Summer of My Amazing Luck - Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews (pronounced "taves", figure that one out) Governor General award-winning A Complicated Kindness is among my all-time favourite books, so I was a little ashamed when I realized that I haven't read any of her other novels. While looking for a fast and entertaining read that I could sneak in between essays and theory, I came across Toews' debut and thought it would be a perfect fit.

Summer of My Amazing Luck revolves around two single-mom's living in a Winnipeg housing project. There is Lucy, the narrator, who is unsure of who the father of her young son, Dillinger, is; and Lish, an eccentric with four daughters, two of whom were fathered by a travelling fire-eating busker. When lish decides to find the father, the two women and five kids pile into a van for a road trip to Denver. 

I did enjoy this book, but at times, it felt a little like a role-call of all the characters in the Winnipeg housing project. Yes, there's a plot, but this story is more about character than what actually happens. It's nice to see how Toews has progressed as a writer from this first novel to where she is now. Gives me hope.

"louis riel: a comic-strip biography" by chester brown

i think it is appropriate that i finally got around to reading this now that i'm living in winnipeg. louis riel is a hero 'round these parts, with numerous establishments named after him and a couple imposing statues.

a graphic novel portraying part of the very interesting life of manitoba founder and politician, and metis rights activist, louis riel. a beautifully drawn, interesting read, i like this book more for what it is than its literary quality.

"what we all long for" by dionne brand

there's a tenet in play writing of don't show us, tell us, and i think this novel could have benefited from that mantra. the majority of this novel takes place in the character's heads as they ponder their feelings. why couldn't these thoughts be shown through dialogue or action? i guess that's a benefit of writing prose, but i found myself at times getting a little fed up with how internal the story was. 

at its heart, this novel is the story of four friends: tuyen, carla, oku and jackie, who all have complicated family and personal backgrounds. their stories are interspersed with chapters from the perspective of quy, the child tuyen's parents lost when they were immigrating to canada. 

at times, "what we all long for" felt like an advertisement for multiculturalism in canada. all the characters are visible minorities. there are two minor characters who are white; jackie's boyfriend who is referred to as "the german", and carla's mother, who killed herself. i'm not saying that this book is prejudice towards whites, but when tuyen, the vietnamese-canadian lesbian artist, is cycling through little italy and coming across spanish speakers, it was kind of like "ok, great, toronto is a mecca for everyone, let's move on".

i did enjoy this novel, but it's not one i would gush about to others. a quick and enjoyable read.

"boys in blue" by rebecca york, ann voss peterson, patricia rosemoor

this is only the second romance i've read, but i think i've got the formula down. take one strong career woman (lawyer, business owner etc.) with deep-seated insecurities, mix with an archetypal alpha male in the form of a cop or firefighter who is battling with his own demons. have each character save the other, mix in some fleeting glances and incidental touching, one sex scene and a proposal at the end.

this is part of the harlequin "intrigue" series that combines a romance with a mystery. it's broken into three parts that all deal with a different eligible male cop as he and his lady companion, attempt to solve the overarching mystery.

terribly written, but highly entertaining. in the absence of tv, this is my mindless fun.

"Lightning crackled in the sky above him - as though nature has conspired to provide a backdrop for danger."

"She reached out and laid a hand on his arm, which was rock hard under her fingers. She fought the urge to run her hand over the thin cotton of his dress shirt, to massage his tension away."

"Slipping an arm under her back, he lifted Becca so that they were sitting face-to-face and chest-to-chest. She shifted and slid her arms up around his neck, and this time when their lips met, so did their worlds."

"goja" by suniti namjoshi

don't read this book unless you have to.

"sorry" by gail jones

this book is really quite something.  a unique take on the girl-growing-up-with-dysfunctional-family-and-environment, the story takes place in western australia in the 1930's and 40's.

perdita is a lonely child growing up with parents who are indifferent to her existence. she makes her own family of billy, the mute-deaf son of a neighbour, and mary, a "half-caste" aboriginal taken out of a convent to care for perdita when her mother enters an asylum. when perdita's father is murdered, mary confesses and is sent away, and perdita is left alone and with a terrible stutter that renders her almost speechless.

told with tremendous skill and beautiful language, 'sorry' is a book that will stay with me for a while.

