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Moral Republic of You
Feb. 17th, 2007 08:55 pmWhich Brings Me to You: A Novel in Confessions, Steve Almond and Julia Baggett
This novel was trying too hard. That said, it only took me about a third of the way in to get over my crankiness at the pretension and settle in (I think the pretension may've backed off once stuff was established, too). And then I devoured it. By the end I couldn't put it down, *even though* I still felt cranky. Which is kind of impressive.
(22/250)
Moral Disorder, Margaret Atwood
The problem I had with these stories is that I don't really like literary short stories. I'm more prone to underappreciate them than overestimate them. As such, there were only about 4 of these stories that I really enjoyed. But because they are linked and more or less form a continuous narrative, instead of feeling like 'well, like most short story collections, it was hit or miss', it feels like 'well, there were *parts* of a GLORIOUS novel in there, but it was so uneven.' Sigh. My problem with the stories I did not like were that they felt very Canadian-high-school-textbookish, if you were wondering. The story "The White Horse" was extremely lovely though.
(23/250)
People's Republic of Desire, by Annie Wang
Meh. There were some great moments in this but mostly it was just so ... flat. One thing I noticed was a complete lack of metaphor (other than in some of the chinese phrases). I wanted it to be a lot more meaty than it was. But as the Sex in the City genre goes, it's not bad. I just felt like the author was deliberately holding herself back or something. It was too newspaper-columny, I guess.
(24/250)
This novel was trying too hard. That said, it only took me about a third of the way in to get over my crankiness at the pretension and settle in (I think the pretension may've backed off once stuff was established, too). And then I devoured it. By the end I couldn't put it down, *even though* I still felt cranky. Which is kind of impressive.
(22/250)
Moral Disorder, Margaret Atwood
The problem I had with these stories is that I don't really like literary short stories. I'm more prone to underappreciate them than overestimate them. As such, there were only about 4 of these stories that I really enjoyed. But because they are linked and more or less form a continuous narrative, instead of feeling like 'well, like most short story collections, it was hit or miss', it feels like 'well, there were *parts* of a GLORIOUS novel in there, but it was so uneven.' Sigh. My problem with the stories I did not like were that they felt very Canadian-high-school-textbookish, if you were wondering. The story "The White Horse" was extremely lovely though.
(23/250)
People's Republic of Desire, by Annie Wang
Meh. There were some great moments in this but mostly it was just so ... flat. One thing I noticed was a complete lack of metaphor (other than in some of the chinese phrases). I wanted it to be a lot more meaty than it was. But as the Sex in the City genre goes, it's not bad. I just felt like the author was deliberately holding herself back or something. It was too newspaper-columny, I guess.
(24/250)
