Bookin' It

I’ve had the pleasure and the time to read a fair amount of literature since I came to Turkey in December. Here’s a list of the good stuff I’ve made my way through so far with my own two cents of an opinion thrown in.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.
Really good book about a 14 year old girl from Indiana who spends her four, formative high school years at a Massachusetts Prep School. I never thought I’d identify so well with a highschool teenaged girl. It gets bogged down at times, but it’s an enjoyable read and one I recommend.

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
A sardonic, venemously comical book about a 16 year old kid in Martirio, TX whose friend kills 16 students at their high school, and then the lead character gets blamed for it all. I know, the premise doesn’t sound too promising on the humor-scale, but this book is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s told from a first person perspective, which makes all the difference in the world. If you’ve ever lived in the south or know anyone who has, you’ll get a kick out of this one.

The Bad Guys Won: A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball With Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put On A New York Uniform, and Maybe the Best by Jeff Pearlman
I haven’t read a lot of sports-related books, but this is definitely the best I’ve ever read. If you have any interest in baseball, the 1980’s sports scene, or even the ’86 Red Sox, you’ll love this. The stuff these guys tell the writer in their interviews is priceless.

The Best American Essays, 2003- I had never read anything from the Best American Series, but Maddy had gotten this sent to her by her Mom or a friend, and she referred one of the stories to me. I liked it so much, I went ahead and read the rest of them. Now I want to get the Best American Essays from other years, along with some of the other series that the publishers put out, like Best American Short Stories, Sports Writing, and Non-Required Reading. And each year these series get a new guest editor, which makes them all unique from one another. Of course, there will always be a few that don’t tickle your fancy and you end up skipping or skimming, but there are some truly great pieces of writing in this one.

A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
I know I might get some backlash for this, but I wasn’t too crazy about this one. When I started it, I loved all the little details and funny minutiae that Eggers put into the book, even messing with the title and publisher’s pages, but the novelty faded quickly, and I lost interest quickly after the first 100 pages. I read on, and then I just started getting annoyed by his character. I got tired of reading about how he’s worried about his little brother every time he’s not with him. We got it already, Dave! I was glad when this one finished, whereas with most books I hate to see them end.

Bibliophilia by Michael Griffith
A wonderful novella set in and around Louisiana State University told from multiple points of view of an aging female librarian who’s put in charge of stopping college kids from having sex in the library and a young foreign college student from Egypt who works part-time at the library while studying water irrigation. Doesn’t exactly sound like a barn burner, I know, but it’s very entertaining and whimsical. While this isn’t exactly first-person, the author does an impressive job of getting inside his 2 main characters’ heads. The short stories that follow are excellent as well.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Written by the guy responsible for The Tipping Point, this isn’t quite as good as his first book, but that’s probably because I was familiar with or knew most of what he brought up already from the social psychology research I did in college. I think he referenced the professor I worked for within the first 10 pages, and he bases most of his theories on research I’ve already read about ad nauseum. I liked the way he applied all the information to varying situations, but it was nothing new that made me go, “Wow!” like in The Tipping Point. I’m probably not the best person to ask regarding this book.

The DaVinci Code and Deception Point by Dan Brown
I wrote about the DaVinci Code already about what a sinfully guilty pleasure it was. My roommate Jen also had Deception Point lying around, so I gave that one a quick read as well, but I didn’t like it nearly as much. When you read a 2nd Dan Brown book, the formula for his plots, characters, and constructions become all too apparent and…similar. I almost didn’t want to finish Deception Point, but I figured I got that far, I might as well go the distance. The first 100 pages were intriguing, but it slowed down in the middle, and it had one character, a wacky, eccentric scientist that just about drove me up the wall. Dan Brown really needs to work on writing dialogue, because sometimes it sounds like a microwave oven instruction manual…or a George Lucas movie.

Elements of Style by Strunk and White
No explanation needed. I could probably benefit from reading it again, though.

currently reading The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup by Susan Orlean
Yeah, she wrote The Orchid Thief, and Meryl Streep played her in Adaptation. This is a collection of a bunch of her character profiles that ran in different magazines over the years. She’s a damn good writer and she profiles the most interesting people, or at least her observatory skills are so keen that she makes them interesting even if they seem boring, typical or mundane on the surface. I’ll recommend this one to a lot of people.

I know I read another book or two before I took them home when I went back to the states at the end of January, but I can’t remember them now.


******Books To Read While I’m Still Here (any comments?)

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Stiffed by Susan Faludi
Re-read Catcher in the Rye by JD Sallinger
Mailman by J Robert Lennon
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
When The Nines Roll by David Benioff
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Somewhere In America by Mark Singer
Wonderland by Michael Bamberger