Sunday, January 15, 2006

Ask, because you might be surprised

I stopped by the bookstore on Friday night. I had finished work, and had nothing really to do, so I decided to take a little bus ride downtown. The weather was so mild, but overcast and rainy, it felt like we'd gone one step forward to winter and two steps back to fall! I got off the bus near my favourite bakery in the city to see if they had a nice dense sunflower sourdough loaf for me, but they did not. As I walked past the bookstore, I decided to go in and see if they had a nice dense new novel for me to read, but they did not either. I've read just about everything in there that seems appealing to me. Good lord, they have a lot of John Grisham, Sophie Kinsella (described as "pink-covered girl-centric fiction") and Paul Coelho. Coelho had me at "The Alchemist," but lost me with "Eleven Minutes." I just couldn't relate to his main character, and I concur with a brief review of the book I found on amazon dot com: "I hated this book. I thought it seemed like it was poorly translated and seemed like a man's ATTEMPT to understand what a woman might feel." So screw Coelho and his massive fan club.

I have been really enjoying a book I picked up a couple weeks ago,
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it's a compilation of short stories selected, and introduced by David Sedaris. I'd only heard of him a few months ago and have been looking forward to reading his books. After finding nothing of interest, I turned to the dude at the cash register and asked, "Hey, can you order books for me?" I fully expected him to laugh and say no, but instead he said "sure!"

Cooooooool!

So I wrote down 5 of Sedaris's books, and he's going to call my school on Monday to tell me how successful he's been in obtaining them for me. I'm psyched! I'd place a good book before a good meal, or a good movie, or perhaps even a good roll in the sack. I'm half-way to two-thirds between about 5 different novels, because they're just not doing it for me. "Sex in the City?" I love the HBO series, but the book,...what a load of crap. "A Hundred Years of Solitude," despite being an Oprah Book Club selection, just hasn't held my interest. (Granted, I've heard it takes getting past the first hundred pages or so to be hooked.) I've put in on the backwarmer for so long I'm going to have to start it over again. I will. Even with brutally horrible novels I've bought I eventually get through them, just maybe as a lesson in perseverance.

Anyhow, pick up a good book. It's food for your brain.
If you want a humble recommendation of what's awesome reading, let me know, or if you HAVE a recommendation, please leave a comment!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jelly,

From one avid reader to another:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

One of the better books I've read over the last year.

Jelly said...

Ah! Nomad! Hello!
Actually, I've heard about that book a couple times before somewhere for sure, so I will definitely see if they can order it for me. I used to have a rule that if a CD had 3 singles that I liked I'd buy it, and I've kind of adopted the same policy - 3 recommendations on a book (from trustworthy sources)- and I get it. -What happened to your song of the week? I actually uploaded a couple somgs to my MP3 player because you reminded me I loved them!

Anonymous said...

The song of the week thingy was put to rest because I didn't think anyone cared about it (or even read it) except me...plus a couple of readers emailed me to let me know that I could get in legal trouble for posting lyrics (which I got from another site on the web that anyone can get too...this whole copyright crap has gone too far, IMHO).
If you do decide to get that book, I think you'll enjoy it.