Monday, August 01, 2005

2005 books 96, 97, 98

martha cooley's the archivist
eh, this book was ok: it's about a college archivist who encounters a grad student who wants to see some t.s. eliot letters, which aren't supposed to be public until 2020. she reminds the archivist of his dead wife, who appears in flashback and through her journal entries. the ending is a little flat, but it's a nice story on the whole--i think to really love it, you have to be a big fan of eliot and other poets, though. i mean, sure, i wrote a high school term paper on prufrock, but i'm not generally a big poetry fan on the whole.

chieh chieng's a long stay in a distant land
this book was really, really good. it's the story of an extended chinese-american family; one of its members believes they're under some bizarre death curse, because so many of them have died in sudden, weird accidents. after his mother's death, his father obsesses over killing the other driver involved in the car accident, and his grandmother worries over one of her other sons, who has disappeared in hong long. the story is told through a series of vignettes from the points of view of different family members, which is a really effective device as their actual lives become clear. i liked this one a lot.

jennifer donnelly's a northern light
this lengthy YA novel is sort of about the same murder that apparently dreiser covers in an american tragedy, but the main character is a young girl who works at the hotel in question. she longs to go to college and study literature and learn to be a writer, but her family needs her and a young local handsome guy has come a-callin'. which life will she choose?? how will the murder and her knowledge about it change her life???? actually, this was a pretty good book--good vacation reading.

No comments:

Post a Comment