Fiction: This Is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper

Have looked at it in the bookstore a few times so picked it up when I saw it at the library the other day.

Three brothers, sister, insane mother all in different stages of romantic mess-ups sit shiva for their dad for a week and contretemps ensue.

Occasionally a bit crass but entertaining. Both funny and sad in parts, I liked the main character and I really loved Penny.

At some point you lose sight of your actual parents; you just see a basketful of history and unresolved issues. …

Penny’s honesty has always been like nudity in an action movie: gratuitous but no less welcome for it. …

You can’t let your dog crap on the sidewalk, but it’s perfectly acceptable to blow carcinogens down other people’s throats. Somewhere along the way, smokers exempted themselves from the social contract.

Books Read in 2009

date refers to date finished only; some books get started, and then set down for ages. i.e., just b/c I finished two books in a given day doesn’t mean I read two entire books that day!

  • The Good Fairies of New York, by Martin Millar (12/30)
  • Marcher, by Chris Beckett (12/28)
  • A Plea for Eros, By Siri Hustvedt (12/27)
  • The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews (12/22)
  • City of Thieves, by David Benioff (12/21)
  • Undiscovered Country, by Lin Enger (12/14)
  • Doubleblind, by Ann Aguirre (12/13)
  • Blue Diablo, by Ann Aguirre (12/6)
  • Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant?, by Preston Jones and Greg Graffin (11/29)
  • The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks (11/25)
  • Normal People Don’t Live Like This, by Dylan Landis (11/21)
  • The English American, by Alison Larkin (11/20)
  • Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins (11/18)
  • Fire, by Kristin Cashore (11/16)
  • Graceling, by Kristin Cashore (11/16)
  • Magic in the Shadows, by Devon Monk (11/8)
  • Toast, by Nigel Slater (11/5)
  • The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson (10/28)
  • Mother of Storms, by John Barnes (10/26)
  • Ravens, by George Dawes Green (10/19)
  • Even Money, by Dick Francis (and Felix Francis) (10/16)
  • Liar, by Justine Larbalestier (10/14)
  • Midnighters 3: Blue Noon, by Scott Westerfeld (10/13)
  • The White Darkness, by Geraldine McCaughrean (10/12)
  • Sweep 15: Night’s Child, by Cate Tiernan (10/10)
  • Midnighters 2: Touching Darkness, by Scott Westerfeld (10/9)
  • Sweep 14: Full Circle, by Cate Tiernan (10/8)
  • Sweep 13: Reckoning, by Cate Tiernan (10/8)
  • Sweep 12: Eclipse, by Cate Tiernan (10/7)
  • Midnighters 1: The Secret Hour, by Scott Westerfeld (9/30)
  • Sweep 11: Origins, by Cate Tiernan (9/29)
  • Sweep 10: Seeker, by Cate Tiernan (9/28)
  • Sweep 9: Strife, by Cate Tiernan (9/26)
  • Sweep 8: Changeling, by Cate Tiernan (9/25)
  • Sweep 7: The Calling, by Cate Tiernan (9/23)
  • Sweep 6: Spellbound, by Cate Tiernan (9/23)
  • Sweep 5: Awakening, by Cate Tiernan (9/23)
  • Sweep 4: Dark Magick, by Cate Tiernan (9/23)
  • Sweep 3: Blood Witch, by Cate Tiernan (9/23)
  • Sweep 2: The Coven, by Cate Tiernan (9/23)
  • Sweep 1: Book of Shadows, by Cate Tiernan (9/23)
  • A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy (9/20)
  • Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (9/18)
  • Evil at Heart, by Chelsea Cain (9/11)
  • White Time, by Margo Lanagan (8/31) (stories)
  • Hunting Ground, by Patricia Briggs (8/25)
  • Happy All the Time, by Laurie Colwin (8/24)
  • Cry Wolf, by Patricia Briggs (8/20)
  • Carved in Bone, by Jefferson Bass (8/17)
  • Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill (8/16)
  • Sea Lord, by Virginia Kantra (8/2)
  • Sea Fever, by Virginia Kantra (8/1)
  • Mark of the Demon, by Diana Rowland (7/31)
  • Sea Witch, by Virginia Kantra (7/28)
  • The Death of Sweet Mister, by Daniel Woodrell (7/27)
  • In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan (7/27)
  • Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (7/25)
  • Emerald City, by Jennifer Egan (6/25)
  • 13 Bullets, by David Wellington (6/21)
  • Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi (6/19)
  • Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn (6/12)
  • Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem (6/8)
  • Magic in the Blood, by Devon Monk (6/3)
  • Gone Tomorrow: A Reacher Novel, by Lee Child (6/1)
  • Dead and Gone, by Charlaine Harris (5/31)
  • All Summer, by Claire Kilroy (5/28)
  • Dracula, by Bram Stoker (5/21) (re-read)
  • Wanderlust, by Ann Aguirre (5/21)
  • Grimspace, by Ann Aguirre (5/18)
  • From Dead to Worse, by Charlaine Harris (5/11)
  • All Together Dead, by Charlaine Harris (5/8)
  • Definitely Dead, by Charlaine Harris (5/6)
  • The Dart League King, by Keith Lee Morris (5/4)
  • Dead as a Doornail, by Charlaine Harris (5/1)
  • The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart (4/25)
  • Eureka Street, by Robert McLiam Wilson (4/24)
  • Club Dead, by Charlaine Harris (4/23)
  • Living Dead in Dallas, by Charlaine Harris (4/21)
  • Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris (4/14)
  • The Three Evanglists, by Fred Vargas (4/14)
  • Tell No One, by Harlan Coben (4/12)
  • Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson (4/11)
  • Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris (4/8)
  • City of Glass, by Cassandra Clare (4/2)
  • Little Bee, by Chris Cleave (4/1)
  • The Pianist, by Wladyslaw Szpilman (3/28)
  • The Feminists Go Swimming, by Michael Collins (3/28)
  • Circle of the Dead, by Ingrid Black (3/27)
  • City of Refuge, by Tom Piazza (3/25)
  • The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan (3/19)
  • Domestic Violence, by Eavan Boland (3/12) (poetry)
  • Flesh and Bone, by Jefferson Bass (3/9)
  • A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, by Molly Wizenberg (3/8)
  • The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson (3/8)
  • Bone Crossed, by Patricia Briggs (3/7)
  • Antarctica, by Claire Keegan (3/6) (stories)
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (3/4) (re-read)
  • For All We Know, by Ciaran Carson (2/26) (poetry)
  • Delicate Edible Birds, by Lauren Groff (2/22) (stories)
  • Dark Hollow, by John Connolly (2/22)
  • Sweetheart, by Chelsea Cain (2/21)
  • Every Dead Thing, by John Connolly (2/19)
  • Lies of Silence, by Brian Moore (2/17)
  • The Devil’s Bones, by Jefferson Bass (2/16)
  • L.A. Outlaws, by T. Jefferson Parker (2/15)
  • The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace (2/13)
  • Satan Says, by Sharon Olds (2/11) (poetry)(reread)
  • Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang (1/31) (stories)
  • The Partly Cloudy Patriot, by Sarah Vowell (1/28)
  • Tethered, by Amy MacKinnon (1/24)
  • City of Ashes, by Cassandra Clare (1/24)
  • Magic to the Bone, by Devon Monk (1/21)
  • Mainspring, by Jay Lake (1/19)
  • A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (reread) (1/14)
  • HeartSick, by Chelsea Cain (1/4)
  • Shakespeare Wrote for Money, by Nick Hornby (1/3) (essays)
  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (1/2)
  • City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare (1/2)

