about a book

jaclynday:

What I’ve Read: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

This book is as good as you’ve probably heard it is. It’s the story of two young teens with cancer, and while that may sound a little depressing or even a little Walk To Remember, I assure you—it’s not. The literary equivalent of Juno (+ cancer), this book is witty, funny and just begs you to turn another page. I read the entire thing in about two hours and couldn’t stop talking about it after that. Whether or not two teens would have the existential insight and impressive intellect they are given in the book doesn’t really matter because it’s so enjoyable. (There are a few moments I stopped and thought, “No teenager would talk like this,” but that small reservation is inconsequential when the book is viewed as a whole.)

It’s hard to write a book that makes a reader care about the characters and what happens to them. Ironically, like the way the fictional, cancer-ridden teens in this book care about what happens to several characters in a book they both love, I found myself wanting more as I turned the last page.

Have you read this book? What did you think?

edatrix:

i finished this book this afternoon, and though i haven’t written any of my paltry book reviews on here in a long while, i feel compelled to share my thoughts.  i liked it so much, i sort of feel like i’ll never like another book again.  that sounds extreme, but haven’t you ever had that feeling when you’ve just eaten or viewed or read something great?

anyways, what a beautiful book.

you don’t have to be a baseball lover to enjoy this it, but the sport provides a most lovely background.  the story takes place at a University, on the baseball diamond, and is different from many books i read because much of the plot focuses on the relationships between men rather than women.  multiple times, i found myself comparing the characters and their dynamic relationships to those in Franzen’s Freedom (and the book is almost as long, ha).

sticking with the half-baked reviews i’ve written in the past, i’ll leave this here.  i highly recommend this book, and think it would be great for a book club (ahem, DC Readers).  maybe i should start a Seattle Readers book club…

jaclynday:

What I’ve Read: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

This is a book that’s really entirely about baseball. Sort of. It’s about baseball and it’s about people and relationships. There’s a reason it’s also received rave reviews and countless awards and mentions—it’s a really, REALLY freaking good book.

On the surface, it’s not that complex. It’s the story of a surprisingly talented college-aged baseball player, his roommate, his older mentor and a college president and his daughter. The majority of the action takes place on the baseball field, in the dorms or in the president’s living quarters. It feels like a coming-of-age book in a lot of ways, but it’s not just that. Where another writer may have taken a sardonic, overly intellectual eye to this story, Harbach was content to make it warm and earnest and that’s why I couldn’t put it down for two days straight.

After finishing this book, I knew that I wasn’t likely to read another like it for some time and I was surprised to find myself depressed by the thought. I’ve read several really good books in the past few months, but this one stands out as that rare example of something that deserves the hype, but never seemed engineered specifically to generate it. For that reason alone, I fully excuse the few problems I had with it (errant storylines that never got wrapped up, characters that seemed important but weren’t).

If you’re looking for a great novel, or maybe a new selection for your book club, I’d highly recommend taking a look at this!

Have you read this book? What did you think?

readafuckingbook:

This Bridge Called My Back - Writings by Radical Women of Color

I don’t care what gender studies or queer theory class you’ve taken, you need to read this book, but be warned, it is a rare find and might expensive. It contains several essays by womanists discussing their experience, racism, poverty, how racism pervaded the feminist movement in the early 1980s and most importantly the individual experiences of asian pacific, black, american indian and latina/chicana women. This words you find in this book and the truths that will make your soul sick are imperrative for understanding the history of racism, feminism, systematic oppression and white privilege. These are stories that have, even today, been swept under the rug and out of sight. 

You need to read this fucking book. 

(via alohanico)

paperbackgirl:

i finished state of wonder by ann patchett over the weekend. where to begin? i loved it. at the very least it equaled bel canto and truth and beauty: a friendship. highly recommended.

equaled bel canto?  this is a high recommendation.

mavieenrose:

i just finished reading the privileges by jonathan dee. this novel follows the life of a nyc power couple who seems to continue becoming more successful and wealthier no matter the cost. the book is interesting because dee never makes an value judgments about his characters, although i think it’s easy to think of them as despicable and amoral. i really enjoyed the book up until the very last page, which left me incredibly confused. read it, and then tell me what you thought.

4 out of 5 stars.

jaclynday:

What I’ve Read: Normal Gets You Nowhere by Kelly Cutrone

I made no secret of the fact that I loved Kelly’s first book If You Have To Cry Go Outside. I thought the advice was sound and it was interesting learning more tidbits about her personal life and work. It was a fast, worthwhile read and I still recommend it to people.

You can imagine how excited I was to read her second book, Normal Gets You Nowhere, and I know some of you were looking forward to it as well. I had high expectations, even though I didn’t expect it would be a same song, second verse situation. I knew she wouldn’t do a lazy remix of the first book, so I was wondering what direction she’d take it in.

