Happy Jingoism Day! And back to June:
I read:
Thoughts:
- Bent by Teri Louise Kelly: Reviewed earlier this month. For some reason, I always think the last name is Marsh. I wonder why.
- Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Corn Popper by David A. Adler: You mean they had Cam Jansen when you were a kid? says my kid. Um yeah, this book was published in 1986, so yes, I did have Cam Jansen around when I was a kid.
- Unicorn on a Roll by Dana Simpson: Reviewed earlier this month.
- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson: A re-read in preparation for A God In Ruins. I liked it less the second time, and it was just as hard to get past the first hundred pages the second time as the first as the pages are are like having one’s head banged against a concrete wall. And I’m still not enamored about the fact that the life in which Ursula is raped, it destroys everything after it. I am in no way dismissing the trauma of rape, more tired of the trope of the fallen women who can never redeem herself.
-
A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson: There’s a bitterness to this book that makes it hard to like the book. I know likability isn’t really the point, but this book was really pointy-elbows-out uncomfortable. Thinking about it now, two weeks post-reading, I’m not really satisfied with the ending. I expect more of Kate Atkinson than the ending she gave. Hmph.
Of course, I still love you Kate Atkinson. You can be in my list of famous people who are my friends but don’t know it yet (Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling, Vin Diesel, etc.). - Woes of the True Policeman by Robert Bolaño: Every Bolaño book I read means there is one less Bolaño book I get to read for the first time 🙁 Plus I now have memorized the code to write ñ on the computer (Alt-164).
- Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq: This was less caustic as maybe being less famous and this being one of his earlier works, his editors snipped a lot of it out? In any case, try Soumission in French or wait for an English translation?
- The Cat by Edeet Ravel: If you ever need proof that I read depressing books, here’s a book I read about a disfigured woman whose son dies and she can’t kill herself because she has to take care of her son’s beloved cat. All that for an ending that comes out of nowhere and for no reason. Plus it’s set in Guelph, a city I hate for the sole reason that sometimes the Kitchener-Toronto Greyhound winds its way through Guelph and it takes bloody forever, like a whole other hour, to get to Toronto. I used to hate that when I lived in Waterloo. Hence my dislike of Guelph.
-
A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell: This book actually has an Italian character who cries “Mamma mia!” likely slapping her hands to her cheeks as she does so. And so we have an anthropological/sociological study of the prejudices of an upper-middle class British author in the 1970s.
It does not age well. - The Thrilling Life of Pauline De Lammermoor by Edeet Ravel: I’m pretty sure this is set in Guelph too, even though the town is called something else. Stupid Guelph.
- Dog Boy by Eva Hornung: I wanted to read this for a long time. So I read it. I should have read it right when I found out about it, rather than have my expectations build up. It was solid. I gave it four out of five. But it wasn’t miraculous, likely because I waited too long.
Favourite book of the month:
Continuing to lose myself in Bolaño’s universe.
Most promising book on the wishlist:
Internet tells me this book is great. I’ll probably leave it for four years, like Dog Boy, let the expectation of greatness simmer, and then be disappointed in 2019 that it wasn’t as transcendent as I thought it would be.
I watched:
I wrote:
Wolf Children Chapters One and Four and tentative starts on Chapter Two. Faerie story review. Fiddling with older short stories and submitting them here and there. I plan to be rejected from every major Canadian literary journal before my writing time is through!