What are you reading?

[giz]

Have any of you read Douglas Coupland? I loved Generation X, but was cold on Girlfriend in a Coma. I'm thinking of trying another one of his. Right now, I've just started on Your Mouth is Lovely, (another Canadian novel, by Nancy Richler) which starts in the shetls of the Ukraine and moves on to Revolutionary Russia. So far it's sad, but I'm really enjoying it.

[JLuvs]

Oooh, let me know how you like it! I LOVED The Secret Life of Bees and have high hopes for this one. I think I'll wait for the paperback though.

I really, really liked it. Takes me a long time to get through a book now that I am subbing and in a play

[AJane]

Giz, who is Nancy Richler? Is she related to Mordecai and Daniel? (Loved Daniel Richler's first novel, Kicking Tomorrow, btw. Pick it up if you haven't read it...haven't read any of his stuff since, though.)

I finished The Closers - still not my cup of tea, but it did pick up about 3/4 of the way through. I'm now almost halfway through The Mermaid Chair - much more my kind of book, and I'll definitely check out The Secret Life of Bees after I'm through with this one.

[giz]

AJane, I'm pretty sure Nancy Richler is unrelated to Mordechai and Daniel (D. is our Mordechai's son, isn't he). I know Nancy Richler's from Vancouver, but that's as much as I know right now.

[Bubba-Jo-Lyn]

Not sure if anyone posted about this one yet but I just finished reading "Everyone Worth Knowing" by Lauren Weisberger and it is a really good book. It's her second novel after "The Devil Wears Prada". I enjoyed it a lot. It's all about the New York party scene. Funny and touching too. I would recommend it highly.

[Dinahann]

Not sure if anyone posted about this one yet but I just finished reading "Everyone Worth Knowing" by Lauren Weisberger and it is a really good book. It's her second novel after "The Devil Wears Prada". I enjoyed it a lot. It's all about the New York party scene. Funny and touching too. I would recommend it highly.

I really liked The Devil Wears Prada and didn't know she had another book out. I'll have to look for it.

I've read my current crop of library books and I'm hoping my library has some new ones. I keep telling myself I'm not buying another new book until I have some new bookshelves made, but that's a hard commitment to keep when the library takes so long to stock new books.

[geek the girl]

Just finished The Tin Drum by 1999's Nobel laureate Günter Grass. It's yet another mandatory but amazing read - seriously, this course I'm taking is the best ever. If any of my fellow lit majors (there are a few of us, right?) should stumble across a course on Magic Realism, do take it. Every book I've read so far has been wonderful.

Anyway, The Tin Drum is an absolutely overwhelming read. It takes place in Nazi Germany, and its main character is one of the strangest fictional character I've ever come across: a grown man in a three-year-old's body with magic abilities, most of which are connected with his tin drum. It's part surreal, part painfully realistic and incredibly well-written. Definitely one of the best novels I've read this year. I've seen it on several lists (yes, those lists ) and now that I've read it myself, I can honestly say that The Tin Drum deserves to be treated as one of post-WW2 Europe's most important works. It's an exhausting, sometimes unbearable read, but I had a hard time putting the book down.

[SnowflakeGirl]

Thank you so much for reminding of The Tin Drum, Geek the Glorious. That is one of my favorite novels. I haven't read it in ages, and honestly, I read it as a young girl, so I'm curious now to pick it up now to see what my impressions are as an adult. I'm sure there was much subtext that must have passed me by, no matter how precocious I thought I was.

I love, love, love Magical Realism (and yes, I was a lit major back in school ). A teacher assigned us 100 Years of Solitude in high school, and I was hooked. What are you reading in your course? Some of my favorites in this genre are Gabriel Garcia Marquez (of course), Jorge Luis Borges, and Mikhail Bulgakov.

[geek the girl]

What are you reading in your course?

So far, we've read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (of course; it's pretty much the definition of Magical Realism), The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Tracks by Louise Erdrich, The Famished Road by Ben Okri and, now, The Tin Drum. Some of the novels I've read before, others are new acquaintances. All of them are wonderful and have made a huge impact on me. I highly recommend them all to anyone who's into fine storytelling.

[giz]

I read Bulghakov a long time ago, I should re-read him, I'm sure I missed a lot the first time round. Has anyone seen the film of The Tin Drum? I saw it (I think when I was in highschool),and really enjoyed it. Very dark though.