shiny things in messy little piles

Year: 2017 (Page 1 of 3)

The Books of November

Sev­er­al books in this issues point to a trend: writ­ers seem to be los­ing the mag­ic in their work. Is it age, too much writ­ing, or the unbe­liev­ably car­toon­ish real­i­ty of the times? What­ev­er, the mag­ic is gone from a lot of writ­ing at the moment.

* Mag­i­cal Real­ism can’t keep up with the zeitgeist. *

Fiction:

Dust: La Belle Sauvage — Philip Pullman (2017)

This is a (pr)equel (that’s Pullman’s term) to the His Dark Mate­ri­als books. La Bell Sauvage describes how the young Lrya came to be at Jor­dan Col­lege Oxford. This book lacks the sur­pris­ing grandeur of the Gold­en Com­pass but will that ever be topped? If you’re will­ing to set your sights lit­tle low­er, then you’re in for enjoy­able ride down the flood­ed, mud­dy, treach­er­ous Thames river.
LBS is set up in a small vil­lage on the Thames above Oxford were we meet Mal­colm a mild-mannered, curi­ous child who lives and works in his par­ents pub. Mal­colm meets the infant Lrya while run­ning errands for the sis­ters at the God­stow nun­nery. Known for his curios­i­ty and frankly a bit of a busy­body, Mal­colm is recruit­ed by an Oxford schol­ar who is study­ing the alei­theme­ter and who works with a secret orga­ni­za­tion that oppos­es the Mages­teri­um to use his friend­ship with the sis­ters to keep an eye on the com­ing and goings near Lyra. As things devel­op the Magestri­um, in light of a mys­te­ri­ous prophe­cy, wants to take con­trol of the infant Lyra.
Just as the Mager­steri­um gets Lyra in to their clutch­es, a flood of pos­si­bly super­nat­ur­al ori­gin occurs and Mal­colm and Alice (the pot wash­er at his par­ents pub) by hap­pen­stance find them­selves rac­ing down the flood­ed riv­er in Mal­com’s lit­tle boat (the Belle Sauvage of the title) with the baby Lyra. There’s thrills and spills and fairies and the scari­est vil­lain so far with a hideous maimed hye­na daemon.
There were parts of the end of the book that left me lit­er­al­ly breath­less and made me seri­ous­ly recon­sid­er what I was read­ing at bed­time. There were images that I did­n’t just need in my brain as I was drift­ing off to sleep. But I per­sist­ed as do Mal­colm and Alice and in the end Lyra is safe­ty deliv­ered to Jor­dan College.
The main char­ac­ters Mal­colm and Alice are com­fort­able drawn children/teenagers. One thing that did con­fuse me a bit was the age gap between Mal­colm and Alice. At the begin­ning of the book Mal­colm is pre­sent­ed as 12(ish) and Alice as 16. That’s a big gap for kids. Giv­en the age dif­fer­ence, some the lat­er mate­r­i­al bor­ders on creepy as they interact.
In the end while it’s a nice book and had some love­ly light moments and some real moments of ter­ror. It’s very pre­quel and the end­ing is only sat­is­fy­ing because I know how things work out in lat­er books.

* Lyra as MacGuffin *

Practical Magic — Alice Hoffman (2003)

What hap­pens when your sis­ter shows up with a dead body in the trunk of her boyfriend’s car? You help her bury it in the back yard of course. At least I’m pret­ty sure that’s what I would do. And that’s what Sal­ly Owen does when her sis­ter Gillam shows up with the very dead Jimmy.
The main char­ac­ters are the Owens sis­ters Sal­ly and Gillian. Daugh­ters of the witchy Owens fam­i­ly, as chil­dren they were alter­nate­ly shunned and tor­ment­ed by their class­mates. Once old enough they both run as far as they could from the lega­cy of their moth­ers, grand­moth­er, and aun­ties. Sal­ly and Gillian are a bit pre­dictable as the good sis­ter who set­tles down and strives for nor­mal­cy and the bad sis­ter who runs around and has lousy taste in men. Though this pre­dictabil­i­ty leads to the fun of watch­ing sol­id, sta­ble, des­per­ate­ly nor­mal Sal­ly com­plete­ly lose her abil­i­ty to con­trol her world when a cer­tain inves­ti­ga­tor from Ari­zona appears look­ing for Jim­my the back­yard denizen.
The char­ac­ters of the Sal­ly’s two daugh­ters are much more real­is­tic than most por­tray­als of teenagers as sec­ondary char­ac­ters. This makes me hap­py. The end­ing isn’t as scary as I had hoped it would be.

