Reading so far in 2010

This year I've been reading...

The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers
The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Murderer's Daughters is her first book. Well written, well drawn characters, compelling story. Good read!

I picked up The Last Chinese Chef at work after a customer requested it (yes, I work in a bookstore). I'd read A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones several years ago and loved it. It was luminous. This was very different, really got into Chinese cuisine - and know that here in the US, those two words might seem like an oxymoron, as we are so used to 'Chinese food', which hardly seems gourmet. This book introduced a whole new world of food in China (to me), PLUS a good story (if a teensy bit predictable).

And then The Bell Jar. I'd heard it was really depressing, and I didn't find it so. I found some lovely prose, and yes, not exactly cheerful, but well done and and I quite enjoyed it. Set in the early 1960's, it was interesting to read something really OF that time. And depression in women in the 60's? No surprises there...

Right now I'm reading Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor. It will be out in February. The back of the book uses the words 'fractured narratives', and indeed it is. Telling their own stories, of finding one of their friends dead, their drug use...the style incredibly evokes the gritty and yes, fragmented world of drug use. Not easy to read, intense. Well done.