Shakespeare Wrote for Money

It was with great trepidation that I read Nick Hornby's latest collection of columns from The Believer. Not because I didn't want to read it--in fact, I couldn't wait--but because I knew I would have to post something about it. As far as I'm concerned, Hornby is the king of blogging on books--though of course his format is more formal and I would hate to compare what he does to mere blogging.
I've only read one Hornby book that I didn't love ( I hated How to Be Good) so I was really looking forward to Shakespeare Wrote for Money. This is the last collection of Hornby's Stuff I've Been Reading column and I'd say he's probably right to take a break. Everyone should catch his earlier collections, Housekeeping vs. the Dirt and The Polysyllabic Spree. I've always gotten suggestions of what to read, as I did here, but he seems a little tired in this collection.
In Shakespeare, Hornby discovers Young Adult literature and like any recent convert, he's a zealot, defending his interest vehemently lest anyone take him less seriously than before. He also makes an attempt at self-deprecation in order to make a point about self-deprecation; he's enthusiastic about everything he reads--perhaps because he's apparently not allowed to trash any books, or to be even vaguely critical of an author; he gives everyone a free pass on having to read the uber-depressing novel by Cormac McCarthy The Road (thank you, thank you!); and it is YA lit. that helps him climb out of the hole he gets into over the future of the earth and humanity.
I will miss his columns, but can only hope this means more novels from Nick Hornby. In the introduction to Shakespeare, Sarah Vowel writes:[Hornby] is quitting Stuff I've Been Reading so as to "spend more time with his family" What--they don't let you read books in rehab?Incidently, her introduction is quite funny and makes me want to read her latest, The Wordy Shipmates, which I've considered and rejected several times since seeing her on The Daily Show. (Well, that sounds really half-hearted, doesn't it?)

There was a passage in Hornby's novel, A Long Way Down that was so funny, I actually did pee my pants. Nothing quite so dramatic in this writing, but I did like this: [Hornby had been refusing to read some book that everyone was nagging him to read] ...The same people who had been telling me to read the posh novel told me to read the posh memoir, and I felt that a further refusal would have indicated some kind of Trotskyite militancy that I really don't feel. It's more a mild distate than a deeply entrenched wordview."

In The Flesh

I had thought this Wexford mystery by Ruth Rendell would be the perfect "holding pattern" book leading up to Christmas (and which point I assumed I would find mounds of books under the tree for me to read), but it turned out merely irritating. I usually like the Wexford mysteries. He's a fine character--and I'm always impressed (?) by Rendell's ability to make him vaguely sexist and so out of touch with "modern" technology. For awhile I suspected those traits were elements of her own personality (which seemed weird) so I finally settled on it being due to good writing.
The two old bodies unearthed promised a nice bit of whodunnit, but then Rendell had to bring in Somali female genital mutilation, which was just a huge distraction. In another book she brought in baby selling in Africa. Okay, so kudos (I guess) for the ripped from the headlines elements (I guess?), but who cares, really? Give me dead, and not gross bodies, and I'm happy to read your book for a few hours, in a warm house, by a crackling fire.

addendum to Ex-Libris (or my life)

So, husband Ben found this image on a blog he reads and sent it because, apparently, he likes to encourage my worst tendencies. Of course I love it, so I'm poaching it (and posting it) for...um...I guess my own amusement. Anne Fadiman can rest assured that there are still many like her out there. (Okay, well, at least two people...unless the second sign was written by committee, which opens up all sorts of possibilities)

To make this post an actual addendum to Ex-Libris, I will add that I have heard from several people that Fadiman's book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, is excellent. I probably won't get around to reading it, but someone should.

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

When I was in college (and embarrassingly long after that), friends and I made a game of finding "unnecessary quotes" in our environs. In our own short hand, this meant searching for those signs with superfluous quotation marks that many (many, many--it turns out) people use to "punch up" their messages. What started us off, was the hand-lettered sign on a vending machine in the dorm basement that read:

Any further abuse of this machine will result in its removal.

"Think of those" who use it correctly.

Educated, priviliged snots that we were, this game threatened to become our life's calling.

Reading Anne Fadiman's series of short essays collected in Ex Libris is both a vaguely embarrassing mirror of my own life and also a window into "there but for the grace of---um, a different calling--go I." I absolutely loved this book, a really accessible, readable book about loving books and words and language.

Fadiman grew up in a hyper-literary family--her parents owned over 7,000 books--in which word games and trivia games were manna. Okay, who hasn't shouted out the answers in front of Jeopardy? But did your family give itself a team name and pound imaginary buzzers embedded in the stuffed chairs?(The Joy of Sesquipedalians). Her upbringing resembles a mash-up of my mother and aunt's recollection of their childhood (Greek as a lunchtime brain snack, for example) and mine in which a quick wit and a ready answer were prized.

