FACT: krysbrezinski will read 75 books in 2011.

Well, here I am again - for my third year of procrastinating till November and then reading like mad for two solid months, if I stick to my usual pattern. :P
Wish me luck!






Previous Threads:
2009
2010

Best of 2010:
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
Founding Brothers - Joseph Ellis
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
Catch Me If You Can - Stan Redding & Frank Abignale

Reading Now:
The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon

Officially Abandoned:
The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein
The Titan's Curse - Rick Riordan (reread)

To Read:
The Age of Innocence - Wharton
Maurice - Forster
Emma - Austen
Candide - Voltaire
Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
Pygmalion - Shaw
Mrs Dalloway - Woolf
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
Lolita - Nabokov
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Kesey
The House of Seven Gables - Hawthorne
Jude the Obscure - Hardy
Sister Carrie - Dreiser
The Stranger - Camus
A Doll's House - Ibsen
Rabbit, Run - Updike
Brighton Rock - Greene
Main Street - Lewis
The Adventures of Augie March - Bellow

Books 1 - 10:
January
o1. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
o2. The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold
o3. The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis - Kirby Larson
o4. I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger - Frank Wynne
o5. Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
o6. Oreo - Fran Ross
o7. Room - Emma Donoghue
o8. The Art of the Steal: How to Recognize and Prevent Fraud - Frank W. Abignale
o9. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
1o. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

Books 11 - 20:
11. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender
February
12. The Gardner Heist - Ulrich Boser
March
13. The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten
14. The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan (reread)
15. The Sea of Monsters - Rick Riordan (reread)
16. The Poet and the Murderer - Simon Worrall
April
17. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much - Allison Hoover Bartlett
August
18. Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
19. First Step 2 Forever - Justin Bieber (& Justin Bieber's ghostwriter)
2o. The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly

Books 21 - 30:
21. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
22. Hell House - Richard Matheson
23. I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
September
24. The Art Detective - Philip Mould
25. House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
October
26. On Blondes - Joanna Pitman
27. Sex with the Queen - Eleanor Herman
November
28. Rabbit, Run - John Updike
29. When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro
December
3o. Tell-All - Chuck Palahniuk

Books 31 - 40:
31. The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
4o.

Books 41 - 50:
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
5o.

Books 51 - 60:
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
6o.

Books 61 - 7o:
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
7o.

Books 71 - 75+:
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.

When am I allowed to comment? :)

Mmmm, I'm thinking now. Welcome! :)

Ha, I should've known SOMEONE would try to jump the gun on me. ;) Thanks for the welcome, you guys. I'm psyched for the new year and new list of books to devour!

I've read:


Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (4 stars)
Like most novels with ambiguous endings, this one has had me thinking over the past few days. It's a haunted house story, in the sense that the narrative follows a young governess as she moves into a country estate to be faced with the pair of ghosts that haunt the two children in her care, but it's by no means the typical "chills & thrills"-type horror novel. There's little scary about these supernatural beings but the fact that they seem bent on corrupting the children in some way, continuing the negative influence they'd had while alive. An influence towards what, one wonders, as there are implications but it's never made explicit. In fact, the majority of the novel is concerned with this sense of taboo - wrongs so unspeakable but titillating the characters can only speak around them in innuendo, trying to force each other into revelation first. I'd definitely recommend giving this a read, but expect (and embrace!) the loose ends.


Alice Sebold's The Almost Moon (2.5 stars)
Disclaimer: I'm not sure why I read this, as I'm not a fan of Sebold's fiction, but somehow I ended up with this novel in-hand.
As is revealed on the novel's first page, the narrator kills her mother, and the rest of the book's nonlinear timeline is concerned with the events leading up to and following this action. It's ironic that Philip Roth is name-dropped by the protagonist at one point, as I'd call Helen the female equivalent of one of his own characters - white, middle-aged, middle-class, and dissatisfied with her life and the direction it's taken. It's not hard to identify with her, but it is difficult to particularly care what comes out of her self-manufactured mess. Yes, suburban life can be hell - especially with mental illness thrown into the mix - but it all feels like retread ground to me.

