Oh Hi. Here Are May and June Books!

So, I did a really poor job on my One Book A Week New Year’s Resoution in May, so I didn’t do my typical book reading summaries (plus, I was…..am…. being pretty lazy about the whole blog writing thing in general).  But man, I really killed it in May.  I read so many books!  I don’t even know if I can remember them!!  Luckily for me (and of course for you), I kept track of them with my handy GoodReads.

Now, also in the month of May, I gave up Diet Cokes, thanks to the persuasiveness of one Brittany Dansereau (I am easily persuaded….all you have to do is mention possible weight loss).  Therefore, I don’t know that a diet coke rating is applicable.  I mean, I still understand that diet cokes are the most delicious of the drinks to ever be created, however, I am somewhat like an alcoholic or smoker when it comes to them.  I don’t know that I will ever be able to drink diet coke in moderation.  One sip leads to an entire gallon being gulped down in the span of one day (you might think I am exaggerating, but I am not…I recently estimated the amount of diet coke I was drinking to be one gallon per day….which is why I had to quit cold turkey).  So, I guess I will just have to replace the diet coke rating with s’mores, the most delicious of all the foods.  Same rating scale – 1 to 5 s’mores, with 5 obviously being the best (because the more s’mores the better….wow, that was not on purpose).

Now, due to the quantity of literature I consumed over the past month, my summaries are going to be shorter than normal…especially for the books I did not enjoy.  So, I guess I am just going to start, considering that this has the potential to be the longest blog entry ever created:

The Egyptologist – Arthur Phillips
I have to vote this my least favorite book of the last two months.  I really just did not like the main character.  I mean, I guess the epistle style was an interesting way to develop a distinctly unlikable character, but because you were only ever reading about the character rather than diving into the character’s thoughts and motivations, it was never really clear why certain things were happening.  The only thing that I distinctly remember about the novel was that the main character was stone cold crazy. I give it 2 s’mores.

Eating the Dinosaur – Chuck Klosterman
Ah, Chuck Klosterman, you are always a fall back for an entertaining and quick read.  This is the latest of Klosterman’s books, all of which have been read by me.  While, his style is beginning to wear on me (I mean really, sometimes I just want him to give it a break!), a good Chuck Klosterman essay on the greatness of ABBA or the unrealized brilliance of Nirvana’s In Utero makes you feel simultaneously smarter than everyone around you but dumb for not having those thoughts in the first place.  PLUS!  I learned about the history of football in one of the essays from this book, which I then used to dazzle all my sports obsessed coworkers. Score – 3.5 s’mores.

Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
This is my second Murakami novel, and I found myself thoroughly confused by both.  The author loves to mix the crazy metaphysical with the everyday mundane, which is fun, I guess, but also frustrating when you are trying to, you know, follow a freaking plot. This book is awarded 3 s’mores.

The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next #1) – Jasper Fforde
Eh.  If I am following the sorority rules of one positive, one negative, one positive critiquing, I will say this:

(1)  Interesting use of the English language.
(2)  Eh.
(3)  Creative.

These aren’t ringing endorsements.  It gets 2 s’mores.

The Irresistible Henry House – Lisa Grunwald
I can see by the next four novels, that we are entering the “oh the middle class have it so rough” genre of my May reading.  This book was probably in the top two of all the novels on this list.  The novel follows the main character (guess what his name is!  Henry House!  Surprising!), who began life as a practice baby in the home economics department of a women’s college.  Growing up with a different mom every week had predictably negative effects on the poor kid’s psyche, and this novel follows him, Forrest Gump style, through his childhood and early adulthood.  It’s good.  Really good. I suggest it.  4.5 s’mores!

The Imperfectionists:  A Novel – Tom Rachman
This book will make you sad.  But, you know, not in a terrible, oh my gosh why is life this rough! sort of way, but more in a, oh my gosh life is so mundane and unpredictable! sort of way.  This secondary tragedy speaks to my specific brand of normalcy and middle class-ness, therefore this novel, detailing the end of a Rome newspaper in a funny yet poignant manner, was made all the more depressing by its approximation of a normal life marred by the tragic nature of just plain living. 4 s’mores.

The Ask:  A Novel – Sam Lipsyte
This author loves twisting sentences into all sorts of interesting and exacting descriptions.  The novel itself is depressing, and not like The Imperfectionists.  Oh no.  This novel is depressing like watching someone self destruct and make terrible decision after decision would be depressing.  But the twisting use of the English language is exciting. I give it 3.5 s’mores for the twisty English but acerbic tone.

