Indigo - Alice Hoffman

This book was really terrible. It read like a children's book, but it was in the adult section at my library. It was written too vaguely for a child to understand, so I suppose it was meant for adults, but oh man. Never read this. If you do, it will only take about ten minutes because it's very short, but you can never. Get. That. Time. Back.


Indigo is about two orphan boys who have a curious affinity for all things ocean-related. They're adopted, ironically, by a couple who lives in a landlocked town terrified of water. One day the boys decide to run away to the ocean with their friend Martha, but the town floods the day they leave, wreaking havoc on everything and eventually forcing them to go back home because Martha breaks her arm. The two boys then "save" the town by diving underwater and destroying the wall that is holding the water in. In doing so, they miraculously remember that their mother is a mermaid. Their adopted parents decide to move to the ocean, accepting that it is a part of who the boys are. And Martha's father, who has been seeing a heinous woman named Hildy since his wife died, decides to leave her and he goes from clinically depressed to sunshine and daisies happy in a matter of minutes.

This might seem an unnecessarily harsh summary, but the book is written in a very similar fashion. The true tragedy is that the story has all the potential to be awesome. If Hoffman had made this a novel or even a literary short story, she could have given it a depth and subtlety it decidedly lacks.

It is books like this that give me hope that my work will one day be published. The bar is obviously set very low.

The Trylle Trilogy - Amanda Hocking

You know when you read a noun in a book and you pronounce it a certain way, and then at the very end you realize you've been saying it wrong all along? That's what happened to me with the Trylle Trilogy. For some reason, I thought it should be pronounced "Try-elle," as if there was an extra 'e' in there. At the end of the book, I found a glossary that informed me in no uncertain terms that Trylle is pronounced "trill." Oops.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

I absolutely loved the books. So much so that I finished all three in about three days. The main plot line is that Wendy, the protagonist and narrator, is a troll changeling placed with a human family at birth. Now I know what you're thinking - but trolls turn out to be humans 2.0 - more beautiful than a normal human with some kind of superpower, be it control over the elements, telekinesis, psychokinesis, you name it. When Wendy is seventeen, she is taken back to her real family, where she learns that she is Princess and future Queen of the Trylle people. Throughout the three books, she falls in love with a "tracker," basically an indentured servant lowest on the social ladder, then the Prince of the Vittra (another troll tribe whose King wants to kill Wendy and take over the Trylle kingdom), loses her mother, and kills her father. Sorry if I just ruined it for you.

The Trylle Trilogy is your quintessential fantasy fairy tale set amidst unsuspecting normal humans. The characters are hilarious and lovable, the world Hocking paints gorgeous and appealing. The men are beautiful. Need I say more? When I put down the last book I was almost depressed. Thank god Hocking has more books I can read.

Each book includes a short bonus story, which is kind of exciting. It gives you some background and it's great to go back to when you're wringing your hands in despair because you've finished all the books.

Hocking has self published a few books, which I think is terrifically cool, given how popular she's become. Just saying.

Sundown, Yellow Moon - Larry Watson

I started reading this because I took a few classes with the author when I was in school and he is AMAZING. Dr. Watson is an incredibly insightful man. My own writing improved so much during my time learning from him that I decided to read all of his books.

Sundown, Yellow Moon is very interesting so far. I don't know what to make of it. The protagonist's best friend's father murders a senator and then commits suicide and noone really knows why. This novel is the after story: the protagonist, a writer, reflects on the events of that day nearly forty years later, trying to piece together what  happened, and why, and the aftermath of the tragedy. A review in Esquire compares it to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, which I haven't read fully, so I can't comment, but the review does make me want to read more Dostoevsky, if that's any indication of how I feel about this novel. It's ridiculously well-written, but it's a different style than what I am used to reading. I'm going to make a big assumption and say that's because Dr. Watson is much older than I am. His writing, and his plot, reflect an America that I have never experienced. I'm about halfway through, and I have a good feeling about this.

Sundown, Yellow Moon reminds me of The Body of Christopher Creed a little bit. In the latter, a boy named Christopher Creed (surprise, surprise) mysteriously disappears and noone knows what to make of it. Throughout the book, the narrator explores different reasons for his disappearance, and ultimately it comes to haunt him constantly. I don't remember what happens at the end - I'm going to have to read it again at some point.

Books to Read

Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
Some Great Thing - Colin McAdam
A Beautiful Truth - Colin McAdam
Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishiguro
When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Torrents of Spring - Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
To Have and Have Not - Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Across the River and into the Trees - Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Islands in the Stream  - Ernest Hemingway
The Garden of Eden - Ernest Hemingway
Anna Karenina
Lolita
Basically everything by Marian Keyes

Introduction

I had the idea to create this blog about two years ago while I was driving around Hawaii. I was trying to decide what ebook I should download next from a fairly long list of the classics, when I realized I didn't even know for sure which ones I had read and which ones I hadn't. I mean, everyone knows what Jane Eyre, or The Secret Garden, or The Picture of Dorian Gray is about. And if you're like me, you've tracked down the movies and read all the scholarly criticism too because it just makes the books so much more interesting. It also makes it a lot more confusing when you're trying to figure out which books you've actually read versus what you've just researched or studied. That's when I decided I needed to keep a reading list. Not just of the books I want to read, which only grows, never diminishes, but of the books that I have read, and what I thought about them.

I'm hoping this will force me to read more. When I was a child you couldn't tear me away from my books, and in college I was an English major (enough said). But sadly the amount I read has significantly decreased in the past few years, and this is my plan to remedy that.

This is my personal diary, my very own book club, my love letter to literature. :)