|
Title
|
Author
|
Comment
|
|
Atonement
|
Ian McEwan
|
A slow
start, but a truly excellent book.
Great characters, with a great storyline; raises more questions than
it answers. Leads by example good
fiction does - brings you inside the lives of others. [Spoiler ... Ends
with protagonist making it unclear whether the story was true or made up;
even though this is fiction, it matters.]
|
|
The
Enormous Room
|
e.e. cummings
|
About ambulance
driver in World War I. I read
this long ago and can hardly remember it, but have always liked what cummings can do with the world.
|
|
Memoirs
of a Geisha
|
Arthur
Golden
|
Great
read. Extremely convincing and
compelling.
|
|
A Map
of the World
|
Jane
Hamilton
|
Picked
this up at the airport. If the
blurbs were at all honest about what is inside, I never would have read
it. It's about a woman whose
life falls apart after a neighbor's child drowns while at the woman's
house. How's that for a pick me
up? Nonetheless, this is very
well written and makes a good use of the Rashomon-type
technique of narrating from multiple perspectives.
|
|
A Fine
Balance
|
Rohinton Misly
|
Two
guys who definitely don't answer to "lucky".
|
|
Crossing
to Safety
|
Wallace
Stegner
|
Read
while awaiting tenure decision - about a guy who didn't get tenure. I think it would be riveting
regardless.
|
|
The
Wind Up Bird Chronicle
|
Haruki Murakami
|
The
start is oddly compelling. A
man's cat disappears. He
gets a call from an unknown woman asking to meet her. By the end, though, it has fallen
into such an alternative universe that it's hard to finish.
|
|
The
Book of Laughter and Forgetting
|
Milan Kundera
|
Laughed
and now forgot the story. Damn,
he's good.
|
|
Feast
of the Goat
|
Mario
Vargas Llosa
|
The
story is well crafted and the evocation of both sides of tyranny is very
compelling. About Trujillo dictatorship in Dominican Republic.
|
|
The
Corrections
|
Jonathan
Franzen
|
A bit long,
but a harrowing depiction of dementia at the end is quite memorable.
|
|
Hitchhikers
Guide to the Galaxy series
|
Douglas
Adams
|
|
|
Instance
of the Fingerpost
|
Iaian Pearns
|
Murder
in 17th century Oxford
with a dash of Rashomon (actually "Yabu no naka") tossed
in.
|
|
Bel Canto
|
Ann Patchett
|
Excellent
book - would make great movie.
Carmen is revolutionary girl from country. Protagonist is Japanese
pianist. Chick flick wrapped in
terrorist/kidnapping plot.
|
|
Night
Soldiers
|
Alan Furst
|
I've liked
every book by him I've read.
Very evocative of clash of Nazis, Communists and the West in
pre-WWII central Europe.
|
|
Me Talk
Pretty One Day
|
David
Sedaris
|
Funny,
funny, funny.
|
|
The Man
Called Thursday
|
G.K.
Chesterton
|
|
|
Good
Omens
|
Neil Gaimman and Terry Pratchett
|
VERY
funny. Page 14: "God does
not play dice with the universe.
He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be
compared, from the perspective of the other players, to being in an obscure
and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for
infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules..." Page
163 - British kids talking about rumor that an American ice cream shop had
39 flavors - "there aren't thirty-nine flavors in the whole
world"
|
|
Middlesex
|
Jeffrey
Eugenides
|
Fantastic. The author is a shameless
storyteller -- how else could you describe someone who writes a novel
called "middlesex" about a
hermaphrodite. But the thing is, this book is really interesting. There is always just the right
amount of dramatic tension - we have the main story line about Calliope
being slowly revealed, but also have other story lines developing
simultaneously. It's never
complicated, but the author is darn sure he's going to make it a good
ride. We don't just get Greek
grandparents (who are brother and sister), but they narrowly escaped a
Turkish massacre and another grandparent (Turkish) founded the Nation of
Islam (that bit was a bit odd - are we supposed to "believe" it
as part of the story). There's
perhaps a bit of overkill with the death of the father at the end but at
that point, the main story line has mostly played out and the author is
saying "I'm not done yet...".
|
|
The
Dogs of Babel
|
Carolyn
Parkhurst
|
Paul is
a college professor distraught over death of wife, Lexy. Lexy is
headstrong and fragile. The
story unfolds as the narrator (Paul) slowly reveals all he knows - as much
to himself as to the reader. In
his distress, he tries to get their dog (who witnessed Lexy's
death by fall from an apple tree in their backyard) to talk. You don't know if suddenly you'll
turn the page and have a dog-talking
|
