Category: reviews (Page 8 of 10)

A lot of Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary was tak­en up by read­ing tech­ni­cal books for a writ­ing project. So the recre­ation­al (?) read­ing took a back seat. Here’s the com­bined list.

Read:

M Train — Pat­ti Smith

Feels very impor­tant. I’m not sure why a book that fea­tures a lacon­ic cow­poke dream fig­ure and a lot of vis­it­ing ceme­ter­ies and grave sites should feel so impor­tant. But it does. I gave it to a friend who is in the mid­dle of read­ing it and points out that Pat­ti Smith is poet first. Poet­ry relies on a lot of tech­niques that more dense than those used in prose (few­er words, more obvi­ous struc­ture.) The need to dig deeply into each state­ment might be part of the appeal for me.

* I’ll be pon­der­ing this for a while. * 

A God in Ruins — Kate Atkinson

Fol­low on to her Life After Life. Sort of. It takes up the sto­ry of Ursu­la Tod­d’s younger broth­er Ted­dy who flew a Hal­i­fax for the RAF, crash land­ed in the sea, then again in Ger­many, and nev­er expect­ed to find him­self liv­ing through war, let alone into the late 20th cen­tu­ry and beyond. Life is a con­fus­ing place some­times and Ted­dy’s life has it’s odd — seem­ing­ly out-of-place moments. You’ll love his grand­daugh­ter and come to despise his daugh­ter (though I’m not cer­tain that the author means you to.) The end­ing two sen­tences are opaque to the point that I don’t under­stand them and I fol­lowed the book close­ly. (Yes, I could go look up some reviews and analy­ses and fig­ure it out, but do I want to? Not real­ly. Too much expli­ca­tion can be as bad as too little.)

* Sun and Moon are not just bad names for children. * 

My Life on the Road - Glo­ria Steinem

* Sad­ly dull. * 

 

Casablan­ca Screenplay

One of the greats. I read it most­ly to learn for­mat­ting for screen plays and to look at the struc­ture of the thing. I can judge the tim­ing of plot points bet­ter by pages that I can by minutes.

* Just watch it. * 

 

Song Dogs — Colum McCann

I read this years ago. The book I read this month is not the book I remem­ber. I could be wrong about which McCann I read. Or I could be a dif­fer­ent (old­er) read­er. This time the points of con­nec­tion and dis­con­nec­tion between the son and his father seemed entire­ly nat­ur­al. I’ve been told that you have to be care­ful read­ing McCann lest his voice infect your own work. I’ll nev­er sound like a middle-aged Irish guy. I don’t think. Even if I do not final­ly drop all of the extra­ne­ous hem­ming and haw­ing and qual­i­fy­ing that goes into my aver­age sen­tence. (See the word “final­ly” in the pre­vi­ous sentence.)

* a clas­sic of father/son awkwardness * 

Listened to:

Eliz­a­beth Gilbert’s Big Mag­ic again. Because I need­ed the boost. It is like­ly going to be a book that I revis­it reg­u­lar­ly. Odd that. I gen­er­al­ly hate self-actualization books.

 

 

Mycroft Holmes — Karem Abdul Jabar with Anna Waterhouse

It lacks the snap and smack and acer­bic wit that we asso­ciate with Sher­lock Holmes. And does­n’t play up to Mycroft being the smarter less socia­ble brother.

* Meh. * 

 

Radi­ance — Cath­erynne M. Valente

A world in which we have col­o­nized all of the plan­ets but movies are still shot on film and often with­out sound. There’s a mur­der(?) mys­tery at the heart of it. I got lost a whole bunch of times. But I liked what I could track well enough that I’m going to read the book. (Which I’ve just fin­ished doing as I write this and am grate­ful that it was my sec­ond attempt at the story.)

