Reading on a Sunday.

1. Funk :: -delic.
2. Marketing :: survey.
3. Standards :: norms.
4. Best friend :: Pritch.
5. Search :: and find.
6. Pizza :: oven.
7. Jeans :: tight.
8. Singapore :: tropical.
9. Executive :: decision.
10. Find :: and go seek. Yeah, I know that's dumb, but it's what my mind came up with.

* * * * *

I am not currently reading the two books I want to talk about today. I finished one on Thursday night and the other Saturday afternoon. But they both stuck with me, so I want to talk about them briefly. I have been having rather a dull run with books lately, so it was nice to read two back-to-back that grabbed me.

This one, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, is probably going to get some mixed reviews, and I can see the flaws in it, but I still found it fascinating. It is a bildungsroman, but unlike most coming-of-age novels, this one follows the characters until they have college-age children of their own. If you read the reviews on Amazon, you can get an idea of the plot and the themes. The one that struck me was the jealousy, the feeling of never having as good a life as your friend(s), and wishing you were in their family. I remember that as a child, although now of course I know that no family is as wonderful as I imagined others to be when I was 10. The author examines the some of the characters' feelings in depth, which rang true to me.

The other book, the one I finished yesterday, is The Dinner by Herman Koch. Once again, the Amazon reviews can tell you a lot about the novel. I found it fascinating -- started it at 9:30 Friday night and forced myself to put it down at 12:30 because I needed to go to sleep, however unwilling I was not to keep reading. It is dark, satirical, disturbing, a bit mysterious as snippets of information about the characters are slowly revealed. Set in the Netherlands and originally written in Dutch, it was translated to English in 2012.

As always, I have no idea where I got the recommendation to read these -- I request books from the library whenever someone mentions them favorably -- but if it was one of you, thanks!