To her credit and our gain, Fadiman is fully aware of both how irritating and amusing her life must seem to outsiders so she adopts a wry tone. There is nothing judgemental about her quirky intellect and her passion for books. She gives a glimpse into her past that shows how she became the writer and reader she is, and the present (1998) in which she describes having to sort and arrange books in the home she shares with her husband, an equally obsessed book-hoarder. Fadiman believes in categorizing books--specifically by time period. Her husband feels that disorder is part of the fun. "If he wants something, he believes it will present itself, and therefore it usually does," Fadiman writes (Marrying Libraries).

When I read that Fadiman has an entire section of her library devoted to Arctic Travel (The Odd Shelf), I realized the kinship was stronger than I'd thought. I was a devotee of books about what husband Ben once called "stupid people in cold places." My shelves creak under stacks of Arctic, Antarctic and Mountaineering books. I've moved on since and I suppose Fadiman may have as well.

Ex Libris was published in 1998 and I am curious what has happened since then to Anne Fadiman. Is she increasingly eccentric or has she mellowed over time? Does she now have her kids eagerly searching restaurant menus for errors, or do her kids prefer math puzzles? I like to think they watch quiz shows with her, their hands hovering over armchair buzzers, while her husband peruses their mile long bookshelf, searching for that one book that was just there...

The Whistling Season

I had always confused Ivan Doig with an early 19th Century writer, though I'm not sure why (or with whom). Perhaps there's a name similarity with someone I once read in school. In any case, his author picture in The Whistling Season does nothing to discourage this belief.

Nonetheless, The Whistling Season was first published in 2006, though it takes place in Montana of 1910 (yes, the year of Halley's Comet and Mark Twain's death). It's an interesting enough portrait of homesteading at the turn of the last century when Model Ts battled muddy roads for dominance, when dry land farming (You'd have to read this book a bit more carefully than I to fully understand that idea) slapped up against giant Government irrigation projects, and one-room school houses were the center of a community (like it or not).

The framing of The Whistling Season is weird and not really necessary, though at least we know everyone grows up well enough because our narrator pops in occasionally as an adult. But that's kind of the boring part.

The interesting part is the arrival of Rose Llewellyn and her intriguing brother Morrie Morgan to be--respectively--housekeeper and teacher. These two colorful characters have CON ARTISTS tattooed all over them, but they seem perfectly pleasant and interesting, intelligent and kind, and--having not read Doig before (stuffy old 18th century guy, right?), I wasn't sure if he was just playing with his reader.

Morrie is the best character in the book. He looks every bit the dandy--alarmingly stylish mustache, perfectly ironed white shirts--and is pleasantly overeducated, though only in a bookish way. As an example of what he lacks in education, his first job as wood cutter for a cranky old lady ends in him stacking three cords of wood with logs precisely four feet long (a cord, it was originally explained to him is "four feet high, four feet long and 8 feet wide"). To his credit, he did think it was an odd size for pieces of wood destined for a cookstove, and he does fix his mistake.Pressed into service, he becomes one of those teachers you dream of--teaching to a higher level of thinking while entertaining his charges.

In the end, lives change, are improved, or not, and some things about the prairie change and some things do not. I'm glad I gave this writer a chance to prove he lives in this century (or writes in it, anyway), though I'm not a convert.

I don't know if this is too cutesy, but I like the image it created. The youngest boy in the family is bursting to tell of the matrimonial escape of their former teacher: "Miss Trent loped!"

"Did she." Father's eyebrows lifed commensurately. "That must have been a memorable change from her usual gait."

Supreme Courtship

Ah, nothing like an ice storm/power outage to get some reading done, although the light gets pretty dim around 4:00. I ripped right through Christopher Buckley's Supreme Courtship. It was a light and fairly zippy read and, really, I had little else to do while curled up in a sleeping bag in a house that registered somewhere around 34 degrees.

This book reminded me of some of Tom Wolfe's books, though obviously not as long and sweeping. I enjoyed the freakishly prescient Sarah Palin similarities, though it turned out there were only two (thank goodness), right in the beginning. The unpopular president gives up on finding a Supreme Court nominee that the angry Congress will accept and gleefully offers a Court TV judge they can't refuse.

Here's where Sarah Palin comes in (sort of). When Pepper Cartwright pronounces "You Betcha!" I thought Buckley to be some sort of psychic. After all, the book was published in September). When he then mentions that there's a spike in sales of cherry red pickup trucks because of this nominee, all I could think of was the wide-spread mania over Palin's rimless glasses. But then, I suppose not all pop culture should be attributed to the former Republican VP nominee. Eventually she will go away, recede from my mind, and I'll then fail to find her lurking in everything I read. I hope.

