My reading year 2007 - best of - part 1
Every year has its ups and downs and so had my reading selection last year. So, to get it out of the way I thought I’d start this series of posts with my list of the biggest disappointments:
I usually love everything Stephen Fry writes or does on television. I was especially looking forward to reading this book, because it is to an extent autobiographic. I admit, after reading Fry’s other books I had high expectations for this one. “Making History” was a pure delight. “The Star’s Tennis Balls” is a great story despite the stupid title. And even his actual autobiography “Moab is my washpot” was highly entertaining. So when I found “The Liar” in a bargain bin I grabbed it, even though it was the german edition. At first I thought maybe that was the problem with it, but after slogging through a 100 or so pages I had to admit that I just couldn’t get into this book, no matter in what language I read it. It was boring and the main character just got on my nerves. In the end I gave up on it halfway through.
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6. Sterling Johnson “English as a second f*cking language”
Another book I had high hopes for when I signed up for a bookring with it.
If you read my blog for a while you will notice that I love to use swear words. A lot. The subtitle of this book says: “How to swear effectively, explained in detail with numerous examples taken from everyday life.” Like with everything I like to do, I am always happy to learn something new and I really looked forward to broaden my horizon concerning new and inventive swear words with this little tome.
Sadly, this didn’t happen. I don’t know, maybe I’m jaded, but my impression was that you would have to have led quite a sheltered life for any of the stuff in this book to be new for you. And I am not even a native speaker. But then again, my approach (and I know I’m not alone in this) to learning a new language has always been to learn how to swear properly first. So this book had nothing new to teach me.
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For a voracious reader is there anything more promising and delicious than a book about books? I’m sure there must be, but I can’t think of anything right now.
Nancy Pearl is a long-time librarian and it would be an understatement to say she is well-read. The woman must have thousands of books in her life. This book contains more than 170 themed reading lists with books she recommends, covering virtually every topic you can think of and then some.
This point is actually one of my main gripes with the book. Not only do I have no interest whatsoever in many of the categories she mentions (like, for instance, the various types of history books she recommends, or sports books), in the categories I am interested in she often mentions only books and authors I have never even marginally heard of before. It’s fine that she wants to promote lesser-known authors, but come on, at least mention in passing the ones that actually invented that genre. The chapter about travel books, for instance, went by without even a tiny mention of Bill Bryson, which as a huge fan of his writing I take personally (not to mention writers such as Paul Theroux). Also, with fantasy and science fiction there was no mention at all of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams - I’m just glad she mentioned at least Asimov and Tolkien…
Insofar the whole book was a clear disappointment for me. Not only does the woman have a completely different taste in books, but the descriptions of the books she recommends were also way too short to make up my mind if I would like to give them a try or not.
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4. C.S. Lewis “Till we have faces: a myth retold”
A while back I read C.S. Lewis’ Narnia-stories, which, despite the overt religious overtones, I liked quite a lot (the movie is a whole different kettle of fish, but that was to be expected). I also know that Lewis was a good friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and both of them inspired each other in their writing. So, as a big admirer of Tolkien, naturally I also wanted to read some more of Lewis’ work.
Now this re-telling of the story of Cupid and Psyche (which, truth be told, I remember only the tiniest rudiments of from school) was definitely not the right starting point for me. Not only did the preachy tone of the book raise my hackles, I also had trouble connecting to any of the characters. Additionally the dialogue was awful and all in all the book was just beyond boring. I slogged through it stubbornly, but I think this was the book that finally convinced me that finishing a book I don’t enjoy is just a huge waste of time.
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3. Andre Bernard “Now All We Need Is a Title: Famous Book Titles and How They Got That Way”
Another one of those books I saw a bookring for on Bookcrossing and signed up for it just because of the title. Ironically, the title is the best thing about this book. It’s just a wee little book, but I couldn’t get halfway through it. I just flipped through it backwards and forwards in the vain hope to find mention of any books I liked or at least had heard of before and would be interested in learning more about. And even the stories about the few books I did actually know where not really interesting.
