stapsreads

Another attempt at the Great American Novel. It was good, but other books have since taken its place in my heart. No, that's a lie: it never really got near my heart. It made me smile and laugh and cringe, and occasionally wince in recognition; technically, I think it was brilliant; it was certainly no hardship to finish it - but. But it never quite got there, for me.

It is the story of a family. It is the story of the varied and interesting ways in which a family can fall apart, on account of being composed of a varied and interesting collection of human beings. It punctures egos left, right and centre. It gets into the heads of most of the main characters, which is something I like in fiction. (Although Franzen didn't bother with Jessica, the daughter, and maybe I'd have been more interested if he had.)

3 out of 5, I think. It is a good book, but I didn't love it.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10198179

More in the 'creepy and disturbing' vein. The hero is a former construction magnate who becomes an artist after losing an arm in an accident. Doom and disaster result. This was compulsive reading, and kept me hooked most of the way to the end. Fantastic sense of place, though I detected a misogynistic undertone that I didn't much like.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9731584

Needs a Britpicker, badly. I am not convinced that the author had ever been to England, let alone Oxford; the only way I could suspend my disbelief long enough to finish the book was to pretend that the landlubbing part of the story was set in some USAian theme park called 'Oxford' and abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for cruise liners to travel to and from. Apart from the more glaring howlers (car numberplate bearing six figures and no letters; travelling from Oxford to Southampton on the M5; schoolgirls of 21 wearing blazers) the dialogue and internal monologues of the British characters were completely off.

Apart from that, the mystery was reasonably diverting, but this was a real struggle to finish.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10013527/

I have heard a lot about this author; she seems to divide opinions. I came away from this book without much of one - I didn't hate this, but it wasn't exactly gripping. The basic concept - a big-city attorney defending an Amish girl accused of infanticide - could have been very interesting, but Picoult never seemed to develop any of the themes as much as they deserved. There was some sloppy writing in there - plot elements introduced a little too early and then presented as a big surprise - and I never quite saw the point in switching between first and third person narratives.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9730440

I can't believe I'd never read this. I knew the basic gist of the plot, and most people I've spoken to did it at school. I'm rather glad I didn't, for I don't think I'd have enjoyed it nearly as much. I've been putting off reviewing it, because I honestly can't think of what to say. However, it's a book club choice, so I will eventually have to pick a single word to describe it -

which is -

- gripping

Not the first few chapters; it did take me a while to get into it, though I can see that the slow start is essential background-painting - but once the plot really kicked off I was very reluctant to put the book down. Unreliable narrators again: telling an adults' story through a child's eyes is a very effective trick if you can pull it off, and here it really works, trading off the different levels of cynicism. Favourite book of the year so far.

Annie On My Mind for the nineties. Same author, and covering the same sort of themes - coming out at high school, experience of homophobia, vocation to the arts. The school is co-educational now, and the setting has moved from the city to the back of beyond, but there are definite echoes of Garden's earlier (and more famous?) work.

Which is not to say that this was not an enjoyable book in its own right. It contained many of my favourite tropes: coming out (to oneself, particularly), platonic female/male friendship, school... I particularly loved the theatrical theme (even if the parallels with The Crucible made me roll my eyes a bit). In places I found it too painful to read much at a time, but it's ultimately a moving, hopeful novel.

A rather pedestrian mystery, notable more for the confidence with which it deals with persons of exalted office than for any particular inspiration when it came to plot. First published 1980, and so I'm probably missing some context, not being very well up in any sort of politics of that era that doesn't involve trade unions. (They do feature in this, admittedly, but only very briefly.)

This rather fell into the trap of misdirecting so hard that none of the really interesting mystery stuff (When you know How, you know Who) got a look-in. The setting and characters seemed plausible, though.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/988847

Memories of, and reflections on the early years of the Metropolitan Community Church, and some of the people involved in it. Sylvia Pennington was straight, but (eventually) a staunch ally of the queer Christian community. The first section of the book deals with her own personal experiences, getting to know gay people and separating homophobia from faith. Some of that made rather painful reading, though I get the feeling that she must have been as embarrassed writing it as anybody reading it. The second section was a number of case studies, if you like - gay men (and one lesbian) and their journeys to reconciling sexuality and faith. Often moving; sometimes utterly devastating.

I will be honest and admit that the style didn't do much for me. Some of this is probably just down to different Christian and cultural backgrounds - I am not the arm-wavy type, and Pennington, by her own admission, was, so there were some assumptions and turns-of-phrase that felt very alien. The other thing that set my teeth on edge was the way that after each case study she would present the subject as a worthy example of 'God's gays'. And... I can sort of see where she is coming from, assuming an intended audience of devout and homophobic Christians, but it did feel terribly patronising.

I didn't learn anything new from this book, but then I didn't really expect to. Its two main messages - that it is perfectly possible to be simultaneously a person of sincere faith and actively other-than-straight, and that the Church can do its best to make it bloody difficult to practise that sincere faith - are ones that I have been hearing, repeating, and to some extent experiencing for a long time.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10202188

I've deliberately cut back on reading modern crime in recent weeks, having felt a little overwhelmed by it in the autumn. I think this strategy, combined with the genuine merits of this novel, paid off; Flight of the Stone Angel held my attention in a way that many modern mysteries have failed to do.

It's hard to put my finger on what makes this one so good: partly it's the lush descriptions of the Mississippi landscape, I think (I started out finding them rather pretentious, but they grew on me). Probably nearer the mark, though, is the element of surprise. So many thrillers are so tediously formulaic, and in this one I honestly didn't know what was going to happen next. Wonderfully ambiguous characters, too, with plenty left unsaid about all of them.

And it ended with that satisfying/frustrating revelation: that the entire mystery was laid out before the reader all the way through, and you really ought to have guessed it.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7891852

This is a surprise book in the BookCrossing ABC roundabout (I started off the G round with 'Gods Behaving Badly' and we're working up the alphabet). I could have done without another modern crime thriller, having overdosed spectacularly over the past few weeks, but that says more about me than it does about the book, so let's leave that aside.

This is set in a New Orleans radio station, where the star turn, a psychologist who hosts a late-night phone-in show, is receiving phone calls from a mystery man. I felt that the setting was evocatively described, and the mystery was reasonably interesting; however, some of the gender politics made me roll my eyes a bit (a girl ends up dead because she is 'too ambitious', hmm, hmm) and what with that and them glazing over in the sex scenes they got rather over-exercised.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10203084