Last of the 2008 books

Last of 2008's books:

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I think that's it.  Somewhere in the vicinity of 65-70 in one year?  Not too shabby.  Next year I'll go for a clean 100.

more books

I wasn't really planning on keeping up with this, but I promised myself one year of keeping track.  I think I've probably forgotten some in the past two months.  Oh well.

1. Beauty by Robin McKinley

2. Chalice by Robin McKinley

3. The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia A. McKillip

4. Little White Lies by Gemma Townley

5. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walters

6. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

7. Twilight by Stephenie Meyers

8. New Moon by Stephenie Meyers

9. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyers

10. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyers

11. Adultery by Richard B. Wright

Book: The Secret

Title: The Secret

Author: Rhonda Byrne

Thoughts: Well, I've read this before and I will read it again.  Because even though I sometimes feel glum, it's amazing how much a little positive thinking can turn the tables.  Anything that makes me feel so good is FINE BY ME!

Book: The Bell Jar

Title: The Bell Jar

Author: Sylvia Plath

Thoughts: Of course I've read The Bell Jar before, but it was several years ago, and I had forgotten much of it.  Sometimes what strikes me most is the sheer sadness of having been deprived of such talent.  Plath died so young, it makes you wonder what she might have produced in her later years.  I guess we will always wonder what a second novel might have looked like.

Book: Garden Spells

Title: Garden Spells
Author: Sarah Addison Allen
Thoughts: I loved this book! Sarah Addison Allen does in this book the same thing that makes (most of) Alice Hoffman's books work so well for me: beautifully realizes a world of magic realism. Some day I would love to write a book using magic realism really well, but for now I will just stand back and watch and admire these masters of the genre. Everything about Garden Spells is lovely. I can't wait to read her second book.

So Behind: the last 8 books I've read:

Too many books! I should be recording them as I finish, but I plead the stress of moving, etc.

That Charming Man by Marian Keyes
I always like Marian Keyes. This book took me a little getting into, but as soon as I was in it, I couldn't put it down.

Sweet Love by Sarah Strohmeyer
I loved this book!!! Really loved it. I think it's my favorite chick-lit/women's fic book in recent memory.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Oh book. I have read you before, but I adored you even more this time. Scary, creepy, all-too-plausible.

The Dog That Wouldn't Be by Farley Mowat
Night time reading, so I think I was only awake for 2/3s of it.

The Just-So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
Have been read before, and are guaranteed to make me sleep, for some reason, even though I think they are great and not boring in the slightest.

Sleeping Arrangements by Madeleine Wickham
I ... cautiously liked this one. I always like her better when she writes as Kinsella, and I kind of hate adultery as a plot device, so...

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Lovely and heartbreaking and so much more careful and less "Hollywood" than the movie.

Bidding for Love by Katie Fforde
I really enjoyed this one.

Title: Going Home

Title: Going Home
Author: Harriet Evans
Thoughts: Mixed thoughts on this one. I really enjoyed the book, but I also felt it probably could have been made tighter in places. Generally speaking, if I can put a book down, that's where something could have been edited. But it's a minor quibble, because when all's said and done, this book did a lot of other things right: it was well written and engaging, and I liked it enough that I'll keep an eye out for Evans in the future.

Title: Secrets of a Shoe Addict

Title: Secrets of a Shoe Addict
Author: Beth Harbison
Thoughts: I read Harbison's first book earlier in the year and quite enjoyed it. She uses familiar characters in this one, but it's definitely a different story. Because I live in a place where it's been difficult to make friends, I have a real soft spot for lovely little stories of women building friendships. I think Harbison does a nice job of tackling a sequel without making it too much of the same. I look forward to seeing what she does next!

Title: Mistress of the Sun

Title: Mistress of the Sun
Author: Sandra Gulland
Thoughts: Gulland is the author of one of my very favorite series of books: The Josephine B. Trilogy, so I was terribly excited when I saw she'd written a new one. It certainly does not disappoint. She has a lovely way with words, and the way she tackles historical fiction bowls me over. She always has such perfect tone and layers everything with richness and detail, without losing the readability and just plain good storytelling so necessary in a good book. Absolutely recommended. (And if you haven't read the Josephine books, what on EARTH are you waiting for?!)

