Since the beginning of 2013 I've been to Chicago, Atlanta, Mexico, Denver, and Keystone, Colorado. I've spent about 18 of the last 60 days traveling. It feels great... it also feels like exhaustion is one with my bones. It's an exhaustion I'll accept any day, though.
When I'm spending this much time in airports and in the air, and even on the ground when I have time to relax, I fly through books. Reading is one of my favorite parts of travel. Instead of the 3-5 short pages I cram in on metro rides to and from work here in the city, I have time to devour and get lost in whole chapters and entire novels. I've paged my way through five books since the beginning of the year, and am oh so close to finishing a sixth. If there were a mile high reading club, I'd be the president ( (oh wouldn't that be such a nerdier mile high club?!).
Here are short overviews/reviews of 4 of the best novels I've read this year; the idea for the formatting is courtesy of Candice Does the World. I love her blog, don't you?
Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Fast (and possibly furious) overview
Cal Stephanides, an Greek-American living in Germany, tells his story of being born with unnoticed ambiguous genitalia and raised as Calliope Stephanides. That's the simplest form of the plot, but in its truest sense, it's a play on a Greek epic, complete with a genealogy of the Stephanides family that spans back to Cal's great-grandparents, siblings, making the voyage to Detroit, Michigan with nothing but silk worms and memories. Cal follows his family through the industrial revolution, learning English, getting their first automobile, and on up to his birth and life spent living as a girl in a hermaphrodite's body.
Quote(s)“We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.”
“It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.”
3-sentence review
Eugenides is long-winded, and the novel has troughs and peaks - reads like a history text book on one page, and like an addictive soap opera on the next. I wanted more of Cal's story of transformation and self-realization through adulthood. I struggled through the first half of the novel, but knew I loved it immensely as a whole when I closed the last page.
Talullah Rising (Glen Duncan)
Fast (and possibly furious) overviewThe sequel to Duncan's The Last Werewolf, Talullah Rising follows heroine Talullah, pregnant with the now-deceased Jake's werewolf baby. She quickly gives birth, and her son is taken by vampires. She finds unexpected help in former werewolf hunters, who are on a mission for vengeance themselves.
Quote(s)
"My dead moaned and throbbed. My dead. My restless tenants. My forced family of thirteen. Those ghosts, yes, of course, as many as you like. The only way to be sure of never losing the ones you love. The Dahmer Method. Extreme, but effective."
3-sentence review:
I have to wonder if Duncan's publishing contract included a sequel he didn't want to write. Talullah Rising reads like a bad fantasy novel, ripe with tropes and cliches and uninspired sex scenes. The novel's only thrilling, beautiful moments come when Duncan quotes from Jake's journals, simply copying and pasting the splendid writing in The Last Werewolf.
The Sisters Brothers (Patrick DeWitt)
Fast (and possibly furious) overview
It's the old west at the onset of the California Gold Rush, and the Sisters brothers are famous cowboys... and killers. They're contracted by a powerful baron named The Commodore, to find and terminate a prospector called Herman Kermit Warm. Told from the point of view of Eli, it's a western chock full of deadpan humor, wit, and intrigue.
Quote(s)
“...I am happy to welcome you to a town peopled in morons exclusively. Furthermore, I hope that your transformation to moron is not an unpleasant experience.”
“It is true, I thought. I am living a life.”
3-sentence review
"This isn't my grandfather's western," I thought at least 15 times laughing my way through this novel. It's one of my favorite books of the year, and for good reason - DeWitt is hilarious, readable, and makes you earmark so many pages with so many great quotes you want to remember that soon your copy of the novel is just one big folded down hunk. I'd go anywhere the psychopathic, lovable Sisters brothers wanted to take me.
The Stonecutter (Camilla Läckberg)
Fast (and possibly furious) overview
A novel of intertwining stories - spanning from current day to the early 1900s, The Stonecutter is yet another intriguing Swedish mystery. Agnes is the daughter of a wealthy businessman - arrogant and beautiful, and finds herself unhappily married to a poor stone cutter. Her story somehow, someway intersects with the present day murder of a young girl, and a detective's journey to find the killer.
Quote(s)
N/A
3-sentence review
This works as a beach read. It works so well as a beach read that I forgot about it the second I finished it and went back to enjoying the sunshine in Mexico; it's entertaining but forgettable. Anyone have recommendations for quality, literary mystery?
------
I'm currently reading Snow Falling on Cedars - it's one I've picked up twice before and am finally making myself finish. On literary deck for me is Nurture Shock, a book club read, and then I'm looking forward to Into the Wild, which may coincide with my next trip in April (Atlanta again!). What are you reading?
