Scott got me this book for my birthday! How thoughtful. It's Ms. Wadham's true story of going to France, falling in love, getting married and staying there. (She's British.) But it's a lot more than that: it's more of a cultural analysis and comparison between France and the UK.
Well...I tried. I was very excited about it, really I was! But I got about a third of the way through it and it still wasn't grabbing me. It's a great idea, an interesting concept, but it ended up being a little too intellectual or philosophical or something-al for me.
So - onto the next one.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Les Hommes qui n'aimaient pas les femmes - Stieg Larsson
Holy crap! What a book. It's been a while since I've stayed up past my bedtime because I just had to keep reading. But for this book - I couldn't put it down at the end!
This novel was originally published in Swedish. When I was in France last fall, Catherine told me that this series (it's the first in a trilogy) might just be her favorite series ever, and she bought me this book - the first in the series - so that I'd be guaranteed to read it. Well, nine months later, I've finally read it.
It's a mystery story...but so much more. It's a rich world, with characters who are so complex and compelling that they feel very real. Essentially, if I can try to even simplify and summarize in a few sentences, it's the story of a journalist who agrees with the patriarch of a very wealthy family to write the family's story but, really, try to solve the mystery of what happened to Harriet Vanger back in the 1960's, when she suddenly and mysteriously disappeared and was probably murdered. But along the way there is so much more...I can't help but wonder if I shouldn't even try to describe it as I did, because I can not do it justice.
Originally written in Swedish, it's now also translated into English by Reg Keeland. One thing I don't understand, though, is the title. If I were to literally translate the French title into English, it would be Men Who Didn't Like Women. I don't speak Swedish, but from what I understand, that would be a literal translation of the Swedish title as well. However, you have - I'm sure - heard of this book as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And yes, there is a character that fits that description. But I can't help but wonder - why the change? Who decides that? What's wrong with the original title? Did some publisher feel that perhaps people might think it's about gay men and therefore not read it? Was it just viewed as not compelling enough? Yet it's a great success in other countries under that title. I think I prefer the original title, because it shifts the focus onto these men, and leaves the reader to try to figure out who these men are and why that might have been chosen as a title. I don't know...just something I've been thinking about.
Anyway, it's a GREAT book. Stieg Larsson could probably have pared down the book to just the core mystery and had the book be half the length. But you know what? Then it would be half as good. There are so many things that might not be related to the core mystery but that add a definite richness and depth to this story. And, to be honest, it makes me wonder if they'll come into play in books 2 or 3...I'll have to find out sooner rather than later. In the meantime, go find the English translation, and set aside some good hours to sink your teeth into it.
This novel was originally published in Swedish. When I was in France last fall, Catherine told me that this series (it's the first in a trilogy) might just be her favorite series ever, and she bought me this book - the first in the series - so that I'd be guaranteed to read it. Well, nine months later, I've finally read it.
It's a mystery story...but so much more. It's a rich world, with characters who are so complex and compelling that they feel very real. Essentially, if I can try to even simplify and summarize in a few sentences, it's the story of a journalist who agrees with the patriarch of a very wealthy family to write the family's story but, really, try to solve the mystery of what happened to Harriet Vanger back in the 1960's, when she suddenly and mysteriously disappeared and was probably murdered. But along the way there is so much more...I can't help but wonder if I shouldn't even try to describe it as I did, because I can not do it justice.
Originally written in Swedish, it's now also translated into English by Reg Keeland. One thing I don't understand, though, is the title. If I were to literally translate the French title into English, it would be Men Who Didn't Like Women. I don't speak Swedish, but from what I understand, that would be a literal translation of the Swedish title as well. However, you have - I'm sure - heard of this book as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And yes, there is a character that fits that description. But I can't help but wonder - why the change? Who decides that? What's wrong with the original title? Did some publisher feel that perhaps people might think it's about gay men and therefore not read it? Was it just viewed as not compelling enough? Yet it's a great success in other countries under that title. I think I prefer the original title, because it shifts the focus onto these men, and leaves the reader to try to figure out who these men are and why that might have been chosen as a title. I don't know...just something I've been thinking about.
Anyway, it's a GREAT book. Stieg Larsson could probably have pared down the book to just the core mystery and had the book be half the length. But you know what? Then it would be half as good. There are so many things that might not be related to the core mystery but that add a definite richness and depth to this story. And, to be honest, it makes me wonder if they'll come into play in books 2 or 3...I'll have to find out sooner rather than later. In the meantime, go find the English translation, and set aside some good hours to sink your teeth into it.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Boyfriends From Hell - Kevin Bentley, Editor
Oh, how fun this book is. My friend Jen bought it, not realizing that it's all about gay men and their horrid boyfriends...despite the clearly very homoerotic drawing on the cover. Oh, Jen, we love you. :-) So she sent it up to me.
