2 posts tagged “ian mcewan”

So I just finished that Ian McEwan book (On Chesil Beach)that I said was total poetry, and yeah, I dunno.  It's so well-written, and he gets inside people's heads so well.  But man, that guy is like an ace at frustration and hopelessness. It's all exquisitely-written, but so unsettling, ultimately.  Atonement was the same way. 

Or maybe it's way better than a happy-ending book for spurring people into action.  I don't know.  It just is one of those things that can leave me with kind of a cloud all day.  But at the same time, I kind of think that if I were the kind of person prone to inaction, this kind of book would make me want to change my ways more than one about some bold heroic type.  I mean, I might be ruining part of it for anybody that wants to read it, but honestly if you know anything about the author you probably already knew anyway.  And I'm not sure I'd recommend it.  Ok I just wanted to amend that other post where I was talking about how beautiful it is, which it is, but I don't know.

It's like this one time when I started watching Little Children with Kate Winslet, and got about halfway through and then went to small group and we were talking about the things that can make a couple have distance and have problems, and I was talking about how that movie did a really great job of kind of portraying and underlining the things couples do to themselves and each other.  Which it did.  And it sounded like I was saying (and I kind of was) that it was a great movie that was well-done and you should go see it.  Then I went later and finished it, and wow, kind of a super duper crazy messed-up movie.  I guess I'd still say that it was really well-done, but it's not one you want to be on record in small group as having recommended.  And then Jenn went and watched it and was like "uh, Abbey?  Wth?" 

So yeah.  I've learned to qualify and disclaimer my premature recommendations.

I just finished this YA book I borrowed from Anna Claire called Birdwing by Rafe Martin, which is like a continuation or sequel to a Grimm's fairy tale.  It was kind of weird and clunky but somehow also super engaging, which I don't know how that works.  I guess they just created some characters that I really liked and wanted to know more about, even if it was all woven in kind of a weird way.  So overall I'd totally recommend it, especially because it's quick and easy, even if it had a few hiccups in the telling of it.

For Christmas I got two copies of the complete novels of Jane Austen, so I took one of them back and exchanged it for On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.  I've sort of dipped my toes into both so far and I really love both of them, but for totally different reasons.  Ian McEwan is like full entire pages of absolute poetry, and it's so romantic and beautiful yet posh and English.  JSF is more like if you were in a car with a 9-yr-old in the back seat who is both unendingly chatty and incredibly bright.  He's hilarious and kind of ADD, but also has moments of this totally childlike sadness and wisdom that can break your heart. 

I don't know what it is lately, but I've been reading so many books that can literally have me like fighting back tears one paragraph and laughing out loud the next.  Seems like they're usually in the perspective of a kid though too, so I guess that's the key.  But done well.  A couple of other ones I read like that recently were Eggs by Jerry Spinelli and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.  I'd also recommend both of those.  Just go read them in one of the chairs at B&N with a latte or whatever, they're pretty quick reads.  Ok but disclaimer for the Alexie book -- it's kind of... I don't know, PG-13 sometimes?  Or not, I don't know.  It's probably a pretty accurate depiction of a 13-yr-old boy.  Maybe.  I never was one. 

Another one I recently read was called Everything and More: a Brief History of <infinity> but it had the little symbol, by David Foster Wallace.  It was kind of math/philosophy/logic/history, not exactly like a summer beach read but totally fascinating and oddly hilarious.  I'm sure it was a practically impossible book to write, because I do feel like it was probably pretty accessible to newbies (well, you'd probably need at least a little college math) and brainiacs.  I can't really speak for the brainiacs though.  He'd have these little footnotes (DFW?  Footnotes?  No way!) that could either be filling in gaps for the less knowledgeable or adding even more depth for the more knowledgeable so you could kind of customize.  Made me excited to read one of his novels once I get it back from Susanna, he's just so readable and challenging at the same time.  My favorites were how he constantly refers to particular aspects of math or theorems in terms of their "sexiness," or how he'll say something about the relative futility of a certain mathematical paradigm and how that's why he's just not going to go into it, and then round it off with an uber-professional "Deal."  This one might not be for everybody but it's probably for more people than you'd think.  And it's a nice review of the ole higher-level calc.

So from YA to infinity...  I guess I'll wrap this up.