These are the books I read in the first three months of 2013. My general view is if a book is good enough for me to finish reading, it’s good enough to recommend, so even a one out of five stars in my ratings is pretty good.
Continental Drift (P.S.), By Russell Banks
Date Started: December 24
Date Finished: January 8
Year: 2011
Pages: Kindle Edition
Publisher: Harper Collins
Synopsis: Typical Banks about down-on-his luck working class loser.
Quotes of Note:
- “and nothing seems improved over yesterday”
- “pretending he wasn’t who he was”
- “like most people, Bob finds it difficult to know right from wrong”
Other Notes and Thoughts: Lots of good descriptive writing. Tough to read in parts and the parts about Bob seemed to be better, filled with more depth than parts about the Haitians. Lots of sex – almost to the point of being unnecessary, overdone. Liked how the stories collided.
Overall Review: 3 out of 5 stars.
The Roundhouse, By Louise Eldrich
Date Started: January 8
Date Finished: January 19
Year: 2012
Pages: Kindle Edition
Publisher: Harper Collins
Synopsis: National Book Award winner; Native American family living on a reservation comes to grips with brutal attack on the mother.
Quotes of Note: Just a sampling – so many good descriptions and theme-supporting quotes in this book.
- “like punching a bruise”
- “His face registered the humming rage of a man who could not think fast enough.”
- “There was the added weight of being a surprise….and the surging hopes that implied. It was all on me – the bad and the good.”
- Quoted Marcus Aurellius: “Very little is needed to make a happy life.”
- “Lots of men cry after they do something nasty to a woman.”
Other Notes and Thoughts: Really loved this book despite it being predictable in some parts (Cappy’s death, for example, and I say that without giving too much away), but thrilling in most parts. Wish I could write like this. Gave me some good guidance for narration on a fiction project I have been struggling with, as the narrator is retelling a story from his youth.
Overall Review: 5 out of 5 stars.
With The Animals, By Noelle Revaz
Date Started: January 18
Date Finished: February 13
Year: 2012
Pages: Kindle Edition
Publisher: Dalkay Archive Press
Synopsis: Translated story about a misogynistic, semi-illiterate French farmer who relates better to animals than his family, including his cancer-stricken wife and his children.
Quotes of Note:
- “to know the son you have too look at the father too.”
- “Life’s like that, a wheel that turns faster and more frequent all the time, so the seasons seem to pass quicker than they used”
Other Notes and Thoughts: Tough read, and didn;t strike me as being as great as the review I read about it had lead me to believe. Semi-simplistic themes.
Overall Review: 2 out of 5 stars.
The Year We Left Home, By Jean Thompson
Date Started: March 1
Date Finished: March 13
Year: 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Synopsis: Tracks on family through four decades. Interesting structure and, again, something I could possibly experiment with if I were to write a novel based on my experience at summer camp.
Quotes of Note:
- “what really mattered was the life you made for yourself, and the person you decided to be”
- “You never can tell, looking at it from the outside. How miserable people can be in marriage.”
- “You decided that your life would go in a certain direction, and maybe it did. Or maybe you were kidding yourself and the world was mostly a matter of being in the right or wrong place in the right or wrong time.”
- “They didn’t think in terms of happy.”
Other Notes and Thoughts: Very sad when this book ended – picked from the dioscount table at Brookline Booksmith and it ended a streak of starting and not finishing a few books that let me down (Eat the City being one of the titles I really wanted to like a couldn’t like, or finish for that matter, in February). Structure definitely worked, as it showed complexity and growth of characters. Wondering if a similar structure could work in literary nonfiction.
Overall Review: 4 out of 5 stars.
The Lost Weekend, By Charles Jackson
Date Started: March 9
Date Finished: March 31
Year: 1944
Pages: 248
Publisher: Vintage
Synopsis: Semi-autobiographical tale of a five-day binges on the East Side of Manhattan.
Quotes of Note:
- “What was happening to him was, in a sense, not happening at all because nobody knew about it.”
- “Never dreamed it because these things just didn’t happen. Not to the kind of person he was, the kind of people he knew…”
- “How nice and neighborly of them to straighten up for him. The dear, sweet, considerate bitches.”
- “They wake up on mornings such as this, all but out of their minds with remorse, enduring what others call and can call a hangover – that funny word Americans will joke about forever, even when the morning after is their own.”
Other Notes and Thoughts: Picked it up after reading a Vanity Fair article about the film version (which is supposed to be quite good). Fairly timeless and has held up well; will resonate with anyone who has ever struggled with functioning alcoholism.
Overall Review: 3 out of 5 stars.
