Hillary

I wanted to like this book. It's short and stylistically unique. I very much enjoyed Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, and, after hearing about Invisible Cities at a writers' conference a few years back, I was excited to finally get to it. Generally, I wasn't very impressed. The premise wasn't thaaat interesting to me and the writing was just okay.

Although I don't remember it very well, I absolutely loved One Hundred Years of Solitude when I read it in either late high school or early college. This had been on my list for years and I figured Coronavirus pandemic was as good a time as any to read something set in the time of a cholera pandemic. The character development is beautiful and this felt honest in a way that only fiction can really pull off, but I just could not get my brain to gel with Marquez's writing style. I had to focus pretty consistently throughout instead of falling into the story. I liked it but was a little underwhelmed because of that.

I absolutely loved Stoner and was expecting to be blown away by Augustus. The story is told through various accounts, which was a little bit hard for me to get into at first, but I ended up really enjoying it. I knew next to nothing about the Romans/Greeks/Egyptians, so this was a good venture outside of the usual modern literary fiction I read.

I think Atwood might be one of the smartest writers out there. Each of her books that I have read have been so unique, with well-defined characters. This one is a bit of a mystery, which I liked, and the story was as elegantly told as her others. The “twist” wasn't as exciting as I expected, so the end fell a little flat for me but still a very good read.

DFW is always a delight to read. He has an incredible vocabulary and I always walk away from his novels/essays/short stories in awe of how smart he is. Some of the essays in this book are starting to feel VERY dated - particularly the one about US television consumption. The thesis of which seemed to be: people watch an average of six hours of television per day to feel like voyeurs even though the things they are watching are typically scripted (published in 1990, I believe). With the advent of the internet and reality television, he's absolutely on-theme with general horror that can translate to present-day, but he gets far enough in the weeds that it can feel like a bit much for a topic which is no longer 100% applicable. I didn't like this as much as “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,” but it could also be that I tend to prefer fiction. Overall, worth my while and incredibly humbling.

I purchased my copy of Biswas over ten years ago, after reading A Bend in the River for class and finding this on the Modern Library top 100 list. I found this to be a solid story but I never completely fell into the plot or characters, which made it easy to put down. The writing is solid, but the plot felt a bit like wandering and I didn't feel sympathetic toward any of the characters.

Someone in my writing group recommended this book since it reminded her of the book I'm working on (or maybe it was the other way around). There were definitely a lot of interesting parallels between our stories and I think this story would have been more foreign/fascinating if I didn't also live in Portland and find most of what she was describing to be pretty typical of my day-to-day interactions. I think it's very cool she went through a sustainable publishing company (Red Lemonade), and that her book is way better than mine but I wasn't blown away.

This was by no means the worst book I've ever read (and I don't know if the author deserves the backlash she's received), but I kept finding myself rolling my eyes at certain characters and just not fully bought into how reflective the narrative was of an actual migrant journey through Mexico. Obviously, an important story to tell, but this was just okay for me. Couldn't get behind it.

Initially, I had my typical “this is going to be classic crap that I wade through and get nothing out of,” concern, but about 1/3 of the way through I started to really enjoy this novel. The beautiful estate setting in the Caribbean, the protagonist's mental unloosening and Rhys' amazing language skills make me think this may be my new favorite book.

Oh, and I have not read Jane Eyre and don't feel like I missed anything in this story because of it.

I really struggled with this one. The author won the Nobel prize in literature and the Man Booker and this came highly recommended, but at no point was I able to really fall into the story. I had to go back and reread what felt like most of the book. I really wanted to like this one, the premise and writing were both very unique but overall I couldn't get into it. Still finished it to see if anything redeeming happened toward the end but ultimately wouldn't recommend.