Welcome, Krys. Look forward to hearing about what you're reading.

Thanks, Linda!

I forgot to post this earlier, but a friend and I have decided to try to read 25 classics-we-are-ashamed-to-not-have-read-yet together this year. Here's the list of 24 we came up with last week, in no particular order:

The Turn of the Screw - James
The Age of Innocence - Wharton
Maurice - Forster
Emma - Austen
Candide - Voltaire
Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
Pygmalion - Shaw
Mrs Dalloway - Woolf
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
Lolita - Nabokov
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Kesey
Brideshead Revisited - Waugh
The House of Seven Gables - Hawthorne
Jude the Obscure - Hardy
Sister Carrie - Dreiser
The Stranger - Camus
A Doll's House - Ibsen
Rabbit, Run - Updike
Brighton Rock - Greene
Main Street - Lewis
The Adventures of Augie March - Bellow

And with that list - star!

Yikes!! I think I've read only 7 or 8 of those.

There's a Jane Austen readathon around here someplace. Starts January 15th. First one is Sense and Sensibility though Emma is in there, down the road.

Haha, thanks, Liz!

And thanks for the tip, Linda. I'll look for that thread. I find I've been spoiled by all the literature classes I've taken over the years; I can't read a classic without someone to discuss it with.

Hi, Krys

As a fellow Seattlite I thought I'd give your thread a star and lurk around a bit. Let me know if you would be interested in our RL LibraryThingers book group...meets second Mondays. Send me a PM if you'd like some details.

Good luck with your ambitious reading plans!

Hello and welcome to our friendly, chatty group. I hope you like it here. I'm Linda and this is my fourth year with the group..It is a wonderful experience!

>20 maggie1944:
Ooh, I'm always on the lookout for more RL readers to connect with! PM sent, reply eagerly anticipated. :D

>21 Whisper1:
Thanks, Linda! This'll be my third year doing this challenge, but hopefully my first of being more consistently involved and busy chatting and threadstalking - in the past I've been too busy to do much more than occasionally update my own thread, and where's the fun in that?

Got your PM, and answered it. Hope this might work out for us all.

Krys, I think I remember trying to make some Santa Thing suggestions for you, such as for post Civil War true crime, if I'm remembering right. I recall thinking of something I thought you'd enjoy, only to find that you'd already read it.

For the Thrill of It about the Loeb/Leopold kidnapping/murder of Bobby Franks was one such book. I enjoy reading Chicago-related books and want to read that one this year.

I read For the Thrill of It in October, actually, and really enjoyed it. The Leopold&Loeb case is an interesting one, and Baatz's writing is very engaging.

I'll probably lurk around here a bit as several titles on your list are on one of my mental lists and I've read a half dozen or so on there. If you're trying to ease yourself into the beating that reading classics can sometimes be I'd recommend A Doll's House (it's short) or A Tale of Two Cities (my favourite Dickens).

Thanks for the recommendation! I already have a copy of A Tale of Two Cities lying around somewhere, so that would be an easy one to begin with. My friend and I were thinking we might leave Ibsen till later for exactly that reason, actually - it might be a good way to battle the post-Tolstoy fatigue we're both predicting, haha.

Hi, Kris!
You have a great list there. I am definitely wanting to read both The Age of Innocence and Emma this year. I think you will like Anna Karenina. I like your 25 Classics in 2011 Challenge. I really like to read the classics, too!
--BJ

Krys, I do not know if you have discovered it yet or not, but the Austenathon thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/104774. We are starting with Sense and Sensibility and reading the books in publication order.

Thanks, BJ! I'm looking forward to diving into the list in earnest this year and expanding my literary horizons - especially The Age of Innocence, which I read half of back in 2007 before getting distracted by life and never going back. I hate having those loose ends hanging, so I'll be glad to finally have read the whole thing. :)

Thank you for the link, Stasia! I'll definitely keep an eye on the Austenathon threads, though I don't think I'll join you guys until July and Emma.

