Kylie's Book Log

I almost forgot I meant to do this at the end of each month.

Best Book of the Month: The Night Watch, Sarah Waters
Runners-Up: The Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier; After, Francine Prose
The Don't Bother Award: The Fermata, Nicholson Baker
Recommendations of Specific Books to Specific People Who May or May Not Read This Journal: rolypolypony should read Alice MacLeod, Realist At Last, and I think amyura might like Saying Grace, maybe. Also, he might kill me for saying it, but I get the feeling mitdasein might like The Fermata more than I did. (This is not meant as an insult, really - perhaps I would do better to phrase it as "I would be interested to see if mitdasein would like The Fermata any better than I did." That's more what I mean anyway.)
Number of Books Read This Month: 17

Anything else that should go in this post? I can't really think of anything.

Book: 17
Title: Fermata
Author: Nicholson Baker
Genre: General fiction, erotica
One-sentence summary: A guy has the power to stop time, and uses this power to get off.
Why did you get this book? I've liked Nicholson Baker before, and this one turned up on Paperback Swap, so I figured what the hell.
Do you like the cover? I'm pretty sure this is an advance reading copy of some sort. Mine just has a green fermata on it, which is fine, but the rest of the cover is white and partially covered in some sort of mold, which is not.
Did you enjoy the book? No. This is the first book of the year of which I am willing to say, flat out, no. I didn't even finish it, honestly. So, you know, thirty pages in, the concept of a guy who can stop time seems inventive (Dean Koontz's woeful attempt at covering the same theme not being deserving of mention), and though the fact that he uses this power primarily to take off women's clothes and jerk off on their frozen forms is creepy as fuck, well, you know, I could handle that for thirty pages. But it just goes on. And on. And on. And on. And the guy never does anything but jerk off. And strip women. And jerk off. And strip women. And jerk off. And then occasionally he puts vibrators on them while they're frozen, and clicks time back on, and watches them orgasm without having any idea why they are doing so. And then he clicks time back off. And jerks off. And... you know what? This book does not need to be 350 pages, or whatever it is. It doesn't need to be 50 pages. Find a plot, Nick baby, or get off the carousel.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? I'd read The Mezzanine, which I loved, and The Everlasting Story of Nory, which I liked but did not love, and Checkpoint, which I liked a lot better before I read an interview and realized that Baker was taking both his characters' political viewpoints pretty seriously. I don't know about reading him again. I would have to make very sure that he had found a decent plot before I embarked on another book. Because as erotica, this was just so *male*, so... I don't know how to describe it, but as a lesbian, I found it offensively masculine. Which makes sense, because a man wrote it. Anyway, no.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? I'll be recirculating it on PBS, if anyone wants it.
Anything else? In general I like looking up the new vocabulary words that I come across in a Nicholson Baker novel (at least, in The Mezzanine and now this one), but given that the new vocabulary words here basically seemed to consist of three hundred obscure synonyms for male ejaculate, I decided to skip all that this time.
Number of pages: 150, of I don't remember how many
Total pages for the year: 5206