book_log

Tony Parsons: Man and Wife

This book was a continuation of Man and Boy, and I read them both like they were one big book. I didn't like this one as much, though, and I completely did not get the whole affair with the Japanese photographer. Just weird. And made me even less sympathetic toward the main character. The book had its highlights though.

"Happy Birthday, darling."
She tore off the wrapper and gasped with wonder.
"'Lucy Doll Ballerina!'" she read, hungrily devouring the words on the pink cardboard box. "'You'll love her! Marvel at her elegance! Not suitable for children under three years of age! Small parts may pose a choking hazard! All rights reserved!'" Peggy threw her arms around my neck. "Thank you, Harry!"

Tony Parsons: Man and Boy

There is a quote on the cover of this book. It says, "I cried five times and laughed out loud four" and this is the kind of thing that makes me scoff and vow that no matter how sad, the book will never make me cry. I won't let it simply because it's practically bragging that it will. Cut to me reading in my bed late one night, sobbing uncontrollably. It's not that the book is sad, really, it's just the way the author describes certain events that make you think about similar things in your own life, in your own family, and it becomes too fucking much. I love the way this book is written. I could feel the love Harry has for his boy. And maybe it's because I have a child myself, a son, that it got to me like it did.

And while I am totally sympathetic to the relationship between the main character and his son, I think he's somewhat unlikeable and a bit of a putz. Though pretty funny.

"He likes music, doesn't he?" she said to me.
"Loves it," I said. "What do you say, Pat?"
"Thank you," he said. He took the tape and disappeared with Peggy.
"I remembered how much he liked hip-hop when we were all staying at my dad's place," she said. "There's just a few of the classics on there. Coolio. Ol' Dirty Bastard. Tupac. Dr. Dre. Stuff like that. Things that a little kid might like."
"That's really kind of you," I said.
Then Pat or Peggy must have stuffed Sally's tape into the stereo because suddenly and angry black voice was booming above a murderous bass line in the living room.
"You fuck with me and I'll fuck with you--so that would be a dumb fucking, mother-fucking thing to fucking do."
"That's lovely," I said to Sally. "He'll treasure it."

Debra Gallant: Rattled

Strange book about stuck-up suburban moms, their dysfunctional offspring, the new mcmansion housing development phenomenon and ...snakes. Enjoyable little read, though the characters were perfect stereotypes and because of that I had a hard time believing they were real people (yeah I know, durr, the book is fiction, but the object is to make people think the characters could exist). Anyway, grabbed this one off the new fiction rack at the library because I went without a list again. I don't recommend it. But again, I will read anything that's free.

Julie Powell: Julie & Julia

365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen

This was a good book, and much better than I thought it would be, considering it was based on a blog. Not that I've read many books based on blogs. I had to skip the Julia Child letters at the beginning of each chapter, though, because they were boring and felt like they were included to somehow create a theme. Bah, anyway. Good book, and really creative idea for a project.

First, the meat. I spent the better part of half an hour working the thick, large-pored pig skin off the enormous pork shoulder I'd bought, but when I finally pulled it off, I was rewarded with a hearteningly grisly prop. "Look, Eric!" I leaned out of the kitchen door into the bedroom, holding the ragged pig flesh to my bosom. "It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."

Elizabeth Berg: The Year of Pleasures

The entire first chapter of this book broke my heart. I started it one night before bed, intending to read for a few minutes before going to sleep. Instead, I sat in my bed turning the pages and crying my eye makeup into my pillow late into the night.

There is nothing particularly grand about the story, but there is something about how the author wrote this book that makes you feel the intense grief the main character is going through. Like feel it down to your soul. I almost expected Eli to be dead the next morning when I woke up because I mourned and cried so hard in the night after starting this book. Needless to say, I recommend it.

Thomas Berger: Adventures of the Artificial Woman

What a stupid book. But as a testament to my tedious tolerance for stupidity, I read the whole damn thing. It's back at the library now but here's the summary: Idiot guy builds an animatronic woman to be his perfect girlfriend but something goes wrong and she rebels and leaves him. She is so realistically human that she has a successful movie career and later runs for the office of PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Idiot guy realizes that she is quickly becoming drunk with her own power and pulls her plug before she can wreak havoc on the country. THE END.

