Last night I went home, sat in air conditioned splendor, and finished A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly. My mom brought the book with her when she to visit -- she'd mentioned how she'd been interested in it initially because of its ties to An American Tragedy, liked it very much, and then discovered it was a YA book.
If my mom likes something enough that she brings it with her when she visits, I'll read it. We don't choose the same books, so on my end there have been some hits (Joyce Carol Oates' Wonderland) and some misses (The Dive from Clausen's Pier). I enjoyed this one. I think some of it is because I've read the Dreiser story a couple of times and some is because I've vacationed in the Adirondacks and been to Big Moose Lake, where Chester Gillette murdered Grace Brown. There's another picky logistics problem that I can't get into because it's a spoiler. But all in all, A Northern Light was worth the time I spent on it.
As I often do with books, today I found myself telling someone about it. My usual modus operandi is to send the Amazon page and then add my own blather about it, see above. So I went to the page and...the customer review section is full of book reports.
I hate when a student (probably under duress) writes a book report and slaps it up for the world to read or cut and paste into one's own book report. The only two reasons I don't wish there was a way to turn off "A Kid's Review" entries (1) some of the kid reviews are reviews and (2) some of the non-kid reviews are book reports.
Don't even get me started on the "Moby Dick is a great book, but PLEASE BUY MY E-BOOK ABOUT FINDING YOUR PERFECT MATE ON THE INTERNET!!" reviews.
I know...I'm asking for it by reading Amazon reviews, period. But if I didn't, I'd miss stuff like this.
Wow, an Amazon review that calls Family Circus "Proustian." Awesome.
Posted by: Carolyn | August 02, 2006 at 09:46 PM