Books Read Since September 2008

Jan 2, 2009 at 1:07 PM
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I posted my usual reviews for books read in September, then depression hit and life got super busy and my reading habit suffered some neglect. These are the last of the books read in 2008, finally.

Grey King, The - Newbery Promo '99 (Cooper, Susan, Dark Is Rising Sequence.)… by Susan Cooper

This fourth book in the Dark Is Rising series is the strongest I've yet read. The danger is finally palpable, and the more fantastic elements blend more smoothly with the world as we know it. The location and mythology lend a wonderful atmosphere to this read. I wish I'd had these books as a kid; I know they would've been favorites. - 3.5/5 stars

Free-Range Chickens by Simon Rich

This book was offered as a free download for the Kindle, and I needed a laugh, so I gave it a try. It was written by one of the writers for SNL, and it reads like a few weeks' worth of SNL sketches. The sketches are very short, the humor very simple, and the only thing that kept my attention was the thought that it simply had to get better. Much like SNL, you do stumble across the occasional thing that makes the corners of your mouth turn up a little, just often enough to keep you reading and hopeful that there might be a laugh in there somewhere. The last section in the book was the only one I found to be at all laugh-worthy though. I'm not saying this was a horrible book, but it definitely didn't appeal to my personal sense of humor. - 1.5/5 stars

Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life… by Kathleen Norris

I picked this book up when I was suffering a bout of depression and looking for a handhold or two to aid in my climb out. It's not so much a self-help book as it is a memoir, but there are always lessons in other people's struggles, and there were lots of valuable lessons shared here. I was thrilled just to learn the word, "acedia", and to know that the particular kind of dark ennui/depression I was fighting had a name and a history, relieved to find out it was not my own personal hell but something people have always had to fight. I'm not Christian and I find a lot of scripture rubs me the wrong way, but the Psalms shared here, as well as the common sense of the monastic wisdom, really did provide comfort and helpful advice for dealing with these moods that take hold of me. Thanks to Norris' sharing what she's experienced and learned, I now feel more capable of keeping those dark moods at bay. - 3.5/5 stars

Christmas Cookies

Given the state of the economy, we kept our giving very simple this holiday season and went with homemade. I selected all of my holiday cookie recipes from this book and was very pleased with the results. I made: "Crispy Peanut-Butter Chocolate Treats" (pg. 19), "Gingerbread Snowflake Cookies" (pg. 44), "Peppermint Candy Shortbread" (pg. 51), Lemon Icebox Cookies" (pg. 69). Each recipe was easy to follow and everything turned out fantastic. I will be making each of these recipes again, and I'm now confident enough in this book to expect good results from all of the recipes. The cookies went over really well with the recipients too, as everyone oo'd and ah'd and most could not resist sampling their gift immediately. - 4/5 stars

Looking for Alaska by John Green

This was not the book I was looking for. I'd wanted to read a light young-adult book, preferably something simultaneously angsty and silly about friendships and crushes and that time in life when your biggest source of stress was trying to figure out who liked you and what "liked" could mean. What I found here was a familiar old scar, not quite ripped open, but twitching with the memory of the original injury. And I found comfort, that the human experience could be so similar that I once went through thoughts and emotions almost identical to what some man I never met could write about from the perspective of a fictional teenage boy. This was not the book I was looking for, but I'm glad I found it. It's likely I'll come back and reread this one some day. - 4.5/5 stars

I've tried to read 3-4 books a month, excepting the end of the year when I just had so much stuff going on that I didn't care. I might be cutting back to 1-2 books a month for 2009, as I have a ton of studying I want to do this year and only so much time available for sitting with my nose in a book, so the reading-for-pleasure time may take a hit. We'll see.