When I'm spending this much time in airports and in the air, and even on the ground when I have time to relax, I fly through books. Reading is one of my favorite parts of travel. Instead of the 3-5 short pages I cram in on metro rides to and from work here in the city, I have time to devour and get lost in whole chapters and entire novels. I've paged my way through five books since the beginning of the year, and am oh so close to finishing a sixth. If there were a mile high reading club, I'd be the president ( (oh wouldn't that be such a nerdier mile high club?!).
Here are short overviews/reviews of 4 of the best novels I've read this year; the idea for the formatting is courtesy of Candice Does the World. I love her blog, don't you?
Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Fast (and possibly furious) overview
Cal Stephanides, an Greek-American living in Germany, tells his story of being born with unnoticed ambiguous genitalia and raised as Calliope Stephanides. That's the simplest form of the plot, but in its truest sense, it's a play on a Greek epic, complete with a genealogy of the Stephanides family that spans back to Cal's great-grandparents, siblings, making the voyage to Detroit, Michigan with nothing but silk worms and memories. Cal follows his family through the industrial revolution, learning English, getting their first automobile, and on up to his birth and life spent living as a girl in a hermaphrodite's body.
Quote(s)“We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.”
“It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.”
3-sentence review
Eugenides is long-winded, and the novel has troughs and peaks - reads like a history text book on one page, and like an addictive soap opera on the next. I wanted more of Cal's story of transformation and self-realization through adulthood. I struggled through the first half of the novel, but knew I loved it immensely as a whole when I closed the last page.
Talullah Rising (Glen Duncan)
Fast (and possibly furious) overviewThe sequel to Duncan's The Last Werewolf, Talullah Rising follows heroine Talullah, pregnant with the now-deceased Jake's werewolf baby. She quickly gives birth, and her son is taken by vampires. She finds unexpected help in former werewolf hunters, who are on a mission for vengeance themselves.
Quote(s)
"My dead moaned and throbbed. My dead. My restless tenants. My forced family of thirteen. Those ghosts, yes, of course, as many as you like. The only way to be sure of never losing the ones you love. The Dahmer Method. Extreme, but effective."
3-sentence review:
I have to wonder if Duncan's publishing contract included a sequel he didn't want to write. Talullah Rising reads like a bad fantasy novel, ripe with tropes and cliches and uninspired sex scenes. The novel's only thrilling, beautiful moments come when Duncan quotes from Jake's journals, simply copying and pasting the splendid writing in The Last Werewolf.
The Sisters Brothers (Patrick DeWitt)
Fast (and possibly furious) overview
It's the old west at the onset of the California Gold Rush, and the Sisters brothers are famous cowboys... and killers. They're contracted by a powerful baron named The Commodore, to find and terminate a prospector called Herman Kermit Warm. Told from the point of view of Eli, it's a western chock full of deadpan humor, wit, and intrigue.
Quote(s)
“...I am happy to welcome you to a town peopled in morons exclusively. Furthermore, I hope that your transformation to moron is not an unpleasant experience.”
“It is true, I thought. I am living a life.”
3-sentence review
"This isn't my grandfather's western," I thought at least 15 times laughing my way through this novel. It's one of my favorite books of the year, and for good reason - DeWitt is hilarious, readable, and makes you earmark so many pages with so many great quotes you want to remember that soon your copy of the novel is just one big folded down hunk. I'd go anywhere the psychopathic, lovable Sisters brothers wanted to take me.
The Stonecutter (Camilla Läckberg)
Fast (and possibly furious) overview
A novel of intertwining stories - spanning from current day to the early 1900s, The Stonecutter is yet another intriguing Swedish mystery. Agnes is the daughter of a wealthy businessman - arrogant and beautiful, and finds herself unhappily married to a poor stone cutter. Her story somehow, someway intersects with the present day murder of a young girl, and a detective's journey to find the killer.
Quote(s)
N/A
3-sentence review
This works as a beach read. It works so well as a beach read that I forgot about it the second I finished it and went back to enjoying the sunshine in Mexico; it's entertaining but forgettable. Anyone have recommendations for quality, literary mystery?
------
I'm currently reading Snow Falling on Cedars - it's one I've picked up twice before and am finally making myself finish. On literary deck for me is Nurture Shock, a book club read, and then I'm looking forward to Into the Wild, which may coincide with my next trip in April (Atlanta again!). What are you reading?