To catch me up on my Early Review commitments:


Kirby Larson's The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis (4 stars)
I loved the Dear America historical journal series growing up and had been looking forward to this one as a quick, light trip down Memory Lane - my expectations were fairly low, as I don't tend to gravitate towards the YA genre or the contrived pseudo-diary format or late additions to an established collection. That said, I really enjoyed this. Set in the 1940s, late in World War II and following Pearl Harbor, the book follows a middle school-aged girl as she corresponds with her Naval officer brother and moves with her father, a pastor, as he follows his Japanese congregation to their internment camp in Idaho. The historical details are interspersed with slice-of-life subplots like Piper's crush on a classmate and developing interest in photography, and the book manages to be fun and age-appropriate while bringing home the injustice of Japanese Internment and providing takeaway themes and a message that can easily be applied to contemporary conflicts.
I would definitely recommend this to a young reader. It's well-written and aesthetically beautiful, with its purple-colored hardback format and foil cover detailing - a great addition to one's collection.

# 16 Whoa, krysbrezinski! That's quite a list you've got there. Despite reading classics most of the time, I've read just 6 books from your list. When I love reading the classics and there's so many books from the past to read how can I make time for contemporary fiction? I'd stick to my classics for now, I think!

#31: Nice review, Krys!

I had lunch with a friend yesterday, and he brought me a Christmas gift: Oreo, by Fran Ross (1974). I hadn't heard of it before, but according to the back cover synopsis it's "an uproariously funny novel about relations between African Americans and Jews." I'm cautiously intrigued, since this friend of mine tends to have good taste (as in "similar to mine" - we both number A Confederacy of Dunces and White Teeth among our favorite novels), and I've been wanting to read more works by non-white American writers.

Now I feel guilty, though, since I didn't bring a gift for him. I guess I could always mail something for him to receive Wednesday when his campus mail room opens for the semester. What is the question, though - our common interests include satire/social commentary, Asian studies (particularly post-Meiji Japan), and pop music. The last books we exchanged were American Psycho (mine), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (his), and 31 Songs (mine).

Books I am considering:
Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis (He may have read this already, and it feels like a cop-out to repeat an author that I've already given him.)
Sailor Song - Ken Kesey (Points for being a reference to the History of Zen Buddhism class we took together a few years ago.)
The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

Read for January's Arts and Antiquities TIOLI Challenge:


Frank Wynne's I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger (4 stars)
I made the happy mistake of following someone's link to BookCloseOuts.com on Black Friday in November and this was among the assortment of nine vaguely-intriguing books I picked up for $20. Having literally judged this book by its cover in deciding whether to buy it, I wasn't sure what to expect.

What I got was an examination of the life and work (legitimate and not-so-legitimate) of Han van Meegeren, the Dutch artist best known for having successfully forged and sold at least eight paintings attributed to Vermeer and other 17th century painters, only confessing once accused of treason for having sold a "national treasure" to Nazi commander and art collector Hermann Goring. The author does his best to provide some insight into van Meegeren's motivations, portraying him as a classical painter embittered and disillusioned with the art world post-Picasso and out for vengeance, but also as an almost compulsive liar, reveling in his deception and unable to stop "committing masterpieces" once he'd begun - shockingly easy to do, according to the author, who comments extensively on the subjectivity of art criticism and difficulty of establishing authenticity. I was most interested in the techniques van Meegeren had invented to create 300-year-old paintings in the 20th century, and Wynne spends a satisfying amount of time going into the issues the forger faced and how he managed to innovate around those problems.

Despite having read The Art Forger's Handbook a few years ago, I had this idea that art forgery was similar to currency forgery, in that art forgers create identical copies of masterworks - this isn't true, for the most part. Art forgers mimic the style and themes of masters, yes, but they create brand new works to be "discovered" and added to an artist's catalog. And if they do it well enough, according to Wynne and evidenced by the experience of Han van Meegeren, the forgery might hang on a museum wall as genuine forever.

#34: Oooh, my vote is for The Haunting of Hill House - *such* a good & creepy book!

Amber - yeah, that's a favorite of mine, and I think the ambiguous nature of the hauntings would appeal to him. And, selfishly, I'd really enjoy discussing it with him. ;P

Agh, I forgot about the readathon! I'll be cracking open that copy of Oreo right now, then.

