Good books

I've read a whole slew of good books lately, ever since completing The Garden of Last Days.

So I thought I'd be non-controversial and talk about the books instead of whatever it is that makes me controversial, at least according to Pedro.tdog.

Save Your Own, by Elisabeth Brink
Elisabeth is a member of my writers' group, so I wanted to talk to her before I said anything on here, but she came in late to the last meeting and left early. This book was startling to me, in that not only was the main character named Gillian, but she was a lot like me, in character.

I didn't know Elisabeth when she wrote it, and I don't now know her well enough to think she used me as the model for this book. It's just a startling coincidence - or something more. I actually don't believe in coincidence, which is why I wanted to talk to her about it.

I really liked this book, and not for the reason that the main character was like me (it's not an entirely enviable claim). The characters are well-developed, and you care what happens to them (even the not-so-nice ones).

The Whole World Over, by Julia Glass
Glass is another local author (at least she lives in MA), but I don't know her. I could not connect with any of the characters in this book (well, maybe the gay restaurant owner, who was very well written in his staunch loneliness), so I did not care too much what happened to them. I particularly did not like the main character, 'Greenie.' I also don't care for an abundance of character names that are uncommon - Greenie, Saga, Joya, although the first two are nicknames.

Having said that, I can see that it is the type of story that is very popular now with people maybe at least 10 years younger than I, so keep that in mind.

In Her Shoes, by Jennifer Weiner
I really liked Good in Bed, didn't like her newest, Certain Girls, as much, but I liked this one, which came after Good in Bed. In Her Shoes was made into a movie, which I also liked, starring Toni Collette and Cameron Diaz. The book (as always) was better than the movie, but the film did a good job compacting down the story and getting the salient points across - except why Rose had all those fancy shoes in the first place. Weiner's main characters are always 'plus-size,' which I also like.

Writing this, I realized that both Certain Girls and The Whole World Over centered on mother-child relationships, and maybe that's what shut me down. I didn't like the way the women handled situations with their children.

On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
I really did not like Atonement (also by McEwan) - I did not even read all of it. I read the beginning and the end, rolled my eyes, and moved on to another book. This hardly ever happens. I picked this one up because I have been to Chesil Beach, in England, which is made up entirely of stones. I still have the ones I picked up from the beach. And I read the first page and it hooked me.

I still don't know whether I liked it a lot - I only finished it this morning - but it certainly had an effect on me. It's heart breaking, but not in the annoying way that I found Atonement to be. Just 203 pages long, I also liked the way the smallish book, shiny felt in my hands and the way the pages were laid out, and the density of the paper it was printed on. All ways to make the 203 pages look more substantial, I would guess, but I still liked it.