A Mighty Heart by Mariane Pearl (#25, Nonfiction)

I didn't exactly plan on reading this book. My sister picked it out and read it by the pool. I don't really think A Mighty Heart qualifies as a nice pool read, but everyone has their own flavor of chewing gum I suppose. This book just seemed too serious to be a summer read, but I got desperate on the 12 hour drive from Virginia to Maine. I had a couple books left to read in my stash, but when I started reading them, I just couldn't make it past the first page.

I picked up A Mighty Heart on a whim and got sucked in. Mariane Pearl tells the horrible story of how her husband, American journalist Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped and then murdered but she does it in such a way that instills more hope in than sadness in the reader. I really enjoyed her descriptions of Danny, he came alive through her words and she honors his memory in the telling of this tragic event.

I am embarrassed to reveal that I barely remember the actual event occuring in real time. Where was I and how did I react? I don't think I pay too much attention to current events to really get sucked into these types of news stories. Reading this book made me wish I had. I wish I could remember reading about it in the paper and watching the news to find out what happened to Pearl but sadly, I didn't watch the news back in high school, nor do I watch it much now. But I am glad to have read this book, glad to have heard the story, glad to have learned that Mariane Pearl didn't let the tragic, horrible end of her husband kill the good in her. She writes how Daniel Pearl had a mighty heart, and it is through her own unwillingness to let anger and hatred blacken her own life that she and her son, Adam, triumph over the terrorists that took Danny's life. She too has a mighty heart.

Smashed by Koren Zailckas (#24, Nonfiction)

Like most people my age, I find myself wondering if the amount of alcohol I consume when drinking is enough to be considered alcohol abuse. After reading Koren Zailckas' account of her drunken girlhood, I don't think my own experiences with alcohol make me an abuser. By her standards, I am a saint. I do not use alcohol to make me intimate with my lovers, nor do I depend upon it to give me the self-confidence I lack when sober.

Smashed is the brutal story that traces Zailckas' first introduction to the dizzying effects of alcohol at the tender age of fourteen to the last time she drinks and blacks out, waking up the next morning in a strange apartment, not knowing where she is or how she got there. I found the first part of the book the most riveting, as it detailed the underage drinking portion of her life. I guess I found it so interesting because I never drank in high school and her descriptions could be used to describe every suburban town in America, including the one I went to high school in.

Zailckas writes well, although sometimes I find that she is trying too hard. Her message to young girls is obviously to not use alcohol as a means by which one deals with self-esteem or self-confidence issues which is good, sound advice.

Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes (#23, Reader's Choice)

Why did I do this to myself? This was the question that plagued me the entire time I was reading this book. The answer is a simple one: you need a mindless book to read when lounging by the pool or when laying out on the beach. One summer I had the Da Vinci Code to keep me riveted on my beach towel. I had sort of hoped Plum Sykes' Bergdorf Blondes would be an entertaining and witty piece of popular chick lit. It became quite clear after page 30 that this was not to be the case. I contemplated abandoning the book entirely but in a race to read 50 books in one year, I had to just push through to the sorry and predictable ending.

I am not really a connoisseur of chick lit novels, but I have read more than a handful. After nearly every single sad attempt at writing about the woman plight, I come away annoyed and with the resolve to never pick up another one of these books again.

There really is nothing I liked about this book. I hated the narrator, Moi, and her pointless Manhattan existence. I hated the other characters as well for their idiocy and the fact that every single one was a slightly altered carbon copy of the one that came before. I had the ending predicted by page 50 and this was probably the greatest downfall of all. I like to be surprised, and when I know what's going to happen it just totally ruins it for me--unless the writing is superior enough to save it, which in this case it just wasn't. Plum Sykes should stick to fashion magazines and I should stick to books that don't make me dumber for having read them.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (#22, Contemporary Literature)

I have waited and waited to read this book. I am a fan of Margaret Atwood, after having read The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin. Oryx and Crake seemed rather promising. Who doesn't enjoy a good sci-fi mystery told by the talented Atwood?

