Archive for the ‘Book Reviews’ Category
This is version two of the blog, which currently contains 136 published posts. To some extent, this blog represents the creative excesses of a design enthusiast who is somewhere in the process of applying to grad school, working at a law firm and resides in the Financial District of New York City.
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I’ve been meaning to read Slaughterhouse-Five since the dawn of time. Seriously, I think I’ve had the book for about five years now. I’ve read Timequake, Welcome to the Monkey House, Bagombo Snuff Box, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Man without a Country, etc., etc. – loved all these books, but for some reason had never been able to get myself to read his most well-known work.
Until now, of course, and it was wonderful. Oddly enough, he cites a quote in two instances which happens to be one of my favorite quotes. I won’t recite it here – it seems cheesy when taken out of an appropriate context.
I think my delay in reading it might be because I knew I loved Vonnegut so much that I was worried I’d read it and be disappointed – with most of the writers I’ve loved the most, one day I pick up a book I thought I really loved and find that it’s not what I thought it was. I suppose maybe it’s cause I read a lot of stuff when I was young and gave more credit them than they deserved. But who knows.
At any rate, knowing that I wanted to concentrate on reading the new Harry Potter tome, I went ahead and tried to tie up some loose strings by finally finishing the book. I ended up having to start over since it was so long since I’d read the beginning, but it was well worth it. The whole time, I kept thinking about how it hit me when I found out Kurt Vonnegut was dead. It was on the Georgetown bus in Washington D.C. on our way to the business strategy case competition, day of. It was on the left column on the front page of the Post, and it made our little competition seem very insignificant.
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Alright, last post about the past month in New York. It was originally supposed to be about my activities outside of work, but since all we seem to ever do is eat at various restaurants, this has essentially become a restaurant log. There’s also a bunch of places we’ve been to that I never caught the name of. Shame. But anyway, here goes:
Weekends (a.k.a. the Restaurant Log)
The downside of working a lot is that it’s hard to do things during the week. I basically have no time whatsoever from Monday through Friday. I actually didn’t do laundry for the first time until this past weekend – I just kept buying more clothes and underwear, no joke. Right afterwards, I went online and bought more stuff from Victoria’s Secret so I could toss the crap I’d purchased from Duane Reade. Yuck.
Instead, I keep most of my social engagements on the weekends so that I don’t end up canceling on people all over the place and feeling like a jerk. Luckily, people have been in and out of New York every weekend so it’s been pretty fun with sooo much good, delicious, savory, flavorful food. For example, Heartland Brewery has really good mini-burgers.
My first weekend after starting work, I spent most of the time with Rita shopping in Soho and checking out little boutiques. At some point, we went out to a little restaurant called the Barking Dog, where we ate outside in this stone fountain area thing. Quite lovely with pretty good food, depending on what you order. Later we went to Cafe Zaiya because they have really great cream puffs. I also got together with Bo and Chen, who are both also working in the city, but we basically walked around, ate at Monster Sushi and ended up going to the Mac store for some reason. Whatever.
Second weekend, Kasey and Jules strolled into town – yay! So, all us IB kids got together again and went to some very, very random Chinese restaurant in (where else) Chi-town and got gelato afterwards in Little Italy. Also, there was this French restaurant later where Bo tried to hit on the waitress. The great thing about hanging out with other Asian people is that we can do family-style food which is always fun. Chen brought some friends and gave me a sew-it-yourself Monster doll — I’m waiting for a time to do it when I can give it the full attention it deserves.
Oh, when I met up with Rita and her friend Chelsea, we went to this really cute restaurant painted in blue that I need to remember to get the name of. We had a really overzealous waitress who listed off specials for at least a couple minutes. It was a little weird. That, and the crepe place (called Crepe Creations) we went to afterwards that had no food. Seriously. We tired to order stuff and each time they said they didn’t have chocolate, or didnt’ have “fluff” whatever that is but it’s in half their menu or whatever else. When they finally had the stuff, they ran out of apples in Rita’s apple crepe and they ran out of whipped creme and substituted powdered sugar on mine. I know the guy was no Mario Batali, but come on – whipped cream and powdered sugar are so not the same thing.