SciFi: Doubleblind, by Ann Aguirre

The third book in the Sirantha Jax series. I really love this character and this world but I felt a little disjointed for the first bit. I guess I didn’t remember clearly enough what happened at the end of Book 2… And it’s going to suck when Book 4 comes out and I can’t go back and look at the end of this one again since I checked it out of the library! Oh woe is the unemployed student.

Love the action, love the world, love the Vel character. Really into this series.

SciFi: Marcher, by Chris Beckett

Very cool sci fi that I picked up on a whim at the library. A little further ahead in a grimier version of our modern world, where the immigration problem has become “shifters”, people who take a mysterious drug called “slip” that slips or shifts them into other, parallel universes. Charles is one of the immigration officers involved. Lots of cool thoughts about identity and choices and time and linearity. Very cool!

Essays: A Plea for Eros, by Siri Hustvedt

I had read and really enjoyed Hustvedt’s intense novel “What I Loved” (if you search for “Hustvedt” on this page you can hear more) and although I am not a big reader of nonfiction, one day in the bookstore this just insisted on coming home with me.

These are really interesting essays. My favorites were the literary ones – ponderings on The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), The Bostonians (H. James) and Our Mutual Friend (Dickens) – and, as someone who was a New Yorker at the time, her essay on 9/11 from a NYer’s point of view.

The Minnesota stuff is all very familiar to me, I can picture those places not just from my own experiences in small towns there, and my undergrad experience at Gustavus (very similar to St. Olaf, where she went), but also from having been to many of the actual places.

She makes herself very vulnerable here. Way beyond anything I could ever commit to print. And at some points as similarly intense as in her fiction. Burning brightly.

Fantasy: “Hunger Games” and “Catching Fire” both by Suzanne Collins

Another fantastic duo, I would recommend these just as highly as the Kristin Cashore books, but note that they are very, very different.

The dystopian universe here is almost Dickensian in its shadings (although with fewer of the finer details) and it definitely makes you, the reader, long for escape for these characters, for survival, for even just the littlest bit of hope.

Unexpectedly cruel with odd kindnesses. And, as in much YA, some growing up and self discovery along the way.

An adventure of endurance… You’ll want to block off a day for these as you will find yourself unable to do anything else.

And if you’ve read the story “Wealth” in Margo Langan’s “White Time” collection, it almost seems like they come from the same world. In fact, I drove myself insane for an entire afternoon trying to figure out where that story was from as they felt so much of a piece.