poison ivy

no, not the comic book poison ivy (though her appearance in batgirl a month or so ago was mildly entertaining). sadly, i apparently had a run-in with this plant over the fourth of july weekend and as a result have been missing lots of work, instead spending my time sleeping (benadryl makes me sleepy).

on the plus side, i have managed to read two books in the past two days in between naps (i've already read more than the required 50 books for the year, so now am aiming for 100). i'm trying to figure out if there's a way to add all the books i've read so far this year to this blog--by backdating entries, i mean, not by just cramming them all into one entry. but for now, here's books 56 and 57 for 2004.

book 56:
kazuo ishiguro's a pale view of hills
brief comments, 'cause i'm sleepy: good book, interesting characters, interesting look at western culture coming to japan in the post WWII era. my only beef is that the entire story seems to be setting up a mystery, but what happened in the past of the main character is never really revealed. i liked this book, but would have liked it a lot more if there was actually a resolution of sorts. of course this was ishiguro's first novel, so it's not really fair to judge it by his famous later novels.

book 57:

jonathan lethem's amnesia moon
honestly, i'm not a huge fan of lethem's writing--his latest short stories have been trying too hard to be hip and clever, or something. but charles recommended this book to me, and i trust charles' judgment, so i grabbed it at the library today, and enjoyed it pretty well. it's a futuristic dystopia thing, where the main character has no memory of his past or of how the world got so fucked up. keeping w/ my recent trend in reading, the big "what happened" is never explained, but somehow it turns out not to be really necessary to the story as a whole. it's an interesting meditation on memory/thought/dreaming with a pretty good story backing it up. i'll have to get more recommendations from charles.

i love my shiny new library card. i have three more books waiting for me! of course, i am going to try and work a whole day tomorrow . . .