BOOKS READ IN 2013

Author: Ray Bradbury
Summary: Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires. And he enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by the flames ... never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past where people were not afraid. Then Guy met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think. And Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do.

CURRENTLY READING

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Author: Ellen Forney
Summary: Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability while retaining her passions and creativity.

As someone who is two years post-diagnosis for depression, this book touched me deeply. Ms. Forney has incredible storytelling talent, which she displays through both her gorgeous drawings as well as her writing, which peppers each page with biting humor and a clear, unique voice. At times very funny and raunchy, as she recounts her adolescence with her eccentric family, and at times painfully real, as she describes the very lows of her bipolar disorder, the book balances out the obvious negatives of mental illness while still managing to provide a hopeful end. There is no doubt that I will be reading more of Ellen Forney’s work in the future.

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Author: Lorraine Hansberry
Summary: This award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever.

I just finished reading this for school, and I honestly did enjoy it. The play read quite well, and it had well-developed, three-dimensional characters, both male and female. The descriptions of the setting, and the overall phrasing of the stage directions, were some of my favorite bits. Also, I, of course, adored Beneatha. She was a shining beacon throughout the whole play.

“There simply is no God! There is only Man, and it’s he who makes miracles!”

Author: Margaret Atwood
Summary: It is the stow of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to the city of her youth for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman -- but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories.

This book took an embarrassingly long time to finish, but I'm glad I made it through the whole thing.
Margaret Atwood's voice as Elaine Risley, an aging painter reflecting on her life through her art and memories, is sharp and exquisite. She describes things with both wit and wisdom, and I was thoroughly impressed with Atwood's ability to create a whole life for her character in such detail. The story dragged a bit in the beginning, but I found it to be more engaging as it went on.

“And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.”

Author: Mindy Kaling
Summary: In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.

Mindy Kaling is a very clever, very funny woman who has written some of my favorite episodes of The Office. In this book, she chronicles her childhood & adolescence as well as the early years of her career. Her voice is — forgive me — very sassy, and I wish she was my cool older cousin with whom I could talk about boys and television. This book is a quick read; it wasn't anything extraordinary or groundbreaking, but I enjoyed reading it all the same.

“There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.”

Author: Margaret Atwood
Summary: These poems make up Margaret Atwood's most accomplished and versatile gathering to date. Some draw on history, some on myth, both classical and popular. Others, more personal, concern themselves with love, with the fragility of the natural world, and with death. But they also inhabit a contemporary landscape haunted by images of the past.

This little book of poetry was very interesting. Some poems stood out to me and I was utterly impressed by them, but others just struck me as odd and a bit boring. However, I did read most of this book right before bed so most of the time I was almost too tired to pay attention, but I digress. I still love Margaret Atwood though, and her views on life and her exquisite writing mean so much to me.

“Messy love is better than none,
I guess. I am no authority
on sane living.”

Author: Arne Bellstorf
Summary: The heart of Baby’s In Black is a love story. The “fifth Beatle,” Stuart Sutcliffe, falls in love with the beautiful Astrid Kirchherr when she recruits the Beatles for a sensational (and famous) photography session during their time in Hamburg. When the band returns to the UK, Sutcliffe quits, becomes engaged to Kirchherr, and stays in Hamburg. A year later, his meteoric career as a modern artist is cut short when he dies unexpectedly.

This book was a nice quick read. The drawings were very lovely, with a unique style that I think accurately portrayed the likenesses of Astrid, Stuart and the rest of the boys. The writing was simple, which worked well with the clean lines of the drawings. As a long-time Beatles fan, I can also say that the story of the young Beatles on their first tour in Hamburg was both accurate and amusing to read.
{longer review @ goodreads}

“He’s got something…Something different from the others…I just wish he’d take off those sunglasses.”

Author: bell hooks
Summary: Communion challenges every female to courageously claim the search for love as the heroic journey we must all choose to be truly free. hooks explores the ways ideas about women and love were changed by feminist movement, by women's full participation in the workforce, and by the culture of self-help.

I think this book is a pretty good introduction to the social issues that affect women, especially in their search for love. Among its topics, hooks discusses the importance of self-love, of love between both friends, partners, and family, as well as the sexual liberation movement and the struggle to eliminate girl-hate. In lovely, pristine prose, hooks describes the relevance of these issues with both personal anecdotes and quotes from other celebrated feminists (and anti-feminists). {longer review @ goodreads}

“The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.”

Author: Joe Meno
Summary: Jonathan, a paleontologist, is searching in vain for a prehistoric giant squid; his wife, Madeline, an animal behaviorist, cannot explain her failing experiment; their daughter Amelia is a disappointed teenage revolutionary; her younger sister, Thisbe, is on a frustrated search for God; and their grandfather, Henry, wants to disappear, limiting himself to eleven words a day, then ten, then nine - one less each day until he will speak no more.

This was a really lovely surprise. I’d heard nothing of this author or the book, and I was admittedly drawn to it only because of the gorgeous, modern cover art and the title, which seems reminiscent of John Green’s Looking for Alaska. However, this novel was a tremendous read for realistic fiction, crafting characters that were multidimensional and interesting to read about.

“Beneath all of her thoughts and worries, beneath the complication of conflicting identities and needs, maybe it's as simple as loving the way some other person looks when they're sleeping.”

Author: William Landay
Summary: Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

This book is set in a city only a few miles away from where I live, and I go to therapy there every other week. Adding that fact to the story’s premise — the murder of a young schoolboy — I had a feeling this book wouldn’t be too easy to get through. But it was for my book club, so I was determined to read it anyway.
Well, the story starts off fine, with the town’s assistant DA, Andy Barber, as the narrator. But I quickly grew irritated with his voice, how he spoke about the female characters, and other little things like that. I pressed on through the story, though, because I was genuinely interested in the outcome. [Longer review (with spoilers!) @ Goodreads]
While I wasn't all that impressed with this book, it was a quick read and it brought up a lot of good talking points with my book club, so I will give it that.

“At some point as adults we we cease to be our parents' children and we become our children's parents instead.”