finished in 2003

Submitted by taryn on Wed, 01/15/2003 - 12:41
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  • october
  • the boys of my youth by jo ann beard - wonderful collection of essays recommended to me by my grad mentor. a bit lighter in tone than mary karr but every bit as memorable a voice. beard has a way of capturing both childhood and adulthood unforgettably. highest recommendations.
  • september
  • as nature made him: the boy who was raised as a girl by john colapinto - another class assigned book but something i'd have read on my own. it's the biography of an amazing person: Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer--his botched circumcision at eight months and the maniacal doctor who convinced his parents that gender identity was all about nurture. needless to say it's a disturbing expose of seriously flawed medical theories, but also a book that reveals the strength of the human spirit. i highly recommend.
  • august
  • dancing in my nuddy-pants by louise rennison - fourth in the georgia nicolson YA diary series and equally as hilarious as the rest. (i needed that after the last one i read!)
  • hiroshima by john hersey - i can't imagine how this work must have affected people when it came out in 1946 in the new yorker. the nonfiction narrative follows six survivors of the atomic bomb through the day of the bombing and the days that followed. i have to admit i read it for a class and probably wouldn't have chosen to focus on this intense subject on my own, but i'm glad i did. there are quite a few images in it that will stay with me forever. highly recommended for people who want to examine the topic from a personal angle.
  • july
  • summer birds by penelope farmer - here's a book i loved as a young girl and i wanted to reread it to remember why. it's by the same author who wrote charlotte sometimes of cure-song fame but i didn't know that back then. i just loved the idea of a mysterious boy teaching all the school children how to fly...
  • aquamarine by alice hoffman - this was a magical story about two young friends who find a mermaid in the rundown pool at a community beach.... it was cute but a little innocuous for my taste--i like my YA with a little edge.
  • june
  • coraline by neil gaiman - i wish this book had been around when i was a youngster... it's got that classic gaiman balance of bizarre and spooky with a ton of heart behind it. it almost has a "lesson" to it, but it's not given in a pedantic way. plus, the imagery is completely imaginative and his use of marbles made me happy (since i'm a huge marble collector and creator of marble jewelry)... and i'm pleased i just found his american gods book at a library booksale--can't wait to dig in!
  • now & then by frederick buechner - the second in his autobiographical series, i found this one much more explanatory about the man, frederick buechner. he spoke in detail about the balance between his minister-self and writer-self, and i enjoyed finding out about the events and emotions that precipitated his novels. at one point he described his books as "too religious for secular audiences and too secular for religious ones"... but i for one, find the mixture extremely authentic.
  • may
  • "M" is for malice by sue grafton - grafton's back on target with this one. kinsey's work gets her emotionally involved, there were some spiritual/supernatural undertones and it kept me guessing to the end, plus there were parallels that kept her thinking about her own family ties, and we saw the bittersweet return of her sometimes love, robert dietz. i can't believe there are only a few left and i'll be caught up and waiting for her to *write* the rest...
  • swann by carol shields - this novel was a wonderful surprise (the author is a pulitzer prize winner but i can't say i'd heard of her before). in a nutshell, it's a "literary mystery" about a canadian poetess who was published and gained some renown only after her husband violently murdered her and then himself. the structure of the book is what i found the most intriguing: it's made of 4 personal narratives by the people trying to piece together the leftover shreds of who mary swann was. the final portion is written in screenplay form and the four characters come together at a symposium... a little experimental but it worked. it wasn't so much the mystery aspect that got me (i solved it way before the characters did) but her writing style. it's reminiscent of milan kundera, in that the characters are presented as simple and uncomplicated, but what lies underneath is really quite philosophical. swann makes you think about the value of scholarly criticism, how well people really know someone else, and how much they actually reveal about themselves.
