The Books of September

Listened to:

The Night Circus: Erin Morgenstern -
This is a repeat. I loved the book and enjoyed lis­ten­ing to it a cou­ple of years ago. I revis­it­ed it on the morn­ing walks ear­ly in September. I still love it. Ms. Morgenstern has been some­what pub­licly work­ing on her next books for sev­er­al years. I hope to hell she’s not stuck with the sopho­more jinx. though she admits that Night Circus took her a long time and many sub­stan­tial revi­sions to get right.

The Name of the Rose: Umberto Eco -
I love Eco. This was the first of his nov­els that I read years ago and I remem­bered lik­ing it. Now, not so much. He’s as dis­cur­sive as Stephenson but the detours and expli­ca­tions of the here­sies of the 13th (?) cen­tu­ry sim­ply did not hold my atten­tion in the same way that Stephenson’s digres­sions on the nature of mon­ey and the bank­ing econ­o­my or the arcana of cryp­tog­ra­phy did. Clearly I skipped the dull parts when I read the book. That’s a test of how well a dis­cur­sive writer holds up their end of the author/reader bar­gain. Can you lis­ten to the work? Because when you’re lis­ten­ing all the parts get equal weight (time) and there is no way to skim the dull bits. A les­son to learn for writers.

Ready Player One: Ernest Cline / nar­ra­tor: Wil Wheaton -
A clas­sic in the genre that I’ve nev­er both­ered to read because I’m not a game play­er. The last games I played were the text adven­ture games when they were first played on ter­mi­nals con­nect­ed to big com­put­ers in the labs at school.
Likable char­ac­ters and a stroll down late 80’s mem­o­ry lane. It does­n’t hurt that Wheaton has a real love for the book and the 80’s. It comes through in the narration.

Read:

The Poisonwood Bible: Barbara Kingsolver -
A mis­sion­ary fam­i­ly go to the Belgian Congo in the ear­ly 1960’s as the colo­nial era ends. The nar­ra­tive is told in five voic­es, each of the women in the Price fam­i­ly get­ting to tell por­tions of the sto­ry. The voic­es are con­vinc­ing — though you’ll prob­a­bly hate read­ing (lis­ten­ing to) the old­est daughter.
I thought is was going to end at about 60% of the way through. When Mrs. Price and her three remain­ing daugh­ters (no, that is not a spoil­er you learn that one of the daugh­ters is “left in Africa” at the begin­ning of the book) escape the vil­lage and more impor­tant­ly the clutch­es of the hor­ri­ble mis­sion­ary Rev. Price. I think that the rest of the book is inter­est­ing, but it does­n’t have the nar­ra­tive impe­tus of the first half. There is too lit­tle inter­ac­tion between the remain­ing female mem­bers of the fam­i­ly. Through out the first half of the book the sto­ry was about the rela­tion­ship between those women. Then sec­ond half of the book the sto­ry is about the rela­tion­ship each woman has to her own past. Still… I sort of liked it. And I under­stand why it would be an Oprah pick. (Not all Oprah picks suck. Seriously. But you can count on them to be cen­tered on rela­tion­ships between women.)

Second Hand Souls: Christopher Moore -
A follow-up to A Dirty Job. More about the a lit­tle girl who is Death and her helpers. It’s not quite as fun­ny as A Dirty Job, but it’s worth an afternoon.

The Devil in the White City: Erik Larson -
A ser­i­al killer at the 1893 Columbia Exhibition in Chicago.
It’s a dull depic­tion of the killer and a pret­ty bor­ing retelling of the Fair as well. Of inter­est only in that you get to see FL Olmsted work­ing at the end of this life and the cre­ation of the Ferris Wheel.
There are bet­ter ser­i­al killer books (even from this peri­od of time) and there are bet­ter his­to­ries of the Columbia Exhibition.
It’s also incred­i­bly poor­ly writ­ten, to wit, the only depic­tion of the ser­i­al killers psy­chopa­thy is giv­en as “those eyes” over and over and over again.

Marie Antoinette’s Watch: John Biggs -
A love­ly thing for watch geeks, or any­one who finds the inter­sec­tion of his­to­ry and tech­nol­o­gy fas­ci­nat­ing. Recommended by William Gibson who is a bit of a watch nerd. This book traces the his­to­ry of the most famous of the Breguet watch­es, the 160, orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned for the French Queen and fin­ished decades after her death. Stolen from a muse­um in Israel in 1983 and returned under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in 2007.

