by Jane Austen

Annotated – re-read

What new did I discover on this nth re-read? It deserves to be Austen’s best known and beloved. I hope Mary and Kitty married well.

by Charles M. Schulz

This may be Peak Peanuts. It’s definitely peak cuteness. Linus is still crawling when the year starts. Snoopy is starting to do “impressions”, but he’s still a dog.

This doesn’t look like it’s going to be one of my peak years for book reading, quantity-wise. WOLF HALL took up a shitload of time, and since then I seem to be abandoning long books halfway through. It’s hard to read other stuff after WOLF HALL.

by Ian McEwan

SPOILER

Two friends agree that if either one of them ever starts to go downhill, particularly mentally, the other will help him to end it all.

SPOILER NOW!

What happens then is they get into a big fight and hate each other. So each invites the other to meet up with him in Amsterdam; and each one has the other killed.

by Hilary Mantel

They sure chopped off a lot of heads back in the day.

Seriously, what can I say after devouring this entire trilogy in a couple of months? This is surely a new classic.

by Junot Diaz

The first section is about Oscar as a young boy – Dominican immigrant, nerdy, overweight, cannot attract a girlfriend. This is the story that grabbed me.

The second section is about his sister Lola – tough, raped at the age of eight and nobody cared, steely, strong, mother hates her, they fight, she rebels. Now I was REALLY into it.

The third section is about the mother’s backstory in the Dominican Republic. It’s all about how the mother has big tits. She has an affair with a general. I couldn’t wait for this section to end, and was starting to feel bait-and-switched. The footnotes were growing thicker and harder to read.

Thankfully, we do come back to Oscar, from the perspective of his erstwhile college roommate and erstwhile boyfriend of Lola. I really liked this character. From here, we bounced around the various characters until the big climax that led to Oscar’s life being so brief.

There was a great deal of violence. I hated how men treated women and how women treated themselves. It did not end up being the book I signed up for and I would not recommend it.

by Ann Angel

A big picture-book bio of Janis for kids or young adults. Knew it all, probably seen all the pictures too; but gave me an excuse to spend time with her. Love, Janis.

by Oliver Burkeman

I subscribe to Burkeman’s email list, so I had kind of already read a lot of these.

I can’t believe he gave a shout-out to someone who advocates the mantra, “I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy.” I get the spirit of what he was trying to say; but I went to that woman’s website, and talk about woo-woo out the wazoo.

One of my favorite topics, arguing with myself about how bad a person I am, is covered (on Day 17). “Does anyone imagine that Vladmir Putin lies awake at night, worrying if he’s really as caring and thoughtful a person as he’d like to believe?” See? You’re better than Vladmir Putin. Reducto at Putinum.

by Kenneth M. Cadow

I liked it. The story kept me interested. Loved the character, and his resourcefulness.

by Hilary Mantel

Waaaah.. I have finished the second book, and there’s only one more; and there won’t be any more, because she’s dead. 😦

I wanted to save a couple of quotes from Wolf Hall before I return the book.

“How can he explain to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from castle walls, but from countinghouses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the and the powder and the shot.”

“And beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marches of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and the bogarts who live in the hedges and in the hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will swear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug into unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of the uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priests and friar who feed on living England, and such the substance from the future.”

Booker.