The weekend after that was busy, to say the least. My sister was in town, so we got together with two of her friends, Monica and Theresa, both people from Plano. Also, Rita came in again, but with James and Ben, so of course we have to get together. It’s funny how people always seem to be colliding here — at the same time, both Brown and Beam – Emory people – were in town, too, and they managed to run into Suhas in the subways on the one day she came into town. My sister and I ended up hanging out with her friends during the day and my friends at night, basically. It’s not worth detailing out everything that went down, but it essentially was a really fun weekend. I also went to, like, five really good restaurants that weekend and ate a lot.
RESTAURANTS INCLUDED:
Havana with the Asian crew, New Yeah Shanghi Deluxe as well as Sala with Monica and Geg, Smorgas Chef and Choux Factory thanks to Theresa (and Geg), and finally I think the Emory kids went to Tigerland but I’m not sure. It was good.
My sister managed to miss her flight out three times in a row (okay, twice it was because she was standby, but still.) The last night she was here, we went to a Japanese restaurant near my place, and for dessert, we ordered some banana sushi concoction out of curiosity. After some slight confusion regarding complementary green tea ice cream (I wanted to know where the bananas were) – it was actually really good.
Finally, this past weekend, my fourth weekend in New York, marking my first full month to be in the big city, was Rita’s birthday! Her not-quite-surprise party was held at Gyu-Kaku, and I met a ton of her friends from high school. Justin showed up because he was in town visiting Stephanie, as well as James and Jimmy-James. Justin ditched us to go to a ballet. Uncool, man. Uncool. Chaussie was also in town for Rita’s 21st, so we all hung out afterwards (Halal on 53rd and 6th, Dylan’s Candy Bar and the ever-reliable Jamba Juice), as Rita went out and got crunk with her high school people.
Anyway, that’s my story up until this point. I have half and hour before work starts, so off to breakfast. Ciao!
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I’m so sad to say that A Dirty Job (by Christopher Moore) was kind of a disappointment. I mean, to be fair, it’s not a bad book and it’s still pretty funny. I’m glad I read it and it was worth the 13 bucks. However, I keep thinking back to when I read Lamb, by the same author, which was just so damn good, and the last really good book I read, Good Omens, was just amazing – so perhaps this book just never had a chance. Maybe.
Anyway, the premise of it was cute – a guy gets a job harvesting souls as a being working for the underworld. He also has a new baby girl to deal with. Very cute. She gets two puppies, except they’re not so much puppies as they are large black hellhounds. Less cute, but funny.
All in all, not a bad book. I’d give it a solid three-and-a-half stars.
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I’ve been reading a bit over the past week or two. Here’s my take on these books:
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – [5/5] a wonderful, hilarious book. I started reading and couldn’t stop. Iris told me to read it a while back, but I didn’t get to it until now. It’s about good and evil, the end of the world and a bunch of other stuff. It’s one of those books that pretty much anyone can enjoy.
Ignorance by Milan Kundera – [3/5] I have to say, I was a bit disappointed. It’s about memories and the experiences of expats of the Czech Republic. I guess I expected more out of the author of the Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I’ve been told is quite good. It reminded me of reading Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground. Like Notes, it was clearly written by a capable author (and Kundera is – in my opinion – easier to read than Dostoevsky), but also felt like it skimmed the surface of the topic. Both are more novellas than novels (e.g. they’re short) that read like an abstract for a more in-depth work. Brian suggests I try The Joke, another one of his novels, so I might do that. I mean, again, it’s still a good book, I was just expecting more.
Hitched by Carol Higgins Clark – [2.5/5] Argh! I want so badly to like these books. Carol is the daughter of the more well-know (and better) Mary Higgings Clark, who I like. Great airplane and waiting room reads. The younger Clark tends to write with more levity, which is why I want so badly for her books to be a less serious version of the elder Clark’s books. Unfortunately, that is not the case – I’ve read three of her novels now, and each one is a bit unsatisfying. Her novels just don’t unravel as well. Oh well.
The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman – [3.5/5] a book of faux trivia, haha. I just happened to pick this one up and start reading it. At first I thought it was a book of random knowledge until it said something about Yale’s Whiffenpoofs being some sort of foreign defense unit (that just happens to be masquerading as the first all-men a capella group), wherein I figured something was up. Anyway, it can be comical, but you have to be in the mood for some pretty dry deadpanned humor.