Things I read/watched on my summer vacation:

Answer: not much.

Gemma Townley's new book The Importance of Being Married. Love her, usually, but this one relied too heavily on lies to further the plot. Don't like deception, much.

Tracy Chevalier's Burning Bright. Loved this one. That lady can describe, oh yes she can.

The X-Files Movie
Dark Knight
Mamma Mia!

All enjoyable for different reasons, though, as a former fan, I would have changed A LOT about the X-Files flick. Still. It was okay.

It's been a busy month and a half, where the first bit was spent planning/executing my sister's wedding, and the second half was spent in the hospital with my sister's daughter. Not exactly good times for reading/movie watching. I am back in New York now, though, and barring disaster, should be reading more.

Movie: Wanted

Well. James McAvoy. Angelina Jolie. There are worse ways to spend a couple hours than looking at these two. Honestly, it was so so so far out of the realm of believability (even out of suspend-my-disbelief-ability) it was just... kind of fun. Lots of bullets. And blood. And killing. And stuff. So, if you're in the mood for the aforementioned blood, killing, bullets, etc, this is probably your movie. If you're looking for anything deeper than the Deep Thoughts of the Loom of Fate (you'll get it later)... you're going to have to look elsewhere. My favourite moment was crying out in the theater, "Oh, I am tangled in the web of faaaaate!"

Because he was. Literally.

Title: Choke

Title: Choke
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Thoughts: Man, Palahniuk has a great way with voice. Just loved the individuality of his main character, and the style of his writing. I've been meaning to read his books for quite a while, and this was definitely a great way to start them. In the middle I thought it was going a place I didn't want to follow, but everything turned around and worked out perfectly. Great book. Really great tone.

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Kung Fu Panda: LOVED IT
Get Smart: LAUGHED A LOT

Title: The Flirt

Title: The Flirt
Author: Kathleen Tessaro
Thoughts: This has been a magical year in books for me. Every time I think the name of an author I like, or whose books I love, I am told: "Hey, they have a new one coming out!" (There has been one disappointment, where an author I like wrote a book I couldn't stand, but...) I've loved, loved, loved Tessaro's previous books, and, thankfully I loved The Flirt, too. The only thing I didn't like was her asides where she spoke in the "I" voice as the author. Not my cup of tea. But everything else about the story--the characters, the premise--was lovely and enjoyable.

Title: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Title: Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Thoughts: Okay. Admission time. Embarrassing admission. I have never been able to get through a Marquez book. And I have tried. I cannot begin to tell you how long One Hundred Years of Solitude sat in my bathroom. A million years. Or at least two. I couldn't get through it! I'm sorry, because I know so many people swear by his writing. At last, with Chronicle I begin to understand why. This is a short little book, and it packs so much punch into it's 120 pages... it's hard to wrap my brain around. No word is extraneous. Every description is amazing. The hints of layers and layers and layers astound. So, perhaps... perhaps I will move Marquez back into my reading list.

Title: Gigi

Title: Gigi
Author: Colette
Thoughts: This was such a lovely and unexpected story. I really love the way Colette writes--her way with words, her fabulous descriptions... I love them all. I only wished it was longer, because I was enjoying the read so much and then BAM it was over!

Title: Persuasion

Title: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
Thoughts: I haven't read this book in years. Probably about... seven or eight. And why not? It may not be quite as lovely as my beloved Pride and Prejudice, but it is a great novel. I loved it. I got all kinds of warm fuzzies at the end. Ahh, Jane. I wish you'd written fifty books.

Title: Certain Girls

Title: Certain Girls
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Thoughts: I enjoyed this one. It's been a while since I read one of her novels, and this one made it home from the library only to be returned without having been read. Then, a day or so later, I found it at the library again. I'm glad I picked it up and brought it home. At times I wanted to shake all the characters (I was fortunate to have a great mother, and my mother was fortunate because I was the easiest teenager in the world, so some of these conflicts felt very foreign to me), but the ending was genuinely beautiful and moving.

