2015 reading challenge: quarter three.
Housesitting in Portland, with its glorious Multnomah County Library system - very conducive to
reading!
Here are 3Q results... A "*" means you should TOTALLY read this book.
- * The Dinner (Herman Koch) - if you like train wreck novels, have I got a book for you! I couldn't put it down and I don't care to know what that says about me.
- Slightly Out of Focus (Robert Capa) - an interesting account of a famous war photographer's WWII experiences. I think I would've appreciated it more if he had not been famous; the situations he was able to get himself into were definitely not the norm and I think it would've been more interesting to hear from the "everyday" photographer.
- * Dawn (Elie Wiesel) - it feels odd to say that I enjoyed a book about an executioner and his victim, but hey, this is Elie Wiesel. Hoping to find the third book in the series before we leave Portland.
- * The Air We Breathe (Andrea Barrett) - another one of those fiction-based-on-historical-events tales, this is the story of early 19th century war, romance, and tuberculosis patients in the Adirondack Mountains. The end dragged quite a bit for my taste but overall I enjoyed the story itself (again, as much as one can enjoy a story about war and TB) as well as how it was written.
- Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) - I must've been in a very different head space when I read - and immensely enjoyed - The Corrections, because I was very done with every single one of the Freedom characters about 30 pages into the book. If I weren't FUNemployed I probably would have given up pretty early on, and in the end I wished I had just given up because I'll never get those precious FUNemployed hours back.
- Actors Anonymous (James Franco) - I am just going to paste this Goodreads review posted by Casey because I cannot possibly say it any better: "This James Franco book was really very James Franco. It was the most James Franco sort of James Franco book I have ever read. You can tell that the author, James Franco, really loves James Franco. If you enjoyed my commentary about this James Franco book by James Franco you might like to read Actor's Anonymous by James Franco. James Franco."
- Eating Animals (Jonathan Safran Foer) - part preaching to the choir, part guilt-inducing for all the bacon I've eaten this summer, and part thought-provoking in terms of whether and how we will be raising farm animals if we ever get to that point. I recommend it to anyone who still eats grocery store meat... but I don't think any of you do that anymore.
- * Possibilities (Herbie Hancock) - a really engaging look into the evolution of jazz (and the behind-the-scenes lives of jazz musicians) over the decades. How did I live to be 40 without knowing this man's entire repertoire of contributions to music? Shameful! Also, I probably shouldn't admit this, but I never really got the big deal behind Rockit until I read this book.
- * Palisades Park (Alan Brennert) - I snagged this at the library because I loved Moloka'i and I'm still on a fiction-based-on-reality kick. I finished the last half of this in one sitting because the characters and the story were so accessible and enthralling. I'm not a big LA Law fan but I'll read a Brennert book any old day...
- The Taste of Tomorrow (Josh Schonwald) - the first third (!) of the book is about lettuce. Yes, LETTUCE. Then there's a significant amount of anti-GMO bashing followed by a look at in vitro meat development, some preaching for land-based fish farming and finally an exploration of nanotechnology. I did walk away with some questions about my own understanding (and critique) of GMO foods, but generally speaking I found this to be a pretty hoity-toity, long-winded, name-dropping diatribe on the "future" of food. And 2035 (the year he keeps referencing) isn't really the "future"... it's pretty much already here. So meh.
