I had high hopes for March, but as I am now basically competent at my job, I find myself expected to "know the literature" and "produce data", activities that limit my reading time. And so, March was a bit of quiet month for reading...I"ll have to work hard to catch up in April!
22. Great House Nicole Krauss This book makes you work for it, but I think it pays off in the end. It is a lovely, winding meditation on memory and permanence.
21. The Children's Book A. S. Byatt. I should say that I rarely finish a book that I am not enjoying while reading. Unless it is for PSBC or one of those good-for-you, suffer through it classics, if I start to feel like the book is becoming a chore, I usually put it down. So any book I finished is one that I felt deserved to be read all the way through, and that is an endorsement by itself. That said. This book was SO LONG. and had SO MANY CHARACTERS and SO MANY STORYLINES that I wondered if it had been edited at all. Parts were magical and engaging, while others seriously dragged. It took me over a week to read (part of the reason for my slow progress this month). A week! I read books in hours or days, not weeks!
20. Room Emma Donaghue This was more like it. I got the book from the library on a saturday, came in, sat down in my reading chair, opened it and didn't get up until I turned the last page two hours later. Excellent
19. The Lady Matador's Hotel Cristina Garcia I've loved Garcia since Biffy and I read Dreaming in Cuban for PSBC last year. This one didn't blow my socks off like that one did, but it is a nice quick little read.
18. The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall I liked this much more than I thought I would. Going through it I really didn't know what to make of it, but at the end I thought "huh, that was really good" It's an offbeat but sweet book about grief and love
17. Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee Sort of the opposite-a brisk engaging read, but at the end I wasn't sure I really liked it
Previously
16. The Wordy Shipmates Sarah Vowell
15. The Warmth of Other Suns: The epic story of America's great Migration, Isabelle Wilkerson
14. Little Bee Chris Cleave
13 Fool Christopher Moore
12. A Dirty Job Christopher Moore
10. Lolita Vladimir Nabakov
9. Super Sad True Love Story Gary Shteyngart
8. The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova.
7.Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood.
6. Faithful Place, Tana French.
5. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read them, Elif Batuman.
4. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri.
3. The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell.
2. Bite Me, Christopher Moore.
1. Devil in the White City Eric Larson.
2 comments:
i read Room a while back!
the breastfeeding was creepy.
essential to the story, but creepy.
i liked it though, because i like things that are about suffering.
I loved year of the flood! How was Lolita? Also, I kind of got annoyed with the characters in the 'Bite Me' series. I skimmed the second one and just couldn't bring myself to read the third one, which is a shame because the writing is actually good. Oh well!
Johanna
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