Motherless Brooklyn – Jonathan Lethem
This is the other top novel of the month.  I read another Lethem novel earlier this year, and while I did not really enjoy Chronic City nearly as much as this novel, they both share a certain love of words.  By making the main character of Motherless Brooklyn suffer from Tourettes, Lethem seems to revel in the wordplay of rhyming and reversing and entering “EAT ME!” (the main character’s tic of choice) into the dialogue at various points.  It kinda reminded me of my husband, who loves messing around with words way more than normal people.  This book was fast paced while still maintaining the integrity of the main characters and the description. It gets 4.5 s’mores.

A Changed Man – Francine Prose
This novel is written by many points of view, and therefore allows you to fully understand the motivation of just about every character in the book.  Its an interesting juxtaposition to take the action from exactly where it ended in one chapter to the next chapter with a different character’s point of view.  I enjoyed this book and found it a relatively quick read. It gets 4 s’mores.

If interested, here is my book list from:
January
February
March

March Books – Kristi Versus Neuromancer (the worst book ever written)

Well, I’m not going to lie.  The only New Year’s Resolution still going strong is my quest to read one book a week for the entire year.  Although, I have to admit, even that resolution got a little weak in March.  I  managed to pick some stupid science fiction novel that is just KILLING me.  I would give up, but I’m 50% through and I keep thinking that EVENTUALLY I will figure out what is happening.  I don’t know though.  Neuromancer, you are one terrible book.  You not only don’t make sense, but you have terrible characters who do pointless things and read like the script for some horrible video game.  I’m not sure that I will struggle through the remaining 50%, but I am issuing a warning to all other book readers – avoid this one.  It’s bad.  It gets 0 diet cokes, although I will reserve an official diet coke awarding until when (if) I finish.

That being said, due to the slow-mo reading of one terrible science fiction novel, I was only able to finish 3 books in the month of March, much less than February or January.

Catching Fire (Hunger Games #2), Suzanne Collins -
This is the second book in the Hunger Games series, and I’m not going to lie – I already pre-ordered the third book.  These young adult novels are way better than I remember.  In fact, after struggling through half of Neuromancer, I decided that I might just reward myself with some other young adult series (NOT TWILIGHT!)  I award this book – 4 diet cokes.

Man Walks Into a Room, Nicole Krauss -
I didn’t really know what to think about this novel.  When I began, I found myself intrigued by the premise – what is left of the soul if you remove all memories and history of a person?  The story begins with a man who wakes up suddenly, having lost all his memory from when he was 12 years old on.  Amnesia is not a new subject (I know it well from the soap operas I watched with my mom), but the exploration of identity through memory really got under my skin and lead me to randomly change the subject during a Bible Study (bad move.)  But the novel itself?  Eh.  Kinda all over the place.  It seemed almost like the author had TOO many ideas and wanted to cram as many of them in the book as humanly possible.  However, for being though-provoking, I award it 3.5 diet cokes (.5 diet coke deduction for rambling-ness.)

The World to Come, Dara Horn -
Ah, by far the best book of the month.  It was both plotty (a real word, invented by me), whimsical, and works on multiple levels.  The book intertwines Jewish folklore and stories with a traditional plot (see!  whimsical and plotty!)  I find that I read a lot of Jewish literature, which I’ve never quite understood how this happens.  I don’t really seek it out, but I tend to choose these novels and then enjoy them.  This book receives a grand total of 4.25 diet cokes.

Ok, Blog Readers – what do you think, should I plod my way through Neuromancer, or do I throw in the towel?  I need some advice.  50% is a lot of percents.  But terrible is terrible.

Month of January – Five Books Down

Back in the beginning of January, I listed all FOUR of my New Year’s resolutions (I am obviously very ambitious).  So far, I am proud to say that I am Resolution-Breaking-Free for the month of January.  I was mostly worried about the book reading one, as, while reading one book per week is not unheard of, it does demand a certain amount of discipline.  Like, when I’m aimlessly watching television or doing laundry, I have to remind myself, “Kristi!  Why waste your time with worthless tasks like laundry or dishes, when you could be reading books!”  This serves the dual purpose of giving me an excuse not to do laundry or clean ever, but also like, totally expands my mind, man.

Now, a little bit about my book reading habits:  I am primarily and almost exclusively a fiction reader.  I don’t know many other Fiction Only Readers (or F.O.R.s), in fact, if the people I know do claim a type of novel, it is overwhelmingly, non-fiction books chosen over their fiction brethren.  But I LOVE fiction.  Always have.  I just can’t get lose myself in a non-fiction novel the way I do the fiction variety, and they never weasel their way into my brain, causing me to wonder about various themes and images and overall plots for weeks after the novel is completed.  At best, non-fiction books give me facts, which I can then use to prove my superior intelligence in social situations.

