OK, so I haven’t written about the books I’ve been reading for a while now – sorry! They’re all listed with brief summaries/thought on my books page, but I haven’t posted anything about the more recent ones. I will try to quickly remedy that now. 
Good Harbor by Anita Diamant. I remember loving her book The Red Tent, which was a re-telling of the Biblical story of Dinah and talked a lot about women’s lives in that time, so I was excited to find this one. But it was, well, it was just not my favorite – it’s about a frienship between two women, and I just didn’t think anything was properly fleshed out as far as depth of character goes. Not really bad, just not really good.
Everyone Else’s Girl by Megan Crane. A fun chick lit book about returning home after living as an adult, and the resulting awkwardness and difficulty in meeting exes, etc. Fun and quick to read.
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. Told from the perspective of Mary Boleyn, Anne’s older sister, a mistress to Henry VIII (before Anne married him) and mother of two illegitimate children with him. A strong focus on the power struggle behind getting Catherine of Aragon off of the throne, and the resulting schism within the church, as well as the issues surrounding being a woman in that time. As Kari said when she wrote about it, it helps to have a basic understanding of the history of the time, as there is quite a bit of fictionalization that goes on, including giving credence to some theories that the treason charges against Anne and her brother (charges of an incestuous relationship and a homosexual ring at court) were actually true, which most historians would agree was just a ruse to get Anne off of the throne to make way for Jane Seymore (thanks Kara!). I would recommend the book, but it is looooong (650 pages), but I read the last 100 pages on the elliptical at the YMCA in an hour, just because I needed to know how it ended (I mean, I know how it ended historically, but I needed to know how the novel wrapped things up).
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. This is one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read, not in terms of actual reading (it was very well written) but in terms of dealing with the trauma of the events that happen in the book. It’s about two boys growing up in Kabul Afghanistan in the ’70s and follows their lives through 2002. It’s very disturbing, but also (from what I’ve read about it) very accurate to the time and place, and that makes it actually more disturbing in a way. There are things that are specific to Afghan culture and religion, but there are definitely strong themes of guilt, secrets, family relationships and plenty of other things to relate to. I think I would have to read it again (I actually listened to it on CD in the car, which was probably not a good way to do such an emotionally charged book) to pick up on a lot of things, but I need to give it a little while – it’s too fresh and raw right now.
Intuition by Allegra Goodman. Kari recommended the book and asked me to fact-check if possible, cause the story revolves around a cancer research lab in a high-power cancer institute. The research of one post-doc starts to go marvelously well, and soon there are questions being raised by a fellow post-doc about the validity of said research, and it all snow-balls from there. For Kari’s benefit, the science seemed quite accurate, and it was really only talked about in the beginning, so non-scientists can still enjoy the book even if they get lost in the science. I remember Kari mentioning this when she read it, but had forgotten about it by the time I read it, but the story is told from each person’s perspective (not in first person), such that each person’s story is told as if there are the main protagonist and their version of truth and right vs wrong is correct. Which is an interesting and perhaps more realistic way to tell the story (especially this story), but it takes some getting used to – I was thinking all the way through the story that eventually the ‘truth’ was going to come out, that we would find out that he really did cheat, or that she really was making things up, but the ‘truth’ was left fairly ambiguous, though there is some closure at the end. Kari said she liked that there was no clear bad guy, and I agree that that’s more realistic, but in the end, I kinda like having that bad guy to boo, you know? Still a good read, and from what I’ve seen of her books, quite different than the rest of her stuff, so that’s good that she can write across several genres of fiction.
Oh, and I also checked out this strange book from the library, because I was looking for anything else by Audrey Niffenegger (who wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife, which I loved). And it turns out she wrote this bizarre ‘visual novel’ that’s basically a story told in these ephemeral aquatints that she apparently worked on for years and years. But it was straaaange, and I’m not counting it on my list (it took me 15 minutes to flip through). It’s called The Three Incestuous Sisters and well, it was wierd.
So I’ve now started On Agate Hill by Lee Smith (another Kari recommendation) and I’m hoping to get some time at the beach this weekend to read that and maybe one more – I’ve got a new one from Kari called The Faith Club about three women from Christianity, Islam and Judaism who talk about their faith with each other, but I’ve already got a few more out from the library that I need to read so I can turn back in. We’ll see…
What are you reading these days? Any suggestions for summer reading?
I finished Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love this week, and it’s been really hard for me to think of what I wanted to say about the book. It was very good, beautifully written and very compelling – it took me a while to read, but that was mostly because I read it in spurts and missed several days of reading completely, and that’s actually probably the best way to read the book, because there are so many confusing twists and turns that reading it in dribs and drabs would make it even more confusing. The story switches narration mainly between Alma, a young girl dealing with the death of her beloved father, and Leo, an old Polish man who is seeking desparately not to disappear into oblivion. Their stories become connected in a way that seems almost impossible at the beginning, tied in with the fate of a novel written fifty years earlier called ‘The History of Love’.
