By Alexandra OlivaThe second loaner from my boss L.
Almost 3 years later, I had to look up the premise of The Last One to remember what it was about. Since L. was quite stoked that I enjoyed Dark Matter so much, he immediately lent me this “literary” post-apocalyptic novel about Survivor-type contestants.
Sadly, The Last One proved to be a mild dud. I recall not enjoying the inner dialogue of the protagonist and finding the secondary characters annoyingly two-dimensional.
My colleague/manager L. lent this to me. I think we were talking about books we had read, and how he likes to follow up on amazon recommendations for contemporary sci fi. He actually likes to purchase hardcovers as he prefers the bigger format. He was psyched to lend me Dark Matter, which turned out to be a big hit with both myself and Olman, whom I lent the book to after I was done.
I read the book over the weekend; I think
OIman read it in a single evening!
That’s how tight and gripping a thriller it was.
Crouch also wrote the series Wayward Pines.
By Dave Eggers
How the protagonist gets sucked into social media, earning points and climbing the ranks. It was just when my own tech company had a new, youngish (under 50) CEO at the helm and was trying to rebrand itself, update its backend infrastructure, and modernize its corporate culture into one that encouraged (but not push) collaboration and extroversion.
Even though I found the protagonist unlikable and unrelatable, I didn’t mind that fact, as the annoying naivete of her character suited the story, especially with what she did to her poor parents at the end, accidentally bursting in on them with her live camera. That was brutal.
Soon after finishing the book, I
watched the competent movie adaptation on Netflix. Even
though I was given this book as a Xmas gift from my BIL, I didn’t like it
enough to keep it, so I traded it at SW Welch.
Too bad, as Olman asked about it several months later, when he read
about how it portrays life at a giant tech company. You snooze, you lose.
By Louise Welsh
I picked this up when we were used book hunting in Charlottetown at one of their many excellent book stores. I think this copy was at The Book Emporium, but not sure. It was big, with different floors. I was upstairs in their huge fiction section. Surprisingly I only found a few books to purchase, but Olman found a pile as usual.
I remember I also got a charming fairy craft book for my daughter. They were cut-out fairies with cut-out outfits painted in a Rosetti-esque Romantic style. We played with the cut-outs while was had an early dinner el fresco at a nearby brewery. It was a pleasant day.
This is the 2002 debut novel of Louise Welsh. It had an interesting premise, which was why I had this book on my list (which I consulted at The Book Emporium). The narrative was competently executed but I didn't enjoy it as much as I had expected.
By Jennifer Egan
I'm usually good at remembering where I bought or found a book, but for some reason, I can't quite remember where I acquired this one, but it certainly didn't have this cover. I don't know why I like to recall where or how I came upon a book, but it's not dissimilar to how my neighbour/real-estate agent would remember all the homes she had ever visited.
Now that I'm jogging my mind as I type, I'm fairly sure that this was a BMV find. It was a mass market paperback, exactly something that would end up at the BMV.
Holy crap, did I only read four* goddam books in all of 2016?!
An all time low since I started this blog.
This has got to end!
*Update July 30, 2021: total is actually FIVE books because I had to retroactively add High-Rise!
By Elena Ferrante
I had started reading MBF in April and finally finished it. It wasn't because I didn't like it, rather it was something I couldn't read in big gulps. Even though I took little sips here and there for the past several months, it was an immersive reading experience.
That being said, since I was slow to move on this book, my SIL got the rest of the quartet to her Mom this past Xmas. So at least I'll get to borrow the rest when I'm ready!
By Jean Hegland
I think I ordered a copy of Into the Forest shortly after I heard Patricia Rozema had directed the film adaptation, which came out in 2015. I wanted to read the novel first since the premise sounded like something in my wheelhouse, a coming-of-age story set in Northern California with an apocalyptic backdrop. A lot of my memories are mixed with imagery from the movie, which was a fairly faithful adaptation.
Nell and Eve are teenage sisters living with their hermit dad in the Redwood forest. They’re still coping after their mother’s death and their contact with the outside world is sporadic, so it takes them a while to realize that civilization has collapsed. Like The Road and Ice, the reasons are vague, so you know the author is aiming for character-driven speculative fiction, so I’m expecting some heavy themes. Weeks and months pass by and the family is left without internet, telephone, electricity, mail or gas. A gruesome accident befalls the father when he’s chain-sawing logs and the sisters are left to fend for themselves. Eve spends inordinate amounts of time dancing to a metronome, while her younger sister Nell forages for food and does practical things to stay alive.
I think Hegland was attempting to portray how two isolated teenagers would adapt after societal collapse. Before the troubles came, Eve dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer, while Nell was a shy and reserved kid who yearned for companionship and a sense of belonging. As orphans, Eve copes by escaping into dance, while Nell is the one who levels up and looks after them both. She has an opportunity to make a risky journey to Boston with a boy she likes but she changes her mind when she realizes she needs to take care of Eve. At some point, Eve gets raped while Nell was out foraging. There’s a somewhat controversial section when Nell comforts a traumatized Eve and they become physically intimate with Nell helping Eve climax. The sisters don’t become lovers, it’s more to show how much Nell loves her sister that she’s willing to help Eve reclaim her sexuality. They're able to replace an act of violence with an act of pure love. Eve later decides to keep the baby.
After a severe storm, the house is in danger of collapsing, so the sisters take refuge in a hollowed out tree stump that once served as their playhouse. Eve gives birth to a boy and the sisters decide to set fire to their house so that people will think they perished in the flames. They then set off into the woods with the baby and that’s how the story ends.
I totally got what Hegland was trying to achieve and generally liked how it was written. I just didn’t connect with the narrative nor the characters. I think I was holding onto the book in case my daughter ever wanted to read it, but I don’t think she’ll connect with it either.
By Jack London
I saw this charming Puffin Classics hardbound at the BMV in Toronto. I think it was only $5 (why I love love love BMV). There were other titles, like The Little Princess (in pink) and Robin Hood (in green), but The Call of the Wild (1903) was the one I wanted to read.
What can I say that is new about this well-loved classic? It lived up to the hype.
By Sarah Waters
Another great Victorian romp by the talented Sarah Waters, but it didn't blow my mind like Fingersmith.
Tipping the Velvet (1998) was Waters' debut novel and Fingersmith (2002) was her third and last novel set in the Victorian period. So I need to find her second novel, Affinity. I feel that the quality of her work had gone down since Fingersmith (which I count as an all-time favourite), as The Night Watch was rather meh.
By Meg Wollitzer