Theatre I Have Seen

It occurs to me that I should be keeping track of live theatre, too, while I live in New York.
Top Girls, Avenue Q, The Blue Man Group, MacBeth, The Nutcracker, The Homecoming. I think that's it. Hmm. I should see some more!

Book: Thursday Next: First Among Sequels

Title: Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
Author: Jasper Fforde
Thoughts: It is not without sadness that I write this, because I have reached the last of the Thursday Next books. I really enjoyed this one, and was pleased with the way it jumped ahead so many years, but retained the familiarity of the earlier books. I will be waiting with baited breath for the next to come.

Book: How to Sleep with a Movie Star

Title: How to Sleep with a Movie Star
Author: Kristen Harmel
Thoughts: I read another of Harmel's books not too long ago and even though I really enjoyed it, I think I liked this one even better! It helps that it was exactly the kind of book I was in the mood for -- a love story with twists, but not too much neuroses. It was clever and fresh and did an admirable job of making the first two hours of a five hour bus ride fly by. I will be keeping an eye out for more by Harmel.

Movie: Sex and the City

Yeah, yeah... I'm a girl in my twenties. Obviously I was going to have to see this film. I'm only sad I don't have girlfriends here in New York, because this is obviously a movie you should see with your nearest and dearest ladies. Preferably with cosmos. Sex and the City has always been about finding moments and nuggets of truth, even while set in the most melodramatic, crazy city in the world. When I first moved to New York, all my twenty-something girlfriends went into raptures about how my life would be "just like Sex and the City." Alas, I don't own a single pair of Blahniks, I never wear labels, I couldn't tell you the name of the hottest (wait... any...) club in town if you paid me. But it was lovely to revisit these fictional women in their fictional New York, and to fall in love with them all over again. I think if you liked the series, you'll like the movie.... because the movie was, more or less, an entire season packaged for the big screen.

Book: The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

Title: The Enchantment of Lily Dahl
Author: Siri Hustvedt
Thoughts: This was a lovely book--clever but real, and beautifully realized. I love Hustvedt's way with words. She uses only the ones necessary to paint the picture she's going for, but she doesn't pull any punches. This story was beautiful and heartfelt. I love the way the main character thinks -- I love her views on life. Looking forward to reading more of Hustvedt's work.

Movie: Roman de Gare

This was a "well, let's see a movie--which one?" choice I'm glad we made. We'd been a little too intensely involved with the summer blockbusters, and this French whodunit/drama was a breath of fresh air. I won't give away anything, because a lot of the story depends on the audience going in cold, but it was a brilliant film. I've been thinking about it for days. The acting was spot-on, and, as my husband pointed out... it's not very often in Hollywood you get to see a 50-something woman in a starring and awesome role. More's the pity.

Book: Night Child

Title: Night Child
Author: Jes Battis
Thoughts: I found the beginning a little slow, mostly because there was a lot of description about forensic techniques I didn't particularly care about (or need to know about in such detail!) but once the story was fully underway I enjoyed it quite a bit. I look forward to the next in the series.

Book: Don't Hex With Texas

Title: Don't Hex With Texas
Author: Shanna Swendson
Thoughts: I know, from lurking over at her blog, this is the 4th in a series of 5. I also know the publisher has passed on the 5th book. This makes me sad. To be honest, I kind of felt the last book (Damsel Under Stress) was the weakest (with the caveat that it was still very good... just the weakest in the series up to that point). If this is so, Don't Hex With Texas more than makes up for it. I really, really enjoyed this one. I liked the change of scene, I liked the interactions between people, I liked the new cast of characters. I felt this one was more tightly written, and I read it in one sitting.

Also, I really love Owen. I really, really love Owen.

So my fingers are crossed in the hopes Book 5 will somehow come to be.

Movie: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Ooh, May. Must be summer blockbuster season. Summer 2008 is also, apparently, sequel season.

Oh, Indiana. You went places in this movie I couldn't quite follow. Your cheesiness at times was hard to take, and seemed almost apologetic. Even the film quality fluttered in places, like you weren't given enough time or budget to reshoot something that initially went awry.

I still love you. I love your hat and your whip and your Harrison Ford half-smile. I love your theme music and the way you remind me of my childhood. Mostly, though? Not quite there with you.