5:05PM PST
1. Where are you reading from today? Home, barricaded in my bedroom with as many blankets and pillows as could be gathered.
2. Three facts about me: I am currently fighting off a hideous cold/sore throat combo to the best of my ability; I've decided that now that I'm 21, I have no further use for birthdays; and I am now firmly possessed of the belief that it only rains on days I forget to carry my umbrella.
3. How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? AN INFINITE AMOUNT. No really, my TBR pile is massive and since I'm home they're mostly all at my fingertips. I've decided not to plan past the book I'm reading now, so I'll decide what comes next after that.
4. Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on threads)? I'd like to read at least one book straight through, from start to finish.

Oooh, I love Dada! Was my favourite period when I was an art student!

I've been reading: Oreo - Fran Ross
Books finished: 0
Pages read: 42
Reading time: 60
Posting time: 5

Total books read: 0
Total pages read: 42
Total time read: 01:00
Total time posting: 00:05

I hope you enjoy your Readathon, Krys!

I, uhh, may have gotten distracted mid-hour 2. I got 7 more pages into my book before my sister wanted to watch some BBC Sherlock - and who can turn that down? Anyway, I'm back to reading now, for the time being - only 6 hours later.

May have gotten distracted? Seems like a sure bet to me, Krys!

Haha, I think so. At least I got a little over an hour's worth of reading in! :P

I recently finished a book of Vermeer's wonderful paintings and thus Frank Wynne's I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger looks very good.

It was nice having you among us at the read-a-thon Krys! You do know there's another one organized by Ellie this Mon-Tues? I hope you're feeling better, but if you're not, what better way to pass the time in bed? Other than BBC Sherlock I guess... ;-)

>45 Whisper1:
With that background, you'd probably very much enjoy I Was Vermeer, Linda! It's an interesting look at Vermeer's critical reception and the way critics mythologized his work and life story after the artist's death, making it easy for forgers to capitalize on.

>46 Smiler69:
Thank you for all the hard work you put into the read-a-thon, Ilana! I had a lot of fun, and will definitely try to put in at least a couple hours of reading - not Sherlock - time on Monday. Since I have class Tuesday, maybe I can count my dry Biology textbook reading towards my pagecount. ;P

Sometimes my feelings can only be expressed through gif. I'm currently
a) experiencing the consequences of taking a dose of NyQuil instead of DayQuil by mistake.
b) listening to the expository first chapters of Casino Royale, which are so far failing to hold my attention.
c) finally getting around to the task of adding the bulk of my ebook collection to my LT.

Dull. I hope everyone else is having a more exciting weekend.

#48: finally getting around to the task of adding the bulk of my ebook collection to my LT.

I need to do that one of these centuries too!

Finally got my ebooks caught up to the rest of my library! Now my TBR pile is even more intimidating. xP

Well, I finished Casino Royale.



I'll be back with a review once I've gathered my thoughts, but suffice to say I'm unimpressed.

Hello Krys, just commenting on your impressive list of classics you hope to get to this year. I've only read three of those (and have a couple more in my TBR mountain), and recently seen a production of The Dolls House too.

I love the sleepy-head gif in message 48! I know that feeling...

I look forward to you joining the Austen read when we get to Emma. I may not actually re-read that one this year, as I read it fairly recently for the second time, but I'll probably follow the comments.

>52 gennyt:
Hi, Genny! Thanks for stopping by. I have to say I'm really excited about getting into that list of classics - I've read a few of those authors before, but it's embarrassing how many I don't think I'd ever have encountered if I didn't go out of my way to do it like this.

I'm looking forward to getting to Emma - and having a built-in discussion group is really amping up my excitement! That's probably the book I'm most looking forward to on the list of classics, next to The House of Seven Gables (I'm a sucker for a haunted house).

Disclaimer: This was an assigned read for books1001@livejournal, and not something I probably would have chosen to read myself, as I was not raised with the James Bond films and have no particular love for the character (though I have seen and enjoyed the Daniel Craig reboot of the series).

