March Books
I lived without a Kindle for 2.5 weeks recently. Oh, the drama! All back to normal now. Thank apostrophes.
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
Atwood is brilliant for so many reasons. I love her groundbreaking and vivid prose style, and I love her ideas. She makes me think about my own life on every page. The premise of this novel was nothing spectacular: a woman remembers things in her past that shaped her. Yet it was engaging from beginning to end. Her way of presenting small events as relevant and interesting keeps me reading and makes the story and characters stay with me long after. Cordelia!
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Talking pigs! Comedy and tragedy! I love this book.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The story is a murder mystery at its heart. A man is hired to look into an entire family history to figure out what happened to one of the women twenty years earlier. He hires a computer hacker to help him. The forensics are cool and the clues surprising. It works really well as a crime novel, comparable to Lippman’s What the Dead Know, which was one of my fave’s of last year.
What Larsson did really well was building a whole world in this novel. He brought a really large family to life, members past and present, and even made the world of corporate takeovers and computer hackers interesting and real. I enjoyed reading this one, but when I got to the end I felt a little let down. The writing was really excellent and the characters fascinating and original, but in the end, the plot felt a little familiar to me.
I loved the girl with the dragon tattoo (the actual girl in the story). She was tough and smart.
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
It’s probably a little unfair to read an author’s best works first! The Remains of the Day was funny, tragic and ironic, The Unconsoled was strange and eerie and beautiful and Never Let Me Go was a stunningly brilliant literary sci-fi I try to get all my friends to read, but this one‚ Well, I’m still a fan, but I liked the others better, I guess.
In this one, a detective sets out to discover the truth about his parents’ disappearance many years after it happens. He searches his memory for clues, but his memory is not terribly reliable. It’s vintage Ishiguro, but I’d recommend reading his others first. If you absolutely love his stuff, this one is worth a look.
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
I’ve been reading a lot of Atwood lately. Because I love her. This was one of her first published novels and is really short. It’s about a woman sort of finding herself while searching for her missing father. It’s got all the good Atwood stuff (feminist ideas, fabulous writing) but not as much plot holding it together as her later stuff.
Tripping to Somewhere by Kristopher Reisz
This is a really cool YA horror novel about two girls who pursue a witches carnival. It deals with the search for beauty and adventure. I loved the characters; they’re authentic and they’re searching. The relationship between Sam and Gilly is really well done. The story is full of weird magic and fascinating people.