Dreaming in Hindi, by Katherine Russell Rich

[Catch-up review from Goodreads]

Rich spent a year in Udaipur (Rajasthan) studying Hindi; the book combines anecdotes from her stay with tons of information on the science of learning a second language.

It starts out strong, but the parts become increasingly less integrated and the memoir sections become increasingly disorganized as the book continues. There were a number of points where she referenced something as if she'd already told that story, only to explain it 50 pages later. The information was good and her prose, as in individual sentences, was good, but it probably would have worked better as nonfiction about second language acquisition with a few relevant anecdotes than as the awkward chimera it was.

Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language

Thirsty, by M. T. Anderson

[Catch-up review from Goodreads; I read this ages ago, and skimmed recently while culling books. Not a keeper.]

Bleak contemporary horror-satire about a poor shlub of a teenage boy who is slowly turning into a vampire.

There's some good writing and an excellent use of an unusual tone which I can only describe as Raymond Carver meets Joss Whedon. The world is intriguing. But the emotions are just realistic enough to make it excruciatingly depressing. In fact, it concludes with my least favorite depressing trope ever:

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M. T. Anderson is up there with Katherine Paterson for slit-your-wrists YA authors. Feed was even more depressing; it featured a variation on that same depressing trope ( Read more... )

and also the human race was clearly doomed and deserved to be doomed.

Thirsty