penguin, 2002.

Fforde, Jasper. Lost in a Good Book. New York: Penguin, 2002.

Fisher, Carrie. The Best Awful. 2003. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Scribner, 1995.

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. 1856. Trans. Francis Steegmuller. New York: The Modern

Library, 1992.*

Franklin, Tom. Smonk, or, Widow town: being the scabrous adventures of E. O. Smonk & of

the whore Evavangeline in Clarke County, Alabama, early in the last century…. New

York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 1963. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974.*

Grossman, Austin. Soon I Will Be Invincible. New York: Pantheon, 2007.

Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Survive. New

York: Random House, 2007.

Herbert, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Atreides. New York: Bantam, 1999.*

Herbert, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Corrino. New York: Bantam, 2001.*

Herbert, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Harkonen. New York: Bantam, 2000.*

Hornby, Nick. High Fidelity. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba the Greek. 1953. Trans. Carl Wildman. New York: Ballantine Books,

1968.

Knowles, Sir James, ed. King Arthur and His Knights. 1923. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Kostova, Elizabeth. The Historian. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005.

Kushner, Tony. Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. 1995. New York:

Theatre Communications Group, 2003.

Lafayette, Leslie. Why Don’t You Have Kids? Living A Full Life Without Parenthood. New

York: Kensington, 1995.

Millhauser, Steven. Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer. New York: Vintage,

1996.

McEwan, Ian. On Chesil Beach. New York: Doubleday, 2007.

O’Hagan, Andrew. Be Near Me. Orlando: Harcourt, 2007.

Oates, Joyce Carol. The Tattooed Girl. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.*

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.*

Pearl, Matthew. The Dante Club. New York: Random House, 2003. 380 pages*

Puzo, Mario. The Godfather. Greenwich: Fawcett, 1969.

Pynchon, Thomas. V.. 1961. New York: HarperCollins Perennial Classics, 1999.*

Qualls-Corbett, Nancy. The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine. Toronto: Inner

City Books, 1988.

Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society

and Its Youthful Opposition. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1969.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.(7) New York: Scholastic, 2007.

Sedaris, David. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. New York: Little, Brown &

Company, 2004.

Shanghvi, Siddharth Dhanvant. The Last Song of Dusk. New York: Random House, 2006.

Smith, Alisa & J. B. MacKinnon. Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating

Locally. New York: Harmony Books, 2007.

Thomas, Scarlett. PopCo. Orlando: HarperCollins, 2004.*

Thomas, Scarlett. The End of Mr. Y. Orlando: Harcourt, 2006.*

Traig, Jennifer. Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood. New York: Little,

Brown, and Company, 2004.

Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007.

White, T. H. The Once and Future King. 1958. New York: Ace, 1987.

Wolfe, Tom. I Am Charlotte Simmons. New York: Picador, 2005.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. 1928. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957.*

Sunday, December 2, 2007

November Book List 2007

Atwood, Margaret. The Blind Assassin. New York: Anchor, 2001. This is the second Atwood novel I've read and I love her. She's scary-smart, ultimately depressing, but the story stays with you and you just keep thinking about her stories and her characters and the issues she addresses. I can't really say what it's about because that would kind of give away the twist at the end that can't really be called a twist because you see it coming about two-thirds of the way through.

Bombeck, Erma. If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, Then What am I Doing With the Pits?. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1983. I used to love Erma Bombeck because she's hilarious. Reading it now, I realize the problem with her writing--what makes it funny is that it's true and what makes it depressing is that it's true. The experiences she shares make you realize that so much of what she's talking about is actually funny, it's just absurd. I'm not sure if that's supposed to make you laugh and relieve some tension, or stop and re-examine everything about your life before you find yourself completely wasting the entire thing.

Fforde, Jasper. Lost in a Good Book. New York:Penguin, 2002. This is the second Thursday Next novel that I've read and I love it just as much because it has all kinds of things that I love: literary allusions, British people, time travel/manipulation, genetically resurrected dodos, and all kinds of other crazy stuff. Even though a whole of the plot buildup was pointing to the ending, I was a little surprised by it. I need to find the third book.

Herbert, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Corrino. New York: Bantam, 2001. Okay, I've finished the prequel trilogy to the Dune series. I'm pretty excited. Watch out now!

Hornby, Nick. High Fidelity. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995. When I first started reading this, I wondered why the movie wasn't set in England. As I got further into it, I realized it was because if everyone was British, they couldn't have used John Cusack and Jack Black and then the movie would've been as bleak and dark as the book. Oh man, that main character is way more charming and funny when he's John Cusack. A good book, but I was unsettled. I don't know how else to phrase this. Breakups do bad things to people. Depressing British stuff.

