Quick Reviews

I don’t seem to be able to find much time to write substantive reviews of all I’ve read, but I do want to put a few words to each book for my memory’s sake. That is much of the reason I started blogging in the first place. Here are some fast and dirty thoughts about a stack recent books:

  In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
I listened to the audiobook version of this and found it absolutely gripping. Listening to a book often slows down my processing and allows me to reflect on structure, and I think this was a particularly good book to do that with. There is no question from the start of the books about who did the murdering and who was murdered–but how exactly did it go down and why? These points don’t come together until about three-quarters of the way through when we have really solid portraits of all involved. I believe Capote is to be credited/blamed with our pop culture fascination with the killer’s mind. He sold it so well.

5/5, library audiobook

The Overstory by Richard Powers

I loved, loved this book. It starts with a series of short-story-like chapters, each establishing a character and his or her background. In each chapter/story there is a tree: a chestnut, mulberry, redwood, ash, beech, oak. Then Powers expands the structure. He takes the last of the characters, a college student who accidentally electrocutes herself but comes back from this near-death experience with a sense of a mission that propels her out of college, on the road where she meets another of the characters….and slowly all are knitted together in an overarching story about a group of people’s quest to save the forests. What’s remarkable about this book is not only the way Powers connects each of these characters and their stories together into a meaningful plot, but also the way he smoothly integrates research and science on trees, forests, and other species. This book could have come off as a fragmentary, cheesy eco-novel, but instead it becomes  a symphony that makes you weep for the beauty of the forests and weep for our ignorant, casual destruction of such riches for such mostly shallow purposes.

5/5, library copy

Goodbye to a River by John Graves

John Graves heard in the late 50s that plans were underfoot to put 13 dams on a single 250 mile stretch of the Brazos river in West Texas, an area of the country he had a nostalgic attachment to.  So he decided to take a meandering canoe trip down the then still-wild stretch of the river. He wrote this memoir about it. He interlaces observations about the natural world, the weather, hunting, and his traveling companion, a dog, with anecdotes about the history in this stretch of river which was once a hot spot for clashes between westward pushing pioneers and the native population, particularly the formidable Comanche. Along with these tales are stories about homesteader rivalries and character descriptions of some of the old-timers and oddballs he meets on the river. I really liked Graves’ awareness, even back in 1960, of all the natural glory that was being lost and wasted both by the dam proposals and increased human activity in general. But some of the anecdotes were more tedious than illuminating, and he used way too many ellipses, which really affected how I read the memoir. This book got a lot of attention in its day, and I believe only 3 or so of the dam projects were actually built as a result.

3/5, personal copy

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

I have been curious about this book for so long and honestly, I don’t know what the fuss is. Would someone please explain? It’s a book about privileged  people who don’t do very much besides drink and vacillate between delight and disapproval of each other, religion, love, and change. Could it be all the vague–or even bold–suggestions of homosexuality of many of the characters that have garnered such praises? I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t find it as brilliant as I expected either. I wonder if I’d listened to this narrated by a really great voice actor if I’d have appreciated it more. I read this one as part of my 2018 TBR Pile Challenge books.

3/5, personal copy

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

I was fascinated by this multigenerational story of Korean immigrants to Japan, before, during, and after the war, who end up carving out a successful business niche in Japanese society running pachinko parlors. Before starting, I knew a bit about how poorly Koreans have been treated by the Japanese. Even after generations, most descendants of Korean-born immigrants still have to renew their papers to stay in Japan, their country of birth and cultural identification. This book gave me characters and a story to hang this general knowledge on, even if it was fiction. It was a very different take on Japan than I’d ever read. Highly recommend this if you enjoy family sagas, immigrant stories, and stories set in Japan.

5/5, personal copy

Five Audiobooks

I’ve certainly been reading, if not blogging. Recently, I’ve increased my page count by using my library’s great little app called Libby to listen to audiobooks while I commute. Here are some  thoughts on recent ear reads:

The Plant Messiah by Carlos Magdalena

Magdalena, a native of Andalusia, Spain, is a horticulturist at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in England. He is absolutely bat-shit crazy in love with plants and believes we all should be, too. His mission is to conserve as many species as possible, and has taken it as a personal challenge to figure out how to propagate those species deemed “impossible.” The book is part autobiography (he had an interesting upbringing and irregular trajectory to his current career), part travelogue, and part botany crash course. It’s a surprisingly uplifting read, despite also describing how dreadfully wrecked by human indifference and ignorance so many of our ecosystems are. 5/5

