June 11th, 2008 by Rebecca
I finally managed to unearth my book notebook, and was pleased to discover it wasn’t as far behind as I’d feared. It was under a stack of books in my office, and now it’s sitting on one of the many stacks of books on my dining room table. There’s something comforting about having stacks of books randomly scattered around the house, especially if they haven’t been read yet because it gives me something to look forward to reading.
~ Kwitney, Alyssa, On the Couch (4)
The reviews on the back of the book go on about how it was “kinky” and “erotic.” Really? That’s what passes for “kinky” and “erotic” these days? It was just kind of vanilla, and a mild version at that. It also had an abrupt ending and a series of frustrating, unanswered questions. And boring sex, which was the greatest crime of all.
~ Hiem, Scott, Mysterious Skin (6.5)
I seem to have read a lot of books where chapters alternate between different characters and different voices. In this book, I didn’t find it very effective because there wasn’t a lot of difference in the voices – they all sounded alike. That said, I still liked the book, what with the heartbreaking “alien abduction” and the tender finale.
~ Sloan, Brian, A Fine Prom Mess (7)
For days after I read this book, something about it nagged me until I finally figured it out. The crazy prom plot and all the wild and wacky things that occurred reminded me of an early Gordon Korman novel, except there was just one protagonist who embodied both the anarchist and the uptight characters of the Korman buddy novels. Even though it was pretty implausible, it was still fun.
~ Dessen, Sarah, Lock and Key (7)
I still don’t know how I feel about this one. On one hand, it broke out of the happily-ever-after endings I’m used to, and the male protagonist was just as flawed as the female protagonist. On the other hand, the overall story was much darker than normal – child abandonment, abusive parents, alcoholism and casual drug use.
~ Peters, Julie Anne, Luna (5)
God, this book was stressful to read. There were many times where I’d put the book down and walk away because I didn’t want to know what happened next. And then I’d pick it up, read a few pages, and put it down again. The narrator, the sister of the titular “Luna,” was the most stressed-out person in literature, which is understandable considering her brother is transgender and hiding it from their parents, who are complete assholes.
June 11th, 2008 by Rebecca
All afternoon, I had a craving for chocolate chip cookies. Not just any chocolate chip cookies – the ones I get at the coffee shop where I get my Wednesday lattes [1]. By the time I’d closed up the department and everything was shut down, I decided that, what the hell, I was going for it. However, not only did I come out with two lovely chocolate chip cookies, I also came out with a coffee – and not a decaf.
Now, here it is almost 11pm, and I’m just slightly wired. Which is the story of my week – stress and running on caffeine. I had an awesome [2] work-related stress dream the other night where I finished doing up the work schedule for the next few weeks and then someone asked if I’d remembered to add the new employee in my department to it. “Of course,” I replied, knowing that I’d spent so much time making sure that everything was in order. “No, not her – the other [woman with same name].” At which point I realized that not only was I not in my library, I didn’t know half the people waiting to look at the schedule, meaning that the schedule I’d been slaving over was completely wrong.
Sunday night I dreamed that I was smoking two cigarettes at once. Just so you know, I don’t smoke, nor have I ever been a smoker [3]. I think it’s a sign I need to chill out.
[1] On Wednesday, I go into work in the afternoon and stay late, so I usually pick up a latte on my way in. It’s become a ritual, and something to which I look forward.
[2] And by “awesome” I mean “nightmare.”
[3] I have smoked cigars on a couple of occasions. That can be chalked up to two things: grad school and the awesome cigar bar in Halifax.
June 1st, 2008 by Rebecca
Normally, around this time of month, I’d be posting my May reads. However, I’ve missplaced my book notebook – it’s not in either of the two places I usually leave it and I can’t find the stack of books I know I did read. It’s been one of those months – not just from a job-stress perspective – where nothing seemed to stick. I usually have a pretty good idea what I read by remembering plots (“Okay, first there was the one about the viscount’s mistaken identity, then the road trip, then the alien invasion, zombies, and then the romantic “comedy” about dog grooming”) and can figure out titles from there. This month? I think there was something about a prom, maybe some more Navy SEALS, and possibly a bodice-ripper, but I can’t remember. Damn.
For now, I’ll leave you with this meme from Amanda. The bold ones I’ve read, the underlined ones I read for school, and the italicized ones are those I started and didn’t finish.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces (three times!)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