Lafayette, Leslie. Why Don't You Have Kids? Living A Full Life Without Parenthood. New York: Kensington, 1995. I bought this for a dollar at the library sale. It was in the parenting section and I saw it just briefly as I was headed toward the children's fiction. Odd, right? Not so much. So I got it because we haven't been too harassed about the whole "When are you two going to have kids?" thing because we haven't been married too very long and our parents aren't really pressuring us for grandbabies or anything, but there have been a few awkward encounters where I have to either bite my tongue or give our standard response ("When we can afford to buy one on the black market."). I thought this might help. It didn't really. She had a lot of valid points, but I think this was intended for people who are a little bit older. We're very happy with our life right now as it is, but we haven't made the decision to be childfree, so........I didn't really need all that much validation from this book. I wanted to blog about at length, and I tried a couple of times, but then I'd stop because I worried about offending some people. (Oddly enough, my parents were not among those I was concerned with offending via my lack of offspring.) Cody and I are happy without kids, but some people aren't. Plus, I don't that we'll always feel this way. Plus, I don't want to write out something about wanting to be childfree forever and then be reminded of it 5 years and 3 kids from now. (I doubt that'll happen, but my dad tends to print these things off.) But plans change and people change their minds and you just never know. Moving on to the next book.

Puzo, Mario. The Godfather. Greenwich: Fawcett, 1969. I really liked this book. I want to rent the movie. Not all of them or anything, but this was an amazing story. Terribly violent and disturbing and sometimes I was scared to keep reading because you know horrible things are going to happen, but then I kept reading it. I'm glad I did.

So that's the book list for this month.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Book List October 2007

Here's a list of the books I finished this month. This time I've decided to include detailed and ultimately not-helpful summaries/my personal reactions to each work.

Byatt, A. S. Babel Tower. New York: Random House, 1996. This turned out to be the third book of a trilogy. Oops. I don't know if I'll read the other two. I probably will at some point because I've loved A. S. Byatt since I had to read Possession for British Novel however long ago (SP03, I think). She's brilliant. Sometimes I get a little bored with her obsessive use of the character examining their sense of self and issues of identity and blah blah blah. You're not Virginia Woolf, so stop trying. But you're close enough, Ms. Byatt. She writes about words--what her narrator said was so difficult to do in Possession is exactly what she accomplishes here: she writes about the writing process. And it's interesting. I realize I haven't said a thing about what this book is about. I'm not going to bother. It's over 600 pages and the plot is multi-layered and brilliant and I don't know anyone who reads Byatt.

Clapp, Patricia. Jane-Emily. 1969. New York: Harper, 2007. I thought I would do a little spooky reading for October and this is supposedly a classic of the genre. Unfortunately, the genre is juvenile fiction, which I've hated from a young age. So, let's see......stilted dialogue? Check? People falling in love for no apparent reason? Check. Older woman with an icy exterior who is actually a kind and loving soul? Check. Implausible and anti-climatic resolution of deranged (and not in a fun way) supernatural crisis? Check. I actually had to read that scene twice because I was so surprised that nearly nothing was happening. Bleh. What a stupid waste of my time.

Drew, Robert. Ned Kelly. [Orig. Our Sunshine.] 1991. New York: Penguin, 2003. This is work of fiction that was based more on the folklore about the Australian criminal than on historical sources (mostly because there are apparently more inconsistencies in the historical accounts than there in the myths that people have created around the figure), which is strangely appropriate. The man had somehow become mythologized while he was still alive. Most of the story is told through flashbacks. The title was changed to build up name recognition for the movie of the same title. I can't say that it worked out too well. Has anyone seen that? Do you recommend it?

Evan, Justin. A Good and Happy Child. New York: Harper, 2007. So our main character/narrator can't bring himself to touch his newborn son. At all. He goes into therapy. When he mentions that he's been in therapy before, his therapist has him write about that experience. So we find out that as a lonely, socially awkward eleven year-old who misses his dead father, he made an imaginary friend who is apparently a demon. I'm always confused and weirded out by kids that old who see the appeal of an imaginary friend who turns out to be a minion of Hell. Granted, poor dumb Regan McNeil was supposed to be twelve when she befriend Captain Howdy. Anyway, trouble ensues. His mom thinks he's crazy and he gets therapy and drugs. His father's friends think that demons really exist and he gets an exorcism or two (I finished it just this past weekend. You'd think I'd be able to remember.). There are plot twists. The ending made me think of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. You know how you read the last line and you turn the page and nothing's there? It was like that. I think I liked this well enough. I read it in a day because I was riveted and then the ending left me feeling a little flat, but also horrified. Weird. Anyone who's interested can borrow my copy. And you can keep for a really long time if you like.