Book: Something Rotten

Title: Something Rotten
Author: Jasper Fforde
Thoughts: Yes! Yes, yes, yes! This one I loved! (Okay, I've loved all of them, but I really, REALLY loved this one.) Hamlet!! Croquet!! Shakespeare clones!

I am aware how my reviews for Fforde's books have become increasingly enigmatic. Just read them. You'll be glad I spoiled nothing for you.

Movie: Prince Caspian

I liked The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I really did. And Prince Caspian was always one of my favorite Narnia books. Some things I liked -- the Pevensie kids' emotional fallout from the first adventure was quite good. I disliked a lot of it too, though: the almost unintelligable accents of the 'bad guys'; the endless run-fight-battle-run-fight-battle sequences; the School of Melodramatic Acting (Major in the Dramatic Pause) all the actors were evidently required to attend. All told, I found it a little bit meh.

Book: The Well of Lost Plots

Title: The Well of Lost Plots
Author: Jasper Fforde
Thoughts: I am still really enjoying this series, although this one took me longer to read and a bit longer to get into. Still, I picked up Something Rotten right away, so Fforde is definitely doing something right. And honestly, it's hard to wrap my brain around the cleverness and originality sometimes. It's just that great!

Book: Shopaholic & Baby

Title: Shopaholic & Baby
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Thoughts: I like Sophie Kinsella. I really do. And, for that reason, I hope this is the last of the Shopaholic books. Because I am kind of sick of them. They are cute and amusing and fun, but they've also, I think, run their course. This book felt like closure, and I liked that. Plus, I like Kinsella's books so much, I'd like to see more of her non-Shopaholic work!

Movie: Iron Man

You know, I have a guilty pleasure. And that guilty pleasure is comic book superhero movies. I don't always love comic book superhero movie SEQUELS, but usually I love the first ones.

Iron Man is a fun movie. It's a good movie. It's well done and interesting and has a great arc for the main character. I genuinely liked it, and not just because it conformed to my guilty pleasure.

Some day I'll get into my other guilty pleasure: dance movies. Stupid, stupid dance movies.

Book: Pride and Prejudice

Title: Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austen
Thoughts: Not much to say here. P&P is my favorite book in the world. I read it every few months. It's only surprising I haven't read/written about it here yet.

Book: The Drowning Season

Title: The Drowning Season
Author: Alice Hoffman
Thoughts: Yes, another Hoffman I hadn't read. I loved this one. Like a lot of her other work, this was a moving story told with a very fairy-tale-esque tone. Hoffman has a beautiful way with magic realism. I particularly enjoyed the way the histories were interwoven with the main narrative. I think I will be sad when I've read all of Hoffman's books and have to wait like everyone else for new ones to come out.

Book: Beauty

Title: Beauty: a retelling of Beauty and the Beast
Author: Robin McKinley
Thoughts: Next to Pride and Prejudice, this is one of my most favorite books. I know McKinley wrote it when she was young, and it is her first book, so every now and again I notice little awkward things, but it is still one of the most perfect stories out there. This is one of my pick-me-up books -- I can always count on it to cheer me up. It's also one of the few books I can read and reread without getting bored. In fact, I may have been known to finish reading it, pause, and begin it again, just for sheer pleasure.

Book: Lost in a Good Book

Title: Lost in a Good Book
Author: Jasper Fforde
Thoughts: Still really enjoying this series. I thought, perhaps, this installment moved a little slower than the first, but it was still enjoyable. Love all the clever ideas, and the dodos -- especially Pickwick -- are fabulous. Plock plock.

Now, on to the third!

Book: The Eyre Affair

Title: The Eyre Affair
Author: Jasper Fforde
Thoughts: Oh, I loved this book. I loved it! I spent my entire lazy Sunday reading, and when I finished, I wished for nothing more than the second in the series. Sadly, I didn't have it. But I will! Very soon! Because I loved this book. Granted, I am a bit of a lit fiend... and this is lit done right. Because all literature isn't about stodgy study and tearing things apart in order to find meaning... it is about good books. It's about books people, through the ages, have loved and continue to love. Not too long ago I read a different novel that tried (and failed, I thought) to blur the lines between real and fiction, where fictional characters walked about in the 'real' world. Fforde shows exactly how the concept can be handled well.