It was a very quick read; I started it last night and finished it this morning. The book is a collection from different gay male writers, describing bad first dates, horrible relationships, one night stands gone wrong and the like. Some I could totally relate to! Others I couldn't - and I'm kind of glad.
Great stories, lots of fun.
It was a very quick read; I started it last night and finished it this morning. The book is a collection from different gay male writers, describing bad first dates, horrible relationships, one night stands gone wrong and the like. Some I could totally relate to! Others I couldn't - and I'm kind of glad.
Great stories, lots of fun.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Que serais-je sans toi? - Guillaume Musso
Another French book I got on my trip over there last fall. Guillaume Musso writes very enjoyable stories that are generally pretty easy to follow. There is typically some sort of love story where people are, for some reason, kept apart; and there is also typically some sort of supernatural or other-worldly element.
In this story, which is literally translated as What Would I Be Without You?, Martin and Gabrielle meet at age 19. She's American, he's French. He returns to France and, for reasons he doesn't understand, she breaks it off with him. Fast forward fifteen years; Martin is now a cop with a hard heart. He's chasing after an international art thief who just so happens to be Gabrielle's father, who she thought died before she was born.
Martin pursues the thief to the US, to San Francisco, where they both end up seeing Gabrielle. Imagine her shock! But then the two men end up in a coma, where they spend time together in this other world, and then work out their differences.
I enjoyed the story; it's what I've come to expect from Guillaume Musso. No new ground-breaking stuff here, but an enjoyable relatively fast read.
In this story, which is literally translated as What Would I Be Without You?, Martin and Gabrielle meet at age 19. She's American, he's French. He returns to France and, for reasons he doesn't understand, she breaks it off with him. Fast forward fifteen years; Martin is now a cop with a hard heart. He's chasing after an international art thief who just so happens to be Gabrielle's father, who she thought died before she was born.
Martin pursues the thief to the US, to San Francisco, where they both end up seeing Gabrielle. Imagine her shock! But then the two men end up in a coma, where they spend time together in this other world, and then work out their differences.
I enjoyed the story; it's what I've come to expect from Guillaume Musso. No new ground-breaking stuff here, but an enjoyable relatively fast read.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
The Milagro Beanfield War - John Nichols
Holy crap, what a great book. It took me a while to get through it, mostly because I didn't dedicate the time to it that I wanted. I'm so glad to have finally finished it though! But I'll miss some of these characters. And, truly, John Nichols' writing style. It's so creative, so rich...He really knows how to create an entire world, and to give it such depth and feeling. For instance - and bear with me, this is a longer quote than what I would usually do, but it's well worth it - this is how he introduces us to Ruby.
For years many stories and quite a few unconfirmed rumors about the Strawberry Mesa Body Shop and Pipe Queen tycoon, Ruby Archuleta, had circulated between Milagro and Doña Luz. Some folks swore she was a witch; a few misguided harpies insinuated she had poisoned or otherwise murdered the three husbands who had died on her. Various highly impeachable sources suggested that Eliu Archuleta, her eighteen-year-old son, was actually the offspring of an affair between Ruby and the expatriot santo carver who had disappeared right after the Smokey the Bear statue riot, Snuffy Ledoux, a clandestine relationship that supposedly occurred while her second husband, Sufi Menopoulous, a Greek who had owned the Eagle Motel on Route 26 leading east from Chamisaville, lay dying of cancer at St. Claire's Hospital in the capital. Then again, for years a few hardcore gossips had whispered that Eliu was actually the product of a virgin birth.
Getting down to more verifiable facts, though, Ruby Archuleta was an uncertified midwife who had been safely delivering babies since 1940. She also qualified as one of the best fishermen in the area and was a deer hunter supreme. And whenever raspberries ripened in the local canyons a thousand jars of Ruby's raspberry jam appeared almost instantly on the shelves of Rael's store in Milagro, Benny's in Doña Luz, and the Flowering Wheat Health Food Store in Chamisaville, and she raked in the dinero hand over fist.
