The Capricious Guide

Literary Catch up #2

I read "One Good Turn" by Kate Atkinson a few weeks ago now. I'm not usually into crime novels or mysteries, but Atkinson is a great story spinner! The story picks up where "Case Histories"* left off though if you didn't read it you could read this without wondering what's going on.

"One Good Turn" focuses on Jackson Brodie who is a former private detective. He is in Edinburgh, Scotland with his girlfriend Julia who is engrossed in a play and has little time for Jackson. Wandering around, he stumbles onto a crime scene and into a maze of characters that Atkinson develops evenly through each chapter. This book is a little confusing as there are many characters who, as the reader, you know have to be involved with one another. The central mystery also changes about half-way through the book, but it kept me interested and involved. I think this book would be a great beach read, could be a quick read if you wanted it to be. I would recommend it to those who don't normally read mysteries for something different!

*By the way I know I read "Case Histories" also by Kate Atkinson before Christmas last year...why didn't I put it on my list or write about it?? That's strange. I really loved reading that book.

Literary Catch up

So there is no way I am going to make my goal of 50 books this year. That's OK when I made that goal I didn't anticipate the events this year would bring me! Maybe next year I'll get to 50. This year I'll try for 30.

Anyway I wanted to write about the three books I have read recently. The first was "Suite Francais" by Irene Nemirovsky. This book has gotten a lot of praise and rightfully so. One of the most amazing things about the book is the writing of it. Nemirovsky wrote this in France during WWII. It was supposed to be 5 parts long but only two were written before she, because she was a Jew, was deported to Auschwitz and died there. Her daughter had the manuscript but didn't read it for years. When she did, she used her mothers notes to fill out the holes in the manuscript and eventually it was published. There is a forward and two Appendices. You don't need to read them before the actual story to understand what's going on but reading this book with the knowledge of Nemirovsky's life made the experience even richer.

Even with this amazing background, the story itself is well written and a generally a great read! The book itself is in two parts the first chronicles many different characters fleeing from Paris when the Nazi's advanced. Her character development is wonderful. Each person in the book is someone you can imagine vividly. The second part of the book is about life in rural France under the occupation of the Nazis. I thought this part was amazing because it showed how life goes on under occupation and how people's lives go on even under difficult circumstances.

Stay tuned for the next book.   

The Thirteeth Tale

Lots going on here so not much posting. I'll post about that another time. I finished "TheThirteenthTale" over a week ago and have been meaning to write up a review.

"The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield is about a British woman, Margret who lives in an undisclosed time. She lives her life surrounded by books, she works with her father selling rare books. It is a lonely existence but she's resolved to it. One day she gets a letter from a very famous and prolific British author, Vida Winter who wants Margret to write her life story. The book follows Margaret and Vida's conversations about Vida's past and who she really is. We also find out about more about Margaret's past and why she is so lonely.

Setterfield obviously loves to read literary fiction. Especially Jane Eyre. This is a great Gothic romance in the same vein as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. This is a great book for when it is cold and dark outside and you are warm inside. I loved curling up under a blanket and reading this story for hours. This is one of those books I wanted to live in. I wanted to read it really fast, consume the story, but at the same time didn't want it to end. I think because of that the ending was a little choppy and the story wrapped up too tightly but I do think I was reading very quickly to find out what happened to the characters and not savoring the story as I think this book was written to be.

This wasn't a book that I NEED to discuss with others, but I would like to and I think it would make a fine book group book. There's a great web

The Road

I would like to start going more into detail on the books I read this year. Since one of my goals is to blog more often, this sounds like a plan!

I finished "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy last night. This was an amazing and devastating book. This story takes place in what seems to be years after some kind of apocalypse and a father and son are trying to find some kind of community in which to survive by going to the coast. There is very little civilization left and there are marauders who kill and eat anything living they find in their path. McCarthy has such a sparse writing style and is able to communicate so much through only dialogue in this book. I wanted to stop reading several times because the story is so grim and I couldn't’t imagine an outcome that would be at all satisfying, but it made me think about what I would do. Would I try to even survive? Would I be able to hope when things got really, really bad? This is one of those books I really want to discuss and like the movie “Children of Men” I never want to read it again, but it will stay with me for quite some time. This would be an excellent choice for a reading group – if you could convince all members to keep reading, no matter what.

If you have read this book and want to discuss it, please let me know.

Next up:  The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield 

The Wonder Spot

I finished "The Wonder Spot" by Melissa Bank this morning. She also wrote the wonderful "Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing." This barely in the Chick Lit category because it is not light fluff, but a series of short stories focusing on the life and loves of a a woman named Sophie.

