The Book I Read.
Book number 43 in my quest to read 52 books this year was The Hazards of Good Breeding by Jessica Shattuck. Just like with my beer review, I'm not the best book reviewer, but I know what I like. This was a very good book in a long string of good books I have recently read that were set in New England. It's very similar to Nancy Clark's The Hills at Home. Both have a New England family with it's blue-blood life becoming less and less relevant in the present day. And both have the family being documented by a young man who gets a little too close to the subject. The Hills at Home, however, made me feel as if I was in the house with the Hills, where Hazards felt like I was watching a documentary of the family. Plus, where Hazards was occasionally funny, The Hills was often laugh-out-loud funny. The Hazards of Good Breeding was a very good book, very well written, but came too soon after reading The Hills at Home to make me forget that excellent book.
The book I'm reading now is Anna Quindlen's Blessings. I like Ms. Quindlen's oped column in the back of Newsweek, so I was curious to read fiction by her.
I also put holds on three more books at the Philadelphia Library today: Maile Meloy's Liars and Saints, Ira Sher's Gentlemen of Space, and Dennis Lehane's Mystic River. The wife and I have rented Mystic River but haven't watched it yet. If we time it right I'll read it right after watching it, which the opposite of my preferred order.
posted by Mark @ 8/23/2004 05:39:00 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I'd like to see more people write things about the books they read like this. I have just resently started reading for fun (just finished grad-school). And would like to get ideas for what other books to read from other people.
I wonder if there is a place out there where people have an organized display of personal (not professional critics) reviews of books. Perhaps these blogs are the best place for it.
Unfortunately, I don't think any of these books really looked like what i would like to read. I am into reading stories that are fantastic, outrageous, and pretty close to something that would not happen in the real world. I personally liked the Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles, I recently read The Da Vinci Code (excellent, excellent book - very fast read, very spellbinding)... I am currently reading some fantasy book called the Fifth Sorcoress, one of a series of books. I am not sure i will continue with it. It has failed to excite me beyond my own curiosity of what will happen next.
okay. I babble a lot when it is late at night.
Sean,
I don't know about websites with personal book reviews, but I am going to try to do my part for the remainder of the year. I use the New York Times book reviews to pick what I want to read.
It does seem that our tastes in books don't come close, but you might be interested in book number 18, Jennifer Government, by Max Barry. Here is the NYT review. Very "other dimension"-ish and a very quick read.
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