Cooking the Books

I thought that attempting to read on the subway was not as fulfilling as reading on a longer Metro North train ride. Turns out, most of New York City disagrees with me, as per this interesting article in the Times a week or so ago.

Since I've been cramming power-reads in between bumps, starts and "we're experiencing delays due to train traffic ahead of us (SCOFF SCOFF)," I've wracked up what I think is an impressive reading list, thank you very much. And I'm sharing it...because I care. (And I want people to stop misspelling things left and right. You are not getting away with using appalling grammar, either! Read, for crissake...or at least pick up a copy of Strunk & White!!!)

(If you take issue with the former parenthetical statement, please read about the 5 Grammar Mistakes that Make You Sound Like a Chimp. Then talk to me.)

Je voudrais mon livre....I'm a one-woman book club!

1. The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. A chilling work of historical fiction (or is it fiction?), detailing the "real-life" exploits of one mysterious and bloodthirsty European Count Dracula. It's an adventure story, a romance, a mystery and a psychological thriller with a little bit of gore worked in. I'm getting the spine tinglies just thinking about it, and I have a feeling if I pick up the book to reread it, I'll enjoy it more than I did the first time. The only downside...if you don't like dense writers, you might not make it far enough into the story to get to the good stuff. But I promise you, it's GOOD stuff, worth the effort.

I saw a dude on the subway reading this the other day, and interrupted him to gush over the book. I couldn't help myself.

2. The Lost, by Daniel Mendelssohn. If memory serves, I've written about this book in a previous posting. (But who even reads this blog enough to remember? I certainly don't. ) For the sake of refreshment, this book is amazing. It's a memoir of sorts, about a writer so fascinated with his family's history that he travels the world in search of the truth of what happened to his relatives during the Holocaust. As he searches, he ends up finding out a lot more about modern Judaism and the power of family than he thought possible. Amazing, amazing read. Also dense, but I didn't care.

3. Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Saffron Foer. I was on a Holocaust kick, can you tell? A young, dweeby, obsessive-compulsive Jewish American goes on a quest to find the mysterious Ukrainian hometown his grandfather was always babbling about. What he find is both nothing and everything. The quirky narrative, which involves a lot of fragmented, butchered English by the young man's Ukrainian guides, is interwoven with a peculiar stories of the town since it's inception hundreds of years ago. I like it. Can't say I totally understood it, but I liked it. I rented the movie later on and it cleared a few things up for me, but it also confused me more...

4. The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan. Pure, unadulterated fantasy. It would take a novel to explain this book, which is part of a 15-book series. The author died before he finished it, and I'm hoping I get through reading all the books before I kick it too. If you liked the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but got sick of Tolkien's endless babbling, (as I did...snore!) you'll LOVE this.

5. My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. The subject matter was interesting--a young girl sues her parents for the rights to medically emancipate herself, having been born a genetic match for her cancer-ravaged older sister to serve as a bag of harvested organs--but the writing lacked finesse, the touchy-feely-ness felt forced and the end of the story was just plain unrealistic. With other books I normally wouldn't be so concerned about the latter fact, but that this book sold itself as something that was grounded in reality makes it a harder sell for me. I'm sorry, but in this case, I liked the storyline in the film adaptation BETTER because it was MORE realistic. That's a rare thing, folks. Rare indeed for Miss Green Eyes here.

6. First Blood, by David Morrell. When I read the author's introduction to this book, I guessed that I might not finish it. Not because the story wasn't well-written or intriguing--I'd gotten a sense of that from Sylvester Stallone's 1982 hit--but because David Morrell wanted to write a story that was as realistic as possible. And post-traumatic stress syndrome and gory senseless killing aren't really my bag. I made it through about half of the book. It was depressing. It was dark. It was interesting. I was not in the mood. I'm aiming to pick it up again sometime in the future.

7. The Twilight Series, by Stephanie Meyer. I haven't done enough reading of cheesy teen vampire literature to know if Steph Meyer is pulling a George Lucas. Despite her pitiful Dick-and-Jane writing style, I found the stories to be entertaining reads. It's easy to get sucked into the saga, as it caters to every teen fantasy I ever had. Although in retrospect, I was an idiot back then and no longer yearn with angst for skinny, dark troubled young men. Now I'm totally Team Jacob.

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I'm currently reading the second book in Jordan's Wheel of Time series. It's just as rockin' as the first so far. Next, I might pick up that World War Z book everyone's raving about...but I'll have to fit it in between 34th St./Herald Square and Broadway, as I zoom under the East River...