books #90-97

I haven't read any of the books I was all excited about last time, yet. I'm not sure why...

90. The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas ****. I'm not entirely sure about the rating for this one. I liked it a lot at the beginning, then less so, then more again. There are definitely some clunky parts (including whacking great chunks of exposition thinly disguised as internal monologue), but a lot fewer than you might expect of a novel about a cursed book that explains how to travel into and between other people's minds and includes renegade CIA agents and mouse gods. There were definitely some very interesting thought experiments and despite the fact that those seemed to be the raison d'être for the book, I liked the characters, too.

91. Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis ****1/2. I really liked the documentary about the competitive Scrabble world, which mostly covered the same players, but this book was so much better. It almost made me want to devote all the time I currently waste procrastinating to memorising lists of words. Somehow it seems easier to become obsessed with a fairly pointless goal, like Scrabble, rather than anything more productive, like my research. The best parts of this book are the characters, those people for whom Scrabble validates their existence. The author became friends with some of the weirdest and manages to convey both their freakiest and most admirable characteristics sympathetically. Fatsis himself becomes one of the obsessed and it's fun to follow his journey from ignorant journalist to expert devotee. (I was dorky enough to look up his current ranking, and while he's slipped a little from his end-of-book rating, his involvement in the competitive Scrabble world has clearly lasted.) I've been playing too much Scrabble against the computer since reading this...

92. Bad Girls in Love by Cynthia Voigt **1/2. I know, I should have realised from the title that this wouldn't be very good, but it's Cynthia Voigt! She wrote the wonderful Tillerman books! I didn't really think she would have stooped so low as to write anything so mainstream and mediocre, but I was sadly disappointed. It wasn't terrible or anything and it wasn't entirely formulaic, but the characters were just so much less well developed and individual than those in her other books. Still, it was kind of enjoyable and a quick read. Besides, I think junior high romance is about my level.

93. Salmon Doubts by Adam Sacks ****1/2. This was adorable! I picked it up because the title was close enough to Douglas Adams' the Salmon of Doubt that I figured it must be intentional and the author must therefore have good taste, at least. It's a graphic novel about the socially inept young salmon, Henry, and his friend, Geoff, who thinks there might be more to life than spawning. I thought it was just going to be cute, but it was a very poignant story about the meaning of life. Read an excerpt here.

94. Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee **. So the reason I was in the YA section and got the last 2 books was that I was looking for the Pixie book club selections. I got all the suggested books, not just the final choices. This one was okay, but Millicent seemed just a bit too clueless and unreflective about her social outcast status. Maybe I was expecting too much from an 11-year-old character. Although, at 11 I was definitely far more expert at evaluating my many social failings.

95. The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen ***. I loved The Corrections and How to Be Alone, and liked his other books quite a lot, too, so I was expecting to like this one more. Parts of it, especially those about his relationships with his family, were good, but the political parts and some others kind of ruined the narrative thread (although I guess there wasn't really supposed to be one).

96. Celine by Brock Cole ***1/2. Another Pixie book club finalist. I liked this one a lot, despite the fact that Celine is nothing like me. She's far too confident and talkative for me to identify with but she is a great character.

97. Are You Alone on Purpose? by Nancy Werlin ***1/2. Another lame title (even if it was what made me pick it up; I'm a sucker for lonely-awkward-adolescent books (actually, grown-ups as well, but in books (and real life) everyone seems to grow out of their awkwardness)). The description almost made me put it back, since the newly-paraplegic bully and autistic brother made me think it was going to be a heavy-handed issues book. I kept it because of the bit about Alison's brother getting all the attention due to his problems, since that's kind of how I felt growing up. I'm glad I did read it, in the end. It was a lovely portrayal of a friendship developing (plus more cute YA romance).