Fiction: The Trial, by Franz Kafka

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This was our challenge book for December. So much fun!!! Dad had read it back in high school and been totally traumatized. Then at some point watched the Orson Welles film of it and found it equally traumatizing. But somehow, to both of us, this time around it was just soooo farcical. Might make a good companion for a book we read earlier in the year “The Good Soldier Svejk”.

The end is a bit of a shocker just because the narrator has, for the most part, taken things so lightly until then that you sort of expect it to just keep going on forever. It was a lot of fun to read.

Fiction: Deaf Sentence, by David Lodge

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So good. So sad. With Lodge, as with Philip Roth, as he gets older, more infirm and perhaps crankier, so do his characters. I loved the diary-style writing. I loved the tone.

Really only one thing rang false to me and that was an extensive description of a pair of breasts (and how the narrator could tell they were natural) on page 5 (only the third page of actual text). I actually called my dad and asked if that paragraph stuck out like a sore thumb to him as well. AND IT DID. So it wasn’t just a girlreaction, yo.

It was interesting in reading this to think about how there never stops being a time in life when you can inadvertently make bad decisions, or make so-so decisions that cascade into much worse events. Something I think most of us assume will cease to happen as we age.
Really good, but I think I would read other Lodge before this one, if I were to try him for the first time. “Small World” and “Changing Places” are both really great.

In my library this is classified as somewhat academic function. Good companions would be “Straight Man” by Richard Russo or “Foolscap” by Michael Malone (or see the “academic foibles” list on this page).

Mystery: The Lover’s Knot, by Clare O’Donohue

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This was OK / fine for light reading. But the attempt at misdirection seemed way too obvious to me and it drove me nuts the entire time I was reading it that the quilt on the cover of the book was a sampler and not a Lover’s Knot, one of the main metaphors. Dear publishing house: when you’re publishing a book for the crafty market, these types of things WILL be noticed. Idiots.

December Album Reviews

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I bought only two albums in December and a few random singles. Say wha? Definitely the least amount of $$ spent on music all year.

Absolutely Love & Adore:
Frightened Rabbit “The Midnight Organ Fight” – I think this album is outstanding but I don’t have that much more to say about it than when I mentioned it the first time. I listened to it over and over in December. The Vores described it as sounding like Counting Crows. OK, I’ll give them that. I would describe it as… let’s say a combination of Counting Crows with Snow Patrol (from their first album before they got soooo super cheesy and overdramatic in EVERY SONG) but with slightly better music, better lyrics, and better accents. “Backwards Walk” is definitely my favorite song but I’m not sure there’s a single one I don’t like. (“The Twist” may be my #2 fave. I know you wanted to know that.)

Favorite Singles (not on any of the above albums):

  • “Halo” Beyonce – You could not possibly be prepared for the crazy amount of love I have for this song so I’ll just leave it at that.
  • “Shattered Glass” Britney Spears – Yes. I KNOW!
  • “Someone Else’s Life” Joshua Radin – Swoon.
  • “Duet” Rachael Yamagata (with Ray LaMontagne, I believe, although he was not credited on iTunes when I bought it)
  • “Forever Young” (cover) Audra Mae & Forest Rangers – both the accompanied and the acapella versions are soooo pretty (this was featured on Sons of Anarchy. FYI.)

Other Albums I Liked:

  • The Sea and Cake “Car Alarm” – I bought this just to get a little familiar with their tunes since I was going to see them on New Year’s Eve and had never listened to them before (I know!). It’s pleasant enough and I like it but it’s really (really) tame compared to their live show. Dear Sea and Cake fans, do they have an album that better represents what they sound like live? Lemme know, yo.

Not really for me / but maybe for you!:
Nada!

Shamefully have either not listened to at all, or not all the way through, or so few times that I can’t legitimately offer an opinion:
Nada!

À la Nick Hornby, books in/books out for January.

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Bought:

  • City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
  • HeartSick, by Chelsea Cain
  • Tethered, by Amy MacKinnon
  • The One Marvelous Thing, by Rikki DuCornet
  • City of Ashes, by Cassandra Clare
  • Working for the Devil, by Lilith Saintcrow
  • Magic to the Bone, by Devon Monk
  • The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

Read:
  • City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
  • Shakespeare Wrote for Money, by Nick Hornby
  • HeartSick, by Chelsea Cain
  • A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (re-read)
  • Mainspring, by Jay Lake
  • Magic to the Bone, by Devon Monk
  • City of Ashes, by Cassandra Clare
  • Tethered, by Amy MacKinnon
  • The Partly Cloudy Patriot, by Sarah Vowell
  • Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang

It was a good month for readin’. When I’m stressed out? I read.