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[booklog 2005]
Jul. 17th, 2005 01:23 am41. A Little More About Me, by Pam Houston. this is the book i bought because i read one of her stories (the selection for 1999) in an anthology called Best Short Stories of the Century while poking around at Pendragon, and then went and looked her up in the fiction/literature section. and the front has a lucky horseshoe on it, and it begins with a quote from a Dar Williams song and a story about a quarterhorse. she's an adventurer, someone who spends as much time outdoors as she can, so the stories are about traveling and her dogs, what safety means and what home means and all the different reasons why she pushes herself in one way or another, and they're set all over the world. there are insane yaks in Bhutan and a dogsled team in the Brooks Range, but also summer camp and thoughts on pregnancy and body image, life ordinary and extraordinary. a good book.
42. The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. bought this one in the Salt Lake City airport, when i was needing the calm and escapism of a book rather badly. i'm not sure why this seemed like exactly the right book, but i looked through all the shelves of the airport bookstore and this was the book that demanded to be bought. it was exactly the right book for the airport and the flight, but about halfway through i got mired down and only just now finished slogging through. it's a convoluted story set in a fictional county in Virginia, in roughly 1855, about a plantation (including slaves) owned by a free black man, and what happens after his death. the book gives details of the lives of almost every character, little vignettes that jump the reader back and forth by decades and are tacked on in the middle of plot movements, so it gets pretty hard to follow. there was a while, too, where all of these interruptions seemed a bit morbid -- someone would be doing something, cooking or woodcarving or whatever, and then you'd get a flash-forward to what they were doing or thinking of when they died, or where they were then.
42. The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. bought this one in the Salt Lake City airport, when i was needing the calm and escapism of a book rather badly. i'm not sure why this seemed like exactly the right book, but i looked through all the shelves of the airport bookstore and this was the book that demanded to be bought. it was exactly the right book for the airport and the flight, but about halfway through i got mired down and only just now finished slogging through. it's a convoluted story set in a fictional county in Virginia, in roughly 1855, about a plantation (including slaves) owned by a free black man, and what happens after his death. the book gives details of the lives of almost every character, little vignettes that jump the reader back and forth by decades and are tacked on in the middle of plot movements, so it gets pretty hard to follow. there was a while, too, where all of these interruptions seemed a bit morbid -- someone would be doing something, cooking or woodcarving or whatever, and then you'd get a flash-forward to what they were doing or thinking of when they died, or where they were then.
