books #15-21

15. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. I liked it. Not much to say about it, though.

15 1/2. Music for Mechanics (Love and Rockets volume 1) by los Bros Hernandez. It's only half a book because I didn't finish it. It didn't have enough continuity to hold my attention and the individual bits weren't interesting enough on their own.

16. The Bone People by Keri Hulme. I loved this book so much! I don't know why it's taken me so long to write this post, since I've been wanting to rave about the book since I finished it. I was a bit dubious when I read the introductory note about it having non-standard grammar etc, but it was so good! I think I even liked it enough to kick Cryptonomicon off my literary speed dating list, except that I don't think it would create the right impression... The language is beautiful and the characters are wonderfully real and complex. I was worrying about them even while I wasn't actually reading it. Their speech patterns started incorporating themselves into my inner voice as I read, too (I still keep finding myself thinking "E (name)" and "berloody"). Phantom mentioned the book in a comment to my post about asexuality as an example of a character who wanted "love and human connections" without being sexual (thanks Phantom!). I actually found myself identifying more at times with Simon, the kid who doesn't talk (although he was far more expressive with sign language and writing than I ever am), especially in the scene where he realises Kerewin has heard him singing and he's terrified of what the consequences might be. The three main characters' inner voices are written so well that I couldn't help feeling for all of them as they worked through the misunderstandings to negotiate their relationships. I'm not sure I could read it again too soon, since it is rather disturbing and heart wrenching, but as Alice Walker's blurb on the cover says: "this book is just amazingly, wondrously great".

17. Fables and Reflections (Sandman volume 6) by Neil Gaiman. I'm still slowly working my way through the 10 sandman volumes. I'm not sure why I feel the need to ration this series and not his novels. It would probably be more helpful to read them all straight through so I have a chance of remembering all the characters.

18. 1988 by Andrew McGahan. You'd think reading about other people's incredibly pointless lives (6 months spent drinking at a remote weather station) would make me feel better about my own, but I just ended up feeling even more sluggish. It was somehow an enjoyable read though, despite the many incidents that were built up to be potential life-altering, character-building moments, which the protagonist then either messed up or just ignored. I'm not sure if the ending was meant to be hopeful or just another such non-event. It was vaguely similar to Bright Lights, Big City in that regard, actually.

19. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I think I'm about ready to give up on reading classic literature. I'm finding the narrative voice just as irritating here as in the many long diversions on the evils of atheism and the character of the russian peasant that ruined the Brothers Karamazov for me. It doesn't help that he's addressing the reader and ascribing annoying straw man arguments to "you" so he can rant about the laws of nature and determinism. Does it improve and actually develop some plot at any point or should I give up now?

20. Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies and Bargaining Power by Rhona Mahony. I think Bitch, PhD mentioned this book recently (it was actually in a comment here), which is why I picked it up. I felt a bit of an imposter reading it somehow, given the aforementioned posts on asexuality etc, but it was very interesting. It was basically the same idea as that essay everyone hated about how women should study useful things and marry down (the title and author of which I've now forgotten), but minus most of the "selfish women who don't do this are ruining things for everyone" angle. I took the argument in this case to be more about how, as an individual, to balance the negotiating power that the husband generally gets by default thanks to societal norms, if you don't want to do full-time childcare and most of the housework.

updated to add, since I just finished it and don't want to wait for the next book post:
21. The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis. This is Jessa at Bookslut's best book of 2006 (yes, already) so since I trust her judgement (unlike certain columnists) I had to read it (one of her best books of 2005 was Francine Prose's A Changed Man, which I liked a lot, too). Jessa's review is much more articulate than anything I'll write. It's beautifully written and, like the Bone People, does multiple view points (including those of dogs, a beaver and corn) very well, although there are a lot of different view points so they weren't as fully developed and I didn't get so attached to any of them. It starts kind of slowly, but builds in intensity until the end. I think I've rejected one of Davis' previous novels, The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf, in the past because I kept getting it confused with a terrible book I once read with a similar title, but I'm going to have to read more of her work.