Category: Books

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not only was jury duty fun, but in chatting with one of my fellow jurors we got to talking about books made into movies. We discussed Atonement and she asked me if I had seen the Painted Veil. I had, but hadn’t read the book and so the next day she gave me her copy.

I didn’t seek out the book after seeing the movie, because, as mentioned before I’m a lazy reader and don’t like to work while reading. For me, many authors published before 1950 require more attention that I’m willing to give. Not this one. This was a very readable book and the internal thought process of the characters were fascinating. My favorite book/movie difference was the “did you leave your toupee?” question as the lovers were hoping to avoid detection. I also found the descriptions of the babies in the Chinese orphanage interesting. More than once they were described as “not quite human” I hope that we have evolved to the point where we find babies around the world darling, rather than “not quite human.”

Once again, the book does a much better job illustrating the internal shifts in the main character. Not surprisingly, this was a much better book than movie.

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Lucky by Alice Sebold

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
A hard book to read, but an important one. Sebold takes us through the journey that began when she was raped at the end of her freshman year of college. The moment-by-moment description of the rape was particularly fascinating, though not pleasant to read. I made the mistake of starting the book right before bed and it kept me awake for awhile. It was disheartening to realize that Sebold was the “perfect rape victim” and still had a tough time getting a conviction.

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Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
I get obsessive about some things. I rented the movie Gone, Baby, Gone on a Friday and liked it so much I watched it again on Sunday. I reserved the book from the library and had it by Tuesday. Part of my affection for the movie, it must be told, had to do with Casey Affleck’s Patrick Kenzie, but the other part had to do with how incredibly cool his partner Angie was. The movie didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about her which I find rare as Hollywood seems to exist partly to keep women in their place. But that’s a post for another day.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I got the book and Angie is even cooler than she was in the film. Ah, Hollywood, you never let me down. Anyway, good book. Fast-paced, funny with very good character sketches as well as good social commentary. I like Dennis LeHane especially for those last two traits.

Overall the book was solid and I was pleased to find out there are several books with these two characters. I’ll be reading them.

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Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Graphic novels aren’t really my medium. The boyfriend loves them and reads them all the time, but my habit of skimming doesn’t really lend itself to the graphic novel format. But, having seen and loved the movie, I thought I would read the first part of Satrapi’s story.

It was fine. Like I said, not my medium. I liked the movie better, as it contained all the things that were in the book, but with prettier art.

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The Hatbox Baby by Carrie Brown

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Last month I loved the novel I read by Carrie Brown. This month, I wasn’t as enchanted. The story had some interesting points to it. I enjoyed learning about doctors in the 1930s who attempted to save preemie babies. The one in this novel had to have the infants in his care on display at world fairs and expositions. He used the proceeds to fund his research.

I enjoyed meeting several people involved with the World’s Fair in Chicago. Overall, the plot line was interesting, but nothing gelled. I never grew attached to any of the characters or their stories. I finished it, and that was the end of my relationship with that book.

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Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I reserved this book from the library right after I saw the movie. Many other people had the same idea and I was number 198 of 198. I had avoided reading the book before I saw the movie because the whole “Booker Prize Winner” thing. I am a lazy reader and tend to stay away from Pulitzers,Bookers, and any other prize that screams “prestige”

That said, I was reminded that my attitude can keep me from some good books, of which this was one. I used to stridently side with “books” in the “movie version of the book” debate, but in my older years I have mellowed. Mostly if the movie people get the story right, I’m pretty happy. When there are changes to the story line I’m intrigued, rather than angry. Reading this book after seeing the movie was like getting a DVD extra. All the thought processes that weren’t able to be translated to the screen were there.

Atonement was gripping and eminently readable and I’m not ashamed to say I stayed home from work and read the entire thing in a day.

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blah blah blah
What I meant to say up there when I wrote “blah, blah, blah” was that my measly book reading this month had to do with my math class, etc. Still, what few books I read were quite good. Also, I notice that I didn’t spell check before posting. I am completely out of practice.

