no. 1 is right

book: the no. 1 ladies detective agency

author: alexander mccall smith

completion date: 27/07/10

method: borrowed (debbie)

this is one of those books i remember seeing everywhere. we gave it away as a gift to a few people, and i always saw people reading it on the bus and all over. it was a book you saw on desks, but i never read it. i never even really gave it a second thought to be totally truthful. but i am so glad that debbie lent this to me. it was so enjoyable and light and it really made me want to go to africa. the way precious describes her country with such love and vibrance makes it seem like a beautiful place to be (well, that and the way matt and my father described it).

the phrase satisfaction guaranteed for all parties isn't that far off. the book is pretty light, and i would never describe it as challenging, but it is something you would take to the beach, or on the bus in my case, and finish that day thinking 'wow i'm really glad i read that' as opposed to most beach reads which you think 'wow i can't believe i read that whole book'.

i don't really have a ton to say on this one, i may beef up this post later, but i really like this book. its a little shallow, but was really enjoyable!

xo-ellebee

a pivotal moment

book: franny and zooey

author: j. d. salinger

completion date: 26/07/10

method: borrowed (mum)

there is something that i love about the physicality of salinger's books. for one, they are the perfect size to hold in your hand and they don't weigh down your bag. the covers are simple and almost always one colour with maybe a couple of stripes. i always think this is a silly thing to talk about but at the same time its so important.

salinger has this incredible talent for making his main character pretty unlikeable but totally relatable. i remember the first time i read catcher in the rye i really didn't like the main boy until the end. zooey is kind of an ass, but he has good reason to be one. he feels at first like a pompous prick and franny seems to be unnecessarily hysterical over something and in typical salinger fashion, it isn't until the very end that there is resolution. in this book it seems to come so late too, there isn't any sense of resolution until the very last paragraph.

this book is so wonderful because it all takes place over a matter of hours. almost what would be a moment. the beginning (the franny part) is like a preface, or really the inciting incident and the zooey part is the reaction. its such a simple way of structuring a really beautifully executed novel. i found that i didn't want to put this one down at all because i figured: if the book takes place in only a couple of hours then i should be able to follow along in read time. maybe unreasonable, but i loved every moment and found myself wanting more and more

xo-ellebee

a review in four parts

book: the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

author: douglas adams

completion date: 22/07/10

method: gift (jake)

forever jake has been asking me and asking me to read these books, and i'm glad i finally did. they're witty and clever and i really adored them. sometimes they got a weee bit confusing but it was like a clockwork orange- you just had to keep reading.

part 1: the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

for the first book i kind of knew what was going to happen, because jake, alex and i watched the first couple episodes on dvd. what i didn't realize is that the british tv show used almost every line from the book. what was awesome about this is i could pretend that stephen fry was reading the book to me. which coincidentally made it feel like someone was licking my eardrum.

the first book was what i thought was going to be my favourite. i loved it. aurthur dent is the perfect fish out of water for this absurd world that the books introduce us to. without aurthur to relate to i would have been totally lost. what i really like are the little entries from the book within the book: the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. i feel that douglas adams really fleshed out the world before he wrote these books, which gave the novel incredible depth.

part 2: the restaurant at the end of the universe

first off let me preface with: i love this idea. that the universe is always expanding we can witness the end of it but then go back to right before the moment happened and make it entertaining. i'm a little confused about a couple of the details between the first three so forgive me if some things don't belong in one of the books or whatever.

all adams's aliens are so interesting and the history behind the language and the currency. it all seems to boil down to the world (or universe) is too big and too difficult to understand completely, but we do our best. which is really all anyone can ask us to do.

oh and i've forgotten about marvin. oooh marvin. parking cars for centuries and his only meaningful conversation was with a toaster millions of years ago. a robot that is too intelligent to be of any use. douglas adams, way to go.

