december 2006

sena jeter naslund - ahab's wife: or, the star-gazer (again)
etgar keret - the nimrod flipout
manil suri - the death of vishnu
ma jian - red dust: a parth through china
nathaniel philbrick - in the heart of the sea
michael cunningham - the hours

rolf potts - vagabonding

november 2006

max frisch - homo faber
melissa bank - the girls' guide to hunting and fishing (again)

started and never finished:
michael cunningham - the hours
edward p jones - the known world

october 2006

john irving - the cider house rules
margaret atwood - oryx & crake
margaret atwood - cat's eye
bill bryson - i'm a stranger here myself
a manette ansay - blue water

slow month! school started and really, cider house was damn long.

wishlist (updated!)

in order by section: (paperbacks all)

bill bryson - everything except 'in a sunburned country', 'lost continent' & 'i'm a stranger...')
lonely planet travel photography - a guide to taking better pictures
lonely planet guide to travel writing

john hodgman - the areas of my expertise
ruth reichl - garlic and sapphires...
rich smith - you can get arrested for that...
ambrose bierce's devil’s dictionary

chuck palahniuh - fight club (not movie cover)
stephen chbosky - the perks of being a wallflower (isbn 671027344)
postsecret books
stephen king - carrie
death of a salesman (isbn 0140481346)
wally lamb - i know this much is true

september 2006

richard zacks - an underground education: the unauthorized and outrageous supplement to everything you thought you knew...
neil gaiman - neverwhere
bill bryson - dictionary of troublesome words
neil gaiman & terry pratchett - good omens
jeffrey eugenides - the virgin suicides (again)
jeffrey eugenides - middlesex

august 2006

jhumpa lahiri - interpreter of maladies (again)
the best american nonreuiqred reading of 2004
sue miller - the distinguished guest
sue miller - for love
sue miller - family pictures

started & couldn't finish:
jostein gaarder - sophie's world

asian lit

recently, thanks to ting, i've read a few books by chinese authors. and a few quarters ago i took a class on lu xun, another chinese author. and i think sometime last year she lent me a bunch of books written by japanese authors. and before that i had taken a class in west asian authors (india and such). so i've covered a few asian regions of lit. and i think everything i've read this far has been from at least the least century.

the problem with japanese and chinese lit, of course, is that they're not first written in english. and so it depends on the translator to do a good job. cause it's not just the story and the words. it's the tone, the quality, of the book. you need to keep that. and, of course, it's hard.

west asians lit is a little like japanese stuff in that it's very solemn. reverent and... thoughtful. but japanese lit seems more ...existential? chinese lit i like least. they try too hard to make a point. it's too exagerated and therefore unbelieveable. it's simply too hard to connect with the characters.

i think by far, west lit is the most beautiful. the language, the imagry, the colors even... it's just... it seems more intricate and gorgeous. i had read a couple things before my classes and loved the tone of each of those books. but taking a class in it made me realize that this quality i had so admired was like... a characteristic of their culture's lit. it's amazing. i think it's easier too. cause they write in english anyway.

recommended books: jhumpa lahiri's interpreter of maladies. i had picked this up at a library years before and just loved it. then i took the class and was very pleasantly surprised to find that we would be reading it too. it's a book of short stories and is everything i love about west asain lit. agha shahid ali's the half-inch himalayas. this is a short book of collected poems. there are many very beautiful works in here. khaled hosseini's the kite runner. a ny times bestseller. a rather heartbreaking tale of a boy growing up. salman rushdie. he's a notable author whom i just can't make up my mind about. i read east, west which i didn't like at all (too expiremental i thought). but i did enjoy midnight's children. i really should read the satanic verses. which is sort of what made him famous, but i just haven't gotten around to it yet.. eh.

july 2006

bergdorf blonds - plum sykes
su tong - rice
wang wen-hsing - family catastrophe
mian mian - candy
maya angelou - i know why the caged bird sings
aj jacobs - the know it all
joshua priven & david borgenicht - the worst-case scenario survival handbook
amin maaloug - ports of call
michael paterniti - driving mr albert
mineko iwasaki - geisha, a life
srah dunant - the birth of venus

picky picky

i have a system when randomly bookshopping. normally i'll be in the fiction / literature section. i'll check out the spines of the books first. i look for interesting images or color and possibly publisher. if i find one i like then i check out the title. it has to be interesting too, either the title itself or the font. if i like that too then i'll take the book out and look at the cover. good cover art is a must! it is only after i've deemed the book aesthetically pleasing will i turn it around and read the summary. i don't usually read the praise quotes. bleh. altho if it says 'funny' i usually put the book right back down. i like humor, but i'd rather borrow a funny book than purchase it. eh. but i esp like how newer books (usually the upper right corner) list the genre. if i like the book summary then i'll flip to somewhere in the middle of the book and read a bit to see if i like the writing style. it's only if i like all this stuff will i actually purchase the book. i mean, cause seriously, how else do you know if a random book is good or not? and it's too hard to get recommendations from people. they might not have your same taste in books. better to have a system that you can fine tune yourself.