Love Machine: Louise Erdrich -
A com­plex sto­ry about com­plex fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships set on the Chippewa reser­va­tion in North Dakota. A set of short sto­ries from mul­ti­ple points of view that show the rela­tion­ships between the char­ac­ters from dif­fer­ent points of view and let the read­er slow­ly come to under­stand more about the peo­ple and places involved. Perhaps more than the char­ac­ters them­selves know.

Life After Life: Kate Atkinson -
What that stu­pid movie Ground Hog day should real­ly have been about. We fol­low Ursula Todd, born on a win­ter’s night in 1910, through mul­ti­ple iter­a­tions of her life. In each one she makes a dif­fer­ent cru­cial deci­sion that either ends in her death or in a path that diverges from her pre­vi­ous life. I expect­ed to get bored by wan­der­ing along the same path so many times but Kate Atkinson man­ages to reit­er­ate the events of pre­vi­ous lives with­out retread­ing ground. Lives span the first and sec­ond world wars and on almost into the 21st cen­tu­ry. Only once did the sto­ry veer off into “no real­ly?” territory.

Tomcat in Love: Tim O’Brien -
Professor of lin­guis­tics, Thomas Chippering is a very unlik­able man. He thinks of him­self as a con­nois­seur of women. But also as faith­ful man who has been wronged all his life. The men­tal gym­nas­tics that goes through to main­tain his self-image are laugh­able. In a dark­ly com­ic way.
I like O’Brien’s writ­ing. I did­n’t like Chippering — you aren’t sup­posed to like him but you are sup­posed to empathize with his ongo­ing attempts to keep his self-image intact in the face of increas­ing evi­dence of his infi­deli­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ty for all of the mis­for­tunes that befall him. I could­n’t quite man­age it. The book is worth read­ing none the less for the writ­ing and the weird bits were the nar­ra­tor goes off on tan­gents about how indi­vid­ual words have come to have their mean­ings twist­ed for him.

Birds of America: Lorrie Moore -
Short sto­ries by one of America’s mas­ters. Realism, if you like that sort of thing you’ll like the book. She’s one of my models.

 

Middlesex: Jeffery Eugenides -
The first line of this book is:

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remark­ably smog­less Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emer­gency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

What is the mean­ing of gen­der? Is it fixed at birth? Set by upbring­ing? Or flu­id through out our lives? Big ques­tions that are nev­er real­ly defin­i­tive­ly answered. Which is rather the point of the book. It’s also a sprawl­ing Greek saga of three gen­er­a­tions. With lots of enjoy­able char­ac­ters and well hid­den secrets.

—-

I am still look­ing for a tran­scen­dent book. One that sur­pris­es me with both it’s writ­ing and it’s sto­ry. Haven’t got­ten there on any­thing late­ly except per­haps the Lorrie Moore short sto­ries and Middlesex — though nei­ther reach­es all the way to tran­scen­dent. Only close.

Arrival

It’s always night when I arrive.
The lit­tle Embraer 145 lands and shud­ders to a heav­i­ly braked stop at the end of the run­way. Then turns and taxis back toward the ter­mi­nal. Where an air-stair is wheeled up to the side of the plane and we, the pas­sen­gers, descend.
The air is warm and damp, and smells of wood smoke, jet fuel, silt, and drains.
At the bot­tom of the stairs I pick up the car­ry on lug­gage that nev­er fits in the over­head bins. Then pull my click­ing, wheeled bags across the tar­mac and onto the con­crete side­walk under a canopy beside a patch of coarse, unnat­u­ral­ly green grass.
The Arrival Hall is a flu­o­res­cent lit, eight-foot wide cor­ri­dor full of grin­gos attempt­ing to puz­zle out the immi­gra­tion form with its dense, cryp­tic, oh so for­eign instructions.
I am anoint­ed as “one who knows” not for my awful Spanish, but because of my abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly fill out this form — infor­ma­tion repeat­ed twice. Once in ample spaces at the top of the form. And then again at the bot­tom in tiny spaces bare­ly big enough for your ini­tials let alone your Appelidos and Nombres. Continue read­ing “Arrival”

The Books of August

Books I read:

The Anthologist — Nicholson Baker.
I loved it. You won’t like it. Yeah, that does­n’t make any sense does it? It’s a short nov­el about a poet who is try­ing, and fail­ing, to write the intro­duc­tion to an anthol­o­gy of rhyming poet­ry. He pro­cras­ti­nates, cleans his office, moons over his ex-girlfriend, helps a neigh­bor install a new floor, cuts his fin­gers (repeat­ed­ly), and dis­cuss­es at length the mis­con­cep­tions foist­ed on the English-speaking poet­ry world about the worth of rhyme (lots accord­ing to our nar­ra­tor) and iambic pen­tame­ter (very lit­tle,) along with a lot of oth­er poet­ry geek­i­ness. So if gos­sip about poets and dis­course on the val­ue of struc­ture in poet­ry do it for you. You’ll enjoy this. Otherwise… you’ll be bored.

