Keep Track of All the Books I Read in 2007

I don’t read a lot of mysteries, and the ones I have read seem relatively interchangeable. This book, however, really stood out as something different. It’s set in Botswana and gives rich details of the history and everyday life of the country. Rather than focusing on one big mystery, it instead dips into several smaller cases. This is the first in a series. I don’t think I’ll rush out to read the rest, but I’ll probably pick one up here and there.

3.5/5

This is an assigned reading for my Medical Anthropology class this Fall. I’m trying to get ahead and tackle some of these readings before the semester even starts, and this was a great first choice. It’s a memoir of the author’s time in Mali studying childhood malnutrition. She works in a bit of technical information but for the most part she retells the stories of the various exciting things she encountered and experienced. A quick, interesting read.

4/5

I’m feeling daunted by the thought of trying to make up enough ground to read 52 books this year so I think I’ll change to the simpler goal of just keeping track of what I read. I’m about to start in on a whole slew of books for my classes this fall.

This was a wonderful book, one of the very best I’ve read in a long time. It’s filled with interesting characters (kids in high school) whose lives intersect in intriguing ways over one summer. They’re all on the verge of figuring out who they really are, and the story is filled with themes of destiny, fate, Buddhism, etc. I could have read about these characters forever.

5/5

This was a pleasant little Newberry winner. Set in the early 1800’s, it takes the form of a young New Hampshire girl’s journal and details a year in her life. Towards the end, I really found myself transported back to that time period. Written in 1979, it was the award winner for 1980.

4/5

I’ve been hearing great things about Steve Martin as an author for years so I was excited to finally read some of his work. I was not disappointed. Shopgirl is short, understated, and simply written. I was impressed with Martin’s insights into women, specifically single, late-20’s women, prone to depression, and inexperienced in dating. His descriptions of how men and women perceive casual dating were painfully realistic.

4/5

After getting totally bogged down and sidetracked by a book, I decided I needed something short, light, and funny. This filled the bill perfectly, though in the end, I’m not sure I really enjoyed it all that much. It’s a quick and easy read, laugh-out-loud funny in parts, and sometimes hard to put down. The narrator is an apathetic slacker who doesn’t seem to care about anything or anyone including himself. Anything and everything is fair game to be mocked and ridiculed. I especially enjoyed his take on working in the corporate world. Despite all the good points, I often found myself annoyed and disgusted by the book. There are some things, like Guinea Pigs being molested, that are so disturbing they’re just not funny, and the constant mocking of the way deaf people speak got old.

Okay, time to pick up the pace on my reading if I’m going to achieve this goal. We’re in week 15 so I’m 5 books behind.

3/5

The title is a reference to a Smiths song and bits of lyrics are sprinkled throughout. This was probably my favorite aspect of the book because it gave me a little thrill whenever I discovered one. The story has a group of friends left at the end of the world to try and figure out what went wrong and how they can survive. I found myself sucked in, and I flew through it after the half-way point, but overall I was a little disappointed. It takes on a preachy tone towards the end that rubbed me the wrong way and wraps things up in a way I expected but wasn’t hoping for.

3/5

What a wonderful book. The winner of the Newberry Award in 1996, it tells the story of Alyce, a young girl trying to survive alone in the world save a stray cat that follows her wherever she goes and a midwife who grudgingly takes her on as apprentice. Simple and inspiring.

5/5

Required reading for my linguistics class, but very interesting and enjoyable. This book explains the presence of English loanwords in the Japanese language…why they’re borrowed, how they’re changed, how they’re used, the impact these words have on Japanese culture, etc. Anyone interested in Japanese culture would find this a fascinating read.

4/5