I felt like Buckley created in President Donald Vanderdamp the sort of president he thought Bush could have been. Never mind idealogy. Vanderdamp is genial, a lover of bowling who'd rather be back home in some unpronounceable small town in Ohio (since it is unpronounceable and starts with a W, I thought of Palin's hometown. That woman is everywhere!) And instead has to run the country. You kind of want to hate him at first, but he's a good enough guy.

I liked the characters--the prickly, pesky, uber-intelligent Justices, the president, Pepper herself, the suicidal Chief Justice, the grasping, nakedly ambitious Senator, and especially Graydon Clenndennynn. Who wouldn't want a wise, Boston Brahmin type getting you out of trouble with his calm wisdom, his intelligence, and his perfect martinis served with cheese amuse-gueules?

Obviously, I didn't like Pepper's husband--the stupidly named Buddy, the TV producer who is responsible for her rise to TV fame (though almost responsible for her failure to the Supreme Court). He's not likeable, of course, but it's more that Buckley never bothers to explain how on earth those two ended up together and I didn't buy it.

Pepper's attempts to rule--or at least judge-from the highest bench in America are amusing and a little bittersweet. It all seems so much easier and more fun on Judge Judy. In general this book made me never, ever, ever want to be a lawyer (or be married to one), but it was pretty entertaining.

Nice bit of advice: "Short of nuclear warheads that have already been launched, there is no situation that cannot be met head-on with inaction."

And this image, about a dog: Dwight lifted his head off the pillow next to the President's and cocked an ear in hopes of discerning syllabic similarity between the words being spoken and "biscuit."

I rather think those two quotes go well together, now that I see them juxtaposed.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

As soon as I began reading this book in letters by Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece Annie Barrows, it reminded me of a book I'd bought and read in 1987. So the end found me rummaging through stacks of boxes packed up during home renovations to find Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys. Of course I found the book sitting innocently on a bookshelf downstairs. Henrietta's War is subtitled "News from the Home Front 1939-1942" and takes place in roughly the same time period as Potato Peel and is also written in letters. I remember loving it (sigh, part of my British phase). Skimming through it this time around reminded me of what was fun about it.

Now, writing an epistolary novel is hard. The author is really demanding a lot from his reader and there are some who obviously get a bit carried away with the format. Samuel Richardson, famously, has his heroine Clarissa writing to her dear friend as she's being, uh, deflowered (or just about). Of course, the other problem is the time lapse in letter writing. Fine, In the 18th Century, people wrote often and throughout the day, but in later years the regular post office was, really, a bit slower.

And things move pretty fast in Potato Peel. How quickly can you fall in love (by mostly letter, I mean)? Letter writing is certainly an art, but I even reread Dawsey's first letter to Juliet and there's not much there. Okay, yeah, a love of Charles Lamb. and okay, a certain "country folk" appeal, but really, I wasn't even sure it was a man writing it, the first time around. The whole book takes place in less than a year and when even the heroine admits that being engaged for one day is a bit rushed, it feels more like the authors just wanted to "git her done." (the book, I mean. Nothing vulgar here). Yes, I know they meet, but we only have his and her letters to glean anything romantic.

I must admit, if it weren't a book club selection, I would not have finished this book. There were too many things that irritated me (the letters format was the least of it because I knew about that). Things just seemed too cutesy, too much as though the writers had read a few quick books about LIFE DURING THE OCCUPATION (WWII) and then had tried to drop a whole bunch of 'period markers' to guide the reader. This is a particular pet peeve of mine.

BUT, I am trying to be more open-minded about books (sort of) and I perservered. The book definitely picks up. There is still a great deal that annoyed me, but I ended up liking a lot of those very markers that had bugged me to begin with. I was quite moved by the letter writer who lists exactly what he received in his first Red Cross package after several years of inadequate food on Guernsey. Somehow, listing things in ounces (one ounce of salt, ten ounces of raisins...) was terribly poignant

Other details, such as the description of the German soldiers treating their arrival like a holiday, away from the "real war" was interesting and felt fresh to me. I also liked the guy who would read only Seneca for his Society meetings; the other man who read a difficult book just to spite a friend (or repair a friendship).

I even liked the seemingly random discovery of letters from Oscar Wilde. Sure! Why not?

I did not, however, for one minute, buy the romance that blossomed by the end of the book, but I suppose, we all have a little Jane Austen in us and so need things to tidy up neatly and make families of everyone.

