Two thumbs up for Just A Geek: Unflinchingly Honest Tales of the Search for Life, Love, and Fulfillment Beyond the Starship Enterprise by Wil Wheaton. Memoir.
If you are a geek, you just grinned, because you already read WWdN. If you are not a geek, you said to yourself: “Who is Wil Wheaton? And why doesn’t he spell his name with two L’s, like a normal person?” Is okay.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for Fever Dream by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Suspense.
Going from Cormac McCarthy to Preston & Child: Ow. No offense to them, but I think they would be the first to agree that one does not read their books for the prose. But I stuck with it, and after I relaxed into the fact that it was what it was, I enjoyed just as much as always the gleefully over-the-top adventures of ultra-rich ultra-brilliant bullet-dodging DSM-IV-quoting Southern gentleman who is Special Agent Pendergast (he has an evil brother, does that tell you anything about this series?).… >> Read more
Neither thumbs up nor thumbs down for Love Poems from the Japanese translated by Kenneth Rexroth. Poetry.
Not anywhere near the standard of the previous book of Rexroth-translated Japanese poetry I’ve read, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese. All of the best poems in here were also in that one. So read that one instead.
… >> Read more“Your hair has turned whiteWhile your heart stayedKnotted against me.I shall neverLoosen it now.”—Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Thumbs up for The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Literature.
I was strangely attracted to this book in spite of the fact that both my coworker and my boyfriend said the same thing about it: “That’s an AMAZING book. Don’t read it, you won’t like it.” This is because they know I assiduously avoid depressing novels. However, what they didn’t realize is that I have no objection to bleak survival stories – and this book is bleak, bleak, BLEAK – it’s dysfunctional interpersonal dramas I hate.… >> Read more
Two big thumbs up for Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman. Literature.
I won’t lie: I probably would not have assayed a 940-page book at this point in my life had it not been a Christmas present from my boyfriend. He has excellent taste in books so my reaction was more an intrigued “hmm!” rather than a horrified “aaaagh!” – but it’s still a daunting prospect.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. Science fiction.
This one was in the top fifteen of a “Best Classic Science Fiction Novels” list I am working through (I need a project in my reading, or else I’ll be too scattered: as you may have noticed). I was sucked in from the first page and read happily all the way through, feeling undistracted by the other fine things in my “current reading” pile, which is a high compliment.… >> Read more
In keeping with the theme of tasty low-budget meals, this is something that I made last night that I think is worth sharing. It’s an adaptation of a sandwich recipe I found in Gourmet some years ago, but like all Gourmet recipes it had too many ingredients and was incredibly fussy. (Mix the tuna salad and the bean salad separately, when they have near-identical ingredients?… >> Read more
A somewhat tentative thumbs up for The How and Why Wonder Book of North American Indians by Felix Sutton. Children’s nonfiction.
Well, I didn’t know as much as I wanted to about the history of Native Americans, so a children’s book seemed the best way to dip into the subject. It’s an old book, but I can’t imagine there are really that many more modern interpretations of “…and then they were all dead.” Oy vey.… >> Read more