Reading Round-up

I've gotten a little behind on my book reviews, so here is a condensed version of what I've read the past month or so.

Crossed by Allie Condie. This is the second book in the Matched series. I didn't like it as well as the first - it's pretty bleak and much more violent. At times (like the first 2/3 of the book) I found it tedious to read because the plot moves very slowly. However, the story is compelling enough that I will be reading the third book, Reached, when it comes out in November.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Satran Foer. I really liked this book. It is the story of an extremely precocious 9-year-old named Oskar Schell. After his father is killed in 9/11, Oskar sets out on a quest which he believes will give him some answers to the reason for his father's death. Also, entwined with Oskar's chapters is the story of his grandparents - how they met, came together, were separated, and eventually reunited. Sad and funny at the same time. Check this one out. The movie is pretty good, too.

Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O'roark Dowell. This one had been on my to be read list for a while, but after reading it, I'm not sure why. It is the story of a young girl, just starting high school, who lives on a small goat farm. Mild teen angst abounds: making new friends, getting made fun of, disagreements with the parents, discovering boys, but nothing too remarkable or memorable happens. 

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray. I read about this one on NPR's book page where they called it a "Lord of the Flies for girls." I hated that book when I was forced to read it in 9th grade English, so I don't know why I thought this one would be any better. It's the story of 12 or so contestants in the Miss Teen Dream beauty pageant who are the lone survivors of a plane crash carrying all 50 contestants, chaperones, and sponsors on a "desert" island somewhere in the tropical ocean. This one is definitely satirical and not for the easily offended. Also, it is way too long. Skip it.

The Goodbye Time by Celeste Conway. I picked this one up at the library because I liked the dress on the cover. Kind of like Ten Miles Past Normal, it's a cutesy young-people's book about growing up where nothing too remarkable happens.

Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith. In effort to fill the void of the missing Pulitzer fiction winner, I read the book that won for poetry. I'm sorry to report that modern poetry is lost on me. I didn't like any of the poems in this collection. They are mostly dreary and futuristic with allusions to popular culture that I don't get. Meh.

What It Is Like To Go To War by Karl Marlantes. This was a pick for the Huffington Post book club. I plodded through about 2/3 of it and gave up. Not my style of book at all.



The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman by Meg Wolitzer. This is a funny young people's book based around a national Scrabble tournament. It follows three players, all of whom have different reasons for being there, and of course there is lots of self-discovery along the way. And lots of fun scrabble tips, too. And the neatest thing I learned from this book is that the word maraschino is an anagram of harmonicas. Who knew?

Cookies and a Pulitzer Shake-up

 These are cooling on my counter right now. Don't you wish you were at my house? Butterscotch and chocolate chip cookies. Yum.

In other news, this year's Pulitzer Prizes were awarded today, and *gasp* one was not awarded for fiction. Three novels were shortlisted: Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia, by Karen Russell, and The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace, but none won the prize. While not unprecedented - it's happened 9 other times but not since 1977, it is still a bit of a surprise. I have to admit I'm a little disappointed not to have a new book to add to my "to be read" list.

Dissappointed.

I just realized that I never wrote about my May Pulitzer and Newbery selections, so here they are.

I'm sad to report that I lost a lot of respect for the Pulitzer Prize after reading this year's winner: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

It wasn't that the novel was poorly written. In fact, it was put together rather cleverly. The chapters can almost be considered short stories - each one is about a different character and takes place in a different time and place, but even so, everything and everyone is interconnected.

However, in my opinion, the characters and plot are far from memorable, not at all likeable, and I found myself not really caring about any of it as I read. I finished reading the book about a month ago, and I'm now having a hard time actually remembering what it is even about. My recommendation on this one is don't waste your time with it.


The Newbery winner I read is the complete opposite. It's Like This, Cat by Emily Neville is one of the most charming books I have read in a long time.

It takes place in New York City in the 1960s and describes how a 14 year old boy's life changes just because he takes in a stray cat. Very cute. I highly recommend this one.

Since I was so disappointed by May's Pulitzer selection, and because I don't care to read any of the Pulitzer winners that I have left to read on the list any time soon, I've decided to take a break from award winning books for the summer and just read for fun.

Any book suggestions are welcome.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

Recognize that famous line of literature? If you are thinking Gone With the Wind, you're right!

After many years of saying I was going to and in preparation for my upcoming trip to the South, I finally read Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, which just happened to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. 

Since most people are somewhat familiar with the plot, I won't summarize it here. I do think that the story kind of fizzles out before the end, but I still really enjoyed reading it. I also watched the movie again since I hadn't seen it in years and liked it a lot, too, but this is even better.

