Yay and Nay Friday: Round 2

I can't believe an entire week has come and gone, bringing us so rapidly to another installment of "Yay and Nay Friday." Summer seems to have finally begun in San Francisco, meaning lots of hang-outery and assorted forms of chilling.  Resultantly, it's been a bit quiet over here, but now I'm ready to forge on and share some more excellent reads.  

YAY: "THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER" - LIDIA YUKNAVITCH

After my disappointing experience with memoirs last week, I wanted to put forth a book of the same classification that really does things right. Everything you've heard about "Chronology" is true, especially if what you heard is that it is breath-taking. Lidia's recounting of her writerly journey is an intricate blend of dark humor and poetic prose, inviting us into the nasty predicaments of her life with a friendly panache.  Of course, she is a former Kesey companion and acolyte, an enlightening relationship that constitutes much of the later part of the memoir. This book is an absolute must-read for writers:

“Out of the sad sack of sad shit that was my life, I made a wordhouse.”

NAY: "SARAH'S KEY" - TATIANA DE ROSNAY

 

I admittedly picked this book up looking for a quick read in between bigger literary ventures, and though I went in with pretty low expectations, I still found myself sizeably disappointed.  This book shifts between past and present, exploring the lives of a Jewish family in France during World War II and an ex-pat American woman in today's Paris.  The story-line has so much potential, but de Rosnay's attempt to tie up loose ends makes an incomprehensible tragedy into something too neatly-packaged to be believed. Moreover, the characters came across as lusterless and two-dimensional, something that often occurs in over-researched historical fiction, in which more attention is given to environmental details (time, setting, etc.)

Finally, I've been doing a bit of prose-writing myself (!!!), thanks to Sarah's writing group at Desirous of Everything.  Metronomes is a piece I started back in my undergrad days and have recently begun to renovate.  After years of exclusively focusing on poetry, I'm a little out of my element, but having a delightful time nonetheless.

 

What are you reading right now? There's always more room on the "To Read" list!