Space Station Mir

24. The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld I needed a book. Badly. I roamed the Harvard Coop savagely, lusting at recent release tables, pawing at established classics. My eyes rested on a familiar name: Curtis Sittenfeld. I read Prep a few years ago, around a turning point in my life. She helped me wrestle with my inner Lee Fiora, though, truly, I have never been as naturally cruel as that painfully realistic character, no matter how shy or self-conscious. I somehow felt that The Man of My Dreams would be easier to read, and at least I knew it would draw me in. I needed something to give my undivided attention to. The book is about that need to give, in the main character Hannah's case, love. To a man, specifically. That said, I don't know how terribly appropriate the title is. Prep wasn't adroitly titled either though. Hannah is familiar, another Lee, but in different circumstances. The book shows Hannah's life in flashes, skipping from eighth grade to college to ...

23. Moods by Louisa May Alcott Martha Saxton made such a big deal of this novel in her biography Louisa May , that I decided to try it for myself. I might have known, upon her recommendation, that I would be disappointed. Moods is full of high flown language and characters that are themselves ideals. The "mood" that consistently pervades the novel is one of unnecessary melancholy and melodrama. The first chapter is a pretentious, unnatural dialogue hardly to be borne, when I reached the seemingly more normal second chapter, I hoped it was an anomaly, but was unfortunately wrong. Alcott takes one of the oldest stories, as Henry James points out in his review, which was included in my edition, and fashions it anew, without altering or addressing any of the original problems. There is a young girl, and two potential lovers. Necessarily, there is a terrible muddle, and the girl marries the man she cares for less. Alcott tries to salvage the essential correctness of all three ac...

22. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell Tears came to my eyes while reading Gone With the Wind. More than once. I didn't actually cry, but it was still quite a feat . I feel like this is one of those books nearly everyone is expected to have read, but I read it this week for the first time. I avoided it, thinking it would be racist and Confederate-glamorizing and generally uncomfortable for a Northern soul like myself. It was undoubtedly racist and unashamedly proud of the Confederacy, and, even, something not even I suspected, rather supportive than not of the Ku Klux Klan. I absolutely loved it. Mitchell wields her powers of description like a sword, sometimes too heavily, but often with just the right thrust. Scarlett O'Hara, our tempestuous heroine, braves the Civil War and the Restoration with her simple-minded devotion to the survival of herself and those she loves most, her childhood home Tara and her childhood sweetheart Ashley. Mitchell reiterates Scarlett's ...

21. Dune: House Atreides by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson I've been skeptical of the prequel Dune books by Frank Herbert's son and Anderson, a science fiction writer in his own right, but I liked the new Star Trek movie, so why not give the Dune "remakes" a chance? I wasn't disappointed, this book retains all the complicated features and plots within plots of the original Dune series, and I got to meet familiar characters and learn more about the details of their histories, which are alluded to in the initial books. The Afterword was tantalizing, as I learned that Frank Herbert had intended to continue with a 7th Dune book, and his notes and outlines were mysteriously delivered to his son from an unknown PO Box soon after his death. Before this, I had accepted that Chapterhouse: Dune was really the end, even though it ends with all the main characters shuttling off into space...

20. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri I've wanted to read this book for many years, and it was not quite what I was expecting. This is the story of Gogol Ganguli's life. Gogol is the American-born son of Bengali parents, whose father is inspired to explore the world by a terrible accident and the author Nikolai Gogol. The book is well written, in a style that reminds me of Haruki Murakami. However, Lahiri's language is less complex and her descriptions less weird for the sake of being weird. Yet, it is the same clean, direct sentence structure that creates an insular world from which the reader is held just a little aloof, the better view from which to appreciate it. I am very interested in Indian culture, particularly Bengali, since a good friend of mine is Bengali. Therefore, many of the foreign words, usually describing food, were familiar to me, but they may not be to most readers. Much of the story takes place in Massachusetts, and I can relate to the detailed descriptions...

Well, I didn't end up having time yesterday to buy a book after all. However, I did get a sneak peek at the Lucy Parsons Center in the South End. I've walked past there dozens of times, but they're always closed. I've been very interested in them since I found out that they're an anarchist commune that communally own the bookstore. My friends and I were walking home from a late dinner in Chinatown, when we noticed the lights were on at the Lucy Parsons'. We crossed the street, but the sign said "Closed." We prepared to leave, when two women who were closing up saw us and opened the door. They let us inside and it turned out one of my friends knew one of them, so that gave us several minutes to explore. There were predictable manifestos and guides to, for example, teenage emancipation, but most of the literature there would never be found anywhere else. Sections were on Feminism, Radical World History, Anarchism, Communism, Socialism, and the evils of ...