Just Finished Reading - My Year of Meats and Dignifying Science

Hi friends -

Holy wow, it has been a busy week. Am I EVER glad that I took tomorrow off... I'm really looking forward to Thanksgiving weekend! I've got a whole stack of X-Men comics a friend lent me a while ago, and I really need to get on that... which I will be doing now that I have completed the last of the Kat Rosenfeld list!

Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats was the Rosenfeld book I liked the best... and it was also the one I had the hardest time getting into. For some reason, the opening scene just wasn't doing it for me... but finally, I got into it, and I loved reading the story of these two women. And also, am seriously considering going organic in the meat department... but that's another conversation. Be warned, though, there's some pretty graphic, albeit brief, depictions of a slaughterhouse towards the end of the book. It was so good though.

Next up is Dignifying Science, "the second in a series of books done in comics form telling true stories about scientists. This book features famous women scientists including Marie Curie, mathematician Emmy Noether, physicist Lise Meitner, DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin, biologist Barbara McClintock, primatologist Birute Galdikas, and Hedy Lamarr. Yes, that Hedy Lamarr...her story will surprise you!"

It was good - I liked the graphic novel approach - but I have one major complaint about it, which is the lack of context for the stories. I felt like each chapter was aimed at someone who already knew about the scientist in question, so I was often lost. I discovered an appendix at the end which gave some historical/contextual information about each scientist - I really think that they should have put this as an introductory page before the story. I would have gotten more out of it that way, and suspect others would have, too! Nonetheless, I have borrowed other graphic novels by the same author from the library, and am looking forward to reading them (and have a hold on the one about Feynman - I expect that to be a hoot!)

Just Finished Reading - The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

[Before I get into this - could you please tell me where I'm finding time to read all of these books? Coz I'm not sure, to be honest.]

So, this is my second-to-last Kat Rosenfeld recommendation; The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice (read an interview with her here). It was eminently readable and quite good (although I found that it slowed down towards the end).

I once had a conversation with a friend about the gigantic old stone houses that litter the British countryside, and the incredible expense of maintaining them (which means that many of them simply rot away)... it was lovely to read a story that was partially set in one, and to see how the house influenced the characters' feelings.

It's ultimately a story of liberation, and learning, and one whose characters you don't want to leave when the book ends. Thumbs up!

Oh, indiscriminate squid...

My favourite line from this article is definitely the very last one. Please go read it!

And speaking of sex, I just finished reading The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle.

I generally agree with this Washington Post review, although I don't "almost wish I hadn't read it." I'm quite glad that I read it - I found it to be quite the page turner - although I agree that it is disturbing. The exploration of how the insistence that it is "just sex" impacts the relationships between the characters; how Milk's devotion to work influences his view of and relationship with the most important people in his life; the slippery slope into questionable moral practices that the characters slide down so easily (bring to mind Malcolm's rant in Jurassic Park: "You were so busy thinking about whether you could that you didn't stop to think about whether you should," or something along those lines)... I found it to be quite an interesting exploration of the intersection between our humanity and our "human animal" -ness.

Just Finished Reading - Flight of the Maidens

Yet another Kat Rosenfeld special - she recommended 6 books, and I've got 3 left to review - and one I really like. Flight of the Maidens is about 3 girls in post-WWII England preparing to go off to college, and learning a lot about themselves and their relationships with other people. There's a lot of reading between the lines for the reader, which I think allows us to better understand how much guesswork these young women have to do as they try to navigate a rather pivotal moment in growing up.

I wasn't blown away, but I liked it!

Just Finished Reading - Freedom, The Gargoyle, Rex Libris

It was a busy reading weekend for me! Helps that I was off on Monday. Now I have some reviews for you!

Freedom, Jonathan Franzen

This book was definitely "meh" to me. For some reason, it was a very slow read (maybe because I didn't love it, or something about the language? I dunno). It gradually got better, but I could easily have walked away from it at pretty much any point. I kept reading it because Kat Rosenfeld said I should, but it turns out that not everything that comes out of her mouth (blog) is Gospel. Only most of it.

The Gargoyle, Andrew Davidson

Another Rosenfeld recommendation, and this time I agreed. I read this one in two days. I don't think it compares with Life of Pi as someone claims on the dust jacket, but it's definitely a good read - a love story of the definitely-not-Nicholas-Sparks genre (I'm guessing here, because I've never actually read a Sparks book or seen a Sparks movie). Plus, Davidson is Canadian, which is always exciting.

 Rex Libris: Book of Monsters, James Turner

Um, who doesn't love a graphic novel about an ass-kicking librarian who is always setting about saving the world? I love the literary references in this series. So fun!

Just Finished Reading - The Hunger Games

So, the hubby and I have just finished reading the Hunger Games series (aloud. To one another. I shall explain), and I'd like to tell you what I think of it. Leave now if you're deathly afraid of spoilers. I'll try to be vague, but make no promises.

These are them!

Okay, so I started reading the first book, and realized that the story was going to be really compelling. Like, I wasn't going to want to put it down, and was going to have a hard time not-reading it on the 6-ish hour drive to the cottage for the Civic Holiday weekend. Unfortunately, ignoring your husband while trapped in a small metal & plastic box for 6 hours isn't really kosher, so... as soon as I realized that I was hooked, I went back to the beginning, and started reading the book out loud to him, so he'd be hooked too. (This is how drug dealers work, yes?) We powered through it that weekend, started book 2 after my laser eye surgery, and finished book 3 this past weekend.

All of the books would benefit from a good copy edit. But comma splices and sentence fragments (ugh) aside, the first book was a great story.

Unfortunately, it was downhill from there. Some of my problems with books 2 & 3? Increases in the boooooring teenage self-reflexive angst, and cop-outs on the action from the author (juuuuuust when it starts to look juicy, the heroine is injured and wakes up in the hospital. Cheap.) But mostly it's that the stuff I really liked in Book 1 (who will survive the arena? How will the heroine do it? And what about the boy?) are lost in stilted, not particularly inventive, political drama. Bleh.

If you liked Lord of the Flies and/or the first Hunger Games book (uhh... The Hunger Games) I'd strongly recommend reading Battle Royale rather than wasting your time with Catching Fire and Mockingjay. (If you're really curious and insist on knowing what happens, though, I suppose I could fill you in.) Battle Royale is amazing - way better than Hunger Games. And doesn't have any silly sequels for me to complain about. Win win!

Currently Reading - Freedom

So, you may or may not know that I am a total Kat Rosenfeld fangirl. She doesn't blog as much as she used to, but I've got her blog and her Tumblr feeds in my Google Reader, so I see it pretty quickly when she does. The husband does too (I got him hooked a while back).

So clearly, when she posted these book recommendations, I needed to check them out. Literally, from the library. Post haste. I logged onto the Ottawa Public Library website (which I love. I also love their app. Yay, technology!), figured out which ones were on the shelves at the library near us*, and requested the rest. I stopped at the library on my way home, and picked up the three in question (Freedom, My Year of Meats, and The Gargoyle), and headed home. When Tim got home, he saw the pile, looked at me, and was like "She posted those today!" It was pretty funny.

So! I'm currently reading Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen.

It's pretty good. I'm not in looooove with it, but I'm liking it, and definitely interested in giving it a chance. I think it's starting to pick up, which is nice. I'll let you know what I think when I finish!

*I LOVE living a 5-minute walk from the library. I lived right next to a library at my old place, too. No joke, when we move, proximity to a library would be a welcome feature in a new house.