Nothing But Time

Redondo Beach, CA

In the past few months I have been reading like crazy, going through so many books that it is almost hard for me to find something to read next.  The influx of reading started off with a couple books by Joyce Carol Oates – Little Bird of Heaven and My Sister, My Love.  I have been reading Oates for years, she is an author I keep going back to, even though I am only really engaged by every third book of hers I read.  Little Bird of Heaven was pretty forgetful – even though I had read it just a few months earlier I had to pull up the synopsis to refresh my memory on the story, and even then it just reminded me that it was another one of her meandering stories that kinda felt like it just went on an on with no real climax or resolution.  However, I really enjoyed My Sister, My Love, which is very loosely based on the JonBenet Ramsay murder.  It reminded me a lot of Oates’ book Blonde, which is one of my favorites – a work of fiction that is based on the events of Marilyn Monroe’s life.

I also gave Beautiful Creatures a try.  It was kind of in that supernatural Twilight vein, with the main characters being high school students.  Definitely a quick read but not something I could really recommend to anyone over 20.  It was actually so juvenile that I had to cleanse my palate with Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire before I could move on.  It probably goes without saying, but loved the book.  I have always been a huge fan of the film and it was nice to see that both the movie and the novel hold their own merits, but I really loved that Louis’ character was a bit more of a blood-thirsty killer in the book.  Felt more real for a vampire, you know?

Next was Red Hook Road, a story about two newlyweds who are killed on the way to their wedding reception, and how their families deal with the aftermath.  I know, a lot of light, happy reading on my list, right?  I thought the book was really interesting, in that morbid “can’t look away” kind of way.  There were parts that were tough to read, and I’m sure if you actually have children it would make this novel that much more unbearable but I would still put it on the recommend list.

I did insert a light, chick-lit book into the mix with Little Earthquakes: A Novel, about a group of new moms who meet at a pre-natal yoga class.  Not really a whole lot to say about the book except I was done with it in about two days and it was entertaining for someone who is also about to become a first-time mom.

Of course, after reading Little Earthquakes I had to bring it down a notch and read Room: A Novel.  Oh man, this was easily one of the most disturbing books I have ever read (and I’ve read everything by Stephen King and nearly every Chuck Palahniuk book), but it was probably my favorite so far this year.  The plot centers on a young woman who is held captive and raising her 5 year old son in a one room shed that her kidnapper created for her (the kidnapper also being the boy’s father).  There was definitely parts of the book where, if it was a movie, I would have been watching with my hands over my eyes – so heartbreaking but so memorizing, I couldn’t put it down.

I had to wait for the release of Freedom: A Novel, but once it was out I was excited to get started on it.  It follows the courtship and marriage of a mid-western couple – suffice to say they have a more complicated relationship than most, which of course makes it that much more interesting.  I definitely enjoyed this more than Franzen’s The Corrections, and found the characters both totally selfish and still sympathetic.

After that came Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir.  I don’t usually read non-fiction, and this is pretty non-fiction-lite, but was still engaging and as a pregnant lady who is constantly wanting to eat, I could at least relate to the food addition part these days.  It’s always odd for me when I do pick up a memoir instead of a novel because they rarely have that clear conflict resolution, and I always want to Google people when I finish the book to see what happened afterwards!

The most recent book I finished was Snow Crash - very sci-fi cyberpunk, a genre that I usually don’t read but decided since I am doing so much reading I might as well insert something that will expand my knowledge base a little bit.  Science Fiction is a funny genre to me, I find it interesting to a point, but it feels like a lot of the sci-fi books that I read (and granted, most of the time they are in the “science fiction canon”) are a lot of philosophy broken up by short bursts of action.  I just finished the book last night and am having a tough time giving it a one-sentence summary – set in a version of 21st century America where everything is a corporation (including law enforcement and religion) and the hero is a sword-fighting hacker trying to save the world from a virus?  There are some people I would totally recommend this book to (Brent!  Drone!) and others…not so much.

I just started Stephen King’s UR, and next on the list is Deliverance.  I’ll mention that everything listed here was read on my Kindle – seriously, I love that thing.  If you are a big reader and don’t have one yet, you are truly missing out.  One of the best things about it is the sample feature – you are able to download the first few chapters of a book and read them before deciding to purchase the rest of the novel.  That was how I realized that I have no interest in reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I have no idea how much I’ll be able to read in the coming months, but looking back on this list I feel satisfied that I was able to get a decent number of books under my belt leading up to this point!  If you have any recommendations, or thoughts on any of the books I mentioned – I would be interested to hear either.