* I’d tell you about the cal­lowhales but that would spoil it for you. * 

The Bone Clocks — David Mitchell

Hav­ing been con­fused through much of the sto­ry when I read it — lis­ten­ing to it made it much clear­er. Espe­cial­ly the use of sep­a­rate nar­ra­tors for each of the six sec­tions. Which made the point of view changes more obvi­ous. A good sto­ry, but not deep or intel­lec­tu­al. Immor­tals fight­ing the vam­pires (in essence) isn’t any­thing new. Throw in a cli­mate change dri­ven world col­lapse at the end and … well that part seemed gra­tu­itous. Mitchell writes well but some­thing keeps me from lov­ing his work. Prob­a­bly the lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty in plot even though it is hid­den under an orig­i­nal or at least sophis­ti­cat­ed structure.

* is it pos­si­ble to fall in like with an author? * 

Listened to:

Big Mag­ic — Eliz­a­beth Gilbert

Good on cre­ativ­i­ty and she reads her own work nice­ly. Good enough that I start­ed lis­ten­ing to it again just a day or two ago.

* self-help worth your time *

Star­Dust — Neil Gaiman

YA nov­el about a mag­i­cal boy and a shoot­ing star girl. It’s Nice to see a boy as a magical-hero.

* the master *

Pump Six and Oth­er Sto­ries — Pao­lo Bacigalupi

The short sto­ries that came before The Windup Girl and The Water Knife. Some inter­est­ing insights into the world build­ing that went into both novels.

* good short fiction * 

Furi­ous­ly Hap­py — Jen­ny Lawson

Either you love The Blo­gess or you don’t. I think she’s hys­ter­i­cal. I can total­ly under­stand why some peo­ple don’t.

* only if you can laugh along with the men­tal­ly ill * 

Palimpsest — Cath­erynne Valente

The first CV that I ever read. Lush, chewy, sat­is­fy­ing prose. It’s not the eas­i­est sto­ry to fol­low but worth the trou­ble. And the way that she plays out geog­ra­phy as a sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­ease is stunning.

* mag­i­cal real­is­m’s latter-day cousin *

Death­less — Cath­erynne Valente

Sev­er­al Russ­ian fairy­tales and leg­ends mashed togeth­er into the sto­ry of one girl/woman and her rela­tion­ship to the Tsar of Life. Tak­ing in the var­i­ous rev­o­lu­tions and wars of Rus­sia in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry. It ends on an odd­ly hope­ful note for all of the dis­as­ter that befalls the main char­ac­ters. And it is a real­ly disaster-full book. Much clean­er more stream­lined writ­ing than a lot of CV’s more recent work. (Not count­ing her chil­dren’s books.)

* Utter­ly Russian *

Read:

The Ante­lope Wife — Lousie Erdritch

More about the Native Amer­i­cans of the Dako­tas. This one has a more chal­leng­ing nar­ra­tive struc­ture than Love Med­i­cine. Worth­while read from an author that I will con­tin­ue to seek out.

* worth the effort to piece togeth­er the nar­ra­tive threads *

The Sig­na­ture of All Things — Eliz­a­beth Gilbert

Botany is good. Multi-generational epics are good. Strong, if flawed, women are good. Adding them all togeth­er is good. The his­to­ry of a fam­i­ly her­itage of plant hunters and loves gone ter­ri­bly wrong. Ser­vice­able writing.

* if you have the time it’s worth your while *

You Are Badass — Jen Sincero

Yuck, just yuck. Read it based on a trust­ed friends rec­om­men­da­tion — “It’s not like any self-improvement book you’ve ever read.” It’s exact­ly like every self-improvement book I’ve ever read except with more swear­ing. The Laws of Attrac­tion are bull­shit — even when you dress them up with words like ‘bull­shit.’

* why am I even link­ing to this? *

What Poets are Like: Up and Down with the Writ­ing Life — Gary Soto

Some poet­ry, some prose, a lot of reflec­tions on a long career.

* light read­ing for writers *

Speak Easy — Cath­erynne Valente.

