December reading notes

This month I’ve been tearing through my stack of “to-read” books in a race against time to pad the amount of books I’ve read in 2011. Since I started tracking the books I read each year in a spreadsheet this has become a sort of December tradition for me, albeit a deranged one. 

I started off the month with Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan, for which I could write a six page essay about the problems I had with the flimsy plot and irritating characters. Next up was Blue Nights, Joan Didion’s memoir about her daughter, Quintana. I will read everything Didion writes and found sections of the book touching, so much so that the last chapter had me crying on the subway. Other sections had me nodding vigorously in agreement with the criticisms I’d heard, particularly that she excessively name drops. I was prepared to defend the name dropping because you can’t fault that she often mentions her friends, most of whom are coincidentally famous, but did I really need to be beat over the head seven times that Quintana’s wedding cake was from Payard? 

After Blue Nights I unknowingly read three books centered on troubled marriages involving writerly spouses: The Astral, The Paris Wife, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I especially liked The Paris Wife, which is told from the point of view of Hemingway’s first wife and was as fun to read as Midnight In Paris was to watch. 

Next up is Is Everyone Hanging Out Without me? 11 more days! Race against time!