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Hope After the Guernsey Ages
Aug. 16th, 2009 10:51 amThe Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
My ever-so-jaded perspective on the world kept me skeptical about this very gentle story until about page 60 or so. Then I started trusting it and really liked the book from then on. I laughed out loud several times. Similar in tone/feel/setting to I Capture the Castle or 84, Charing Cross Road, though not so completely amazingly brilliant, of course (what is?).
(158/275)
Hope, Human and Wild, by Bill McKibben
Very interesting. The tiniest bit dated since it came out in 1995, but the descriptions of Curitiba and Kerala were satisfying on several different levels, and his exploration of ways that sustainable living might actually happen and/or work in the USA was really worthwhile even if deliberately vague/meandering. He's also very easy to read.
(159/275)
After the Moment, by Garret Freymann-Weyr
All of this author's other books, it seems to me through the filter of an imperfect memory, are about very good people who are all struggling to do the right thing but nonetheless there is some conflict and things that need to be worked out.... and this feels more like a bunch of people with serious problems who blunder around hurting each other but nonetheless they are doing the best they can and try to find good in the struggle. That doesn't make it any less excellent than previous novels by this author - I'd actually say it was better, if I didn't hold such an overwhelming and undisplaceable love for a couple of them close to my heart - but it does make it different. What it has in common with the rest of her writing is that (once I got used to the difference) it was every bit as compelling and I found myself resenting any outside interruption that made me stop reading it for a couple of hours, and mulling over its themes and characters long after I put the book down. PS Reading some reviews of this book, I am reminded that part of the reason I love Freymann-Weyr's work is that her teenagers think like I thought at their age - even while going through crises or being realistically self-absorbed, they're also fundamentally serious about the larger world and about other people's experiences as well as their own - in a way that many teenagers in otherwise perfectly wonderful books are not. (Granted I went through my own not-serious-at-all-about-the-rest-of-the-world phase at the end of my teenagerhood, but when I was in high school I took MORE interest in larger society than I do now, not less! It's very satisfying to find that seriousness in YA; it makes it easier for me to empathize with characters when they feel that extra bit like me-and-most-of-my-friends-as-teens.)
(160/275)
Fables 12: The Dark Ages, by Bill Willingham et al
Still utterly in love with this comic book series. Swoon. If I had to live with only being allowed to read one continuing graphic story, this is the one I'd pick.
(161/275)
My ever-so-jaded perspective on the world kept me skeptical about this very gentle story until about page 60 or so. Then I started trusting it and really liked the book from then on. I laughed out loud several times. Similar in tone/feel/setting to I Capture the Castle or 84, Charing Cross Road, though not so completely amazingly brilliant, of course (what is?).
(158/275)
Hope, Human and Wild, by Bill McKibben
Very interesting. The tiniest bit dated since it came out in 1995, but the descriptions of Curitiba and Kerala were satisfying on several different levels, and his exploration of ways that sustainable living might actually happen and/or work in the USA was really worthwhile even if deliberately vague/meandering. He's also very easy to read.
(159/275)
After the Moment, by Garret Freymann-Weyr
All of this author's other books, it seems to me through the filter of an imperfect memory, are about very good people who are all struggling to do the right thing but nonetheless there is some conflict and things that need to be worked out.... and this feels more like a bunch of people with serious problems who blunder around hurting each other but nonetheless they are doing the best they can and try to find good in the struggle. That doesn't make it any less excellent than previous novels by this author - I'd actually say it was better, if I didn't hold such an overwhelming and undisplaceable love for a couple of them close to my heart - but it does make it different. What it has in common with the rest of her writing is that (once I got used to the difference) it was every bit as compelling and I found myself resenting any outside interruption that made me stop reading it for a couple of hours, and mulling over its themes and characters long after I put the book down. PS Reading some reviews of this book, I am reminded that part of the reason I love Freymann-Weyr's work is that her teenagers think like I thought at their age - even while going through crises or being realistically self-absorbed, they're also fundamentally serious about the larger world and about other people's experiences as well as their own - in a way that many teenagers in otherwise perfectly wonderful books are not. (Granted I went through my own not-serious-at-all-about-the-rest-of-the-world phase at the end of my teenagerhood, but when I was in high school I took MORE interest in larger society than I do now, not less! It's very satisfying to find that seriousness in YA; it makes it easier for me to empathize with characters when they feel that extra bit like me-and-most-of-my-friends-as-teens.)
(160/275)
Fables 12: The Dark Ages, by Bill Willingham et al
Still utterly in love with this comic book series. Swoon. If I had to live with only being allowed to read one continuing graphic story, this is the one I'd pick.
(161/275)
