The Abstinence Teacher

I have a love/hate thing going with Tom Perrotta.  I loved Election and Little Children (although, strangely, I thought in both cases the movie was better than the book), was ambivalent toward The Wishbones, and really did not like Joe College.  The Abstinence Teacher is hands down my favorite of Perrotta's books.  The characters are believable and evoke sympathy, and the theme relevant (one of Perrotta's greatest strengths), highlighting the tension between secular and religious America.  I highly recommend it.

The Road

Bleak, depressing, and sad, The Road could fall into the genre of the dystopic novel because of its post-apocalyptic setting, but I consider it an allegory of the parent-child relationship.  The parent goes through hardship to care for the child and keep him alive.  The parent tries to explain why he is doing what he is doing, even though the child cannot understand, and the parent cannot adequately explain.  The parent tries to instill a sense of morality.  All of this done in the hope that the child will be equipped to care for himself when it becomes necessary.  While I didn't love The Road (so bleak, depressing, and sad), I am comforted by the message in the face of my own grief in the recent loss of my mother.

Highlights from the last year

The best books I've read in the last year:

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon)
• Suite Francaise (Irene Nemirovsky)
• The Nine (Jeffrey Toobin)
• The Abstinence Teacher (Tom Perrotta)
• George Saunders (Pastoralia, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, The Braindead Megaphone)
• Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)

Other books I liked:

• All We Ever Wanted Was Everything (Janelle Brown)
• Lush Life (Richard Price)
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Sherman Alexie)

A whole year?

I haven't updated this blog in over a year. I am a fly-by-night, follow-the-trend-then-abandon-it kind of girl. I had a facebook page for about six months too. Life has thrown me a lot of crap in the last year, last two years, actually, but there has been one constant: books. As long as I can still take refuge in a fictional world, the real world is a little easier to traverse. My reading over the last year has been spotty, and my views clearly colored by what I've been going through. I know The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is an excellent novel, but because I was reading it as my mother was dying, it is forever tainted. I've abandoned a lot of books over the last year as well, some unable to hold my interest, others I've deemed a waste in a short life. My love of books has brought me back here, and I think I'm going to give mini-reviewing another go.