"kiss of the fur queen" by tomson highway

oh contemporary fiction....how i miss thee.

the language of this novel is stunning.  1950's cree life in northern manitoba explodes into life with highway's lush and lyrical descriptions.  the narrative jumps between the real world and a spiritual cree world where the fur queen and other fantastical, almost surreal myths exist. 

semi-autobiographical, 'the kiss of the fur queen' is about jeremiah and gabriel okimasis.  the narrative follows these brothers as they go from a magical and rustic life in the north, to a residential school where they're abused by their teachers, and finally to life in the big city of winnipeg.  wherever they are, a trickster figure in guise of a fur queen watches over them as they struggle with balancing their cree heritage with their new world.

i'm always weary of novels like this.  yes, it was terrible what happened to aboriginals at residential schools, but it's not my fault because i'm white.  this novel doesn't place the blame or ask for an apology, but just tells a lovely story that is beautiful, melancholy, funny and clever - everything you require from literature.  

"the penelopiad" by margaret atwood

there's no doubt that margaret atwood is good at what she does, but i've never been crazy about her.  i've read a few of her novels and while enjoyable, there was nothing about them that really spoke to me.  that saying, i loved this book.

perhaps it was due to the fact that i just read 'the odyssey', but i found this novella a brilliant retelling of homer's epic poem from odysseus' wife's perspective.  as one critic put it, penelope is the perfect atwood heroine and i couldn't imagine a better author to tell this story.

atwood's penelope is very sly and sarcastic as she tells her story from the underworld.  atwood has brilliantly made penelope's (spoiler alert for the odyssey!) 12 hanged maids a sort of vaudevillian chorus that pop up to sing witty and dark and sardonic interludes.  

i'm not sure if i would have enjoyed this as much had i not been familiar with 'the odyssey', but in my mind, atwood has pulled herself out of the humdrum and into the sublime.

"the odyssey" by homer, translated by robert fagles

this was actually really good.  perhaps it's the translation, perhaps it's because i've been reading a lot of heavy academic shit, but i quite enjoyed this novel.

odysseus has fought for ten years in the trojan war and is now on his way home.  however, before he can get there, he is held captive by the lovely nymph, calypso, has to fight the cyclops, get past the beautiful and deadly sirens, travel to the underworld to speak with a dead prophet, outwit the monsters charybdis and scylla and a whole host of other seemingly impossible tasks that make my schoolwork seem like paint-by-numbers.

i was dreading this book, but it turned out to be a lot more accessible than i thought.  i could actually follow the story and with the one undergrad course i took in greek mythology, found myself recognizing characters and situations.

i may feel differently about this story after i spend the next two weeks reading about the penelopian aesthetics so i can deliver a seminar on gendered readings of this text, but as a pure piece of entertainment, it was worth the time spent reading.

"whale music" by paul quarrington

strangely enough, this classic of canadian lit is out of print and my library did not have it. i had to get it on an inter-library loan all the way from medicine hat.

"whale music" is the story of desmond howl. once a hugely successful musician, des now wears little more than a bathrobe and spends his time in a california mansion reminiscing about the glory days while composing the titular opus.

this is classic paul quarrington. funny, seamless transitions from present to past, fully realized wonderfully human characters... mr.quarrington may be my new literary boyfriend.

"pride and prejudice" by jane austen

this classic of english literature concerns itself with the bennet family. the matriarch, mrs. bennet spends the whole novel attempting to get her five daughters (from eldest to youngest), jane, elizabeth, mary, kitty and lydia, hitched. the two eldest are the primary concern and most of the storyline centers on them and the two gentlemen whom they are interested in, mr.bingley and mr.darcy respectively.

in standard 19th century lit form, nothing very exciting happens. there's a lot of gossip and parties and dinners and long walks but no car chases, sex, duels or deaths. things were simpler and more dramatic in those days. also, it's perfectly acceptable to marry your cousin.

this book is widely considered to be the prototype for the romantic comedy. while there definitely were moments where i smiled, i couldn't always tell whether certain situations and characters were meant to be funny or if i was just interpreting them that way.

this book successfully fulfilled my quota for a classic for this year. 