* Do I remem­ber the movie cor­rect­ly? Was­n’t Jim­my a zom­bie in the movie? *

The Refrigerator Monologues — Catherine M. Valente (2017)

Valente takes Gail Simone’s 1999 explo­ration of the misog­y­ny of the world of com­ic books and super heroes and builds her own world around it. Simone point­ed out that the female char­ac­ters in most (near­ly all) of the world of comics and super heroes are mere plot points, facil­i­ta­tors for the sto­ry arc of the male super heroes. This book is a col­lec­tion of self-narrated sto­ries of these “refrig­er­at­ed” females. In Valente’s book each of the mem­bers of the Hell Hath No club tells her sto­ry. There is the plucky hero­ine who dis­cov­ers (acci­den­tal­ly of course) the secret for­mu­la that trans­forms the hero from a every­man to a super­man and then gets her­self killed by the vil­lain look­ing for the for­mu­la for his own uses. The girl whose child is killed so that the hero can shout “for the death of my son” every time he goes onto bat­tle with the vil­lain who killed his son. The girl is of course for­got­ten as soon as the child is ripped from her arms.
There are the female (semi)villains. A cou­ple of girls who serve as keys — lit­er­al­ly — they most­ly let/get the real male vil­lains out of some sort of con­fine­ment. And the super girl whose fab­u­lous pow­er out strips the guys but who lacks con­trol, turns to evil, and must be destroyed for the greater good. The sub­text being that, of course, a male would be able to con­trol these pow­ers but being a girl she can’t.
Each of the tellers of these sto­ries is dis­guised ver­sion of a female char­ac­ter in the world of comics and super­heroes. It can be a bit of a par­ty game to name them all.

The sto­ries have Valen­te’s usu­al facil­i­ty with lan­guage and the point is well made.

(Though am I the only one who miss­es her less com­mer­cial for­ays — those bril­liant mythopoe­ic con­struc­tions that made up Palimpsest and the Orphans Tales?)

* an Alexan­der DeWitt festschrift *

In the Midst of Winter — Isabel Allende (2017)

Every year on Jan­u­ary 8th Allende starts a new book. One recent year she was a bit behind in com­ing up with an idea for a book and so she and her fam­i­ly brain­stormed the ideas that would become this book. It’s got a bit of the feel of a TV show with indi­vid­ual episodes with the life sto­ries of the char­ac­ters hang­ing on the loose over­ar­ch­ing plot line of the dis­cov­ery of a dead woman in the trunk of a “bor­rowed” car dur­ing a NYC blizzard.
There are three char­ac­ters — Richard Bow­man, a stul­ti­fied 60-something pro­fes­sor, the viva­cious old­er Chilean col­lege instruc­tor, Lucia Maraz, who is liv­ing in his base­ment apart­ment, and Eve­lyn Orte­ga an undoc­u­ment­ed Guatemalan immi­grant. When Bow­man runs into the back of Orte­ga’s employ­er’s Lexus dur­ing a bliz­zard, the three char­ac­ters are thrown togeth­er and a caper begins. Each character’s back sto­ry is effect­ing and pro­vides a glimpse into the immi­grant or ex-pat expe­ri­ence from a very dif­fer­ent perspective.
The Guatemalan girl — as effect­ing as her per­son­al sto­ry is — is just the mute don­key that car­ries the two old­er pro­tag­o­nists towards each oth­er as the sto­ry winds down to its inevitable con­clu­sion the old folks fall in love at long last.

* you nev­er know what you’re gong to find in the trunk *

Poetry:

Poetry Toolkit: The Essential Guide to Studying Poetry, 2nd Ed. — Rhian Willimas (2013)

One of the bet­ter poet­ry text books. This is all the stuff about poet­ry that you need to know to write that essay your instruc­tor asked for. It includes a wider selec­tion of poet­ry exam­ples than many of its sort.
I still can’t man­age the bull­shit lev­el nec­es­sary for “close read­ing” in the aca­d­e­m­ic sense. Too much imput­ing inten­tion to poets for every lit­tle thing that the read­er can find in a poem. Don’t get me start­ed on how many close read­ings strait­jack­et a poem into the read­er’s pet set of lit­er­ary theories.
Still. If you need a back­up text to make the one you’ve been assigned this isn’t a bad place to start. It’s hel­la cheap­er than Fussel and lacks some of his more objec­tion­able attitudes.

* log­i­cal­ly orga­nized and not too painful *

Rag Pickers Guide to Poetry — eds: Eleanor Wilner and Maurice Manning (2013)

A col­lec­tion of small essays and sam­ples of poet­ry from folks who have taught at the War­ren Wil­son MFA pro­gram. Most of these essays con­sist of: here’s a poem or three and here’s what I think about my own work with­out propos­ing a larg­er idea. There are a hand­ful of good essays here. Among the more worth­while essays — Chris Forhan sug­gests remov­ing words like because and although from your vocab­u­lary and see­ing where the more declar­a­tive and defin­i­tive take you. Rick Bar­dot has inter­est­ing ideas on step­ping away from the visu­al. And final­ly there is this love­ly quote from Heather McHugh which I am tak­ing entire­ly out of context:
“The poem engages in a sort of net­work’s plea­sure, mak­ing its cat’s cra­dle, using the odd­est threads it could find, in the spool-rooms or yam­mer and yarn.”
It is, I think, the truest thing I have read about poet­ry in quite a while.

* poets talk­ing to them­selves about themselves *

The Cuckoo — Peter Streckfus (2004)

One of the poets that I dis­cov­ered via the Lousie Gluck intro­duc­tions in her Amer­i­can Orig­i­nal­i­ty. These poems are chewy and thick and not at all sweet. There are strands drawn from sev­er­al tra­di­tions, includ­ing Chi­nese leg­end and the Old West. All woven cun­ning­ly into nar­ra­tives that almost make sense and leave you won­der­ing how you can put in the few miss­ing pieces.