  • "L" is for lawless by sue grafton - either grafton is faltering or i'm getting better. i had this one figured out way before kinsey did (and i'm not usually the first to figure things out). not only that but the plot didn't ring as true for me for a couple reasons:
    Spoiler: Highlight to view
    1.) i didn't get why kinsey would stay involved when she wasn't getting paid, even if she did start it as a favor to henry; and 2.) there wasn't even a partial resolution at the end--the "crooks" seem to get away and the family who she was originally trying to help were never even mentioned again.
    i can't say i didn't enjoy the ride, but it seemed a bit more careless than her usual fare.
  • "K" is for killer by sue grafton - this was the perfect story for the middle of the series, i thought... the reader-bond with kinsey is definitely necessary for the ending not to backfire, and it was a tightly woven plot that kept us on the edge. this one really could make a great movie, actually. go grafton!
  • "J" is for judgment by sue grafton - another late night to finish this--i swear this woman has total control over me when i'm involved in her books... i really like how she revealed more of kinsey's background, and i hope there's more of that to come. wish i had K here on vacation with me! *sigh*
  • "I" is for innocent by sue grafton - stayed up til 2:30 finishing this book... (at some point near the end you just have to find out what happens and they're difficult to put down.) kind of an interesting twist...
    Spoiler: Highlight to view
    where the original person suspected is starting to look blameless but then really is the killer...
    but i have to admit i was hoping for more. as far as it fits into the whole series, though, i do like how grafton shakes things up for kinsey so her confidence isn't quite what it was--sometimes i wonder why she keeps doing these jobs when she either gets shot or beat up or jailed or... she must crave the excitement. anyway, looking forward to "J."
  • april
  • sailing alone around the room: new and selected poems by billy collins - quickly becoming one of my favorite poets, billy collins has a way of stating ordinary things in an extraordinary way: he has a poem about stepping into a painting at a museum, one about a town filled with all the students he's ever taught, one trying to make sense of the lyrics of three blind mice, one about stuff people write in the margins of books... and he has some wonderful titles, too, including "another reason why i don't keep a gun in the house," taking off emily dickinson's clothes," "man listening to disc," and "shoveling snow with buddha." i can't encourage people enough to pick up a volume of this one-time US poet laureate and dive in.
  • angus, thongs and full-frontal snogging by louise rennison - finally a book that makes me laugh out loud on every other page. so what if it's about a fourteen year old girl? call it odd, but it's way better than the pathetic stuff i've read so far this month (grafton excluded)...
  • i don't know how she does it: the life of kate reddy, working mother by allison pearson - if it were possible to crossbreed perky british bridget jones's diary and that depressing book about motherhood i just read called tilt, i think you would get allison pearson's book. there are humorous moments--emails between girlfriends, a nice comeuppance prank, and ally mcbeal-esque visions of "the court of motherhood"--but i still found it a bit on the bleak side at least 2/3 of the way to the end. maybe this is because i don't yet know what motherhood is like--let alone working motherhood--but i'm hoping it's a dramatization to prove a point. there definitely is a point... but the problem is, i don't know which group it's supposed to comfort.
  • 17: a novel in prose poems by liz rosenberg - i'm usually all for angst-ridden stories about high school girls, including the pitfalls of first love and the inadequacies of parenting skills to soften the blows of adolescence... but this book was just plain depressing. the style was unique, but there seemed to be so little light emanating from the main character, and so little joy in the "happy" ending. i can appreciate a certain amount of realism, but i hope there are more redemptive books out there for the youth of today. (do i sound old or what?!)
  • "H" is for homicide by sue grafton - well grafton manages to add a new twist to kinsey millhone's character by putting her undercover, but it's definitely not your typical alphabet mystery. it allows millhone to behave in ways she never would before (ie, costume) and also delves more into her childhood--via both recollections and meeting someone she had known back then--but it's not as suspenseful or humorous as other books in the series have been. a nice diversion, though.
  • "G" is for gumshoe by sue grafton - okay i know this is getting old, but this is totally my favorite so far. it had the perfect mix of suspense, romance, humor, and a great client story with a macabre twist. the only thing i'm not fond of us the title...