Clever, tight storytelling, good characters, non-pretentious, enjoyable = love love love.

Plus, there is a character named Jack Schitt. Say it out loud! Jack Schitt!

Book: The Third Angel

Title: The Third Angel
Author: Alice Hoffman
Thoughts: I started reading Hoffman's books after her last novel Skylight Confessions was published. I've read all her books out of order, and just now looked up the chronology. I realize my favorites have been her later novels... she's just been getting better and better. I loved The Third Angel. It was beautiful and haunting, and I feel like I missed so much in my first read-through (you'll understand if you read it) that I want to go back and read it again. Possibly right away.

A lot of what I loved about this book I've mentioned before in relation to Hoffman's writing. She looks at things in such an interesting way. Her stories often read like fairy tales... but ones where no happy ending is guaranteed. Her imagery and use of dreams and symbols is beautiful.

The characters in The Third Angel were so fully realized I couldn't stop thinking about them. I kept imagining all the moments of their lives we didn't get to see. Just wonderful. I can't wait to reread.

Book: Remember Me?

Title: Remember Me?
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Thoughts: I love the way Kinsella writes chick lit. I got a little tired of the Shopaholic books, and haven't even read the latest one yet, but this is a departure from that character and I enjoyed it very much. I love the way Kinsella takes chick lit norms and uses them deftly. Even when something walks the border of cliche, it is saved by cleverness and good writing. So many chick lit authors get the romance, girl-of-the-world, girlfriends and cocktails thing nailed, only to fall down as second-rate writers. Sophie Kinsella always has a good voice, and doesn't resort to the telling-not-showing.

Book: Belong to Me

Title: Belong to Me
Author: Marisa de los Santos
Thoughts: I am embarrassed because de los Santos's first book, Love Walked In, is one of my absolute favorites... and I had no idea her second was due out last week. Honestly, anyone walking next to me on the street when I noticed the big BARNES AND NOBLE RECOMMENDS poster in the window must have thought I was crazy, because I stopped in my tracks and stared for a good minute or two.

I wasn't expecting de los Santos's second book to be a sequel to her first, but I'm glad it was. I had no idea how much I'd missed those characters until I started reading about them again. And yet, she writes a story that isn't dependent on the first to make sense, which I like. The new characters were just as wonderful and developed and perfect as the old, and, as ever, de los Santos has an absolutely magical ability with turn of phrase and metaphor. I love it and it makes me jealous at the same time. High praise! It's a book I'll read and reread many times, I'm sure.

Book: The Great Gatsby

Title: The Great Gatsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thoughts: I last read this book in high school. Mostly the only thing I remembered about it was not liking it all that much... but this was a common ailment I had when it came to assigned reading. Anyway, high school was a few years ago now (ahem) and so, when my husband chose The Great Gatsby as our latest reading-before-bed project, I thought--'Okay, we'll see if I like it better this time around. I mean, it's a Great American Novel, right?'
In some ways I understand why it is a Great American Novel. It's all about The American Dream (whether this dream is successful or fails is probably another story). Fitzgerald is talented, obviously, and he has a remarkable ability for creating interesting turns of phrase.
But for some reason I can't quite put my finger on, I still don't love it. I don't hate it anymore--I think I hated it in high school--so perhaps I will pick it up again in another ten years and suddenly find it my favourite novel? I'll get back to you on that one.

Book: One for Sorrow

Title: One for Sorrow
Author: Christopher Barzak
Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book. It's been a long time since I read a good ghost story, and this one does something magnificent: it sets up a world in which the main character has these completely believable and moving experiences with another character, but it just so happens that character #2 is dead. No laborious over-thinking passages about the meaning of life and death; no painful attempts to delve into the physics of why the ghost is possible; no saccharine musing on the nature of the afterlife. Yet the world of the novel is richly sketched, and never once did I set the book aside thinking 'Hmm, I don't believe it.' At its heart it is a story about grief: the toll it takes, the long process of overcoming it. It is also a coming-of-age story, a growing-up story. Beautifully written and beautifully realized. I'm only sad it's the author's first novel, because I can't run out to find something else of his to read.