* poems that invite your imag­i­na­tion in. 

Audio:

Innocents Abroad: Or the New Pilgrim’s Progress — Mark Twain, Narrated by: Grover Gardner (2011)

Clas­sic Twain — long, detailed, and alter­nate­ly broad­ly and sly­ly fun­ny. Twain’s reports from a 6 month round trip voy­age from New York to the Lev­ant. It’s Twain. It’s a clas­sic and many of the atti­tudes that Twain makes fun of still grate on the soul.
The nar­ra­tion is pitch per­fect. The very slight drawl that one asso­ciates with Twain’s dic­tion is here. And the thing is read “straight” which makes the satire all that much sharp­er. There is no wink­ing at the lis­ten­er on the part of the read­er. At least no winks that aren’t in Twain’s orig­i­nal. Good job.

* real­ly, real trip recount­ed in seri­ous­ly unre­al episodes *

Heartburn — Norah Ephron Narrator: Meryl Streep (2013)

An oldie that stands up well enough oth­er that a cou­ple of anachro­nisms. ($50 shut­tle flights between NYC and DC.) It’s kind of light and has a love­ly bit­ter bite to it. The end­ing is hap­pi­ly ambigu­ous. Meryl Streep is the per­fect nar­ra­tor. Her slight accent (from where I’ve nev­er fig­ured out) lends just the right upper class touch to the sto­ry. Streep can do bitchy like no one’s busi­ness and she applies that perfectly- just a hint in the sto­ry of mar­riage gone com­i­cal­ly wrong. Noth­ing deep here. Just the banal things of mar­riage and betray­al and cook­ing. I like hav­ing Meryl Streep read to me and I won­dered what else she’s read. Answer: a lot of chil­dren’s book includ­ing Beat­rix Potter.

* the recipes aren’t all that, but who reads fic­tion for the recipes? *

Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood — Trevor Noah narrated by the author (2016)

The sto­ries are effect­ing and some­times very fun­ny. The author is after all a come­di­an. There is no self-pity and no self-aggrandizement. Just the hon­est sto­ries of one boy/young man grow­ing up in a par­tic­u­lar his­toric time and place. I laughed a lot in that know­ing way that lives some­where between fun­ny and poignant.
Aside from all the rest, (and you can look up any num­ber of deserved­ly glow­ing reviews else­where) Noah’s take on trib­al­ism and how tribe, race, and lan­guage are used to manip­u­late the emo­tions and actions of peo­ple who is root­ed in the work­ings a com­plex soci­ety formed around many lit­er­al tribes. This book gave me much to think about with regards to our own coun­try and it’s issues of race and class.

* maybe I should start watch­ing late night television *

The Books of September and October

Read: Fiction

PS from Paris — Marc Levy (2017)

As close to a pure romance as I am like­ly to read. Two dis­af­fect­ed char­ac­ters: a writer hid­ing from his past suc­cess and an actress hid­ing from her cur­rent mar­i­tal prob­lems. The twist is amus­ing — the writer, an Amer­i­can liv­ing in Paris — is pop­u­lar most­ly in Korea, for what seem like inex­plic­a­ble rea­sons. But there in lies the secret to that char­ac­ter’s path to redemp­tion. Remem­ber this is a romance and the guy needs to have an epiphany to make him wor­thy of the female char­ac­ter. Who is kind of not real­ly worth being wor­thy of in my opin­ion. She’s just suf­fer­ing from fame and all that. Kind of cute but the tra­jec­to­ry is inevitabl

* beach read *

 

Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders (2017)

A tale told entire­ly in dia­logue among dead peo­ple and excerpts from both true and fic­tion­al accounts of the pres­i­den­cy of Abra­ham Lincoln.
You need to know The Bar­do is before the book makes sense. In Tibetan lore it is the inter­me­di­ate state between one life and the next. In which all sorts of odd things to hap­pen to the “self” includ­ing illu­sions and delusions.
It seems that you can remain tied to the earth is you are will­ing to believe that you are “Sick” rather than dead. The char­ac­ters in this par­tic­u­lar grave yard are grotesque par­o­dies of the earth­ly selves with phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics that hint at their ful­filled and unful­filled secret desires while alive.
Abra­ham Lin­coln comes to vis­it his son Willie’s grave and seeks solace in the young beau­ti­ful corpse. Young Willie is trapped in the Bar­do by his yearn­ing to com­fort his father. It’s kind of grue­some but made com­plete­ly under­stand­able. and then is
The for­mat of the nov­el is exper­i­men­tal. There are two meth­ods of mov­ing the sto­ry for­ward: the dia­log and inter­nal dia­log of the char­ac­ters in the Bar­do, and excerpts both actu­al and fic­tion­al from the accounts of the Lin­col­n’s pres­i­den­cy. Many of these accounts dis­agree with one anoth­er but serve to give a back­ground against which you can mea­sure the state of the Pres­i­den­t’s mind. And it’s his mind that in the end is the cru­cial turn­ing point of the book. His hes­i­tan­cy and grief become a bea­con to the folks in the Bar­do and they attempt to per­suade him first to let his son go and then … is this spoil­ing the book? To say that the black res­i­dents of the black ceme­tery — next to the fenced white ceme­tery final­ly get their look in and influ­ence Lin­col­n’s resolve re the Civ­il War and it’s caus­es and need­ed outcomes.
I’m not sure where this book’s rep­u­ta­tion for dif­fi­cult­ly is com­ing from. It’s com­plex and mul­ti­lay­ered for sure. But dif­fi­cult? No. Oth­er than requir­ing that you actu­al­ly pay atten­tion to who is speak­ing and the moti­va­tions and past sins of the speak­ers. I sup­pose a lot of the dif­fi­cul­ty comes from the non­tra­di­tion­al for­mat. Dia­log along side the excerpts defies tra­di­tions. It works just fine is you read it like play with the reviews inter­spersed. Some peo­ple are com­par­ing this to Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s just not that dif­fi­cult. Maybe I am “spe­cial” in that it only took me 10 or 15 pages to “get” the way the book is written.

