Reading (redux)

To return to my former post, I wanted to say that since I wrote about Landsman last night, I have received a number of requests for more information about the book. As Peter Melman's new honorary publicist, all I have to say is--look people, stop being such cheapskates, and go buy the book, for crying out loud. I hate reviews that say things like "If you liked A, you'll like B," as it seems to downplay the originality of B. To me, if you're a thinking person who likes books, you'll like this one. How highly do I recommend it? Let me just say that I respect it to such an extent that I removed the jacket before reading it in the bath. THAT's love. :^)

Before I leave the subject of my summertime reading list, I did want to mention a couple more items that I think are worth sharing:

9) Mr. Emerson's Wife by Amy Belding Brown. Brown explores the imagined life of Lydia Jackson, Emerson's second wife, who gets frisky with Thoreau in this very respectably written little novel. This does come a little closer to the kind of book that gets on Oprah's list, as there is an actual romp in the hayloft, but don't be deterred--it's still a good read, especially if you're obsessed with mid-19th century writers and their world, as I am.

10) Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. This is pretty much as close as I got to seeing a movie this year. The opening chapters of this book are its best, but I still recommend it highly...it's one of the few books I think I've read lately that I'd describe as stylistically restrained--actually, The Apprentice would fall into that category as well. I'm not sure if less is always more, but in this case it would seem so.


OK, this will probably doom me to some sort of writerly hell, but I will also tell you about a couple of books to avoid:

1) The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. Trust me.

2) The Da Vinci Code. I'm pretty much the last person in the whole country to read this book...except, oh yeah, I read it already when I read Angels and Demons in 2006. I guess it pays to pick a formula and go with it. Anyway, the letters to the editor in your local paper about this book were waaay more interesting than the book itself.

3) According to my husband, who wishes to spare the world from the torture of reading Umberto Eco, the most important book to avoid is Baudolino. According to Adam, he actively mourns the hours he spent reading Baudolino. However, The Name of the Rose has been granted a stay of execution--it's not as good as all the unspeakably tedious essays by French postmodernists would have you believe, but it's definitely enjoyable. Actually, now that I come to think about it, at least some of those horrid essays were written by Eco himself. Hmmm.

4) Atlas Shrugged. I refer to my earlier experience:
http://livingdeliberately-amyo.blogspot.com/2008_05_18_archive.html

Baby Daniel has my back on this one.

Happy reading!