This dynamo measured five feet two inches tall, was forty-nine years old, and her misty red hair had mostly turned to gray. With her son Eliu, her gigantic lover, Claudio Garcia, and a roly-poly hillbilly mechanic named Marvin LaBlue, she lived in a mud-plastered railroad tie house situated on a hill overlooking the Body Shop and Pipe Queen, an enterprise inherited from her first husband, a charismatic hustler named Ray Mingleback, who had drowned on Halloween night, 1958, when his Rolls Royce dove off the north-south highway into the Rio Grande about twenty miles below Chamisaville.
All of that to introduce Ruby. And, quite frankly, I love it. It helps bring us into this world inhabited by all of these different people; it helps to make them real and to me us want to spend time with them.
The story - well, it's a simple enough premise. In the little town of Milagro, mostly "Chicanos" as they call themselves, have lived for generations. They are poor and have little to their names. Even their water has been taken from them; the nearby river is off-limits for watering crops, and will be used to help build a new community and golf course...making the rich richer, and the poor poorer. Well, one day Jose Mondragon decides to go out, tap into that water and irrigate a bean field. And that begins the war - the war over water, over pride, over cultural identity, over money. It's a symbolic gesture that Jose just decides to do for the heck of it; he doesn't mean it in any symbolic way. He doesn't want to start a war. He just wants to grow beans. But of course it's so much more.
There's such complexity to this story. It's about a clash of cultural identities: Chicanos versus Anglos. It's about classism. But it's also about understanding your actions, and what your role is in your world. And it's about trying to figure out if you know who you are, what you want out of your life, and where you're going. And having the courage to stand up for what you believe in.
A great, amazing story. Go read it.
For years many stories and quite a few unconfirmed rumors about the Strawberry Mesa Body Shop and Pipe Queen tycoon, Ruby Archuleta, had circulated between Milagro and Doña Luz. Some folks swore she was a witch; a few misguided harpies insinuated she had poisoned or otherwise murdered the three husbands who had died on her. Various highly impeachable sources suggested that Eliu Archuleta, her eighteen-year-old son, was actually the offspring of an affair between Ruby and the expatriot santo carver who had disappeared right after the Smokey the Bear statue riot, Snuffy Ledoux, a clandestine relationship that supposedly occurred while her second husband, Sufi Menopoulous, a Greek who had owned the Eagle Motel on Route 26 leading east from Chamisaville, lay dying of cancer at St. Claire's Hospital in the capital. Then again, for years a few hardcore gossips had whispered that Eliu was actually the product of a virgin birth.
Getting down to more verifiable facts, though, Ruby Archuleta was an uncertified midwife who had been safely delivering babies since 1940. She also qualified as one of the best fishermen in the area and was a deer hunter supreme. And whenever raspberries ripened in the local canyons a thousand jars of Ruby's raspberry jam appeared almost instantly on the shelves of Rael's store in Milagro, Benny's in Doña Luz, and the Flowering Wheat Health Food Store in Chamisaville, and she raked in the dinero hand over fist.
This dynamo measured five feet two inches tall, was forty-nine years old, and her misty red hair had mostly turned to gray. With her son Eliu, her gigantic lover, Claudio Garcia, and a roly-poly hillbilly mechanic named Marvin LaBlue, she lived in a mud-plastered railroad tie house situated on a hill overlooking the Body Shop and Pipe Queen, an enterprise inherited from her first husband, a charismatic hustler named Ray Mingleback, who had drowned on Halloween night, 1958, when his Rolls Royce dove off the north-south highway into the Rio Grande about twenty miles below Chamisaville.
All of that to introduce Ruby. And, quite frankly, I love it. It helps bring us into this world inhabited by all of these different people; it helps to make them real and to me us want to spend time with them.
The story - well, it's a simple enough premise. In the little town of Milagro, mostly "Chicanos" as they call themselves, have lived for generations. They are poor and have little to their names. Even their water has been taken from them; the nearby river is off-limits for watering crops, and will be used to help build a new community and golf course...making the rich richer, and the poor poorer. Well, one day Jose Mondragon decides to go out, tap into that water and irrigate a bean field. And that begins the war - the war over water, over pride, over cultural identity, over money. It's a symbolic gesture that Jose just decides to do for the heck of it; he doesn't mean it in any symbolic way. He doesn't want to start a war. He just wants to grow beans. But of course it's so much more.
There's such complexity to this story. It's about a clash of cultural identities: Chicanos versus Anglos. It's about classism. But it's also about understanding your actions, and what your role is in your world. And it's about trying to figure out if you know who you are, what you want out of your life, and where you're going. And having the courage to stand up for what you believe in.
A great, amazing story. Go read it.
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