Reasons 31 through 40...
... some good books I read in 2005.
31. The Blue Castle by Lucy Maude Montgomery. How did I miss this one in my pubescence? It starts out all dark and sarcastic and takes a cliched (yet, to LMM's credit, totally unexpected) twist for the wonderful. Ah, all you hopeless romantics out there: read it, read it, read it.
32. A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. More than six months later, I still have no idea whether I loved it or hated it. But it sure stuck with me.
33. Blind Crescent by Michelle Berry. Very Desperate Housewives meets American Beauty. Fun stuff.
34. Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. This book made me afraid to succeed at a young age. A little too knowingly contemporary, with of-the-moment pop-culture references sprinkled liberally, but still interesting fiction.
35. Another Book About Another Broken Heart by Julia Tausch. Oooh, heartbreak. I read this one on a lazy weekend in Elliot, and felt mopey and frustrated for some time after. A painfully accurate and possibly autobiographical snotty-nosed puffy-eyed account of the misery and poor decisions of breakup aftermath.
36. Quentins by Maeve Binchy. I'd never read any Binchy before, and picked this one up somewhat randomly. It's full of quaint characters and high melodrama, which I'm told are Binchy trademarks. Very readable.
37. Timbit Nation by John Stackhouse. I read this just before driving out east, and found it an intriguing experiment: send a Globe and Mail reporter hitching across the country for a summer, and see what he sees. Stackhouse writes like a reporter, resulting in a document that reads more like a series of clipped articles than a fluid book. Still, it was pretty compelling, and he wrote a bit on Elliot Lake, making my transplanted soul beam a bit.
38. Why I Hate Canadians by Will Ferguson. I also read Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw this year, and I liked both equally, but I finished the latter more recently, so it makes the list. Ferguson is superb at capturing the absurdity of Canadian life; sort of like a Canuck David Sedaris. His bit on the 1972 Summit Series was plum hilarious.
39. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling. But I'm in denial about the ending, because I am 12.
40. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. Okay, I'm not technically done this yet. But I plan to be by the end of the year, and it's very very good. I haven't seen the movie yet, and I wonder if it can do the words justice. Ye gods, this man can write!
(I just noticed seven of the ten books mentioned were authored by women. Whee!).
31. The Blue Castle by Lucy Maude Montgomery. How did I miss this one in my pubescence? It starts out all dark and sarcastic and takes a cliched (yet, to LMM's credit, totally unexpected) twist for the wonderful. Ah, all you hopeless romantics out there: read it, read it, read it.
32. A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. More than six months later, I still have no idea whether I loved it or hated it. But it sure stuck with me.
33. Blind Crescent by Michelle Berry. Very Desperate Housewives meets American Beauty. Fun stuff.
34. Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. This book made me afraid to succeed at a young age. A little too knowingly contemporary, with of-the-moment pop-culture references sprinkled liberally, but still interesting fiction.
35. Another Book About Another Broken Heart by Julia Tausch. Oooh, heartbreak. I read this one on a lazy weekend in Elliot, and felt mopey and frustrated for some time after. A painfully accurate and possibly autobiographical snotty-nosed puffy-eyed account of the misery and poor decisions of breakup aftermath.
36. Quentins by Maeve Binchy. I'd never read any Binchy before, and picked this one up somewhat randomly. It's full of quaint characters and high melodrama, which I'm told are Binchy trademarks. Very readable.
37. Timbit Nation by John Stackhouse. I read this just before driving out east, and found it an intriguing experiment: send a Globe and Mail reporter hitching across the country for a summer, and see what he sees. Stackhouse writes like a reporter, resulting in a document that reads more like a series of clipped articles than a fluid book. Still, it was pretty compelling, and he wrote a bit on Elliot Lake, making my transplanted soul beam a bit.
38. Why I Hate Canadians by Will Ferguson. I also read Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw this year, and I liked both equally, but I finished the latter more recently, so it makes the list. Ferguson is superb at capturing the absurdity of Canadian life; sort of like a Canuck David Sedaris. His bit on the 1972 Summit Series was plum hilarious.
39. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling. But I'm in denial about the ending, because I am 12.
40. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. Okay, I'm not technically done this yet. But I plan to be by the end of the year, and it's very very good. I haven't seen the movie yet, and I wonder if it can do the words justice. Ye gods, this man can write!
(I just noticed seven of the ten books mentioned were authored by women. Whee!).
posted by D. at
7:49 PM
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