Book report
Apr. 24th, 2009 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormkeeper_lovedorisI'm so glad to be home from Vegas! And here's a book report.
The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan – I think I should just give up any pretence that my fiction selections are anything more than escapism, especially if the last few ones are any indication. This novel takes place in India 400 years ago, centering on a young woman who has aspirations of marrying the Emperor. I like tales of royal courts and harems and intrigues – all that phluff. It started out good, with a plot that moved at a nice clip. But towards the middle, the novel started to really drag and then it just kind of petered out. The amateurish writing also became more and more apparent as the book wore on. If I am going to read sheer escapism and feel embarrassed about it, can the novels at least be good escapism?? Sheesh. Grade: C-
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose – My friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nytshd3 has been gently suggesting that I give audio books a try, and I finally did so. I think I’m hooked! I’m usually in the car at least 4 hours a week, and I can only listen to my Duran Duran and B-52’s CDs so many times. This was my first audio book, and I really liked the concept. It’s neat to just have someone read to you as you drive, though you do have to strike a balance between paying rapt attention to the book and to the road. There are times when it’s harder for me to mentally hunker down and pay attention. Anyway, on to this book. Prose is a novelist, and her book “The Glorious Ones” is one of my all-time favorites. This book is for anyone who wants to write or who wants to appreciate great writing more. She breaks down and analyzes literature from all different aspects – sentences, paragraphs, detail, dialog, and much more. She provides lots of examples from great literature to illustrate her points, which was probably the neatest thing about the book. I think my main takeaways from “Reading Like a Writer" were that I could stand to slow down a bit when I read, really learn to savor words and sentences and observe the detail that a skilled writer provides. I could also raise the bar in terms of the literature I read. (“The Twentieth Wife” anyone?) Grade: B
More behind the cut.
Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr – This novel stars an American couple who pack up and move to a remote Mexican town of 1000 people, a town where the husband’s grandfather used to own a mine. They have the crazy idea that they want to start it back up again. The novel is as much about this couple – one of whom is diagnosed with a terminal illness early on in the novel – as it is about Ibarra’s colorful, impoverished, desperate, and passionate citizens. I can’t say that it had too much of a plot or that I got too emotionally wrapped up in it, but it was well-written. (It’s definitely a few rungs higher on the ladder than “The Twentieth Wife”!) Grade: B-
The Mother Trip: Hip Mama’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Chaos of Motherhood by Ariel Gore – I have to admit this: I don’t like memoirs that masquerade as “how to” books. You know the type – ‘how to’ books where the author spends most of the time talking about her life rather than providing the help and insight that was promised; they just don’t do much for me. Gore has had a relatively interesting life, she edits “Hip Mama” magazine, she wrote an earlier book that I reviewed and liked (“The Hip Mama Survival Guide”). In this book, when she’s writing one of many stories from her life, she mentions the huge advance she got for “The Hip Mama Survival Guide” and what she did with it. I strongly suspect that the only point of this book was another huge advance. And she tells the same dull story about a sofa of hers twice in this (225 page) book, sheesh. Gore seems like a cool person but this book’s a dud. (Worse even than “The Twentieth Wife”...) Grade: D+
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie – This novel told a good story, and it was simple and captivating. It centers around two young Chinese men who are sent to the mountains to be “re-educated” during China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1970’s. The book was translated from French to English, and it was a pretty choppy translation, since the prose is clumsy and full of cliches. I also felt a bit unsatisfied by the ending, as if too much was not tied up and should have been. Grade: B
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz - The subtitle of this book is "A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom", and it was given to me as a gift by someone I admire. I thought it contained some good wisdom, but I really felt liked I'd heard bits of it before. My view on this type of book is to glean what you can from it, see if any of it can apply to your life, and then feel free to toss the rest. I don't feel the need to make any such book into my personal bible though this one is kind of written in a way that indicates its author maybe wants you to do just that. There are some useful ideas in here like not taking anything personally and the power of asking questions instead of assuming. I personally found "Are You Ready to Succeed" by Rao and "Happiness is a Choice" by Kaufman to be more useful to me though, but this one was nice. Grade: B-
And hey, look - this book report contains books by not one but two male authors! (Dai and Ruiz) And I also favorably reference books by two other guys! (Rao and Kaufman)
