Wednesday, August 19, 2009

More Books I've read in 2009

I've waited too long to be able to give these books anything like a proper review, but I did read:



"Heroic Meaures" was a free download from Oprah.com, and it was a lot less ponderous and depressing than a lot of her book choices. An aging couple in Manhattan tries to sell their apartment during the same weekend that a terrorist is on the loose and their dachsund is having surgery. I believe this sub-genre is known as "domestic thrillers" and although I fel no need to rush out and buy this book so I can get a warm nostalgic glow every time I see it on my bookshelf, I enjoyed it enough.

I enjoyed the first half of Elizabeth Berg's "Open House" in which a woman who finds herself unexpectedly divorced draws on a deep well of wit to cope, but it got all serious toward the end with a miscarriage and denouement that was obvious from miles away.

Seth's graphic novel "It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken" is one of my favorite book titles ever and the story about the author-artist's search for information about an obscure cartoonist -- ostensibly anyway, it's probably more a search for a simpler time -- is pretty good too. This is one of those works that I own in more than one form -- in this case, the original issues of the comic book "Palookaville" that they appeared in and the book collection. I'm trying to thin out some of my duplicate literary works and I was hoping that I could get rid of the comics and keep the book on my shelf, but they did not include the original covers with the book collection and it's smaller and harder on this aged eyes of my mine so I'm keeping the comics -- and the book too, cuz I love looking over there and seeing the words It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken over there. A similar scenario occurs just about every time I try to winnow down my collection.

No comments: