Fiction Potpourri

Last of the backlog. I promise.

Watch with me: and Six other stories of the yet-remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and his wife, Miss Minnie, nee Quinch, Wendell Berry
Berry is usually known for his essays on agriculture, environment and society (Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community is an excellent book, for example). But, he also writes fiction. This is a fun little book about community and marriage. I know I’ve read The Memory of Old Jack, too, but I don’t remember much about that one.

The Count of Monte Christo, Alexander Dumas
Adventure! Romance! Revenge! It’s Huge! Heard the movie sucked, though.

The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
She’s a good writer, and this was an interesting story.

The Lonesome Gods, Louis L’Amour
I was going to put this on my “all time favorites” list until the last few chapters. I was really enjoying the story about a boy’s growing up, learning, and dealing with hatred and revenge (and rising above it). That is, until the book dissolved into a bloody hunt and shootout where all the “bad guys” die. It would have been better had it not become so violent. (My father-in-law took issue with my objections, commenting, “How on earth could it have ended any other way?!”)

A Sudden, Fearful Death, Anne Perry
A good, well-told mystery set in the 1800s

The Princess, Lori Wick
I’d never read something so obviously “Christian fiction”. It was interesting. A romance – an arranged marriage and the couple working to learn to love each other – in which everyone in the book is either
praying, talking about praying for people, reading scriptures or going to church. In the end, though, the book’s just okay.

Ethnic Writers

For lack of a better title…

The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
An interesting little book. I liked it, though I probably didn’t understand it like the author probably meant it to be understood.

Swift as Desire, Laura Esquivel
An attempt to read Latino fiction… it was pretty good. A bit much sex for my taste, but I think in the end the story won me over.

The Chosen and The Promise, Chaim Potok
I liked both books, though I liked The Chosen better. An interesting look at Hasidic Judaism and its relationship to other Jewish factions and the rest of the world. The Asher Lev books are also excellent books by Potok. I have also read The Books of Lights, In the Beginning, Davida’s Harp and I am the Clay, but not for a very long time. So I don’t remember what I thought of them.

Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife, Amy Tan
I generally like Amy Tan, but her books are just different versions of the same story. It gets old after a while. Joy Luck Club is a good movie, though.

The Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan
My favorite Amy Tan book, mostly because it’s not about a Chinese-American daughter coming to terms with her Chinese immigrant mother. It’s a decent story of reconciliation, with a bit of ghost story thrown in.

The Red Tent

The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant is a very earthy book. It’s also a very, well, female book. It’s all about menstration and childbirthing and I’m not sure why any man would care to read this one. It’s not a bad book… there were some elements that I like. It’s the story of Dinah, and through her the story of Leah and Rachel and Jacob and Joseph. I liked the younger Dinah years, before things got, well, complicated. I liked that Diamant spun out a viable and interesting story to compliment the account in the Bible. I didn’t particularly like the whole pagan Mother Earth Goddess thing, but I suppose if you’re writing a book about Biblical times, the whole Mother Earth Goddess thing is going to come up. I also didn’t (and this is my Mormon theology coming out) particularly like her treatment of Jacob and Joseph. It wasn’t a great book, but it didn’t really suck either.

Historical Fiction

I’m generally an escapist reader; I tend not to read to learn. Historical fiction is a good compromise: good stories to satisfy that side of me, while I feel like I’ve “learned” something in the end.

The Great Turkey Walk and Oh, Those Harper Girls!, Kathleen Karr
Fun little books, set in Texas. I liked Turkey Walk better.

The Examination, Malcom Bosse
Perhaps it’s my interest (however vague) in China, but I really liked this book. The plot is essentially two brothers traveling to the state-run examinations. It doesn’t sound very exciting, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s well-written, the history is interesting (if one was ever vaguely interested in Confucian or Taoist thought, this is a good book), and the ending is just perfect (which says a lot).

Mary, Bloody Mary, Carolyn Meyer
A good bit of historical fiction. Interesting characters, interesting plot, well told.