"the ravine" by paul quarrington

poor phil mcquigge. once a successful television writer and producer, he now spends his time drunk-dialling and writing an autobiographical novel. his wife is leaving him, he can't connect to his daughters and he feels guilt over the mysterious death of his former show's star. he narrows his life's misery down to a childhood incident in the titular ravine and embarks on figuring out the missing pieces of the event.

paul quarrington is incredible. his writing is effortless, flowing seamlessly from past to present. he has an uncanny ability for dialogue, directly transporting his readers to a specific time and place. the aspect of meta-fiction is also interesting as quarrington is writing about a writer who is writing a book.

a great and quick read. definitely recommended.

"when you are engulfed in flames" by david sedaris

when i discovered david sedaris a few years ago, i was almost livid that no one had introduced me to his work before. here was a writer i wanted to be; how easy, i thought, to simply write funny moments from your life, turning them into stories that are as enjoyable as they are intelligent. i attempted to write my own personal anecdotes, but i never came close to sedaris' brilliance and realized that he has a superhuman talent for turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

his newest collection of essays suggest a wiser and more mature sedaris. he's settled down, stopped smoking and recalls his days of drinking and drugging rather than living them. while his sardonic wit and wonderful observations are in tact, i found myself not often laughing out loud or smiling as i had when reading his other books. as i sped through this book in a few days, there's no question it's immensely readable, hilarious and entertaining, but perhaps this older sedaris is mellowing out, preferring subtleness to extravagance. and i'm ok with that.

"the glass castle" by jeannette walls

"the glass castle" is another one of those jaw-dropping hard-to-believe-it's-true memoirs. however, it's compelling and moving and well-written and easy to read.

jeannette walls' childhood involved getting severely burnt at the age of 4 when cooking hot dogs for herself, making her own braces, colouring her legs with markers in an attempt to hide the holes in her pants, sewing a gash in her father's arm with needle and thread, eating food found in trash cans at school and sleeping in a cardboard box. to say her parents were laissez-faire would be an understatement; the walls' believing in self-sufficiency and learning from your mistakes. often full of tales of neglect and abuse, jeannette never plays the victim and the story comes off as a unique and entertaining memoir overflowing with life lessons and truths.

"water for elephants" by sara gruen

this book had a quote comparing it to john irving on the front. if that's not a prelude to disappointment, i don't know what is.

90something jacob jankowski recalls his days as a vetrinarian in a circus during depression-era america. he makes good friends, mortal enemies and falls in love with the star of the equestrian act, marlena, and a polish-understanding elephant, rosie.

the story took me a while to get in to, but i commend gruen for the painstaking research she evidently required to realistically portray not only the 1930's, but a travelling circus in the 1930's.

"do travel writers go to hell?: a swashbuckling tale of high adventure, questionable ethics and professional hedonism" by thomas kohnstamm

like many lovers of travel, i always thought writing for the lonely planet would be a dream job. if i got anything from thomas kohnstamm's book is that the reality of being a lonely planet writer is far from the fantasy in my head. the money you're paid and the time you are given are not enough to cover the extensive research that's expected to put together a guidebook.

the book follows kohnstamm on his first lonely planet project as he attempts to cover the entire north-east corner of brazil in an impossibly short time frame. during his travels, he drinks to excess, parties until all hours, sleeps with random women and even resorts to selling ectasy to tourists to help his funds.

a quick and entertaining read, "do travel writers go to hell?" squashed my lonely planet writer dream, but perhaps that's for the best. one less option to consider.

"lamb: the gospel according to biff, christ's childhood pal" by christopher moore

you can figure out the jist of this novel from the title. the story of jesus' first thirty years told from the perspective of his best friend, levi who is called biff. joshua (aka jesus) knows he's the son of god from an early age when he can resurrect the lizards his brother kills. in an effort to find out how to be the messiah, josh and biff embark on a journey to visit the three wise men present at joshua's birth who will hopefully be able to shed some light on the quandry. it is from the wise men that joshua and levi learn about confucianism and hinduism and other 'be nice to your neighbour, don't attach yourself to material things" sentiments and return to israel 15 years later to spread the word.

