My Reading List

2009 Reading List

11/15/09–The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Hmmm, I don’t know. I really didn’t like this one much. There were parts I really liked, but overall I found it just too confusing and strange. It was a book club choice and I wasn’t able to make it to book club because I was sick. Maybe discussing it with everyone would have helped me appreciate it more. Sometimes it does. The title “The History of Love” comes from a book written by one of the characters and there were excerpts of that book throughout this book, which I just didn’t like that much. I actually started over about halfway through after talking to one of my book club friends and getting a little more insight into what was going on, which helped me follow and understand things a little better, but I still ended up confused on a number of things. There was also a twist that really bugged me because it felt really implausible to me and I just didn’t like it. I’ve seen similar twists in other places where I thought it was so cool, because looking back you could see how you might have picked up on it, but that wasn’t the case here at all, for me at least. Maybe there were clues that others picked up on, but I don’t think I’ll be re-reading this one to see. I would hate to put someone totally off from reading this because I know other people that found it really beautiful and there were some parts that I did like, but for the most part I just wasn’t that impressed. 2 stars.

10/25/09–Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

This is a book I just randomly picked from a display shelf at the library. I enjoyed it right from the beginning. The first paragraph drew me in and I really enjoyed the writing and the characters. The situation was really interesting too. It wasn’t anything too heavy or deep, just entertaining and a good story. I was actually interested enough that I had one of my rare nights of staying up until the early hours of the morning to finish it. Unfortunately I was very disappointed in the ending. I don’t know exactly how I would have wanted it to end, but I know I wasn’t satisfied with the way it did. I don’t write books, but I can imagine knowing how to wrap things up would be one of the hardest parts, and in this case I just wasn’t happy with how it was handled, but it’s hard to knock the book too much when it kept me interested and turning the pages. I also found myself laughing out loud in the middle of dramatic situations. There would be something funny come up that lightened the tension and I enjoyed the humor. So all in all, a pretty good novel for just escaping into for awhile. 3 stars.

9/20/09–The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

I’m so glad I went into this book knowing that the plot was based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. For one, I love Hamlet, and for another, when you’re dealing with a Shakespeare tragedy, you kind of know what you’re getting into as far as the end of the story, which was helpful here so I wasn’t expecting any kind of rosy ending. It meant I was able to just focus on the great storytelling. For anyone familiar with Hamlet, it was pretty easy to see the parallels and I enjoyed that aspect of it, but it was also it’s very own story with very different details and much more breadth. It was just a really great story with interesting characters and situations. I stayed involved for all 576 pages. 4 stars.

8/16/09–The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Five stars means “it was amazing” and this book was definitely amazing. It was a beautifully written and compelling story. Interesting that after reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and feeling like there should be more of a distinction between the characters voices, I read this one, which is also told from the point of view of several different characters, but not in letter form as that one was. This author created completely believable characters and different voices and personalities for each one, so that there was no need to go back and remind yourself who was talking because it was obvious. I really enjoyed each character’s point of view and the different things they brought to the story.

It was a sad and thought-provoking book and also very educational about the history and politics of the Congo (Zaire) and Africa in a way that never got too dry. It wasn’t completely depressing, though. There was a lot of beauty and love in there too. So much about this book made me think, and definitely left a lot of unanswered questions for me. How would I cope, coming from my life of comfort and plenty, if I had to live in extreme hunger and danger from the natural world? Why are there so many books where the preacher/religious person is the bad guy? How do you worship creation and ignore the creator? How do you reconcile all the bad things that have been done in the name of religion? Would it really have been better for Africa if they had been left to themselves, or how could things have been different? Obviously their natural resources shouldn’t have been exploited and they shouldn’t have been taken into slavery and all the evil things that happened, but isn’t there something in the middle that could have happened rather than just leaving them in the state they were forever? Isn’t there anything good about trying to bring them a higher standard of living and sharing faith and religion? I have a great respect for nature and the environment, but I also don’t think an ant’s life is as valuable as a human life, or that human sacrifice is acceptable as a form of population control or that treating illnesses with medicine is bad because it upsets the balance of nature.