Sad­ly, I gave up on this one. The sto­ry of a 1920’s apart­ment build­ing and it’s denizens. It’s sup­posed to be a mash up of the twelve danc­ing Princess­es and the courtship of Zel­da and F. Scott Fitzger­ald. The exag­ger­at­ed jazz-age lan­guage was too hard to make it through to the sto­ry. And the sto­ry did­n’t real­ly appear. It’s all par­ty and apart­ment. I might go back and fin­ish it lat­er. But for the moment I need clean­er prose in my head. I think I am falling out of love with an author crush. But Palimpsest will always be with me.

* thank heav­en I did­n’t buy the lim­it­ed edi­tion hardback *

Late, because well, it’s late.

Books Read:

Library of Souls: The Third Miss Pere­grine Book — Ran­som Riggs

Not as good as the ear­li­er books in the tril­o­gy. You can tell in places that he’s added mate­r­i­al (gen­er­al­ly sen­tence or two of descrip­tion of the appear­ance of a char­ac­ter — a walk-on part as it were) that is based on need­ing to add a pho­to­graph at that point. The pho­tographs con­ceit has worn itself out. Oth­er­wise it’s good enough and enough like the oth­er books to make it a quick read. There are bet­ter books. A lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing as a fin­ish for the trilogy.
* only if you need to find out how the tril­o­gy ends *

Man’s Search for Mean­ing — Frankl

Not all that. Beloved by many. Reducible to “for life to be worth hang­ing onto in the face of evil and sep­a­ra­tion it has to have mean­ing”. How you find that mean­ing is left as an exer­cise for the read­er. We already knew this. I was dis­ap­point­ed I expect­ed some­thing con­sid­er­ably more pro­found about the nature of mean­ing in life.
* if every­one else is read­ing it, oth­er­wise skip it *

Con­sid­er the Lob­ster and Oth­er Essays — David Fos­ter Wallace
The god of foot­notes (I love a good foot­note) pon­ders the ways of the world and the moral impli­ca­tions of boil­ing lob­sters. Also some bits of lit­er­ary review The one on the mak­ing of Gar­ner’s Mod­ern Amer­i­can Usage is a live­ly waf­fle on the ques­tion of descrip­tive vs pre­scrip­tive gram­mar and dic­tio­nar­ies. His medi­a­tion on Frank’s biog­ra­phy of Dostevsky and his work in rela­tion to the Russ­ian philoso­phies of the day is of inter­est only to the weirdos in the crowd who read too many Russ­ian Roman­tics in high school and stud­ied phi­los­o­phy as under­grads — oh wait that’s me.
* if you love a good foot­note or won­der about lobsters… *

The Vir­gin Sui­cides — Jef­fery Eugenides

Weird­ly nar­rat­ed by a voice that uses “we” and pro­vides the point of view of a group of teenage (bare­ly) boys. The sub­ject of their obses­sion a group of five sis­ters, all of whom com­mit sui­cide over the course of one year. That sounds awful. But it’s not. You’ll come to love the girls and to sym­pa­thize with the boys — who are drawn into a mys­tery that goes beyond the rea­sons for the sui­cides and plumbs the depths of what it means to be an adolescent.
* worth your time. can’t speak to the movie. *

Ana­grams — Lor­rie Moore

Bored by a third of the way through and dropped it. I pre­fer her short stories.
* Middle-aged aca­d­e­m­ic angst *

 

 

Cit­i­zen: An Amer­i­can Lyric — Clau­dia Rankin

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m not too fond of oth­er peo­ple (a whole bunch of big name review­ers) telling me that I’m sup­posed to be impressed and react in a cer­tain way to some­one’s work. It leaves me cold. And I think that cold­ness affect­ed my per­cep­tion of this book. From the hood­ie on the cov­er to the vignettes of every­day racism as expe­ri­enced by the poet, the point of the col­lec­tion of poems is obvi­ous. The per­son­al­iza­tion of racism in the US makes an impres­sion. If you’re a ten­nis fan or know a ten­nis fan Rank­in’s per­spec­tive on Ser­e­na Williams’ expe­ri­ences is worth read­ing. There are oth­er pieces that spoke to me. But some parts — the video scripts in par­tic­u­lar — that are so mud­dled that I could­n’t keep what was going on straight.
* prob­a­bly required reading *

Non-Required Read­ing — 2014 — Daniel Han­dler ed.

