sweet mustard pickles

why be happy when you could be normal, jeanette winterson
this memoir was simultaneously terribly sad and extremely uplifting. not only was 'oranges are not the only fruit' not depressing enough but it turns out it was the glossier cover version! out of all of winterson's writing this book was much more prose and direct that usual, making it all the more stark. i imagine winterson to be a towering force of nature.

townie, andre dubus iii
i like reading about childhoods (as previously mentioned) and the first third of this memoir was particularly good with an undercurrent exploring the roots of violence. the middle third started to drag.. the end was ok. this is a boring review because i want to get to the next one! but i would rate this very highly in terms of memoirs by people who have not had extremely interesting things happen in their lives.

ghost lights, lydia millet
i started this book and read the majority of it thinking yeah, yeah, this is ok, i don't love the main character but i don't hate him, i kinda like the journey of self discovery  he has taken throughout this somewhat typical journey to a tropical island country complete with manhunts and tiny covert military operations and stereotypical side characters. all of that is well and good. and it would have been fine with a typical loose-end-tying culmination and resolution. but no. the entire last chapter changes everything and turns it into a book worth at least another read right away.
eta: i do have one significant criticism for this book and it is that the font for the page numbers is way too quirky such that it is too difficult to read and therefore remember the page at which one pauses.

a new look for a new era

i hence advise publicly that this blog will attempt to review books.

from earlier in the year:

- blood matters, masha gessen

- perfect rigour, masha gessen

- papa hemingway, a.e. hotchner
very interesting! a look into the man himself. as i may have said before i don't particularly care that hemingway doesn't particularly have a great reputation, though i wish he weren't faintly/obviously anti-semitic in the sun also rises. what a life to lead!

- the sound and the fury, william faulkner
my first faulkner novel, very good. i regret not writing this review earlier because i have somewhat forgotten it. i feel like it was the prototype for others' subsequent novels set in the south who turned these complex characters into stock stereotypes.

- the sportswriter, richard ford
i actually read independence day (the 'sequel') a few years ago and didn't love it, but then i read this properly word for word and really liked it.

- best american short stories, 2011, ed. geraldine brooks
some good, some just ok. this is why i love the library.

- green hills of africa, ernest hemingway
while it's easy to get sucked into any one of hemingway's passions via his writing, i felt that this was less accessible and inspiring of violence than his writing about bullfighting. i would have liked more technical explanation and how he did his tracking and shooting.

- the emperor of scent, chandler burr
having read luca turin's own book on the science of scent it was interesting to read about the man himself and the background surrounding his research, and more importantly the politics and negative reception one gets for crashing a science party with a new theory. it makes me want to look up how the vibration theory is going now that there has been so much publicity about it.

- the perfect scent, chandler burr
so it seems i have been on a perfume kick. but smells are important to me. this one focused on the development behind sarah jessica parker's perfume lines, and also the process of hermes' first in-house development of perfume. so much money.