The King’s Fifth, Scott O’Dell
A fascinating story about Spanish explorers in America and their obsession with finding gold. Really interesting and really well-told.

When My Name was Keoko, Linda Sue Park
About Korea during World War II, while it was occupied by Japan. Not a whole lot of story, but I was fascinated by the details of life in Korea during the occupation. (Russell didn’t find it interesting at all, though.)

An Acquaintance with Darkness, Ann Rinaldi
Good historical mystery, set right after the Civil War. Deals with “body snatching” by the physicians at the time and their desire to know the anatomy of the body.

The Coffin Quilt, Ann Rinaldi
Set in the hills of West Virginia and Kentucky and looks at the Hatfield-McCoy feud in the 1880s. I didn’t know anything about this feud (though Russell had heard of it), but the book was a fascinating look on grudges, revenge and hatred and what it can do to a family.

The Outlandish Knight, Richard Adams
Interesting, though I got lost with all the detailed English History.

Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
Fascinating story about a convicted murderer and the “reason” why she killed. Based on a real case in the 1800s.

Pop Fiction

Pop Fiction: anything that makes the NY Times best seller list. I hardly ever read them. Too many books I’ve haven’t read yet that are so much better.

Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
A note on Dan Brown: he’s not a good writer. I think one ends up liking the first book you read by him, and then realizing that he’s a bad writer and can’t even tell a decent story. I liked this one because I read it before DiVinci Code. It’s a decent thriller, but not a good book.

Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
An interesting tale of a Geisha in post-WWII Japan. Been too long since I’ve read it to really remember much, though I do remember liking the book.

A Painted House, John Grisham
A pretty accurate telling of the life of a cotton farmer in Arkansas. I read this because it takes place where we live right now. The only real complaint is that his 7-year-old narrator doesn’t act like a 7-year-old (he acts like he’s 11 or 12). But other than that, it’s a good story decently told.

The Nanny Diaries, Emma MacLauglan and Nora Kraus
Not an especially good book, but a guilty pleasure. Made me feel superior to all those snobby rich New York people because I, at least, am a good mom.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Gregory Maguire
A good premise: the Wizard of Oz from the Wicked Witch’s point of view. Turns out the Wizard and the Witch of the East were the “wicked” ones because both abused their power. Anyway, it kind of gave out to the end
when he had to fit the story to the original.

Adult Fiction

Thomas the Rhymer

Mission Road

The Great Gastby

Gods Behaving Badly

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

Southtown (DNF)

Twelfth Night

The Devil Went Down to Austin

The Fairy Godmother

The Last King of Texas

One Hundred Years of Solitude (DNF)

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Naked Heat

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Heat Wave

How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Daughter of the Forest

The White Queen

2010:

A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

The Importance of Being Earnest

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

Crossed Wires

Girl in Translation

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (DNF)

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

The Girl in Hyacinth Blue

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Much Ado About Nothing

A Song for Summer

The School of Essential Ingredients

Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence; Sabine’s Notebook; The Golden Mean

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Letter to My Daughter

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The War of the Worlds

The Girl Who Chased the Moon

Neverwhere

The English American

Sea Glass

Sugar

Howards End

The Catcher in the Rye

Storm Glass

The Undaunted (DNF)

Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms

2009:

The Heretic’s Daughter

The Wine-Dark Sea

Cotillion

Fifth Business

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

The Stand

Sweetness in the Belly

A Civil Contract (DNF)

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

The Great Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

The Moonstone

Twilight of Avalon

My Antonia

The Book of Unholy Mischief

The Handmaid’s Tale

Fiction

Previously Engaged

Echoes From the Dead

The Talisman Ring

Garden Spells

Atonement

Fire Study

Magic Study

Poison Study

The Painter from Shanghai

The Actor and the Housewife

The Woman in White

The Screwtape Letters

People of the Book

Ancedotes of Destiny and Ehrengard

The Darcys and the Bingleys

Pemberley by the Sea

Jane Austen Ruined My Life

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Rosewater and Soda Bread

Bee Season

Chocolat

Matrimony

Beside a Burning Sea

Captain Alatriste

Breathing Out the Ghost

2008:

The Christmas Carol

Persuasion

Chasing Windmills

The Triumph of Deborah

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

Call of the Wild

Frankenstein

Sense and Sensibility

What if…?

