Book Update

Although I've been selecting a lot of books that have received great reviews or recommendations, this spring season has not yielded any special favorites, save one. I feel like I've been moving through books slowly, although I guess several of these were long and/or challenging, so I must still be making good time in the scheme of things! Here are the books of 2006 so far:

• The Plot Against America - very dull.
• The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron - interesting, but long and difficult to follow.
• Something Blue - chick lit, nothing extraordinary but a relief after Enron.
• I Know This Much Is True - one of the couple best of the year so far. Very good and readable, although 900 pages. Recommended.
  
• Prep - Very good story about a girl at prep school, recommended.
• The Lost Painting - A surprisingly dull story about research leading to the discovery of a Caravaggio painting.
• The World is Flat - Very interesting non-fiction about the globalization of business, but difficult to recommend because it's quite long and repetitive.
• On Beauty - Stopped at 100 pages.
  
• The Year of Magical Thinking - A memoir about the death of a loved one, that was a surprisingly unemotional read for me.
• My Antonia - Pleasantly readable for a classic, but not something I found gripping.
• Me Talk Pretty One Day - A compilation of anecdotes, a little funny and a little dark.
• Can You Keep a Secret? - Sad to say for the more intellectual books on the list, this is the best of the year so far. Light, funny, charming, the joy of reading. For women only.
  
• Skinny Bitch - Vascillates between funny and charming diet book, and shocking animal rights expose. Effective at both.
• Running With Scissors - A memoir about a sad childhood that is supposed to be funny. In my opinion the result was pretty odd. This will be released as a movie this fall.
• Enduring Love - A unique story of a tragic accident involving a hot air balloon, and a stalking case that ensues. Strangely I was expecting the stalking to be the meat of the book, but was actually more interested in the initial incident. It was like one of those scruples questions that has no easy answer. Interesting. But hard to recommend a book whose best stuff is at the beginning.

So that's it. Hopefully the next month will yield some good reading while I'm jet setting around. : )

Jen