Part 1.


And Part 2.


Are you laughing?

Even though a lot of my April reading time was filled up with Gone With the Wind, I still managed to read a few other books, including a Newbery winner called Dicey's Song, by Cynthia Voigt.

Dicey's Song is number 2 in a series of books about the Tillerman family. The first is called Homecoming, and it is pretty dreadful. I read it to prepare for Dicey's Song, but I wish I hadn't. The plot isn't so bad in itself - the four Tillerman children are abandoned by their mother in the parking lot of a shopping mall, miles from their home, so they take it upon themselves to cross the state and find some fabled relatives of theirs. Interesting, but it goes on and on - the kids try to find something to eat, try to find somewhere to sleep, complain about how tired they are, walk for what seems like miles, get in trouble...day after day. They finally get settled with a cousin or someone, but then they run away to find their grandmother and the whole trip thing starts again.

Dicey's Song is better, but I still found the characters to be annoying. The kids finally end up with their grandmother at the end of Homecoming, and Dicey's Song tells the story of how they settle into their new life, make friends, deal with tragedy...

There are five or six books in the series, but I'm pretty sure I won't read the rest any time soon. I've had my fill of the Tillermans.

One last note, I'm already halfway through 2011's Pulitzer winner, but so far I'm not impressed. I'll write more about it when  when I've finished.

A Guilty Pleasure?

When I was a senior in college, I took a class on 19th century British literature. It was a fantastic class. We read and dissected works by Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot, Thackeray, … I don’t even remember who all we read, but I do remember that I loved everything.

One day, at the start of class, the professor (I can’t remember his name now) asked what were our favorite “guilty pleasure” reads. No one spoke up, probably because most senior literature majors don’t have time for pleasure reading, so the professor admitted that he liked “wasting” his time on novels by Philip Roth.

Philip Roth! Really? A guilty pleasure? I had never read anything by Roth at the time, but I was very much aware of his presence in the literary world. I knew that he had won the Pulitzer and National Book Award, and every year his name is thrown around as a possibility for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Anyway, I’ve always remembered that professor’s assessment of Roth’s work and have wondered if there is any truth in it.

This month I finally got around to reading Philip Roth‘s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, American Pastoral which won the award in 1998.

The plot of the story revolves around Seymour “Swede” Levov, a successful business and family man in the 1960s. His life is more or less ruined when his daughter, as a protest to the Vietnam War, plants a bomb in the local post office/general store and then disappears after the bomb goes off killing a man.

Obviously there is a lot more to the story than that brief synopsis, but you’ll have to read the book yourself if you want to find out more. I will tell you that the whole story is very bleak, and there is no happy ending. Despite the subject matter, and lots of profanity it is a very readable book, and I will most likely be reading more Philip Roth in the future.

But is it a “guilty pleasure” read? Maybe. Especially if you compare it to the likes of Vanity Fair or Wuthering Heights. But I think it has a lot to offer on its own merit, and I definitely wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen reading it on the subway.

February reads

I usually read around ten books a month, but this February, I only read four. I'm not sure why I didn't get more read. Let's chalk it up to the fact that it was a short month.

I did, however, read my Newbery and Pulitzer selections.

In honor of President's Day, I chose a biography of Abraham Lincoln by Russell Freedman which won the Newbery Award in 1988 titled Lincoln: A Photobiography.

As the title suggests, this book tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's life from his humble beginnings to his tragic death. Except for a lot of pictures of Lincoln, and some interesting Civil War photos, there is really nothing remarkable in this book. The story is easy to read and includes a very simplified account of the Civil War.

Overall, it's not great but not terrible either. Take it or leave it.

For my Pulitzer read, I chose last year's winner. Tinkers, by Paul Harding is not at all what I expected. The story is about a dying man named George. While his life is ebbing away, he remembers moments from his past. Interspersed with his story is that of his father, Howard, a peddler and misunderstood epileptic.

I want to like this book, and while it is well written with some truly beautiful and poetic passages, I really can't recommend it. It is just too hard to get into and stick with, and at times, overly difficult to follow. Even though it is just under 200 pages, it seems much longer.

February's reading was pretty disappointing. March will be better. I made a trip to the library yesterday and have a large stack of books that I am anxious to work my way through.

Happy reading!

I Read It In A Book

I haven't written anything about any books lately, and I'm sure you all are just sitting on the edges of your seats waiting for me to tell about my reading plan for 2011, so here it is.

I've mentioned before my penchant for reading award winning books, so this year I decided to knock a few more off the lists and read a Pulitzer and Newbery winner each month.