How can a bunch high school stu­dents chose such an excel­lent col­lec­tion of writ­ing? Sto­ries, poems, non-fiction pieces and some that flit between all of these. There are a cou­ple of clunk­ers that show the youth of the edi­to­r­i­al board. But on the whole the qual­i­ty and depth of the cho­sen mate­r­i­al will restore your faith in the think­ing pow­er of today’s high school students.
* this series is always worth your time *

Invis­i­ble Cities — Ita­lo Calvino

Is this Venice? Or are these tru­ly cities of the imag­i­na­tion? — vari­a­tions on some eter­nal Pla­ton­ic City. The explor­er Mar­co Polo describes for the Emper­or Kubla Khan the cities that he has vis­it­ed in his trav­els. Each city is a small chap­ter per­haps even a prose poem. I love this book. I reread it every cou­ple of years to remind me how many vari­a­tions there on any one pat­tern. Also I love Calvi­no’s writing.
* How can I make you need to read this? *

Works and Days and Theogony — Hes­iod, trans Stane­ly Lombardo

Read excerpts from it in Fresh­man Human­i­ties. Revis­it­ing it as research for a screen play. There is more humor in it than I remem­ber. The trans­la­tion is good if a bit more casu­al in tone than I think of when I think of trans­lat­ed Greeks.
* real­ly, the Greeks could be funny *

 

Listened to:

Angel Mak­er — Nick Harkaway.
Romp­ing fun from the sec­ond world war to mod­ern Eng­land. With steam­punk bees, a fab­u­lous hero­ine, and a revolt­ing dog.

* Hark­away’s best *

Dur­ing July I did­n’t get as much reading/listening done as I often do. Sum­mer takes up a lot of read­ing time.

Listened to:

The Water Knife — Pao­lo Baci­galupi (Nar­ra­tion by Almarie Guer­ra — who’s just fine to lis­ten to.)

A vio­lent and thrilling view of a near future filled with the con­flicts of the New West- when water is run­ning out and the drought just won’t lift. Sound famil­iar? Three char­ac­ter’s sto­ry arcs meet, cross, and recross. Angel the water knife: an enforcer employed by Las Vegas’ water mogul. Charged with obtain­ing (fre­quent­ly by duress) and pro­tect­ing the water rights that feed the Las Vegas fun machine and the arcolo­gies — near­ly self-sustaining liv­ing envi­ron­ments filled with water fea­tures and the rich who can afford to live there. Marie: a refuge from the dust bowl that is now Texas. One of the new Okies doing what ever she can to get by. Lucy Mon­roe: a jour­nal­ist who has come to iden­ti­fy, per­haps too close­ly, with the res­i­dents of the now water starved Phoenix. It’s fic­tion but not so far-fetched when you con­sid­er the amount of cor­rup­tion and vio­lence that has accom­pa­nied the fight for water rights in the West in the past 150 years. It’s also got some pret­ty graph­ic vio­lence and some almost tol­er­a­ble sex scenes.

* Adults only. * 

The Things they Car­ried — Tim O’Brien (narr. — Bryan Cranston aka Wal­ter White or whatever- I’ve nev­er seen the show, but the voice is pre­fect for OBrien’s stories.)

The pre­tense that these short sto­ries are true sto­ries con­tin­ues all the way through the book, right down to its ded­i­ca­tion to one of the char­ac­ters — Rat Kiley. These are sto­ries of Viet­nam from the reac­tion of a kid get­ting his draft notice, through expe­ri­ences “in coun­try,” to the sto­ries of those same sol­diers at home again and liv­ing in a nation that does­n’t know what to do with them.
It’s an inter­est­ing med­i­ta­tion on the nature of fic­tion when a sto­ry teller uses it to tell more truth than can pos­si­bly be told in straight non-fiction. There are strong par­al­lels to Phil Klay’s Rede­ploy­ment which uses a sim­i­lar tech­nique to exam­ine the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. O’Brien is IMO a bet­ter writer. As well, the nation­al cir­cum­stances in which the sol­diers were deployed and returned from deploy­ment are dif­fer­ent. And yet the same.

