Twilight a Knitter’s Review

Yes, another book review, so soon you say, well I finished this book over the weekend and I been wanting to share the review with all of you. The book in case is a little trashy and a very easy read, it is called Twilight and it is a teen romance, between a vampire and a human girl. I was very reticent to pick this book, but the Argentine had read it and enjoyed it and so I decided that before starting the next serious book (usually book club books then to be more serious) I would enjoy a light novel. I truly enjoyed it, and now I can not wait to read the next two novels in the series. Go here for the complete review.

A cook book for me

I was reading this site, and found this book:



This is usually how I feel. I am almost hungry all the time.

Rushing

Busy, busy, busy, that is how I have been. Work had to be done this week both at the office and the home front. Lets just say that I can not wait to get home tonite, have some dinner and watch me some Ugly Betty. At least 2/3 of the Christmas Cards have been written and sent, now need to tackle the last ones and mail them, I have put myself a deadline of next Monday. Because I have nothing much to say here is the NYT's list of 10 notable books:

Nonfiction

IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: Inside Iraq's Green Zone.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95; Vintage, paper, $14.95. The author, a Washington Post journalist, catalogs the arrogance and ineptitude that marked America’s governance of Iraq.

LITTLE HEATHENS: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression.
By Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Bantam Books, $22. Kalish’s soaring love for her childhood memories saturates this memoir, which coaxes the reader into joy, wonder and even envy.

THE NINE: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.
By Jeffrey Toobin. Doubleday, $27.95. An erudite outsider’s account of the cloistered court’s inner workings.

THE ORDEAL OF ELIZABETH MARSH: A Woman in World History.
By Linda Colley. Pantheon Books, $27.50. Colley tracks the “compulsively itinerant” Marsh across the 18th century and several continents.

THE REST IS NOISE: Listening to the Twentieth Century.
By Alex Ross. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30. In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker’s music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.

Fiction

MAN GONE DOWN
By Michael Thomas. Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $14. This first novel explores the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer’s life.

OUT STEALING HORSES
By Per Petterson. Translated by Anne Born. Graywolf Press, $22. In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.

THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES
By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.

THEN WE CAME TO THE END
By Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown & Company, $23.99. Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.

TREE OF SMOKE
By Denis Johnson. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. The author of “Jesus’ Son” offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.


Have you read any of them ?

I have not. I have read this month's book for book club, so I am going to post a review tomorrow.

The one I might pick up is THEN WE CAME TO AN END.

I.can.not.put.it.down

Last Thursday I got the new Harry Potter book, and I have not been able to put the book down ever since. I got real busy Friday and Saturday but Sunday, I sat most of the day reading, yes me the ever on the run Mexican, literally sat down after brunch and read for 3 hours or more. It helped that the Argentine had made brunch and I was reading next to me, but it has been one of the first times in a while that I have been able to just sit and read. It is a great book, of course if you have not read the previous books I would suggest starting with book 1 or book 3, there are parts you can always skip, but starting with book 4 you have to read them all to understand the many challenges Harry, Hermione and Ron are facing from page 1.

I am not planning on giving anything away, but I do believe that it is amazing how this tale of “the boy who lived” has taken over the world. The main reason is that it is a great story, with characters that are likable, no adorable and real, we call in some way identify with one/several of the characters. The adventures are interesting, of course there is a lot of belief in them, and sometimes the writing gets a wee-bit corny, but at least for me, when I sit down and start reading any of these books, time flies. I am transported to a different place and I can not get enough. I am purposely reading this book slowly, because I want to savor it, to enjoy every page and every description.

Yesterday, in the Charlotte airport, I stopped at a pen store to get some ink for my fountain pen –yes, stop rolling your eyes, you all know I am terrible snob and yes I love writing with a fountain pen. I asked for the ink cartridges, and I put the book on the counter. The lady in the store, showed the color of the inks they had and then asked if I was enjoying the book, I told her I was, and that I could not put it down. She have me the two boxes, and said I read it last week and finished it in 5 days.

So here is to Miss Rowling who has managed to put a spell on the world.

Book Review

Book Review

An idea occurred to me this weekend, we who read books need to start an itinerant library, there is no point in everyone buying books, but we can lend them to each other and that way we can all read different books and we can all save a little money. Sometimes I feel like I can not go into Kramer’s without purchasing one of such objects. The Argentinean even proposed to create a blog that basically encompasses book reviews, and the idea intrigues me. I can post about Paris and Amsterdam, but those entries would take way too much work and not sure I have the energy right now, later of course (yes skinny one, I know I am always promising posts), so I am tackling the book we discussed last Sunday, Mrs. Dalloway.

I approached this book with a little caution, I had never read any of her books, and was not sure what to expect. Like most people I had seen The Hours, so was curious to see if I could infer things from the movie that would help me read the book. I was disappointed when this was not the case. I skipped the introduction, one of the problems with reading one book every month, is you have to read it – yes I am the guilty one that tries to read them even if he dislikes them. Ok, so I started the book and I was familiar with the first line, so I followed the story, but then it changed, the narrator kept changing on me, and it took me like the first 30 pages to get used to it. But then I was fine, and by the time Peter comes to visit the morning of the party, I was able to identify the changes in narrator immediately and determine where the story was going next. My recommendation would be to skip the intro and just go for it, jump in and fight with her long sentences and her descriptions of things until you get the hang of the story and just keep at it.

The story is simple yet complicated, it is something we can all relate to because we all do some level of introspection, and we do not have the amount of time people had in the 20’s to just walk to the florist, but we still have 30 minutes here and there where we think of things, we need to do, of things we have not done, and of things that happened in the past and that still affect us to this date. The great thing about these exercises for me at least is that it gives you perspective, is shows how things that seemed so important were not and how little things ended up being what one keeps. Ok enough about me, the book surprised me because it was extremely pro British Empire, and how it went through all these characters cutting across the upper classes paying very little attention to the lower classes. I had thought she would be more of a socialist and a feminist than that. I can see how the book was and is revolutionary and how it is written with such craft that she keeps you reading even after she has cycled through similar descriptions over and over again, always through different perspectives. At the center of the book is a love triangle, that haunts its main characters through their lives, and this is a recurring theme in life and literature, but she manages to make it nuanced and interesting. Finally here are the things I would focus if I was to read the book again:
* The details about the park
* The lunch scene with Lady Bruton
* Elizabeth’s shopping scene
* Septimus appointment with Dr. Bradshaw

I know this post is a bit too long, but I would recommend anyone to read this book. The language will be a challenge (it was for me, but I am not a native speaker) but the story is beautifully told, its worth reading it for the sentences and the paragraphs alone. Also I like Clarissa, I like her a lot, so I guess I am biased because from the get go, when he is mending her dress for her party she had me.

PS. There is a new link on the right, y’all know who he is.