Holiday Reading Wrap Up

Hey! Happy new year! I missed you, it’s just that I’ve been busy. You know, the holidays and all that. Also, mourning a crashed hard drive. So do you want to know the final verdict on Anil’s Ghost? 

It was quiet and good and a little bit twisty at the end. It was sad mostly—a depressing subject with depressing characters. But the prose.. the prose was beautiful, and there was one sentence I wanted to write in here because it was just incredible and beautiful and I never would have ever thought to say it the way it was written, but it was pretty much perfect, but you see, I sent it off this morning to someone who I think will like it, so I no longer have it with me. So you will just have to trust me, Ondaatje has a poet’s eye and voice, which is not to say that his novels are dreamy or hard to grasp, but just that they are filled with gorgeous images conjured by elegant and simple phrases. That kind of thing always amazes me.

Now I am reading What is the What. You know, it would be cool if I could read something that wasn’t about political massacres, but that just doesn’t seem to be the case right now. I love this book, though, I do, although it’s taking awhile to get through because there are people to see and things to do, but maybe I’ll finish it on the plane. It’s Dave Eggers, but it’s so strongly written in this other man’s voice that it’s really refreshing and personable. Eggers is a personable author, don’t you think?

I wanted to finish it before I got on the plane because I really wanted my plane book to be one of the Christmas presents I got this year—Roberto Bolano’s 2666. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and the cover art is beautiful, and the prose reads easy, and I am so excited to get started. I want to do it now, today. But I’m not letting myself until after I finish the book I’m currently reading. Self control.

Do you have any new year’s resolutions? I have too many. One is to read more. That is always the goal.