I hesitated a long time before writing this because I have heard mostly LOVE for this book, and I didn't want to disagree with friend Liz (though she knows we don't always agree on books). As my sister-in-law said first, "I didn't love it." BUT, I didn't end up hating it either, which I would have done had I quit. Instead, I savored some of the scenes and descriptions and let go of any cheese I found.
This is an easy book to suggest to most people because it's a lite little book that also makes you feel like you're learning something about the Terrible Times that were WWII. So, go ahead and read it (and argue with me, if you want)

my faves of 2008

I keep track of my "best reads" of the year in a somewhat useless way--by making a small dot next to the title in a notebook. This is an improvement over the old method--that of depending on my memory. The old method usually left me announcing to friends and casual acquaintances, "Oh, I loved that book!" whenever they mentioned something I'd read. Later, I'd realize that all I meant was that the title was familiar.
And so, the dots.
This was a bad year for me, bookwise. Usually, I look back and find at least 10 dots, but not this year. In any case, here is a list of the books I enjoyed most in 2008, followed by a few honorable mentions to round out the list. It's conceivable that I'll love another book before the year is out, but this is a start.

(The list is more chronological than it is from best to worst).

Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Phillips.
Some critics found this story of Greek Gods living in London a tired (or tiring) gimmick, but I found it really funny. The whole "sun going out" bit was a little long, but Apollo as talk show host was funny.

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen.
I was really late to the table on this one, partly scared off by the circus theme, but it was fantastic.

The House on Fortune Street, Margot Livesey
Not my favorite Livesey (that would be Eva Moves the Furniture), but I like her writing and I'm a sucker for multiple POV stories.

Lush Life, Richard Price
He captures a kind of life that I will never know, but it rings so true. I probably love best the throw-away scenes that just establish the neighborhood.

The Anglo Files, Sarah Lyall
A late entry, but I already blogged this so I won't go into how much I loved it. Though, I will add that it actually got me to purchase an out-of-print book that Lyall mentions, and tuck away for the future another book at the library.

Okay, a few others include

The Tenderness of Wolves, Stef Penney
Frontier Canada--trappers, Native Canadians, and European religious sects. Also, a good mystery.

Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden
This is from friend Liz's list from 2007. Canadian Indians in WWI trenches. Fascinating, though of course, sadish.

The Ghost, Robert Harris.
Not a great book, about the ghost writer for a thinly disguised Tony Blair, but Harris does something brilliant with the identity of his main character that takes about 70 pages to catch, (though my husband never noticed). Kind of a fun read.

If You are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
always fun

When will there be good news, Kate Atkinson
Just because I waited so long for this, and she is a very good writer

The Anglo Files: a field guide to the British

I went through a stage during which I romanticized pretty much everything about England and the English--except the food, of course. Being French, I never had any illusions about the English food, but, oh, the jolly camaraderie of the boarding schools, the witty repartee, the distant colonies and their literature, the whole stiff upper lip during the London Blitz, and the accent of course. Some of my favorite authors are British and I could not get enough, even traveling there several times as a kid.
Then something happened. I don't know what exactly, or when, but I began to notice that they were just like us. They ate crappy food in front of the telly (soccer instead of football), and the accents didn't really mean they were smarter...Anyway, the scales fell and I got on with my life.

Sarah Lyall's book The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British completely destroyed ANY lingering illusion I had about the joy and pleasure of living among the British and I loved this book. Lyall is an American, a journalist, married to a British writer, and she takes it upon herself to add to the somewhat crowded field of study loosely titled "What is up with our wacky cousins across the pond?"
She takes on the self-deprecation, the dry humor, the bizarre institution that was the House of Lords, the government in general, the British obsession with bad food and bad dental hygiene (yes, apparently some of this is by choice), the love of small animals (badgers and hedgehogs, though that's more of a love/hate thing), the cruelty of the school system that is rapidly being replaced by an overly touchy/feely system of recompense; sex, manliness (or lack thereof, depending on your definition).
On that last note, (and I start with this mainly because last night I watched the latest James Bond), Lyall writes: It seems to me that Daniel Craig in his role as Agent 007 [perfectly combines English mystery with American sensitivity]. He looks good in a dinner jacket, affects humorous insouciance in the face of peril, and knows the proper technique for injecting oneself in the heart when going into cardiac arrest. But he also understands that when a woman is slumped, weeping, in the shower, her evening gown covered in blood, what she really wants is a man with well-defined pectoral muscles to get in there beside her and slowly kiss her fingers, one by one."
Lyall's point is this: That's not going to happen in Britain. Ever. Not even once. (Of course, I'm assuming it doesn't happen in most countries--the blood, the evening gown shower...but I see what she means).