Anyway, I’m rambling, but it sure got a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head and it’s definitely a book I want to read again. I didn’t really stop and mark passages this time, and I want to read it again just to do that because there was so much beautiful writing and interesting thoughts I want to get back to! 5 stars!

7/4/09–The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

I picked this up at the airport while traveling. I hadn’t read any Arthur Conan Doyle before and I loved this one! It had a great, suspenseful story that really held my interest and I was drawn into the well-described atmosphere. Since I’m slow getting around to reviewing it, I don’t remember anything I was going to say about it other than I thoroughly enjoyed it! 5 stars!

6/25/09–The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shafer

I really enjoyed this book. It was fun learning about the island of Guernsey and what happened there during World War II. The characters were likable and the story was interesting. It’s written in letters from different characters to each other and my only complaint was that they all sounded like they came from the same person. I couldn’t really sense the different personalities from the writing or the way they talked and I kept having to remind myself who was talking and who all the characters were. After awhile I didn’t really think about that, though, and just enjoyed the story. 4 stars.

3/21/09–Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

I don’t know that I ever would have chosen or planned to read this book if it hadn’t been picked for book club. I’m not sure why. I guess I thought it would be sort of soap opera-ish and it’s so long. Maybe it is soap opera-ish, I don’t even know exactly what I mean by that, but I can say that I was hooked from the first page and my interest was held for pretty much the entire 1,000 pages. There were times when I was frustrated or impatient, really wanting to see Scarlett grow up and become a better person. It is interesting to me that the book could center around two characters that are so completely selfish and practically without morals. I was shocked and never really got over Rhett abandoning Scarlett, her 3-year-old son, her teenage slave, her sister-in-law Melanie, who had just given birth (as in within the last day) and was very ill, and her newborn baby in a wagon in the middle of the night to face untold dangers, starvation, enemy soldiers in their path, and possibly no home to arrive at if it had been burned down by the Yankees, as many plantations had. Maybe he was supposed to be noble by joining the Confederate army and maybe he knew that Scarlett was strong and could handle herself, but he couldn’t have known what would happen to them, and especially for the fact of Melanie and her baby I just could never forgive him for that. One of the most difficult things to understand with Scarlett was her complete lack of motherly instinct. I was appalled by the following scenes:

She rose dizzily to her feet and started walking again. When she came in sight of the house, she saw Wade swinging on the front gate. When he saw her, his face puckered and he began to cry, holding up a grubby bruised finger.

“Hurt!” he sobbed. “Hurt!”

“Hush! Hush! Hush! Or I’ll spank you. Go out in the back yard and make mud pies and don’t move from there.”

“Wade hungwy,” he sobbed and put the hurt finger in his mouth.

I don’t care. Go in the back yard. . .

and this one:

The little boy sobbed, shrinking close to his nurse.

“Make him hush. I can’t stand it,” said Scarlett, taking the horse by the bridle and pulling him to a reluctant start. “Be a little man, Wade, and stop crying or I will come over there and slap you.”

Why had God invented children, she thought savagely as she turned her ankle cruelly on the dark road–useless, crying nuisances they were, always demanding care, always in the way. In her exhaustion there was no room for compassion for the frightened child, trotting by Prissy’s side, dragging at her hand and sniffling–only a weariness that she had borne him, only a tired wonder that she had ever married Charles Hamilton.

So I think the miracle is, with characters like these, that I loved the book so much. The story was compelling and the writing was amazing. The information about the Civil War and the Southern way of life were fascinating and the bits of history scattered through the book never dragged or got boring. The characters were all so vivid and well described. When I wasn’t reading I was thinking about it, thinking about the characters, and wondering what I would do in a situation like war, where your whole world turns upside down and every day is a struggle for survival. Does the end justify the means? It’s hard to imagine doing things the way Scarlett did them, but it’s also hard to imagine what would have happened to everyone if she hadn’t. 5 stars.

