"The Casual Vacancy" - J.K. Rowling

Published in 2012 by Little Brown

This was a highly anticipated novel obviously and because Harry Potter was so famous worldwide there was much debate whether the press was excited because the new book was good, or just because it was something new.  Well, I have read it, and I can say that it is good on it's own.

Kris can attest to the fact that I am not a big crier, there was one movie that we don't speak of (the puppy was going to DIE!!!!) but other than that, not so much with the waterworks.  So when I finished this novel and burst into tears it was a little confusing to say the least.

Rowling's writing is wonderful and filled with detail.  She is able to get inside the heads of her many characters and unlike Harry Potter, is able to give them honest thoughts for their ages.  The teenagers are horny and unhappy, the adults are. . . well also horny and unhappy, but they are also so much more.  Even though in the US the concept of a Casual Vacancy is not something we are familiar with, she is able to make the book interesting enough for the least politically inclined.

This is a rambling review but I have so many feelings.  All in all, A+ J.K.  Way to get outside of your comfort zone and write an excellent book.

Rating: ****

A New Year of Reading

2012 was a great year for reading! I finished new 44 books, 47 if I include rereading the hunger games, and after a little tallying the facts are in.

Pages read: 15,903

Average pages in a book: 361

Best Books of the Year: "Cutting For Stone" & "Atonement"

Worst Book of the Year: "The Best Ladies Detective Agency"

Favorite Quote:
"We're having an adventure. . . and most people live and die without being as lucky as we are."

As we go into 2013, I don't have a new planned number.  I think this year will be more about re-reading and trying to find books that really call out to me from authors I already know I like.

Now, onwards to the first book of 2013, "Casual Vacancy" by J.K. Rowling!

"How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you" - the Oatmeal

Published in 2012 by Matthew Inman

I'm counting this as a book even though it was cartoons. Funny pictures of kittens and silly comics, count me in.

The oatmeal is an online cartoon that looks at a wide variety of topics including adorable kittens.

Read this book. It's amazeballs.

Rating: *****

Quotes: every page

"In One Person" - John Irving

Published in 2012 by Garp Enterprises, Inc.

I really like John Irving, I like his repetitive themes about abortion, bears, and dysfunctional sexual relationships.  I like his stories about how families form and interact.  I even love his strange obsession with wrestling. But this was not his best.

The World According to Garp introduced me to his style of writing and I loved it.  The Cider House Rules introduced me to some of the most lovable hated characters I have read and was a beautiful story.  But this? This wandered, weaved, ducked, bobbed and nosedived into the floor.

I read this with no pretense, I received it without a book-jacket and started on page one without looking into it at all.  The writing style wasn't quite there and the way the narration looped around itself was distracting at best and confusing at worst.  While we follow the tale of a young man who is bisexual, his attraction to manly women, women with small breasts, men of all ages, and his best friend, it's easy to get confused as to which part of his life Irving is writing about.  The mother is a strange character who is confusing and never has her problem resolved in the story. The inevitable introduction of AIDS and the 100 pages that follow where every person we have been introduced to dies, is not a pleasant read and (Spoiler) when he finally meets his dad it feels thrown in like the publishers wanted some closure.

Overall, I wanted more, I wanted Irving.  But I did love that the Bears in this novel were far different than in any other.

Rating: **

Quotes:
"Like my grandmother, Aunt Muriel managed to be both arrogant and judemental without saying anything that was either verifiable or interesting: in this respect  both my grandmother and my aunt struck me as superior-sounding bores."

"Yet me infatuation with Miss Frost had certainly shown me that my penis had ideas that seemed entirely separate from my own thoughts. And if penises could have ideas, it was not such a stretch to imagine that breasts could also think for themselves."

