50-book challenge: April.
Jun. 7th, 2007 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI've lost the piece of paper with my April and May books on it, so alas, this is a reconstruction. I need to come up with some fool- and scatterbrain-proof method of recording what I read for the 50-book challenge, or I'll never make it to December.
At any rate: New books I think I read in April:
You Suck: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore.
The sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, and superior because the annoyingly self-admiring zaniness has been dialed down quite a bit. Still not that great, although it is partially redeemed by the addition of a teenage goth character who goes by the name of Abby Normal - and especially by extensive excerpts from her diary.
Every Mother is a Daughter: The Neverending Quest for Success, Inner Peace, and a Really Clean Kitchen, by Perri Klass and Sheila Solomon Klass.
I would never have picked this up if it hadn't been by Perri Klass, because from the title and cover alone I would have guessed it to be a long string of mawkish, sticky-sweet cliches and stereotypes. I decided to give it a chance anyway, and I'm glad I did. Sheila and Perri Klass are strong, intelligent, offbeat women, and they're both excellent writers. They write in alternating sections about their experiences of childhood and motherhood, their interactions as adults (including a trip to India they take together), their differing experiences as working mothers in different generations, their relationships with Perri's father, who died shortly before they began the book, and their opinions of each other. They nitpick, correct each other, and predict what the other is likely to say in response to their latest section. Each provides her own - very different - lists of "how we are alike" and "how we are different." A very enjoyable read; it made me want to seek out more books by both Klasses.
Gods and Pawns, by Kage Baker.
I loved this collection of short stories and novellas set in the world of The Company. I read it shortly after finishing The Machine's Child, the latest company novel, which frustrated me because it seemed as though Baker was trying to keep so many different plot threads going that I lost the sense of being involved in a story. So this was perfect: deep immersion into a series of specific missions, cultures, and eras, and the ability to really focus on a couple of Baker's ongoing characters at once instead of skipping from head to head to head. I was particularly haunted by "The Catch" and "The Land Beyond the Sunset." I think this book would work for people who haven't read the rest of the Company series, but I'm not entirely sure.
The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
The sticker on the back of this book informs me that I bought it at the Reed College bookstore - probably right after I'd read An Artist of the Floating World by the same author and then seen the movie of The Remains of the Day, both for my senior Humanities seminar. For one reason or another, I'd never actually read the book. I'm so glad that I finally did. It's the first-person account of an elderly butler who is slowly beginning to realize that his lifelong aspiration to be "a great butler" has cost him terribly. Throughout the book he struggles to dodge his growing awareness that the man he devoted most of his life to serving was not only unworthy, but deeply morally tainted. I was particularly impressed by the skill with which Ishiguro is able to depict the first-person narrator's utterly crippled emotional life, even though he himself is unaware of the extent to which he is damaged.
Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child, by Alissa Quart.
This is a deeply confused book. The author was a "child prodigy" with considerable early talent for writing, which brought her tons of praise, awards, opportunities, and attention throughout her teens. She wasn't able to adjust well to growing up to become just another highly-skilled adult, and provides quotes and interviews with a number of other former prodigies who feel the same way - for example, musical prodigies who had brilliant childhood concert careers and then quit playing entirely. She has some good points to make about the problems that arise from overprofessionalization of children's talents and overemphasis on the creation of products that document children's precocity. And she offers an interesting exploration of the fundamental American ambivalence about gifted education.
So, good as far as it goes. But she conflates parental efforts to induce genius ("teach your infant to read" programs and the like) with parental efforts to provide appropriate resources to gifted children. She writes a highly approving profile of a public-school gifted program, and then looks askance at parents who try to get their children in to things like that - or who try to provide similar resources at home. She acknowledges that research on prodigies typically finds that these kids have a tremendous inner drive, but then manages to imply that all the individual parents who say their kid is internally driven are lying, or perhaps self-deluded. She never offers any kind of coherent suggestion of what parents of gifted children should do - it's mainly just a catalogue of criticism, suspicion, and rejection.
In the end, although there are interesting aspects to the book, I have to agree with the Amazon reviewer who said they thought Quart would've written a much better book if she had been through therapy first.
Total for April: 5, unless I've forgotten something.
Total for the year: 31.
At any rate: New books I think I read in April:
You Suck: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore.
The sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, and superior because the annoyingly self-admiring zaniness has been dialed down quite a bit. Still not that great, although it is partially redeemed by the addition of a teenage goth character who goes by the name of Abby Normal - and especially by extensive excerpts from her diary.