I especially liked one of the first stories about Sophie as a child, getting bored at Hebrew school and king of making friends with a "bad" girl. Sophie watches in amazement as this girl just defies adult rules and gets in trouble. I remember feeling the same way. I loved the part where faced with going along with this girl or doing what her father would want, she "gets her personality back" and goes back to class rather than rob the temple gift shop. I remember that exact feeling growing up...getting my personality back, not necessarily growing a backbone as some say, but remembering who you are and what you were taught.

This book is full of monuments like that, very relateable. I liked the pace of the book and the style of the short story as novel. I hope Bank keeps writing, I'll defiantly read her next book as well.

The right book at the right time

Sometimes I read a book that just clicks into place with where I am in life. I finished Dan Savage's "The Commitment" last night. The book is all about marriage, the question of should we get married and all of the political implications of getting married. In Savage's case he and his partner Terry have been together for 10 years and the question is should they get married. Of course it is not legal for them to get married in Washington State where they and I live.

I love how Savage uses humor mixed with outrage at his second-class citizen place in our country as a gay man unable to marry his partner with whom he is raising a child. He questions whether to get married or not, so many of his friends got married and then broke up. It is to "straight" to get married. What's the point when it isn't even legally recognized. Savage works through these issues with his family and friends including his Catholic mom, his Republican dad - both want he and Terry to get married. I won't tell you if they got married or not, you should read this book to find out! This would be a great book for a discussion group, so many issues are brought forth, ripe for discussion.

Why did this come at the right time for me? Mike and I have talked about marriage and I have gone back and forth on the issue myself. What have we decided? You will just have to keep reading here to find out.

Just what I needed

I finished "The Highest Tide"  by Jim Lynch over the weekend. What a wonderful read. I don't think that it is just because the story is set in and around the bays and coves of the Puget Sound near Olympia, where I grew up playing on the beaches at my grandparent's house on Budd Bay. I love the smell of salt water and can even appreciate the smell of low tide. I still find great joy in turning rocks over to find tons of tiny crabs and being squirted by clams as I walk on the sand in low tide. Ahh summer at my grandparent's house, perfect vision for a day in January.

Anyway, back to the book. The story is about a 13 year old boy named Miles who's life is the beaches and what he finds on them during one summer of his life. He becomes a local media darling after several amazing finds including a giant squid and a Japanese street sign that wash up on the beaches near his house.

I loved how Lynch included the flavor of beach-side living in Olympia and the often overlooked Mud Bay and the Evergreen nude beach. I think anyone who lives in the Puget Sound or has marveled at a tide pool should read this book. It was not only a good story about life  during adolescence, but a great study of life in the water and on, in and around the sand. I am certainly going to look more closely the next time I am walking on the beach. Bottom line, read this book.

Long....

I finally finished "Until I Find You" by John Irving. This book was 820 pages long! It took me forever to finish because while I liked the story, it wasn't much of a page turner. The story follows Jack, starting when he is 4 years old until he is in his late thirties. Basically, Jack's father has abandoned his mother before he was born and when Jack is 4, he and his mother travel around the North Sea looking for his father who is an organist and a tattoo addict. This journey takes up the first 1/4 of the book.

After that the story follows Jack as he is molested by older women, while in elementary school, has strange relationships in middle school and even stranger sexual experiences in high school and beyond. Eventually he follows his love of acting on the stage to Hollywood where he becomes a strange actor. The story doesn't really get interesting again until the last 1/4 of the book where Jack discovers that his trip with his mother when he was 4, wasn't the way he remembered it.

I feel like by the time I finished this book, not only was it overdue at the library, I was just ready to finish. I don't think that I got all the intricacies of the book that Irving was weaving in and out of the story, thought I did think that the molestation by older women of young boys was very interesting and not something that is talked about very often.

So, do I recommend this book, only if you are a big John Irving fan. I would suggest "The World According to Garp" or "The Cider House Rules," even if you have seen the movie instead.

Super Geek!

My mom just sent me this great link to Library Thing which is an on-line cataloging system for your personal library! How cool is that? it has been said before and it will be said again, I am a library geek! Check it out.

Best books of 2005

I love best of the year lists. I read 34 books in 2005, and for a while, I'll keep the list along my sidebar. The following are the 10 best.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson  (possibly my favorite of all)

A Changed Man by Francine Prose

The Kite Runner by Kalhed Hosseini

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Under The Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audry Niffengger

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman