We survived our 50 books in one year challenge. In 2009 we are still reading...

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley (#15, Fiction)

I saw this movie almost exactly three years ago. Wow, was that really only three years ago? It feels like a lifetime. Anyway.

A co-worker said the book was much better than the movie, so I figured I'd check it out. I enjoyed the movie, the satire of the subject is pretty ridiculous, (that is satire, right?) and I enjoyed the book as well.

It is pretty awesome reading a book set in the city in which one works and lives. I envisioned Nick walking down Rhode Island Avenue, enjoying the cherry blossoms like I have been doing this month, and I can picture him scurrying around the Mall covered in nicotine patches and being picked up by some cop on a horse! That's not the way it happened in the book, but I really like the horse cops, so that's going to be my version.

The book is a quick read. Very entertaining, and full of messed up and crazy characters. I really enjoyed how Buckley wrote the southern accents--"Ah'd lak to thank Mistuh Nayla fuh his courage in attendin' today's hea'ngs." How great is that? I can just read it over and over again and actually hear some dirty old Senator speaking.

If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend reading the book first! And if you have seen the movie, why not read the book?

Sunday, April 5, 2009

The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens (#9, Contemporary Lit)

A fellow English major turned bartender recommended Peter Behrens' The Law of Dreams, a book that I most definitely would never have picked up of my own accord. This just isn't the type of book I would normally go for. When Baylis mentioned it to me initially, I was uninterested and wrote it off as a book about a topic that I wasn't really into reading about. But then she continued to rave about it and brought it in for me to borrow and I gave in to peer pressure.

I was immediately sucked in though, as Behrens is a great writer. His descriptions of Ireland are so gritty and detailed that sometimes I could almost smell what Fergus, the main character, was smelling. The Law of Dreams tells the story of a young Irish boy orphaned by the potato famine and his subsequent journey to America. There is nothing pretty or uplifting about this story. Tragedy seems to follow Fergus where ever he goes and he seemingly has the worst luck with women. Based upon the characters in this novel, I would tell you never to trust a red headed lass.

Behrens conducted a lot of research for this book, which was very, very loosely based upon his own family history and toward the end, when Fergus was making the crossing to North America, definitely made me think about my own Irish heritage and when my own ancestors made a similar crossing. I'd like to know the Collins story. How did we end up in Alabama? When did we cross the ocean? Do we even know these facts about our family history?