"Isn't it perfectly possible that Nils and his wife are too depressed to have kids? The prospect of having kids depressed the shit out of me and I;m neither suicidal nor Norwegian"

"Sweet Tooth" - Ian McEwan

Published in 2012 by Jonathan Cape

King of the Twist! That is my new nickname for Ian McEwan.  If you have read (or seen) Atonement you already know that this guys got endings in the bag.  I was truly surprised when this novel flipped from slightly boring romantic intrigue based in the 1970s, and made me go back a page to catch the twist again.

This is the story of Serena Frome (rhymes with Plume) and her induction and service with MI5.  It is the 1970's in Britain and there is considerable turmoil over communism and how to sneakily keep the citizens from seeing it as a good idea.  McEwan explores the relationship between government and literature, and throws in a healthy dose of girlish anxiety.

It wasn't my favorite novel, a little bland but well written and then end was worth the few days it took.  Unlike atonement, the characters weren't quite as well formed and I personally didn't feel any real emotional bond to them.

Rating: ***

Quotes:
"I didn't use, and hadn't even heard, the word "totalitarianism." I probably would have through it had something to do with refusing a drink.

"I was the bases of readers.  All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form"

"It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say "Marry me" by the end.

"There was, in me view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honor.  No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual.  This was a contract founded on mutual trust."

"Granta 119: Britain"

Published in 2012 by Granta

Granta is a win-some-lose-some books by mail subscription. Four times a year I receive a compilation of Hirt stories that all focus in some way on a specific topic.

This quarters topic was Britain; the stories, poems, and photos ranged in style and composition but were all somehow clearly linked by the overarching theme.

This was a win-some.

Quotes:
"She paid twenty quid for a private dance with a girl named Clover, who had pigtails and purple nails and a tattoo of a unicorn just above her groin.
'Its my power animal,' she said.
'I'm pregnant,' said Katherine."

"Living in a racist society has a profound psychological impact. It produces in it's victims a sort of hyper-vigilance, as the individual attempts to read those around them and so anticipate the hostility that might assail them."

"Sacre Bleu" - Christopher Moore

Published in 2012 by William Morrow

This book is the epitome of Christopher Moore.  As much as I always want to love his books, they tend to either be super awesome (A Dirty Job, Lamb, Fool) or be kind of bleh (Fluke, the one about vampires, something about a Sequined Nun Love.)  This was a little of both.  Parts were wry, compelling and laugh out loud funny.  Parts were dry, boring, and a little overwrought.

A very strange and entertaining idea though, Sacre Bleu is a story about famous artists compelled to paint by a mystical little man who creates a magical color of blue that allows for some crazy things to happen.  While it was not his best book it was a fun and interesting look at the lives of men we often forget. . . had lives!

It shows us that these men were contemporaries and friends, just men living in Paris and getting by with the world around them and what they were given in life.

Quotes:
"Now the ragpicker threw his head back and laughed in the way only a Frenchman with 7 teeth and a conscience soaked in wine can laugh, the sound his donkey might make if he were a heavier smoker and had just licked the devils ass to chase all taste of goodness from his tongue.  The ragpicker wasn't a scoundrel, but scoundrels envied his laugh."

Rating: ***

"What Color is Your Parachute 2012" - Richard N. Bolles

Published in 2012 by Ten Speed Press

This book is touted as "the best-selling job-hunting book in the world, 10 million copies sold, revised and updated Annually." And that is an excellent description of what I expected from it.  A great manual to help me find my way in the crazy job market.  As it is in it's 40th year of republishing, it seemed pretty dang trustworthy.

Like many people my age, I graduated from college under the impression that someone was just going to hand me a job and say "thanks so much for your hard work, your office is in the corner."  But obviously, that's not really how the world works.  So for almost two years I have been updating, changing, sending, faxing, emailing, and color coding my resume.  With little to no luck.

A friend recommended I try this book to give my resume a little more direction, he didn't mention that it is a great way to reevaluate what I am looking for and HOW I am searching for it.  Through exercises, lists and some actual self evaluation I was able to completely revamp my resume and give myself a second wind (who am I kidding, 14th or 15th wind is more accurate.)

Rating: ****