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May 2007

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

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The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

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Wow. Just... wow. This is probably now one of my favorite books of all time. I just loved everything about this book! It was long, but I absolutely couldn't put it down. The story was so fascinating and emotional.

April 2007

Helpless - Barbara Gowdy

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I wouldn't say that this book was bad, but I wouldn't say that it was good, either. The story was very interesting, and I was definitely captivated, although I didn't like the ending very much. It seemed like the author just hurried to wrap things up in the last few pages with very little explanation. I also didn't like the writing style. Too many times, I felt like I had to go back and re-read sentences to grasp the meaning. Maybe it's a dialect thing: so often, the author left off subjects of sentences, and it was a little... disquieting for me. It's difficult to explain, but the writing just left me feeling disoriented sometimes. If I had to rate this book on a scale of 1-10, however, I'd probably give it an 8. It was pretty good light reading.

Class Matters - The New York Times (Correspondents)

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This book was great, but not really what I was expecting. It has lots of great stories and short articles, although most of them say much the same thing: class is a huge deal in America, but the lines are becoming a litle bit blurred. I was looking for something that talked more about class distinctions and how people view each other, but the writers gave more attention to how social mobility and how people see themselves. Still, this book had some really great articles!

The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins

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March 2007

Naked - David Sedaris

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This book is totally hilarious. I absolutely loved it! I've never read anything by David Sedaris before, but I'm so glad that I finally did. I was laughing hysterically throughout most of this book; somehow the author seems to take relatively mundane events (riding on a bus...) and make them entertaining. The first half of the book was much funnier than the second half, but it was a very good book overall. I just loved it! I can't wait to read more by David Sedaris.

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg

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Maybe it's because I'm an Alabama girl myself, but I really connected with this book. I've seen the movie, but somehow, the book was even better. The familiarity of the small town in Alabama (not my small town, but close enough!) gave it a home-like quality which I just loved. Not only did I get that sentimentality, but this book also touched on some much larger social issues without getting too overwhelming.

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity - John Stossel

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I love pretty much everything about this book. John Stossel is great, and I love all of the myth-busting that he does! I also love it that he can admit when he was wrong about things in the past. To me, that just adds to his credibility. This is a great book!

The Culture of Fear - Barry Glassner

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This book was ok, but it wasn't what I expected. I wouldn't say it was a horrible book, but it was definitely not good, either. Mostly, it just said OVER AND OVER that the media is the reason Americans are scared to death of everything. Yes, that's very true... we shouldn't scare ourselves out of getting vaccinations because of the one-in-million chance that something could go wrong (because get tuberculosis would be a LOT worse!). But how many times can you really say that without sounding like a broken record? Also, this book seemed extremely biased in many parts, and to me, that took away the author's credibility, since he wasn't really looking at things objectively. For example: yes, it's true that some children die due to guns. But statistically, MANY more children die in pools; pools are much more dangerous than guns, but the media pushes the gun issue. This is an example of what Glassner is against: the media ignoring bigger dangers for emotionally-charged issues that, statistically, are not as dangerous. So this would have been a perfect example in Glassner's book... instead, he spends the first three chapters on an anti-gun tirade, and honestly, he just doesn't back it up with facts.

gods in Alabama - Joshilyn Jackson

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I read Joshilyn Jackson's other book, Between, Georgia, before I read this one, and I have to say that I like this one MUCH better. In both, the writing is very good and very witty, but the plot is just very bland. In Between, Georgia, I'd even saying it was BORING. In this book, however, the plot was a lot more exciting, although the characters were a little less believable. They seemed almost like caricatures sometimes, and were pretty one-dimensional... with the exception of the boy who was either sweet and charming or completely evil (which is just bizarre).

February 2007

The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield

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Between, Georgia - Joshilyn Jackson

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January 2007

Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen

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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas S. Kuhn

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I had to read some parts of this book for a class, so I just decided to read the whole thing. It had a lot of interesting, thought-provoking concepts, but the writing was very bland. This is NOT a light read! Even though it is difficult to read, however, the ideas inside were very valuable.

The Art of Deception - Kevin Mitnick

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This was a very interesting book about social engineering and various cons. Some of the stories in the book were interesting, but the target audience is business owners who care about security. So there were several parts that didn't apply to me (ie, "Make sure your employees don't give out their passwords to ANYONE"), but it was still a good book. I was surprised at some of the things people could pull off just by sounding persuasive over the phone!

Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs

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The entire time I was reading this book, I was laughing hysterically. I love the writing style, and the situations were bizarre to the point of being funny. I didn't, however, feel that this story was completely accurate. After finishing the book, I felt that more than a few stuations were exaggerated, and there may have been some outright lies. I was just left feeling very suspicious of this book's "nonfiction" categorization. I eventually found out that there is some dispute over how much of this book is factual. In my mind, I suppose I'll just always think of this book as fiction based on reality.

A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle

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Saving Fish from Drowning - Amy Tan

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I adore Amy Tan. I've now read all of her books, but this one just doesn't measure up to the others. It's a good book, but it's nothing like her other works. Which isn't such a bad thing; sometimes it's just time to step outside the box. This book had a very strong start, but it fizzled out at the end. I just wasn't interested in what happened to the tourists in the end, although I was interested in what happened to Bibi Chen (the narrator). Overall, this was still a wonderful book, and certainly worth my time to read.