This Is Boring Even to Me
I had a post idea in mind, but I'm too tired to flesh it out. Instead, you get administrative minutia. What can I say, I aim to please.
First, I've updated my book list over yonder there to the left. It took almost no time at all because I've been reading so little. And what I've read has underwhelmed me.
The Beatles biography? 800+ pages, some of it fascinating, some of it tedious. But if you ever wanted confirmation of the enormous chasm between John Lennon the martyred peacenik and John Lennon the young man, here it is. Not that the others come off as burnished icons, either, except perhaps for Ringo. As far as new information, well, I had not known that the phrase "I am the egg man" in "I Am the Walrus" refers to an orgy that John Lennon attended in which eggs were apparently, umm, cracked.
On Beauty? It was pretty engaging, not nearly as good as White Teeth but at least far less self-indulgently clever than Autograph Man. I thought I'd have something (anything) more to say about it, actually. If only I'd read Howard's End, which On Beauty retells. What kind of English major was I, anyway?
A Long Way Down? Clever and funny, with lots of delicious Hornby wit.
Gilead? The one standout in this bunch. Gorgeous prose, and one of the most morally upright but relentlessly self-flagellating narrators I've ever encountered. The theological ruminations were fascinating, if a bit opaque.
Yes, I am reading those Ayelet Waldman Mommy Track mysteries. Death Gets a Timeout is the best so far -- the first three were pretty thin, but I love the detective, a former public defender turned stay-at-home mom (sounds an awful lot like Waldman, doesn't it?). And although I figured out the twist to this book pretty quickly, I still enjoyed it.
Which brings me to Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, by Maureen Corrigan (book reviewer for NPR's Fresh Air). The in medias res verdict is: Meh. It's a memoir, and the author's linking of literary analysis to her personal experiences seems pretty tenuous to me. But I'll persevere because I admire her writing style.
I know, this is really boring. Now you see why I have completely ignored the "books" part of my tagline.
Second (quick, go check, there really was a "First", way back there at the beginning), having recognized my egregious blogroll neglect, I've done some pruning (so many blogs on there have gone POOF and disappeared!) and added some new blogs.
Thus endeth the administrative trivia post, which took me about as long to write as that substantive post that I was too tired to write would have.
I had a post idea in mind, but I'm too tired to flesh it out. Instead, you get administrative minutia. What can I say, I aim to please.
First, I've updated my book list over yonder there to the left. It took almost no time at all because I've been reading so little. And what I've read has underwhelmed me.
The Beatles biography? 800+ pages, some of it fascinating, some of it tedious. But if you ever wanted confirmation of the enormous chasm between John Lennon the martyred peacenik and John Lennon the young man, here it is. Not that the others come off as burnished icons, either, except perhaps for Ringo. As far as new information, well, I had not known that the phrase "I am the egg man" in "I Am the Walrus" refers to an orgy that John Lennon attended in which eggs were apparently, umm, cracked.
On Beauty? It was pretty engaging, not nearly as good as White Teeth but at least far less self-indulgently clever than Autograph Man. I thought I'd have something (anything) more to say about it, actually. If only I'd read Howard's End, which On Beauty retells. What kind of English major was I, anyway?
A Long Way Down? Clever and funny, with lots of delicious Hornby wit.
Gilead? The one standout in this bunch. Gorgeous prose, and one of the most morally upright but relentlessly self-flagellating narrators I've ever encountered. The theological ruminations were fascinating, if a bit opaque.
Yes, I am reading those Ayelet Waldman Mommy Track mysteries. Death Gets a Timeout is the best so far -- the first three were pretty thin, but I love the detective, a former public defender turned stay-at-home mom (sounds an awful lot like Waldman, doesn't it?). And although I figured out the twist to this book pretty quickly, I still enjoyed it.
Which brings me to Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, by Maureen Corrigan (book reviewer for NPR's Fresh Air). The in medias res verdict is: Meh. It's a memoir, and the author's linking of literary analysis to her personal experiences seems pretty tenuous to me. But I'll persevere because I admire her writing style.
I know, this is really boring. Now you see why I have completely ignored the "books" part of my tagline.
Second (quick, go check, there really was a "First", way back there at the beginning), having recognized my egregious blogroll neglect, I've done some pruning (so many blogs on there have gone POOF and disappeared!) and added some new blogs.
Thus endeth the administrative trivia post, which took me about as long to write as that substantive post that I was too tired to write would have.
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posted by Suzanne @ 11:31 PM
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