part 3: life, the universe and everything

i almost disliked this book. i found it so confusing and nonsensical. the other books seemed to have some distant roots in reason, but this one just seemed confusing and unfocused. they talked about saving the universe but i never really understood that it was in danger, and the kricket aliens wanted to blow everything up (?) i think. oh no, they were robots because how they were thwarted was brilliant- marvin plugged himself into their computer and made the robots all too depressed to try and blow up anything anymore.

part 4: so long, and thanks for all the fish

this one was my favourite by far. i know that the first 2 are the best ones, but there were just so many moments in part 4 that i loved so much. i feel that his writing was clearer (or maybe its because i was reading it after universe) and i was able to fall back into enjoying being slightly confused without feeling lost. and its really hard to resist not trying to take the weight off both feet. especially the moment when aurthur and fenchurch make love in the air. these books have many hilarious moments, but very few absolutely beautiful ones, and this was just so beautiful. so simple but fabulously executed.

i liked that these 4 seemed cyclical. aurthur and fenchurch reunite with ford to continue hitchhiking and most likely will have to save the universe again.

i should note that i abandoned mostly harmless. i found that by the time i got there i needed to get my feet back on solid ground. i may read it later on, but it didn't really grab me like the others. i needed something real at the end of it all.

xo-ellebee

kind of a downer

book: prozac nation

author: elizabeth wurtzel

completion date: 19/07/10

method: borrowed (mum)

the problem with a memoir about being depressed is it isn't fun to read about. i don't mean i didn't enjoy the book- i really liked it actually. it was engaging and well written but fucking hard to read about. i found that often i wanted to just put the book down for a few minutes and liven up a little.

wurtzel is however, a fabulous writer. she really manages to tell her downer story without whining. you really feel for her, because she doesn't know why she is so sad and has been for so long. she is constantly fighting this battle with herself as to why she is depressed. and its one of those horrible catch 22s because she doesn't know why she's depressed so she's depressed but she doesn't know why she was originally depressed because she's been depressed for so long and so she's depressed... and on and on.

the issue with memoirs is i always feel that they're embellished and re imagined- which is fine. we all live our lives with a healthy dose of fiction added, but its tough to know what is totally real and what is totally false. but i guess all that matters is whether or not you enjoyed reading it, right?

xo-ellebee

editors are valuable people

book: the girl who played with fire

author: stieg larsson

completion date: 18/07/10

method: borrowed (mum)

lindsay went to the cottage this weekend. she packed her brown bikini, one tank top and a couple pairs of underware. her bag wasn't that heavy, so she was ok for the majority of the trip. she checked in online on her 27 inch imac and printed out her ticket on her boyfriend's hp2500 series printer. she flew porter so she only had to catch the shuttle from the royal york hotel on front street. on the ferry to the island she thought are we actually moving? it feels like the ferry isn't going anywhere. in the airport she had one cappuccino, one late a couple of walker's shortbread cookies and packed an orange juice in her bag for flight. when the gate was called, she quickly skirried to the front so she could get on the plane before everyone else. on the plane she read the last few chapters of the book she brought with her. the flight attendant brought around cookies, chips and drinks. lindsay had a bag of terra chips and an apple juice. when the plane began its decent, a young child was crying because her ears hurt and lindsay though i know how you feel kid, but unlike you i can't scream about it. when she landed, she was picked up by her brother and his girlfriend. on the drive they picked up half-a dozen persians and some wild blueberries for the weekend. when they arrived at the cottage on loon lake, they immediatly changed into their swim suits and drank coronas on the floating dock. their parents arrived a few hours later, bringing with them a car full of clothes and her mother's 15" macbook pro. her mother had brought lindsay a stack of new books, including stieg larsson's second novel in the millenium trilogy, the girl who played with fire. while reading it, lindsay thought what i wouldn't give for a red pen- I DON'T THING THIS BOOK WAS EVER EDITED!. she even found that there were a number of sections with gramatical errors, or where the word used was incorrect. overall she found it better than the previous novel, but it seemed to read like a grocery list. she spend a number of hours reading the book over the weekend, finishing it at 3 on sunday. overall she found it more enjoyable than the previous novel by stieg larsson, but lack luster.