* oh, just read it *

Trajectory — Richard Russo (2017)

Short sto­ries by one of my favorite cre­ators of char­ac­ters. The mid­dle sto­ry is a longish novel­la that I could­n’t man­age to make my way through. Retired pro­fes­sor makes a mess of a class and his rela­tion­ship with a “spe­cial” stu­dent and then goes to Italy where his broth­er does a bun­co on him. That’s as far as I got. No idea what was actu­al­ly up with the greasy broth­er did­n’t care.
The oth­er sto­ries are clas­sic Rus­so and worth your time. I espe­cial­ly liked Mil­ton and Mar­cus — Hol­ly­wood fol­lies are always good for lay­ing open char­ac­ter. Though Rus­so is bet­ter at longer lengths were he can stretch out and take his time build­ing his characters.

* wait­ing for the next novel * 

 

Life A User’s Manual — George Perec (1978)

I’m lost. Utter­ly and all the time. Yet, I’m still enjoy­ing read­ing this tale of a french apart­ment build­ing and it’s occu­pants. It’s immense and is tak­ing quite a while to get through. But I love how the pieces fit togeth­er like the jig­saw puz­zles that are at the heart of one man’s sto­ry. Room by room and apart­ment by apart­ment there are lives and loves and a cer­tain amount enmi­ty. Lin­coln in the Bar­do has been com­pared to Joyce’s Ulysses. This is a much bet­ter match for that com­par­i­son. Both Perec and Joyce write cir­cuitous nov­els that will leave you with many puz­zles to solve.

* a book to be read more than once? * 

 

Read: NonFiction

The Moth Presents All These Wonders — Catherine Burns (2017)

A known fran­chise. The Moth series of events presents quick takes from peo­ple’s lives on themes such as “Pulling Focus: Tales of Insight” and “Into the Wild: Sto­ries of Strange Lands” broad­ly inter­pret­ed. These are the small plates of the essay world and can be relied on for effec­tive and effect­ing pieces.
* bite sized wonders * 

 

 

 

American Originality Essays on Poetry — Louise Gluck (2017)

A hand­ful of essays on var­i­ous poets and oth­er writ­ers in the first two sections.(Including an essay on Bud­den­brooks that near­ly bored me to tears.) A sec­tion of 10 of her intro­duc­tions to books in the Yale Younger Poets Series and then a short sec­tion that includes essays on the writ­ing of poet­ry. For me this is most­ly a book that illus­trates how the acad­e­my talks about poet­ry. Use­ful in that way but not one that excites the poet in me. I did dis­cov­er a cou­ple of new to me poets through her intro­duc­tions. Much here appeared in the Three Pen­ny Review pre­vi­ous­ly. TPR is one of those things. I ought to enjoy it when I read it, I rarely do.
* too much navel gaz­ing Amer­i­can exceptionalism * 

 

Fish Whistle — Daniel Pinkwater (1990)

Tiny lit­tle humor­ous essays that Pinkwa­ter did for NPR’s “All Things Con­sid­ered.” There are gems here and as in any col­lec­tion of this many things a few clunk­ers. Sized just right for 10 minute reads. I was look­ing for a par­tic­u­lar essay on read­ing and writ­ing that had been rec­om­mend­ed to me but it was­n’t in here. Still look­ing for Pinkwa­ter on writing.
* NPR humor is strange * 

 

 

 

All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists — Terry Gross (2005)

Ter­ry Gross’s inter­views on Fresh Air are well-known. These are most­ly from the 90s and they do feel a bit dat­ed. Who cares about Nicholas Cage any­more? Her infa­mous dust-up with Gene Sim­mons is includ­ed. It only con­firms my opin­ion that the fel­low is three bricks shy of a wall and just about a whole wall shy of human­i­ty. Oth­er sub­jects includ­ing sev­er­al of the mer­i­to­ri­ous dead. Among them John­ny Cash and Mau­rice Sendak (that one is par­tic­u­lar­ly enlight­en­ing) as well as liv­ing pop­u­lar cul­ture icons. My only real wish is that a cou­ple of the inter­views had gone on longer than they did. Often the top­ic gets changed just as an inter­est­ing insight is on the hori­zon. It’s also enlight­en­ing to see exact­ly how short a half hour inter­view is on the page.
* I’ll be look­ing for more up to date material * 

The Books of August

Heavy on the audio books this month. A lot of lis­ten­ing while knit­ting or oth­er domes­tic activ­i­ties happening.

