meghan rose allen

I read:

Thoughts:

The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less) by David Bercovici: Review to come closer to publication date.

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer: I was really enjoying it, wondering why it didn’t get the same buzz as The Goldfinch, since they are thematically similar, but then I noticed I was taking forever to read it, and thus realized that maybe I wasn’t really enjoying it that much after all. Plus it just ends. Plus rape, see comment below.

The Complete Masters of the Poster: Reviewed earlier this month.

The North Water by Ian McGuire: I’m tired of rape in fiction as shorthand for bad guy/vulnerable victim. I am on fictional-rape-overload. It’s unnecessarily lurid and whatever happened to eating kittens as a way to show the reader the person in question is monstrous? I want some kitten-eating villains. I don’t want rape to be used as plot points. Rape is not something that should be cheapened in that way.

Rendez-vous in Phoenix by Tony Sandoval: Full review coming closer to the publication date.

The Complete Bone by Jeff Smith: It was all right. I don’t understand the overwhelming love for it, but I think that might just be with my not-loving-graphic-novels-feelings as much as other people. It would have been nice if the main character had fallen in love with the girl after getting to know her, rather than knee-jerk she’s so pretty –> now I’m in love. Imagine actually writing women as real characters before the shapeless blobs of male protagonists decide they want her — oh, how fun that would be.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque: I really struggled until the hospital part. I feel horrible that a book on the horrors of war bored me a little. I try to justify it that at the time, a book about the sheer misery of war was more groundbreaking than now, as there’s a whole lexicon of horror-of-war books, but that doesn’t change that something inside me just couldn’t connect and I feel awful about that.

Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? by Katrine Marçal: An article writ long. Many fragments. Of sentences. Included therein. Muddled thesis and forgettable when I had hoped it would be great. Need to stop being excited to read books. Always a disappointment. Was going to be present for my father for Christmas. No more.

Marçal did have fantastic red lipstick in author photo. For book purportedly about feminism, sad that what I remember most is awesome makeup. (But the feminism in the book is pretty subtle anyway and not as overt as I wanted.)

Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera: *Looks all around to make sure no one is watching*

Shhhhh. I liked the movie better.

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner: Like taking a toddler and putting it in book format: dizzyingly high but at the same time, so exhausting. The book wore my brain out.

Favourite book:

My proto-friend wrote it. She signed it for me, but spelled my name wrong and I was too timid to correct her. That has nothing to do, however, with the poems inside, which are nice in a sunny, calm day sort of way. People don’t like the word nice. I had a high school English teacher ban the word, but some things are just nice and that’s the word I want to use and I mean it in as nice a way as possible. If you don’t like nice then replace it with genuine I suppose.

Most promising book on my wishlist:

Since I only put one book on my wishlist in October, it’s pretty much a given what it’s going to be.

I watched:

Thoughts:

Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Even since Danny turned out to be a jerk and Mindy had to break-up with him (I can’t even watch The Mindy Project anymore since my heart hurts too much), this is my new TV obsession.

I wrote:

FAERIES! I think I’ve gotten over my five-page hump. I also changed the chapter breaks to do busy work on one of the days I didn’t want to do any work at all.

I read:

Thoughts:

Edge the Bare Garden by Roseanne Cheng: Reviewed earlier this month.

Unspeakable Things by Kathleen Spivack: Reviewed earlier this month.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout: Reviewed earlier this month.

Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap: Review will be posted closer to the publication date.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff: My opinion: pretentious American twaddle. The establishment’s opinion: Amazing, award winning, wonderful.

Private Beach by David Jerome Hahn: Reviewed earlier this month.

My Life Before Me by Norah McClintock: A YA novel that I guess is supposed to be good for you, like kale. I don’t much like eating kale. Geoff puts kale on pizza though.

P.S. Your Not Listening by Eleanor Craig: Reviewed earlier this month.

The two Elena Ferrante books I read this month: These books are like cream, like chocolate milk that simply slides down my throat. I read and think of the few female friends I’ve known; I don’t have many. One in particular though, where our relationship is as long as the toxic and intoxicating one Ferrante writes about. I don’t know. I was never good with friends, especially female ones. Sorry.

Favourite book:

Most promising book on my wishlist:

I watched:

Thoughts:

Odd Squad: I don’t know if I can love the new agents as much as I love Olive and Otto.

The Mindy Project: It hurts my heart the Mindy and Danny situation.

I wrote: Faeries faeries faeries.

I read:

Thoughts:

Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis: This is what I get when I read a book knowing nothing about it other than it won the Giller so I felt I should read it the same way I should eat kale more often and floss my teeth: a book about fifteen dogs. I’m not quite sure why, given the title, this surprised me. But it did. Dogs. Inside their heads. At least it was better than that book I read about cats with the resurrected souls of those interned in Père Lachaise.

Tears in the Grass by Lynda A. Archer: Reviewed earlier this month.

Inside by Alix Ohlin: One of those throw-in-a-genocide books that I frequently complain about to Geoff (see here and here for some bloggy examples). If you’re going to put a genocide in your story, you really have to have something (a depth? a deftness? a skill?) that isn’t available in Inside. The book didn’t bother me as much as it did, say, William Giraldi, and I’d already forgotten I read it until I went to write this post, so I guess that’s a review in and of itself.

Veins by Drew: Hee hee hee. I liked it.

The Good Earth by Pearl Luke: Being a woman in China at the time of this book sucked, which I suppose I already knew if I’d bothered to think about it for more than half a second.

Bandit by Molly Brodak: A review will be posted closer to the book’s publication date.

PS, I Still Love You by Jenny Han: Teenage schmaltz that I devoured in one sitting.

Favourite book:

It might be sinful how much I love this book. I read it to Tesfa again, but really, I was reading it for me, not her. Why was I born me and not born Claudia Kincaid?

(Because she is a fiction, yes, I know.)

Most promising book on my wishlist:

I watched:

I wrote:

Faerie story proof-read. Nothing new written. Mystery story published.