Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Behind in books

I've been generally dissatisfied with my reading of the last several months (and very helpful that you will return soon to read how you can help me change this), but I've still been reading. Here are some thoughts from books that haven't compelled me to write a full blog post.
Terry Prachet Equal Rites Are puns ever funny? I think very fondly of The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my all-time favorite books, and answer that of course puns can be funny and clever. So it must not be just the puns that make this discworld novel not sit well with me. In any case, clever and fun, but directing me more away from reading more Terry Prachet than toward.
Elizabeth Forsythe A Woman of Independent Means This is one of the few novels I've read in which I thought plot didn't matter. The book was apparently made into a mini-series and I have no idea how that could have worked well, because, while the book is the saga of one woman's life; the interesting part of the book is not what happens to her, but rather how the character describes the events differently to different people and at different points in her life through her letters that make up the book. Incredible how much suspense can be built up just by wondering if and when the woman is going to realize things can't be as she says they are.

Babies born out of wedlock, revengeful old women, poisonings, hot men, small town gossip, woman pregnant by her best friend who impregnates someone else, secret hideouts, blizzards, accidents at the granite quarry, death, disease, dysfunction: Barbara Delinsky's The Passions of Chelsea Kane has them all. And it's not as bad as it could be, given all that. In fact, I found it to be great page-turning fun, but that still doesn't make it a very good novel.
The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop was given to Dianthus for his first birthday (the main character shares his name and it was a gift from one of his Castle relatives). It's about seven years beyond Dianthus's reading ability, but I very much enjoyed it.

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Wow - sounds like there is a lot packed into the "The Passions of Chelsea Kane" made my head spin just reading your description.