Second disclaimer, in gif format:



Ian Fleming's Casino Royale (2 stars)

This is the first novel of Fleming's "Double-O" series, and an outdated relic really only relevant for James Bond's current status as cultural touchstone/film icon - this sleuth/spy genre and era has many better offerings for a "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die"-type list. The characters are at worst caricatures, at best stereotypical: scheming Jews, lying commie scum, hysterical women, and Bond - James Bond, the most obvious author avatar/Gary Stu to ever grace a page. Paragraphs are devoted to his excellent taste (overly specific descriptions of his wardrobe, his vehicles, his alcoholic beverages) and superior skills and judgment - and it's all absolutely serious. At least the original films had some campy fun with it all; as-is it's alternately tiresome and nauseating.

Bond, a new (but already tested and established as one of M's Good Old Boys) 00 agent, is - of course - the best card player British Intelligence has and as such is sent to the titular casino in order to outplay Le Chiffre, a KGB spy attempting to earn $50 million dollars to replace stolen Russian funds. The reasons this Enemy Of The State couldn't just be assassinated are handwaved away, of course.

Bond is, for some unexplained reason, paired with another agent for this job: a woman, great. Our hero is displeased - "have they warned you this is spy work, not a slumber party? Did your superior tell you not to go falling in love with me, what with your womanly feelings and breasts and all?" he asks (not in those words, but he does). In his defense, I'd be displeased, too - Vesper Lynd really is deadweight as far as the spywork of the novel goes.

Gambling happens. Bond almost loses, but a deus ex machina saves his ass and then he wins big and something about a gun in a crowded casino and a clever ruse and something about Bond's buttocks something something and he wins the game and a check for the millions. Being The Best At Everything, he hides the check in a secret place no room-searching enemy agents will ever find and heads out to get to wooing that female agent whose professionalism he was so worried about earlier.

Of course, being useless, she is immediately kidnapped. Bond races to the rescue with much eye-rolling (his - and mine, actually) only to discover that he's been lured into a trap. Le Chiffre wants his money, there's this infamous scene involving a bottomless chair and a carpetbeater, and suffice to say Bond will not be broken by any torture - he loves his country too damned much to yield under pressure. Another deus ex machina intervenes just before he can be tortured to death (not surrender, mind you) and we flash forward to Bond recovering in a hospital. He reveals his super secret hiding place, squares things up with Mother Britain, and the story really should have ended about thirty pages before this point.

No such luck! Bond heads off on leave with the woman he's suddenly ~*~in love~*~ with. There's sex, marriage proposals are contemplated, but Vesper seems to be hiding something from our hero (she has private phone calls, I mean who does that?) so he nurtures both the mistrust/contempt he's been feeling from Day One's "you're making me work with a woman?!" and the deep/pure love together for a while. Of course, despite his best intentions, some things are not meant to last.

FINALLY: Bond comes home one day from doing manly things, Vesper is dead, there's a note, she was working for the enemy all along, blah blah blah, her flightly womanly nature made her love a Russian man, love for Bond brought her loyalties back to Britain, blah blah, Bond calls M all "that bitch was a double agent, yo! I told you women can't spy! Now I have angst and am justified in treating women like shit for the rest of my series!"

Oh, I'm sorry. What he actually says is: "The bitch is dead now."

Frankly, the recent film adaptation of Casino Royale, for all its own flaws, features more nuanced characterisation and a more well-developed plot than this book. I don't think I've ever before recommended a movie over its novel counterpart, but I guess there truly is a first for everything. This book gets two stars because the writing is decent, if nothing else, and the gambling sequence did hold my attention.

Funny!
--BJ

Very funny review. And I appreciate your NOT adding to my TBR shelves.

I now condemn you to reading the entire series so that I may have the pleasure of reading your superior summaries. You may continue.

I'll be back to read your review!

Ha! Thanks, guys - blame my anthropology professor and her tendency to drone this morning. There was nothing else to do but write screeds about awful books in my note margins!

Nice review of Casino Royale - I would say it is definitely the worst Bond book (I read them all when I was a teenager, which was a long time ago, but I still remember thinking that), so you might want to try another one, although there are so many books out there, maybe not.......

