That Snow Book.....

I finished this book a few weeks ago, but haven't had the time to write about it..... I wrote my review on my Goodreads site, so I've decided to add part of it here.

This book grabbed me from the beginning, and though it was a bit quirky, and tended to flashback a lot to Smilla's upbringing, which took you out of the story, I really enjoyed it.

There had been a movie quite a few years back, that I had seen, made from this book, but the book must have been so different that I didn't even remember references to the movie.

There was a lot of intrigue in this book, and that kept me wanting to read more, but I also found myself learning a lot about snow....and it was so interesting to learn of the things that Smilla knew about snow and what her mother had taught her. I had never thought of so many different types of cold---and snow will never seem the same to me!

All in all----a good read----good writing and good story. Only thing that annoyed me was the ending....seriously----was anyone else annoyed by the ending? I mean, after all that we went through with her and then to leave us hanging?

Why Don't You Dance?

So I still haven't completely finished Brittni's selection from December, but I have read most of it. I'm going to save the rest for a rainy day(s), so that I can try to catch up again. I have enjoyed a lot of those short stories, although they all tend to be kind of dismal. They are thought provoking, and Raymond Carver does a great job of invoking mood and making you feel what the characters feel.

The story that stuck with me the most is the one called, "Why Don't You Dance?" It kind of bothered me at first actually, because it doesn't explain anything at all. There is no backstory to it. In context of the other stories in the book, one might suppose that it is about a guy whose marriage has failed and he is completely depressed. But I'm not sure we can assume that even. Maybe the wife died. Maybe he killed her and buried her under the floorboards. Maybe the wife just went away for the weekend and the husband had a bit too much to drink. Maybe there never was a wife, and the guy just lived in the house all by himself, and finally just gave in to the despair of loneliness and realized that all of his stuff means absolutely nothing to him.

In any case, the story starts out with him standing inside the house looking outside at all the furniture that he has placed on the front lawn. He leaves to get some more booze and a young couple comes along and, thinking it's a yard sale, stops to check it out. The man comes back and proceeds to sell them everything they want, and more, for as cheap as they are willing to pay. They all get real drunk and dance in the driveway to old records. The girl says, "You must be desperate, or something."

I think the thing that makes this story interesting is that we don't really know what happened to the guy, or how he is feeling. He says very little. Most of the dialogue in the story is from the boy and the girl. We can project our own ideas about it, but we have no idea what happened inside that house, or inside that guys head. We all live inside our own heads. Other people only see the external stuff. The girl sees all of his stuff put out on the lawn and thinks he must be desperate. But I believe the "or something", is closer to the truth. It bothers her because she can't figure it out, and it probably touches some fear inside her about her future together with the boy. But the guy doesn't really act desperate. He really seems as though he doesn't care at all. Desperation would be a few levels better.

Snow, Snow, Snow!

How is everyone doing on Smillas Sense of Snow? I am about half way through it and am looking forward to every night when I can see what is going to happen next! I don't know if we have anyone to pick out a book for Feb., so I thought that I would write and inquire about where everyone was at......

My life has been super busy these past few weeks, with back to back shows and birthdays every week-----ahhhhh-----but I still find at least an hour a day to read----so I hope that we continue on!!

Sooooo----'fess up everyone------where the heck are you and how is your reading going?

If You're All Ready....

Hey, all!

Okay, so there were only three comments and two were definitely ready for the new book, one was on the fence. So I will go ahead and announce it and then you can read it when you get the chance.

I live in the warm and nearly-always sunny Southern California. We don't have winter here. I've experienced winter and I really wasn't a fan. That's why I live 10 miles from the ocean.
But when I thought about the fact that my month was January, I thought about what types of books might be better read when temperatures have dipped and you just want to cuddle up with a blanket and a warm cup of cocoa and get lost in a good story.

And so I looked for winter-type books. Something that would remind me that there are places that have that sort of thing.

That was my motivation for selecting:

From Barnes & Noble:

She thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of love. She lives in a world of numbers, science and memories--a dark, exotic stranger in a strange land. And now Smilla Jaspersen is convinced she has uncovered a shattering crime...

It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own. Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice....

I hope this sounds okay to all of you. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm always done for a mystery and this one came fairly highly recommended.

January Book

So...I have a book picked out for January. I've even purchased it already.

I picked it awhile ago, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

But I have hesitated because it seems like everyone, myself included, has been incredibly busy with life and other things.

So, instead of announcing the January book quite yet, I thought I'd just ask if you are all ready for a new one or if you'd like to give it a bit more time, finish up the December short stories, recover from the holidays, whatever.

Thoughts?

#1

Well, my favorite story has been the very first one. About the boy who meets another boy and they catch that huge fish... remember?

I don't know but I find it the most disturbing out of all the stories in a very strange way. I'm not sure why either, it's just a feeling I have every time I read it. How old do you think that boy is? Sometimes I think he sounds very young, like 12 maybe. Also at the same time I feel like he is older then I think as well, but he just acts like a child. I'm not sure yet.

I think the entire story seemed so normal. It seemed like an average day for him. I felt sad about his parents not seeming to really care about him, or what he does. It's obvious he wants their approval, real bad. Which is another reason why I believe he is young. You are seeing that through his eyes. Maybe his parents are great people, they were just having an off night?

I don't know, I'm still thinking about it all. What do you think?`

Fat

Well, I didn't hear otherwise, so I figured I'd just go along with Brandon's suggestion on how to discuss the December book: Where I'm Calling From.

I quite enjoyed a lot of the short stories in the book, but one that really kept me thinking afterward was "Fat."

It's one of the shorter stories in the book. Only 6 or 7 pages maybe and probably took fewer than ten minutes to read.

It's the one about the waitress telling her friend a story about this incredibly fat customer that she waited on, and who she seemed to take a bit of extra care of because she felt sorry for him and his girth.

As the waitress tells the story, she includes some details of other conversations she has with coworkers and with her husband. And ends with a bit of introspection.

Now, when I read this story, I was fairly convinced the waitress, our narrator, was relating to her friend, Rita, a dream she'd had. The way the waitress describes the fat man, the detailed way she continues to talk about his fingers. The way the customer repeatedly refers to "us" and "we" instead of "I" and "me."

After doing a bit of google searching, I have yet to come across any critic or commentator or essayist that agrees with my conclusion. It seems that everyone approaches this story in the same way. As though this, fictitiously, actually happened.

But the more I read about it, the more convinced I am that the narrator is telling her friend about a dream she had. A dream that led her to make some conclusions about her own life. At one point, she talks about serving the man some food and then looking in the sugar bowl, saying, "I know now I was after something. But I don't know what." To me, that sounds like the part in a dream when you know you need to find a person or a place or an object, but you don't know what you're looking for.

Does that happen to anyone else, or just me?

At the end of the story, the narrator and her husband go to bed and Rudy wants to sleep with her, but now she feels overwhelmed by size and imagines that she is much larger than the husband that is forcing himself on her.

The story ends when the narrator says, "My life is going to change. I feel it."

This story is so full of symbolism, from the size of the fat man, to the food he consumed, to the need to find something, to the unhappy marriage.

I still believe the whole thing was a dream in need of interpretation. A reflection of a problem the character's mind was trying to work out.

Thoughts?