One of the best chapters (besides the one on sex--always entertaining) is Lyall's presentation of the government, but the House of Lords specifically. Until a very few years ago, these seats (some 700) were held by landed gentry, and handed down through the generations. That's right. they weren't elected, they didn't have to care about politics or other people, or even show up. They did get free parking in London, though, Always a perk in an expensive, crowded city. Basically The House of Lords consisted of mostly old men ("Lord X is 92 years old, but acts like a man twice his age" as one reporter put it) debating strange and sometimes less strange things while (mostly) drunk. They quote in Latin and French, they evoke a lost and sometimes mythical past to make points that are meaningless. Probably their best debate (other than the one on the existence--yes or no--of extraterrestrials) was when they had to debate whether or not they should have to give up their seats. (They did)
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, though I skimmed a chapter or two. This makes my top 10 of 2008. I close with a sample of the humor the British use to counter anything they are supposed to care about (according to Lyall's research and observation). Apparently there is one paper which loves printing corrections. They are rather slapdash in their writing and editing so there is a lot of opportunity (including apologizing for misspelling the word "misspelled" in one correction column. Here is one example:

"A Caption in Guardian Weekend...read "Binch of crappy travel mags." This should, of course, have been "bunch." But more to the point it should not have been there at all. It was meant as a dummy which we failed to replace with the real caption. It was not meant to be a comment on perfectly good travel brochures."

So Brave, Young, and Handsome

I loved Leif Enger's first novel, Peace Like a River, though I don't remember much about it now, so I was excited that he had a new one out (finally). I really wanted to like So Brave, Young and Handsome, and fell in love with the first 9 words: "Not to disappoint you, but my troubles are nothing--". but the rest of the paragraph (and chapter, really) is pretty generic. It's not until chapter 7 when Enger goes on about a giant snapping turtle (trust me), cycling back to the turtle even, that I loved the writing. I felt he finally hit his stride (or maybe I just got into it).

I really didn't like Monte Becket, the narrator, for most of the story, which I always have a hard time with. He finally gets some backbone (which is the point, of course) and then I sort of like him. But the other characters are interesting and unusual. I especially like the enthusiastically doomed young Hood Roberts, bursting with the thrill of the outlaw life in the waning days of cowboys (1915). "Suppose we hear gunshots? What'll we do then?" He asks when the "evil" ex-Pinkerton detective is hot on their outlaw friend's tail. "Suppose Glendon overcomes him [the detective] by guile and brings him back hogtied and blindfolded..."

Serious Monte replies, "Untie him and let him go. What do you mean blindfolded? Why would he blindfold him?"

Monte only writes romances, doesn't really know how to live them and he's adrift in this new life he's chosen, away from his wife, helping a former outlaw escape the law. Unlike Hood Roberts, who takes to the life like a shot, Monte is not much of a cowboy, though he has written a book. He admits to an aversion to horses, calling them "sinister" and correctly understands that "the only thing a horse wants from you is your absence."

And so these men, in groups of two or three or even one, chase their way across the dying West, following along on Glendon's mission to apologize to his long-ago wife for his life of misdeeds. Along for the ride is a version of The Law and it's ugly and pathetic, but the men understand its necessity. There's something both sad and heroic about this journey, a lot like what I picture cowboy life to be like now, in this modern age of machines and cars and internet and TV. You still want to believe in the solitary "Marlboro Man", but we all know what happened to him. I suppose 1915 already seemed to signal the end to that kind of life.


The writing is nice and I suppose it's my sloppy reading that leaves me perplexed as to the meaning behind the title. I mean, yeah, I get it---America, cowboys, youth, blah blah blah...I don't put much stock in titles anyways and often find myself disappointed when I find the title of a book repeated within the story. Seems cheap or lazy.



Nice line: He did not seem to struggle against death, nor did he appear surprised. Death arrived easy as the train; [He] just climbed aboard, like the capable traveler he was.

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat

Yes, this is a kids' book. Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat by Lynne Jonell came across my desk in a work-related incident and I was intrigued. It's on the Great Stone Face list which, for all you non-New Hampshire natives, is a list of books from which 4th-6th graders vote to choose the "best" book.
Emmy doesn't quite transcend kid lit to become a book for the ages, but it is appealingly packaged, including a wonderful "flip book" format in which we see a rat falling into the hands of a child. The names are Dickensian, which I'm not sure most 4th graders would get (or 6th graders, for that matter). The evil nanny (and aren't those always wonderful characters?) is named Miss Barmy and the rodent expert is Professor Capybara. Emmy is the good girl who longs to live her own life and then befriends a talking rat who has his own woes along with a secret power.
Mayhem ensues, the bad are punished, the good rewarded, people grow and shrink as needed for plot purposes, and a good time is had by all. Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat is a fun little romp with an old-fashioned appeal and sometimes I like to dash through a middle school book because it's easy and fun. It's nice to have the excuse of work to read this sort of thing.