Great review of Casino Royale, Krys. I can now safely skip this one forever!

Catching up on reviews, after Monday/Tuesday's readathon. These are the two books I finished that day:


Fran Ross' Oreo (two and a half stars)

This one is satirical, something I'd compare most closely to John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. Young Christine (Oreo) is born to an African American woman and a Jewish American man (whose coupling caused quite a bit of conflict within their families), raised by her maternal grandmother until the day she comes of age and ventures off on a parody of the Greek-mythical Hero's Quest. It's goofy, deliberately odd, and was a lot of fun to read. I'm not sure I'd recommend it - for this genre, Toole's work is better, but if you enjoyed Dunces and are after more in that vein, give this a look.


Emma Donoghue's Room (five stars)

I downloaded this out of curiosity after seeing it mentioned several times on other LibraryThing member threads, not knowing really what to expect...and then I started reading it yesterday and found myself unable to put it down. I read it straight through - there was no question of slowing down or taking any breaks. The book is absolutely riveting, and the interesting choice of narrating from the perspective of a five-year-old, which I'd been suspicious of, is carried off near-perfectly.

The story is that of a boy, Jack, and his mother, who live their lives trapped in a 15x15' room. The narrative softens the horror of their situation somewhat, information all filtered through the perceptions of this child who was born in captivity and knows nothing different (for example: "Scream" is introduced to the reader as a game Jack and his mother play together; obviously it is actually a daily attempt to yell for help). The novel follows Jack as he and his mother attain their freedom (reluctantly, in his case) and he adapts to the outside world he'd never before imagined, growing and striving for something close to normalcy.

Room is powerful, for what it is - I found it very moving, and I'll definitely be recommending it to anyone who won't mind the disturbing themes and references inherent to this subject matter.

I loved Room when I read it, so I am glad to see the book has found another fan.

Room is definitely my favorite read of the year so far! I haven't been that engaged by a novel in a while.

>60 JanetinLondon:
Janet - Ha, I think I'll take your word that the series improves post-Casino Royale; I don't think I could take any more Bond. It's good to know Fleming's writing gets better, though - he had nowhere to go but up!

Kyrs, I loved your review of Room. I have been debating whether I'd like to read it. As I hang out with kids, one of whom is 5, I wasn't sure I would be willing to go into that world. Disturbing because of knowing that such events are really not beyond the pale.

None of the three (currently reading the fourth) books I've read so far this year have really engaged me, and I've been disappointed. But I have Room on my TBR shelves, so I think it may be next up!

Hi There

I'm compiling a list of birthdays of our group members. If you haven't done so already, would you mind stopping by this thread and posting yours.

Thanks.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/105833

I read Casino Royale with a crime fiction reading group that used to meet at a London crime fiction bookshop (which sadly closed years ago). I think it's very unlikely that I'll try the rest of the series!

BWA-HAHAHA, I love your review of Casino Royale! I'm pretty sure it's always been considered one of Fleming's worst. I couldn't believe they were going to make a modern film out of it, a few years back, and I honestly didn't even really like that new movie. Oh well. I'm also fairly certain that the women continue to be useless, but perhaps in a more entertaining way...? LOL.

Hello and Happy early Birthday greetings.

I hope the 31st is a special day for you.

As is my usual MO, I kind of dropped off the face of the literary earth for a few months, there! This happens to me every year around summertime, for some reason - I just lose interest in sitting down with a book for a while.


I'm back now, though. A road trip to Chicago this month got me finishing up Devil in the White City, which I enjoyed (besides some minor eye-rolling at Larson's occasional indulgence in purple prose); the juxtaposition of the organization of The World's Fair with H. H. Holmes' serial killings made for an engaging read. The author was obviously captivated by this period in Chicago's history, and his passion was infectious.


For my carmate's benefit on the road I did a dramatic reading of Justin Bieber's "100% official!" "autobiography," First Step 2 Forever. It was as hilarious as one would expect, and weirdly endearing at parts. (He seems to feel things very intensely - after failing his driver's permit exam he walks home in the rain screaming "I hate you"s at passing cars, and there's also a section in the book where he refers to critics of his "One Less Lonely Girl" music video as "puppy haters who don't care about girls' feelings." Like I said, hilarious.)


