Saturday, June 14, 2008

Summer Reading

Years ago, I used to love reading Amy Tan. Last year, she came to Purdue for a reading, and she was really great in person--full of life and energy and lots of clever little insights. So I bought her newest book after the reading--Saving Fish From Drowning. It's been sitting on my desk for over a year, and I finally decided to start reading it. I'm only a couple of chapters in, and it's not really doing anything for me, but I'm going to give it a chance. I am starting to think that my reading tastes must have changed profoundly since beginning graduate school many years ago. I'm not sure I'll get through this one...

I also just finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I hated it for the first few pages, with all of its cryptic talk about "carers" and "donors." But then I got really sucked in, and I can't say quite why without giving away the plot. It was another one that had been sitting on my desk for a couple of years...

So now I have Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases, which just came out in paperback, and I'm really excited about this one...

And then I have The Cyclist, which I'm trying to read this weekend...

I'm also re-reading Alicia Ostriker's For the Love of God so that I can write a review for Shofar, as well as Ezra Cappell's American Talmud for Modern Fiction Studies.

I feel like I need one more really great novel...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm....reading Crappell's book for a review? You're a much better person than I. I don't think my stomach would take it. BTW, remind me to tell you something hilarious about this topic. It's a funny story I heard at the San Francisco ALA Conference from a couple of others who know him. Funny stuff!

Anonymous said...

You might like Hass' new collection, "Time and Material."

"A Thousand Splendid Suns" is also amazing. A window.

Monica said...

Joe--

Thanks for the Hass recommendation--I'd been thinking of "A Thousand Splendid Suns" recently as well.