When Will There Be Good News?

There was another great character in Olive Kitteredge that I forgot to write about. She seemed at first like someone to ridicule or even dislike because she was really into crafts and not so warm and fuzzy towards her husband. I guess she just seemed like a "type." But Strout gave her a great voice so that I ended up really enjoying her and so here I am still thinking about her, a book later. She was cranky about the name of the Grateful Dead, thought it just seemed disrespectful, and when told that the lead singer was dead, this relentlessly cheerful, afghan-knitter, announces, "Well, I hope he's grateful!"

In Kate Atkinson's latest, When Will There Be Good News? there are a ton of lines like this, funny, throw away lines or images that just stop me. One character is pretending to be a tourist while he's kind of up to no good so he ends up having to admire the local natural wonder as cover for his story. He decides 10 minutes is the minimum for authenticity and Atkinson writes: "He wished he still smoked. He wouldn't mind a drink.If you didn't smoke and you didn't drink, then standing by a waterfall for ten minutes with nothing to do was something that could really get to you..."

I really loved Atkinson's last book, One Good Turn, and I really disliked her other thriller with the same characters (Case Histories). Her other books are somewhere on the spectrum though they are ALL weird. This one was good. I like the characters, I like her writing, and everyone more or less ends up where they're supposed to be (some dead, some avenged, some rewarded, etc.). There are some dissatisfying moments towards the end and the train accident is a bit over the top, but you just have to let that go. I did get fairly annoyed reading about Chief Inspector Louise's qualms about her new marriage. Who cares? I hate reading about women who get themselves into a situation (in this case a good one) and just churn around in their own mess until they muck everything up.

Friend Denise and I don't agree much on mysteries--though she has the advantage over me of having read them for years. I am too picky, I suppose, but I feel that Atkinson's books are an easy way into this genre if you're a novice or nervous about trying a "mystery' (for whatever reason). Maybe I just like skirting the edges of the genre.

I did notice that just about every character had at least one family member (sometimes several)that had died in weird ways (or died, anyway). There were several car crashes, murders (obviously), and long hair getting caught in pool drains (ooookaaay...). I know the story centers around police and sordid lives, but really, how many people die so dramatically in one place? Maybe this is always happening in mysteries and thrillers. Doesn't make me want to move to Edinburgh, anyway.

I'm working on Leif Enger's So Brave, Young, and Handsome. I'll see how far I get with a man's voice.

Olive Kitteridge

In my last blog, I pretty much admitted that I am a snob, but after reading Elizabeth Strout's latest book, Olive Kitteridge, I realize there is hope for me to become a more tolerant, if not better person. The bad news is, I might have to wait until I'm 74.
It takes Olive about that long to let down her guard and become the sort of person who can get along with others. Apparently her inability to do so hasn't really crimped her style in her years in the small town of Crosby, Maine. Olive is the center of this collection of linked short stories. She is like the relative that everyone fears or tries to avoid at Thanksgiving, but grudgingly admires for speaking her mind and she is a piece of work in this book.
Olive's husband, Henry is the one everyone loves, and he loves Olive in spite of the fact that she is the sort of woman who would steal clothes from her new daughter-in-law just BECAUSE SHE CAN (oh yes, and because her son has chosen the wrong sort of woman for Olive...oh, I mean for himself). The sabotaging of the first daughter-in-law is horrifying(the theft is not the worst of it) and hard to read because I wanted to like Olive, to see what Henry sees, but we have to wait a long time for that.
The other characters in here are interesting (I only skimmed through one story) though the connection to Olive can often seem contrived. If not everyone is old, they mostly seem old so I would say Strout didn't vary her voices enough. There's a lot there, though.
What if you came back to your hometown to kill yourself and had to save someone instead? What if your mother was a former beauty queen who insisted on still living as she did when she was a hardscrabble trailer kid(complete with "weird' plumbing and a shotgun)? What if you found yourself happily in retirement and in love and you found out your husband had had an affair (and not too long ago)? Or what if he suddenly suffers a massive stroke, just on an ordinary day and you had to realize no one really likes you without him?
But Olive comes out all right in the end, even if she does end up friends with a...gasp!...Republican.

Nice image: "They had fun these days...It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert."

The Lucky Ones (Part 2)

So, I opened my Entertainment Weekly (which did used to have a pretty good BOOKS section) and discovered that Nicholas Sparks has a book called The Lucky One. So, now not only there's a movie not named after Rachel Cusk's novel, but there's also a Sparks novel with a similar title. I realize this happens all the time and that's not really what this post is about.
THIS post should really be titled ??????!!!??!!??! because APPARENTLY Nicolas Sparks--he of the schmaltzy novels (okay, full disclosure, I haven't read any, just seen the previews)--CLAIMS to read 125 books per year. ONE TWENTY FIVE!

