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the little friend
donna tartt
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You might remember her from her last book, "The Secret History", which made a big splash about ten years ago. This new one is kind of a Southern gothic murder mystery set in the 1970's, involving a girl who is trying to figure out the unsolved murder of her brother, who was found hanging in the back yard (she was a baby at the time). This is being touted as the new "it" book, and with its distant cousin, "The Lovely Bones" being so hot, I suspect this will be as big, or bigger. It is written with great detail, great character development (a huge ensemble of aunts, siblings, and other members of the community), and some of the best dialogue I've seen in a long time. It's being compared to Dickens and Faulkner and other greats, and so far I don't think that's too far off base. You kind of get the feel, when reading this, that people will be reading this generations from now.
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reviewed by: ericS |
November 2002 [link] |
recommend
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meditations
the dalai lama
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| Have I already reviewed this lil' gem that bolstered my life? Yes, I think so. I'm still reading it, however, long after I've read it from cover to cover. I think this book is more like a Buddhist "life's lil' instruction book" or "keep it simple" or "everything I learned in kindergarten was the really useful stuff". Because it's Buddhist however, it's much much more. Well actually, I've only read a copy of "Kindergarten Learning Everything" that my mother had on hand in the can. It was actually quite nice for those assholes (sic) out there who need to quit making everyone nervous by their inability to spend fifteen minutes alone with themselves (and computers and tv aren't you so they don't count). Anyhoo, this book gives me hope in humanity. The more I read lately, the more I realize that I've never been alone. There's a whole universe out there. These books and people have been sitting waiting for me to read them and feel at one (ommmmmmmmm). Although I have rather a flippant tone today, I truly do love this book. It truly is by my bedside. I truly do read it last before I fall asleep (well last night I didn't. I was reading an old National Geographic but the night before and before and before and .....) |
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reviewed by: kristen |
May 2002 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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the disastrous mrs. weldon
brian thompson
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This book drew me by the cover as well. It had a sensuous painting of an enigmatic looking Victorian woman. What a joke! It was fun getting to know this woman (The book is sort of a summation of Mrs. Weldon’s twelve-volume published memoirs); however, I didn’t finish the book. I got about three quarters of the way through and found I didn’t really care what happened to her, but she sure was a vainglorious card.
The author did a nice job of being fascinated with Mrs. Weldon and translating that to reader. Very nice slice of life book, but as she was no one I knew a thing about, I don’t care about legal history of fighting for rights of the insane, or care about singing, it wasn’t wholly satisfying. I did enjoy seeing a rare, diary-like glimpse of a real |
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reviewed by: kristen |
June 2001 [link] |
recommend
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a complicated kindness
miriam toews
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Each year there comes that book I want to press on everyone I know. Last year it was A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews.
Nomi Nickel is a teenage Mennonite girl with a sense of humour and observation that brand her an outsider in the rigid Mennonite community she has grown up in.
“Imagine the least well-adjusted kid in your school starting a breakaway clique of people whose manifesto includes a ban on the media, dancing, smoking , temperate climates, movies, drinking, rock'n'roll, having sex for fun, swimming, makeup, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities, or staying up past nine o'clock. That was Menno all over. Thanks a lot, Menno."
After both her mother and older sister were kicked out of the church for their independent thinking and spirited lifestyles, Nomi is left in the hands of her hapless, pious father. He adores her, but is too wrapped up in his own grief to stop her downward spiral. To make things worse, he is inexplicably getting rid of the household furniture, piece by piece.
But Nomi as narrator is hilarious, tragic, and hopeful. She describes her first sexual encounter with her boyfriend:
“Move with me,” he says, to which she replies: “To Montreal?” In retrospect, she reflects, “I think it might have gone better if I hadn't been bald, drunk, depressed and jealous.”
When the book ends, it is like a revelation. You realize that the slow accumulation of small stories and details has been woven together into a beautiful, full narrative and you are rooting for Nomi - her punk-ass intolerance for bullshit, her brutal honesty, and her wicked humour.