i think if i new more about jesus' life and the new testament, i would have liked this book more. i have a feeling there's a lot of nudge-nudge wink-wink's that i didn't get just by not being familiar with the quirks of the apostles, the teachings of jesus and the stories behind christianity's celebrations. the book is funny, having some killer one-liners and hilarious dialogue, but these get less and less frequent as the story progresses and joshua heads towards his demise.

a strong novel, but not my cup of tea. perhaps i'm wrong, but it often felt like christopher moore forced situations in order to put in some tidbit of jesus' life in the story. the story dragged on in parts and i would frequently get the characters mixed up and not understand what was going on. maybe i should have paid more attention.

"the beautiful miscellaneous" by dominic smith

sometimes i like to read mediocre books because it makes me believe that i, too, can write a novel one day.

nathan nelson is the son of a physicist genius father.  the father, believing that nathan is also a genius, spends the better part of nathan's adolescence trying to coax out his inner whiz-kid, eventually realizing that nathan is just a boy with slightly above average intelligence.  then nathan is involved in a car accident, develops synesthesia and the ability to memorize entire phone books, and goes to spend time in an institute with other savants.

this is your classic coming-of-age-with-a-twist tale, and while i found it sub-par, there were sentences of incredible beauty, mr.smith having a knack for descriptions of scenery.  the story itself is a great idea, but the execution of it falls flat.  meh.

"gods behaving badly" by marie phillips

this book was a riot to read, keeping me up past my bedtime many-a-nights to just read one more chapter.

set in the modern day, "gods behaving badly" finds all the greek mythology gods living in a run down house in london where morale is fading fast as no one believes in them any more. aphrodite is a phone-sex worker, artemis walks dogs, apollo is a tv psychic, eros has become a christian. a couple of overly nice mortals come into the picture providing a narrative and hilarity ensues. fun fun fun.

"late nights on air" by elizabeth hay

regrettably i had to speed through this book as it was due back at the library with 200+ holds on it.

this book is beautiful. very meaty, but absolutely outstanding and deserving of its many accolades. i had to carefully read it, often pausing after particular sentences to let the words sink in; be absorbed. after my last rather vacuous read, this was a welcome change. elizabeth hay's prose is majestic and complex. she gets inside each of her characters and offers profound insights into their lives and personalities. my strong interest in heading to the northern part of canada was reawakened and satisfied.

set in yellowknife in the 1970's, the story follows the people who work for the local radio station. fabulous.

"quiet please: dispatches from a public librarian" by scott douglas

what i liked most about this book was the chapter titles.

it's not that it is bad, it's just not very good. if i didn't work in a library, i would have stopped reading it. considering how much i love douglas' regular mcsweeney's column, "dispatches from a public librarian", i thought this book would be just as great. not so. the humour is often stupid, the writing is sub-par and his grand philosophical statements about a librarian serving the community come off as shallow and narcisstic. stick with mcsweeney's mr. douglas.

"the loss of leon meed" by josh emmons

up until about page 200, i was sure this would end up in my top 10 books ever.  upon finishing it, i'd put it in my top 25, which is still a very respectable place.  it was (and is!) everything i could have dreamed off. contemporary magical realism, eclectic and beautiful characters, sly humour, heartbreaking and subtle language, an intriguing narrative and innovative structure.

set in a small city in northern california, this novel follows an eclectic cast of characters as they go about living the best lives that they can. tying them all together is leon meed, a 50something burl sculptor, who keeps mysteriously materializing in their lives.

i found the ending not quite up to par with the rest of the story, but it's hard to have a satisfying ending to a story with so many diverse characters and some unexplainable phenomena.  a review i read said "it sets up expectations it cannot fufill", which is pretty spot on.  it's still a stellar book that'll warrant a re-read in a couple of years.  i anxiously await josh emmons next book.

"the know-it-all: one man's humble quest to become the smartest person in the world" by a.j. jacobs

after tremendously enjoying a.j. jacobs newest book, "the year of living biblically" in which he lives by the bible for an entire year, i had to read this one in which he embarks on reading the entire encyclopedia britannica.  

while not as refined as his latest offering, this book was a very good read.  the humour is often a bit hammy and too obvious, unlike the wit in "the year of living biblically", but it's kind of nice to be able to actually notice a writer getting better.

