Books Purchased:
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
Minders of Make-Believe by Leonard S. Marcus
Calamity and Other Stories by Daphne Kalotay
Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London by Susan Tyler Hitchcock
Blue Shoe by Anne Lamott
Leave it to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse
New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
How Beautiful it is and How Easily it Can Be Broken by Daniel Mendelsohn
The Best American Comics 2007 edited by Chris Ware
Bertie Wooster Sees It Through by P. G. Wodehouse
Joy in the Morning by P. G. Wodehouse
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes
Liberty by Garrison Keillor
Homegrown Democrat by Garrison Keillor
Biblioholism by Tom Raabe
Books Read:
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
Bertie Wooster Sees It Through by P. G. Wodehouse
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Here are some thoughts on the books I read this month – the ones that I haven’t already posted about, or plan on posting about.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was purchased on a whim when I decided I want to start reading more graphic novels. I started reading it right away and plowed right through it. Skipped right through it might be a better verb, since nothing about reading this should be called work – it’s pure delight. I’m fast becoming a fan of graphic novel memoirs. I’m planning on reading Maus next, and I also wanted to check out Too Cool to be Forgotten by Alex Robinson.
The Twilight Series – I posted about the first book the series, Twilight, already, but not about what I thought of the entire series. There’s a lot of debate and opinions on the internet about this series, especially the last book, Breaking Dawn. For me, these books were a lovely guilty pleasure that was very fun to read. I purposely did not set up any expectations going into this series, and ended up with no disappointments. As I said about Twilight, they’d make excellent vacation books – they hold your attention firmly with no sign of letting go. It would have been perfect plane reading for me, since I get fidgety and often find myself looking around, mind wandering. For me, they helped greatly this month – I had to have a colonoscopy and I don’t know what I would have done during the 24 hours I had to fast on a liquid diet if I had not had Eclipse and Breaking Dawn to distract me.
Disgrace – oy. I did not like Disgrace. I was surprised that I didn’t, because so many people love it. It came down to the characters though – none of them had a single redeeming quality to me, and that combined with the fact that there was nothing in it that made me even interested about what they were doing lead to very negative results. I may have liked it more if I had to read it for a college class or book group. It would make a great book to discuss, there’s a lot going on symbolically and culturally. I may not have liked it that much more on its own, but I would have at least enjoyed the discussion.
Bertie Wooster Sees it Through – This was the second Jeeves and Wooster book that I’ve read, and it was just as fabulous. I’m buying every Wodehouse that I see at Strand or other used book stores. I’ve said this before about Wodehouse I believe, but it is so much fun to discover an author who wrote almost 100 books. I need to keep a list of the ones I have, so I don’t accidentally buy duplicates. I have Joy in the Morning, and plan to read that this month.
When I realized that I had only read an abridged version of Little Women, I decided I must read the full version asap. I loved it, and now am looking forward to re-watching the movie version.
A sharp contrast to my P. G. Wodehouse situation – it’s a tad depressing to love an author who only has four published books. I finished Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger, which means that the only one I have left is Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: an Introduction. Nine Stories was incredible. I love each of the stories, but my favorite is definitely the last one in the collection, “Teddy.”
Coming soon: my Summer Reading 2008 Recap and a post about The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
My complete Polysyllabic Spree can be found here.
(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)
