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A Book A Week: Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner
on 11/19/09 at 6:00 pm | Popular fiction is a genre that is distinct from literary fiction, though the boundaries are fluid. I like to think of these categories as either ends of a ruler, with most books falling somewhere between the two ends. A lot of the books I read fall right around the middle of the continuum between popular and literary fiction. |
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A Book A Week: A Long Finish by Michael Didbin
on 11/13/09 at 6:00 pm | When I heard in 2007 that Michael Dibdin had died, I remember thinking, "Oh darn, I never got around to reading any of his books." What a weird thought, as if the Head Librarian would now be taking all his books off the shelves. |
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A Book A Week: Caravaggio's Angel by Ruth Brandon
on 11/05/09 at 6:00 pm | I am very picky about writing styles. Have you noticed? I don't like (and won't read) badly written books. I will, however, sometimes read a decently written book with a lousy plot. Ruth Brandon's Caravaggio's Angel fits into this category. I am a sucker for art mysteries and picked this up by chance. |
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A Book A Week: The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
on 10/30/09 at 6:00 pm | Some books just take longer than a week to read. David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife took more than two weeks, partly because it's long, and partly because some of it is a slog. Nevertheless it's an interesting book and worth reading for the 85% non-sloggish bits. |
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A Book A Week: Mother on Fire by Sandra Tsing Loh
on 10/09/09 at 6:00 pm | Sandra Tsing Loh is a writer, performance artist and public radio commentator. I don't hear her much on radio but I do read her pieces in the Atlantic. I’ve also never seen any of her one-woman shows but would sure like to. In 2008 she published Mother on Fire, a memoir about her life in Los Angeles, framed around her search for an appropriate school for her kindergarten-age daughter. |
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A Book A Week: Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris
on 10/03/09 at 6:00 pm | I keep coming across these mysteries that take place in exotic locales. This was another one, set in Saudi Arabia. A teenage girl called Nouf goes missing and eventually turns up dead. |
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A Book A Week: Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold
on 09/24/09 at 6:00 pm | I really had high hopes for Beguilement, which is the first volume of a series called The Sharing Knife. My hopes were high not so much because I had heard anything about this book, but because I wanted it to be good. |
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A Book A Week: Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach
on 09/11/09 at 6:00 pm | Marti Leimbach's Daniel Isn’t Talking came out in 2006 and I remember reading some of the press about it with interest. Autism was in the news a lot because I think 2006 was the height of the autism/vaccination link controversy; not that autism has stopped being in the news. |
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A Book A Week: The Dressmaker by Elizabeth Birkelund Oberbeck
on 09/04/09 at 6:00 pm | This book was so forgettable that I forgot to blog about it. It's one of the books I bought at Powell's in Portland, Oregon, back in the beginning of August. The plot sounded like something I would like: a simple tailor in rural France is transformed into a leading couturier when he creates a fabulous wedding dress for a socialite. |
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A Book A Week: Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies
on 08/19/09 at 6:00 pm | I thought this book was a novel about a crumbling marriage. It turns out that it's a true story about a crumbling marriage, which makes it a little weirder to read. If it were a novel it would fit squarely into the "domestic fiction" category that I love so much. Is there such a thing as "domestic nonfiction?" |
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A Book A Week: Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
on 08/12/09 at 6:00 pm | This was an emergency purchase in the Minneapolis airport last week. I was changing planes there (en route to Portland) and realized too late that I had forgotten my book on the first plane. But hooray: A kiosk selling paperbacks was right across from my gate. |
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A Book A Week: Testimony by Anita Shreve
on 07/31/09 at 6:00 pm | Why did Testimony have to be so sad? It is really heartbreaking. Well, it turns out that in Anita Shreve's world, if you commit adultery, very bad things happen to you. |
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A Book A Week: Love Falls by Esther Freud
on 07/23/09 at 6:00 pm | Esther Freud wrote Hideous Kinky, a good book that became an even better movie. Love Falls would be a good movie too, but it's a lousy book. |
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A Book A Week: Escape by Carolyn Jessop, with Laura Palmer
on 07/16/09 at 6:00 pm | I don't usually read books about the issue du jour, if you know what I mean. For some reason, however, I was attracted to Escape by Carolyn Jessop, who escaped from the FLDS, the fundamentalist polygamous cult that was recently raided by the Texas authorities for alleged child abuse. |
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A Book A Week: The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger
on 07/08/09 at 6:00 pm | Can I just list some of the topics Freudenberger tackles? Adolescent ennui, adultery, Chinese experimental art, culture shock, the nature of commitment, the Hollywood movie industry, identity and Tiananmen Square. With this many balls in the air at once, it's not surprising that a few of them drop and roll away without our ever knowing where they end up. |