Books I started reading but didn’t finish:
None
The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan – I think I should just give up any pretence that my fiction selections are anything more than escapism, especially if the last few ones are any indication. This novel takes place in India 400 years ago, centering on a young woman who has aspirations of marrying the Emperor. I like tales of royal courts and harems and intrigues – all that phluff. It started out good, with a plot that moved at a nice clip. But towards the middle, the novel started to really drag and then it just kind of petered out. The amateurish writing also became more and more apparent as the book wore on. If I am going to read sheer escapism and feel embarrassed about it, can the novels at least be good escapism?? Sheesh. Grade: C-
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose – My friend
nytshd3 has been gently suggesting that I give audio books a try, and I finally did so. I think I’m hooked! I’m usually in the car at least 4 hours a week, and I can only listen to my Duran Duran and B-52’s CDs so many times. This was my first audio book, and I really liked the concept. It’s neat to just have someone read to you as you drive, though you do have to strike a balance between paying rapt attention to the book and to the road. There are times when it’s harder for me to mentally hunker down and pay attention. Anyway, on to this book. Prose is a novelist, and her book “The Glorious Ones” is one of my all-time favorites. This book is for anyone who wants to write or who wants to appreciate great writing more. She breaks down and analyzes literature from all different aspects – sentences, paragraphs, detail, dialog, and much more. She provides lots of examples from great literature to illustrate her points, which was probably the neatest thing about the book. I think my main takeaways from “Reading Like a Writer" were that I could stand to slow down a bit when I read, really learn to savor words and sentences and observe the detail that a skilled writer provides. I could also raise the bar in terms of the literature I read. (“The Twentieth Wife” anyone?) Grade: BMore behind the cut.
Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr – This novel stars an American couple who pack up and move to a remote Mexican town of 1000 people, a town where the husband’s grandfather used to own a mine. They have the crazy idea that they want to start it back up again. The novel is as much about this couple – one of whom is diagnosed with a terminal illness early on in the novel – as it is about Ibarra’s colorful, impoverished, desperate, and passionate citizens. I can’t say that it had too much of a plot or that I got too emotionally wrapped up in it, but it was well-written. (It’s definitely a few rungs higher on the ladder than “The Twentieth Wife”!) Grade: B-
The Mother Trip: Hip Mama’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Chaos of Motherhood by Ariel Gore – I have to admit this: I don’t like memoirs that masquerade as “how to” books. You know the type – ‘how to’ books where the author spends most of the time talking about her life rather than providing the help and insight that was promised; they just don’t do much for me. Gore has had a relatively interesting life, she edits “Hip Mama” magazine, she wrote an earlier book that I reviewed and liked (“The Hip Mama Survival Guide”). In this book, when she’s writing one of many stories from her life, she mentions the huge advance she got for “The Hip Mama Survival Guide” and what she did with it. I strongly suspect that the only point of this book was another huge advance. And she tells the same dull story about a sofa of hers twice in this (225 page) book, sheesh. Gore seems like a cool person but this book’s a dud. (Worse even than “The Twentieth Wife”...) Grade: D+
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie – This novel told a good story, and it was simple and captivating. It centers around two young Chinese men who are sent to the mountains to be “re-educated” during China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1970’s. The book was translated from French to English, and it was a pretty choppy translation, since the prose is clumsy and full of cliches. I also felt a bit unsatisfied by the ending, as if too much was not tied up and should have been. Grade: B
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz - The subtitle of this book is "A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom", and it was given to me as a gift by someone I admire. I thought it contained some good wisdom, but I really felt liked I'd heard bits of it before. My view on this type of book is to glean what you can from it, see if any of it can apply to your life, and then feel free to toss the rest. I don't feel the need to make any such book into my personal bible though this one is kind of written in a way that indicates its author maybe wants you to do just that. There are some useful ideas in here like not taking anything personally and the power of asking questions instead of assuming. I personally found "Are You Ready to Succeed" by Rao and "Happiness is a Choice" by Kaufman to be more useful to me though, but this one was nice. Grade: B-
And hey, look - this book report contains books by not one but two male authors! (Dai and Ruiz) And I also favorably reference books by two other guys! (Rao and Kaufman)
Books I started reading but didn’t finish:
None