    Spoiler: Highlight to view
    oh and of course the fact that the one time kinsey is closest to falling in love, the guy has to move to germany for a job...
    as a side note, i realized that my favorite way to read these is in one sitting--takes me approximately 4 hours.
  • tilt: every family spins on its own axis by elizabeth burns - i don't think i've ever cried more while reading a book, not during the red tent, not even while listening to angela's ashes on audio--while driving no less... this is an amazingly touching and well-written book by an award winning poet. it was just really, really difficult to read without taking breaks for weeping. (luckily i finished it in a day.)
  • march
  • jelly roll: a blues by kevin young - haven't read a book of poetry in a while and this was a pleasant surprise--found it by accident among the new releases at the library. his titles are all music-related--like "ragtime" and "jitterbug," "dirge" and "muzak"--so it was the theme that pulled me in, but the contents are surprising and sexy. i haven't enjoyed a new writer this much in a long time; definitely worth seeking out his first two books.
  • "F" is for fugitive by sue grafton - not as suspenseful as some of the others have been, but did have a couple nice twists. what made this so enjoyable was how grafton manages to make kinsey millhone so human--whether it's descriptions of hunger & fatigue, humorous rants about hating nature, or admissions of squeemishness. it gives life to even a long-dead small-town mystery.
  • february
  • a room called remember by frederick buechner - originally a lit class text, this collection was finally pulled from the shelf and given the reading it deserved. the author admits it's a "mixed bag"--various essays, sermons, and commencement addresses--but nonetheless deeply profound. more than any author i've read, buechner manages to pull together the human/flawed and divine/spiritual sides of our existence and leaves you with a sense of hope. mostly, he makes me remember why i want to write.
  • "E" is for evidence by sue grafton - okay everybody, "E" is officially my favorite so far. i think the reason i enjoyed it so much was that this one is more personal than the previous--kinsey millhone PI is defending her own good name rather than investigating for a client, and the plot also delves into her past by reviving her ex-husband, daniel. let's just say grafton struck a chord with this one... now we'll see if she can rise up any higher.
  • the sacred journey by frederick buechner - returning to my preferred genre felt strange but comforting. i'm always a bit tentative when picking up a new autobiography so i decided to ease back with someone i knew would be a sure bet... and almost predictably, i find myself thinking that buechner is everything i hope to one day be as a writer. he has a way of describing the mysteries of life so brilliantly--whether tackling topics as difficult as his father's suicide, or as simplistic as the strange significance of a mish-mash of concurrent noises--all the while turning phrases like "the thingness of things." the man is a master at pinpointing epiphanal moments, and the story of his first 20 years is beautifully written, joys and tragedies all.
  • "D" is for deadbeat by sue grafton - not one of the better ones, so far--maybe because i didn't get as attached to the characters in this one. everybody seemed either really seedy or unrealistically (and uninterestingly) middleclass. i thought at least the romantic plotline would get going but even that was disappointing. (maybe i should switch over to that genre for awhile? JK!) what really has me wondering now, though, is grafton's process. did she write up a list of all the titles first? and did she draft out how much the recurring characters would play into each book? what's funny is i'm fully aware that i wouldn't even be reading these if the title-gimmick didn't appeal to me. (is this like buying shampoo knowing you were influenced by the models in the commercial?) at any rate, i can't analyze it much more or i won't get through the whole alphabet... and don't call me retentive, listologists, because i'm only the kettle.
  • "C" is for corpse by sue grafton - grafton seems to move into her own here, writing a truly capable first plotline and adding an amusing second plotline as well. more and more i find myself enjoying kinsey millhone's observations about people and trying to predict her responses to tight situations. also i know i'm getting sucked in soap opera-style, because i enjoy seeing the characters recur from the previous two books. so far this one's my favorite...
  • the mormon church by robert l. millet - written by a professor at brigham young university with the intent "not to convert but to aid in understanding." i found this book extremely helpful in explaining the beliefs of the LDS faith--and addressing the hearsay spread by so many other denominations.
