The unfairness of it all...

I recently finished listening to The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and it was a downer. Newland Archer sped up his engagement and wedding in order to quell feelings he had for his fiancee's cousin, but to no avail. He was still in love with her to the very end, at which point he was old and sad and couldn't even bring himself to go visit her. The cousin, Ellen, was persona non grata because she had left her husband but couldn't divorce lest it shame the family. It was, in short, a book about obligations vs. desires. I enjoyed the book very much, but it left me feeling sort of bummed. Luckily, things are a little better these days in terms of marrying outside one's class or race, but there is still a lingering stigma.

Marissa

Looking for a book to help me sleep.

First of all, I would like to say that i really dislike pregnancy insomnia. Usually I can sleep just fine. Not lately. However, being up this late did allow me to finally finish The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera. This book has been annoying me for about a week and I am glad to be through with it.

It doesn't seem to be a novel at all. Rather, it is this collection of stories and recollections. Some are in the first person and some are clearly fiction. They mostly deal with the struggle of the Czech people throughout recent history. And also sex. It all seemed so random and disjointed to me.

Unfortunately though, as tough as this material was to slog through, it didn't help me get to sleep!

Couldn't put down the Book of Illusions!

Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions was published in 2002. I am so surprised that I had not heard of it or read it before now. This book is fantastic. It is a wonderful layering of stories, a Vermont literature professor, a 1920s silent film star, and a mysterious young woman. I could not put it down. (That's usually the test for me - some books I just read so quickly because they are so interesting I have to keep reading and reading to find out what happens!)

This story hinges on the mysterious disappearance of this silent film star. The author is able to really show us America back in the 1920s as well as in the present day - I'm telling you, this book is so. good.

Short stories!

I don't know why I don't like short stories more. It is nice to sit down and quickly read a whole story - even when you don't have a lot of time, you can read one and then go about your business while turning over the ideas.

The next book on the list of New York Times Best Books of 2006 is The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel. I had not heard of this author before. I really liked this collection. Her work is very direct and her sentences are very short. Not a lot of extra words in here. But the stories were really interesting and good and full of emotions. I liked these a lot.

Books 101-110

Here are the next 10 books on the list.

101. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera (1979)
102. Born in Exile by George Gissing (1892)
103. Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan (1958)
104. Bouvard and Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert (1881)
105. A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White (1982)
106. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
107. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote (1958)
108. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1973)
109. The Breast by Philip Roth (1972)
110. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)

It takes a lot of the fun out of a crime story...

...when there isn't a whole lot of suspense. John Banville's The Book of Evidence is kind of a unique way to write a book. Basically, this guy has been arrested for a crime, and the book is his confession. So at the outset you know that he has been caught - hence there is sort of no suspense about how it is going to end. The story was OK, and it was an interesting idea. It just wasn't a page turner and didn't really stand out that much for me.

Imagine...

The Book of Daniel is based on a really cool premise. The book imagines that the Rosenbergs had children, and follows Daniel, the older son, as he grows up through the 1950s and 60s and deals with his parents' deaths. The idea of it was so great, I was really excited to read this one.

It turned out not to be my favorite book, though. The way it was written was really confusing and there were a lot of flashbacks and jumping around points. I can definitely tell it is good literature, but for a casual reader like me, it wasn't the greatest. I'm sure I missed a lot of important stuff. So I was a little bummed out - I really wanted to like this more than I did.