50 books

I could count how many movies I saw last year because I always keep my ticket stubs, but I have no idea how many books I read, so this year I'd like to keep track. I noticed quite a few people had a goal of reading 50 books during the year, so I'm starting with that (although given I'm already up to book 5, I hopefully won't have any trouble reaching that goal).

1. Educating Alice by Alice Starnbach. This was a Christmas present from a friend so I wanted to like it, but I found the author's tone too patronising and self-satisfied. It was about her adventures travelling to different countries and taking some kind of class so she had plenty of opportunity to describe things she did badly, but somehow she still came off as thinking she was fabulous. What I particularly disliked were the times she made a sweeping generalisation about a culture or nationality that was favourable to herself and then said she had no reason to believe it was true, but she liked the idea so she'd believe it.

2. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Another book I was expecting to like since everybody raves about it, even my housemate who only really loves George Eliot. I was even stopped by some random guy on my way home tonight who was so eager to discuss its fabulousness his greeting was "do you love it?". Unfortunately, I had to admit I was sadly disappointed. I'm actually still going on it because I'm not loving it at all, but I don't hate it enough to give up. I'm completely missing the humour, though. Is the joke just that Ignatius is so delusional in his offensiveness?

3. A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter. This was very sweet, but ultimately Elnora was a bit too much of a Mary-Sue for me to like her wholeheartedly. I much prefer Anne Shirley or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (I can't remember her actual last name).

4. Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. Finally a book I loved! I've always been a sucker for boarding school stories and, as you may have noticed, I have a preference for heroines who are suitably insecure. I actually went to the library to try to find a print copy of A Girl of the Limberlost since the online version let me read 5 chapters before refusing to work, but I'd forgotten the children's section closes early so I needed another teenage girl story. I wasn't particularly expecting to like this book since I read a bad review of it at one point, but the main character's insecurities were almost alarmingly close to my own (when there's a thief in the dorms she wonders if maybe it's actually her even though she can't remember stealing anything, she needs a special, enthusiastic invitation before she'll begin to believe it might possibly be okay for her to join in a group activity etc). Of course, she gets over most of them eventually, unlike me, but I still liked it a lot. It was a good book to read on Thursday when I was already feeling miserable about all my ignoring of research finally starting to catch up with me, plus I'm always miserable the night before I have a therapy appointment (this time especially, since the previous appointment was fairly disastrous). I tend to apply the logic my parents used to use on Christmas Eve (ie that the sooner you go to sleep, the sooner morning will come) and stay up as late as possible. I also had multiple awkward interactions on the way home (another random guy at the library asked me where to find the books, I stared at him blankly and asked "which books?" before he explained it was a joke and then tried to make conversation while I tried to figure out why he was talking to me and how I could escape to find my book; I also had to drop the keys back to the cat owners and they had made me brownies (sadly, with ginger) and cookies, but I still barely managed to say 2 sentences to them) so all in all I was glad to have a book to read that made me realise that at least I have fictional company in freakdom. Although, after reading many books like this, the fact that my issues are so typically adolescent makes the recognition less comforting.
Incidentally, the therapy appointment was remarkably painless, since she just asked stuff about where my family was from and the differences between various Commonwealthlands and the US. She actually thought we were making progress since I could actually answer her questions, though. She seemed so heartened that I would have felt bad bursting her bubble so maybe it was lucky I couldn't explain why it wasn't really any improvement...