 

"the luck of ginger coffey" by brian moore

poor ginger coffey. the guy just can't get a break. he immigrates from ireland to canada with his small family in hopes of a better life and ends up with a shitty job, a tiny apartment and a wife who leaves him for their only friend in montreal. despite his inumberable obstacles and hardships, ginger's optimism rarely wanes and is the impetus for the novel, propelling the title protagonist ever forward.

this book won the governor general's award in 1960. it was a quick read.

"the corrections" by jonathan franzen

i was ready for this book to end around page 300. it's not that i didn't like it, but this novel went in so many directions, that i often got frustrated and fed-up.

at its core, "the corrections" is about the lambert family. there's the neurotic and over-bearing matriarch, enid, and her quickly deteriorating husband, alfred. there's their eldest child, gary; a privileged, yet clinically depressed suburbanite with a beautiful wife and three of his own boys. the middle child, chip, a former university professor fired for having an affair with a student, and denise, the youngest, a chef with her own restaurant and oodles of her own romantic problems. the characters and dynamic reminded me a lot of douglas coupland, though less extreme.

the book mostly consists of very large chunks about each character that often veer off into other large chunks about secondary characters with enough back story to form their own novels. at one point, enid and alfred take a cruise and there's a 20 page account from a women enid meets. at another point, chip goes to lithuania and there's 30 pages of how the country is falling apart and how such-and-such unpronounceable eastern european name is at war with another unpronounceable eastern european name and it became easy to stop paying attention and gloss over the words.

despite my many frustrations with this novel, franzen should be complimented for his vivid and unique descriptions, often hilarious situations and deeply moving account of a dysfunctional family

"the new york trilogy" by paul auster

this book is three short novellas that could be classified as postmodern detective fiction.

the first, city of glass, follows a protagonist writer as he’s mistaken for a detective (named paul auster) and starts an obsessive watch of a recently released criminal. it’s bizarre and absurd and not much happens, but it’s fascinating to read.

the second, ghosts, is the story of blue, who’s hired by white, to watch black. white rents an apartment for blue on orange street where he can see directly in to black's window. black turns out to be quite dull, spending most of his time writing and reading thoreau. it’s bizarre and absurd and not much happens, but it’s fascinating to read.

the third, the locked room, is also the tale of a writer. he’s contacted by his childhood best friend’s wife after the friend disappears. the friend, fanshawe, told his wife, sophie, that if anything should ever happen to him she’s to contact this friend to read over his life’s work and deem if any of it is suitable for publishing. the protagonist writer friend publishes all fanshawe’s work, marries sophie and embarks on writing a biography about fanshawe. it’s bizarre and absurd and there’s much more action and plot than the first two novellas and it's fascinating to read.

there are many similar themes that run through these stories tying them together into a cohesive whole. they’re all meta-fictional with themes of watching/being watched, mistaken identities, existentialism, transformation and intrigue. while i'm not going to rush out to read paul auster's entire oeuvre, i'll definitely keep him in mind for future reading.

"king leary" by paul quarrington

the winner of this year's canada reads, "king leary" is a gem of canadiana that i'm grateful is being rediscovered. of course panelist dave bidini, author of many an ice-sport related book of his own (including a stellar collection of short story hockey erotica), would choose this tale of an aging hockey star as he remembers his days of glory from a small town ontario nursing home.

i couldn't think of anything i'd rather do less than read about hockey, but paul quarrington's storytelling is hilarious and vivid and flows seamlessly from past to present.

percival leary, the "king of the ice", was a hockey great in the early days of professional hockey. now, he shares a room with the cantankerous blue hermann, a former newspaperman who, coincidentally, spent much of his journalistic life, chronicling leary's career. the plot follows the two, along with their bizarre nurse, iain, as they embark on a trip to toronto where leary is to film a commercial for his drink of choice, canada dry ginger ale. however, this plot is secondary to leary's recollections of his career in professional hockey and the zany characters of his past.

a quick and enjoyable read, "king leary" is a wonderful reprieve from the often dire and isolation-themed annals of can lit.