* An eas­i­er lis­ten than I thought it would be. * 

The Book Thief — Mar­cus Suzak (aban­doned)

A sto­ry of a girl in WWII Ger­many and books. Told from the point of view of Death — which I should have liked and maybe would have liked if I had read the book. But lis­ten­ing to Allan Cor­duner try to do the voic­es of chil­dren just did­n’t work for me.

* good read­ing book, bad audio book * 

Neal Stephen­son’s Sev­en­Eves (Great nar­ra­tors. For the first two-thirds of the book Mary Robi­nette Know­el — a writer I admire whose work I can­not stand to read. It hap­pens. For the last third Will Damron.)

Enjoyed the hell out of it. The moon breaks up and life on earth will end in two years. A race to get some frag­ment of the human race into space where they can sit out the destruc­tion of earth (some 5000 years worth of it) and keep the species going. It has space ships and robots and nice geeky peo­ple and a cou­ple of not so nice peo­ple. And a not too sur­pris­ing end­ing — but I loved get­ting there.
There have been com­plaints in var­i­ous cir­cles that the Stephen­son’s geek­ery is too much. That all those descrip­tions and bits of back­ground and occa­sion­al info-dumps make the sto­ry too slow. I don’t find that to be the case. Espe­cial­ly in the audio-book ver­sion. There’s a nice leisure­ly pace to be sure, but I did­n’t find my inter­est flag­ging. On the con­trary I’m spent entire­ly too much time plugged into my headphones.

* saga length, epic scale * 

Read:

(I’m read­ing less than I’m lis­ten­ing late­ly. One of the haz­ards of sum­mer — too much else to do while it’s day­light and too lit­tle dark left at the end of the day to get much read­ing done.)

The Book of Spec­u­la­tion — Eri­ka Swyler

If you like mer­maids, cir­cus­es, curs­es, mys­te­ri­ous books, librar­i­ans, and curi­ous fam­i­ly sagas then you should read The Book of Spec­u­la­tion. I can’t explain the title there isn’t real­ly any­thing spec­u­la­tive about the book. But the sto­ry and char­ac­ters are appeal­ing in a sum­mer read kind of way. And it’s sum­mer so that’s just about right. Not too long a book. Maybe a week’s worth of bed­time reading.

* There are libraries and books! * 

The Unnec­es­sary Woman — Rabih Alameddine

It’s easy to become unnec­es­sary in a world in which fam­i­ly is every­thing and old women only exist as grand­moth­ers. Aaliya lives in Beruit. She is 72 years old, unmar­ried (divorced actu­al­ly) has no chil­dren and lit­tle inter­est in her remain­ing fam­i­ly — a step moth­er and a hand­ful of boor­ish half broth­ers. But she loves books, and lit­er­a­ture, and phi­los­o­phy. Her pas­time is trans­lat­ing books that she loves into Ara­bic using a round-about method. All of the books she trans­lates are orig­i­nal­ly in lan­guages that she does­n’t speak. (She’s fond of the Rus­sians.) To trans­late them into Ara­bic she uses sev­er­al ver­sions of the books in the two oth­er lan­guages that she does speak, Eng­lish and French. What sort of trans­la­tion this cre­ates is a bar­rel of tex­tu­al mon­keys that is nev­er direct­ly address­es but the ques­tion of how much of the real you can access through rep­re­sen­ta­tions lives some­where at the core of the book. Nom­i­nal­ly it is about the every­day and extra­or­di­nary crises that attend being female, old, and unusu­al in a strong­ly patri­ar­chal society.

The voice of Aaliya is warm, wit­ty, and occa­sion­al­ly baf­fled by the incon­sis­ten­cies of the world. The dif­fer­ence between world as it should log­i­cal­ly be and as it illog­i­cal­ly is.

* You’ll enjoy Aaliya’s company. *