books 64, 65, 66

holiday time is reading time!

the book thief, markus zusak
rating:


i LOVED this book, even though it took me weeks and weeks to read it. i kept having to put it down for various school and job-related reasons, but it was really easy to pick back up where i left off. i loved i am the messenger, so my expectations for this one were really high, and it completely delivered. i was a little nervous that it would be gimmicky (narrated by death, includes drawings, etc), but it wasn't at all. the whole thing takes place during wwii in germany, so it's fraught with a certain amount of automatic tension, but it's also very human and universal in the way it deals with things like death and maturation. i just can't gush enough about what a great writer markus zusak is. i want to go back and read his earlier books whenever i get a chance.


wasted: a memoir of anorexia and bulimia, marya hornbacher

i can't really rate this book, because it was well-written and evocative and all of those positive things, but it was also almost unbearably painful to read. there was a time in my life (ages 11-13) that i read tons and tons of eating disorder memoirs, but they must have been much tamer than this one. i have been having horrible nightmares since i finished this book in which i am shrinking and i grow fur.


last seen leaving, kelly braffet
rating:


last december, i read a delightfully disturbing book that kelly braffet wrote called josie and jack (or jack and josie?). think flowers in the attic meets a secret history. so, i was excited when my mom brought this home for me while i was visiting for thanksgiving (she works in a public library and always keeps an eye out for anything vaguely interesting around the time of my visits). this one was very different, all about a mother and daughter who have grown increasingly removed from one another since the mysterious death of their husband/father, a pilot named nick. the mother, anne, tries to contact her daughter, miranda, on her twenty-eighth birthday, only to discover that she's missing. a search ensues. i'll admit that i was skimming a little bit at the end, so i'm not sure i really understand if the mystery of nick's death is ever actually solved. but it was a nice, fast read, and it held my attention for 200+ pages.

book 63!

the uses of enchantment, heidi julavits
rating:


this book was decent, but it also annoyed me. it's about a girl who maybe was abducted/ maybe faked her own abduction in 1985. it's all tied in with freud and dora. she sees this psychoanalyst who pretty much uses her to explain this theory he has about privileged white teenage girls and then writes a book about her. there are all these chapters called "what might have happened" interwoven with her shrink's notes and then with stuff in the present, where the main character's mom has just died and there's all this weirdness. and i have no idea what's really true, which irks me. it kept my attention most of the way, and i really wanted to know what was what, but not knowing at the end really pissed me off. i felt like it was trying a little too hard.

but hey, the good news is, i read a whole book! and i've only got fifteen left before i hit my goal. with my sad pace lately, i may not make it, but i'm still going to try!