Sorry for the longer-than-expected break guys! We extended our vacation for a few days, and as soon as I got home, I managed to eat some sketchy raw spinach and, well, if you don’t know the possible consequences of that, your ignorance is definitely bliss. So I haven’t really felt like blogging until today.

Moving right along (sorry for the overshare, random Sunday Saloners), while most of my vacation was spent savouring my sister and niece’s company, I did get a fair amount of time to sunbathe and read (my sister’s kind of allergic to the sun, and my niece’s skin is so white you can trace all of her veins, so when my poor Colorado self needed some Texas warmth, I had to be alone. Don’t worry-I always use really high sunscreen, and I’m one of those people who tan instead of burning.). And I’ve read a few more since I’ve been home (library deadlines are such great motivators! hehe). So here we go…

My mom and I listened to Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangerson CD while we were driving down to Texas. I’m a huge fan of McEwan, so I’m slowly working my way through his books (very slowly-I’m awful about reading more of my favourite authors for some reason). I have to say that this is my least favourite so far; while I think I know what McEwan was trying to accomplish, I don’t think he delivered. In the book, a British couple on holiday in Venice bump into a local man and befriend him. Unfortunately for them, this is a suspense book, so their newfound friend has dark intentions. My mom said the book reminded her of a Hitchcock film, and I can definitely see that. My major problem with the story was that the British couple are so, well, daft, I couldn’t really believe it. The guy starts being pretty creepy early on, so why would they continue their relationship with him? I could have overlooked that, if McEwan had delivered a really satisfying ending. But instead the ending didn’t quite ring true to all of the foreshadowing (almost as if McEwan drew back and decided he didn’t really want to go there), so I was left frustrated. As I was listening to the story, I couldn’t help wondering if this was his first book; he seems to do a lot of experimenting with different focuses and voices that makes the book feel a bit piecemeal (according to Wikipedia, it’s his second). That being said, McEwan’s writing is still wonderful, so we were definitely entertained (although, um, there was a lot of sex in it at one point which was mildly awkward in the car, lol). Recommended for McEwan fans, but first-timers should choose one of his other books. I’m curious about the movie adaptation, because this is one of those times I might actually prefer it!

Throughout my vacation, I read stories from the collection American Girls About Town, an anthology of contemporary American female chick lit authors. I very rarely read chick lit, and most of these stories reminded me why; the genre and I simply don’t mesh well. Most of the stories were pretty forgettable to me, but there were a few that stood out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my favourites were two that followed women travelling: “The Bamboo Confessions” by Lauren Weisberger and “Andromeda on the Street of Ducklings” by Judi Hendricks. You’ll hear more about those two tomorrow for Short Story Monday! My other two favourites were “Forty Days” by Jill Smolinski, in which the protagonist spends the 40 days before her fortieth birthday during new things (this one was awesome actually, and I totally want to make this a birthday tradition starting next year) reviewed by the lovely Darcie hereand “Leaving a Light On” by Claire LaZebnik which seems to be a one-night stand story, but it has a fun twist and (more importantly to me) the writing style is strong. Even though I can’t say I enjoyed the anthology, I’m not going to give up on the genre yet. If any one of you have a favourite ‘chick lit’ book, please share!

As another part of my Women’s History Month project, I read Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Lauren Ulrich. Ulrich is the historian who originally coined that phrase, and in this book she explores the idea through women in various times and places. I loved it, and I’m going to do a more in-depth review soon! I also picked up Mary Doria Russell’s Dreamers of the Day. I was so excited about this one, since I thought The Sparrow as such an interesting book, and I love the 1920s and the Middle East. But I have to be honest: Dreamers didn’t impress me at all. The first part is a makeover a la Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and while 1920s fashion is always fun, it didn’t connect all that well to the rest of the book. Many of the characters were real people (Lawrence of Arabia, Gertrude Stein), but I don’t think that’s an excuse for one-dimensionality. Even Agnes herself (the protagonist) didn’t feel real; Russell beats the reader over the head that Agnes is trying to push off her control-freak, Edwardian mother’s influence and stop being a spinster. That was the real problem with the book: rather than showing us, Russell rushes in to tell everything. Why? Because Agnes is narrating the book from ‘beyond the grave,’ which I think was a poor style choice. Also, in the end, Agnes talks about the afterlife and the random people she meets and it just made me roll my eyes over and over again. *sigh* I expected to love this one, but honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. If you’re interested in the history Russell discusses, there are better books for that. And if you’re all about 1920s flappers, there are better books for that too. If only Russell had changed the narrative voice, I think this could have been a really good book. As it was, it got worse and worse as it progressed.

