The Tiger

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March's book club book was The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant.  It is the true story of a man eating tiger in Eastern Russia in the 1990's.  I actually listened to it on CD, because I was able to get a copy from the library sooner that way.  I think that listening to it was definitely the way to go, for me at least.  With my long commute, I was able to make it through the book fairly quickly, and painlessly.  It was an interesting story, but there were a lot of tangents, so I think if I'd been reading an actual book I would have found it a lot harder to power through it.  The tangents covered everything from Russian history, to big cat psychology.

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It's probably not a book that I would have picked for myself, but in telling David about it he thought that it sounded interesting, and he's probably going to read it, too.

The Geography of Bliss

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I recently finished reading The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner.  It was pretty good.  It's about Weiner's travels all over the world, to try to find the happiest places.  He visits Iceland in the winter, and finds that it is one of the happiest places, while Moldova sounds pretty bleak any time.  He highlighted about 10 countries, and I found that the chapters about countries that interest me were much more enjoyable than the countries that don't excite me at all.  I guess that's no surprise.  The book did seem to drag a bit by the end, but overall it was just fine.

An Artist of the Floating World

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Kazuo Ishiguro is an author that I recently discovered.  His most famous book is The Remains of the Day.  Last time it was my turn to choose the book club book I chose another book of his: Never Let Me Go, and I liked it quite a bit.  So, for Christmas I asked for some more books by Ishiguro, and I received two!  Thank you Shannon for getting me An Artist of the Floating World!

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Unlike The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, An Artist of the Floating World is set in Japan.  Ishiguro was born in Japan, but raised in England.  I haven't read many books set in Japan, so this was new and interesting.  The book is set a few years after WWII ended, but the narrator spends much of the book looking back over his past, so most of the "action" of the book is before and during the war.  The main character is an artist, and the book focuses on how his art changed over time.  The changes were due to his progression from student to teacher, but also were related to the political climate.

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Both this book and Never Let Me Go are told from the first person perspective.  But one thing that is unique is that they both have narrators that talk to you.  It's not just that you are hearing the main character's story, but he is actually saying things like "If you've every been to the Bridge of Hesitation, you'll remember that . . ." or "I don't know how it was where you were, but for us . . ."  I don't think I've every read another author that uses this particular technique.

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I liked this book, and would recommend it for people who are interested in Japanese culture, as well as people who are interested WWII.  There isn't much of a beginning-middle-end feel, it's more a book that makes you think, even after it's ended.

Little Bee

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I'm in a book club.  Each month one person chooses a book and we all read it and then get together to discuss it.  This month's book was Little Bee by Chris Cleave.  It's about African refugees in Britain, and oil wars in Nigeria.  I'm a sucker for happy endings, so I was a little bit apprehensive.  I just didn't see how it could have a happy ending and still be believable.  In fact, I figured that it would be a pretty depressing book.  

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I'm happy to say that I was wrong.  Little Bee is definitely a book about serious issues, but it also has some laugh-out-loud funny parts.  That's not to say that Cleave makes light of serious situations, but rather that he recognizes that life is funny, even when it's tragic.  The ending isn't really happy, but it isn't really sad either.  It was just open ended.

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A bonus for our book club this month was that Chris Cleave came to Portland and did an event at Powell's.  We didn't realize this when the book was chosen, so it was just luck or fate or something.  He was a really great speaker, and I felt more hopeful about the non conclusive ending after hearing him talk.  I also bought his other book Incendiary, so you can look forward to me reviewing it sometime in the future.

The Sirens of Titan

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Two years ago my brother and I mad an agreement.  He agreed to read my favorite book and I'd read his.  The agreement was made when we were on vacation, in a pub in Austria, and frankly I never thought that I'd have to keep my end of the bargain because I didn't think he'd read Pride and Prejudice.

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And then a few months ago Robby called me up to tell me that he'd finished Pride and Prejudice.  He told me that Mr. Bennet was hilarious (which he is) and that he'd be sending me a copy of The Sirens of Titan to read.  Well, a deal is a deal.  I put it off for a while because he never sent me the book, but when he came up for Christmas he had it with him.  So with no excuse left, I read it.  

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It definitely wasn't the kind of book that I usually read.  It was very weird, written in the past but set in the future.  I'm not sure that I could sum it up very easily . . . parts of it are set on Mars, Mercury, and Titan (Saturn's largest moon), and it had a set of main characters that were not especially likable, which I guess is lucky because then you don't mind so much when life doesn't go as planned.  

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I'm not sure that I'll be reading any more Kurt Vonnegut books, but then I don't imagine that Robby will be reading any more Jane Austen.  It was a fun experiment, however, and I'm glad that we made the deal . . . and followed through with it.

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I've decided this year to use the blog to keep track of books that I've read.  So periodically you can expect book reviews to appear here.