Books Read:

Lucy and Edgar — Victor Lodato (2017)

I fin­ished this out of a dogged sense of loy­al­ty to the old woman who dies at the begin­ning of the book. The char­ac­ters are stereo­types with­out any sort of depth to make them any­one you care about. In fact oth­er than Edgar, the child at the cen­ter of the book, I could have done with­out any of the oth­ers and their pre­dictable behaviors.
But… like I said dogged loy­al­ty — which is in part what this book is about. There comes a point at about 75% of the way through the book where there looks to be only two pos­si­ble out­comes, and nei­ther one of them is sat­is­fy­ing. I guess I also held on to see if the writer could pull off some­thing mov­ing that was­n’t easy or manip­u­la­tive. And I think he did — most­ly. It’s one of the obvi­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties from the mid­dle of the book but it’s done in a way that keeps you from want­i­ng to the throw the author off of the train. (And I can’t be any more spe­cif­ic about it than that or I’d spoil the book for you.)
Still, I don’t under­stand the huge amount of praise that has been lav­ished on the book by crit­ics and review­ers. It’s just not that inter­est­ing or original.

* one more lousy moth­er and dam­aged son *

Geek Love — Katherine Dunn (2002)

Weird, but I think that was the point. The Binews­ki tribe is trag­ic in all kinds of ways and a per­fect object les­son about the dan­gers of fam­i­ly. While the char­ac­ters here are freaks on the out­side they point out to us the fact that we are, most of us any­way, freaks on the inside and our world is warped around that freak­ish­ness. I don’t like to think of peo­ple being unself­con­scious­ly mali­cious; though I see the evi­dence of just that sort of behav­ior every day. In this book the hav­oc wreaked by one self­ish ego-maniac (Arturo) is stun­ning­ly wide and entire­ly believ­able. In fact one of the things that I liked most about this book was how believ­able the most out­ra­geous char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions were.
The writ­ing is love­ly enough to keep you involved in the book when the plot and char­ac­ters get beyond your com­fort zone.

* human­i­ty with all its gross, ick­i­ness on the outside *

The Sleep Walker Guide to Dancing — Mira Jacob (2014)

I did­n’t get very far in this, I think because it seemed too famil­iar and I was look­ing for novelty.
* I might pick it up again later. *

Books Listened to:

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender — Leslye Walton (2014)

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

I read this one a cou­ple of years ago. It’s a love­ly sto­ry with amus­ing and intrigu­ing char­ac­ters. The sto­ry begins with Ava’s grand­moth­er’s trag­ic, ghost-filled fam­i­ly his­to­ry and con­tin­ues on to describe a line of women with what might be char­i­ta­bly con­sid­ered to have ter­ri­ble luck in love, lead­ing up the birth of the twins Ava and Hen­ry. Ava is born with wings and Hen­ry with what we might assume is autism but by the end of the book seems more like a prophet­ic gift of mute­ness. As Ava grows her wings come to define and cir­cum­scribe her place in the world. The trag­ic end­ing you expect is avert­ed, but only nar­row­ly, and only after a good deal of dam­age is done. But hope is a thing with wings. And so is Ava.
The writ­ing is clear and glis­tens with the sub­tle rain washed hues of the Seat­tle climate.
The nar­ra­tion is quite good. Worth a lis­ten if you haven’t read the book already.

* loved it again *

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. — Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland (2017)

Narration: Cast of dozens :)

The new Stephen­son. The title char­ac­ter — one Melisande Stokes an under­paid under appre­ci­at­ed lec­tur­er in lin­guis­tics — finds her­self involved with a mys­te­ri­ous gov­ern­ment agency and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mag­ic in the mun­dane world. There fol­lows the usu­al byzan­tine plot and riotous com­pli­ca­tion of details that I love in a Stephen­son book.
One of the few writ­ers that I auto­mat­i­cal­ly lis­ten to rather than read. I think that his in-depth asides work best if you are forced to give them equal weight with the nar­ra­tive and that is most eas­i­ly done when the woods are read to you.
DODO is good clean — slight­ly fan­tas­tic fun. A change from Stephen­son’s most recent work Sev­en­Eves which was any­thing but light-hearted. The col­lab­o­ra­tion is seam­less, with no jumps from one writer to the other.
Nar­ra­tion is good, though the accents are a bit over done.
(Odd­ly there is a paint­ing called Melisande by a woman named Mar­i­ane Stokes — this can­not be a coin­ci­dence, not in a Stephen­son book.)