The Book of Lost Things was a mixed bag. I really liked the concept ("stories come alive with the telling" seemed to be the central theme, as a child is pulled into the world of his collections of fairy tales after his mother dies and father remarries) and the twisted revisions of fairy tales were intriguing, but the narrative just wasn't as successful as it could've been. Connolly started relying on point-of-view shifts to the villains by midway through the book to create tension, which just wound up being clumsy and making the ending far too obvious.
I'd still recommend this book to anyone interested in Gregory Maguire-esque fairy tale rewrites, and I'd pick up another Connolly novel myself maybe two or three down the line from this one.


Cloud Atlas was incredible. I didn't particularly know what to expect when I picked it up, but what I got was so engaging and exciting I could hardly put it down for the day and a half it took to finish. I knew the novel would consist of 6 distinct stories; I didn't realize they were all not only nested (each breaks off partway and is returned to after the conclusion of the story that proceeds it, like so: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1) but that every story takes place in the same universe but moves the reader forward several decades in time until the inevitable post-apocalyptic future and each part plays a role - whether as a set of letters, movie script, novel, recording, etc - in the plot of the following story.

I'm probably not explaining that well at all. Suffice to say I am very excited about this book and have been yelling at anyone within reach to pick up a copy. My only real criticism of the book would be regarding the endings of some of the stories, particularly the 6th - as much as I'm in love with the format and design of this book and the details carried through, the plot of the novel was obviously Mitchell's secondary/tertiary concern. The experience of reading the book and discovering its intricacies was rewarding, but if I had to outline solely the plot(s) I'm not sure I could say it really "went anywhere," and I don't think this novel would particularly reward a second reading.

Now I'm working on The Yiddish Policeman's Union and might go back to my art-related crimes kick next with The Art Detective, which I haven't really looked at yet but am excited about based on my judging it by its cover. :P

I am with you on Cloud Atlas! It is incredible! I have read the book twice now and I got more out of it the second time around than I did the first. I imagine when I get around to reading it again that I will get still more out of it.

You may want to check out this dramatic reading of selections from Justin Bieber's autobiography. :D

>73 alcottacre:
The more I think about Cloud Atlas, the more I love it! I keep realizing new things about the way the stories connect and the novel as a whole. It's a very well-crafted book.

>74 MickyFine:
That's the video that inspired my own dramatic reading ambitions, actually! Biebs' referenced love-affair with dairy products carries through the entire book.

By the way, I have changed my username.

#76: To what, Krys? I may never find you again if you do not tell me!

The Devil in the White City was one of our reads for last years Halloween list. Glad you liked it.

Weird that it's not showing up as changed yet! I'm now okrysmastree. :)

Maybe logging out and back in again will have helped. Testing...

There we go!

#80: Ah, OK!

I love a good haunted house novel so I picked up Richard Matheson's Hell House yesterday, having been told it's a classic of the subgenre - though looking back, I'm not sure I could say why. It's a cheap, pulpy knockoff of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House with the sex (mostly lesbian, and all coerced) and violence gratuitously amped up and a happy ending tacked on at the end.

I think the most obnoxious part was the writing of the female characters (Shouldn't there be a point where I cease to feel shocked and betrayed by this kind of thing? It's not like I haven't read retro pulp fiction before - hi, Casino Royale) - Florence, the sex kitten I mean medium, loses her mind in the house after falling in love with a ghost, being raped by a decaying corpse and then a giant wooden crucifix (and this is after several other incidents of sexual attack) and commits suicide. Edith is the "frigid," nervous, disturbingly codependent one with more neuroses than any therapist would know what to do with and no understanding of the supernatural whatsoever, despite her being married to an "expert" and the narrative's claim she accompanies him on every job. Some great moments in Edith's story, all of which shine so well on their own I won't even comment:

