books #77-82

77. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ****. I could really identify with the main character in this book, 15-year-old Kambili, who is terrified of doing anything wrong and barely speaks, thanks to her strict and abusive father, which is ridiculous, because I never had anything like that to be scared of. The book follows Kambili's family during a time of political upheaval in Nigeria and although the focus is on the family's personal life, their response to the political events allow for more complex characterisation. I'm not sure why I slipped into English-essay-writing mode there... It was a good book, in any case.

78. The Wood Wife by Terri Windling ***1/2. For some reason I want to describe this book as sweet, but it was also creepy at times, with mythical creatures who weren't entirely friendly. Maybe it was the love story that made it seem sweet, although that's simplifying it a bit much, too.

79. My Antonia by Willa Cather ***. It was interesting reading about early prairie life, but despite the engaging characters it was a little dry and distant for me. Maybe I just didn't find Jim as interesting as the people he was describing.

80. The Keep by Jennifer Egan *****. This was a wonderful book. I'd been thinking maybe I was becoming too unappreciative, since the previous bunch of books I'd read were all good, but I didn't find any as amazing as I remembered some books being. I should just remember 5 star books are relatively rare.
The main story is about Danny, who goes to help his cousin, Howie with turning an old castle into a hotel. I haven't read a book in a while that had male characters who seemed so real, although maybe I don't read so much about men in general. The book was suspenseful and creepy, but to me it seemed more about the complicated history between the cousins and how an event from their childhood had influenced their divergent lives and their relationship (at least on Danny's part, as he was the narrator).

Howie is presumably not a fan of blogging:

What are they giving you, the machines? Shadows, disembodied voices. Typed words and pictures if you're online. That's it, Danny. If you think you're surrounded by people, you're making them up.

Am I making you all up? :)

81. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl ****1/2. I loved the beginning of this book, then my enthusiasm waned a bit as it turned into a mystery (yes, I should have been expecting that) in the last half, but the ending made up for it again. It tread a fine line between having an interesting structure and being too gimmicky, but it mostly stayed on the interesting side and the final exam was an excellent way of creating/resolving ambiguities. Blue van Meer (an awesome name, for a character) was a little too preciously precocious in some ways, but also somewhat socially awkward, which always endears a character to me.

82. The Unsayable by Annie Rogers ****. I think Shrinky already wrote my review for me. I really liked the book, but I had the same problem with believing all her patients magically open up in response to her repeating their own words back to them. The parts where she makes a big deal of the recurrence of "ed" in words used by a girl who was abused by someone named Ed made me less inclined to accept her theories about language and the unconscious, too.
Still, it definitely makes sense to me that things from the unconscious can leak into a person's behaviour/word choice, without consciously being aware of it. I think I expect, or fear, that my therapist will do this kind of analysis on everything I say and do, so I'm too scared to say anything or move, in case I reveal something inadvertently. So why did reading this book make me kind of wish Annie Rogers could be my therapist?

(This is a bit old, since I started writing this post a while ago)
Apparently Bush has been tracking his reading for the year too, and is up to 60 books, if you believe him. That's a lot of reading for someone who doesn't even like newspapers. Maybe he's just reading biographies of presidents where they all have an imaginary friend to help them out.