August 2004

The Tummy Trilogy, by Calvin Trillin
A library book that had to be returned before I got through the second half of the second book and any of the third. But it's back on my Amazon wishlist -- it was sweet and funny, enough about food to make you learn something but not so much that you didn't care. Calvin Trillin is kind of like Bill Bryson without the curmudgeon and with a little more high-brow-brought-low sensibility. Grade: As nonfiction, exempt from the grading scale.

Lost in a Good Book, by Jasper Fforde
Bought at the Strand, read in transit between New York, Boston and DC. A fun mystery; I want the first and third now. Grade: B+.


The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
From the list, and No. 1 at that. OK, so. Gatsby. I wanted to like this a lot but had a feeling I wouldn't, and I was right. Why? Why is this considered the greatest book in American literature? Grade: I can't even describe it well enough to formulate my thoughts, let alone assign it a letter.

Pure Poetry, by Binnie Kirshenbaum
Maybe I need to stop reading other books by authors I have recently come to love right on the heels of the books I actually loved... again, couldn't connect to the narrator at all, but unlike Home at the End of the World (in which the three narrators at least were interesting people), I couldn't stand Lila. She is probably my absolute mirror opposite -- self-possessed, self-assured, brazen, irrational, wild -- but instead of feeling illuminated by insight into someone like that, I just felt irritated. I didn't buy her at all. Grade: C-.

A Home at the End of the World, by Michael Cunningham
Not nearly as good as the other two I read.... this was his first, so maybe he just hadn't hit his stride yet. But I felt completely disconnected from all the characters, and utterly furious with Claire at the end. A sad message, too, about not being able to overcome death and loss -- I think he was going for something transcendant, but it didn't work for me. Grade: C.

An Almost Perfect Moment, by Binnie Kirshenbaum
The story of a Jewish girl in New Jersey who looks just like the Virgin Mary, and what happens to her when she sort of IS the Virgin Mary. One of those books that I finished by feeling unbearably jealous -- this is just the kind of book I want to write. Somehow, she knows how to be derivative and full and challenging and unrestrained without being distracting. There's so much momentum, and it's all going somewhere, but there's a real freedom in the language and the story itself. Green-eyed monster heaven. Grade: A.