The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights (DNF)

Dracula

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Grail Prince

The Three Musketeers

Rules for Saying Goodbye

The Code of the Woosters

Rebecca

Leave it to Psmith

The Host

Right Ho, Jeeves

Pride and Prejudice

Suite Francaise

Othello

The Fall of the Kings

Swordspoint

Emma

The Last Enchantment

The Hollow Hills

The Crystal Cave

Serving Crazy with Curry

American Gods

Mansfield Park

The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye

Interpreter of Maladies

The Other Boleyn Girl (DNF)

The Secret Between Us

The Winter Queen

The Book Thief

Kidnapped

The Saffron Kitchen

The Painted Drum (DNF)

Northanger Abbey

1984

The Hummingbird’s Daughter

2007:

The Stone Diaries

Empire of Ivory (DNF)

Villette

Pomegranate Soup

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

The Brothers K

More Letters from Pemberly (DNF)

The Rest Falls Away and Rises the Night

The Traveler’s Gift

A Good Man is Hard to Find

A Snug Life Somewhere

The Inheritance

Jane Eyre

The Blue Castle

Old Friends, New Fancies; Letters from Pemberly

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Liszt’s Kiss

Enchantment

A Good Year

Eat Cake

Sunshine

Stardust

Midsummer Night’s Dream

As You Like It

The Killer Angels

Bridget Jones’s Diary

Austenland

Riddle-Master

Black Powder War

Throne of Jade

An Instance of the Fingerpost

Confessions of a Super Mom and Super Mom Saves the World

Outlander

The Last of the Mohicans (DNF)

Mrs. Mike

Kite Runner

His Majesty’s Dragon

The Odyssey

2006:

Frangipani

Skipping Christmas

Blessed are the Cheesemakers

March

How Green Was My Valley

A Year of Wonders

Katherine (DNF)

Tooth and Claw

Rachel and Leah

The Towers of Trebizond (DNF)

Gap Creek

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

Ella Minnow Pea

The Mermaid Chair

Zorro

The Jane Austen Book Club

The Orange Girl

The Virgin’s Lover

Parnassus on Wheels

Peace Like a River

These is My Words

The Queen’s Fool

Vanity and Vexation

The Time Traveler’s Wife

Possession

2005:

Snow (DNF)

Memory of Earth

The Swallows of Kabul

Mrs. Kimble

Magic Street

Changing Planes

Vanity Fair

Unveiling

The Whale Rider

Aiding and Abetting

Girl With a Pearl Earring

Sarah

The Red Tent

Life of Pi

The Outlandish Knight and Alias Grace

Rose Daughter

The Bear Went Over the Mountain

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Galileo’s Daughter

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Fiction Potpourri: Watch With Me, The Count of Monte Christo, The Bean Trees, The Lonesome Gods, A Sudden Fearful Death, The Princess

Ethnic Writers: House on Mango Street, Swift as Desire, The Chosen, The Promise, Joy Luck Club, Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses

English Class: Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abby, Nicholas Nickleby, Room With a View, The Scarlett Letter, Farewell to Arms, Daisy Miller, Washington Square, Slaughterhouse Five

Pop Fiction: Angels and Demons, Memoirs of a Geisha, A Painted House, Nanny Diaries, Wicked

Sci-Fi and Fantasy: Deerskin, Dragonflight, Dragonquest, Four Ways to Forgiveness, The Lathe of Heaven, Dirk Gently

Orson Scott Card: Folk of the Fringe, Rebekah, Ender’s Game, Enchantment, Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hedgemon, Shadow Puppets, Xenocide

King Arthur Books: Mists of Avalon, Lady of Avalon, Merlin Trilogy (Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment)

Top 10 Fiction Books

Fiction Rejects

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Our local library had a copy of Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven (well, two actually), but the wait list was so long I had my sister-in-law pick me up a copy (they had 20) to read over Christmas. It’s not a hard book to finish. And not especially worth the easy read, either. It’s a book that, well, aspires to be profound. And falls short at least in my opinion. The basic premise is that a man dies and meets five people that help explain his life and his life’s purpose to him in order to give it meaning. Perhaps I thought it trite because of my belief on life and the after-life; perhaps it’s because while Mitch Albom is a good newspaper columnist he’s really not all that great as a novelist. I feel like I’m supposed to find inspiration in this story, that I’m supposed to look at my life differently, but it didn’t happen.