Am I jealous, just snarky (what kind of "books" is he talking about?) or highly skeptical? A fourth possibility is that I needed a topic for a post because I'm strangely slow reading this month.

while you wait...

My friend Liz was a bit scared off by the blog format, but she is a reader you can trust so I've reprinted her suggestions to me (via email) for good reads. We aren't always attracted to the same books, but I've never been steered wrong when I DID pick up one of her suggestions.

From Liz: Great books I've read recently are Mudbound by Hillary Jordan, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, and I'm now reading a delightful, unique novel newly published on this side of the Atlantic but which has been a best seller in Europe (came out there in 2006), The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (translated from the French)....a paperback original, at least over here.

Liz has been talking about the potato peel book for awhile and it's definitely on my list, but right now I'm in the middle of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (finally! And more on that later, when I'm done). After that I definitely need to get out of the domestic fiction genre that I've been rolling through.

The Lucky Ones (not the movie)

Like Arlington Park, this Rachel Cusk novel moves from one character to the next, a bit like Richard Linklater's movie, Slackers. We move from the young pregnant woman in jail for something she probably didn't do to Martin, skiing in the alps with the woman's assistant lawyer, to the sister of a friend of Martin, etc...
It's all very gentle and, though a bit gimmicky, I like the puzzle aspect (Okay who will we follow next?) and the example it provides of the six degrees of separation theory (which I like). In this way we're given a sort of "short story lite" for those of us who balk at the choppiness of the short story genre.
This style does break down towards the middle of The Lucky Ones, though we cycle back to the first character in the end, and we're given instead certain "types". Mrs Daley is a horror--the mother of grown children with five or "I suppose six, now" as she says herself, reluctantly acknowledging the latest one. Mrs Daley could serve as a warning to the other mothers presented here, but they seem a long way off from her life, still in the bewildering years of staying at home with small children.
Cusk paints a grim picture of marriage and parenting. The few decent men are either dying or realizing too late what it means to be a good father. The women seem at a loss how to rejoin the world or make a place for themselves. The nastiest character is no help at all, saying to his wife, "All right then...you go and earn the money and I'll sit at home all day drinking coffee. I know which I'd rather do."
It's hard to believe this sort of character still exists in this day and age, but I suppose he does somewhere, even if those words are never spoken aloud.
This seems a very domestic book, but the characters are mostly interesting and the writing is nice.
I like this line:
"I lived in the square house up the potholed lane with my parents and my twin sister Lucy, and they loomed large in the flat landscape, which was so empty of obvious entertainment and where time passed slowly, laboriously, as though each hour were being manufactured by hand."

Doesn't that just describe a childhood's Sunday afternoon?

Minette Walters and thrillers

I don't normally read thrillers, though it's getting less and less accurate for me to say that. I read Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell and a few others I've tried in the past. I read a bunch of Archer Mayers, mostly because one of them took place at my alma mater, but I quit when the absurdity of so much crime taking place in the small town of Brattelboro, VT (which I've visited) outweighed any pleasure I got from the books. I absolutely love Stella Rimington's three books about MI-5. But generally I stay away.
It's the writing that kills me. Most thrillers are terribly written and I've always been less of a plot-driven reader and more of a hyper-sensitive critic of the finely-turned phrase. The writing's got to be good.
That said, there is a time when my mind turns to the dark and easy-to-ingest, and that's why I'm so pleased to find good writers who also make me turn the page in anticipation of the big pay-off of whodunit (or whydonit or, occasionally, howdonit). I've been circling around Minnette Walters for a few years--since my bookstore days really, but I never committed until this summer and now I've read two.
I started with Acid Row (by chance) and immediately had grave misgivings because it turned out to be about pedophiles and I feared the story would just become bogged down in the easy disgust we all feel for this type of person. But it was the characters that finally grabbed me and dragged me in. They were all interesting and seemingly no real "good guy." When I finally found a character to like, Walters took her time exposing his basic goodness. The story ripped right along and, being new to her writing, I really didn't know if everything was going to turn out as it should.
More recently I read The Dark Room which I liked a little less because the ending was a bit disappointing, but I don't regret the dark and creepy ride Walters took me on. Make no mistake, these books are creepy. I did have a lot of bad dreams due to reading right before bed, but there was nothing cheap and graphic about the writing. I think "foreboding" is the right word to describe it. She doesn't really take the easy way out by just grossing us out and then having a "The butler did it ending." Just about everyone is flawed or mistaken at least occasionally which doesn't feel forced. And since there's no clear-cut hero, the story feels a bit more like real life (Now that's kind of creepy).
I'm probably done with this kind of reading for awhile as I need some bright and sunny stuff to stave off a New England winter, but I know there's a backlog of Minnette Walters for me at the library and there IS a newish Rendell I haven't gotten to and a new Ian Rankin, so maybe I'm lying about the whole "I don't read thrillers" bit.

