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Jul
13
What I Read on My Summer Vacation, part 1
2009 at 3pm Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
If you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you probably know that I like to write in my books. I underline passages and make notes about my reactions, and when I’m finished reading, I go back and use my notes to shape my reviews. But when I go vacation, I like to just read, to be swept up in stories and not do too much thinking. So I’m not really prepared to review the books I read on my vacation in my usual style, but I want to talk about them because they were all pretty good.
Here’s what I’ve been reading:
Pefume by Patrick Suskind: Jean-Baptiste Grenouille has no scent of his own but a very keen sense of smell, which he uses to map out his surroundings and make sense of his world. Obsessed with possessing and creating the perfect scent, Grenouille will stop at nothing. The subtitle is “The Story of a Murderer,” but this book is really about much more than that. The writing is wonderful, the story is strange and at times absurd, and the end is just straight up weird. It’s really like nothing else I’ve read. Perfume is a dark, somewhat grotesque, and utterly unique read that will appeal to fans of Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen is growing up in District 12 of Panem, the country that used to be the United States. Each year, the people in the Capitol, just to remind the people down in the districts who’s boss, select one boy and one girl from each district to compete in the Hunger Games. The Games, which are a fight to the death, are nationally televised—think “Survivor” with teenagers….and death—and require strategy not just for staying alive but for gaining the audience’s favor.
The story here is captivating, but while the book is very plot-driven, it also has solid character development and conflict. Katniss is a strong female character and a great alternative to many of the weak, whiny heroines popular in today’s young adult literature. I didn’t love The Hunger Games (I think my expectations might have been too high), but I did really enjoy it, and I’ll be looking forward to the sequel Catching Fire this fall.
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell: When I won this on audio from a blog giveaway several months ago (I now have absolutely no idea which blog, sorry), I tucked it away for my summer roadtrip with hubby. We haven’t listened to audiobooks on our trips before, and this seemed like a good one to start with. Beat the Reaper follows Peter Brown, a former mob hitman who is now in witness protection and has become a doctor, as he tries to avoid being caught by his former boss after one of his patients recognizes him from his previous line of work.
Chapters alternate between Brown’s present story and flashbacks to his work with the mob and his personal history. His voice is dry and sarcastic, and his sense of humor is biting. We laughed out loud a few times, and this story was fun and entertaining, but hubby and I agreed that it wasn’t quite as good as we expected it to be. I think I would have enjoyed this more in book form, where I could have really appreciated the language and the structure of the story.
Stay tuned for Part 2 later this week.
I’m glad you agree that the ending was… just strange as all get-out. I’m not sure I liked the way that it ended!
So I guess you figured out which scene we were talking about on Twitter the other day…the end!
Yeah. The ending was crazy and unexpected. Like Lena, I’m still not sure if I liked it, but it was certainly a very interesting choice on the author’s part.
I used to write it my books, but found that I felt bad when I loaned them out like that! It does help with active reading though
[...] What I Read on My Summer Vacation, part 1 [...]
I figure I’m doing someone a favor (saving them time, money, etc.) if I’m loaning a book out, so they can deal w/ my annotation, or get their own copy
The character development in Hunger Games is one of the very best aspects. I adored the story (though maybe because I’d not read a whole lot about it from others before hand to raise my expectations super high) but the greatest strenght is in Katniss and Peeta. Heck even the secondary characters are unique and well done. Collins is skilled in this area.
You read some great books on vacation!! The Hunger Games is sitting right beside me and you would think I would read it by now!!!!
I didn’t enjoy Perfume, but I appreciated the author’s writing style.
I’m so glad to know I wasn’t really the last person to read The Hunger Games! It was really starting to feel that way. Go read it!
It’s a pretty weird story, so I can definitely understand not liking it, but I’m glad you enjoyed the style. That was one of the highlights for me as well.
I ordered Perfume after following your discussion of it on Twitter. I hope it gets here soon, I may just have to bring it along on our trip.
And they say blogging and tweeting might not really sell books! Hah. Hope you enjoy it—it’s not one I’ll soon forget.
except for the profanity i really loved this book.
Which one? I’m guessing Beat the Reaper, which does have its fair share, but wanted to make sure.
I read Perfume in highschool and loved it – even the ending! I think that Patrick Suskind is a great writer – I have also read The Pigeon and Mr. Sommer, which are both short, interesting reads,
I recall that I first read Perfume because I heard tat Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) was obsessed with the book and read it on airplanes when he was touring.
Suskind is definitely one of my favourte authors…I’ll have to revisit him again!
Perfume just wasn’t my cup of tea. It got more and more gross and absurd toward the end. It was the fact that I am bound by a kind of filial obligation to books I purchased that I finished it.
I loved Gargoyle so I’ll have to check out Perfume.
I really liked Beat the Reaper, but I read it instead of listening to it.
It’s definitely not a book that everyone will like, that’s for sure. I don’t know what it says about me, but I kind of enjoy the gross and absurd every now and then
[...] of what I read on my summer [...]