"a tree grows in brooklyn" by betty smith

i took this book on my trip to new york, imagining myself sitting in a quaint cafe in the titular borough with the book on my lap and an americano steaming in front of me. in reality, i made it to brooklyn only once, and that was just to walk back to manhattan over the bridge, and hardly got any reading done.

"a tree grows in brooklyn" is the story of francie nolan as she grows up in poverty in williamsburg, brooklyn during the early twentieth century. she's precocious and curious and resourceful and gives a wonderful perspective to her time and place. betty smith is incredibly sympathetic towards her characters and i found myself really caring about their trials and tribulations.

"a tree grows in brooklyn" is targeted towards the same "girl" demographic as books like "little women", but it's not overly sentimental or saccharine. the book reminded me a lot of gabrielle roy's "the tin flute" with the same time period and similar themes. it's a wonderfully simple, yet moving tale that is sure to remain a classic for many decades to come.

"the year of living biblically: one man's humble quest to follow the bible as literally as possible" by a.j. jacobs

this is the best non-fiction book i've read in quite some time. a.j. jacobs, a new york agnostic jew, decides to live by the bible for a full year. we're all familiar with the ubiquitous ten commandments, but the bible has hundreds of rules that are a lot less straightforward than "thou shalt not kill".

who knew that the bible forbid the wearing of clothes made of wool and linen? and not only that, but there is an association of people who will test your clothes for the offending mix. huh.

jacobs' year takes him to a creationist museum, the wailing wall in israel, a mega church, a hasidic dance party and many other wonderful and fascinating sites. he consults rabbis and pastors and other clergy on his quest to divine the interpretation of biblical passages that could be taken literally or metaphorically.

a touching, hilarious and insightful memoir, "the year of living biblically" had me up past my bedtime many nights.

"outlander" by diana gabaldon

a quote on the first page of this book proclaims it's "a feast for ravenous readers of eighteenth-century scottish history, heroism and romance". i'd never have thought this niche existed.

the first of a many part series, the book's protagonist is claire randall, an englishwoman readjusting to normal life after world war ii. married before the war, she was separated from her husband at its beginning to work as a combat nurse. claire and her husband are reunited after the war and go on a second honeymoon to scotland. roaming around the scottish highlands one day with a local, claire is taken to a stone henge-ish rock formation where she touches one of the rocks and is hurtled 200 years back in time. scotland in 1743 is rough and war-torn and she is soon caught up with a clan and catapulted into a new life of adventure.

despite it's 850 pages, i breezed through this page turner. there's a lot of fighting, intrigue and sex. yes, sex. lots and lots of sex. so much sex that i was almost embarrassed to read it in public. this novel’s a bit trashy, but well-written and immensely enjoyable. i’m not going to rush to read the sequel, but it was a good respite from my usual literature.

"stoner" by john williams

this book was highly recommended by a co-worker. in his review, he told me "it's a little slow going, but by around page 50, i realized i cared for the main character more than i care for most real people".

while john williams certainly has a strong ability to create sympathy for a character, i wasn't as overcome as my colleague. "stoner" is the story of william stoner, who grows up as a single child on a farm. he goes to the city to get a degree in agriculture, but soon discovers a latent passion for literature and changes his course of study. the novel follows stoner as he starts a long teaching career at the university, marries, has a child, has an affair, upsets his colleagues, falls ill, eventually retires and dies.

a strongly written and minimalist book with flowing prose and beautiful descriptions, "stoner" is a portrait of a man who faces his many disappointments in life with a stoic-ness that is heartbreaking.

"then we came to the end" by joshua ferris

this novel centers on an ad agency in chicago that is quickly going down the drain. as work dries up and layoffs become more and more frequent, the remaining employees keep up a facade of busyness, gossip and pull pranks. the character's are quirky, yet believable. they steal each other's chairs, have affairs, black out their windows with construction paper and wear multiple shirts.

i have never encountered a novel quite like this. it is written in the first person plural so the people in the office become a unit, referred to as we. "we went to this meeting", "we had a 40 minute coffee break", "we worried about so-and-so". you are never sure which one of the characters is actually the narrator, and while frustrating intially, it's an interesting device that keeps any one character from becoming the single protagonist or antagonist. that said, the first person plural also muddles the narrative slightly. character's often relay past conversations to other characters and this creates confusion.

this book was just alright.