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I wound up reading this because it was the only title I recognized out of a random pile of books in a waiting room. But I’m generally weary of books and movies that are so blatantly sappy that it’s difficult to muster up any type of emotion that’s remotely genuine. Nickolas Sparks, for example, I cannot stomach. (I remember reading A Walk to Remember on a bus and making faces at it while I was reading. This is coming from a girl who used to read Sweet Valley books, so you can imagine.)
That said, I actually liked Mitch Albom’s newest, For One More Day. I’d been avoiding reading anything of his for a while for the reason listed above, but people seem to like him. Anyhow, according to the back of the book, it’s “the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that lasts a lifetime and beyond.”
And yes, the novel itself is as sappy as it sounds. The chapter titles say things like “Times When My Mother Stood Up for Me” and “Times When I Did Not Stand Up for My Mother” — that sort of thing. However, the book’s saving grace is the mom character, who is actually quite likable. Moreover, the ending actually surprised me quite a bit, which I wasn’t expecting (please ignore the redundancy in that sentence, thanks).
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the book (but maybe a little disappointed in myself).
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The Painted Veil, by Somerset Maugham, isn’t quite what I expected. According to the forward, it was based on a line in Dante’s Inferno about a man who takes his adulteress wife to a noxious castle in a place called Maremma in hopes that it will cause her to die.
Intriguing premise, but the story felt flat to me. The story seemed pretty predictable and packaged. The characters were interesting and thinking of Walter Fane as Edward Norton was a plus, but beyond a lesson on altruism, I didn’t think there was much to the novel. It kept me interested, but I suppose I was hoping for something else.
I don’t have much to say about it. I’ll update this post (maybe) after I watch the movie.
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The Final Solution, by Michael Chabon (who won a Pulitzer in 2001 for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), is like Encyclopedia Brown on crack. A novelette – it’s a brisk 144 pages – starring a famous unnamed detective (the book hints at his identity being Sherlock Holmes), The Final Solution is a story of one case, one murder, one answer, and one boy and his parrot.
Like Encyclopedia Brown who runs his business (remember? NO case too small, 25 cents per day) from his garage, the detective gets asked by city investigators to assist in a case involving a murder and a stolen parrot – a bird with a curious habit of rattling off streams of seemingly insignificant numbers. Set at end of World War II in England, our retired detective reluctantly sets off to help a mute Jewish boy find his pet.
It’s a whodunit (was it the jealous husband? the irascible son? the stranger?) mixed in with a bit of military and political intrigue that has all the elements of a solid mystery novel. Though it’s a bit longer than Encyclopedia’s average case, Chabon’s novel still retains the gratifying “reveal” at the end of the book that makes it all worth the while. Short, sweet, and altogether satisfying.
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The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, was longer than I thought it would be (the pages are thin). Luckily, it was also very enjoyable. I finished it a couple days ago, but I finally have time to come up with a quick review now.
The primary thread through the story is a young girl who discovers her father’s research into Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler or by others as Dracula. Part historical fiction, the novel takes the reader though temples, old archives, Cold War Europe, and copious amounts of Byzantine and Ottoman history. It pulls the reader along with little cliffhangers and an understated romance. It’s a pretty rapid read, given it’s length, but anyone who lacks patience for historical topics should shy away. Otherwise, it’s a trek into an – albeit romanticized – hunt for Dracula that’s satisfying, entertaining, and even suspenseful at times.
Kostova writes passably in the male voice but I suspect for most guys it would be even less convincing than it was for me. I know that most wold say that The Historian is no literary feat, but I think it’s definitely worth a read for historical fiction buffs or Dracula enthusiasts.
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I recently finished Lisa Grunwald’s Whatever Makes You Happy. It’s a rumination on the concept of happiness wrapped in a novel about a woman writing a book called “The History of Happiness.” The woman has a mid-life crisis of sorts and begins an affair with a famous artist and spends a lot of time thinking about what she’s doing based on her research, etc. It’s a very enjoyable book to read – Grunwald writes in simple prose, but does it well enough – but the book lacks substance.
For a novel dealing with a very Big Question and the topic of adultry, it’s still a light read. It touches upon different methods of measuring happiness and what various philosophers have said regarding the topic, but doesn’t delve deep enough to make you think. The storyline of the novel is nothing spectacular, but again, it’s not bad. This would be a good beach-type novel for people who don’t want to be caught reading chick lit.
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