Finished
The Running Mate
Joe Klein

The Rope Walk
Carrie Brown

The Abstinence Teacher
Tom Perrotta

Started but didn’t finish.
Think Like a Cat: How to Raise a Well-Adjusted Cat–Not a Sour Puss
Pam Johnson-Bennett
A really great guide to bringing your new cat home and living happily with it. Johnson-Bennett covers everything from getting down on your knees to see things from kitten height to encouraging daily play sessions to helping solve problems such as spraying and clawing furniture. I didn’t make it through this whole guide before it had to go back, but will get it again when cat ownership is closer to my future.

Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades: The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening
Steve Solomon
I. Love. This. Book. As you might have guessed by the title Solomon thoroughly explores how to grow things if you live west of the Cascade Mountains. Our climate over here is different than the rest of the US and so a lot of general gardening guides don’t work for us, for instance, mulching with hay or leaves around a plant will bring the slugs a chomping.

While not a how-to guide, Solomon has many handy items included in this book: a month-by-month planting guide; advice NOT to do a soil test as well as the organic fertilizer he recommends you stir up yourself and use; instructions for planting your garden so you never have to water it; a 4-5 year rotation of land to avoid insect infestations.

This guide will be by my right hand when planning my garden next year. The only drawback I could find was that reading it made me long for more ground in which to grow things.

Didn’t even start.
Psycho Kitty: Understanding Your Cat’s Crazy Behavior
Pam Johnson-Bennett
This is probably also a good guide, but I had my fill of Johnson-Bennett’s other cat-raising guide. This book had more actual case studies. I will reference it in the future.

Ruth is the high school health teacher forced to adapt an abstinence-based curriculum. Tim is a recovering alcohol and drug user trying to hold on to the sobriety he found when he started attending a local evangelical church. The book throws these two characters together at a point of adversity and then examines how their interactions affect their lives.

This book was readable enough, with the well developed characters I am used to from Tom Perrotta. However, I felt that the point at which the book ended was the ideal starting point for the story. All that came before it seemed like a very long set up without a payout.

There’s a certain genre of movies I refer to as the “white men in suits” movies. They are the kind of movies where many of the main characters look alike and not much is done to differentiate them. I’m always slightly confused during these films, because the characters are so interchangeable. So in the third reel when it is revealed that Mr. So-and-so was really a double agent/mafia don/retired baseball player I always think, “Wait, who was Mr. So-and-so?”

This book was much like that. The story of a long time Midwestern Senator had a lot of characters who were sparingly introduced and then referred to later not only by either their first or last names, but also a nickname now and then. “Who is this person?” I kept thinking as I read.

But I kept reading and aside from having little idea who was talking 60% of the time, I enjoyed this book. Charlie, the main character was wonderful to follow through his trials and tribulations. He really wanted to do the right thing, which was difficult in the changing political landscape of the early 90s. His father was a fun character who would wander in and out and I enjoyed a few of the staffers too.

I enjoy politics (though not so much these past years) and it was fun to have a fictional window to a Senate campaign. There were story threads that could have been more developed and story threads that wandered on forever, but overall this was a pretty okay book.

Alice turns 10 at the beginning of this book. She leans out the window at her birthday party and as she leans, we are introduced to her five older brothers, her professor father and the house keeper Elizabeth who came to work when Alice’s mother died one month after her birth. We also meet other sundry characters including Theo, the grandchild of Alice’s neighbors Helen and O’Brien, who is staying with them for the summer. Theo and Alice become friends and together they befriend Kenneth, an older neighbor.

The book is best when describing Alice’s feelings and emotions. There are so many great examples of being 10 years old. I especially loved the friendship that developed between Theo and Alice and this was another book I didn’t want to finish. The closer I got to the ending, the more I set it down.

On an unrelated side note, the author’s picture fascinated me. It may have been because her hair was pinned up, but her steely expression to me seemed to be straight out of a frontier photograph from the 1850s. And I mean that as a compliment.