Book 98: A Dance with Dragons – George R. R. Martin
Well I finally got bored with the series, but I’m glad I read them (and will finish the series as […]
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Love
Book 89: Hood – Emma Donoghue
Hood is the first of the 40 books I’ve committed to in Reading Challenges for 2012. It comes from the Mount
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Book 85: Jo’s Boys – Louisa May Alcott
As the final novel I could not have asked for a better ending to the informal trilogy. Another ten years
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Book 84: Little Men – Louisa May Alcott
I’ll confess that I am back dating this post. I finished reading this the third week in December, but never
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Book 81: Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
There are few books that I finish reading and truly regret not having read them earlier in life, and this
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Book 80: I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. – John Donovan
I finished reading this book last week, but wanted to take the time to digest what I’d read. I’m still
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Book 74: Babycakes – Armistead Maupin
Babycakes takes place two years after Further Tales of the City and of the four books I’ve read in the series this is my least favorite. I understand characters have to grow and evolve, but sometimes you just don’t want them to.
In comparison to the other novels in this series, the novel seems angst ridden and is darker than the previous novels. I’m not sure if this is a direct response to Maupin’s mindset at the time or the general feeling of gloom and doom of San Francisco and the LGBT community at the time. Originally published in 1984, Maupin wrote the tales in Babycakes while Reagan was President of the US and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the UK and the AIDS crisis was on the horizon (although the Reagan administration didn’t acknowledge it until 1987).
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Book 69: The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
A friend in undergrad recommended I read this novel and I’m sad it took me this long to read it. The Namesake is one of the most beautifully and eloquently written novels I have read this year, if not ever.
There is something so simple and yet strikingly intricate in Lahiri’s prose. I can only compare her to the lyrical like prose I’ve read from many Irish authors. I found myself repeating sentences in my head because of their artful construction. The foreign names, foods, and customs interwoven with the familiar places and customs created a story I couldn’t put down. I’ve compared Jhumpa Lahiri to Jane Austen, in the ordinariness of what she writes and her style, and I stand by this, but it is the lives and deaths—the full picture, rather than the snapshot—at which Lahiri excels.
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Book 66: The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
I could be predictable and say the story is about the English patient, as the title suggests, or any of
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