Book Round Up

It has been a while since my last meager attempt at recounting the books and movies and whatnots I consume for entertainment. Soooo, in no particular order, here's what I have been reading since the last time. I re-read Homecoming for the first time since I was probably ten or eleven. I feel like I read the book a number of times when I was younger, but a lot of the story and events were completely new to me. Now I want to read Dicey's Song again.
While I was at Cayuga Lake with A.S. I basically commandeered her mother's Stieg Larsson books. After originally doing this, I realized how rude it was and tried to take it back...but ended up reading both of them nonetheless. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. The first one certainly has a good pace and the characters are better than your average mystery book's protagonists and villains...but I was somehow under the impression that these were more literary/fancy than they actually are.
Liked the second one too, but didn't power through it at quite the same pace as I did the first.
Somehow I missed reading The Giver as a kid. Now I have. What a weird little book for young adults. I mean. It's really a strange book. It struck me as somehow anti-communist/socialist but I couldn't really explain that in any depth. Well, I guess I could a little...I mean, the concept that everyone has the same things, that they don't pick their career path as much as the equivalent of government does, etc. etc. And that ending. Hmpf. I had issues with the book that I couldn't quite express to my coworkers. Maybe I'll have to read it again.
I've been in Tennessee for the last couple of days, and in my first three days I read three books. Among them was Judith Guest's The Tarnished Eye. I loved Ordinary People when I was a teenager. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. I read it enough that I knew exactly which parts would make me cry and read them slowly to savor each tear. I read other books by Guest as well, all in the same vein of family fucked up ness and some kind of redemption. This book is more in the mystery end of the spectrum. It was good, but there were a few loose threads at the end that seemed like they wouldn't have been that difficult to wrap up. If you like Michigan and murder, you might like this book.
L. lent me her copy of Eat, Pray, Love. I didn't really have any interest in reading it, but she insisted. L. also said that the voice of Elizabeth Gilbert (the written voice, not the spoken one) reminded her of me. I think this was mainly because, at one point, Gilbert makes up a song that goes (she's in Bolgona, Italy) 'my Bologna has a first name, it's p-r-e-t-t-y.' It's definitely an interesting read. Most books about very successful people struggling to find themselves are, because they get to do it in so much style. I don't mean to be uncharitable, but it's true. I'm not a spiritual or religious person, so the large 'finding inner peace/God/yogic higher plane stuff' was interesting but not as compelling as I'm sure it would be if that was a path you were already on. It's a good book, but it didn't speak to me exactly. Some parts did. I'm not a completely unfeeling person incapable of self-reflection and growth...I'm just mainly that person. She did, however, make me want to live in Rome and Bali.
Last year I read Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, which remains, to this day, one of the most messed up non-fiction accounts of a childhood I have ever read. I mean, seriously. So when I saw her new book lying around the parents' house I thought I'd take a look. She calls this a 'true life novel' because she writes in the first person, from the perspective of her maternal grandmother. I have no doubt that most of the events are not, however, fictional. It's good. It gives some insight into Walls' mother while also just recounting an interesting story, full of hardship and ranches and horses.
I re-read The Big Over Easy the other week just because I felt like it. Still quite clever, still quite funny. I heard Fforde has a new book out, I'll have to look into that. Just so we're clear: I really think everyone should read this man's books.

I read God of Animals a few days ago. I read it quickly and I liked it. This may possibly be because of the horse element. I used to ride. I was never super good, but I liked doing it and being part of that horse culture...though I always knew I wasn't quite a horse person in the official sense (there is an official sense). It's a story about struggle, and adolescence and family and grace...and a lack of grace. I don't know, it's pretty good...though there are some tropes (tropes?) that will seem awfully familiar.
Pat Barker. I read a book by her every now and again. Ghost Road was not my favorite. Though it gave me a little more information about shell shock during World War I and the culture of head hunters.