I do read books, too!
Since I have a take-home final to write this weekend, I am obviously procrastinating, and have spent much of today organizing a new index post for my reviews of various non-BtVS things (you can find it in my links list in the sidebar). I figured since I've been focusing on other TV shows way more than BtVS these days, they deserved their own index. TV is definitely the lion's share of it, but there were a fair amount of movie reviews as well.
The thing I noticed, though, is that I hardly ever talk about books. Which is partly because I'm in grad school and so most of the books I read are NOT FOR FUN. But just for kicks, I thought I'd do one of those "books I've read this year" lists, and I was a little surprised at how many fun books I managed to squeeze in. Under the cut, everything I've read thus far in 2010, roughly in chronological order.
Of the books I read for fun (i.e. #1, 2, 13, 14, 15, and 16), I'd recommend almost all of them. Other than Changes, which is from the Dresden Files series, the rest were recommendations from my mom's book club. My next read will probably be another Pam Jenoff book - my mom claims that the one I read was her least favorite. We both agreed we liked Almost Home because it's set primarily in London and Cambridge, and so we had a lot of fun recognizing the places the characters visited.
Luncheon of the Boating Party is a historical fiction based on the Renoir painting. I liked it, except the author made Renoir seem kind of like an asshole. (I don't know anything about him, so maybe he was?) Skeletons at the Feast is set during World War II, and focuses on various individuals whose paths cross, including a German family forced to flee their home, a Jewish boy masquerading as a Nazi soldier to avoid capture, and a French woman in a concentration camp. Broken Paradise, which I mentioned in a meme, is about Cuban cousins who are separated when Castro comes to power, and one family flees to America while the other stays.
Edgar Sawtelle is the only one I wasn't really a fan of. It's about a mute boy who trains dogs, and I really think you need to like dogs to appreciate that one, lol. (I am a total cat person.) While the plot was interesting, it felt really slow-moving because there was a lot of time spent dwelling on the dogs and Edgar's relationships with them. Also, it seemed like the POV changes were somewhat arbitrary (the whole book is in third limited, and you felt the need to randomly switch to second for one section... why?) and that annoyed me.
Of the books I read not for fun, So Damn Much Money is a book I felt like I would read even if it weren't required. It's written with more of a narrative, rather than the textbooky feel of most of my class reading. (Of course, it's about the growth of the lobbying industry in Washington, so it's still probably only interesting to political dorks like me.)
If you're frustrated at the paralyzing level of partisanship in Congress today, then The Broken Branch is sort of depressing and hopeful at the same time (don't bother with Congress Behaving Badly - half of it is quotes from Mann and Ornstein anyway). The Second Civil War was also really fascinating, since it went way more in-depth on the historical trends and patterns of ideology and partisanship in Congress than the other books (of course, it's also four times as long, so again, probably only for the really dedicated political dork).
If you want to learn more about government, Congress and Its Members is a thorough introduction to how the legislative branch works. It pissed me off that it was assigned as grad school level reading, but it's probably good if anyone is looking for a Government 101 lesson. Hostile Takeover is very informative on a variety of different issues, as long as you can get past the unpleasantly sarcastic, and IMO unprofessional, tone. (It's also now woefully outdated in some areas, such as health care, having been published in 2006.)
The thing I noticed, though, is that I hardly ever talk about books. Which is partly because I'm in grad school and so most of the books I read are NOT FOR FUN. But just for kicks, I thought I'd do one of those "books I've read this year" lists, and I was a little surprised at how many fun books I managed to squeeze in. Under the cut, everything I've read thus far in 2010, roughly in chronological order.
- Luncheon of the Boating Party, Susan Vreeland
- Skeletons at the Feast, Chris Bohjalian
- How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
- Total Lobbying, Anthony Nownes
- Congress: The Electoral Connection, David Mayhew
- Congress and Its Members, Roger Davidson and Walter Oleszek
- Congress Behaving Badly: The Rise of Partisanship and Incivility and the Death of Public Trust, Sunil Ahuja
- The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing American and How to Get It Back on Track, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein
- Congress Reconsidered, Lawrence Dodd and Bruce Oppenheimer
- Unorthodox Lawmaking: New Legislative Processes in the U.S. Congress, Barbara Sinclair
- So Damn Much Money, Robert Kaiser
- The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America, Robert Brownstein
- Changes, Jim Butcher
- Almost Home, Pam Jenoff
- The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski
- Broken Paradise, Cecilia Samartin
- Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government - and How We Take It Back, David Sirota
Of the books I read for fun (i.e. #1, 2, 13, 14, 15, and 16), I'd recommend almost all of them. Other than Changes, which is from the Dresden Files series, the rest were recommendations from my mom's book club. My next read will probably be another Pam Jenoff book - my mom claims that the one I read was her least favorite. We both agreed we liked Almost Home because it's set primarily in London and Cambridge, and so we had a lot of fun recognizing the places the characters visited.
Luncheon of the Boating Party is a historical fiction based on the Renoir painting. I liked it, except the author made Renoir seem kind of like an asshole. (I don't know anything about him, so maybe he was?) Skeletons at the Feast is set during World War II, and focuses on various individuals whose paths cross, including a German family forced to flee their home, a Jewish boy masquerading as a Nazi soldier to avoid capture, and a French woman in a concentration camp. Broken Paradise, which I mentioned in a meme, is about Cuban cousins who are separated when Castro comes to power, and one family flees to America while the other stays.
Edgar Sawtelle is the only one I wasn't really a fan of. It's about a mute boy who trains dogs, and I really think you need to like dogs to appreciate that one, lol. (I am a total cat person.) While the plot was interesting, it felt really slow-moving because there was a lot of time spent dwelling on the dogs and Edgar's relationships with them. Also, it seemed like the POV changes were somewhat arbitrary (the whole book is in third limited, and you felt the need to randomly switch to second for one section... why?) and that annoyed me.
Of the books I read not for fun, So Damn Much Money is a book I felt like I would read even if it weren't required. It's written with more of a narrative, rather than the textbooky feel of most of my class reading. (Of course, it's about the growth of the lobbying industry in Washington, so it's still probably only interesting to political dorks like me.)
If you're frustrated at the paralyzing level of partisanship in Congress today, then The Broken Branch is sort of depressing and hopeful at the same time (don't bother with Congress Behaving Badly - half of it is quotes from Mann and Ornstein anyway). The Second Civil War was also really fascinating, since it went way more in-depth on the historical trends and patterns of ideology and partisanship in Congress than the other books (of course, it's also four times as long, so again, probably only for the really dedicated political dork).
If you want to learn more about government, Congress and Its Members is a thorough introduction to how the legislative branch works. It pissed me off that it was assigned as grad school level reading, but it's probably good if anyone is looking for a Government 101 lesson. Hostile Takeover is very informative on a variety of different issues, as long as you can get past the unpleasantly sarcastic, and IMO unprofessional, tone. (It's also now woefully outdated in some areas, such as health care, having been published in 2006.)