xo-ellebee

sisterly love

book: i see you everywhere
author: julia glass
completion date: 16/07/10
method: borrowed (mum)

i could have sworn that this book was written about my aunt and my mother. it was almost eerie how similar the main characters were- a bookish, serious older sister and the wild and impulsive younger shadow who have a very difficult, overbearing mother. also the fact that lou (the elder) spent a good amount of their childhood trying to control clem until clem got to be too strong and willful to be controlled.
for the fist half this book was so biographical (except for the failed marriages part) about my mum and her first sister. the way that lou and clem talked to each other, and how they fought and forgave was just so perfectly sisterly. i have a feeling that glass has at least one sister, because she understands what it's like to hate someone sometimes but not be able to live without them.
the book is narrated by both sisters at the same time, and i feel that this is where the book really falls apart, because unlike let the great world spin, both sisters have the same voice. often i found that i couldn't tell who was speaking until they mentioned the other. this book really could have been excellent if it weren't for the fact that you couldn't tell the narrators apart. it was a real downfall in my opinion.
i really got attached to both sisters though. they are both very strong characters who are living very different lives. because they're sisters, everything they do relates back to the other. perhaps that's the downfall of having a sibling- everything you do is compared to what they did. glass also deals with something interesting- the fact that the younger sister is clearly the favourite, meaning that everything lou does, however brilliant it is, she is never good enough. she is always haunted by this, because how do you deal with the fact that your mother loves your sister so much more. and where does that leave you when your sister is gone?
xo-ellebee

the time to change is now

book: galapogos
author: kurt vonnegut
completion date:14/07/10
method: gift (jake)

i think that vonnegut and attwood have similar sympathies towards the human race: neither of them think that we are particularly well adjusted to live in this world. which i have to say i agree with. we are not very good natural hunters, our bodies don't fare well in the climates we live in (we have no fur and pretty thin skin). currently we cannot eat local plants (i mean grass, leaves). but maybe thats because we have evolved to live in the world we live in now...or the world we have created has stalled our evolution.
i feel that i've found my new chuck in vonnegut. he has a similar nihilistic style, but he has a much smoother, interesting method. his characters are different and interesting. then again, this is the first vonnegut book i've ever read so i don't know for sure if he just keeps rewriting the same characters but based on his history i would assume that he has a more varied cast.
the narrator confused me in this book. i was really throw off guard when i realized that the narration was in first person- told from the point of view of a ghost haunting this ship. i really was not expecting that but it made for an interesting perspective. the ghost remembers what civilization was and explains the change that humans went through when they had to start over. it is very similar to what happens in oryx and crake only a little less terrifying. this disaster was not a virus created to wipe out the dirty pleb people by some psychotic genius but world war three. however, we never really know what happened to everyone, because our narrator doesn't know. if anything it feels more like a side not that this disaster happened. although it is integral to the plot it doesn't feel that monumental.
i wonder how some authors don't become attatched to their characters tho. vonnegut just seems to let whatever may happen happen to them. maybe thats a silly critisism...
this really made me want to read more vonnegut though. he has such an easy way of writing and i feel like i could get lost in his books easily. it isn't the kind of world i would want to be trapped in though. everything just seems so chaotic.
xo-ellebee

see paul haggis- THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT!

book: let the great world spin

author: colum mccann

completion date: 12/07/10

method: borrowed (mum)

ok hands up if you remember that awful movie written by paul haggis. you know the one about how racism exists in all of us and how we're all really really racist s.o.b.'s? i do. remember how it won an oscar instead of being laughed out of theatres? I DO. paul haggis was trying to create a sequence of characters that worked together to create a story that happens over a period of a few days to these few people. it didn't work because they were all shallow stock characters that you felt nothing for at all. mccann does exactly what haggis tried to do, and he executes it brilliantly.

