Books read in July 2012

Hah! Only 7 books read this month despite being on vacation for a week.  Could some sort of balance be returning to my reading schedule?  Let's hope so.  Maybe next month I will only read five books.

Read
Bossypants. 
Tina Fey 
I've been staring at this book in the Lucky Day section at my library for many months and I just last week noticed that the hands on the cover are man hands and not hers at all.  I would make a horrible FBI agent as noticing is not my thing.  

This is a very funny book, which I read at the same time I read Sleepwalk with Me by Mike Bribigla and while reading both books my laughter echoed through the house often, causing much commentary by Matt. I spared him the reading aloud of multiple pages, but he would have been the better for it.

The thing I liked about this memoir was that it was full of great stories, but Tina Fey still keeps her secrets.  Her reasons why she does not talk about the attack that gave her the scar on her face was one of the most brilliantly reasoned passages I have read in a memoir and I admired how we continually heard about her ongoing state of virginity, but she never tells us the details of when she crossed that milestone.  Tina Fey is a classy lady and proof that feminists and funny are not exclusive.

Sleepwalk with Me
Mike Bribigla
This was sitting on the shelf of the library right next to Bossypants and I grabbed them both.  Both were laugh-out-loud funny.  Some of this book were things expanded from bits I heard of Bribiglia's act, some were stories new to me.  I loved reading his response to review published in student publications and his tour of college campuses of the northwest.  Matt got to hear that one read aloud.

Plain Kate
Erin Bow
This falls into the "YA strong female protagonist" genre that is publishing like mad right now.  The story was compelling, but perhaps a little too dark for me.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Douglas Adams
Read aloud.
The saga of Ford Prefect and Arthur continues as they bring along Trillian and Zaphod Beeblebrox.  High-jinx ensue, pithy observations are made and funny things happen.

Wonder
R.J. Palacio
Thanks to Sara, I read one of the best books of the year.  This is the story of a deformed child entering a middle school after being home schooled through elementary school.  It's the awkward middle school transition we all got to experience, but times one-thousand.  The writing is wry and compelling and the characters were very multidimensional.  I am hoping this will win some prizes.

Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin
Read for Book Group
Eh.  The prose was dry, the forbidding sense of doom became annoying really quickly and I didn't really like any of the characters.  That  said, it was an interesting glimpse into homosexuality in Paris in the 1950s.  And I was the only one at book group who didn't like it.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami
So I'm still not sure about Murakami.  As with 1Q84, I enjoyed reading the book, it sort of put me in an altered state.  But when I finished I was again wondering if that was all there was.  I'll read another of Murakami and maybe that will help me decide if I like him or not.  Or maybe I'll read all of his books and still have the same feeling.

Started and did not finish.
The Horse and His Boy
C.S. Lewis
Oh god, this series is boring.  Stay tuned to see if I make it through all the books.