I am sad to say but I was sorely disappointed. I guess I never really believed the world she creates in this narrative told in two parts--by Jimmy and Snowman. Jimmy starts off as a young boy with two scientist parents who help to engineer new species. Snowman is a bald man who runs around in a floral sheet fighting to stay alive in a world that was ravaged by some disaster that left very few survivors. The novel fluctuates between these two narrators, who only tell us little bits, and make us follow their disjointed retelling of how Snowman ends up running around in nothing but a sheet.

I guess I expected too much. The ending didn't surprise me. I really like to be surprised, so I was left wanting more. I wanted more than the character of Jimmy or Snowman could give me. Perhaps this is Atwood's style. The satirical nature of the story, the warnings against consumerism, against the way our society conducts itself were not lost on me though. I found it scary, and quite possibly almost too accurate.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (#21, Reader's Choice)

Sitting by the pool requires specific types of books. I never want anything too serious. I do like to read adventure stories though. This book fit the bill. From the young adult section, Scott Westerfeld's Uglies was just what I needed for my relaxing Wednesday at the pool. I basked in the sun and read book one of his futuristic series about a world where everyone gets cosmetic surgery at the age of 16 so that everyone looks the same. The reason for this type of homogenization is to eliminate conflicts that arise from someone else looking visibly different than you. This obviously raises some interesting questions, and makes you wonder if having everyone look the same would solve some of the problems in our own world that arise out of the visible differences among people.

Unfortunately for me, I neglected to bring books 2 and 3, not knowing that Westerfeld ends Uglies with a cliffhanger. I am eagerly awaiting getting back to Portland so that I can find out what happens to Tally.

Popco by Scarlett Thomas (#20, Reader's Choice)

Wandering through the library shelves aimlessly often results in me finding little gems that I normally wouldn't have found on my own. I stumbled upon Scarlett Thomas' Popco in just this manner on a recent excursion to the public library. It jumped out at me and I remembered seeing it on another blogger's page as a somewhat interesting and satisfying read. After Vanity Fair, I was ready for something light and fluffy.

Can Popco be described as light and fluffy? If you look at it for what it appears to be on the surface--a tale about a toy company--then yes, it might be called that. But I think Thomas means the book as a critique of today's consumer-centered society. There is also a lovely mystery weaved in that involves code-breaking. I feel like by reading this book, I can now use a Vigenere Cipher and crack codes by looking for patterns in jumbled sequences of letters and numbers.

This book has a lot of interesting information about psychology, prime numbers, code breaking, and marketing theories. I definitely don't feel dumber having read Popco. The only thing that bothered me was the ending, which fizzled out. The secret was revealed in an inept two part narrative that made it seem anti-climactic to me. Other than that, I really enjoyed reading this on the way from Ohio to South Carolina.

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (#19, Contemporary Literature)

I loved this book's utter strangeness. How can you resist a narrator like Alex, who butchers the English language so beautifully and to such comic ends that to laugh out loud while reading his chapters is virtually impossible. I was so amused I had the urge to read particularly funny sentences to who ever was in my general vicinity. A book like this isn't one you keep under wraps--you tell everyone you know to read it so you can laugh at things like how Alex repeatedly refers to the grandfather's dog as his "seeing-eye bitch."

Everything Is Illuminated is not all fun and games though--there is a balance between that which is hysterically funny and that which is heartbreakingly sad. The other main character, Johnathan, comes to Ukraine to search for the woman who supposedly saved his grandfather from the Nazis. The search for this woman leads them on a comical, yet serious journey that ends in the illumination that the title suggests.

There were parts that confused me, and I was slightly put off by some scenes of brutality towards the women, but overall, this strangely entertaining story charmed me and I plan on reading Foer's second novel sometime in the near future.