Fiction Reject Pile

Okay — I read most of these a while ago… take everything with a bit of a grain of salt. Sometimes a bad mood or a bad day can affect how I react to a book.

Open House, Elizabeth Berg (An Oprah book. I was expecting something with a powerful heroine; instead I got a whining divorcee.)

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown(Let this be a lesson: never, ever read two books by the same author back to back. I enjoyed Angels and Demons better. But then, that’s not saying a whole lot.)

Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte (For me, it was like watching a train wreck. And that is never a pleasant way to spend one’s time.)

The Professor’s House, Willa Cather (I was bored by this.)

Body and Soul, Frank Conroy (A genius pianist comes of age. The beautiful passages about his playing almost saved this book for me. But not quite.)

Think of England, Alice Elliot Dark (I don’t know what I expected from this book. It was trite, while trying to be deep, and often confusing.)

Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel (Call me uneducated, but I happen to like my magic in fantasy books… I just don’t get “magic realism.” Inner passion setting buildings on fire – not for me! I’m really not all that sophisticated in my literary taste, I admit.)

The Monk Downstairs, Tim Farrington (A Pretentious book about Relationship. Graphic sex – just short of heaving bosoms – didn’t help.)

One Thousand White Women, Jim Fergus (I don’t care for books where the white man needs to be redeemed by the “noble savage”. Sorry.)

Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (Read it because of the buzz, but didn’t get why this was supposed to be so great.)

Neuromancer, William Gibson (Admittedly, I only read a couple chapters of this. But I didn’t want to finish some 15-year-old computer geek’s wet dream.)

High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (Too much foul language for my taste. I’m a prude.)

Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (Russell really liked it, though.)

Dragon’s Winter, Elizabeth Lynn (Good idea, lousy execution.)

A Game of Thrones, George RR Martin (Too much sex, too much violence, too much silly story.)

The White Dragon, Anne McCaffrey (After the first two books in the Pern series, which are quite good, I really expected this to be good. It wasn’t.)

The Knocker on Death’s Door, Ellis Peters (A very silly mystery.)

Moo, Jane Smiley (Too many characters, too much plot, not enough caring on my part. I read half and didn’t bother with the rest.)

The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Amy Tan (I like Amy Tan; I just felt she was repeating herself.)

Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (I liked the movie better.)

The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim (Ditto.)

My take on Orson Scott Card

My general opinion on Card is that his earlier stuff is better. I find that these days, he gets too preachy and philosophical (if you can call it that) in his writing for my taste. Give me straight-up storytelling without the moralizing, please.

My favorites:

Folk of the Fringe

I really liked his take on the post-apocalyptic world, and the Mormon religion’s place in it. The best stories (it’s a book of short stories) were the first (the name escapes me now), Pageant Wagon and America, all of which were based on intriguing ideas, well-developed and just plain enjoyable to read.

Rebekah

I set out to dislike this one; I’m really not one who likes “retelling” of Biblical stories. But the storyteller I like in Card came out and he told a really good story about a strong woman and the choices she makes in her life. It’s a really good book. I’d like the chance to read Sarah and Leah and Rebekah, but as the library here doesn’t have them, I’ll have to track down someone who does.

Ender’s Game

It was more violent than I remembered, but it’s still an excellent science fiction story. Though Speaker for the Dead (posted here) is the better book.

Ones that are just “okay” (not bad, but not great):

Enchantment

An interesting take on Sleeping Beauty, though I was often frustrated with the storytelling. (I often found myself yelling at the book to get back to the story and stop the moralizing!)

