Happy Father's Day.

It's fitting that I am writing about American Pastoral by Philip Roth on Father's Day. This book was fantastic. It made me a little sad, though. Without giving away too much of the plot, the protagonist's daughter commits an act of political terrorism and the book is about how the protagonist deals with his feelings about his daughter and the terrorism, and how it changes his family and his outlook on the world.

There are a lot of flashbacks where this guy is pushing his daughter on the swing, or playing with her as a baby, etc., and it made me sad. As a parent of a one year old, I always love to imagine the possibilities of her life. Whether she'll love basketball, or classical music, or whatever. What she'll decide to be when she grows up. Who she'll fall in love with. And I can't imagine a few years down the road, having my life turned upside down by something like what happens to this guy. Very sad.

I can't stress enough, though, how fantastic this book is. I just couldn't put it down.

Everyone loves Amelia Bedelia.

Me: So this book I'm reading is really long. Amelia by Henry Fielding.
Mike: Amelia Bedelia?

3 days later...
Me: I can't figure out what's so great about Amelia anyway. All the men in the book want to be with her.
Mike: Amelia Bedelia?

A week later...
Me: Amelia's husband is such a moron.
Mike: Amelia Bedelia?
Me: [head explodes]

Finally finished this one. It was actually not about a character who takes directions literally and gets in funny scrapes. (thank you, wikipedia for refreshing my memory on that one!) This Amelia really dragged. The women in this novel were all kind of annoying. Even Amelia, the apparent best woman in the world, got on my nerves. There is a lot of hand wringing. And Booth is SUCH an idiot. Every time things start to look up for the family he messes it up somehow. Oh well. At least they really seemed to love their children and each other. I thought that part was really sweet.

I can't believe I'm done with #30!

A vocabulary lesson.

Oh HI! Thought I forgot about this? No waaaay. Recently finished another semester of grad school, so it's summer and that means...summer reading. I'm about halfway done with Absalom, Absalom! and that Bill Faulkner LOOOOOVES his vocabulary. Ow, my brain. Also, was the period not invented when this book was written? You know, that little dot that ends a thought? Needless to say, I'm not loving this book so far. This may also be due to the fact that I keep falling asleep when I read it. But that's ok, because it's one big long thought, so I wake up and I may have dropped the book in my sleep, open three pages beyond where I was, and it's the same sentence peppered with words like "dulcet," "wroils," and "miasmal."

I love vocabulary, but I cannot get onboard with all these unhappy Southern ladies and that dude Sutpen. Period.

Final thoughts to be determined.

Marissa

Move along. Nothing interesting to see here.

The Ambassadors by Henry James was slow going for me. I found his sentences long and I felt like it took FOREVER to get anywhere in this book. And you know what? Not that much happened. I really thought I missed something, so much that once I was done, I went over to Wikipedia to read the plot summary to find out what I missed. It turns out I hadn't missed anything at all. The book just wasn't that exciting.

I couldn't really relate to the characters and couldn't figure out what was so great about Paris or Madame de Vionnet that would cause Strether to risk a relationship with Mrs. Newsome, who obviously loved him very much. But maybe that's just because I'm an ignorant American!

This was the first book I read on my iPad. Awesome awesome awesome.

Books 31-40

Here are the next 10 books on the list.

31. American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1997)

32. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)

33. Amerika by Franz Kafka (1927)

34. Amok by Stefan Zweig (1922)

35. Amongst Women by John McGahern (1990)

36. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998)

37. Anagrams by Lorrie Moore (1986)

38. Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)

39. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)

40. Another World by Pat Barker (1998)

Seems like an interesting group of books. With a few notable exceptions, lots of relatively recent ones. I read Anna Karenina about 5 years ago, but I think I might reread it for this project. I enjoyed it and I'm curious to see what I will get out of it the second time around.

More like anecdotes. With porcupines.

I just finished Amateurs by Donald Barthelme.

This was super fast because it is under 200 pages, and it's a series of 3 to 5-page anecdotes, with a title page for each one. So it was really more around 100 pages of actual text. (So Marissa, that is why I read it so fast!)

This wasn't my favorite. I didn't really get a lot of the anecdotes. They didn't seem to relate to each other at all. And while some of the anecdotes featured hilariously funny satire (Porcupines at the University was my favorite. "Why not enroll them in Alternate Life Styles? We've already got too many people in Alternate Life Styles.") others seemed to make no sense.

We are all part of history...and it is very sad.

All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom is an interesting mix of a novel and a social commentary. Unlike Against the Grain, there is a real story here, interspersed with a whole lot of discussion about history and art. The real story here is very sad. This Dutch guy has lost his wife and child on a plane and he spends his time taking videos (he's a professional cameraman and is working on a documentary project for himself too) and talking with his friends in cafes. There's also an interesting young woman that he happens to come across.

The beauty of the book is really in the thoughts and discussions that he has with his friends. A lot of it went way over my head, but it was really interesting. My favorite thought though, was that clouds are the Holy Spirit's horses and they wander around the world making sure everything is OK. I like that thought a lot.