A few months ago I joined
goodreads. I created an account, asked a bunch of people to be my friends, wrote a review of one book, and then never visited the site again. Looks like my tolerance for social networking is maxxed out at a facebook account and this little ole blog. But I still love to talk about books, so here are some unsolicited reviews of what I’ve read lately:
This is the book that I reviewed on Goodreads, so I actually read it quite a while ago but it’s worth mentioning here because I absolutely loved it. I first got acquainted with Kazuo Ishiguro when I read
Remains of the Day and there’s just something about his writing that kills me. It’s so distinctively aloof and cool and it worked particularly well in telling this story of three characters raised to be organ donors in a fictional 1990s England. I hear they made a movie of it recently but Keira McNast Knightly is in it so I refuse to go there (She was also in the film version of
Atonement, which makes me think she is hell-bent on tainting my favorite books).
When I told people I was reading this book, their reactions were more or less the same. My boss said “so is it going to make us all want to be vegetarians?” and a friend told me that she didn’t want to read it because she wasn’t ready to change her eating habits. So I’m guessing you probably already know what’s in this book: an account of how modern factory farming mistreats animals, destroys the environment, and puts all kind of scary things into our bodies. But the way Jonathan Safran Foer tells this story—through a mix of memoir, interviews, and good old-fashioned investigative reporting—makes this a particularly interesting read. His approach to this issue is also more philosophical than most (sometimes pretentiously so).
That said, this book did not compel me to be a vegetarian. Foer makes it seem like it’s impossible to be a true “selective omnivore” but I’ve found that you can eat meat without buying into the factory system. You can purchase your meat from a local farm like
this one, and stores/restuarants like Whole Foods and Chipotle are becoming more committed to providing ethically raised meat to their customers. So there are definitely options out there if you are like me and not opposed to eating meat on principle but don’t agree with what the meat industry has become.
This is one of the most unique books I’ve read in a long time. Although it’s labeled as a novel,
The Imperfectionists reads more like a series of intertwined short stories told from the perspective of various staffers at an international newspaper in Rome. Some chapters are humorous and some are sad, but all are masterfully crafted. I first heard about this book on NPR, and the commentator said that it was one of the best-reviewed books of the year. After reading it I can’t say I’m surprised.
With the likes of Lauren Conrad (LC if you know her from
Laguna Beach) claiming to be an author these days, picking up a book by a celebrity can be a risky venture. But aside from a slight tell-all feel in describing what went down on the
Ally McBeal set, Portia de Rossi’s account of life with an eating disorder reads more or less like a gritty memoir by a legit author or journalist. It’s a really interesting look at how a behavior our society praises (exercising, eating right) can develop into something ugly in its extreme form.
My older sister recommended this book to me when I was looking for a light, guilty pleasure-type read. It’s about a teenage girl whose sister dies and she copes with this loss by writing some truly crappy poetry and hooking up with both the dead sister’s boyfriend and a fellow band geek. Classy stuff. I read this book in much the same way that I read
Twilight, meaning that I had to periodically slam the book shut in order to shake off the awkwardness of the passage I had just read. Young adult literature and I have quite the tortured relationship.
So, in keeping with the whole blog-as-goodreads-account thing, I would love to hear some recommendations on what to read next. My life is kind of sad right now because all the books I want to read have waiting lists a mile long at the library. Truly a nerd’s worst nightmare.
(click here if you don’t get it).