* there are cat’s Schro­ding­er and otherwise *

Middlesex — Jeffery Eugenides (2002)

Narration: Kristoffer Tabori

Briefly reviewed in Sep­tem­ber 2015.  I found the book just as enjoy­able the sec­ond time around. Per­haps more so because I have become more aware of the con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing sex, gen­der, and iden­ti­ty and appre­ci­at­ed the light touch that the author uses in insist­ing that we look more close­ly at our assumptions.
Nar­ra­tion is good, and the voice used is just ambigu­ous enough to make the flu­id gen­der of Cal(liope) audible.

* the sins of the old coun­try come home to roost in mid­dle class Detroit *

The Books of July

Prose

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir — Sherman Alexie (2017)

A com­pli­cat­ed book on a com­pli­cat­ed sub­ject. Many slight chap­ters made up of short essays, sto­ries, and poems.
This is a reflec­tion on life with a com­plex woman and the haz­ards of moth­er­ing and being moth­ered. Alex­ie’s moth­er Lil­lian … she what? Had demons? Don’t we all. Her demons inter­fered with her abil­i­ty to moth­er. And Alex­i’s demons, so very close to those of his moth­er made it hard for him to be moth­ered. It’s a two-way prob­lem between moth­ers and chil­dren: shar­ing the alco­hol a bipo­lar demons. And then there’s crush­ing pover­ty — the finan­cial and spir­i­tu­al and cul­tur­al of reser­va­tion life. In some ways it’s a tough book to fig­ure out. There is the par­tic­u­lar to the Alex­ie’s expe­ri­ence (and his moth­er’s.) More broad­ly, it is also about the haz­ards to fam­i­lies of liv­ing as a reser­va­tion Indi­an. And even more gen­er­al­ly to the expe­ri­ence of being Indi­an. But at both its heart and its out­er lim­its it is about the prob­lem of being a dys­func­tion­al child of a dys­func­tion­al par­ent. We live and learn, some times late in life, and then we mourn the things that were and the things will nev­er have been.
* grief can be a clear lens *

Vinegar Girl — Ann Tyler (2016)

I used to like Tyler’s work but some­how the voice in this is too? Com­mon and pedes­tri­an. This retelling of Tam­ing of the Shrew did­n’t win me over because I did­n’t like Kate. Real­ly did­n’t like Tyler’s Kate. She is a bum­bling, aim­less, preschool assis­tant with­out a per­son­al­i­ty. She’s so bland that I can­not begin to care about her. On top of that the voice and the sto­ry (which I nor­mal­ly love) did­n’t pull me in at all.
* some­times the orig­i­nal is best left alone *

 

 

The Art of Racing in the Rain — Garth Stein (2008)

Ayr­ton Sen­na name check aside I had a bad feel­ing about this book when I read the Kin­dle pre­view. But the dog as nar­ra­tor thing might be inter­est­ing and there is rac­ing… so I start­ed it. At 15% of the way through there’s already a nice lady with brain tumor thing going on. Lead­ing inevitably to a trag­i­cal­ly moth­er­less lit­tle girl and all of that. Not to men­tion it turns out that the dog is an aging beast with a mar­tyr com­plex. So I stopped to check the reviews, so much praise, until I hit on a cou­ple of poor reviews with spoil­ers. (Yeah I some­times read the spoil­ers.) Rape alle­ga­tions? Child tak­en by CPS? ON top of the already quite melo­dra­mat­ic sit­u­a­tion. Real­ly? This is look­ing more than iffy. I just can’t.
* I don’t read to be manip­u­lat­ed by amateurs *

 

Adventures of John Blake — Philip Pullman and Fred Fordham (2017)

Graph­ic nov­el about a boy trapped on a haunt­ed ship that is shut­tled back and forth through time seek­ing the knowl­edge and a cer­tain item that will allow them to con­trol their path. The crew is made up of sailors col­lect­ed along the way. From an ancient roman to the John Blake, a mid-20th cen­tu­ry son of a sci­en­tist who may have invent­ed the device that allows time trav­el and that set the haunt­ed Mary Alice on its course. It’s an enter­tain­ing, quick read. Don’t expect Pull­man’s mar­velous prose to show up. It’s a graph­ic nov­el and the con­ven­tions are dif­fer­ent. The illus­tra­tions are nice but not ter­ri­bly imag­i­na­tive. Which, I think, is a good thing. I’m tired of Extra­or­di­nary Illus­tra­tions that make fol­low­ing the sto­ry difficult.
The plot goes along. There’s a mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy vil­lain and the end result is a nice vic­to­ry for John and his mod­ern com­pan­ion Serena.
I can see this as the script for an action-adventure with teenagers. I might actu­al­ly go to see it.
I’m look­ing for­ward to Pull­man return­ing to prose with his next book sup­pos­ed­ly set back in the world of Oxford and Lyra.
* cross­ing gen­res to good effect *

Outlander — Diana Gabaldon (2005)