There should be an additional category for fiction this bad. It should be called grand delusional fiction and have its very own library shelf. Far away from the real stories.

Bebe Moore Campbell: 72 Hour Hold

This is a story about a mom who is trying to deal with her daughter's mental illness. Trina went from being an honor student on her way to college to an out of control manic, sneaking out of the house, doing drugs and attacking her mom.

The story is basically about Kira trying to get her daughter to take her meds and the things that result when she is unsuccessful. Trina suffers from bipolar disorder, and this story offered some good insight into understanding bipolar, but also mental illness in general.

It's easy to label someone as a junkie or a whore or an out of control freak, but to stop and consider that the person you're judging may be the same as you except for the minor fact of a broken brain is a scary thing to think about.

Stephen King: Cell

I've decided to review this book before I finish it. I want to be positive about the story before I get to the end and it's all ruined by a bad ending. I don't know that the ending will suck, but it's Stephen King and he's done it to me before.

The story is fantastic, creepy and highly readable, unlike much of Stephen King's work over the last few years. It reminds me of the feeling I got when I read The Green Mile, which was so exceptional that I thought it had to be written by someone else. It's an actual story and none of the characters slip into flashbacks that are nearly impossible to follow. It's simply a story.

What would happen if one day someone (researchers, terrorist organization) figured out a way to create a signal that would immediately erase the brain of anyone who hears it? And what if they decided to send the signal out through cell phone transmission one afternoon in the fall? Everyone who happens to be on their cell phone at the moment of The Pulse goes crazy.  And the people who are spared, frightened by what's happening around them, immediately reach for their own cell phones to try to contact anyone who could explain what the fuck is happening, and they're Pulsed too!

I'm a bit biased as I always enjoy a good story about the breakdown of civilization. I'm perhaps the only person on earth who completely enjoyed The Postman, Artificial Intelligence and Waterworld (especially Waterworld). I didn't even mind The Day After Tomorrow even though it was complete BULLSHIT, and if I see it on HBO I'll sit down and watch it again, even if it's just to see the part where the helicopter guy freezes solid during the big chill.

Anyway, highly enjoyable read and nothing like what you'd expect from King. Great concept and great story. Some of the dialogue is weird, but you can easily ignore that. I would recommend this book. And once I'm finished I will come back to give a review that includes the ending.

UPDATE: I finished the book, so if you don't want the ending to be wrecked, avert your eyes now.

Oh, sweet Stephen, you've done it to me again. Not only did you leave everything to wonder, you tricked me by having thirty extra pages of an excerpt from your next book at the end of the story. I thought I still had lots to read but when I flipped over and saw the acknowledgements I raised my fists to the sky and made a pact with myself that I will never let you do this to me again. Unless you come up with a sequel that explains:

1) What happened to Clay's son when he pulsed him again?

2) What about the others? Did they meet up again in a cabin up north? Did Denise have her baby? What about Jordan?

3) Who sent out the pulse? Did the Phonies die off in the winter like they were supposed to? Was the rest of the world affected? How did the survivors reclaim the earth? Did they build a new civilization from scratch?

Write a new book and TELL ME!!!!!!! I know, I know, I should just use my own imagination to come up with an acceptable ending, but if I wanted to use my own imagination to tell myself a story, I wouldn't have bothered reading your book to begin with!

I hate you.

Marian Keyes: Anybody Out There?

Beach book. Great, light read. I like to read one of these every once in a while. Kind of like reading a weblog you can hold.

Annie Proulx: Brokeback Mountain

I put this book on reserve at the library after seeing the movie. I was surprised when I picked it up the other day and it was only 55 pages long. The movie comes directly from the book, and probably every line of it was used. I could picture Ennis and Jack saying the words as I read them and I finally got to know what Ennis says to Jack's shirt at the end. I rewound and rewound the DVD at least ten times and I still couldn't figure it out, but it's right there in the book. He says, "Jack, I swear--"

I love the story of Brokeback Mountain, though I would've liked to have known a little more detail about why exactly Ennis and Jack fell in love. Not that I need it spelled out, but just something besides loneliness that may have drawn them together. And what exactly it was that they could get from each other that they couldn't get from anyone else. So much so that they would risk everything for it.

But I guess none of that matters because I didn't need it to fall in love with the story.

Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking about getting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.