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reviewed by: adina |
September 2006 [link] |
recommend 2 thumbs up
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lord of some rings
j.r.r. tolkein
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| For a long time, I thought I had read this book when I was nine-ish (see review for "the Hobbit"), but no, it was "The Hobbit" I had read and I didn't read this one at all. I learned this when I watched that FUCKING amazing movie! I read the book mainly because I was curious at why greg and john hume were so insensed that Tom Bombidil was left out. Yes, this book is indeed a MEANING of life book, and I regret any slights I may have thrown it's way. I'm sorry. But, I think I can help rationalize a good reason why TB was left out. The only real reason I read the book is to see more EVEN more of the world that the movie appears to be just a brilliant teaser for. Get my drift? |
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reviewed by: kristen |
January 2002 [link] |
recommend
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hobbit, the
j.r.r. tolkein
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| This naturally was a book that I was told an infinite number of times to read (weren't we all). Finally in sixth grade, I read it. While the world created is still memorable to me to a startling degree, I didn't like the tone/quest of it. I had been used to reading Anne McCaffrey, Robin McKinley, Lloyd Alexander, Isaac Asimov (if I wanted to go a little hard), and this was just such a physically dirty book -slimy, underearth dwellers… The book was paced so smugly. The plot didn't hold me. I frankly found the book ponderous and annoying. Now, in my late twenties (ouch), I have been told to re-read it and I will catch it on so many different levels. Maybe later. It would be a perfect book for autumn if you were feeling the need to escape from the world and how much it sucks. |
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reviewed by: kristen |
September 2000 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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the return of the king
j. r. r. tolkien
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| Ahhhhh I had drawn out the reading of “Return of the King”. I wanted it to linger –to linger. And it did linger. I was only a quarter of the way into it when Mark went away for his week-long commercial. I only read a bit of it – and only when I was feeling lucid and bored and willing to focus (which lemme tell ya..). Finally, on Saturday, it was a rainy, cold day with a long walk behind me, and my belly filled with warm tea and homemade bread and jam that I began to plow. I surprised myself by finishing the book in record time. Apparently there are many many appendices in the back. So, where I thought I was 3/4 of the way into the book, I was actually nigh on the end. It's hard to describe what I feel after reading these books. I suppose a great kinship and admiration to the author, a sadness of things passed… Yes, to me (as with reading Moretta of Pern as a youth) when it was all done it was the passing of a way of life and of “archetypes” that was so sad – that along with the awful realities that the “bad, dark, evil” in humans brings out. It was a very topical book to me. I am very glad that I have read them and feel very strange to have only read them at this particular time in my life – and by strange I mean bizarre. |
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reviewed by: kristen |
February 2002 [link] |
recommend
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bringing home the birkin
michael tonello
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| Tonello's infectious memoir is about his turn as an Hermes re-seller and his obsession with the illustrious Birkin bag. After relocating to Barcelona, Tonello sells a few of his possessions on eBay, noticing that his Hermes items were the hottest things to go. As he schools himself in the art of Hermes collecting (some women go bonkers for the scarves and HAVE to have every one ever issued), he starts shopping the European boutiques and launches a very successful business online. His most devoted clients want the Birkin bag (these illustrious bags start at $7500 and sometimes fetch six digits with the most exotic being made of crocodile) – supposedly only 100 are made every year and there's a two year waiting list. On a whim, Tonello asks for one at a store in Spain and is surprised to get one. He makes a tidy profit on the bags and off he goes, sometimes scoring several bags a day at different shops. His story is so fun, his writing witty and by the end of the book, I wanted a Birkin, too. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
August 2008 [link] |
recommend
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feeding a yen
calvin trillin
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| Trillin is one of my favorite New Yorker writers as well as my favorite food and humor writers. Okay, he's one of my favorite writers, period. "Feeding a Yen" is a compilation of various essays on New York food and far-flung specialites like pimientos in Spain and posole in New Mexico. He reveals his Register of Frustration and Deprivation of items he can only get in their place of origin and some he can't get anymore at all - like hard little pumpernickel bagels his daughter Abigail would move back to NY for if only he could find them... |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
November 2006 [link] |
recommend
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this is where i leave you
jonathan tropper
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| Judd Foxman has seemingly hit rock bottom – his wife cheated on him with his boss (he walk in on them in his own bedroom and things ended, "as these things do, with paramedics and cheesecake"), his soon-to-be-ex announces she's pregnant and his father passes away. His father requests that the intermittently-Jewish family sit shiva. As Judd, his two brothers, sister and mother hunker down for the seven day mourning period in the home where they grew up, they're forced to come to terms with their family dynamic as well as their personal lives. What's great about a novel like this is it takes the sad disappointments of life, pokes fun at them a bit and in the end, the characters all get on with their lives, profoundly changed but hopeful. Immensely funny and bittersweet, this will no doubt be turned into a movie even before the paperback is out. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
October 2009 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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