2/18/09–A Letter of Mary (Mary Russell series #3) by Laurie R. King

I was disappointed. The first book in the series got 5 stars, second 4 stars, and this one 3 stars bordering on a 2 stars. I sort of enjoyed it while I was reading it, mostly because I expected it to all come together by the end. I kept waiting for some kind of climax but there never seemed to be one. The mystery just sort of solved itself in a weird way with the other suspects just kind of dismissed with not much else to say. I was disappointed that after the last book ended on the anticipation of an exciting event, this one started two years later, after the fact, so we didn’t get to even experience that at all. There were a few nice interpersonal scenes, but mostly it was about the mystery, which just wasn’t that good. I will probably continue to read the series at some point in hopes that there is improvement, but I’m not feeling in a hurry to now so I’m not sure when I’ll get back to it. I’m sad that the quality of the first couldn’t be maintained. 3 stars.

2/8/09–Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

I’ve read lots of reviews of this book that were really positive. All the quotes on the book itself are of course glowing with praise. It was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. It got published. A friend chose it for book club. Many people apparently think this is a really amazing book. I’m not exactly sure what I’m missing here. I didn’t hate it, but I was just kind of bored and not impressed. The good thing is that it was a very short and easy book to read so I didn’t feel like I wasted a lot of time. If you want to read a book about poverty, abuse, and a dysfunctional family in the South with a girl that manages to get through it all successfully, I would highly recommend “The Glass Castle.” That’s good reading. This just seemed overly simplistic and tidy. There were so many details missing. With all the talk about race, it seems strange that I was confused for for a lot of the book about what race the main character even was. I didn’t feel like I really got a grasp on any of the characters. I’ll be interested to go to book club and get an idea of what I’m missing here, because I seem to be in the minority. 2 stars.

2/5/09–A Monstrous Regiment of Women (Mary Russell series #2) by Laurie R. King

This is the second book in the series that started with A Beekeeper’s Apprentice. I really enjoyed it, but maybe not quite as much as the first one. It definitely had more of a story arc without all the meandering of the first one, but I actually liked all that meandering. This was really good though and when I couldn’t read I looked forward to getting back to it. The author does describe scenes really well, to where I can play them out in my head like I’m watching a movie. In fact, I think this book would make a good movie. It would be fun to see some of the action being played out on the screen. Now I just have to discipline myself to keep up with my book club books instead of reading the rest of this series right in a row! 4 stars.

1/27/09–How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

This book is called “How Green Was My Valley,” but if he went by the way they talk in the book it would be called, “There is Green My Valley Was.” The language did take a little getting used to, but it kind of got into my head after awhile. This book was really slow and took me quite awhile to get into. The story was basically a coming-of-age story of a young boy, looking back from his perspective as a 60-something year old man. He reminisces about his family, his experiences, and the beautiful valley in Wales that he spent his life in. His father and brothers were coal miners and the waste from the coal operations was building up on the mountains, growing throughout his life until it eventually drove him from his home. There were a lot of beautiful descriptions of the landscape and family life. Here’s one example.

“Beautiful were the days that are gone, and O, for them to be back. The mountain was green, and proud with a good covering of oak and ash, and washing his feet in a streaming river clear as the eyes of God. The winds came down with the scents of the grass and wild flowers, putting a sweetness to our noses, and taking away so that nobody could tell what beauty had been stolen, only that the winds were old robbers who took something from each grass and flower and gave it back again, and gave a little to each of us, and took it away again.”

I enjoyed seeing Huw (pronounced Hugh I believe) grow and gain insight and understanding about life. I loved his respect for women that continued to grow. Possibly my favorite part of all was a conversation toward the end of the book with Bronwen, his sister-in-law, where he comes to an even greater understanding and respect of her and all women. I’m tempted to quote the whole conversation, because it was that good, but it was long and would reveal too many plot points from late in the book.

There were many other little gems of wisdom and beauty that keep coming to mind after finishing, so even though I kind of had to push myself through it at times, I am really glad I read it. Talking to book club members about it, someone mentioned how older books just tend to be slower like that. We have much shorter attention spans in general these days just because of our faster-paced society, which is really true. I think of most of the older books I have read and there is definitely a lot of dragging, but then they were worth it overall. (The only exception I can think of is “Pride and Prejudice,” which entertains me on every page.) Part of it was my mood at the time. I think you need to come into this kind of book in the right frame of mind, to just experience and slow down and become part of that world. 4 stars.