His­tor­i­cal Romance with Time Trav­el. Yes I cap­i­tal­ized all of those words. Set in 18th Cen­tu­ry Scot­land and oth­er parts of Europe as the saga goes on. It does help a lit­tle to know what’s going on but you can get along even if your grasp of Eng­lish his­to­ry is weak. (You can read all about the pol­i­tics of the time in wikipedia is you want to.)
So (Girl) Claire falls through a hole in time (in a henge) and ends up stum­bling into an Eng­lish Patrol where bad things are threat­ened. She is then res­cued by a Scot­tish raid­ing par­ty. Bad things, but not quite so bad, are threat­ened. She doc­tors one of the mem­bers of the par­ty and we meet (Boy) Jamie Fraz­er going under the name McKen­zie. An out­lawed man. The sto­ry goes on in sweet­ly pre­dictable ways — Claire is threat­ened. Jamie res­cues her. They are forced to mar­ry, but lat­er fall in love. Jamie goes off to try to find some­one to help him get out from under his death sen­tence. Claire is threat­ened Jamie res­cues her (a few more times) until in the last huge set piece of the book Claire must res­cue Jamie from an Eng­lish prison. Then all decamp for France. This should be a spoil­er but you can tell from the begin­ning that the two pro­tag­o­nists are going to sur­vive and that the pat­tern of dan­ger, res­cue, dan­ger, res­cue, sex, dan­ger, sex, res­cue, sex is going to go on for a long time.
The sex scenes are fre­quent, pret­ty well writ­ten, and occa­sion­al­ly very dis­turb­ing. If you have a prob­lem with rape cul­ture (and 18th cen­tu­ry Scotland/England is a pret­ty damned rapey place) — then you might want to skip this.
There are anoth­er dozen or so books in the world. Eight direct­ly in the series and a hand­ful that revolve around oth­er points.
So… will I run out and read them all now? No, the books aren’t that good and are a bit pre­dictable. I’d get bored if I read anoth­er one right away. But lat­er? The next time I need some­thing to shore up a long week­end at the beach or a dead­ly dull air­line flight? Yeah, I prob­a­bly will reach out for the next book in the series.
* at least at the end it’s the hero­ine doing the rescuing *

The Nakano Thrift Shop: A Novel

- Hiro­mi Kawaka­mi, A.M. Pow­ell, trans (2017)
Weird lit­tle nov­el about a thrift shop in Japan and the own­er, his sis­ter, and the two peo­ple who work there. A small, inmate book. I kept want­i­ng some­thing amaz­ing to hap­pen but it did­n’t. In a way it was an all day toy train wreck. I can’t not love it though. The way in which the pro­tag­o­nist (Hit­o­mi) stum­bles through her aim­less twen­ties. Not quite reach­ing the unreach­able boy she works with. And the par­al­lels between her unsuc­cess­ful run to love and her boss’s dal­liance with the high-powered antique deal­er and his sis­ter’s dal­liance with the soon to be deceased. Real­ly they are all in love with some­one they ought not to be and it just does­n’t quite work out for anyone.
* var­i­ous states of mis-shapen love *

The Moth: 50 True Stories — Catherine Burns, ed. (2013)

50 short mono­logues from var­i­ous Moth events and broad­casts. Just what Moth is well explained the three intro­duc­tions. (Yes, three.) True sto­ries of one sort and oth­er. I’d esti­mate that most of them ran 5 — 10 min­utes live/on air. Some real­ly effec­tive sto­ry telling. If you’re a fan of essays you’ll rec­og­nize a cou­ple of the sto­ry­tellers but most are aver­age peo­ple recount­ing some not so aver­age event in their lives.
* good short mono­logues — refresh­ing sto­ry telling *

Poetry:

No Planets Strike — Josh Bell (2004)

 

 

 

 

and

Alamo Theory — Josh Bell (2016)

A cou­ple of mind expand­ing col­lec­tions. The first, No Plan­ets Strike<?em>, is raw and unnerv­ing, what with Ramona, and the gen­tle hand­ed holy father, and zom­bies. The sec­ond, Alamo The­o­ry, is more accom­plished and pol­ished but… it lacks the mar­velous ner­vous­ness that the first one had. Both con­tain work that is some­times ran­dom in a care­ful­ly plot­ted way designed to throw the read­er off the scent. Both of these col­lec­tions are very son­ic; It’s good to read them out loud but I would say essen­tial for Alamo The­o­ry. Also note that Alamo The­o­ry was pub­lished by Cop­per Canyon and is a square book — a for­mat that allows Bel­l’s ling line lengths enough room to breathe on the page and a decent type size. No Plan­ets Strike suf­fers from a lot of crowd­ing and very small font. 

* I like bad boy poets, though they are a bit less thrilling as they grow up *

Books of June

This month in nonfiction:

Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior — Catherine Johnson and Temple Grandin (2006)

Ms. Grandin has a unique per­spec­tive on ani­mal behav­ior that is informed by her own autism. She is very opin­ion­at­ed but you have to trust the opin­ion of a woman who has spent so many years care­ful­ly watch­ing ani­mals. It is inter­est­ing to see some of the folk­lore  of ani­mal train­ers and man­agers (such as the loca­tion of hair whorls on the faces of hors­es and cat­tle cor­re­lat­ing with flight­i­ness) backed up by expe­ri­ence and exper­i­ment. The ref­er­ences are some­what dat­ed but the book is full of insights that are now being proven in sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments. I will be very inter­est­ed to see how she expand on these ideas in her lat­er book “Ani­mals Make Us Human.”
* shift your per­spec­tive for a while *

