nomadreader

The backstory: I loved Scottsboro , Ellen Feldman's last novel ( my review ), which was on the 2009 Orange Prize shortlist, and I've been eagerly awaiting Next to Love since I first heard about it. The basics: Next to Love  is the story of Babe, Millie and Grace, three long-time friends who together face their husbands (or boyfriend in the case of Babe) going off to war, the tragedies of war and re-building a life after war. My thoughts: Sometimes when I start reading a book, I never want to put it down. It isn't necessarily an indication I will think of the book in the coming months and years. I enjoy thrillers and mysteries, and it's often the experience of reading them I enjoy. Then there are books I may not especially enjoy while reading them (ahem, Freedom ), but I can't stop thinking about them. Sometimes the book is both. Next to Love  was both an exhilarating read, albeit a tragic one, and one that ventured beyond its initial scope to enchant me furthe...

Translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund with Per Petterson The backstory: I Curse the River of Time was shortlisted for the 2011 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize . The basics: With his wife divorcing him and his mother being diagnosed with cancer, Avrid decides to follow his mother from Oslo to her home country of Denmark, where she has not lived for forty years. On the ferry ride, he remembers the choices he's made during life and the paths he's been on. My thoughts: I Curse the River of Time was a book that started quite strongly for me. I enjoyed the narrative voice immensely. The prose had a curtness to it I liked. Avrid is unapologetic and his narration reinforced it to the reader. Initially, I was enchanted by the theme of home in this novel. With Avrid facing divorce and his mother dealing with cancer, both undertook geographical change. The very nature of home and its comfort was confronted. Despite a strong start, this novel fizzled for me as A...

The backstory: It's Paris in July ! If I can't be in Paris (perhaps my all-time favorite city) this July, at least I can read about it. The basics: French Lessons follows three Americans on one day with their French tutors. The three stories intersect tangentially. My thoughts: In some ways, French Lessons felt more like stories than a novel. It opens with the three Parisian tutors having coffee. From there, the action is quite segmented. We first meet Josie, a young French teacher and aspiring playwright who has traveled to Paris alone. Her story is told as a mix of flashbacks of her backstory and her current adventure. I loved her story, and I was sad when it ended. Next we meet Riley, an American mom with two young children who now lives in Paris but has not mastered the language at all. Riley's story was more escapist but still intriguing and somewhat dark. Finally, we meet Jeremy, who has traveled with his wife to Paris for their anniversary, but she is busy w...

The backstory: The Tiger's Wife won the 2011 Orange Prize . Tea Obreht is also one of The New Yorker 's 20 Under 40. The basics: Part exploration of grief, part war novel, and part fairy tale, The Tiger's Wife defies a basic synopsis. My thoughts: I really wanted to love The Tiger's Wife . Initially, I did love it. I was captivated by Natalia, a young doctor who travels with a friend to inoculate children in an orphanage in the war-torn Balkans. I think if the novel would have stayed with Natalia and her personal quest to understand why her grandfather left home to die, then I would have loved it. As an exploration of grief, I was moved. I lost interest, however, in the rampant side stories and symbolism. I fully acknowledge for every symbol I got, there were likely many more I missed. Still, the novel lost me when the magical realism veered too far to the magic rather than the realism. I don't have anything against magical realism, per se, but I struggled w...

In January, I read and fell in love with One Day  by David Nicholls. It was my first five-star read of the year. Since then I've been eagerly awaiting the release of the film adaptation. At first glance, this novel is not one that can necessarily be easily adapted. The novel covers one day in the lives of Dex and Emma over twenty years. Do you cast actors young enough to be the right age at the beginning of the film and use makeup to artificially (and ideally realistically) age them? Or do you opt for actors somewhere in the middle of the story and use makeup to make them younger and older? I'm a firm believer in finding the right actors and making it work, and I hope that's how One Day will be. As soon as I heard David Nicholls was adapting the novel for the screen, I was relieved and excited. I love this novel, but it matters more to me to have the spirit of the novel created for the cinema than to have an especially faithful-to-the-details adaptation. The ...

The perils of working for a living: a twelve-hour delay in posting reactions to the Emmy nominations. Things That Made Me Sad: No love for Parenthood . It's one of my favorite shows on television, and I think both the writing and ensemble cast are exemplary. No love for Community . Again. It's perhaps the most inventive comedy on the air (no disrespect to my other beloved 30 Rock and Modern Family , which are the two best comedies on the air.) Community is more original and almost as funny. It deserves a spot in the Best Comedy category. No guest acting nominations for Law & Order: SVU . Looking back on this season, I struggled to think who should be nominated, but their one-time dominance in this category is gone, and it made me sad. Kyra Sedgwick was shut out. I love The Closer , but I was more impressed by her perfect-until-now streak of being nominated for Best Actress every year for the Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award. Here's hopi...

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine to highlight an upcoming release you cannot wait to read. Robert Ellis is my favorite mystery writer. Period. He's criminally under-appreciated. Yesterday, when I heard he has a new novel (the third Lena Gamble mystery) coming out, I squealed. My eyes teared up. (I'm serious; it's been almost three years since The Lost Witness , which I named the best book of 2009. City of Fire was the best book I read in 2007 (admittedly before I really started keeping track.) As I said in my review of The Lost Witness , "it's refreshingly rare to find both a great writer and a great suspense storyteller in one."(I enjoyed his two pre-Lena Gamble novels, Access to Power and The Dead Room , too, but not quite as much.) Minotaur will publish Murder Season on December 6, 2011, which gives you plenty of time to find and read City of Fire and The Lost Witness before then. Do it. Treat yourself! Buy...