As my last genre book for the Book Lust class I had to read a western. I picked a random Zane Grey novel off of the library shelves and read it last night. I wasn't surprised by the way Grey spent a lot of time describing the Arizona landscape (trees, canyons, etc) but was surprised that the novel was a romance. Jean is summoned home to help his father. He falls in love with the daughter of his father's arch-enemy. Gun fights happen. Lots of people die. Since it's a romance, the novel departs from the plot of Romeo & Juliet and the young lovers ride off together at the end. Yes, I did just give away the plot, but this isn't one to read so much for plot as for scenary.
posted by kristin at 2:54 PM
Ernest J. Gaines'
A Lesson Before Dying was another book I'd had sitting around for awhile. I think it came to my attention a few years ago when I was perusing lists of the books cities had chosen for their "If all ... read the same book" programs. The main character is a black schoolteacher who's been pressured by his aunt and her friend to visit the friend's son in jail where he's awaiting execution for a murder he didn't commit.
posted by kristin at 2:46 PM
Orhan Pamuk's
Snow is this month's book group selection. I'd already bought it before
Molly picked it, but hadn't gotten around to reading it yet. The main character, Ka, is a Turkish poet who lives in Germany but has come back to Turkey to visit and is snowed into the small town of Kars. He's only there a few days, but a romance blossoms, the town experiences a military coup, trouble brews with the militant Islamists in town and more. The odd thing is that with how much happens, Pamuk's writing style is such that it was a really slow read for me. I kept putting it down and reading other books before coming back to it.
posted by kristin at 2:40 PM
I picked up Tony Vigorito's
Just a Couple of Days awhile back based on an amazon recommendation and the description. Not surprisingly, I didn't get around to reading it immediately. It was one of the books my Reader's Advisory exercise partner picked for me in my Book Lust class which reminded me I should read it. Unfortunately it didn't quite live up to its promise. The story-line was interesting, but Vigorito spent so much time trying to be clever with language that it felt overloaded with metaphors. The main character is a professor whose best friend has been taken hostage to get him to work on a secret government project. The situation is promising, but the book overall was disappointing.
posted by kristin at 2:35 PM
Yes, I'm a bad blogger :)
After
Chasm City I read through
What Would Dewey Do? (the second volume of Unshelved comic strips), then read my romance for the Book Lust class. I picked up
Here and Now by Constance O'Day-Flannery. I initially picked it up because she was billed as "The queen of time travel romance" only to find that time travel romance is very different than time travel SF-type novel. (The only time travel happened in the first 5 pages and there was no attempt to explain it). Overall I'd say the writing was pretty atrocious, but despite that I got sucked in and had to keep reminding myself that it was a romance novel so would have a happy ending. Unfortunately now I need to come up with 5 discussion questions for it for class. Next up for class is a Western.
Chaim Potok's
I am the Clay was a departure from his usual stories about Jewish people in New York. Instead of New York, this one was set in Korea during the Korean war. An old child-less married couple fleeing the Chinese army rescue an orphaned boy and the rest of the novel is the story of their relationships and attempts to survive.
I needed a light read a few days ago so picked up Terry Pratchett's
The Fifth Elephant. Vimes, dwarves, werewolves, vampires and a scone. What's not to like? In some ways I wish I'd paid a bit more attention to what order I was reading the Discworld books in, but in others I realize it really doesn't matter.
I'm now working on Orhan Pamuk's
Snow for book group.
posted by kristin at 8:43 PM 
