As a followup to my pre-beach post about summer reading, I wanted to say that I chose Under Heaven as my "yearly" novel and it served the prupose well, though the plot promises to achieve greatness early on, and doesn't quite live up to its potential. The problem here is that the story has fantasy at its heart and develops toward fitting climax, but then unravels without an equivalent resolution, much more like the ending from a historic fiction couched in realism. So much so that I had about 15 pages left when it was due back at the library, and I didn't bother to ask Brooklynne to renew it. I will never know what those last 15 pages held (and perhaps someone will tell me I should regret this) but I'm confident I had already passed the ending 50 pages before. That sounds harsh, but I did really like this book, I recommend it, and I think I'll read more of Gavriel's stuff. I'm just not the kind of reader that "needs" to slog to the end after taking as much satisfaction as possible from a story.

Here's another take on the book with a rationale for why it's ok for the story's ending to seem so unfitting.

Now Reading: The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them (totally nerdy, I know, but I can't help it.) 

Right now, the Travis family is in survival mode. We are just trying to make it to beach week, any way we can.

I'm especially looking forward to my annual novel. I really do love reading, but unlike others I know, I do not have time to read much, and what little time I have is usually spent reading for a class. Therefore, beach week is the only guaranteed time I have to enjoy a novel.

Around this time every year, I start to feel some pressure. My beach read better be a good one, because this is a one-time deal--no second chances until next summer. Thus, I have become a fan of the yearly NPR summer book lists. Each year in June, NPR puts out a series of recommendations by various booksellers and critics. Each list has a blurb about what makes the book a good read, along with an excerpt. Since our beach week is always at the beginning of June, right when these lists are published, I usually take my picks from a previous year (after all, a good book is timeless, right?). Here are the lists from 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.

I've been using these lists for the past 3 years and I haven't been disappointed yet.

This year, I may read City of Thieves (a 2007 selection), or Under Heaven (a 2010 pick). Have you read either of these? Do you have a favorite method for picking a good book? Other book recommendations?

Tomorrow I go back to work.

On a more positive note, I have been making progress on the house. We passed our electrical inspection and we're getting closer to actually moving in, but every step seems to take a major effort. This week's project is drywall, and the floors will be done this weekend.

I did take some time to read a little this Christmas. I was travelling alone, so I splurged on a book and read it on the plane. I settled on The Shadow of the Wind, which I would recommend despite a few R-rated scenes and general mushiness throughout. How's that for a book review?

Anywho, I'm tired from working at the house, and uninspired, so I'm going to bed. I'll try to get some Utah pictures from Brooklynne and post them this week. 

I just finished reading Genesis, a science fiction novel by Bernard Beckett. I'm really drawn to sci-fi for some reason--it's one of my favorite genres for movies and TV--but I rarely like sci-fi books. I'm kind of a reading snob. I don't like bad writing, and I have a hard time lowering my standards even for simple pleasure reading. Most sci-fi fails to reach the bar.

Genesis, on the other hand, is very well written. The reader is basically listening in on a dissertation defense, which may sound rather boring, but it's not. The story moves along at a slow, but engaging clip until the last chapter, which suddenly becomes gripping. From the second or third chapter, I could guess the twist at the end, but the way it plays out is chilling in some strange way that I'm not sure I can easily explain.

The book wrestles with pinning down the essence of life, and how that essence is entertwined with sin and death. The final pages are fraught with irony, so it would make a great discussion piece... an all around great read. And at only 150 pages, you can finish it in only a few hours.

Bernard Beckett, I applaud you.

In the comments of the last post, the discussion led to me thinking about Pechorin, a character from a book with whom I strongly identified. Have you ever felt like a character was speaking to you? If so who?

Maybe a better question--who are your most and least favorite characters? Feel free to include movies and plays too.

I'm a moderate reader. I used to read for pleasure alot, until I got to college, and then I read mostly just my school books and an occasional book on religion. Right now, I'm so sick of reading history, I'm really craving something fictional. I can only think of a couple times in the past 5 years that I have sat down with a good novel and enjoyed the experience of leisurely flipping from page one to the end, and both times, the book was really bad. I haven't done a top ten list in a long time, so here is a top (bottom?) ten list of bad novels I have read over the past ten or so years. (I'm talking bad as in not enjoyable, so this is not a comment on their literary merit. Also, most of these are on the heavy side--I know--but I already said that I've done little reading outside of school.)

10. Song of Solomon (Morrison) - I have to mention that I liked the ending, or this would have been much lower.
9. Dead Souls (Gogol) - my copy was apparently missing the last half (although there was mysteriously no indication of any missing pages), but I never bothered to read the rest.
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Dick) - too bad, did not finish.
7. Rabbit, Run (Updike)
6. Peyton Place (Metalious)
5. Cold Mountain (Frazier)
4. Age of Innocence (Wharton)
3. Jude the Obscure (Hardy)
2. Fathers and Sons (Turgenev)

And the number one worst of them all...

Last night, Brooklynne and I watched another movie--Match Point. Has anyone else seen this movie? It's a recent Woody Allen film. I had heard good things about it and my cousin, Rich, who was over last night, recommended it (I think he's a Woody Allen fan in general).

The movie was not enjoyable for me. I don't like movies where people get tangled in impossibly bad relationships and there was an hour in the middle of the movie that could easily have been boiled down to a 5 minute mantage played to Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" without loosing one bit of the plot.

But what I did enjoy about the movie is that Allen comes into direct dialogue with Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (one of my favorite books of all time and a must-read in my opinion) and offers a thought provoking reply to the book's central question. If you want more than that, you'll have to read the book and watch the movie. I'm not spoiling anything here.

Has anyone else read/watched both? What did you think?

Also, I brought up must-reads. If you had to make a must-read list of at least 5, and no more than 10, novels, what titles would make your list? Here's mine (in no particular order):

1. Crime and Punishment
2. A Hero of Our Time
3. This Side of Paradise
4. Moby Dick
5. Beloved
6. The Catcher in the Rye

(I struggled over CITR because I hated it when I read it in high school, but I came to love it on a second reading in college. Also, MD is certainly one of my favorites--personal top 3?--but it is hard to call it a must-read for everyone, because many people just don't have time to appreciate it. Honorable mentions: Mama Day, The Hobit, Treasure Island, The Bell Jar, Lord of the Flies.)