Saturday, February 21, 2009

vacation reading: modern latino american fiction, WWII thriller, Jane Austen

I guess it's really hard for me to read anything unless I get the fuck out of town. Living in NY and working full time and going to school part time has lead me to basically read the paper, some magazines and school work in addition to a gillion blogs, facebook and twitter. Sad.

Well luckily I'm addicted to the beach so I have been able to keep up with a decent amount of reading over the past year. Here's the latest installment. I didn't finish the last one yet but I'll try to finish it by years end.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
My classmate Vanessa let me borrow this and I enjoyed it mostly until the end. It's a funny depiction of a tragic sad sap Oscar Wao and his Dominican family and all of their comic tragedies, curses and disastrous love lives. It's got a lot of Spanglish and Spanish and I thought a lot while I was reading it that it might be really hard to follow if you didn't have sort of an idea of what was being said. At the end it just sort of dragged on and the characters really were sad and pathetic and tragic and I kind of just wanted it to be over.


Up in Honey's Room
by Elmore Leonard
I picked this up on my annual stop to the Cannes English Bookshop. I attend a conference every January in Cannes and a four years ago I found this shop and make it a point to visit every year. I pretty much make a random impulse buy and this year "Up In Honey's Room" was the result. This was the UK edition and it was on the discount table and had a cool cover so it was the winner. I dug the book and it's raunchiness and period thrillerness.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
I may have picked up this Signet Classics edition on last years Cannes trip? Anyway, I finally got around to reading it and honestly Jane Austen is sorta tough vacation reading because I really have to concentrate to make sure I know who the hell everyone is. I got about a quarter through it and am into it so far and have it on my nightstand now so I'm gonna try to knock it out. I think on the facebook "which Jane Austen heroine are you?" quiz I was Fanny Price and it makes sense so far.

4 comments:

Tobi Vail said...

hi Molly,
Vacation=reading and sitting by the water for me too. I look forward to summer vacation at Lake Chelan, which is supposed to be a family hang out but where I really just get to do all my reading and swim and sleep and eat and read and swim and chill. Sounds like you planned well and got to have Summer in the Winter time! I'm wishing for that now, as it is snowing again and the power keeps going out. brrrrr. xo xo Tobi
p.s. I ordered that Feminism and War book today if you are up for it, it might be a little hardcore, but I hope to get through it by May so please read along if you are so inclined. I'm totally up for reading that other book you suggested next. Can't remember what it's called--about women in Nicaragua during the war.

Slim Moon said...

i went through an elmore leonard phase, specifically right when i got out of treatment. read about ten of his books, maybe 15 actually.

i was fanny too!

maggie said...

that is hilarious molly - I bought mansfield park in the english bookstore in nice!

maggie said...

oh yeah and I am fanny too.