Rookie Reads

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who sneak ahead to the last page of a book before finishing, and those who do not. 

I'm of the latter and my greatest pet peeve are those of the former.

And now, a few summer reading reviews.



This one, An Abundance of Katherines by John Greene, you need to read it. Seriously, if you want/need to laugh. If you share my appreciation for young adult lit. Read it. Seriously, read it. The characters do pay homage to Norman Mailer with excessive use of the word "fugging" and I literally mean "fugging" and not what Mailer replaced with "fug". I enjoyed it thoroughly, the clever footnotes especially. It was one of the option for our department's summer reading and I'm ever so happy it was on the list.



Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie was quick and lovely. It reaches into the human quest, desire, need for creativity and imagination. I loved it. I only wonder, as with anything translated, what was lost in translation. This was also on our school's summer reading list.


The great surprise of the summer:

Whirligig by Paul Fleischman. I can't say much about it without giving it away, but the chapters that veer from our protagonist were my favorite. Quick, adolescent loveliness. Also got this one from the school's list.


Now, I feel divided about this one:

Niffeneger is a talented story teller. Much of the prose was exquisite. The concept itself was intriguing and how it played out in the texture of the story itself was quite brilliant and seamless. But the sex was, well, excessive in my opinion. I believe a marriage should have that kind of passion, absolutely. But it seemed like we just kept going back there.



Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is now in a box somewhere. It just didn't catch me and keep me soon enough. It spent the summer living at my bedside beneath other books. I hope to return to it eventually and give it another go-round when I'm not distracted by all the other reading to be done.



And this little piggy (Edgar Mint) has been interrupted by packing and purging. I'll come back to it later.