more 50books_poc

[pauraque_bk]

6. Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
Impressive, written tightly and well; I enjoyed it even though it wasn't quite my genre. (Can you believe I've never seen the movie?)

7. Hanif Kureishi, Midnight All Day
Only good thing about these short stories is that they're short.

8. Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto
Excellent nonfic about doctors who think they don't make mistakes.

9. Keri Hulme, the bone people
Raw, painful, poetically-written novel, but pulls punches at the end and kind of ruins itself.

10. Virginia Hamilton, In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World
Lovely stories, but was she the right person to tell them?


The Remains of the Day and The Checklist Manifesto are the only two out of this bunch that I'd unhesitatingly recommend. Onward, onward!

Comments

[bowdlerized.livejournal.com]

post on goodreeeeeeeeads!

[pauraque]

Oh, that. Well, maybe, but I couldn't figure out what the point of the thing was. You review a book and then what?

[bowdlerized.livejournal.com]

You get a record of what you read and when, plus your goodreads pals can see what you've read and decide whether it sounds interesting, and you can compare books with your friends and get recommendations.

I dunno, I'm kind of obsessed because I love keeping track of things.

[pauraque]

Well, another fact is that I don't read many non-linguistics books, which makes my reading list uninteresting to most people. 50books_poc has changed that lately, but all my reviews go on the comm, so all I'd be doing right now is copy/pasting reviews into another venue!

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

I work in pharmacy, and OMG you should see the epic checklists and procedures we have. This is certainly not the case in all pharmacies, but it helps me sleep at night!

"the bone people" was really confusing to me - parts of it were magnificent, but it really didn't know where it was going, I think, and ran out of steam. I wonder if it's because the author is a poet and so used to condensing that she didn't deal so well with an expansive storyline? She's never written another novel.

[pauraque]

Yeah, I noticed that too. I found something written in the mid-90s saying that she'd been planning another novel for years but it hadn't materialized yet, and that has not changed since then. I also read that she was very opposed to her work being edited, and 'the bone people' essentially was not edited by anyone but her, which unfortunately shows.