I began this month excited to start my new challenge.  My parents gave me a Kindle for Christmas, which allowed for simultaneous knitting AND reading, something which excited me to dorky new levels, and it was kind of like a blank slate to buy ALL NEW BOOKS (exciting due to my propensity to purchase more books than I could ever read in any reasonable amount of time – resulting in a bookshelf FULL of forgotten, unread novels.)  I began by consulting my beloved Goodreads.com.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the website, Goodreads is kind of like a highbrow Facebook, where you can announce to all your friends any novels you have completed, are in process of reading, or are planning to read.  If you are really brave, you can post a review of a book previously finished for others to read, respond to, or just plain ridicule.  I mainly use the site as an organizing tool, enjoying tracking my reading process and utilizing the “list” function and “forums” full of people way smarter than me and full of advice on just what little old Kristi should be reading next.

This month, I somehow decided on the following books:

The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Author:  Stieg Larsson

Those two books look like some sort of weird sci-fi novels when written on top of one another like that, but most assuredly they are not.  Now listen, I don’t plan on offering some sort of literary criticism or worse – book report on my novels every month, but maybe just a thought or two.  Besides sharing an author, these two novels also share main characters and similar story lines.  Imagine that.  I recognized these titles from various “Best of…(whatever year the first of this book came out)” and honestly, I have to say, I was expecting more.  While VERY entertaining and something of a “page turner” (ugh.  I don’t like that expression), it was more of a thriller than what you normally see on a “Best of…” list.  BUT!  If you like that sort of thing  (and who doesn’t?), I have to admit that even though these books are very long (exactly how long, I have no idea thanks to the lack of page numbers on Kindles…Geez!), I flew through them in a couple of days a piece (which allowed me the leg up for the rest of the months).  Thanks Stieg!

The Unit
Author:  Ninni Holmqvist

Randomly, this novel shared a location with the previously mentioned novels.  Sweden.  How random, right?  Side note:  Since beginning this little marathon reading quest of mine, I have noticed odd similarities in all my choices.  Not obvious ones, like reading the same genre over and over again, but weird ones – like – novels being written by Swedish authors (unknown to me when choosing what to read next) or entire plot twists (not to be revealed here!).  The Unit falls under the “dystopian future” novel sub-genre, which is a favorite of mine.  I love those dark and depressing novels!  While I found this book enjoyable, its really the next one that got under my skin for DAYS.  I even repeated the plot to Blake INCLUDING the story-telling method in which it was told…which I’m sure he enjoyed thoroughly.

Never Let Me Go
Author:  Kazuo Ishiguro

Without giving to much away, let me just say that this novel and The Unit share some startling plot similarities.  This was unknown to me, but allowed me to feel a little smarter than the average when I was able to guess the plot twist in this book way sooner than I’m sure the author intended.  As mentioned, this was probably my favorite book of the month.  I contemplated it for days.  It was both thematically stimulating and an interesting read.  The best combination!  If you, like I, are hiding a dark heart full of love for dark/dismal futures – try this one!

Chronic City
Author:  Jonathan Lethem

Yeah, you guessed right.  There is a lot of pot smoking in this novel.  Chronic City, while still maintaining the threads of a plot, is more of a character study than any of the other novels I read this month.  As I described to Blake this morning, “I feel like the author put all this obvious symbolism and themes in the novel wrapped up in big blinking lights, exclaiming ‘I’m a symbol!  I’m a symbol!’”  This novel caused some serious shower-thinking (where I do my best thinking), and Lethem’s writing style is uniquely intriguing.  However, I would not recommend this one to a casual reader (or an anti-weed advocate.)  If you like your stories straight-forward, this is 100% NOT the story for you.

There you go!  One month of books down!  With one book to spare!  I AM SO GREAT!  (that was a joke).

I Learned How to Post Pictures! I Rock!

Blake recently showed me how to insert pictures into my blog posts.  How exciting!  Just so we all are aware, typically, I write these posts in Microsoft Word and then hand my computer to Blake and ask him to make me a blog post.  I am very much computer illiterate.  I think he was a little tired of being my computer-crutch, so he taught me how to write posts ON MY OWN and also how to POST PICTURES!  I am obviously very thrilled.  In order to celebrate, I thought I would show you a few of my pictures of the last few days.  (Ok, mainly the last 10 minutes since that was how long ago I decided to do this post….Ok, and by “my” pictures, I mean the pictures Blake took after I complained and complained that I couldn’t take artsy enough pictures.  He’s a real saint, that husband of mine).

Hi! I am a cute green chair!

This would be the GREEN CHAIR mentioned in post number 2 of this blog.  Isn’t is so cute, sitting over there with an orange blanket on top of it?  Blake and I are going for an “aren’t we so cool and 1950′s-ish” look for the living room, and this chair is probably my most favorite furniture purchase ever after the BLUE chair I have in our bedroom (which I can’t show you right now since our room is a disaster area, READ MORE