Bookworm

Review of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

"Gladwell tramples the concept of political correctness by dissecting these questions: Why are people of Asian ethnicity so good at math? Why are so many of the highest flying law firms run by individuals of Jewish heritage? Why are some country’s pilots and airlines more prone to in-flight accidents? The suggested answers are both straight-forward and surprising." [Review of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell]

Holiday Message from Roy Blount Jr.: Buy Books

"We don't want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. So let's mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that's just for starters. Clear out the mysteries, wrap up the histories, beam up the science fiction! Round up the westerns, go crazy for self-help, say yes to the university press books! Get a load of those coffee-table books, fatten up on slim volumes of verse, and take a chance on romance! There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children's books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they'll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books." [The Authors Guild - Holiday Message from Roy Blount Jr.: Buy Books From Your Local Bookstore, Now]

Brief Review of 2 Graphic "Novels"

Review of Blankets by Craig Thompson and American Widow by Alissa Torres can be found here.

Three Writers Retread Old Ground

The Corrections - TIME

"Roth, Updike and Morrison have new novels out this fall, and in each of them they return to a story they first told much earlier in their careers. In The Widows of Eastwick, out Oct. 21, Updike has dreamed up a sequel to his novel of suburban sorcery, The Witches of Eastwick. In Indignation, published in September, Roth retells the story of Portnoy's Complaint, the brilliant, pneumatically obscene book that made him famous. And in A Mercy, due out in November, Morrison--the last American writer to win a Nobel Prize for Literature--tells the story of a mother who loses her daughter to slavery, just as she did in Beloved."

The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

Review of Alexander McCall Smith's newest Isabel Dalhousie mystery here: http://readinginbed.wordpress.com/

Recently published books

Review of Elizabeth McCracken's memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Review of Note to Self by Samara O'Shea

Reading in Bed

Reading in Bed: Review of Note to Self by Samara O'Shea.

". . . a journal isn’t a road map. It can’t be. A journal, rather, is the path of pebbles you leave behind you, so you have the security of knowing you can always return to where you’ve been."

The Ten-Year Nap (finished it!)

The Ten-Year Nap
by Meg Wolitzer

The four women at the core of the novel, Amy, Jill, Roberta, and Karen, are women whose ages are not specified, but whom I presume to be in their mid-to-late thirties or early forties, since their children range in age from 6 to 10 and they all had careers before motherhood.  All four have stayed at home with their children and are now wondering whether they will continue to do so, or whether they will go back to work.  By the end of the novel, two of them are back in the workforce and two are not, but the possibility is left open that they, too, will eventually do so.  

""That world could be absorbing yet was also pulled along by a current of tedium, and everybody knew it." (328)

". . . like so many people she knew, she'd sought satisfaction around the edges, and time had slid past, and until recently she rarely had been idle and often in fact had been very busy. That life could be so boring, of course, she thought, not unlike the way a job could easily be boring." (pg. 323)

I started out thinking this was a "women's novel" or a "mommy novel," but now that I've finished it I think it's not quite as quantifiable that way.  It poses, in some ways, middle-aged "what am I going to be when I grow up" questions that are not gender specific.  Through the examples of the women's husbands and fathers (in short flashbacks), we see that they either enjoy work or don't, get a big "break" or don't. 

One of the women has the epiphany that just having a job doesn't make you interesting -- having an interesting job makes you interesting. We see that both men and women might have the desire to stay home or might wonder if the things that were important to them when they were in school are still their passions. 

This passage made me laugh a bit.  I do think my husband would think of boots, eventually:

"On the morning of the first day back to school after Christmas vacation, the first snow fell upon the city.  From the windows of their financial and legal towers, men and women peered out upon the natural phenomenon.  The men thought of sleds and of their children and of being a child. . . more than a few of the women wondered if their children's boots from last year still fit."

The Beach House by Jane Green

Yesterday I finished The Beach House by Jane Green.  I picked it up for some light summer reading and wasn't disappointed. 

I wouldn't have bought it just for its cover (I'm sure I've read this author before), but the cover design is lovely and fresh.  A pale metallic blue is the background color, framed with white matte brush strokes.  There is a blue hydrangea in the upper left and a hint of green for the leaf. 

There were almost too many characters to keep straight, at the beginning.  It got easier when their lives began to converge on Nantucket.  I felt more invested in some characters' paths than others -- I think that is one side effect to multiple storylines in a relatively short novel.  I enjoyed it, but probably won't reread it. 

I found myself caring most about Daniel, who, after a lifetime of resistance, finally admits to himself and his wife that he "bats for the other team," so to speak.  I think his story was a bit idealized, but the anguish he felt was palpable.

At its best, the book reminded me a little of Rosamunde Pilcher's The Shell Seekers, September, or Coming Home, while not quite matching them in the depth of feeling evoked for the characters.

Author James Patterson

"About writing, Patterson said to focus on what's alluring about the plot and characters, and not spend "three pages describing the room." The author revealed he writes books in longhand, with a pencil. "Hello, dinosaur," he said." [Poughkeepsie Journal; found via Books On the Nightstand]