i think that the key difference is that everything in let the great world spin circles around one event- philippe petit's walk across the twin towers. this decision is fabulous because of two things: fist that this was a real event. petit strung a wire across the top of the world trade centre towers and walked, ran and lay down on it. watch man on a wire. its great. beautiful really. the event is so intense and surreal that it makes everything that happens to the characters monumental.

second- that this book was published after the fall of the towers. this event was just so devastating to us that to have a current (the book was published 2009) novel revolve around such an intense moment for these towers it really personalizes the novel even though it is set shortly after the vietnam war.

what this novel does so well is it fleshes out each of its narrators. each narrator has a distinct voice which speaks to mccann's skill as an author. he creates these voices with ease and distinction. i can see why this was mum's favourite book of the year, and why this american life has been suggesting it as an audio book. it was just such a perfectly constructed novel, i want to leave it on people's doorsteps so they can read and love it too.

xo-ellebee

love, still, is not enough

book: the disappeared

author: kim echlin

completion date: 09/08/10

method: borrowed (mum)

i don't know what it is about these love stories. i just don't feel them lately. mainly because i do believe that absence makes the heart grow fonder but the heart is a fickle and forgetful muscle. it does not remember after so many years that there is someone out there who might love it back, it is more interested in love as a whole. but maybe i am defeatist and a downer. maybe these stories are true but i have a hard time believing in this extreme dedication. maybe it can happen, but i feel like its an easy thing to fictionalize. funny to think about love being romanticized...

i felt like a dummy reading this book because i didn't know about this horrifying massacre that happened in cambodia. and it seems like the kind of thing that is so monumental you would hear about it. there were sides to this story that i wanted the author to pursue, but they focused too much on the dreamy love element. the narrator, anne, is more focused on finding her love than she is witnessing what is going on around her in this country. i wish that her lover had included her, but she is an outsider so he never really explains anything to her. he just lets her believe whatever she wants without making her see what is really happening.

i was glad i read this book however. i was glad that i learned about something that i didn't know about otherwise and it will be something that i research because i don't understand how i could be so oblivious to such a horrifying massacre, but i feel like the focus was too much on this unreal love story and not enough on what happens to the survivors of these situations.

however i have to add that i loved the way this book was narrated. it is written as almost a love letter to serey, anne's lover and this does help build her character, but i feel like she is built as an accessory to him. serey is a strong character, who faces incredible trials and suffering, and anne is very weak in comparison. but i don't know maybe it makes him seem stronger because she romanticized and idealizes him.

xo-ellebee

oh stephen

book: lisey's story

author: stephen king

completion date: 08/07/10

method: borrowed (mum)

the only other stephen king novel i've ever read was the shining and i have to say i loved the movie and i liked the book. i think stephen is a strong idea man but he creates the most bizarre twists and i never really can under stand where they come from. i feel like he wanted to be a fantasy writer once upon a time but settled for what he does now which isn't really fantasy or horror is just kind of 'bizarro'.

let me get something straight- i liked lisey's story. i felt that the character of lisey was strong and interesting. stephen captured the sibling relationship to a tee. he seemed to know exactly how they play off eachother without making it tacky or contrived. they are all strong characters. what i wanted was for there to be no fantasy. the idea is there is this world (boo'ya moon) that people can access and things and people can be left there). we are introduced to this story perifially in the beginning but it soon becomes a major element of the plot. what i wanted is for this world to not exist. i wanted lisey's husband, scott, to actually be totally insane and to have invented this world which he used to escape his horrifyingly abusive childhood. basically i wanted there to be a twist, but there wasn't one. no twist. everything was real and thats what i didn't want.

one thing i loved in this novel though was 'the bad-gunky'. i'm not sure what to classify it as (depression, self mutilation, escapism) but it seems to be all the bad feelings we have that get so bottled up we go insane with them. and i loved this because this made sense. totally. and i believe i have felt something at least similar to scott's 'bad gunky' but i might just be projecting.

i am really at a loss as to why stephen king is such a popular writer, because i don't really thing he's very good at what he does, but then again 'twilight' has sold almost as many copies as the bible.

xo-ellebee

mercilessly good.