Girl on the Train — Paula Hawkins.
Meh. All three pro­tag­o­nists are alter­nate­ly bor­ing and unlik­able. There’s an odd lack of descrip­tions of the peo­ple, the places, or even the weath­er… that leaves the whole thing feels very unground­ed. It has a pre­dictable out­come for a thriller. Though, if you ever need to give some­one a clear exam­ple of gas light­ing hand them this book.

I seem to be hav­ing a run of so-so books hav­ing turned down an alley of rec­om­men­da­tions that just aren’t doing it for me. I keep look­ing at the rec­om­men­da­tions based on lik­ing All the Light We Cannot See and being mis­guid­ed into slight nov­els with flat char­ac­ters and only fair to mid­dling language.

The Little Paris Book Shop — Nina George.
The premise is adorable. A book­shop on barge in the Seine. The book­seller is more of a book apothe­cary than a push­er of mod­ern nov­els. He believes that there is a book for every­one — a book that will cure their ills.
Poor Jean Perdu (yeah, John Lost — not actu­al­ly that clever) His one great love left him 20 years ago and he’s nev­er even tried to recov­er. Then one day he donates an old kitchen table to a new neigh­bor and she finds a let­ter writ­ten by his long-lost love that he refused to open when it arrived 19 years ago. In addi­tion to the lady dumped by her hus­band with­out so much as a kitchen table, oth­er char­ac­ters include a wun­derkind author suf­fer­ing from the sopho­more jinx, a cou­ple of cats, and a lovelorn Italian cook. They jour­ney both through the canals of France and their bruised souls. But the book isn’t dark, it’s warm and sun­ny and full of the scenery of France. Kind of nice for a gloomy day. (Ignore all the two stars reviews. They come from peo­ple who con­sid­er open rela­tion­ships to be evil. A rather dull sort of peo­ple.) Anyway, I liked it but it’s not one that I am going pros­e­ly­tize for.

Better than Before — Gretchen Rubin.
The lady who wrote the Happiness Project writes about habits. She starts by divid­ing the world into four kinds of peo­ple and then pre­scribes for­mu­las and strate­gies for each type to devel­op habits. It’s a trite rehash­ing of all the pre­vi­ous advice you’ve ever heard, with pre­dictable anec­dotes from the writer — who’s a real weirdo. May be use­ful for some peo­ple but I fall into her Rebel cat­e­go­ry and the clear sub­text of this book is Rebels are screwed. They sim­ply lack the basic account­abil­i­ty to oth­ers and will pow­er to devel­op habits.

Audio books this month:

Station Eleven — Emily St John Mandel — nar­ra­tor Kirsten Potter
I liked this one when I read it. It’s equal­ly good as a lis­ten. The nar­ra­tor makes sense as a lot of the book is told from the point of view of a female character.

 

 

Farewell My Lovely — Raymond Chandler — nar­ra­tor Ray Porter.
A clas­sic hard-boiled detec­tive nov­el. Chandler sounds like a par­o­dy of him­self at this point but I still revis­it him on a irreg­u­lar basis for the crash­ing, brash sen­tences. They read bet­ter than they lis­ten. Not the nar­ra­tor’s fault.

 

Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson — nar­ra­tor Jonathan Davis.
Not my favorite Stephenson but a nice com­par­i­son to SevenEves which I lis­tened to last month. There’s a huge growth curve between the two. Nice to see even my favorite pros learn as they go. Narrator — decent enough.

I have a huge list queued up for next month which includes two weeks of away from home vaca­tion. Including more Tim O’Brien, Umberto Eco, Christopher Moore, Ernest Cline, and Karen Russel.

What are you reading?

Lara

The Books of July

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. * 

I Believe (after Ron Shelton)

I believe in the image, the line, the stan­za, the iambic foot, the per­fect word. Assonance, slant rhymes, that the for­mal forms still have a place in mod­ern poet­ry. I believe that Shakespeare wrote the plays. I believe in a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment out­law­ing poet­ry about poet­ry and the use of the word “suf­fuse.” I believe in revi­sion, inter­lin­ear trans­la­tions, pub­lish­ing for read­ers — not edi­tors, and I believe in long, slow, deep, wet poems that last three days.