This might get a little tricky because I am down to the really thick ones on the Pulitzer list, but I think I'm up for the challenge.

Speaking of thick novels, my Pulitzer winner for January was The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk.

I put off reading this one for a long time because the story never appealed to me.

It is about Captain Queeg and his crew on an dilapidated mine sweeper during WWII. The captain is rather neurotic, full of unreasonable demands, and constantly making questionable decisions. One day in the midst of a typhoon, one of the officers named Maryk decides to relieve Queeg of his command claiming he (Captain Queeg) is paranoid/insane and not fit to captain the ship any longer.

Of course a court-martial ensues which leads to a rather interesting ending.

Along with the action on the sea is the story of one of the officers on the ship named Willie Keith, a privileged Princeton grad from New York City, and his complicated love affair with a nightclub singer named May Wynn.

I definitely recommend this one. I didn't think I would like it, but I did. And even though it is around 550 pages, it moves along quickly.

The Newbery winner I read is by Rachel Field and is titled Hitty: Her First Hundred Years. This one I didn't like so much.

It is the story of a little wooden doll, carved out of a piece of mountain ash wood around 1829. At the beginning of the story she is sitting in an antique store 100 years later waiting to be sold. While waiting, she decides to write her memoirs. The book is what she writes, and goodness knows she had an eventful life.

It just seemed like this one went on and on. She would get lost and then found. Loved and then discarded. Over and over and over again.

I think the purpose of the book is to teach young people a bit of a history lesson, since Hitty travels to many places and "meets" many people over the course of 100 years. I would just rather not learn history from a doll's perspective.

Even though I didn't really like it, if you do decide to read this one, make sure you get the original as it was rewritten a few years ago to be made more politically correct.

So, there you have it. One good one and one bad for January. What will February hold?

And The Winner Is...

Confession: I have a bit of a love affair going on with the Pulitzer Prize. I'm not really sure when or why it happened, it's just one of those things. I'm especially fond of the fiction winner and a few years ago I took it upon myself to read all the past winners in fiction. I still have a few to go, but it has been a fun reading list.

2010's winners were announced today. The winner for fiction was Tinkers by Paul Harding. I've never heard of the author or the book, but it sounds interesting. From Booklist:

A tinker is a mender, and in Harding’s spellbinding debut, he imagines the old, mendable horse-and-carriage world. The objects of the past were more readily repaired than our electronics, but the living world was a mystery, as it still is, as it always will be. And so in this rhapsodic novel of impending death, Harding considers humankind’s contrary desires to conquer the “imps of disorder” and to be one with life, fully meshed within the great glimmering web. In the present, George lies on his death bed in the Massachusetts house he built himself, surrounded by family and the antique clocks he restores. George loves the precision of fine timepieces, but now he is at the mercy of chaotic forces and seems to be channeling his late father, Howard, a tinker and a mystic whose epileptic seizures strike like lightning. Howard, in turn, remembers his “strange and gentle” minister father. Each man is extraordinarily porous to nature and prone to becoming “unhitched” from everyday human existence and entering a state of ecstasy, even transcendence. Writing with breathtaking lyricism and tenderness, Harding has created a rare and beautiful novel of spiritual inheritance and acute psychological and metaphysical suspense

The books that were shortlisted are: Love In Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet and In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin. I'm not familiar with those two books and authors, either. So, I guess I know what to look for on my next trip to the library. I will read and report on them here. Happy reading!

Olive Kitteridge. Read it.

Several years ago I took it upon myself to read all the fiction books which have won the Pulitzer Prize. While I still have a few left to read, it has been a fun reading exercise so far, and I've read some books and authors I probably wouldn't have otherwise picked up.

Over the past couple of days I read 2009's winner, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I wasn't really expecting much since a couple of weeks earlier I read a runner up for 2009's prize called All Souls by Christine Schutt. Frankly, I thought it was pretty terrible, and I will never understand why it was picked to be shortlisted. I thought that if All Souls was second best for the year, maybe the winner wouldn't be very great either.

I was wrong. Olive Kitteridge is a novel in short stories. The book spans several decades in a small coastal town in Maine. The characters lives and stories are intertwined, and the larger than life character of Olive Kitteridge makes an appearance in each story to tie them all together.

By the time I finished reading, I was sad the book wasn't longer. Even though the stories weren't necessarily happy, some of them were actually rather tragic and even shocking, I just wanted to keep reading to find out what would happen next. In my opinion, Olive Kitteridge definitely deserved the prize it was given. Now, I just have to wait to see what wins this year!