Arlington Park

I supposedly read Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk for my book group, but it's a sloppy book group--we're all busy and it's hard to get reorganized at the end of summer/beginning of school. In any case, the suggestion to read this book got me out of my rut of summer thrillers and unsatisfying books so even if we never talk about it in a group, at least I read it and had an opinion.

Arlington Park appears at first to be just another one of those "women dissatisfied in the suburbs" books, but I forgave it at first because it takes place in Britain instead of the States and also because I am well removed from the stroller set these days and happy in my own marriage so I could read about these women's angst in a more dispassionate way.

Trouble arrived at last when I couldn't figure out if I was supposed actually to LIKE any of these characters. I had my hopes pinned on Christine (and I don't think it was just the name), but then she turned out to be a cleaning freak--which actually I'm okay with--and THEN she threw the child (someone else's child) hard onto her white couch because he'd colored on it with markers.

Okay, sure, maybe we've all wanted to do that to a certain degree--just grab up that annoying, spoiled kid and give him or her a good shake (though OF COURSE we don't), but come on, over a marker? Why did she have a white couch anyway?
Also, who in their right mind takes kids in strollers to the mall FOR A GOOD TIME? (okay, actually a lot of people do, but you can see the outcome a mile away)

Then I thought I'd like Juliet because she too is a teacher, but she didn't seem that good at her job, even with the supposedly bright kids.

Am I being too picky?

I won't even get to the men who turned out to be useless.

I guess we're supposed to feel for these people for living in the suburbs and wasting their lives, but I want characters to take control of their lives and not just get drunk by the end of the book.

Still, there was some nice writing and I'm not sorry I read it. One character is trying to drill names into her husband's mind just before a dinner party because "Benedict had the unnerving habit of confidently addressing people by names that did not belong to them." I loved that and wanted to be at the table with Benedict when he did this.

I also liked the former wunderkind who becomes a teacher and realizes that it doesn't really matter how many prizes you get at school, you still just end up a normal person. "...it made it seem that she wasn't bright or gifted or exceptional at all. She was merely good at going to school." I could relate to that in more ways than I care to admit.

I think a nice companion to this book would be Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, which I haven't read yet. I think I'll suggest in to my book group if we ever meet again.

Y:The Last Man

It took me just about a year to read all ten volumes of the graphic novel Y:The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan. This was mostly due to my relying on the library. It's a great library, but apparently I'm not the only person in town who was following the series and I have a strange aversion to reserving books. (What if it comes and I'm NOT READY?)

Anyway, this series was my first long-term commitment to this form of writing (aside from childhood obsessions with Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke) and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Around Volume 3 of the story of the last man on earth after a bizarre plague wipes out half of the human population (males, obviously), I couldn't imagine in what other form it would have been possible to tell this story.

A pet peeve of mine in "comic books" was always that the writing wasn't linear. That is, it was very hard to tell which bubble you were supposed to read first and even the art wasn't always great--dark and grimacing (or big-breasted, depending on the gender of the character), but I found a lot to like in Last Man.

I suffered a bit from the time lapse between volumes, but found that there were often great chunks missing from the action anyway. I guess wacky post-apocalyptic action can be like that.
I grew fairly attached to the characters, even the confusingly-named Beth and Beth, and I found myself really down at the end. To me, the last book is sad, right down to the final ALAS scrawled across the page, but I'm not sure it's supposed to be sad in the grand scheme of things. Also, how else would a book about the human race teetering on extinction end?
I REALLY want to read this series all over again but there's no wayI will because there's always something new I've got to try. I may check out Vaughan's other series, Ex-Machina, but really, my heart isn't into all graphic, all the time, so there's no rush.

In the Beginning...

For a long time, I've kept track of all the books I've read--at least by title with occasional somewhat cryptic marks to remind myself if I liked the book, hated the book or read it for a book club. At the end of 2007 I realized I had managed to read 54 books. Math is not my specialty, but even I realized that meant more than 1 book a week. Yes, I count the graphic novels (if it takes more than one sitting to read them) and the occasional young adult novel, but I don't count the books I read to my kids. I read a lot and I like to think I read widely, but sometimes just listing the title isn't enough and I want to say more. And so, this blog.