"middlesex" by jeffrey eugenides

my rating would be
eight and a half out of ten
excellent and rich

it doesn't matter
that it was on oprah's list
she chooses good books

a hermaphrodite
a family history
a beautiful tale

three generations
from greece to america
tragic and lovely

"early bird: a memoir of early retirement" by rodney rothman

i don’t know about memoirs. some are masturbatory (“a heartbreaking work…”), some unbelievable (“running with scissors”), some just plain untrue (“a million little pieces”). (note: i haven’t actually read “a million little pieces”) i don’t know if i’ve ever read one i’ve really enjoyed, but the cover of this book really appealed to me, plus there was a jon stewart quote on the front and if jon stewart endorses it, how can it possibly be bad?

rodney rothman was a writer for the david letterman show when he got fed up with his 70 hour work weeks and decided to retire at the age of 28. he moved into a senior’s residence in florida where he takes up shuffleboard and eats supper at 5pm.

it is books like these that give me hope of one day writing a novel. not that it’s bad, but just very simple and, in a word, cute. it’s funny, but not the laugh-out-loud david sedaris funny that rothman was going for. it’s not going to make any best-of list’s, but it’s well-written and i enjoyed reading it.

"the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" by douglas adams

as previously mentioned, i've been having trouble getting into books this month. i've been meaning to give this book a re-read for quite a while, and this seemed like an apt time.

arthur dent is all that remains of earth when an alien race decides to blow the planet up to make way for a galactic superhighway. he is is rescued by his friend, ford prefect, a space traveller from betelgeuse who was stranded on earth where he was conducting research for the titular publication.

this book is hilarious and imaginative. god disappears in a poof of logic, a suicidally depressed robot saves the day, earth is merely a experiment run by superintelligent mice and the president of the galaxy is a two-headed, three-armed idiot.

nothing really comes to a conclusion at the end, but having read the series previously, i'm not in a panic to find out what happens next.

selected quotes:

"Time is an illusion. Lunch doubly so."

"It must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays."

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

"no country for old men" by cormac mccarthy

i've been havin a real hard time gettin into books the last couple weeks. i'd start one, not be able to get into it, and give up. i was tempted to part with this book, but i forced myself to keep goin. it took about 150 pages, but i finally got use to the style an figured out how to read it.

prior to this, i had read no other novels by cormac mccarthy. i don't know if his other works use a southern america colloquial, lack punctuation like quotation marks an apostrophes and use plenty o fragments. this style added to the frustration of plodding through the bleak landscape of this novel which is filled with simple, yet strikin images, stark violence an, at time, a biblical like tone.

i’m sure most people already know the story. one day llewelyn moss is huntin in the texas desert when he comes across a whack of dead bodies, a truck load of heroin an over two million dollars. he takes the money an is, from that point on, on the run from a merciless killer (anton chigurh) after the money, an the law tryin to get to him before the killer does.

with the recent coen brother’s adaptation of this novel onto the big screen, it was interestin to note the differences an similarities between the book an the movie. the most notable difference is of the character of sheriff bell, who, in the film, is a minor character; his quiet search pushed aside by the dramatics of the moss and chigurh chase. in the book, the sheriff is the central character, having beautifully melancholic monologues between each chapter which give his history and reactions to the bloodshed that’s part of his job. these monologues make sense of the title as he struggles with how times are a changin an he’s no longer cut out for law enforcement.

once i got the hang o this book, i enjoyed it. because it took me so long to get into, i had the urge to go back an re-read the first 150 pages. i’ll suffice with seein’ the movie again when it comes out on video.

"white teeth" by zadie smith

zadie smith is a fabulous writer. have i said this already? the scope of this novel is massive. it's reminiscent of john irving, however, smith adds a cheeky self-awareness that makes it that much better.

"white teeth" is essentially the story of two families; the joneses and the iqbals. the patriarch's, archie and samad, met during world war ii and the book follows their lives in a north london suburb.

while this book was harder to get through than "on beauty" and veers off into an occasional tangent, it was a worthwhile and meaty read.