  • "B" is for burglar by sue grafton - less predictable than the first (almost to the point of confusing) and far more suspenseful, but some phrases and explanations were copied verbatim from "a is for alibi". as a whole i enjoyed this one--finished in a single sitting--but i was annoyed when the ending didn't give enough after-story. do mystery readers get bored once they find out whodunnit and how? what ever happened to justice?!
  • jenny & the jaws of life (short stories) by jincy willett - one of the best collections i've read, filled with some genuinely tragic figures (little marsha in "mr. lazanbee" who puts herself in harm's way to get attention) written in a highly amusing style (gracefully clumsy melinda in "melinda falling")... highlights being the ones focused on relationships, like "the haunting of the linguards" about how a ghost sighting affected the perfect marriage, "anticipatory grief" about how a daughter grieves the death of a her father, and "under the bed" about the affects of rape on someone who refuses to be a victim. david sedaris wrote the foreward for the new edition, and although i can't say i laughed out loud like i do at his books, i can understand the connection--heavy topics written with large doses of humor. and unlike the stories that i was assigned to read in college, i have a feeling these will stick with me for a long time.
  • january
  • "a" is for alibi by sue grafton - i'm just getting used to the mystery genre and i know i might be judging it too harshly, but...does it have to be so predictable?
    Spoiler: Highlight to view
    there's *gasp* two killers instead of one--and *gasp* the PI slept with one of them!
    unlike the pennsylvania dutch series, though, i am curious enough about this character to want to read the B book. we'll see how much i can handle of this stuff. at any rate, it's an entertaining way to get through a throat infection.
  • madeleine's ghost by robert girardi - a strange tale about a guy whose NYC apartment is haunted... he's also pining for a girl he loved in new orleans ten years before and is conducting research on a possible saint from brooklyn. for a while it seems there are too many plotlines, but of course everything comes together in the end. anyway i read this on a long plane ride and it did the trick--that is, wasn't too hard to follow and kept me interested.
  • lord of the dead by tom holland - a totally different kind of historical fiction, this one imagining the poet lord byron as a vampire. as with most vampire tales, i get bored during the history part but thoroughly enjoy the struggle with conscience and mortality, and once this author got to the good stuff, he did an excellent job of weaving the tale. i was however, disappointed in the ending...
    Spoiler: Highlight to view
    i don't know whether the author intended it to be happy for the humans or tragic for the vampires, but either way it was just a big bummer!
    still, a great twist on the genre and entertaining for admirers of the great poet.
  • parsley, sage, rosemary and crime: a pennsylvania dutch mystery with recipes by tamar myers - the 2nd in a series of soon-to-be 11 penn-dutch mysteries with recipes. it's my first foray into the genre so i thought i'd start with the humorous variety. overall it was enjoyable in a small-town-thrill kind of way, but even with the added gimmick of recipes i'm not sure there was enough here to draw me back. (and how much amish vs. "english" humor can actually exist?)
  • son of laughter by frederick buechner - much recommended to me, i finally picked up this historical fiction about the life of the old testament character, jacob. i've enjoyed buechner's nonfiction thoroughly and wasn't sure i could get into this, but once he snared me with his writing style, i couldn't put it down. although based on the bible, this isn't for the faint of heart--a lot of grit here, both sexual and violent, but written in a poetic, non-offensive way. if you've ever wanted the bible to read more realistically, i highly recommend this. it gives you the feeling that very little has changed about humanity over the years, and also reminds you of the great hope we bear.
lbangs05/22/2003

Count me in as a fan of Buechner's memoirs. Very moving and thought provoking. He is a great author who I suspect will be appreciated by more over time.

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

taryn05/22/2003

good to know you're on board with buechner, too--and i hope you're right about his place in literary history...

now if i could only take a break in my grafton frenzy to work on his 2nd in the memoir series. ;)