Book: Me and Mr. Darcy

Title: Me and Mr. Darcy
Author: Alexandra Potter
Thoughts: As someone currently working on a novel that pays homage to Pride and Prejudice, I just have to say this one thing: it is entirely (and often all too) possible to stick too close to the original when one is retelling a famous story. Pride and Prejudice is a great book--my favourite, as a matter of fact--and no one who retells the original word for word is doing themselves justice. A perfect nugget like the original Austen is hard to compete with on the best of days by the best of writers so all you chick-lit wannabes out there take heed: borrow if you must, but don't copy passages of the original. And when you (inevitably) get to the part where your Darcy stand-in writes his revelatory letter explaining everything, please don't steal lines from Austen. Please. Please. You aren't as good as Jane Austen, and voluntarily putting yourself up for comparison with one of the greatest novels of all time? Just painful. For everyone involved.

Book: The Art of French Kissing

Title: The Art of French Kissing
Author: Kristin Harmel
Thoughts: Chick lit? Check! Crazy French rock star? Check! Girl discovering herself? Check! Paris, Paris, Paris? Check! Check! Check!
This was a quick and easy read, but boy did it scratch an itch I didn't realize I'd had. I've been a bit chick-lit-ted out recently, but this was a lovely book and was exactly what I needed. Plus it was set in Paris, and I'm writing a book set in Paris, so it was practically research! I kind of wish I hadn't figured out what was obviously meant to be the twist in the end about half-way through, but... what can you do? I'm going to look up her other two books the next time I'm at the library!

Movie: The Duchess of Langeis

Wow.

This movie was so boring.

I'm sorry to be so critical, but... honestly? At least half a dozen people left the theatre as it played (and it was a small theatre) and more just slept... I could hear a guy in my row snoring. The costumes, I grant you, were beautiful. But the characters had no chemistry, I didn't even like them, and I certainly didn't care about the things they cared about. Which means as a character-driven drama it failed. Failed miserably.

Also, it was two and a half hours long.

Zzzzz.

Book: Illumination Night

Title: Illumination Night
Author: Alice Hoffman
Thoughts: I sure will be sad when I run out of Alice Hoffman books. The thing is, I don't love all of them. Some stories I just can't get behind. Illumination Night wasn't one of those. It was a delicate story with just enough of the magical realism I so enjoy in her books. Sometimes you feel as though you're reading a grown-up fairy tale. Sure her usual themes of infidelity and rebellious teenagehood were present, and sometimes I get sick of those, but I really enjoyed this book. It was a lovely tonic while I recuperated from the flu!

Book: The Bright Forever

Title: The Bright Forever
Author: Lee Martin
Thoughts: I liked a lot of things about this book. I'm always on the lookout for books that use multiple POVs well, and Martin really had his POV voices down pat. The reader doesn't get to hear every character, but the characters chosen are good ones. There was, in my opinion, a little too much 'playing to the camera' for lack of a better term: a character saying something along the lines of 'well, you'll understand when I tell you my story' or 'but we haven't reached that part of my story yet' etc. Overall it was touching and well-written, but it was no The Lovely Bones.

Movie: The Other Boleyn Girl

Well. The book was better.

The problem, I think, with doing a movie based on this book is that even though the events are historical and epic and lend themselves to film story-telling, the book was more intimate. A lot of that intimacy was lost in the scope of 'ooh! castles! Eric Bana! ooh! pretty girls!'

Sometimes when I watch too many Hollywood movies, I start to see the terrible stereotypes everywhere. Here is the 'good sister' here is the 'bad sister' here is the 'weak dad' here is the 'chummy brother'. It's as though everyone only ever gets one word to describe their character, and heaven help them if the want to bring anything more to the table. "No! I said you are the good sister and THAT IS ALL!!"

Sometimes Hollywood drives me nuts.