Every Mother is a Daughter: The Neverending Quest for Success, Inner Peace, and a Really Clean Kitchen, by Perri Klass and Sheila Solomon Klass.
I would never have picked this up if it hadn't been by Perri Klass, because from the title and cover alone I would have guessed it to be a long string of mawkish, sticky-sweet cliches and stereotypes. I decided to give it a chance anyway, and I'm glad I did. Sheila and Perri Klass are strong, intelligent, offbeat women, and they're both excellent writers. They write in alternating sections about their experiences of childhood and motherhood, their interactions as adults (including a trip to India they take together), their differing experiences as working mothers in different generations, their relationships with Perri's father, who died shortly before they began the book, and their opinions of each other. They nitpick, correct each other, and predict what the other is likely to say in response to their latest section. Each provides her own - very different - lists of "how we are alike" and "how we are different." A very enjoyable read; it made me want to seek out more books by both Klasses.
Gods and Pawns, by Kage Baker.
I loved this collection of short stories and novellas set in the world of The Company. I read it shortly after finishing The Machine's Child, the latest company novel, which frustrated me because it seemed as though Baker was trying to keep so many different plot threads going that I lost the sense of being involved in a story. So this was perfect: deep immersion into a series of specific missions, cultures, and eras, and the ability to really focus on a couple of Baker's ongoing characters at once instead of skipping from head to head to head. I was particularly haunted by "The Catch" and "The Land Beyond the Sunset." I think this book would work for people who haven't read the rest of the Company series, but I'm not entirely sure.
The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
The sticker on the back of this book informs me that I bought it at the Reed College bookstore - probably right after I'd read An Artist of the Floating World by the same author and then seen the movie of The Remains of the Day, both for my senior Humanities seminar. For one reason or another, I'd never actually read the book. I'm so glad that I finally did. It's the first-person account of an elderly butler who is slowly beginning to realize that his lifelong aspiration to be "a great butler" has cost him terribly. Throughout the book he struggles to dodge his growing awareness that the man he devoted most of his life to serving was not only unworthy, but deeply morally tainted. I was particularly impressed by the skill with which Ishiguro is able to depict the first-person narrator's utterly crippled emotional life, even though he himself is unaware of the extent to which he is damaged.
Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child, by Alissa Quart.
This is a deeply confused book. The author was a "child prodigy" with considerable early talent for writing, which brought her tons of praise, awards, opportunities, and attention throughout her teens. She wasn't able to adjust well to growing up to become just another highly-skilled adult, and provides quotes and interviews with a number of other former prodigies who feel the same way - for example, musical prodigies who had brilliant childhood concert careers and then quit playing entirely. She has some good points to make about the problems that arise from overprofessionalization of children's talents and overemphasis on the creation of products that document children's precocity. And she offers an interesting exploration of the fundamental American ambivalence about gifted education.
So, good as far as it goes. But she conflates parental efforts to induce genius ("teach your infant to read" programs and the like) with parental efforts to provide appropriate resources to gifted children. She writes a highly approving profile of a public-school gifted program, and then looks askance at parents who try to get their children in to things like that - or who try to provide similar resources at home. She acknowledges that research on prodigies typically finds that these kids have a tremendous inner drive, but then manages to imply that all the individual parents who say their kid is internally driven are lying, or perhaps self-deluded. She never offers any kind of coherent suggestion of what parents of gifted children should do - it's mainly just a catalogue of criticism, suspicion, and rejection.
In the end, although there are interesting aspects to the book, I have to agree with the Amazon reviewer who said they thought Quart would've written a much better book if she had been through therapy first.
Total for April: 5, unless I've forgotten something.
Total for the year: 31.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-08 02:21 am (UTC)that was the best yet one of the hardest things about going to college where i did. i was no longer the smart kid. in high school, i was the smart kid even in the top track classes.
in college? feh. couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting someone at least as smart as i was.
very very nice, once i got used to it. but if your whole identity is predicated on being "the smart one", then getting into an environment where you are no longer *the* smart one, but one of the smart ones kind of rocks your world.
(fortunately, my parents and sister are also garden variety geniuses, so i had other identity options to fall back on...)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-08 04:02 am (UTC)in college? feh. couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting someone at least as smart as i was.
I still remember my delight in meeting, during Orientation Week, three first-year students who were younger than me. I skipped a grade and had a late-fall birthday, so all through grade school I was freakishly younger than the other kids in my class. What a relief to find out that, at Reed, I wasn't even the youngest student in my dorm.
It was such a joy, for me, to come to Reed and feel normal for once in my life. Which is funny, because now I feel normal pretty much all the time.