That was all I read during my actual vacation, but once I got home I kicked it up a notch. I quickly went through two nonfiction books: Internet Dating is Not Like Ordering a Pizzaby Cherie Burbach, which is a book tour book that far surpassed its title and cover, and Dark Banquetby Bill Schutt. The latter was a science book about blood-sucking animals, and several of you noticed it during my Library Loot. I’m here to say it was a lot of fun, and while I’ll be doing a full review, if you were thinking about reading it, I definitely enjoyed it! Corny puns abounded, as I’ve come to expect in the genre, but they actually made me chuckle a bit this time. And the printing is gorgeous: there are sketches throughout, and little crimson silhouettes of the various creatures between section breaks. It’s a high-quality book.

I also read Pathways to Bliss, a posthumous collection of Joseph Campbell lectures and essays. I began it on vacation, and finished it up when I got home as my Dewey Decimal Challenge March selection. I’m a big fan of Campbell, but I don’t think this book had the best editing. I was attracted to it in large part because of the subtitle: Mythology and Personal Transformation. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of psychology in this book, and I’m not a huge Freud fan (to put it lightly), and most of the other stuff (the Hero’s Journey, the difference in experiences in the East and the West, etc.) has been addressed by other Campbell books in a better way. That being said, I really liked two chapters, which formed about fifty pages in the middle: “Myth and the Self” and “Personal Myth.” For me, this made the book worth reading, but I think the books Campbell actually wrote and/or published himself are a better bet.

I finally got Toni Morrison’s A Mercy from the library, and when I had mentally geared up for it (slavery is something I have to prepare for in my reading), I broke it open. It was much shorter than I expected, and although I loved it, I don’t think it’s a book for everyone. It barely has a plot and a very open ending, and the story told is all mixed up chronologically. If those things drive you crazy, you probably won’t like the book. But it has wonderful characterizations, in a wide variety of narrative voices, and since it’s Morrison she explores difficult moral choices (there’s an echo of Beloved’s look at the dark side of mother love here) and how a society built on slavery has horrible effects on all of its members. I didn’t know anything about the characters going into the book, and I think that’s the best way to go about it: Morrison can reveal things in the order and style she intended. I loved this one, and if you read like me, I bet that you will too (the book kind of reminded me of Woolf’s style, with its focus on the internal lives of the characters to the exclusion of almost everything else).

I was really on a short book kick when I got back, as I soon finished Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: the World as Stage. I’ve never read any of Bryson’s travelogues (they sound good, just haven’t gotten around to them), and I’ve never read a biography of Shakespeare, so I went into this with a clean slate. It was my first read for Emily’s Getting to Know You Challenge, for which I’m also going to read at least three of the Bard’s plays (one history, one comedy, one tragedy). I really loved the book: Bryson says at the beginning that we don’t actually know many facts about Shakespeare, so while he touches on the conjectures, most of the book is about Shakespeare’s place and time. I think that’s a great way to approach it, as I could imagine Shakespeare wandering about Elizabethan London and I learned lots of interesting facts. He also looks at Shakespeare’s stunning impact on English literature, and while the book doesn’t have intense literary criticism, Bryson’s admiration for his subject really comes through. I’d highly recommend this book, for people who want more context for Shakespeare’s life or who are just curious about Elizabethan London and want a taste of what life would have been like back then. Bryson has a strong and wonderful voice, and I’ll definitely be reading more of his books in the future! (Speaking of Shakespeare, does anyone have a favourite history play to recommend? I’m fairly well acquainted with the comedies and tragedies but know nothing about the histories.)