Books: Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last

Title: Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last
Author: Susan Juby
Thoughts: At first I was like "What? Are you serious? Smithers?" because it would never occur to me to set a novel in Smithers, BC. After I wrapped my head around that, though, I actually enjoyed this quick little teen read. Juby has a nice voice--perhaps a little older than 16 years old, though--and I was amused from beginning to end. I wouldn't mind reading the earlier books in the series, and will look for them in library.

Book: The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters

Title: The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters
Author: Elisabeth Robinson
Thoughts: Okay, I'll admit it: I have a real problem with epistolary novels. Letters. Diary entries. I find these things difficult to get behind. Occasionally a novel transcends this problem (The Josephine B. books come to mind) but mostly I find it hard to care about the characters when you're never getting anything but their words. And, especially as in this book, only one character's words.

Robinson almost had me with this novel. I still struggled and put it down half-way through... but I picked it up again. I enjoyed her use of language and was many times jealous of a beautiful turn of phrase. I cried a little.

I am really curious to see what comes of this second novel she is apparently working on.

Movie: Be Kind Rewind

My husband, who is notoriously hard on movies when it comes to the star scale (1-5), gave this movie a 5. Since this never happens, I probably built it up a little before heading off to see it on my own. I thought it had a bit of a slow start, but once the action of the piece finally started, it was both amusing and thoughtful. Essentially it was a film about coming together to celebrate shared experiences and shared loves, both with cleverness and with a touch of sentimentality. I think I could have done with a teeny bit less of Jack Black being Jack Black, but overall it was a great film.

Book: The Secret Garden

Title: The Secret Garden
Author: Frances Hodgeson Burnett
Thoughts: As soon as I finished reading A Little Princess, I happened to find The Secret Garden in a thrift shop and I snapped it right up. It was just as delicate and descriptive and lovely and inspiring. I love her characters! I want to read every book she has ever written... that's how much I enjoyed these two books, be they intended for children or not. I've often said I think books for children have to be more compelling than those meant for adults because children make for a cruel audience. If you don't keep them consistently and constantly entertained, down the book goes, never to be picked up again.

Book: A Little Princess

Title: A Little Princess
Author: Frances Hodgeson Burnett
Thoughts: I don't know how I missed reading this book when I was a child--everything about it was lovely. The prose is light but still evocative and descriptive. I understand why it was made into a film--Burnett is adept with descriptive language. I started smiling about five pages in and didn't stop until the end. I love a book that makes me smile.

Movie: The Silence Before Bach

I think, perhaps, this film thought it was cleverer than it actually was. The music, of course, was amazing. Even the way the little vignettes tied together in a sort of fugue-like fashion was kind of neat (though my husband points out that in a fugue there is simultaneity, which was not the case here). Mostly, though, the film suffered from a case of the borings. It didn't engage quite enough to carry off what it was doing. If you're going to present an agonizingly long, boring shot of something you'd better damn-well make sure your audience is already so engaged they won't notice.

See: The New World. Some people thought that movie was boring. I was so engaged from the first moment I would have watched that actress read the phone book. The whole New York City phone book. All five boroughs. If such a thing existed.

Book: The Three Musketeers

Title: The Three Musketeers
Author: Alexandre Dumas
Thoughts: This book was read to me over the course of several months. My husband reads to me every night before bed, because I have a long history of insomnia...and his voice puts me to sleep, apparently. It was an amusing book, in desperate need of an editor---I know this is because it was orginally written as a serial, meaning readers might need a long catch-up paragraph every other chapter. Boy-oh-boy does that get old when you're reading it straight through, though.

The best thing about it were the sarcastic additions by my husband. I'll just leave it at that. But there were times when he would do a character voice or make a sideways comment that had me in STITCHES.

Movie: 27 Dresses

As no one should be surprised to hear, given my chick lit tastes, I am a sucker for a romantic comedy. I am always willing to overlook the bad in favour of the good. 27 Dresses is a perfect example. I loved just about everything, except for the younger sister (I disliked the character and I disliked the actress playing her) and some pacing issues (usually involving long speeches by the aforementioned sister). It was clever and cute and exactly what I wanted to see. (Exactly what I always want to see, more or less.)

As a side note: all of my bridesmaids have worn their dresses again since my wedding. This is because I let them wear pretty little empire-waisted pink silk voile. (I have one in white. It wasn't my wedding dress.) Some of the dresses in the movie were beyond hideous.

