Tag Archives: fiction

The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass

Posted by melydia on June 3, 2007 None comments

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass: What a strange book. I’m not sure how else to describe the life story of a midget with a neurotic attachment to his toy drum and a voice that can shatter glass. Add in the fact that most of it takes place in Germany during WWII and it’s all narrated from a bed in a mental hospital, and you have one truly bizarre tale. It took me an unusually long time to read this book. It wasn’t bad, just very dense and difficult to read a lot of at a time. In fact, the absurdity was quite funny in places, but maybe I just have a strange sense of humor. The passages I read out loud baffled my husband. In short, I have absolutely no idea why this book is considered a classic in some circles, but I’m glad I read it. It’s definitely one story I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner

Posted by melydia on April 28, 2007 None comments

Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner (unabridged audiobook read by Johanna Parker): Though stories of multiple people all experiencing different variations on the same theme are far from uncommon, this one is reasonably fresh and enjoyable. Here we have four mothers (current, former, and soon-to-be) from four different backgrounds, each dealing with issues with her marriage and with her mother (or mother-in-law). The target audience is definitely mothers and mothers-to-be (and I think fathers could benefit from such an honest account of what their wives and girlfriends are going through), but I found myself sympathizing with the characters and wanting to know how things turned out. I especially empathized with Kelly. No, this book has not made me want children of my own, but it was a good story nonetheless. And it certainly didn’t hurt that it was read by a actress with amazing subtleties in her voice. Most of the men sounded alike, but she had an amazing range in her female voices.

Blue Springs by Peter Rennebohm

Posted by melydia on April 22, 2007 None comments

Blue Springs by Peter Rennebohm: The year is 1955, and 11-year-old Charlie has problems. His father’s a drunk (which for some reason takes multiple chapters and three separate incidents to get across; I get it, move on), so he runs away. Though the full title is “Blue Springs: A Suspense Novel,” there isn’t a whole lot of suspense. Some unbelievable bad guys chase after Charlie, but it’s so obvious that all the good guys will emerge without a scratch that there’s never any real tension. And the difference between good guys and bad guys is incredibly easy to spot. The characters are better described as caricatures, as everyone is either 100% good or 100% evil. To make matters worse, grammatical and typographical errors abound, distracting from the flow of the story.

To be fair, had there been no advertisement for suspense I may have felt somewhat more charitable. There’s no excuse for the repeated punctuation abuse and overall sloppy writing, but as a family drama this plot just might work. I still would not have liked it – I don’t watch made-for-TV movies on the Hallmark Channel either, after all – but my expectations would have been more realistic. The back cover is filled with good reviews so clearly there is an audience for this book somewhere. I just don’t happen to be part of it.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Posted by melydia on February 27, 2007 None comments

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie: This is a very strange story that took me a very long time to read. In a nutshell, it is about Gibreel Farishta, a famous Indian movie star who may or may not be turning into the archangel Gabriel, and Saladin Chamcha, an Indian voice actor living in London who may or may not be turning into Satan. Much of the book is also devoted to the story-within-a-story of Gibreel’s dreams, which take place in numerous locations and time periods. The story begins with Gibreel and Saladin falling through the air after the airplane they were on was blown up by terrorists.

I have pretty mixed feelings about this one. I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it were I more familiar with the Koran and Indian society. It was also a bit difficult to get into because of the writing style: Rushdie displayed a fondness for overly long, run-on sentences and a disdain for paragraph breaks, especially where dialogue is concerned. The primary reason I finished this book is because I read somewhere that it is one of the most commonly started-but-not-finished books of all time (though how that is measured is beyond me). This isn’t a very good reason to read a book, especially one you know you are not fully understanding. I wouldn’t say it was a waste of time – I enjoyed some of the characters, especially the maddening Gibreel – but I do believe there are other books I would have enjoyed more during the month it took me to finish reading this one.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Posted by melydia on February 2, 2007 None comments

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (unabridged audiobook read by Grover Gardner): This is on several “OMG you must read these books before you die” lists so I decided to try it. I was not prepared for now remarkably difficult it is to follow. It is divided into four sections, the first three narrated in (unreliable) first person and the fourth in third person omniscient. The first section is narrated by Benjy, a man with severe mental retardation; next is Quentin, a neurotic with a tendency to interrupt himself midsentence; and finally we have Jason, an evil man with an apparent distaste for proper nouns, often going entire scenes talking about “her” without letting the reader know who “she” is. The fourth section would be a breath of fresh air, tying everything together, except it’s so strangled with purple prose it’s almost unbearable. To be fair, this should never have been an audiobook. Gardner is an excellent narrator, but with no way to obviously set apart the italicized sections from the rest it all becomes one big jumble, jumping back and forth through time without any indication to the reader of what’s happening when. (Multiple characters sharing the same name doesn’t help either.) Not that I think I would have liked this book had I experienced it in print first. The characters are despicable. The mother especially got under my skin, with her self-centered mewling about what a martyr she is. Now, just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean you won’t. I can see how this book would appeal to people who enjoy an extra challenge in their reading, who define “classics” as books that require multiple reads to fully understand. I actually gave some thought to rereading it, but I didn’t really want to spend any more time with the Compsons than strictly necessary. In short, if you’re just looking for a good story the first time around, I would strongly suggest skipping this one – or at least having a study guide close at hand while you read.

