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 *