The Maze at Windemere by Gregory Blake Smith

This reminded me of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, but unfortunately, it’s not as successful. Five stories are layered throughout the book, each at a different point in history, but all set in Newport, R.I. at the site of (or what will be the location of) a grand estate called Windermere. In the present of 2011, a hot tennis pro woos Windermere’s wealthy heiress, who suffers from cerebral palsy and bipolar depression–it’s an unlikely pairing at best–and the only story told in the third person. All the others are narrated in the first person and they include an aging fin-de-sieclè homosexual social climber trying to secure his social position and secret by marrying a wealthy widow;  a young Henry James keeping a diary about a lovely young woman he’s fascinated by; a creepy, anti-Semitic British officer in the 1700s who becomes obsessed with seducing a young Jewish woman; and a recently orphaned Puritan teenager who finds the mettle and ingenuity to secure herself a promising future. All the stories are about love, sexual attraction/seduction, and often, deception. I liked listening to this as an audiobook because each story had its own narrator and I’m sure it added drama to how I envisioned each story. I also liked the layering of the stories throughout time and the book itself, but I don’t think the stories resolved well individually or as a complete work–which really let me down. 3/5

The Nix by Nathan Hill

This was a gigantic book to listen to on audio–about 23 hours worth. It was also a super entertaining and often piercing satire of American culture and politics. Samuel, a bored young English professor, was abandoned by his mother as a boy and spends most of his days dealing with irritatingly self-entitled students and playing video games instead of writing his overdue book manuscript. When his mom resurfaces in the nightly news as an unlikely political lightning rod after hurling a handful of rocks at a politician, Samuel is strong-armed by his editor into reuniting with her and writing a sensationalist exposé instead of that academic manuscript. It’s a wild, sprawling ride through Samuel’s story, his mom’s back story, video game culture, and lots of political and social history that Hill slashes to tatters with his sharp observations and wit. I was utterly entertained and at the same time, I really wish his editor had reined him in a tad. 4/5

Commonwealth by Anne Patchett

I listened to this a while ago, and my first impressions are quite blurred now. Two couples who are friends divorce, and two of those divorcées marry each other, thus blending the children of both families into one. The story introduces us to the children as adults and how their lives have been affected not only by this family shuffle, but also by the death of one of the children one summer day . I enjoyed the book thoroughly — and it is the only book I’ve read by Patchett except Bel Canto, which I also enjoyed.  But recently, one of my students who is a nurse pointed out two crucial errors Patchett makes with the medical events in the book. It’s rather messed up my impression of both stories — and my interest in reading more Patchett. Still, 4/5

L’appart by David Lebovitz

If you like food blogs, you probably already know David Lebovitz because he practically invented the food blog. This book recalls his travails buying and renovating his Paris apartment. I’m not quite done listening to it, but I am amazed by how many bad choices and dodgy deals David made and survived for le remodel. Every time his contractor says “Pas de problem, David,” I want to scream, C’est un grande fucking problem, Daveed! Don’t do it! This says a lot about how the book is written — David really winds the reader up over and over. You can hear the Jaws theme booming every couple of paragraphs as some fanged real estate gets ready to double deal him or his contractor sends him on a wild goose chase all over Paris for a nonexistant style of doorknob. It’s written with big-D drama for sure, but it’s strangely less stressful than listening to current politics on NPR while driving in Bay Area traffic, so I am looking forward to finding out how he finally gets the job done.

 

 

Pulitzer 1965: The Keepers of the House

I’d say that 1965 was a very good year for the Pulitzer prize in literature. It was awarded to Shirley Ann Grau for The Keepers of the House,  a morally complex novel about racism, family, and gender set in the deep south.

Abigail Howland is the seventh generation heir to the Howland family estate in rural Alabama. Her great-great-great-great grandfather established the farm in 1815, and by the time Abigail inherits from her grandfather, William, the Howlands are deeply respected members of the state and county, not in the least because they own most of it.

William’s story is fascinating — his wife dies and he lives alone until he meets a young black woman, Margaret, who becomes his housekeeper and also bears him five children. Everybody in the town/county seem to know about his children, but as has been done for generations, they turn a blind eye to his “woods colts.” The children, who are so light-skinned they can pass for white, are sent off to boarding schools at puberty, never to return. The eldest, Robert, is the same age as William’s white granddaughter, Abigail.

Shazam! The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

I feel like the world is divided into those who love comic books and those who don’t much care. Other than reading a few Archie and Josie and the Pussycats comics in my girl days, I was one of those who never much cared. It kind of surprises me, because I loved (and love) drawing and art. And while I can now appreciate some of the cheesy appeal of the genre, I have always preferred immersing myself in a novel and letting the author’s word spin my own unique images of the characters and action in my mind’s eye.

Perhaps my disinterest in comic books is why it took me over ten years and three tries to finally read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. Despite a complete lack of illustrations anywhere in its 636 pages, I can picture the Escapist, Luna Moth, and other creations of the two main characters, Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay, two Jewish cousins breaking into and developing the comic book genre in the early twentieth century.

