Reading List 2005

Last year I kept track of all the books I read, listened to on tape, and picked up to read but abandoned after becoming indifferent or aggravated. I have enjoyed seeing the list accumulate, so I decided to do it again this year. I thought today, as I returned a rather glurgic book on tape to the library, that I ought to write some reviews of the books I've read.

So, without further ado, the selections for the month of January:

Fiction:

The Little Drummer Girl (John Le Carre)
I picked up a copy of this from the "free books" shelf outside our local library -- in hardback, no less! I remember my husband raving about something about it once, so it seemed like a good find. I found it a hard book to begin but easy to finish.

The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
This is the February selection for my Mothers & More book club. As usual, I won't be able to make the meeting on time, if at all -- it conflicts with my volunteer night at Canine University. But, all is well. We rarely spend much time actually discussing the book at hand, and instead chatting and eating ice cream (we meet at the Tewksbury Friendly's, despite their miserable service).

The book itself was ... interesting while I read it, but I find my excitement wanes in retrospect. There's an awful lot of bee lore. When I heard the title, I mistakenly thought it was "that book that got made into a movie with that old guy," which turns out to be Ulee's Gold. In fact, this book is about a runaway motherless daughter in search of love and companionship. Lush details, some interesting mysticism, but not a lot else to recommend it.

The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate (Nancy Mitford)
What a fun pair of novels! According to the essays within the "Two Novels" edition of these books, they are personal memoirs thinly disguised as social commentary. Think of them as Jane Austen for the 1930's and 1940's. The family at the center of it all is a quirky and (for once) believable group of individuals with strengths and weaknesses and an abiding love and loyalty to one another. Funny and heart-wrenching at turns, I cannot recommend them enough.

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Richard Bach)
This is one of those books that honestly believes it has something profound to say, only it doesn't. Not really. I read Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull in my high school English class (sophomore year), and got the same feeling from that text. There's only so much "I'm so much cleverer than you!" I can take in one sitting.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
I played catch-up and read both the Dec '04 issue and the Feb '05 issue. Nothing in particular stood out to me.

Non-Fiction:

Life at the Zoo: Behind the Scenes with the Animal Doctors (Phillip Robinson)
Chose this one off the shelf mostly because I was hoping for some good fun medical stories. I was not disappointed! It was interesting to learn about how the approach to animal-keeping has changed since the middle part of this century. At times the author was a tad repetitive, but I survived.

The Penguin Classic Baby Name Book (Carol Wallace)
A nicely-organized if ultimately uninspiring baby name book. (No, we have not yet settled on a moniker for Mr. Baby #3.)

The Midwife's Pregnancy and Childbirth Book: Having Your Baby Your Way (Marion McCartney and Antonia van der Meer)
This book, in contrast to the previous title, was inspiring. I have had two babies "naturally" -- which I use to mean that I did not accept any medications for pain relief during labor, and strove to let my own body labor and give birth in a way as un-interfered-with as I could manage. I find that when I'm pregnant I love to read about pregnancy and childbirth, especially eye-opening accounts like this one. It has, among other things, many useful lists of questions to ask one's health care provider, to find out what they really believe about childbirth.

On Tape or CD:

Rescue (Nicholas Sparks)
I suppose there are some who would call me mean-spirited to call this piece of super-sweet drivel by name, but ... if I hadn't had nothing else to listen to in the car -- I would have never been able to finish this book. Ugh. The author uses a child with severe developmental delays as the sticky honey-glue that holds the two main characters together. The love interests vacillate between being exceptionally self-sacrificing and exceptionally self-centered. It wears on a person. Predictable to a fault and so nutra-sweet my teeth hurt.