And so, although secretly jealous of the easy entertainment that they had, and stewing in a self-induced rage over my academic pursuits, I managed to read a bevy of what I can only call "Ha Smorgasbord Sefer."
That's right, a gastronomic-like, linguistically and grammatically bizarre (read: incorrect) selection of books. And I will critique them below.
The Three of Us: A Family Story
Do not read this book unless you don't have children, are not planning to have children or will forget this book's contents before you have children, and both of your parents are dead (or far far away). However, if you fit those three qualifications then by all means - read away. It is an interesting and well-written true story that will keep you up at night, not because you will stay up late to finish it but because you will be kept awake by the disturbing images floating around in your cerebral cortex.
This Isn't What I Expected
A book about post-partum depression. I'm going to go ahead and recommend against this book unless you want a manual on how to diagnose yourself with PPD. Captain, this might be a good one for you.
Shalimar the Clown
Ohhhhhh, can we say sexy beast? Salman Rushdie is like poetic gold. About 200 pages into the book, I read the end (don't try to stop me; it's a lifelong habit). And even knowing the end, I still wanted to finish the 600 page book. I could live in the dreamy places in this book. Except without the mass murder and rape. And without the disease. But otherwise, yeah.
The Double Bind
What is UP with people writing sexually disturbing books? This book is like taking a cheese grater to the parts of your brain that produce happiness and trust in humanity. I guess in that sense you could call it a great book because it weaves itself so deeply into your psyche but FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! I had to watch a Disney movie immediately after just to get the horrible depression to lift. Maybe that would have been a good time to diagnose myself with PPD...
Noises Off
I had read this play a few weeks ago but had to re-read it, since I'm the costume designer for the community theatre production of this lovely number. Funny, in a British sort of way, which means that it's not. Funny, that is.
It's amazing what 40 hours of flight time can accomplish. However, that also means that I probably won't read an entire single book for several more months. And even then...I think next time I might cave and go for the 16 straight hours of personal programming at my fingertips. From cartoons to carrying on...would that mean they could make a movie called Mulan (Rouge)?
1 comment:
I think you need to adopt a third (fourth? fifth?) parallel career and become a professional lit critic. I like that you summarize the book's content and whether I should read it in a single paragraph, without pausing to go off on any pompous, self-indulgent tangents in which you attempt to convince the reader that the book in question is a post-modern re-telling of The Odyssey and that the persistent references to boneless chicken breasts constitute a metaphor for our post-dotcom-boom alienation from consumer technology. (Since the reader has presumably not yet read the book, they are left to assume that you know what you're talking about, but if they return to your review afterward, they find not a tadpole's crucifix in hell of believability to anything you've written.) And it's much more interesting than Reader's Digest, which requires stomach acid.
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