Ender’s Shadow

This was fascinating, not because it was well-written (Card’s writing has gotten overly prolific as he’s aged) but because it was a different take on an already told story. It was worth it to read just to get another “perspective” on Ender and his whole saga. A good companion book to Ender’s Game.

Shadow of the Hedgemon

A good book, if you don’t mind it not being about Peter Wiggin. Card doesn’t moralize as much as he usually does and the way Bean goes about rescuing Petra I found quite fascinating.

Ones I wouldn’t read again:

Shadow Puppets

There was too much moralizing not enough storytelling. And the story that was told wasn’t interesting.

Xenocide

It needs to be read, if only to finish off the Ender story. Otherwise, it has no use. I didn’t even bother re-reading Children of the Mind to confirm I hated it when it first came out.

(I think there’s a general trend here… his series tend to deteriorate; the latter books are generally worse than the earlier ones.)

I have read the first three books of the Alvin Maker series, but it’s been a while. I remember liking them, but since the library here doesn’t have them, I haven’t had the chance to re-read them and see if I still think they’re worth the time. I have also read — and would recommend on the basis of what I remember — Card’s collection of short stories, Maps in the Mirror. While, like all of his writing, it’s not consistently good, there are some very good short stories. Granted, it’s been a while since I read it last.

My King Arthur Fixation

I don’t know where it came from, or really even how long I’ve been interested in Camelot and the whole King Arthur story. But it seems that I’m drawn to books that are set in and deal with the whole King Arthur myth.
First off, there are (at least) two big holes in this list. I have never gotten around to reading T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. Actually, I think I tried to read it once and found it frightfully dull and have never attempted it since. The second hole is Sir Thomas Mallory’s King Arthur and the Round Table. (At least I think that’s the title.) No excuses on that one.

That being said, the King Arthur books I have read and my thoughts on them:

Ladies of the Lake, Caitlin and John Matthews: I bought this on a whim; it turned out to be an equal balance between new-agey hippy stuff (full of meditations on this line: “Imagine you’re Guenievere. You’re wandering through the garden, about to meet the love of your life…”) and decent scholarship on the women in the Arthur story: Guinevere, Morgan/Morgause, Nimue and Vivian. Kind of silly, but an interesting book overall.

In the same New Age vein, there’s… Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley: A heady piece of feminist fiction. The first time I read this, I was enraptured by the way she tells the story from the women’s point of view. Granted, I was 20-something at the time, and very much into the whole feminine power thing. This time through, it wasn’t as good as I had remembered. Perhaps it’s because I have children now that I just found it to be a bit heavy-handed. Anyway, maybe it’s a great book for 20-somethings. In addition, there’s Lady of Avalon. It’s Bradley’s “prequel” to Mists of Avalon. I had a hard time getting into the story for all the New Age Goddess schlock. If you choose to read either, read Mists. It’s better.

As for youth fiction, try…

The Lost Years of Merlin series (The Lost Years of Merlin, The Fires of Merlin, The Seven Songs of Merlin, The Mirror of Merlin, and The Wings of Merlin), T.A. Barron: I really wanted to like this series, since Barron is dealing with Merlin’s backstory. But, in the end, it was just okay. I think I had to start and re-start the first book just because I wasn’t interested in the story Barron was trying to tell. I did really like the Seven Songs of Merlin, though, so it wasn’t all a waste.

or…

Passager, Hobby, Merlin, Jane Yolen: Another look at Merlin’s backstory. Usually Yolen is a great writer; I’ve enjoyed many of her picture books. But I found this series to be a bit forced and choppy.

And, my favorite look at the King Arthur legend:

The Merlin Trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment), Mary Stewart: It’s a good trilogy, though it drops off by the last book (and the fourth, The Wicked Day, is abominable). Mary Stewart is obviously more interested in Merlin, and by the end when Arthur is playing a more prominent role, she (and as a result the book) is less interesting. But the first book and most of the second are quite compelling.