After finishing this, I read its corresponding Wikipedia entry. Though usually not a fan of spoilers, I wish I’d read this synposis before tackling the actual text. It may have been easier to parse.

Cover the Butter by Carrie Kabak

Posted by melydia on January 15, 2007 None comments

Cover the Butter by Carrie Kabak: This is the story of Kate, a doormat. Most of her life is spent under her mother’s thumb in some way or another, and that need for approval from the one person in her life least willing to give it forces Kate into a slew of bad decisions throughout her life. That’s not to say this book is all depressing, though sometimes it was a bit frustrating to see Kate putting up with such poor treatment. There are also parts that are touching, like Kate’s eternally devoted grandparents, and parts that are hilarious, like her lovingly (and brutally) honest friends. Almost all the characters are so detailed I could hear them in my head. In all, it’s a pretty good depiction of how a woman can let her life get so far off track – and, happily, how she can get it back on again.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Posted by melydia on January 8, 2007 None comments

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver: I bought this knowing absolutely nothing about it except that a lot of people really liked it. Sometimes that’s the best way for me to approach a book. After all, if someone had told me it was about a Baptist preacher and his family doing missionary work in the Congo (now Zaire) in 1960, I probably would have passed it by. I’m glad I didn’t, though, because it’s is so much more than that. Told in alternating narratives between the preacher’s wife and their four daughters – snooty Rachel, overeager Leah, cynical Adah, and brutally honest Ruth May – the story unfolds to reveal their individual perceptions and prejudices. Though there is some political discussion (the history of that area is pretty turbulent in places). it is presented in such a way that it comes across as the opinions of the characters, as opposed to leaving the reader feeling badgered by the author. Likewise with the frequent thoughts on religion. In short, this is an extremely well-written and engrossing story and I look forward to reading more by Kingsolver in the future.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Pact by Jodi Picoult

Posted by melydia on December 19, 2006 None comments

The Pact by Jodi Picoult (unabridged audiobook read by George Guidall): The Golds and the Hartes are neighbors and best friends. Their children, Chris Harte and Emily Gold, are raised practically as siblings, and start dating seriously as teenagers. As the story opens, Emily dies from a gunshot wound to the head and Chris claims it was a botched double suicide attempt. Soon after, Chris is on trial for the murder of his girlfriend. There’s some interesting discussion of how well parents can really know their teenage children and some decent drama between the two families, but for the most part it’s pretty unconvincing. The parents are remarkably unwilling to ask obvious questions, and I find it hard to believe that Chris and Emily would have been so tight-lipped for so long. This is one of Picoult’s books I would recommend skipping, especially since several of her other works are so excellent.

Paint It Black by Janet Fitch

Posted by melydia on November 28, 2006 None comments

Paint It Black by Janet Fitch (unabridged audiobook read by Jen Taylor): The story opens with Josie Tyrell waiting for her artist boyfriend Michael, who left a week before to hole up in his mother’s empty house and work on a painting. Just as she is beginning to wonder if he’d run off with another woman, the coroner calls. Michael was not at his mother’s house, not working on a painting at all. In reality, he had driven to a motel and shot himself. From then on out it is nonstop grief. This is a book I’m not sure I would have enjoyed on paper, but Taylor’s narration is absolutely brilliant. She captures the confusion, anger, and despair of Josie and Michael’s mother Meredith, as well as the mystery of Michael himself (in flashbacks), without ever sounding melodramatic or tiresome. Without her touch, I’m not sure I would have been able to stand such endless misery. But it’s only the subject matter that would be difficult to read. Fitch, as always, uses language like a paintbrush. The writing is simply beautiful, even when describing ugly things. Her unabashed love for poetry and art is present again here, as it was in White Oleander; likewise with the independent daughter/powerful mother dynamic. But the story is far from a repeat. And while I enjoyed it, I would have appreciated a little more plot – this was more of a slice-of-life story about Josie going through the stages of grief than a series of interelated events. I also wish the ending had been a touch more conclusive, but in a way the openness gave it more of a feeling of real life, where nothing ever ends. Quibbles aside, I was really touched by this book. Josie and Michael and Meredith and everyone were like real people whose lives I wanted to know more about. I will definitely be on the lookout for more books by Fitch.

Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

Posted by melydia on September 26, 2006 None comments

Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult (unabridged audiobook): Delia Hopkins has a pretty ordinary life in Wexton, New Hampshire, that gets turned upside down overnight when her father is arrested for having kidnapped her during a custody visit 28 years ago. The twisty plot and complex character relationships are revealed slowly and deliberately, hooking me from the first chapter. This is my second Picoult book, and like the other (My Sister’s Keeper), it is told in a series of first-person narratives, including Delia, her father, her mother, her fiancee, and her best friend. Each character is read by a different person, all of whom were quite good with the exception of Delia, who was almost painful to listen to. Luckily, the story was good enough that I still got sucked in despite her awkward reading. If the two I’ve read are at all representative of quality, I will definitely be picking up more of Picoult’s books in the future.

© 2010-2025 kate weber All Rights Reserved -- Copyright notice by Blog Copyright