The Love Wife by Gish Jen

I was very excited about this book. I loved "Typical American" and "Mona in the Promised Land", but this book really did not live up to my expectations. The first problem I had was that most of book is narrated by Wendy, who starts off at 9 years old and turns 11 at the end of the novel. I'm not sure why Jen made the choice to have a character this young narrate because the language she uses really strains my ability to suspend my disbelief. The narration is far too mature for a child that young. The second problem I had with this book is the narration that switches from one character to another. A lot of reviews I read said it was confusing, but that wasn't my problem. What bothered me was how sometimes the characters seemed to be responding to one another and other times, they were revealing things that the other characters were clearly not aware of. I have no problem with the narration being done by multiple characters, but it really broke down the fourth wall to have the characters responding to each other at times. What really made me dislike this book, though, is that absolutely none of the characters have any redeeming qualities, with the exception of Wendy, the pre-teen wonder girl supposedly narrating the bulk of tale in her highly advanced prose. Blondie and Carnegie were both just horrible people and I couldn't understand their reason for being together. Lizzy was a horrible brat, mostly due to her parent's lack of involvement in her life, and Lan was the worst of all. I didn't care how many tragedies befell her by the end of the book, she was just a completely hateful character. I won't stop reading Jen's books because of "The Love Wife," but I definitely won't be as excited the next time she has a new one.

You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers

Well, I love Dave Eggers. A lot of people don't seem to feel the love, but I really do. This was an excellent book, as was "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," which I read a little over a year ago. Now that I know that the first book wasn't just a fluke, I'll have to get "How We Are Hungry" and subscribe to McSweeney's and The Believer. My favorite part of this book has to be the part in the Mexican airport at the end when Will is being asked questions by a little girl completing a social studies project. The whole scene is absolutely perfect. This book made me think about the conflicting feelings I had giving money and things away while I was in India and after I returned. Will's internal dialogue with the people he meets was very authentic to me, having experienced similar things while traveling abroad. I'm not sure how I feel about the interruption, which was not included in my copy of the book, and which I had to obtain from the McSweeney's website. It changes a lot of how I feel about the story, and I'm not sure why Eggers didn't include it in the more recent edition of the book that I have, or indicate to the reader that it existed elsewhere. Does he now want the book to stand on it's own, without the influence of Hand's perspective? I'll need some time to work out what I think of that, and this will be a great book to re-read in order to gain further insight, but for now, I'll just say that I loved it.

The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

I was pretty excited about this book, having heard about it on the illustrious Saturday Edition with Scott Simon on NPR, so Ben bought it for me for Christmas. I'm up to P now and it's starting to wear on my nerves. Some of the reviews on Amazon said the author was whiny and full of himself and such, and I wouldn't say I agree with that. The author reminds me a bit of Woody Allen, who is good in small doses, but 368 pages worth of his brand of self-deprecating humor can get to be a bit much. It is making me want to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, though. If my opinion changes for the better or worse by the end of the book, I'll update.

Okay, here's an update: I just re-read the above post after posting my latest entry and I feel like maybe I was a little too harsh on A.J. Jacobs. The book did seem to improve as I moved on past the P section, and I was interested by the author's musings on the nature of intelligence and I really liked the parts about going on the millionaire show. By the end of the book, I was willing to say it was a good read and that I'd recommend it to others. In fact, Ben is reading it right now.

What Is This All About?

I've created this blog as an easy way to track what I'm reading this year. I have an awesome blank book I bought from Borders years ago in which I intended to do this, but in addition to hating everything I've ever written, I have trouble looking upon my own handwriting, which is never neat enough to please my exacting eyes. I thought I could overcome the handwriting part at least and really attempt to make a record of the things I've read and how I felt about them this year, since I forget everything I read almost immediately. Anyway, each post will theoretically be about a new book or play or possibly, although it's unlikely, poem I have read. We'll see how long this lasts.