What Kari said about the book being about survival really resonated with me, as that seemed like the biggest theme of the book – Leo’s concern with not disappearing, Alma’s attempts to become prolific at outdoor survival, Leo’s drive to make sure that part of himself is left behind, it’s all about survival, making sure that the life we lead leaves at least a small mark on the world when we die, that something is different because we were alive. And the book communicates that powerfully, I think.
My favorite part of the book, however, is early on during one of the exerpts from the novel ‘The History of Love’ (confusing that that’s the title of both ‘books’). The author is talking about the ‘Ages’ throughout history, and in this part he’s talking about the Age of Silence, when communication was only through gestures and there was no spoken language developed.
During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious.
I thought that was an amazing statement of the concept that love is about action, that it’s less about feelings and emotions and more about the things we do that let people know that we love them. Of course it’s much easier to say the words ‘I love you’ but to actually show someone that love means something more than words is much more difficult, but also more worthwhile in the end.
So I finally finished Matthew Pearl’s book The Dante Club this week. It took me a good long while to really get into the book (probably not til 75 pages or so in), but I definitely did get more interested as the book progressed. It’s kind of a combination of the concept of the movie Se7en (which I’ve never seen) and Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, in terms of the ideas of punishment being fit for the crime committed. And in that sense, the book was quite interesting, as an introduction (or re-introduction) to Dante’s work and sense of justice. And having some insight into that time in history (1865 Boston) was nice too, including using real literary figures as the main characters who are trying to solve the string of serial murders mimicking Dante’s punishments in Inferno.
I did feel like the pacing of the story was a bit off, that the suspense kinda peaked for me about 2/3 of the way in, and the last little bit of the book especially didn’t seem to flow well with the earlier parts of the book. And I know Matthew Pearl left some people out of the Dante Club (the group of authors solving the crimes) for ease of storytelling, but I still felt like there were almost too many people to get to know, that some of them lacked depth as a result.
But I really did enjoy the mystery, and the intelligent natures of the characters – it was kind of interesting to think about the lives of people like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes (members of the Dante Club), without their writing being the first thing I think of now. So overall, I enjoyed the book, though there were definitely things I would have liked to see happen differently – it might make an interesting movie, though with the possibility of being very gruesome, as the book was in places.
I’m now reading Muddhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner, who I love – I read about half of it in less than an hour before I fell asleep last night, so I should finish it tonight-ish. Very good so far. I picked up The Memory Keeper’s Daughter last week and I think I’ll start that this weekend (what tipped the scales to me finally buying it was the Jodi Picoult wrote a review on the back of the book ) – I’m on call this weekend, so I should have some time to get started on it.
I finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go today and wrote briefly about it.. (I finished Speaking with the Angel and wrote about it there too, but didn’t have much to say) The book was amazingly enthralling, especially once I’d made it about 40-50 pages in – it was really, really hard to put down, mostly cause I really wanted to know what was really going on. The authour (who wrote Remains of the Day, which I’ve never read or seen the movie) was very good at keeping the suspense up, only letting us in on the barest details and keeping you always wanting more. I highly recommend it, but not for the faint of heart.
We’re back from Wintergreen – the conference was great, almost all the speakers were really good, and I learned a lot. Unfortunately, our lab manager broke her right wrist and left thumb while on the slopes during our free time snowboarding. So she spent a good bit of time at the ER, and was on some pain meds for most of our ride home (I drove us up and back). She’s had the surgery to put pins in her thumb, but I don’t know when she’ll be back to work, since she can’t even drive at this point, much less pipette anything. We’ll see…
Other random things about my life right now:
~ I got an awesome silicone cover for my cell phone – it’s pink
~ I’ve spent an hour on the elliptical machine at the YMCA the last three days – no soreness yet to report! Hope this will help get me ready for the run in Charleston.
~ My brother is talking about moving to Los Angeles – I hate that he’ll be on the other coast (HATE THIS PLAN, MACKS!), but I’m glad he’s getting an awesome fresh start hopefully breaking into doing what he loves for a living.
~ My seminar is next week – I could use some prayer.
~ I might get to see Steven Curtis Chapman in concert tomorrow night! Awesome!
This weekend I finished my 5th book of the year, Thirty-three Swoons by Martha Cooley. It was strange, but interesting – I found it hard to relate to the characters, but I found that was largely because I didn’t agree with some of their choices, not because they were unappealing or anything. But now I do want to find a book on the perfume industry (fiction or non-fiction) because that aspect of the novel was really intriguing. I started Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult last night, which is good so far – I think I’m going to try Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro next, cause reading the back of the book makes me very curious – I can take that one along on the trip to Wintergreen.
I’m having dinner tonight with my mom, who is up in Greensboro to see a client, so I’m driving over there before she heads back to Charlotte. And I’m meeting with some of the women at my church, cause I’m supposed to be helping plan the women’s ministry retreat/conference in March – I’m excited about being involved, but scared about a large time committment right now – we’ll see after tonight…
My friend Beth just started working part-time at this new place called Sociale, where you go in and can assemble entrees right there in their kitchen with help from their chefs, or you can just pick up stuff pre-assembled. I wanted to go to their opening Friday night when Beth started but was too tired (and no one to go with 
) – hopefully I’ll be able to go sometime in the next few weeks when Beth is working again – you should check it out!