What I’ve Been Reading: Snarky Six Word Reviews

It’s a very long time since my last update on what I’ve been reading – although I have mentioned books along the way – so get ready for a whole slew of snarky six word reviews.

Since I’ve totally veered from reading everything on the BBC 100 List, most of these books will not be from that list.  I will also exclude the Harry Potter books.  I loved them, but they all sort of blend in my mind.

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. Overrated. Dickens obviously paid by word.

Persuasion, by Jane Austen. Read instead of Dickens. Watch miniseries.

Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden. Surprisingly trashy. Details make the book.

A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. Interesting and strange. Curious about movie.

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Pretentious literary gymnastics. Good characters though.

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins. Suspenseful gothic mystery. Suspend all disbelief.

The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson. Want to take up boxing now.

Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Unexpectedly ignorant, anti-war, pro-woman.

The Book of Lost Things, by John Connolly. Dark, imaginative, and sad. Want more.

Corelli’s Mandolin, by Louis de Bernieres. War romance with slow start, nice payoff.

Saturday’s Child, by Kathleen Norris. Enjoyable fluff. Single gal, 1915 SF.

Room, by Emma Donoghue. Amazingly moving. Read in two nights.

Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris. His radio stories. Still hilarious though.

And that’s it!

Of all of these, I’d say the only one you MUST read is Room.  I could not put that sucker down.  At the same time, it’s thoroughly disturbing and upsetting.  I felt like I was in that room, in the head of Jack, the five-year old narrator.  And the fact that the author could pull off the voice of a little kid for an entire novel – I don’t know if I’d be able to do that.

The Book of Lost Things was also quite good.  I liked it well enough that I want to read his other book, The Gates, which seems to be YA, but a lot of awesome books out there are YA.

Now I’m reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.  It’s a long one so I won’t be done for a while.

4 comments

  1. Room and The Help are two books that I’ve been trying to read for the longest time. I actually bought them and a friend sniped both the last time I was over because I made the mistake of whining to her about how I didn’t have enough time to read them because of school.
    And right now, I’m sitting home on a Saturday night (not really feeling like school) with nothing to read.
    Persuasion is one of my favourite Austen books. It’s actually a tie between that and Sense & Sensibility.
    Memoirs of a Geisha – I thought I’d hate it because everyone was so obsessed with it but ended up falling in love with it. With the movie too (which got terrible reviews) because the cinematography was amazing.
    The Girl Who Played With Fire is exploding everywhere but I’m debating whether or not it seems like something I’d actually like.
    The books I love best are either Jane Eyre-ish, Brave New World-ish or Middlesex-ish. I end up forgetting about anything that doesn’t fit into those.

  2. SERIOUSLY agree with you on Room. Hearbreaking, but a MUST read for sure.

  3. […] been forever since I last did one of these, so I thought it was time.  But I’ll omit the books I already wrote about in my year-end […]

  4. […] first Nervous Breakdown book club selection, and what a way to kick off a book club.  I’ve raved about Room already, so I’ll just say this: the only reason it’s not the number one book I’ve read […]