@internrachel @julia1

I have a bunch of books I want to talk about (also somehow like fifteen times as many that I still need to read, I don’t know, borders closeout sales are evil).

I reread this book I remembered really liking as a kid, Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson (175 pages)–I happened upon it in a bookstore and it sounded really familiar, so I decided to pick it up. It was a quick read and strange how familiar and unfamiliar it felt–once I started reading, I remembered the plot and the character, but it all seemed smaller and less vibrant than it had been, like visiting the neighborhood you grew up in or your elementary school. Does anyone else reread books from their childhood/get this feeling?

I also read McSweeney’s 18, which I’m not sure if counts but should, because it was book sized (250 pages) and awesome. I mean, McSweeney’s is always great but I really liked some of the stories from that issue–they were really emotionally intense. Sometimes I think David Eggers must have some sort of literary superpowers (I’m also reading one of the Best American Nonrequired Reading anthologies (I now own like five, thanks borders), which he edits, and it’s just like everything he touches turns to awesome).

Then I read Oblivion by David Foster Wallace, which I think might be one of my favorite of his short story collections (although I think that about all of them). I don’t know the words to describe the feelings I have about some of the stories. He captures emotion or life or something so perfectly and it feels as though what he’s written was just written to talk to me. “Good Old Neon” and “Incarnations of Burned Children” were probably my favorites. I didn’t like “The Suffering Channel” as much as parts of it made me want to–the end felt unresolved, which I understand because if he had taken it to it’s natural end it would have crossed a line/become tacky/seemed lazy but at the same time it just felt written wrong somehow.

I also finished A Model World by Michael Chabon (207 pages), which I liked, but not as much as I liked Kavelier and Clay or The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (although their plots were really really similar (also kind of gay)). He definitely has a talent for short stories, but the longer pieces were the ones that really stood out–the story “A Model World,” which was sort of a series of vignettes, seemed a lot more memorable than any of the others in the collection.

Now I’m starting in on my summer reading for school–I’m reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy right now, and then will read Zeitoun by Eggers, A Tale of Two Cities, and Slaughterhouse 5. Hopefully I’ll get these done in the next week or so so I can get back to my fun books :)!