Shanghvi, Siddharth Dhanvant. The Last Song of Dusk. New York: Random House, 2006. Sometimes the prose is really beautiful and sometimes it's just really......gay. Yes, adjectives are our friends and helpers, but only if we use them properly. I think I like this book. I have a little bit of a hard time with magical realism. Give me time. This book was incredibly sad. The narrator keeps alluding to sadness and you know it's coming and you can see how it's going to happen and then it comes and you're not ready. Gah. There were also some graphically sad stories. It felt disjointed in some places. Maybe it was supposed to be that way. Again, magical realism messes me up.

Thomas, Scarlett. PopCo. Orlando: HarperCollins, 2004. I read another book of Thomas's earlier this year. I'm starting to see a theme: unconventional and brilliant young woman with a troubled family background finds out some kind of secret. Some form of science, philosophy, literature, math, homeopathy, and flashbacks are utilized to help her sort out her moral dilemmas and solve the mystery at hand. She encounters a talk, dark, and handsomely troubled man who falls in love with her even though she's supposed to be too quirky to have good relationships. So in this story we have a young woman who dresses badly and believes in homeopathy and makes her living coming up with ideas for spy kits for a toy company. She goes to a retreat, finds out some things about the code for a hidden treasure that her grandfather already knew about (which, by the way has absolutely nothing to do with the plot except reveal to us how smart and creative our author is in spending so much time on codebreaking things), hooks up with a vegan who waits on her hand and foot when she gets a bad cold because he's somehow in love with her after (if I remember right) just three sexual encounters. Maybe this is magical realism, too. Anyway, corporations are evil, you should think about where your food comes from, whether or not your child actually needs that toy, and you actually need that medicine and yes, yes, you can change the system from the inside if you get to join some kind of supersecret Project Mayhem-esque organization, like our off-beat heroine. I hope I didn't spoil the ending for anyone with that last part. These are basically just fun books to read when the weather's bad or you're sick and needing a good story, although the parts about guerrilla advertising were both interesting and disturbing. Um, yea? I don't know that I'll read any more of her books. Yes, I do. I will.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

September Book List


Okay, I'm finally able to access my blogger account. I've had problems ever since I got my new computer, but now it's straightened out. I've had to download a whole new browser....but it's worth it, especially since I'm going to develop some film this weekend. So here's September's book list.


It was a good month.

Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel. New York: Penguin, 2002. This was a lot of fun: time travel, jumping in and out of books and alternate realities, British people. I need to get started on the other one of these books that I borrowed from Kayla.

Herbet, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Atreides. New York: Bantam, 1999. It's the first book in a trilogy of prequels to Frank Herbert's Dune series.

Herbet, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Harkonnen. New York: Bantam, 2000. I am a nerd.

Knowles, Sir James, ed. King Arthur and His Knights. 1923. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. I feel so strange just thinking this: but the movie was noticeably better. Still an awesome story, though.

Traig, Jennifer. Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood. New York: Little, Brown and Company, Inc., 2004. I read this in one night. It was hilarious. I'm going to sound like a weirdo saying this, but it was nice to read about someone who could show how ridiculous teenage fears/eating disorders/severe OCD can be. Really. I laughed almost through the entire thing. Funny, funny stuff.

Currently reading :
Babel Tower
By A.S. Byatt
Release date: 24 June, 1997

Friday, August 31, 2007

August's Book List

Adams, Douglas. Mostly Harmless. 1992. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Five
Complete Novels and One Story
. New York: Random House, 2005. 180 pages. I read it. It was nice because I always like to hear more about the characters, but when I finished it, I thought, "Well, that was a little stupid." But that probably the point.

Adams, Douglas. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. 1985. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy: Five Complete Novels and One Story
. New York: Random House,
2005. 142 pages. Much more fun.

Smith, Alisa & J. B. MacKinnon. Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating
Locally
. New York: Harmony Books, 2007. 272 pages. This book is like a cautionary tale about what can happen to your weight and relationship if you don't have wheat for nearly 6 months (they couldn't find any within the 100-mile radius). Think about it: a life without sandwiches! Scary. But the authors give you a lot to think about, and really, it's a lot more enjoyable and slightly less preachy than I expected it to be.

Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007. 287 pages. Wow. This guy looks at what would happen if all human life just disappeared one day. Nuclear plants would eventually melt down. The pipes in your house would freez and burst. Kudzu would be all over the place. Protected species might die out, cats would definitely go feral, new species might flourish. It's really, really interesting.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. 1928. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993. It's really a novel. Ha! She fooled you! Orlando lives for hundreds of years, changes from a man to woman, and naturally has lots of adventures. It's about how we look at gender roles, literature, time, wealth, etc. I can't say it enough: Virginia Woolf is so very cool.