Book: Local Girls

Title: Local Girls
Author: Alice Hoffman
Thoughts: Yeah, I'm on one of those Alice Hoffman kicks again. I started a different one of hers and couldn't get into it, so I set it aside for this one. Local Girls is interesting because it's about the same few characters living in the same small town, but it spans many, many years, and each 'chapter' is actually a short story. I didn't know this when I started--though I did wonder at the in and out of different chapters written from different POVs and in different tenses. It made sense when I realized they were all connected in a linear way, but that each story could be read separately. I loved the story. There were so many beautiful moments. That's the thing about short stories-as-chapters...you can't be lazy. Each chapter/story has it's Big Moment. I think it's probably a good way to write a book, quite frankly. No lazy storytelling allowed.

Book: 5 Minutes Ago

Title: 5 Minutes Ago
Author: Hilary de Vries
Thoughts: Hmm. Not too long ago, my husband and I had a long conversation about the name-dropping of real things/places/people in fiction. He hates it completely and utterly. I dislike it, but can see how, especially in chick lit, it is acceptable. A woman wearing head-to-toe Gucci or Armani means something more than a woman dressed in a nice suit. Those names stand for something, and basically act as a placeholder. If the reader is told a woman wears Armani, you know she is rich, you know she's classy, you suspect she might be pretentious... etc, etc. That said, I hate sentences like this "The woman, dressed head-to-toe in Gucci, strode into the Starbucks on the corner of Bleeker and 4th, ordered her standard venti quad espresso, pulled a twenty from her Louis Vuitton handbag and waved at Charlize Theron, who happened to be picking up her grande non-fat, half-caf mocha." Too much!! TOO MUCH!! And, for me, 5 Minutes Ago was simply too much. Too much name dropping, too many almost-libelous references to real celebrities, too much.

And not just because I'm writing my own Hollywood-kinda-sucks-doesn't-it novel ;)

Movie: There Will Be Blood

I figure this blog may as well be devoted to the films I watch, too---I've always wanted to keep track of them.

Last night we went to see There Will Be Blood, which I knew nothing about except a) oil was involved b) Daniel Day-Lewis has been lauded for his performance c) it took place in California d) it was period.

It was the kind of film you think about afterward--I'll probably think about it for days. It was also, I felt, an excellent example of film using itself to actively be a part of the story, rather than blending the story together. Maybe that doesn't make much sense, but what I'm getting at is the sense I had, while watching the film, that is was definitely a film I was watching. I didn't pretend I was 'in' the story. The score, in particular, was used so strangely it couldn't help but stand out. And not in a bad way. I realized, later, the music was likely very strongly tied to the symbolism of the main character's soul. More than anything, the film was an intense, intimate portrait of one man--the choices he makes, the hubris that drives him; the neuroses, the ambition.

The entire long walk home, my husband and I kept up a running conversation about the film--things we liked, things we didn't, things springing to mind only then--and I have to say... any film that can keep us talking for nearly an hour afterward gets a solid thumbs up from me.

Book: What Men Want

First read of 2008!

Title: What Men Want
Author: Deborah Blumenthal
Thoughts: I liked the story, as much as I like most read-it-and-forget-it chick-lit novels. However, a few things stood out that bear mentioning.

1. Typos are bad. She 'died' her hair? Justdeserts.com instead of justdesserts.com? It was meant to be a reference to revenge, not the Sahara.
2. This book had a serious, life-threatening case of 'Cover art? WTF?' as well as the most misleading summary on the back I've probably ever come across. Both the cover art and the back-flap blurb belonged, it seemed, to a different book. (Perhaps a book that bore a slight resemblance to the one contained within these lying covers, but only slight.)
3. Show, don't tell. Please.

I sometimes think my chick-lit addiction is just that: unhealthy.

The New Year and I'm already behind...

Placeholder for three books (all read in 2007, not 2008)

Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen
Lee Nichols, Hand-Me-Down

Hmm. Even though I thought there was another one, I can't seem to remember it. See? This is why I need to record AS I READ!!!