Rated Umami 8/10
Warm, smart and funny story of the people living in a small complex in Mexico City. Very bright and breezy and weird, especially for a book that's so much about loss and mourning. It's very odd structurally, not really for any reason, and it doesn't quite amount to as much as it seems like it's going to, but I enjoyed it.
Rated Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy 10/10
Rated All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers 8/10
clever, heartfelt essays about "troublesome" famous women like Courtney Love, Winona Ryder, Lil' Kim and Princess Diana, shot through with personal details about the author's life. you'll need a tolerance for a confessional, heart-on-sleeve style but it's a quick read and rewarding.
Rated The Wallcreeper 6/10
I had a hard time getting my head around this book. It's sort of less than the sum of its parts, though many of its parts are quite good and I'm definitely glad I read it. There are some beautiful images and clever, devastating turns of phrase, but it's also kind of a bummer - the narrator is very frustrating and the story she tells ends up being wishy-washy in a way I think is intended but doesn't quite work. I compare it unfavorably to After Birth, which is also about a brief slice of the life of a woman who feels very isolated and lonely, but manages to cohere and sell it even though it has less "plot" than the Wallcreeper.
Rated The Girls 8/10
Creepy, lyrical, intense story of a woman who was caught up in a Manson-esque cult as a teenager. Really remarkable, especially for how well it conveys an adolescent-girl's-eye-view of the world, tragic and dreamy and emotionally rich and unsettled.
Rated The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks 6/10
Light and breezy yet encyclopedic. Kinda like getting cornered at the party by the foodie who wants to tell you all about the appetizers. You can skip around at your leisure rather than trying to read it straight through, but it's full of fun factoids.
Rated The Age of Miracles 8/10
really liked this - i ended up reading it all in a few sittings over about a day and a half. fascinating, creepy, sad. <br/><br/>not quite as cripplingly depressing as [b:Never Let Me Go|6334|Never Let Me Go|Kazuo Ishiguro|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165592008s/6334.jpg|1499998], but has that same kind of otherworldly, calm sadness. the sci-fi concept isn't over-analyzed; really it's a slice of life of the concept as seen through a teenage girl's experiences.<br/><br/>very affecting.
Rated Parable of the Talents 10/10
If this year's election had a different outcome, this would be a much heavier read (not that it isn't heavy, regardless). Both this book and its predecessor are excellent, and I enjoyed having the different characters' points-of-view in this one. When people say "Who would write about our current time," and they neglect to mention Octavia Butler, I see a gap in their reading history. I'm glad I filled in the gap.
Wants to read The Thirty Years War
Rated Vampires in the Lemon Grove 8/10
Like Catherine, I'd give this 3.5 if I could - some stories are great and some are ok.<br/><br/>Russell is probably the author I feel the most envy aout, because she writes like I'd like to write (fast-moving but atmospheric, perceptive internal viewpoints from distinct characters, sneaky magic realism) and because she's just a little younger than me.
Rated The Empathy Exams 8/10
Leslie Jamison is an exceptionally talented writer. She's better when she has something really concrete to talk about than something abstract, but her voice is really powerful and she's a sharp observer. This set of essays is mostly on sad topics - pain, oppression, heartbreak, diseases people might not have, crimes people may not have committed, and in particular the way Jamison herself reacts emotionally to all of these things she encounters.
Rated The First Bad Man 8/10
Every Miranda July story is about two or more people whose ability to function in a social setting is deeply compromised in a distinct, different way, and how they react to each other. It's always a little disorienting and it's a weird place to spend a lot of time. I mean this in a good way; she is a lovely and clever writer.
Rated The Tiger's Wife 8/10
Doesn't quite hang together like I was hoping - it seems a little scattered between four or so storylines - but so beautifully written and evocative that it hardly matters.
Rated The Moor's Account 8/10
Really well-done - a great story. It takes place in the 1550s in the New World; it's based on a true story of lost Spanish conquistadors, told from the perspective of a Moroccan slave. Highly recommend.
Rated The Secret History 8/10
Great great writing, well-drawn characters, really establishes a world and then brutally deconstructs it.
Rated Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe 8/10
Loved this! Freewheeling, dry-witted, not-especially-comprehensive history of the very weird Hapsburg Empire. He's a really digressive writer, sometimes to the point of being rambly, but he makes up for it with an eye for the strange and a way of conveying just how arbitrary and contingent the borders of modern Europe are. I read this in preparation for a trip to Vienna, Budapest and Prague - the imperial cities of this no-longer-existing empire - and it gave me a lot of great guidance on where to go and what to look for.<br/><br/>Highly recommend to history buffs, though not if you're looking for something crisply academic. Delightful and sad.
