recent reads

William S Burroughs
Junky
(had been wanting to read The Naked Lunch, which is his most famous book, but a colleague had told me how hard it was to get through, plus the library didn't seem to have a copy, so I picked up this one, Burroughs' first book and supposedly most autobiographical. It's about his life as a junkie and how he goes from addiction to addiction. Good read.)



Joan Didion
Where I Was From
(I have to admit that I didn't finish this. I didn't even really start it. It was just going on too much about California and kinda bored me. I flipped through the rest of it, decided it wasn't worth it. Plus I didn't like the layout - it's one of those narrow books, which to me is always weird.)



Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go
(Loved it. Didn't in the beginning. But it grew on me. I like how it's somewhat sci-fi and yet absolutely not. It's more like a book that lived too long next to a sci-fi shelf and took on some tinges of sci-fi. I like that Ishiguro never states the obvious and lets the reader make her own deductions. Great read.)



John Irving
Until I Find You
(The length of this one is rather frightful. But it is John Irving, so it is expected. Equally expected are mentions of wrestling. The thing about Irving is that I somehow just can't stop reading. I have to know what happens in the end, despite having to chug through hundreds of pages to get there. This one reminds me, in particular, of The World According To Garp, the first Irving book I read and adored. But it's a step down from that.)



Rick Moody
Black Veil
(The full title of this is Black Veil: A memoir with digressions. And yeah, plenty of digressions. Moody leads us through his life, one of addiction - yes another book that has something to do with addiction this time - and melancholy. And how he learns that one of his ancestors might have been written about by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This relative was known for wearing a black veil over his face, all the time. It's not so much about the story and the relative, but Moody's relationship to the story and how he sees himself. Complicated.)