books #71- 91 (2007)

These are all out of order because I'm reconstructing the list from my library records, having completely forgotten about tracking books as I read them, despite my early enthusiasm for GoodReads.


71. Inglorious by Johanna Kavenna ***1/2. I quite liked this book, which is about a woman whose husband leaves her after she's quit her job, but I spent most of the book irritated at her aimless drifting and willingness to impose on her friends. There was obviously some deeper psychological issue preventing her from taking control of her life, so you'd think I'd be more sympathetic, but apparently not.


72. The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon ****. I think I liked this as much as I did because it reminded me of The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, although it's nowhere near as good. I don't even like mysteries at all, usually, but I did enjoy this one.

73. Look at Me by Jennifer Egan ***. This started out seeming like it could be interesting, but it got too outlandish by the end.

74. Y: The Last Man #2: Cycles by Brian K Vaughan ***1/2. Maybe I should lump all of the series together as one book. This was interesting enough to keep me reading, but I'm still not wildly enthusiastic about it.

75. Ghost World by Daniel Clowes ****. I think I might have liked the movie better, but I liked them both a lot.

76. Spook Country by William Gibson ***1/2. I really loved Pattern Recognition, so I was hoping this would be equally good, even though I didn't love Neuromancer. Sadly, it's not. It was still interesting, but I didn't care about the characters so much. It seemed much more just about the cool ideas (and the ideas for the artwork were very cool) than Pattern Recognition.

77. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro ****. This book was so sad.

78. The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd ****. I wasn't expecting to like this book so much. Chip Kidd is better known for his book covers and design work, so it was interesting to read the graphic design teacher in the novel critiquing his students' work. The actual story was good, too.

79. Original Bliss by A.L. Kennedy ****1/2. This book sounds depressing, and it kind of is, but A.L. Kennedy writes deeply flawed, but real, characters so well, and it does have a satisfying conclusion.

80. Shut the Door by Amanda Marquit **1/2. This was written when the author was 16 and, while it was interesting, you can kind of tell. A family basically disintegrates over the course of the father's 10 day business trip. If the drama had been spread over a longer time period, it might have been more believable.

81. So Much for my Happy Ending by Kyra Davis **. This could have been an interesting book, but it wasn't, so I'm going to spoil it. It was about a woman whose husband's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. He's eventually diagnosed as bipolar, but instead of showing how they dealt with his illness, he just became cartoonishly evil so she'd be justified in dumping him and going off with the hot musician.

82. Everything I Need to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume edited by Jennifer O'Connell ***. My mum used to flick through any Judy Blume book I borrowed from the library, making sure it wasn't the sex one, before I was allowed to take it home. I ended up reading Forever standing in the book section of a department store while she was shopping elsewhere, instead. I remember being disappointed at how un-exciting the experience was, given all the fuss about it being banned from my school library. I used to read Judy Blume books, hoping to learn some secrets about being a girl, but unlike the authors of the essays in this book, I usually just ended up feeling more out of touch with girls my age. I definitely didn't understand Margaret - why would she want to go through puberty?

83. People I Wanted to Be by Gina Ochsner ***. There were some great moments in some of these stories, but I don't think I was completely satisfied by any of them.

84. Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall ****1/2. I picked up this book because of the pretty rainbow-coloured text on the spine and the fact that colour was spelled correctly. It turned out to be an excellent book, so maybe I'll rely more on cover art in future, since I don't tend to do that well at choosing books based on the blurb.

85. You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett ***. Apparently, I got over my hatred of short stories enough to pick up at least one collection every time I went to the library. I think I might have to go back to only reading ones that have exceptional reviews, though. It's not that they were bad, and I shouldn't be picking on this book in particular; some of its stories were very good. It's just that I find mediocre short stories more unsatisfying than mediocre novels.

86. How You Can Be More Interesting by Edward de Bono *. This book was painfully boring.

87. The Better of McSweeney's ***1/2. There are some very good stories, and I enjoyed the copyright information, but I was wondering how some of them made it into a "better of" collection, unless the rest were very bad.

88. Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists ***1/2. Some of the lists are definitely worth 5 stars, but then some of them probably only rate 1 or 2, so it balances out.

89. Light by M. John Harrison ***1/2. I started this with very low expectations, which I think was a good thing. I would've been disappointed if I had been expecting it to live up to the blurbs on the cover. I got more interested towards the end, when it got easier to see past the futuristic SF stuff to the characters' stories.


90. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ****1/2. I'm reading this for a book club. It's been fun to discuss. I keep imagining the characters in their BBC series incarnations, which isn't a bad thing, but I wonder how I would've seen them if I'd read the book before then (I've read it before now, but only after seeing the series).

91. The Moon by Night by Madeleine L'Engle ****. This isn't my favourite L'Engle book, but it's the only one I own in this country, so I'm reading it. As I read, I've been wondering how much I would like it if I read it for the first time now; probably not a lot. Still, for all her outdated notions and preachiness, she captures a certain awkwardness that I still identify with wonderfully.