I read:
Thoughts:
- Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald: Too frenetic a pace and too close to home to really enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
- Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce: Finally finished!
- I Am Malala (Young Readers Edition) by Malala Yousafzai: Slightly frustrating because it had American spellings (gray) but then British terms (nappies). Be consistent.
- The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks: How jaded am I? Only one truly gicky part even though the guy I borrowed it from told me I’d be shocked, Shocked, SHOCKED!
- Brueghel Moon by Tamaz Chiladze: Review here.
- Under The Skin by Michel Faber: I actually like the movie better, but the movie is more restrained than the book, and less internal. I just didn’t really need to hear any of Isserly’s thoughts — they aren’t that interesting.
- Nowhere to Be Found by Bae Suah: Reviewed here.
- So Sexy, So Soon by Diane E. Levin, Ph.D. and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D.: Oh goody, yet another pitfall added to all the things I have to be wary of raising Tesfa. She’s so perfect and I don’t want to screw her up.
- Great American Short Stories edited by Wallace and Mary Stegner: Last month I said that these were the stories that made you hate short stories. Yeah, I’m going to stick with that. But I’m keeping up with the idea of reading of a short story a day because why not? Geoff’s dad was saying one should savour short stories, read them slowly, bit by bit. So I’ll try that.
- White Tiger on Snow Mountain by David Gordon: Reviewed earlier this month.
- Up The Pier by Helen Cresswell: So end of the British empire feeling. People take trains that get in forty three minutes past the hour and people vacation in little houses by piers and the sea.
- Nobody Cries at Bingo by Dawn Dumont: I wish I could write funny.
- The Best Is Yet To Come by Anne Mazar: It’s really hard to want to continue reading a book to Tesfa when the “weird” family in the book does the things we do as a family (calls parents by first names, kids get to decide what to wear, no forcing of eating food – although I feel I should have a caveat here – we don’t force Tesfa to eat dinner, but if she doesn’t like what we’re eating, we don’t make her anything else.) And they make fun of a girl’s clothes. This book is mean.
- The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank: I remember way back in the nineties when this book came out, all the comparisons to Bridget Jones. Why? This novel is nothing like Bridget Jones other than (a) written by a female and (b) female main character and her relationships. For some reason I also thought this book took place in Minnesota; don’t know why.
- Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín: Reviewed here.
- Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel: So someone cut out a bunch of pages (consecutive) from my library copy! What the hell is up with that? I really liked the book but I also had a hard time staying focused. I wish I loved it.
- Uzumaki Volume Two by Junji Ito: So creepy, the snails chapter, ugggggg.
- Sanaaq by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk: A hard book to convince yourself to pick up and a hard book to convince yourself to put down and get back to life.
- The Juggler’s Children by Carolyn Abraham: I know that the idea of non-fiction lately includes personal stories and the vanishing of distance between the documentor and the subject, but I rarely feel in books like that (and like The Juggler’s Children) that I get as much out of it as I would if the bias was disguised better. Also, there were ghosts. FMRL (Fuck my reading life).
Favourite book of the month:
Oh, I liked this book. So funny.
Most promising book on the wishlist:
I’ve been trying to cut back my wishlisting. So I didn’t have a lot to chose from and am not super inspired this month. So nothing.
I watched:
I wrote:
A story about cutlery. Slushed it out. New story came out at Found Press. Feeling middling about writing as a whole. Had some nice compliments from a neighbour and from Geoff about my writing, so I’ll keep going for now.