Subwayland was a delight. It's basically a compilation of Randy Kennedy's New York Times columns about the subway, but I hadn't read more than one or two before, and together they create a really lovely collection. Much like Rats, I got a lot of New York City history in Subwayland. It was a welcome change from Prep.
Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel Prep is a painful narrative of four years at a New England prep school featuring a midwestern narrator named Lee. Sittenfeld went to Groton, and gives the New England boarding school culture a big middle finger in the novel (to be fair, the people I've known from Groton seemed to have survived intact, so I took the novel's acerbity with a grain of salt). It's interesting in the way adolescent novels are interesting, but by the end I just wanted it to be over. It's definitely a book for adults, and high school sex and all of its accompanying drama was the aspect of the book that finally threw me on the "not liking it" side of the like line. The narrator is hateable, but also occasionally sympathetic. By the end, though, I didn't really care what happened to her. It's a strange novel to read as a grown up--it's too late to be a cautionary tale, and from adult distance the struggles of the narrator seem pretty paltry. It's constructed pretty well, but not written in a way that wows.
Ah, Harry Potter. I read Harry Potter books and go into a fugue state for approximately 48 hours until I'm done. This one (HBP) had my mind stuck in Hogwarts for a day or so afterwards.
Spoiler stuff if you click more. DON'T CLICK 'MORE' IF YOU HAVEN'T READ OR FINISHED THE BOOK.
Okay, so I straight up don't know what to think. I believe whatever is handed to me. I didn't think about Snape not being bad or Dumbledore not being dead until hitting the internet after reading the book. I'm so out of it. I just read the books and take them at face value.
Anyway, I liked HBP a lot, much more than the last two. I found Harry so frustrating in the last book (the spot on portrayal of a cranky fifteen year old was a little tiresome) and was glad to see his spirits up. I like Harry and Ginny together (sue me) and am so bland as to hope for a Ron/Hermione pairing.
I don't know what to expect in book seven, but I do hope that everything turns out okay.
It's clear that when it comes to Harry Potter, I become a child when it comes to review and analysis. Basically, the books are a ton of fun--that's what matters to me.
First I saw the film based on the book The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and then I read the first two books in the published trilogy.
The movie was really great. It was a movie that you could take your niece or your grandma to and had great acting by several superb young actresses. I thought America Ferrera was terrific as Carmen (she was also in the great Real Women Have Curves, and Amber Tamblyn, late of Joan of Arcadia, was amazing, as always. I'm always waiting for Alexis Bledel (Rory Gilmore) to bust out of her demure, pretty box, and I heard she did so in Sin City, which I didn't see because of the violence. She's good at being demure and pretty, though, so her performance here is pretty solid.
Then I bought the books to read and read them in one day while traveling recently, and they're really pretty good. I would have loved them when I was 15 or so. Great portrayals of adolescent friendship, and characters that are believable enough and different enough for most readers to find someone to relate to.