In my free time since school has been out, I've been listening to this song:
...and reading books. I did an Amazon Wish List for my birthday and Christmas this year, and I've really enjoyed getting those little email notifications saying "Someone has a given you a gift!" I like seeing what people pick out to give me too. I think this registry type thing with books is important, because people know I like books, but feel like giving me a gift card is so impersonal. This way, they can read the blurbs and choose something they like too!!
I've got two reviews for you today:
The Marriage Plot: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
This book was listed as one of the best books of 2011 by Amazon. The book's characters and narrators are recent college graduates from an Ivy League school in the 1980s. The book follows them through their career plans (and failures) and their personal enlightenment as liberal arts post-grads. Yeah, I said it, liberal arts. The book is quite high-brow, referencing much of the scholarship in Lit Crit and Religious Studies that was new and fashionable in the '80s, especially some nifty feminism (and feminist-Victorianism later in book--which I found interesting because it was pretty much the norm as far as Victorian theories went in my undergrad, in 2007.) The narrators wax poetic on their life problems and sexual frustrations, so it gets tedious for a while, but the intelligence with which this author approaches the social and personal issues of the novel is really interesting, as well as entertaining in its uniqueness to other writing styles. (I think the author has written some other famous works, e.g., The Virgin Suicides.) Overall, I give the book a 6 or 7 out of 10, because it reads like a diary from the ivory tower but has some pretty nitty gritty human elements too (one character spends 3 weeks volunteering at one of Mother Theresa's relief shelters in Calcutta).
Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson
This book was a suspenseful and heartbreaking story of a women with amnesia. After reading the book's blurb to Matt, he said he guessed the plot would turn out like Christopher Nolan's Memento, a movie in which a man with amnesia keeps track of his memories through Polaroid photos and is trying to catch the man who killed his wife and gave him amnesia. This book is about a women who wakes every day not knowing what has happened for the last 22 years. She can build memories and access them throughout the day, but as soon as she goes to sleep again, her memory resets. (Kind-of like 50 First Dates.) The woman begins to keep a journal to refer back to every day, but she keeps it secret from her husband, Ben, because he might be hurt by this independence from him. One day, she wakes up, takes out the journal, and has written "Don't Trust Ben" in the journal as a note to herself. I won't go any further, because the book has some pretty neat twists and turns and takes you on an emotional roller coaster. I highly recommend it for these qualities and as a quick read. I finished it in a day. The only fault I find is in how depressed this woman's psychological state made me. The author makes you get in deep with all the issues that an amnesiac faces (independence, dependence, love, sex, health, consistency, family, and especially trust).
Until next time guys! I've got plenty more books to read and review!
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