book: mister pip

author: lloyd jones

completion date: 05/07/10

method: borrowed (mum)

normally when someone lends you an upsetting book they warn you. they hand it to you (just like my father did with engleby) and say, "now it gets upsetting at the end- just so you know". so you know. you know that everything win't always be coming up roses. this book came with no such disclaimer, but it needed one. more than any of the other books i have read, this book needs to come with a major warning label. i was also on the bus so i couldn't have the breakdown i thought needed. this one deserved an ugly cry.

the worst part about it is that it comes so unexpectedly. the story up until this point is so beautiful and heartfelt. i couldn't really figure out a time period, but i have a feeling its around the 70's or 80's. it is the story of a small village torn apart by the wealth of the soil (paraphrasing seriously) and how the children of this village are entranced by a man (the only white man in the village) reading them the story of great expectations. i'm actually having trouble writing about this one, because what happened at the end was just not something i was able to handle. i am not going to be able to read this book again, however i really recommend it. it was beautiful, but it just grabbed your heart, ripped it out and fed it to you.

i don't know how many of these stories of trials and tribulations suffered by young children i can keep reading. they have really been getting to me in my dreams and i just need to read something a little more light hearted so i can get out of bed in the morning.

xo-ellebee

love is not enough

book: love invents us

author: amy bloom

completion date: 04/07/10

method: borrowed (mum)

i think that this book was meant to be an incredible love story. a story of love through time or maybe even the true missed connection. it seems to embrace the idea that although we may have many partners, there is only one person for us and no love will be the same as the love we feel for this person. this is something that i just can't believe. i believe that absence makes the heart grow fonder to a point. after a while, the heart can be forgetful and stop filling in the blanks.

i just didn't feel the love between these two kids. i feel like i missed the chemistry. or maybe they just didn't have it. i felt like they were just two teenage lovers who never completed their relationship so they always thought 'what if'. they never had any resolution or closure so they blamed every failed relationship on their unrequited love for each other.

and i have to say i was very confused by elizabeth's commitment to her old teacher who sexually abused her. at one point he compares himself to humbert humbert and it couldn't be more accurate. as she matures sexually and moves to other relationships, he seems to cling to the little girl she was. i don't understand why she would have any loyalty to him in his death, because he was her abuser. he uses every excuse in the book to make it 'ok' - he never refers to her as a child, she is a 'young woman'. he convinces himself he would love her as much as a grown woman, but you know it isn't true. she seems to have this guilty attachment to him, like its her fault he's dying.

i just never felt the connection here. lets just say i didn't feel the love

xo-ellebee

nature vs nurture

book: engleby
author: sebastian faulks

completion date: 02/07/10

method: borrowed (dad)

i had a really hard time getting into this book. it didn't seem to grab me in the beginning, but i persevered. i know with a lot of mystery type novels it takes a little longer for the story to get established. my problem was that mike engleby wasn't very likeable (something that is frequently mentioned in the second half of the novel). but i felt so sorry for him. he seemed like someone who was just simply ostracized by his piers early on and this detaches him for the rest of his life.

a monster is a scary thing because you never know who created it. was it always there just lurking below the surface? or was it created through a detached upbringing? and is 'monster' the best word if it was created by society and the 'monster's piers? i could spend all day thinking about this and still not have an answer.

what i found about this book is that it has one of the most upsetting twists and i never saw it coming. i was afraid of the character (this is the infuriating thing about books with twists, is i don't want to ruin it for any future readers). mainly because he lacked remorse or sadness. he was rational and that is what made him terrifying. i felt like i was just humming along great in this novel and then all of a sudden- BOOM everything goes to shit.

part of this is because of the narration. the narrator (the title character) skips around through time, so you get bits and pieces of the stories. once i learned what happened i wanted to go back to the beginning and read the whole thing again. it was so unexpected that i feel like i must have missed some clue.

the problem with this book is i can't tell you for sure whether or not i liked it. i read it and was affected by it... but i don't know if i would describe what i went through as enjoyment

xo-ellebee