I've been reading, I promise, but I can't seem to get even brief reviews done for all that I read. On account of that great, miserable, unfortunate, deplorable failing, I will in this thread list all the books I've read since September 10th 2009 and to September 10th, 2010. As you may recall, I think waiting 'til New Years' to make a resolution is lame. It's just a procrastinatory measure. Oh, spell check is unhappy...
Anywho, here is the list. I will include the reviews if I've written them. Unless I get bored. Am worst blogger in history. Then again, they're pretty new, so really I haven't got much to be put against have I? Anyway, it's newest finished closest to the top. And, by the by, I do not include books I'm rereading on this list, though I reread a lot, so be impressed, punk.
12/1/09 Summary- Thirteen books! Be amazed! I'm a grad student, after all, so this is in addition to course readings. Okay, so... (am mathing in another place) about twelve weeks have passed since I started. Twelve times one is twelve (yes, I really did just think that out- see how I love you, I update when I am exhausted.). Which means I'm one book ahead! And I'll probably finish Five Children and It before the real twelve weeks hits (Thursday). Feeling good! Plus, I plan to read pretty much the whole Series of Unfortunate event series (redundant much?) after the quarter ends. Yay! Optimism!
June 8 2010-- Well, I finally am getting around to updating pretty much everything I read extracurricularly Winter and Spring quarters. Wow, a lot of updating to do...Will probably be getting a lot more reading done now that I'm out of the school- rah! ... except I'm researching so much this sum-muh.
edit note: though I did do summer quarter... done tomorrow!
August 27 2010: oops, apparently I miscounted at some point -- So, hurrah- am done!
Kafka on the Shore- Murakami
Nine Pound Hammer- Bemis
Break of Day- Colette
Never Let Me Go- Ishiguro
Hate that Cat- Creech
Cabinet of Curiosities- Preston and Child
Teaching to Transgress- bell hooks
Critical Race Theory: An Intro
Slow Fat Triathlete- Jayne Williams
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis
The Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemingway
Maisie Dobbs-Jacqueline Winspear
Goodbye, Mr. Chips - James Hamilton
After Dark- Haruki Murakami
Eat, Pray, Love- Elizabeth Gilbert
House and Philosophy: Everybody Lies- Ed. Henry Jacoby
Girls in Peril- Karen Lee Boren
Polyverse- Lee Ann Brown
History of Sexuality Volume 1- Michele Foucault
How to Train Your Dragon- Cressida Cowell
Geography- Kelli Russell Agodon
The Cancer Journals- Audre Lorde
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo- Stieg Larsson
Ghost Boy- Iain Lawrence
Moon Opera- Bi Feiyu
The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison
Disquiet- Julia Leigh--Creeeeepy!
The Possession- Annie Ernaux
Beauty Salon- Mario Bellatin-- Hauntingly interesting. Highly recommended!
A is for Alibi- Sue Grafton
A Single Man- Christopher Isherwood
Gentlemen of the Road- Michael Chabon-- Don't be fooled! Even though it's by the fabulous Michael Chabon, this book is TERRIBLE. Possibly the worst book I've ever read. I want to buy and burn it, but then I'd be financially supporting this crap. I'm not even linking it because it is so bad.
Letter to My Daughter- George Bishop Jr.
The Malady of Death- Marguerite Duras
Newcomer Can't Swim- Renee Gladman
A Picture-feeling- Renee Gladman
The Activist- Renee Gladman
The Yiddish Policemen's Union-Michael Chabon
A Mercy- Toni Morrison
Shutter Island- Dennis Lehane
Little Women- Louisa May Alcott
Hard Times- Charles Dickens
Geography Club- Brent Hartinger
Empress of the World- Sara Ryan
Ash- Malinda Lo
I, Rigoberta Menchu- Rigoberta Menchu
Frame Structures: Early Poems: 1974-1979- Susan Howe
Juice- Renee Gladman
The War- Marguerite Duras
The Lover- Marguerite Duras
Trans-Liberation- Leslie Feinberg
The Jungle Book- Rudyard Kipling
A Series of Unfortunate Events Book the Fourth: the Miserable Mill- Lemony Snicket
The Gates- John Connolly
Five Children and It- Nesbit
The Afterlife- Soto
A Series of Unfortunate Events Book the Third: The Wide Window- Lemony Snicket
Crossing the Wire- Hobbs
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days- Kinney
Slaughter-house Five- Vonnegut
Esperanza Rising- Munoz Ryan
Push- Sapphire
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society- Barrows and Shaffer
Peter and the Shadow Thieves- Barry and Pearson
Elsewhere- Zevin
Border Crossing- Cruz
It's nice to find a book out there dealing with the experiences of multiracial children, but this book was only decently written. Sometimes, it felt more like a lecture than an illustrated lesson, and the coincidences were a little too far-fetched to be believable. Plus, there was a pretty noticeable typo regarding which country San Diego was in- at one point the narrator gets off the bus in San Diego and is suddenly in Mexico. Overall, though, the novel covers themes not expressed at all or at all effectively elsewhere and fills a gap with mediocre skill.
Love That Dog- Creech
Told through the poem's enclosed in a boy's school journal, Love That Dog is a story of loss, healing, and artistic awakening. One of the most original children's stories I've ever read and uniquely beautiful among Creech's plethora of gorgeous works. A wonderful book to introduce to young artists not yet mature enough to take on Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
Let Me In- Lindqvist
While many literary critics quickly associate the voice of John Ajvide Lindqvist with other more well-known writers of the horror genre, Lindqvist should be noted as a young artist noteworthy for his particular distinctness of story-telling and narrative. In an era that has seen the violent vampire myth turned into a romantic topic of teen angst, Lindqvist imagines vampirism in its darkest hours, weaving a tale of murder, sadism, and everyday suffering, in which it is not so much the vampires as the humans who are the monsters.
Lindqvist's take on the necessities for the modern vampire's survival is innovative and disturbing; the vampire-girl Eli lives in the body of a 12-year-old and thus depends on a middle-aged pedophile to support her need for blood. She is too young for work but cannot survive in a modern world without financial assets, and so takes money from her victims. As a vampire or vampire-like creature, she does not kill for pleasure but purely to survive, and the author clearly illustrates for readers that most people-turned-vampire cannot make the choice to kill, and instead commit suicide.
While the story primarily focuses on the extended life of Eli and her new friend Oskar, a viciously bullied 12-year-old boy, it also shows how their situations affect those around them. Vampirism is treated as an epidemic that Eli attempts to contain but which somehow continues to spread throughout the novel, creating on particularly terrifying character both in appearance and mannerism. The town of Blackeberg itself becomes a character, treated as the Transylvania of the Bram Stoker novel.
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