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A Book a Week: An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken
on 06/27/09 at 12:00 pm | This slim little book is about loss, specifically the loss of a baby. Too depressing, you might say? Maybe for some, but it's also about hope and about recovery. |
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A Book A Week: Dumbfounded by Matt Rothschild
on 06/20/09 at 12:00 pm | I'm not the first person to observe this, but you know how sometimes a movie trailer can make a movie look funny and unique, then you go see it at the theater and realize that all the best bits were in the trailer and the rest of the movie is a big disappointment? |
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A Book a Week: Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson
on 06/16/09 at 6:00 pm | I loved Diane Johnson's three earlier books about American expatriates in France: Le Divorce, Le Mariage and L'Affaire. All three were funny, original, compelling and delivered laser-like critiques of both French and American culture. Johnson writes with a distinctive breezy style that belies her sharp observations and subtle characterizations. |
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A Book a Week: In Love With Jerzy Kosinski by Agate Nesaule
on 06/08/09 at 6:00 pm | In the book In Love With Jerzy Kosinski we go inside Agate Nesaule's head because that is where all the action is. Or rather, we go inside the head of Anna, Nesaule's fictional alter ego, a woman who has a lot in common with her creator. |
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A Book a Week: Hearts and Minds by Rosy Thornton
on 05/29/09 at 5:00 pm | Academic fiction is a sub-genre of literary fiction. Academic fiction set at a women's college must then be a sub-sub-genre. The small number of books that fit the bill may explain why Rosy Thornton's publishers have packaged this book as chick lit or romance; they didn't know what to do with it. |
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A Book a Week: The Irish Game by Matthew Hart
on 05/21/09 at 6:00 pm | I like to read about art theft. There's something so Robin Hood-ish about stealing paintings from rich folks. Of course I do know it's wrong to steal. Art in museums belongs to everyone; I don't want anyone to steal my stuff, whether that stuff is in my living room or in the Smithsonian. |
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A Book a Week: Who Do You Think You Are by Alyse Myers
on 05/14/09 at 6:00 pm | Who Do You Think You Are by Alyse Myers is a sad and depressing book. Alyse Myers tells the story of her unhappy childhood in Queens in the 1960s, her turbulent relationship with her mother, and her struggle to be a better mother to her own daughter. |
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A Book a Week: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
on 05/09/09 at 10:00 am | Yesterday I finished listening to The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson on a device called a Playaway. Have you heard of these? |
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A Book a Week: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
on 04/30/09 at 5:00 pm | Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was recently a movie starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. I finished reading the book more than a week ago but I put off writing about it hoping to see the movie first. I kept thinking it was going to come any day but then I discovered that someone in my family had hijacked the Netflix queue and High School Musical 3 arrived instead. |
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A Book a Week: Peony in Love by Lisa See
on 04/24/09 at 5:00 pm | Lisa See's books have such lovely covers! And her titles: Peony in Love, Snow Flower and The Secret Fan. Don’t they sound delightful? I think I have been avoiding them for these very reasons; I suspected they might not measure up to their marketing. And it's true that Peony in Love was not what I expected, but in a good way, to my surprise. |
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A Book a Week: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
on 04/16/09 at 1:00 pm | Jeannette Walls grew up in extreme poverty with an alcoholic father and a co-dependent mother. Why is her story unique? Because Walls escaped from her toxic environment and against all odds got a Barnard education and a good job as a journalist in New York City. |
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A Book a Week: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale
on 04/09/09 at 6:00 pm | Early versions of crime and mystery stories were appearing in Scotland and England in the late 1840s, and Edgar Allan Poe created the first fictional detective, Auguste Dupin, in 1841 in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. But it was England's national obsession with the Road Hill House murder that really got the ball rolling. |
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A Book a Week: When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
on 03/30/09 at 5:00 pm | I have a crush on Kate Atkinson. Her books are so clever, so original, so unexpected. They crackle with wit and sparkle with insight. Her characters live on in your head, continuing to make their mordant observations for months after you have finished reading about them. I just can't get enough of them, and like a good relationship, the longer I have known Atkinson, the better she gets. |
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A Book a Week: Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer by Jane Brocket
on 03/26/09 at 2:00 pm | Did you ever think up a good idea but do nothing with it, only to discover later that someone else not only had that same idea, but acted on it, thereby making some money and getting some attention in the bargain? How maddening! That is what happened to me with Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer by Jane Brocket. |
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