june 2006

sylvia plath - the bell jar (again)
charlotte perkins gilman - "the yellow wallpaper" and other short stories (dover thrift) (again)
willa cather - alexander's bridge
stephen crane - "the open boat" and other stories (dover thrift)
camus - the stranger (again)
how i became stupid - martin page
to live - yu hua
the angel with one hundred wings - daniel horch

may 2006

richard north patterson - degree of guilt
jm coetzee - elizabeth costello
stephen king - rose madder (again)
frank mccourt - angela's ashes (again)
richard north patterson - the outside man
margaret atwood - the blind assasin
anne tyler - ladder of years
pete dexter - the paperboy
amy tan - the bonesetters daughter

what is love?

this past february national geographic had an interesting article about love. you can read an excerpt here. another short except is can be found here. this one is more about the chemical similarities of people in love and those with ocd (a mental disorder). i actually scanned in the whole article, so i you want to read the thing, just comment me and i'll send it to you. anyway, since it is national geographic it mainly talks about the science of love. but i do appreciate the chemistry and the biological reasons of why we love, stay in love, and fall out of it. i even find it rather romantic. because personalities change, and obviously so do looks. but scents? your pheromones? i dunno... that seems like a keeper. which is nice. because it means that even years from now, you and him will be the same people, where it counts anyway. but if you do need some help, it even has a couple suggestions on how to rekindle that spark.
best quote: "'I married him because of his B.O.'"

oprah's 1st offense

kaye gibbons - a virtuous woman. this earns mention because it is the first oprah's book club book that i've not liked. lol, seriously. i don't know what happened with this one. maybe her usual book club recomendation person was sick? and so someone else filled in the spot? i don't know... anyway. boring book. no real point.

expert's guide

samantha ettus' the experts' guide to 100 things everyone should know how to do was actually a bit disapointing. there are lots of good topics and yet very few of them actually go in depth. and some of them are just common sense. i mean, how to wash your hair? ...doesn't it instruct how to right on the shampoo bottle? and if you can't take the time to read that itty bit, i doubt you're gonna read this book. also frederick fekkai tells you to wash your hair everyday. and yet everything else i've ever read tells you otherwise. anyway. i did like the selection of topics and i thought that most of the experts she chose were very qualified. however, i do think the book would've benefitted from a few more pictures. but i dunno, maybe i just need a little more help than most...

april 2006

j.m. coetzee - waiting for the barbarians (again)
suzanne finnamore - otherwise engaged
sue miller - while i was gone
ruthanne lum mccunn - thousand pieces of gold
elizabeth strout -amy and isabelle (again)
elizabeth berg - open house (again)
anne tyler - back when we were grownups (again)
kaye gibbons - a virtuous woman
iris murdoch - under the net
erik larson - the devil in the white city
david lawrence - circle of the dead

back from break

so you know how i planned on reading tons during the break? well, i didn't. in fact i barely read at all. i only finished one book. a book that i was already half-way through. bleh. i did however manage to read like a million magazines: 2 newsweeks, 3 bazaars, 1 allure, 1 in style, 2 luckys, 1 national geographic, 1 domino, 1 teen vouge, 1 esquire, 2 janes, and 1 seventeen. that's right. 16 magazines. and that's if i didn't forget anything. oh, and i started another book too. guess it wasn't all for nothing after all...

hiatus

geez, i've not been reading like at all lately. just school stuff mainly. lots of poems and short stories and such. anyway. spring break is coming up next week and i intend to read my butt off! well. no. but hopefully i'll finish at least two books. :)

stephania

i started ilona karmel's stephania just a few hours into march 4th as sort of the ultimate tribute to myself and my bday. i actually also only bought the book because it's title has a strong resemblance to my name. at any rate, it should've been no surprise that it was a pretty good read (there goes that egotism again...). it's about a polish jew named stephanie who's ::gasp:: 23 and in the hospital for surgery to get rid of her hunchback. ... like me she isn't always the easiest person to get along with but she's alright. she's pretty, smart and when she wants to be, quite friendly and nice. as i was reading the book i kept expecting one of those 'light breaking thru the clouds' moments. an epiphany. alas, no such moment occurred. still, it was a pretty good book. an easy read with a good pace. reminded me a bit of somerset's of human bondage. which is one of my favorite books. that's also about a young person with a physical affirmity (a boy this time, wit a clubfoot) and how they learn to deal with it.

march 2006

stacey j lee - unraveling the 'model minority' stereotype: listening to asian american youth
ilona karmel - stephania
tim cahill - road fever
samantha ettus - the experts' guide to 100 things everyone should know how to do

jane magazine

jane magazine. good stuff. well written articles, good layouts, interesting fashion shoots, not your usual fluff magazine. i normally read lucky and in style. i like vogue but it's a bit too serious for me. as is vanity fair. allure and elle are okay but i'll only get one if i like the cover. jane however, good stuff. esp the new section they have at back "back stories". they're little op-ed pieces. this month they have one of a woman who's boif convinces her to go to therapy to help her get over him going to a bachelor party in vegas (i identify wit her fears), an asian girl too 'lazy' to tape up her eyelids and get surgery, a couple that has sex in front of others for money, a home birthing article, and a thoughtful piece on the "commercialization of cattiness" (all those 'bitch' tee-shirts: the 'i slept wit your boyfriend' variety.) for the back stories alone, worth every penny of the cheapo $1.99 it cost.