1/11/09–The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King

Wow, I so loved this book! Our library’s first floor is the children’s section and the checkout desk, but they have one display shelf of books for adults. A librarian told me once that it is for those parents that have a hard time getting upstairs to the adult section because of little kids. I generally check out books by requesting them online and then just picking them up at the desk, but I saw this one on that display shelf and it caught my eye. Something about the cover and the title caught my attention. I actually had it for quite a few weeks. I was finishing up other books and almost returned it unread since it was almost due. When I was sick in bed with a little flu, though, and wanted something to read, I looked through the stack of books I had available, checked out the first few pages, and this is the one that most grabbed my attention. Now that I’ve finished it is overdue and I’ll have to pay a fine, but it was worth it!

As I looked back over other books I’ve rated and thought about books I love, many of them took some time to really get into or there were certain parts I didn’t like as well, even though I ended up overall loving the book. This book was one of those rare books for me that I loved from the beginning and I was never disappointed. The story varied quite a bit from section to section and I liked it all! A young girl with a brilliant mind happens across the legendary Sherlock Holmes in his later years, after the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle take place, and they get to know each other. Holmes trains her (Mary Russell) in his skills and they eventually become partners. Now I confess it seems like a recipe for disaster to take an already established character from another book and put him into a new book by a new author. I personally have never read any Sherlock Holmes books but am familiar with him just through references, probably mostly from the character Dr. House on television, who is based on him. (And there were definitely things about Holmes that reminded me of House.) Maybe if I had read the original books I would be more critical, but as it is I loved his character as well as Mary Russell’s. The characters and their interaction was what I really enjoyed most about the book. The mystery was of interest to me mainly in how they responded to it.

I loved the writing–the descriptions, the dialogue, the pace of the story, the variation in setting and action, the developing friendship, the suspense. Okay, basically everything. It was a good comfort read and good escapism–a foreign land in a different time with some interesting adventures. I do think that my reaction was partly just hitting on just what I was in the mood for at the right time. I’m not sure it’s a book that would withstand multiple readings for me or if it’s a book that really enlightened me, inspired me, or added deep understanding like classic literature, but for the purpose of entertainment, it hit the spot and I’m looking forward to reading more of the series when I get a chance. 5 stars!

1/3/09–Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

I hardly ever buy books. With a tight budget, it’s an expense I have a hard time justifying, especially when I can get pretty much anything I want to read at the library. I remember, though, that many of the books I read when I was younger are books that I picked off of my parents’ bookshelves, and at some point I need to build up a library of books to at least be available to my kids. I decided to start with Shakespeare, so last year I got a set of 30 something paperbacks of Shakespeare’s plays for a very reasonable price on eBay (I think about $30). I finally got around to reading one of them myself. I tried starting with King John (picking it randomly), but didn’t get very far and didn’t really care, so I decided to try again with a light comedy and chose this one.

This book was a lot of fun. I have enough familiarity with the style of language that I was able to understand it pretty well, but I still couldn’t help myself from looking over at the notes on every page to make sure I understood it right. A lot of times I had, but there were enough times where the notes explained something I hadn’t gotten that I couldn’t stop doing it. So that was a little distracting and annoying, going back and forth between text and notes, but it did help me understand more. Next time I’ll have to try reading straight through though. I think that would be more enjoyable.

The story follows two couples in love, one is Beatrice and Benedick, who always banter about insults and witty remarks. They are both dead set against love and marriage, but naturally fall in love (with a little help from their friends.) Their conversations are the best part of the book. They are very entertaining. The other couple is Hero and Claudio, who are romantic and sweet, but some mischief on the part of a villain creates a serious problem between them. It’s a great story with lots of action and humor! I also watched the Kenneth Branagh movie last night, which I thought was a pretty great adaptation, particularly his role as Benedick. The book is really fun and this edition does have a lot of helpful extra information. 4 stars.