1Q84 Post-Mortem.

Based on the buzz surrounding 1Q84 I expected a departure from Haruki Murakami’s standby themes. I stopped reading him a while ago because after six or seven novels it felt like I was reading the same repackaged story, the innovative and exciting qualities that struck me after first discovering him now seemed stale. Within the first few hundred pages of 1Q84 I found myself distracted by mentions of cats or ears or cooking spaghetti, like playing a literary version of I Spy. 

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!

bossypants.

let’s start with the positives: the book is light and fun with anecdotes about SNL, 30 Rock, her family, and getting her start in improv. the writing is sharp and witty, replete with her trademark one-liners. 

the bad news: it is not a meaty read. see above regarding “light and fun.” we already see that side of fey through her writing for TV and movies and i was hoping to learn more about her as a person and it merely scratched the surface. people presumably write books about themselves to share things with an audience but i didn’t feel like i got to know her at all. not to mention that the last two sections of the book ran in advance in the new yorker which made me feel a little cheated.

bottom line: like most of her fans, i expect a lot from tina fey because i adore her so much. i don’t expect her to be the spokesperson for women in writing or women in comedy or working mothers because she is already out in the world doing those things and setting an example that way. i am disappointed that she sat down to write a book and kept me at arm’s length as a reader while glossing over her experiences in the aforementioned roles she juggles. 

the immortal life of henrietta lacks.

i finished last night and my qualms about the lacks family accepting their portrayal in the book were laid to rest. by the time the book went to press most of the family came to terms with what happened and chose to focus on the positive things the cells did for science rather than the injustice of not getting the pay or recognition the family deserved. i also thought it was an extremely classy move for rebecca skloot to set up the henrietta lacks foundation and donate a percentage of profits from her book sales to the cause.

if you haven’t read this book yet, you absolutely should. i never thought science writing could hold my attention for 300+ pages but this one proved me wrong.

geek love.

katherine dunn’s geek love seems to be either loved or hated and has an almost cult-like following of rabid fans. i can vouch for this because they keep striking up conversations with me on the subway while i’m trying to read.

i can’t say i fall into the rabid fan category, but i liked the story of the rise and fall of the binewski family and their freak show enough that the characters are still in my head a few days after finishing the book. no intense reactions to the book but arty’s dangerous charisma, chick’s complacent innocence, and olympia’s appetite for being loved will stick with me for a while. 

room by emma donoghue.

a good exercise in self-control would be attempting to drag out reading room by emma donoghue in as many sittings as possible. i finished it in four sittings over three days and even when i wasn’t reading it, i was definitely thinking about when i would be reading it next.

the corrections.

the corrections by jonathan franzen gave me the same brick in the stomach feeling i get while walking around the neighborhood i grew up in with my mother while she comments on which neighbors have died, divorced, gotten married, been in and out of rehab, or grown up to disappoint their parents.

don’t get me wrong, in typical franzen fashion it was ambitious, sprawling, and entertaining. it just broke my heart a little to stare so intently at how families cope with change and loss.

just kids, patti smith.

the love story of patti smith and robert mapplethorpe’s friendship completely gutted me. i finished just kids in three sittings and had to take crying breaks throughout the last fifteen pages or so to ensure that the deluge coming from my eyeballs wouldn’t force me to miss one scrap of detail. i’ve never been comfortable with the notion of soulmates, but even the most hardhearted cynic would waver after reading their story.

just kids isn’t just a biography of two aspiring artists who eventually make their way in new york, it’s also a love letter to new york in the gritty 1970’s. you are dropped right into the world of the hotel chelsea with cameos from jim morrison, janis joplin, jimi hendrix, andy warhol—to name a few—all struggling with drugs, failure, success, and establishing their identity in new york.

this was the 49th book i read this year and without a doubt has been my favorite, the one that moved me the most. it made me nostalgic for a new york city i have never experienced.