Friday, February 24, 2006
Book List
So I've been keeping a list of the books I've read recently, here goes:
Feb 2006:
The Whale Rider, Witi Ihimaera
so so. Short, quick prose style, but a little disney-esque. I can't say all that much about it, really.
Baby No-Eyes, Patricia Grace
Another Maori island narrative. Biotheft and ghosts and replacement children running themes, the prose style at first seems very intriguing and engaging, but ultimately seems affected and over-stylized. Also, when the political drama takes over, the novel loses its character and drags. Second rate Leslie Marmon Silko.
The Master Butcher’s Singing Club, Louise Erdich
Another entry from my "Transgenrational Trauma" seminar, which as a course, started so promising but has flattened out pretty badly. This book though, is beautiful. It's subtle and delicate, and works on you, as one of my classmates said, like a repressed memory. Maybe fifty pages too long? Yeah, but she earns it.
Jan 2006:
Disgrace, Coetzee
Everyone I spoke to about this book raved. I'm not sure why. It seemed over intellectualized and flat. Not much engagement with language. Seems very plotted and planned and all the dog stuff is over-wrought and kinda arch. I wouldn't say it was bad, but not all it's cracked up to be.
Beloved, Toni Morrison
A fucking brilliant book. Intense and constantly pushing the limit of realism, yet never stepping too far over the edge. You'll read a sentence that will blow your mind away, because it deals with some trauma the character has undergone but the reader doesn't know about yet, and that sentence will stick in your head and run around in circles and then fifteen or twenty pages you find out what it means and then it all hits you. Exquisite.
Recent History, Anthony Giardina
Amazing first half. The second half, not so much. The narrator when he's twelve tells about his father leaving his mom for another man, a drunk, no less, and then he has a short affair with a boy friend of his--maybe to draw attention to dad, maybe because he just likes it. The narrator doesn't know. The second half is the narrator older, having marriage problems and so e deals with his homosexuality to make his heterosexuality stronger. Formulaic. But he's a candidate here, and I'm excited anyway, because he's definitely seems to be on the other side of the typical "boy's club" or writers.
Ask the Dust, John Fante
Read this book seven times. No less. John Fante is my new favorite author, I only can't decide which of his two book that I've read- Dust, or Bandini, I like more. Probably Dust. I dare you to read this book and not become obsessed with the hero, Autoro bandini. Bandini!
Dec 2005:
The House by the Medlar Tree, Giovanni Verga
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Mysteries of Pittsburg, Michael Chabon
Wait Until Spring, Bandini, John Fante
½ of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Sept-Nov 2005:
Even Now, Michelle Latiolais
Goodbye Columbus, Philip Roth
June-July 2005:
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolfe
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Sabbath’s Theater, Phillip Roth
High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
Feb 2006:
The Whale Rider, Witi Ihimaera
so so. Short, quick prose style, but a little disney-esque. I can't say all that much about it, really.
Baby No-Eyes, Patricia Grace
Another Maori island narrative. Biotheft and ghosts and replacement children running themes, the prose style at first seems very intriguing and engaging, but ultimately seems affected and over-stylized. Also, when the political drama takes over, the novel loses its character and drags. Second rate Leslie Marmon Silko.
The Master Butcher’s Singing Club, Louise Erdich
Another entry from my "Transgenrational Trauma" seminar, which as a course, started so promising but has flattened out pretty badly. This book though, is beautiful. It's subtle and delicate, and works on you, as one of my classmates said, like a repressed memory. Maybe fifty pages too long? Yeah, but she earns it.
Jan 2006:
Disgrace, Coetzee
Everyone I spoke to about this book raved. I'm not sure why. It seemed over intellectualized and flat. Not much engagement with language. Seems very plotted and planned and all the dog stuff is over-wrought and kinda arch. I wouldn't say it was bad, but not all it's cracked up to be.
Beloved, Toni Morrison
A fucking brilliant book. Intense and constantly pushing the limit of realism, yet never stepping too far over the edge. You'll read a sentence that will blow your mind away, because it deals with some trauma the character has undergone but the reader doesn't know about yet, and that sentence will stick in your head and run around in circles and then fifteen or twenty pages you find out what it means and then it all hits you. Exquisite.
Recent History, Anthony Giardina
Amazing first half. The second half, not so much. The narrator when he's twelve tells about his father leaving his mom for another man, a drunk, no less, and then he has a short affair with a boy friend of his--maybe to draw attention to dad, maybe because he just likes it. The narrator doesn't know. The second half is the narrator older, having marriage problems and so e deals with his homosexuality to make his heterosexuality stronger. Formulaic. But he's a candidate here, and I'm excited anyway, because he's definitely seems to be on the other side of the typical "boy's club" or writers.
Ask the Dust, John Fante
Read this book seven times. No less. John Fante is my new favorite author, I only can't decide which of his two book that I've read- Dust, or Bandini, I like more. Probably Dust. I dare you to read this book and not become obsessed with the hero, Autoro bandini. Bandini!
Dec 2005:
The House by the Medlar Tree, Giovanni Verga
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Mysteries of Pittsburg, Michael Chabon
Wait Until Spring, Bandini, John Fante
½ of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Sept-Nov 2005:
Even Now, Michelle Latiolais
Goodbye Columbus, Philip Roth
June-July 2005:
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolfe
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Sabbath’s Theater, Phillip Roth
High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