 

 

Train the Dog in Front of You — Denise Fenzi (2016)

The best piece of dog train­ing advice I’ve got­ten this year. Maybe ever. Train the dog you have. In order to do that you have to pay atten­tion to your dog’s par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­i­ty and learn­ing styles. Fen­zi offers a hand­ful of modes/aspects/facets that you can use to begin to orga­nize your thoughts as you observe your dog. Well worth the rather steep price.
* there is no point in wait­ing for the per­fect dog *

This month in essays:

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life — Samantha Irby (2017)

Ah, this one caused me a good deal of grief as I tried to for­mu­late an opin­ion. Angry POC women are a com­mon essay buck­et at the book store these days. It’s about time that they got a chance for their voic­es to be heard and yet. And yet. POC, queer, and dis­abled is no guar­an­tee of interesting.

A lot of peo­ple loved this book. I just did­n’t find it that fun­ny; fun­ny requires orig­i­nal and a glimpse of human­i­ty that is tru­ly dar­ing. There is a guard­ed­ness about her rev­e­la­tions — a sense that she is dar­ing me to not find the sit­u­a­tions fun­ny that –under­cuts these essays. Her overeat­ing, pover­ty dri­ven mon­ey fetishiz­ing, trash tele­vi­sion lov­ing life does­n’t speaks to me of larg­er human con­cerns in a new way.
* TMI isn’t the same as imi­tate — it just isn’t *

This month in fiction:

The Shipping News — Annie Proulx (1993)

Yeah, late to the par­ty. I’d nev­er read it. The Ship­ping News is much more dark­ly com­ic than I was led to believe. I enjoyed it, even the weird writ­ing style. The jux­ta­po­si­tion of all those frag­ments with the long lists of things. I was also impressed by how much she knew or learned about New­found­land, fish­ing, and boats — espe­cial­ly build­ing boats. The excerpts from the knot book at the begin­ning of the chap­ters were inter­est­ing on their own and added nice­ly the sto­ry. All in all I found this rather to my taste even though I hat­ed Broke­back Moun­tain. So, do I dare to read anoth­er of her books?
* Weird, eerie, and dark­ly comic *

 

 

Camino Island — John Grisham (2017)

Great engag­ing plot. A caper involv­ing the theft of F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s man­u­scripts and a block­er writer recruit­ed very much against her will to entrap the man who may have bought the man­u­scripts from the thieves. Grisham’s prose is dry and thin. Lakes are pret­ty. Girls are tall. Build­ings are old. Some peo­ple claim that it’s taut; I think it’s just unimag­i­na­tive. The char­ac­ters aren’t all that well-rounded either. The woman from the insur­ance group who recruits the pro­tag­o­nist is such a stick fig­ure that I can have torn her out of a fash­ion mag­a­zine. Wide­ly reviled by the Grisham faith­ful. But as a non-Grisham read­ing fan of both the capers and that genre of mys­tery known as the cozy it worked well enough for me.
* a beach book for the fan of both capers and cozies *

 

Gwendy’s Button Box — Steven King and Richard Chizmar (2017)

This novel­la about of a girl giv­en a gift by a mys­te­ri­ous man in a bowler hat cir­cles the rim of out­right hor­ror but nev­er quite dips into the whirlpool. The man in the bowler hat gives Gwendy a box that will deliv­er two gifts (choco­lates and sil­ver dol­lars) when­ev­er she asks. But there oth­er but­tons on the top whose use is left unex­plained. As time goes on Gwendy begins to devel­op a the­o­ry about their pur­pose. Only once does she use one of the but­tons on the box and at the same time an ene­my is van­quished in a prop­er­ly hor­ri­fy­ing man­ner. Did Gwendy cause this or was it coin­ci­dence? She nev­er quite sure but becomes con­vinced that the box is dan­ger­ous and its actions fraught with unin­tend­ed con­se­quences. How should Gwendy deal with the box and it’s pow­ers? Can she stay on the right side of good and evil?
* what if some­one gave you Pan­do­ra’s box with­out an instruc­tion manual? *

 

The Book of Polly — Kathy Hepinstall (2017)

Anoth­er child nar­ra­tor — as the book begins the 10 year-old Wil­low is pre­oc­cu­pied with the idea that her moth­er Pol­ly will die. As well as telling out­ra­geous lies about her moth­er, she is obsessed with a secret that her moth­er is keep­ing. The rela­tion­ship between moth­ers and daugh­ters is explored in the con­text of an old­er moth­er, well estab­lished in her sar­cas­tic know every­thing per­son­al­i­ty, and her equal­ly uncon­ven­tion­al late-in-life child. As Wil­low turns 16, Pol­ly is indeed dying. With the help of her miss­ing broth­er’s odd ball friend , Wil­low sets out to get a mir­a­cle for her moth­er and in the process to dis­cov­er her secrets. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive is Hep­in­stal­l’s cre­ation of a unique voice for the teenage Willow.
* south­ern goth­ic with a heap­ing side of humor *

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