Stories of sadness: Olive Kitteridge

There was a certain point in Olive Kitteridge when I was mentally adding it to my best-books-ever list. While it’s still a contender, it’s not quite lingering with me in the way those books do. But I don’t want to give the impression that Olive Kitteridge (henceforth OK) is disappointing or lacking in some way. It’s really brilliant, but also unrelentingly sad.

OK has an interesting construction. Is it a novel or a collection of short stories? Each chapter is a unique stand-alone story, but all the stories are about people in the same small Maine town. Olive herself appears in every story, but sometimes only as a mention. Other times, she is the main character of the chapter/story. To me the book reads more like a novel mainly because the stories begin in the past, but move forward in time. Also, there is progression and change in the characters, including Olive herself.

The first story introduces Olive through a story about her husband, Henry, and his unrequited love for one of his employees. By the end of the book, we have learned from various stories that Henry has had a stroke and has been left completely incapacitated in nursing home. Finally, in another story we learn that he has passed away. The book is a bit like being privy to all the best (and saddest) small town gossip.

In the middle of Middlemarch

I’m keeping up with one of my 2017 reading resolutions — that is, to read one book of  Middlemarch a month. Today I finished Book IV: Three Love Problems, which puts my bookmark right in the middle.

As I’ve been reading, I’ve thought about how I might or might not want to comment here in my blog. I think with Middlemarch, as with many famous and classic novels, the world doesn’t really need any more reviews, so this is more a scattershot of some thoughts and impressions. And they might only make sense if you’ve read Middlemarch — or even a part of it.

I find reading Middlemarch that I have to give my utmost concentration to the writing. There are sections of dialogue and storytelling when I can read along with ease, but when the narrator steps in, as she so often does, I have to really slow down and parse the train of thought. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about. It tempts me to describe the narrator’s style as turgid, but I think it’s really the opposite. Eliot’s use of language is so precise and dense with meaning that it often demands my full engagement to reckon the complexity of the idea she’s putting across — and/or it exceeds my ability. But when I do get it, most of the time, the narrator’s ideas seem to express human truth in a fresh way:

Funny Ladies: Pym & Semple

I finally, FINALLY read my first Barbara Pym novel — and it was her first novel, too: Some Tame Gazelle. Although Pym is a favorite of several of the bloggers I read, I first heard about her books when I was in college. A friend and her mother were addicted to her books, but I never picked one up. They liked the books, they told me, because they were these stories about quaint English village life, yet they were subtly funny.

Some Tame Gazelle proved to be all that. Belinda and Harriet are spinster sisters who share a house in a small village. Belinda is dowdy, timid, and self-doubting, yet has been resignedly in love with the local (married) archdeacon for more than thirty years. She knows it will never come to anything, so it is almost an indulgence. Her sister, however, is an overweight fashionista who fusses and fawns over each new curate and turns down regular marriage proposals from a devoted count. The loose plot surrounds the arrival of a new curate and the visit of a bishop. It’s not much really. The book is more character sketches of these sisters and their relationships.

Love & Serpents

One thing I love? This cover!

Last night I stayed up late to proofread an essay my son wrote for his sophomore English class. The topic was love, to define it in his own words and then spin off from there. The night before last, I stayed up late finishing The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. As I was reading my son’s sometimes humorous, sometimes touching, and sometimes bewildering thoughts on love, my thoughts on the novel became a lot clearer. It’s a novel about love, pure, simple, and complex.

My second Persephone, but #3: Someone at a Distance

I am sleepy today because last night I couldn’t put down Dorothy Whipple’s marvelous Someone at a Distance until I’d finished it. Why isn’t this writer better known and more widely read? To be sure, this novel has the flavor of the past; it lacks any contemporary literary tricks, and it’s subject, the failure of a marriage, is hardly edgy. But the depth of psychological understanding that Whipple brings to the characterizations feels modern and relatable. It’s been a good while since I whipped through a 400+ page book in two or three sittings because the story spun along effortlessly to a satisfying, but not really predictable, conclusion. Persephone has done so good in reissuing this novel.

An Odd Couple. Of books to review, that is.

I’ve been reading up a storm recently, tossing one book off after another.  But to catch up on my blogging, here is a double-duty post of two completely different books, one historical fiction and the other contemporary memoir.

The Miniaturist by Jesse Burton

This is a great example of a book I couldn’t put down, but didn’t think all that much of once I was finished. Set in seventeenth century Amsterdam, the teenage protagonist, Nella Oortman, arrives in the city full of optimism and nerves to begin her marriage to Johannes Brandt, a very successful, wealthy, and much older man. Her new household is unwelcoming, and while her new husband is kind to her, he is also disinterested in her sexually and romantically.