esquire presents...

recently got esquire presents what it feels like... which was pretty good but surprisingly a bit of a disappointment as well. you see, i'd never actually seen the book before i bought it. i just found out about it from somewhere online and thought it looked really cool. and then i bought it on ebay. anyway, the content of the book was pretty good. some good topics. wat it feels like to be in a tornado, be a mob hitman, be in an orgy, go thru an exorcism, have a sever stutter, change from a male to a female (and vice versa), get shot in the head, give birth, be an albino... but the actual accounts were pretty bad. there's not a lot of actual description. the whole basis of the book is that they tell you wat it feels like so you don't have to go thru the same experience. but even after reading it you don't feel like you've lived thru any of it! well, the walking on the moon one was pretty good. and so wat the giving birth one. and starving... anyway. some are good, some are bad. but some are appallingly bad. each one is very short anyway. maybe only 200 words, if even that. and even then they don't always get right to the point. at any rate. it was a pretty interesting read, if not particularly good. i say... read it, but don't buy it.

bryson

so i've read bill bryson's the lost continent as well as his in a sunburned country (both travel writings). sunburned, i must say, was a million times better than lost continent. i actually read sunburned first and really liked it. loved it actually. so i was really interested in reading his other books. but this book was a bit of a disapointment. i think lost continent was one of his first works so he wasn't very good with the actual travel bits, like the introductions of states, bits of trivia, information about places visited. he did a much better job with sunburned. you actually learn a lot from this book. it will in no way replace an actual travel guide but it does provide lots of silly and rather useless statistical information. lost continent actually gets better with this info stuff as you read along. however in other aspects it doesn't get better. in sunburned it's obvious that he loves australia and is really happy to be visiting. he has nice things to say about everyone and everything. he doesn't bs tho. if he doesn't find it charming he says so. but in lost continent he's just an ass. oh sure we kno that he left america at basically the first chance he got so of course we're not expecting him to be in love the states or anything. but he's so mean! he's highly critcal and talks shit about nearly everything! he doesn't, by far, seem like the type of person i'd want to travel with. in this book anyway. sunburned country is really good. they say a walk in the woods is also really good but i'm a bit put off from lost country. really, that's how bad it is. or mabye it's just that my expectations were so raised from sunburned. in any case. i didn't enjoy it nearly as much as i had hoped i would.

handmaid's tale

the is one of my favorite books, the other being 'of human bondage'. while there are many reasons to like this book i suppose i love it especially because of the language. i am especially drawn to quiet contemplative and somber tones. which is why in general i like south asian lit. it is a projection of an outer peace but you kno the river runs deeper than it appears. i think to many who read, they don't fully appreciate the technicalities of language. shorter words and sentences drive you forward. long windy sentences slow you down. certain sounds can do the same. so when a character is angry the sentences themselves should reflect that. harsh consonants, lack of adverbs and adjectives, shorter more abrupt sentences. subtle alliteration smooths out sentences and the calms the reader. good writing is more than just randomly chosen words strung together to form a story. good writing requires a lot of thought. getting the words right. the sentences. the structure. each word has its own taste. even articles. good writing blends these tastes together to form something new. each flavor subtly distinct but also blurring into the next. writing is an art. it appeals to more than just the eyes. some people have the ability to actually see music. colors usually (this was in newsweek a while ago). but really. any good art should appeal to more than just one sense. writing, in it's most obvious way appeals to sight. when read aloud, to sound. but to the conscientious reader it's both. always. and sometimes even more.

sand and fog

finished andre dubus III's house of sand and fog tonight and oh my god was that good. seriously... the ending. wow. really really wow. and did you kno it was a movie? yeah i didn't see it but not i want to jennifer connelly is a great actress and i seem to recall that ben kingsly is as well. anyway, the book is basically about a house and wat it means to certain people and just how far they are willing to go to keep it. but it's also about how far one goes for love and for the ones they love. and the motivations behind that love and all the actions thereafter. the book really makes you wonder if you've ever wanted something that much, or loved someone that much. you really sympathize wit each character and even though it's so fully realistic you still want a happy ending somehow. where everything turns out right and well. for the plot alone i highly recommend this book. the language however is equally beautiful. dubus really captures each character's being. you're never confused when the narrative perspective is switched. each transition is so seamless and he so perfectly captures the emotion of the characters that you immediately follow and kno where you are, and who you are. this book is excellent.

february 2006

bill bryson - the lost continent
andre dubus III - house of sand and fog
margaret atwood - the handmaid's tale
melissa bank - the girls' guide to hunting and fishing
esquire presents: what it feels like...
charlotte bronte - villette

another one?!

it's true! i have yet another site! but don't worry this one is more for reference than anything. it will list the books i've read (completed, not started) for the month. every month. until i get tired up upkeeping yet another site. i might do reviews as well? we'll see how much time and energy i feel like putting into this thing. :)