This book is a short (shorter than the first) take on all sorts of things Kelly has opinions on: religion, friendship, sex, holidays…to name a few. There’s also a chapter devoted to Eleanor Roosevelt, an inspirational figure to Kelly (“a feminine ideal”) and one about a breakthrough she had in connecting with her feminine, God-like self.

So, it’s uneven. Very uneven. It bounces around a bit, feels a little thrown together and, while containing important nuggets of advice like her first, has a distinct tone of spirituality throughout that was only briefly touched on in her first book. For some readers, this could really throw you…or turn you off. She alternates between the hard-as-nails personality we’ve all seen on TV and this super-compassionate, super-spiritual woman. The result is a book that I can’t really wrap my head around. I’m not sure what kind of book she set out to write. In the forward, she mentions that her editor wanted her to do “Kelly’s take” on the 10 Commandments and she refused, wanting to write her own thing. Well, this is her own thing—that much is evident. But it’s also wildly bizarre one minute and becomes coherent the next.

Anyway, it’s a short book (I read it in one hour) and does have some valuable advice, but ultimately, I found it more confusing than anything else. Unlike the satisfaction I had when I finished reading the first, I came away from this book with a, “Did I miss something?” reaction.

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts? If you haven’t read it, will you?

vneckandacardigan:

My Sort Of Book Review: Room

This book. I can’t say enough about this book. But really, I can’t say anything. Pretty much everyone else has already read this book and I’ll say what they’ve said —— I can’t tell you anything about it.

I can say that I read the bulk of it in three days. That all I wanted to do was read this book. That I was completely engrossed in the story.

If you’re part of the 1% of the population that hasn’t read this, go get it immediately. You won’t be sorry. 

52books:

#45: Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans

This has been on a few “best of” lists for the year and after finishing it this morning, I can concede that it has every right to be at the top of them. Before You Suffocate is a collection of stories, mostly surrounding young women, that touch on relationships, race, and growing up. Each one gently makes the reader remember a few key moments in their life when they realized they are not they same as they once were, that maybe the world will see them differently. Though not every story in this book mirrored my own, there are aspects of truth that are absolutely undeniable.

Oh, and Danielle Evans is 26. That is just months away from my own age which has made me, admittedly a little sad about my own writing skill, but more so proud of what she has been able to accomplish. There is something empowering about reading the work of a peer and realizing there’s actually something to be made from being a given age during a given time. I can’t wait to see where Ms. Evans goes and what she’ll do. It’s books like this (among a few others I’ve been lucky enough to read lately) that make me excited about where literature is headed. 

jaclynday:

What I’ve Read:

1. House Rules by Jodi Picoult - If you’re familiar with Jodi Picoult’s writing at all, you’ll know that she favors ethical and moral dilemma-type storylines set within a nuclear family who are trying both to figure each other out while the world (in some capacity) looks on. In this case, the dilemma is that the main character’s son, Jacob, has Asperger’s syndrome (a high-functioning personality disorder on the autism spectrum). Jacob’s physical mannerisms and his interpretation of all questions or comments into their most literal form lead local police to suspect and then charge Jacob with the death of his tutor. Functioning on the sidelines in this book are Jacob’s mother, brother, lawyer and the investigator on the case. Maybe one of the most frustrating things about this book was that despite how well it switched between each character’s point of view, I had “solved” the mystery that drives the book long before I think Picoult intended it to become clear. So, while some may find the great murder mystery pushing them to finish the book, I kept reading because I found the characters so well-developed that I wanted to see how they would react to what I had figured out. But, maybe that’s what Picoult intended all along. One more thing: it takes me about a quarter of a book to get used to Picoult’s M.O., the point-of-view shift she does each chapter. I normally hate authors who do this (is one character not enough for you?!), but Picoult does it so well and so seamlessly.

2. The Russian Concubine by Kate Furnivall - Oh man, what a weird book. I kept trying to figure out what kind of book she wanted this to be because it was at various times sort of 1920’s noir, then a romantic novel, then a mystery, then quite violent out of no where, back to the noir thing. It made my head spin, to be honest. On top of the incredibly schizo plot and random attention paid to minor characters, the main character was not particularly likable, or sketched out well throughout. The book is about a mother and daughter pair of Russian refugees living in an international settlement outside a Chinese city. The daughter one day runs into a Chinese man and is struck by the encounter so that she makes every excuse to see him again, until he disappears. And there’s opium and Communists and so on and so forth. The main character, Lydia, might be one of the strangest characters I’ve read in some time. She is originally made to be a mischievous thief-child, then a few hundred pages later, this girl who has been essentially settled as (at best) a preteen is having passionate sex scenes with her Chinese lover. I just don’t know, guys. I’d say to read it only because I’d be interested to know what you thought, but it is quite long and if you can stick it out, bravo.