The Pages I've Been Turning

I love to read year-round, but when summer hits my appetite for books becomes absolutely insatiable. This is probably because I still associate summer with my younger years, when its blessed arrival meant freedom from responsibility and ample time to spend lounging by the pool absorbed in a good read. No such luck this year, but between Bear Lake weekends and the afternoon reading breaks a few of my co-workers and I have instituted, I’ve been able to finish a few books.

Here’s the breakdown of what I’ve read lately:

Sarah's Key is one of those books that had promise because of the interesting subject matter (French involvement in the holocaust), but it wasn’t my cup of tea. The writing style reminded me of instructions they give you in junior high English classes, I could guess most of the plot twists from about twenty pages away, and the whole thing felt a little forced and melodramatic. It was also very sad. But not in a beautiful way.

Oh. My. Land. Jonathan Safran Foer is incredible. That’s all there is to say. But I will say more anyway. Namely that I loved this book from start to finish and I wish I could have the experience of reading it again for the first time.

The plot centers around a nine-year-old boy whose father dies in 9-11 and this novel is narrated mainly from his point of view. His voice reminded me a lot of the boy in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, so if you enjoyed that then Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is definitely worth picking up. Easily one of the best books I’ve read in years.

I think this is one of those books best read in one sitting when you have a few hours to do nothing but soak up some good old-fashioned storytelling and descriptions of the Norwegian countryside. It’s very slow and quite vague, but the writing does have a definite beauty to it. Maybe I just had a hard time with Out Stealing Horses because I was forced to read it in small chunks, and, after the postmodern busyness of Extremely Loud, it was difficult to focus on a book as nuanced as this one. I guess you could say I appreciated it but didn’t really enjoy it all that much. Maybe I’ll give it another try when I have ample spare time on my hands.

Chuck Klosterman’s essays are kind of like an inside joke; funny if you get what he’s talking about and completely lame if you don’t. Unless you are a bona fide expert on pop culture, chances are you’ll find yourself scratching your head more than a couple of times. But when you do understand Klosterman’s subject matter, like when I read his essay on Saved by the Bell, he is pretty clever. Albeit in an overthought, cynical way best enjoyed in small doses. Also, Chuck can be pretty crass at times. Just putting that out there as a warning of sorts.

Ah, the token summer bestseller. I read this book for the same reason that I read The Help, DaVinci Code , Twilight (ugh), and countless other titles: because everyone else was doing it. Like those other books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not going to win a Pulitzer Prize any time soon, but it was entertaining in a trashy, quasi disturbing way. I don’t recommend reading it when you are all by yourself at night, though. If you’re anything like me you will be convinced that every creak of the floorboards is a serial killer hell-bent on breaking into your house and smuggling you away to Sweden.

Everything is Illuminated is up next on my summer reading agenda, but after that my list of library holds is a barren wasteland. So tell me friends, what have you read and loved lately?