This is one of those books that could have been good, but turned out to be a complete waste of time, because they were made in such a half-assed way as to be totally useless. I’m just glad I didn’t actually spend money on it.
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2. Robert Pirsig “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
Ok, if you have read this book and actually liked it maybe you could let me know what the last two thirds of it were about, because I gave up after a hundred pages or so.
The thing is, I really like motorcycles, and I think the idea of taking a trip to find yourself and using motorcycle metaphors to describe your insights is as good a way as any other. Insofar I was quite looking forward to reading this. Unfortunately, even if I hadn’t hated Pirsig’s guts after a couple of pages, his writing style just drove me up the wall. Here is clearly a guy who loves to hear himself talk and his endless blathering bored me to tears.
His philosophy as such is quite sensible, if a bit obvious, so my problem was not so much that I disagreed with him. It was rather that I kind of figured out what his point was around page 30 or so and just couldn’t go on reading about him waffling on about it for 400 more pages. On the whole, this book is not quite as bad as another one I read 2 years ago (Dave Eggers’ “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”, which alternately made me scratch my head and gag), but it’s not much better either. To see it hailed as “a brillant and original book” on Amazon really pains me.
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1. Kenneth Grahame “The Wind in the Willows”
Ok now, I know that some of you who read this book as children will probably want to slap me when I say this, but this is by far the worst childrens’ book I have read for, like, ever. I seldom really hate books, mostly I tend to just forget about the ones I didn’t like, but this one is such a load of crap that I only wish I could purge it completely from my mind. And because I don’t want to get all worked up about it again, I will just give you the review I wrote about it on Bookcrossing:
” This is it. I’m giving up.
I really tried to find this book charming and it’s probably my own fault that I failed completely. I don’t know what exactly I expected, but this book rubbed me the wrong way right from the start. I don’t generally have a problem with anthropomorphized animals - up to a point. There still has to be some sense to it. I’m usually pretty good with the suspension of disbelief, since I read a lot of fantasy stories. But it just doesn’t work for me if there are such glaring logical errors in the story.
Here, you have animals of all kinds that would be food for each other in the real world, interacting as friends. You have a toad who puts horses to his gypsy cart - never mind that horses are like a hundred times bigger than your usual toad. Don’t even let me get started on the motor-cars! Then you have a rat and a mole eating bacon and eggs - so where does the bacon come from, Mummy? Well, they’re probably keeping some really small pigs out back somewhere. At the same time the rat and the mole are afraid of dogs and cats in the village - why exactly, if they’re strong enough to handle a horse? (Or are we talking about really really small horses here, and really really big cats?) And where exactly are all the humans and why don’t they ever notice the animals racing around in cars on their streets? And then, of course, you have the toad who gets imprisoned in a castle, forchrissake. And I don’t know what other bullshit was still to come, because at this point I decided to stop wasting my time with it.
It’s just a total jumble of things that don’t add up und don’t make sense at all. And moreover, it’s all done in such a cutesy way as to make me gag. Now, I don’t have kids myself, but if I had, I would surely want them to read cute stories, but this one certainly wouldn’t qualify in my eyes. I may be overcritical, but in a time when city-kids often do not even know what a real cow looks like anymore, I find it a bit counterproductive to let them read a book that tells them absolutely nothing whatsoever about what real animals are like. I could never bring myself to read that to any child with a straight face.
I know that childrens’ books are mostly not supposed to be too realistic, and I know that the point the author was trying to make was more about friendship than about the life of real animals. But I don’t see a reason why you couldn’t at least get your facts right and try to apply a little bit of logic to even a story for children. I know there are lots of childrens’ books that manage to do that. And I’m sure, if I had read that book as a 7- or 8-year-old, I would have asked the exact same questions and my mom probably would have tossed the book out before long, because I would have driven her bonkers with my cries of “but that doesn’t make sense!”. ”
In short, I have to go with Ms. Dorothy Parker on this one: “This is not a book to be put aside lightly; it should be thrown with great force.” (I know she didn’t say that about this particular book, but it applies nevertheless.)
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