She'd face anything rather than be alone. She'd never told Lionel how close she'd come to a mental breakdown during those three weeks he'd been gone in 1962. It would only have distressed him, and he'd needed all his concentration for the work he was doing. So she'd lied and sounded cheerful on the telephone the three times he'd called - and, alone, she'd wept and shaken, taken tranquilizers, hadn't slept or eaten, lost thirteen pounds, fought off compulsions to end it all. Met him at the airport finally, pale and smiling, told him that she'd had the flu.

and

Edith tensed as Lionel wet two fingers and crimped out the wick of his candle, Fischer blew his out. Only hers remained, a tiny, pulsing aura of light in the vastness of the hall; the fire had gone out an hour earlier. Edith was unable to make herself extinguish it Barrett reached out and did it for her.

and

She closed her eyes, a look of self-reproach on her face. Had she ever wanted sex with him? She made a pained sound. Would she have even married him if he hadn't been twenty years her senior and left virtually impotent by the polio? ... Just because my mother told me sex is evil and degrading, do I have to fear it all my life?

and

He looked toward the door. Edith was taking rather a long time. He frowned. He didn't want to stand again. Still, he mustn't leave her alone for more than seconds.

And that's only scratching the surface - I think I muttered "Get a grip, Edith!" a dozen times reading through this. She's of course terrified of sex, so once she's in the house she begins to be disturbed by lesbian fantasies and "sleepwalking" episodes where she attempts to seduce the other man working in the house. She's sexually assaulted by Florence while the other woman is possessed, and ultimately winds up surviving the house but only because she follows direction well.

Did I mention that both men remain fairly cool and collected and relatively undisturbed by visions throughout the experience? They have to fend off Edith's "sleepwalking" come-ons, of course, but besides that they don't endure much.

I don't get it! How is this such a classic? Besides all the characterization issues, the plot itself is dull and cliched - characters terrorized and clueless for 260 pages, eureka! moment at the end (with a ~science-y~ deus ex machina) that ties everything up neatly. I like Matheson's TV work, but this was horrible...and probably doesn't explain why I just put three more of his books on my Nook for skimming this afternoon. Maybe I Am Legend or What Dreams May Come will have more to inspire me. And at least I'm going in prepared for the flawed character-building this time.

#82: I am not touching that book wtih a 20-foot pole. Ick.

I do hope your next read is a better one. I will add that I did enjoy I Am Legend so I please give that one a try.

And Miss Alcott is not much of a horror fan, so that's pretty high praise. I just loaned my copy of I am Legend to a co-worker; my copy had several short stories in it, most of which were very enjoyable. You really should try it; it has a significantly different angle on the whole vampire/zombie story, I think. And we have 7 Steps to Midnight on the Halloween list this year.

I'm a couple chapters into I Am Legend and enjoying it much more.

I found I Am Legend much more enjoyable than Hell House, possibly because the main character spends the majority of the book in solitude, so besides some yearnings there really isn't the opportunity to get into the kind of raunch and gratuitous perversion that made Hell House so hard to get through. And since the main (male) character is alone most of the time, Matheson doesn't have quite the opportunity to write horrible female characters (he gets it in towards the end with a handful of cliches and stereotypes, but since it's not pervasive I couldn't work up the same irritation that came so easy to me reading Hell House :P).

It's definitely a book I would recommend to anyone with an interest in horror or specifically vampires in fiction, as the novel has a very interesting take on the myth. I wouldn't recommend this for characterization or plot; from what I've observed, Matheson works entirely in bland stock characters who go nowhere in terms of personal growth or storyline. It's fine for a novel like I Am Legend, though, where the premise is the entire point, and the characters expounding on it are mere props. In the case of this book, unlike Hell House, the premise was more than enough to carry me through happily to the end.

Glad you liked that one better.

I am glad to see that you enjoyed I Am Legend, Krys.

So much for the subject line of this post! I'm very behind at this point - I'll maybe finish Kafka on the Shore by New Years', which would bring me to 32 for the year, but I probably won't. This is the fewest books I've read in a while; I guess I was too caught up in academics and my new job to get much done.

Oh well, 2012 is a new year!

I didn't do much more than you this year, but I too will try again next year. My strategy will be to list every picture book, and short childrens' book, and all the YA books I read, too. I do hang with kids so it is not totally cheating. hahahahah