I also finished up The Noodle Makerby Ma Jian, my first Orbis Terrarum stop. It took me to early 90s China, and while the writing style was strong, and the narrative structure really neat (a professional writer and a professional blood donor who are old friends are having dinner-but most of the book is taken up with stories the writer would publish if he didn’t live in a totalitarian state), the utter misogynist tone got old really fast. I don’t know if the author feels that way about women, or if it’s just an attribute he gave the writer/narrator, but it destroyed all of the enjoyment I would have felt about the book. It’s still a very interesting book; it rather reminded me of if Kundera was Chinese and more overt with his opinions regarding women. But especially in the middle of my Women’s History Month reading, it left a sour taste in my mouth. I’ll definitely try out another of the author’s books, since his writing is great (it immediately evokes a sense of place and time and his characters are unforgettable), but if it has an anti-women vibe to it as well, that’ll be that.

Two other books that I started on vacation and finished after I got home were Lud-in-the-Mistby Hope Mirrlees and The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby. I read the Mirrlees for the Neil Gaiman challenge (he wrote the foreword to the new publication), but also because none of my Once Upon a Time choices are available for pick-up at the library yet and I needed a fantasy fix! Lud-in-the-Mist is a small English village on the border with faerie, that tries to studiously ignore anything faerie-related. But when illegal fairy fruit starts surfacing, and the youth of town begin eating it and disappearing over the hills into faerie land, two of the town elders decide to take on the mysterious forces. I thought parts of the book were charming: the style is very provincial British, and the ‘curses’ of the townspeople are hilarious (“Toasted cheese!” was by far my favourite). I enjoyed watching Master Nat work out the mystery and go after those responsible. But I thought it rather odd that he was so much more concerned with his son than his daughter (they both disappear, but he seems to care only about his son), and the book didn’t have that special extra sparkle to make it five stars. So fun, and a good fantasy fix, but not a book I want to read over and over again.

The Tale of Murasaki is historical fiction, set in Medieval Japan, that is the imagined memoirs of the author of The Tales of Genji. It’s one of my choices for the 9 for ‘09 challenge (free-since I bookmooched it). While Dalby is American, she has a lot of both personal and academic experience with Japanese culture, and she completely immersed me in the world. I loved hearing all of the little details of life and Dalby mixes in many of the real woman’s poems. While I don’t pretend to understand Japanese poetry, it did add something special to the book. Murasaki herself is the only fully developed character, which makes sense in a fictional memoir, and although there isn’t much of a plot (this is my life), I really loved having a window into such a different world. I drew the reading out as long as I could, and I definitely plan to read more of Dalby in the future. Highly recommended to pretty much anyone.

The final book I’m going to talk about today (I know! this makes ten! I’m exhausted, lol) is Vivian Vande Velde’s A Well-Timed Enchantment. This was an impulse buy at my library sale last year; I love time travel and the Middle Ages, so this book about a teenage girl (Deanna) who goes back to medieval France seemed like fun. And it was fun, but unfortunately it was one of those children’s books without a lot of depth. Velde introduces these random elves, who are the reason for the time travel and give Deanna the ability to understand and communicate in Medieval French…it felt like too much of a device to me. And the people Deanna encounters are all pretty one-dimensional. The best part is Oliver, a cat that the elves turn into a person to help her in her quest (she has to get back a Mickey Mouse watch she accidentally dropped into a well that crosses time). Velde’s portrayal of how a cat might act as a person is quite amusing. All in all, I think I would have enjoyed this when I was maybe seven or eight, but it left me feeling a bit flat as an adult. But I still love the author’s name. And it’s one of my choices for the Themed Reading Challenge (I picked Middle Ages as my theme).

Whew! I did finish one other book last night: The Book of Night Women by Marlon James, but for now I’ll just say that it was moving and powerful and I stayed up way too late to finish it.

I can’t wait to get back into the blogging groove, and although I doubt I’ll ever actually catch up on reviews (lol), it’s always fun to try!