Us: A Novel / David Nicholls

Douglas is the nerdy scientist-type and displays all the stereotypes that go along with that. Connie is a Bohemian artist-type on the rebound, and Douglas seems to be everything her last boyfriend was not. This book charts their unlikely romance, the uneasy marriage, the dysfunctional family, and finally the inevitable but nevertheless reluctant separation.

Connie decides to inform Douglas that she’s through with their marriage just before their son is off to university and right before they’ve planned to depart en famille on a grand tour of the continent. Against common sense, they decide to go forward with the plan, which results in predictably unpredictable consequences.

I’m not sure that in real life the ill-fated grand tour would really have made it to the first hotel, but as a plot device it was pretty clever. Perfect for the armchair traveler, there is wonderful description of some of the great art museums of Europe sandwiched in between the frequent episodes of family discord.

I found this book to be humorous to the point of being laugh-out-loud funny. David Nicholls has such a knack for creating real-life characters and situations that seem very familiar and very human.

Comments

So Much for That / Lionel Shriver

This novel comes from the 2005 Orange Prize winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin , a disturbing book in which a parent with ambivalent feelings towards motherhood deals with the aftermath of a Columbine-style school killing perpetrated by her son. Lionel Shriver has said that she prefers to create characters that are hard to love, and So Much for That certainly contains some flinty characters, who although they may be hard to love, are nevertheless very believable. The topic this time is healthcare in America. Shep is all ready to launch into an exotic early retirement on the island of Pemba off the eastern coast of Africa, but when his wife reveals a diagnosis of mesothelioma, he must hold on to his job to maintain family health coverage to see her through her devastating illness. His work colleague and friend, Jackson, experiences a medical dilemma completely of his own doing, which proves to be his un doing. Jackson's daughter suffers from an unusual genetic disorde...

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating / Elisabeth Tova Bailey

The snail is a lowly creature, and probably one that most of us have never truly contemplated. The snail was probably a creature to which the author hadn't given much thought before a debilitating disease kept her confined to bed, practically immobile, for months and months. One day a friend put a woodland snail in a pot of violets on her nightstand. After being transported from the woods, the snail had emerged from its shell into the alien territory of my room, with no clue as to where it was or how it had arrived; the lack of vegetation and the desertlike surroundings must have seemed strange. The snail and I were both living in altered landscapes not of our choosing; I figured we shared a sense of loss and displacement. p 20 The companionship of this tiny creature is what sees her through the darkest days of her imprisonment by her horrible disease. The snail, thriving in its slow-mo existence and life of undemanding simplicity, provides interest and comfort to the author. ...

This Book Is Overdue! : How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All / Marilyn Johnson Click here to check availability in AFPLS This book is an interesting collection of essays that offer glimpses into the brave new world of librarianship. It’s sort of the antithesis of Nicholson Baker’s grumpy dissing of librarians in his 2001 book Doublefold . If you thought that librarians are still the be-bunned shushing ladies in wool skirts with reading glasses dangling around their necks on slender gold chains, then this book certainly is overdue for you. The author shows how librarians are morphing and adapting to the new information landscape, meeting new challenges with fewer resources and a public that wants instant gratification in clicks-and-mortar libraries. Meet librarians who offer triage reference services in streets filled with protesters and others who assume alternate identities and inhabit virtual libraries in the cyber universe called Second Life. Learn about how the venerable N...

Peachy Reads

Search This Blog