See, what happened was, I was going to write about some of these yesterday, but then I had a ham feast. And then I was going to write about them today, but my internet went out right after I wrote this morning’s post and finally came back on, so now I have six books to write about all at once. Sorry.

Julie and Julia

So, the thing about blog to book projects is that I usually don’t like them. The books tend to feel extremely choppy and poorly assembled, even when the blog’s author is quite talented and funny. Which just goes to illustrate the difference between the media of books and blogs, I suppose.

Anyway, this is a blog to book that doesn’t suck, largely because it is well put together, thanks to the framework of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. For those of you who haven’t heard about the Julie/Julia project, Julie Powell decided to cook her way through Julia Child’s classic in a year, and she did, and she wrote about it on her website, and then got hugely trendy, and then wrote a book about it.

I can forgive her a bit for being trendy, though, because it was a neat idea, and it was well executed. Also, she’s a crass writer with a great flair for the descriptive.

Demographics:

Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell. Published 2005, 310 pages. Cooking.

Borderliners

I like Smilla’s Sense of Snow, so I was prepared to dig Borderliners, but apparently such was not to be. To put it plainly, I really loathed this book. Reading stuff in translation is so challenging, because I can’t tell if the translator just failed to capture the author’s voice, or if the translator captured the author’s voice just fine and the book is just bad.

At any rate, I don’t really want to waste any more time on this book than I already have. Suffice it to say that I need to learn to stop picking up books with cutesy narrative devices, because I seem to pretty much uniformly hate them.

Demographics:

Borderliners, by Peter Hoeg. Translated from the Danish by Barbara Haveland. English translation published 1994, 277 pages. Fiction.

A Spot of Bother

I had a tough time getting into this book at first, and then around halfway through, I found myself gripped by it. So if you’ve picked it up and struggled, I encourage you to give it a second chance. It’s just a slow, sleepy developer which gradually inches in under your skin until you finish it and then feel slightly melancholy.

The book is about a dysfunctional family, to some extent, and it’s also about slipping into insanity and making difficult choices. It kind of takes awhile to set the book up in the beginning, and maybe that’s its problem, but once it gets going, it’s really hot. Hoppin’, even. I haven’t read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is Haddon’s famous book, but if it’s anything like this one, I will have to take a gander at it. I really liked the writing style, which wavered between being very clean and crisp to being a tad obscure, and I liked the characters, and I liked where Haddon took them.

Demographics:

A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon. Published 2006, 390 pages. Fiction.

Tales of the Unexpected

When I looked it up in the online catalogue, I was shocked to discover that the Fort Bragg Library actually has a couple of collections of Roald Dahl. Therefore, I had to race over to the library and grab them, before someone else did. So I did, and this one is a collection of macabre, gory, and somewhat creepy stories.

While the book retains a note of the silliness that Dahl’s children’s books have, it was much darker. There are ghastly murders, nasty adults, and short, icky vignettes. Dahl truly was a master of the short story, I tell you what. It’s hard to pick a favourite from the collection. I love “Taste,” where a father bets his daughter’s hand in marriage that a dinner guest can’t identify a mystery wine. “William and Mary” has a plot too complex and ghoulish to delve into without spoiling it, but it was funny, and brilliant. “Poison” is theoretically about snakes, but also about vicious, vindictive racism, while in “Royal Jelly,” a man turns into a bee.

I would really like to have met Roald Dahl. I think we would have got on very well.

Demographics:

Tales of the Unexpected, by Roald Dahl. Vintage Edition published 1990, 471 pages. Fiction.

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life

Another collection of Dahl stories, these of a somewhat different bent than those above, although “The Ratcatcher” definitely was delightfully icky. Many of these stories were inspired by Dahl’s experiences in the English countryside just after the Second World War, and by a character named Claude. Reading this book, I found the inspiration for Danny the Champion of the World. I absolutely loved “Parson’s Pleasure,” about a conniving furniture dealer who gets his comeuppance, along with the title story, which delved into the mysteries of breeding cows.

I can’t wait until the other short story collections I ordered arrive.

Demographics:

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, by Roald Dahl. Published 1989, 179 pages. Fiction.

Primary Colors

Given the fact that the election is heating up, I thought I would take another gander at Primary Colors, which created quite a stir when it was published. I haven’t read it in a few years, and I definitely got much more into it this time around. I found myself engaged by the plot, which delved into the seamier side of American politics, but also dealt with race, gender, and life on the campaign trail. I can also see why it caused a stir when it came out, since it is a thinly veiled and contemptuous look into the 1992 Clinton Presidential campaign, which made it all the more apt to read now.

Of course, in the end of the book, the Clinton character is forced to make a choice between doing anything to get ahead, and doing what is right, and he chooses to do what is right. Too bad the real Clintons appear incapable of making that choice, eh?

Demographics:

Primary Colors, by Anonymous. Published 1996, 366 pages. Fiction.