Arlington Park

I supposedly read Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk for my book group, but it's a sloppy book group--we're all busy and it's hard to get reorganized at the end of summer/beginning of school. In any case, the suggestion to read this book got me out of my rut of summer thrillers and unsatisfying books so even if we never talk about it in a group, at least I read it and had an opinion.

Arlington Park appears at first to be just another one of those "women dissatisfied in the suburbs" books, but I forgave it at first because it takes place in Britain instead of the States and also because I am well removed from the stroller set these days and happy in my own marriage so I could read about these women's angst in a more dispassionate way.

Trouble arrived at last when I couldn't figure out if I was supposed actually to LIKE any of these characters. I had my hopes pinned on Christine (and I don't think it was just the name), but then she turned out to be a cleaning freak--which actually I'm okay with--and THEN she threw the child (someone else's child) hard onto her white couch because he'd colored on it with markers.

Okay, sure, maybe we've all wanted to do that to a certain degree--just grab up that annoying, spoiled kid and give him or her a good shake (though OF COURSE we don't), but come on, over a marker? Why did she have a white couch anyway?
Also, who in their right mind takes kids in strollers to the mall FOR A GOOD TIME? (okay, actually a lot of people do, but you can see the outcome a mile away)

Then I thought I'd like Juliet because she too is a teacher, but she didn't seem that good at her job, even with the supposedly bright kids.

Am I being too picky?

I won't even get to the men who turned out to be useless.

I guess we're supposed to feel for these people for living in the suburbs and wasting their lives, but I want characters to take control of their lives and not just get drunk by the end of the book.

Still, there was some nice writing and I'm not sorry I read it. One character is trying to drill names into her husband's mind just before a dinner party because "Benedict had the unnerving habit of confidently addressing people by names that did not belong to them." I loved that and wanted to be at the table with Benedict when he did this.

I also liked the former wunderkind who becomes a teacher and realizes that it doesn't really matter how many prizes you get at school, you still just end up a normal person. "...it made it seem that she wasn't bright or gifted or exceptional at all. She was merely good at going to school." I could relate to that in more ways than I care to admit.

I think a nice companion to this book would be Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, which I haven't read yet. I think I'll suggest in to my book group if we ever meet again.

Y:The Last Man

It took me just about a year to read all ten volumes of the graphic novel Y:The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan. This was mostly due to my relying on the library. It's a great library, but apparently I'm not the only person in town who was following the series and I have a strange aversion to reserving books. (What if it comes and I'm NOT READY?)

Anyway, this series was my first long-term commitment to this form of writing (aside from childhood obsessions with Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke) and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Around Volume 3 of the story of the last man on earth after a bizarre plague wipes out half of the human population (males, obviously), I couldn't imagine in what other form it would have been possible to tell this story.

A pet peeve of mine in "comic books" was always that the writing wasn't linear. That is, it was very hard to tell which bubble you were supposed to read first and even the art wasn't always great--dark and grimacing (or big-breasted, depending on the gender of the character), but I found a lot to like in Last Man.

I suffered a bit from the time lapse between volumes, but found that there were often great chunks missing from the action anyway. I guess wacky post-apocalyptic action can be like that.
I grew fairly attached to the characters, even the confusingly-named Beth and Beth, and I found myself really down at the end. To me, the last book is sad, right down to the final ALAS scrawled across the page, but I'm not sure it's supposed to be sad in the grand scheme of things. Also, how else would a book about the human race teetering on extinction end?
I REALLY want to read this series all over again but there's no wayI will because there's always something new I've got to try. I may check out Vaughan's other series, Ex-Machina, but really, my heart isn't into all graphic, all the time, so there's no rush.

In the Beginning...

For a long time, I've kept track of all the books I've read--at least by title with occasional somewhat cryptic marks to remind myself if I liked the book, hated the book or read it for a book club. At the end of 2007 I realized I had managed to read 54 books. Math is not my specialty, but even I realized that meant more than 1 book a week. Yes, I count the graphic novels (if it takes more than one sitting to read them) and the occasional young adult novel, but I don't count the books I read to my kids. I read a lot and I like to think I read widely, but sometimes just listing the title isn't enough and I want to say more. And so, this blog.