The Orphan Master’s Son (by Adam Johnson)

This is the book that won the 2013 Tournament of Books, so I had to read it to see if I liked it better than How Should a Person Be? or Building Stories. It also just won a Pulitzer, so I had high hopes.

My high hopes were completely exceeded. Holy shit. Read this book.

It is a fascinating, well-researched, often brutal (but still page-turning and entertaining) book about a boy who grows up in an orphanage in North Korea and then ends up having many adventures in the repressive North Korean regime. It's a wonderful subject for a book, and Johnson somehow even got to go to North Korea under Kim Jong Il for research. The interview after the book made me appreciate what he'd pulled off even more, as he mentioned some of the real-life inspirations for the novel.

I am interested in reading the articles that discuss the issues of race and appropriation; after all, this book is about Korean characters but was written by a white dude. (The issue was even more stark in Memoirs of a Geisha, which is also by a white guy, but in first person and from the point of view of a woman. I do love that book though, total guilty pleasure.) But apart from all of that, I recommend this book in a major, major way. It's amazing.

Liar (by Justine Larbalestier)

I gave a presentation at an academic conference last week about the unreliable narrator, and used the cover of Liar as my opening graphic. This reminded me that I really should read it!

A little history: I had followed the brouhaha about the whitewashed cover with interest (and very glad the publisher ultimately changed it), but the undertones in How to Ditch Your Fairy bugged me more and more as time went on, and I never saw them addressed by Larbalestier, so I was not inclined to read this one. But I do love an unreliable narrator and had heard nothing but good things about Liar (and about the importance of being unspoiled, mostly so someone else can't frame the book for you in the context of their own interpretation).

(Speaking of which, do yourself a favor and do not highlight the spoilered text below. Don't even read the next mostly vague paragraph. Click away until you've read Liar. Then come back.)

Okay okay, you're saying, but how is Liar? Reader, it is awesome. I love the character of Micah, in spite of all her unreliability. I love that we get a character who is biracial, who is exploring her sexuality and gender identity in ways that feel very authentic. I love the ambiguity of the ending, which Larbalestier said is designed to be read in two different ways. And I am dying to hear your take away, for those of you who have read it.

Mine is that (major, major spoilers, don't highlight if you haven't read): the werewolf thing is a metaphor for Micah's losing control, that the pills are antipsychotics, and that when she forgets to take them, she has a psychotic break. The farm is an asylum, the people on the farm are doctors, nurses, and fellow patients, and Micah killed Jordan (accidentally), Zach (for whatever reason), and most likely her teacher and her family. Larbalestier has said that only one of Jordan or Pete is real, but also that they are "twins" of each other. I interpreted Pete as a manifestation of Micah's psyche, that he was her guilty conscience in a way. I guess this could be tied to the death of Jordan (which, along with the onset of puberty, is probably where Micah's psychosis began) but I haven't quite worked that out yet. As much as I really root for Micah and would love her happy ending to be true, this is the explanation that works the best for me, although I might need to re-read it to solidify my ideas.

So if you love unreliable narrators and don't mind dark YA with some fantasy elements, this one is highly, highly recommended.

How Should a Person Be? (by Sheila Heti)

This was the love-it-or-hate-it book of the 2013 Tournament of Books (it knocked out Bring Up the Bodies in a big upset) and aych, the friend who leant it to me, hated it. Well I loved it. Loved it!

I understand why some people might not like it, might think it's too facile or McSweeney's or gimmicky, but I really loved it. It can be funny: "We live in an age of some really great blow-job artists. Every era has its art form. The 19th century, I know, was tops for the novel." It can be profound: "One thinks sometimes how much more alive such people would be if they suffered! If they can’t be happy, let them at least be unhappy—really, really unhappy for once, and then they might truly be human." 

I just loved Heti's writing, I thought it was original and energetic. If it came down to this or Building Stories in my own personal 2013 Tournament of Books, I might pick this one too. (But I wouldn't expect anyone to agree with me.)

Bring Up the Bodies (by Hillary Mantel)

A little late for the Tournament of Books, but I just finished the sequel to Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies. This one essentially covers the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn from Thomas Cromwell's point of view, with Mantel's characteristic attention to dialogue, detail, and metaphor, and with Cromwell being as inscrutable and ambiguous as ever.

I would not have read it if someone hadn't told me that Mantel fixed the pronoun thing that drove me so crazy with Wolf Hall, and she did! There are a few awkward "he, Cromwell" constructions, but it's better than "he" just floating around by itself in the confusing way that it did in Wolf Hall. So this book is an easier read for sure.

It's also just as gripping as Wolf Hall if not more so, since we know Anne Boleyn is doomed, and we're waiting to see how it happens. Mantel does ascribe a strange motive to Cromwell (which is that he's getting revenge on five men specifically for a play they were in years ago) which apparently does not square with history.  I also feel that whole section of the trial and arrests and so forth is somewhat rushed, and I don't get a clear sense of the characters of some of the men. (That's probably my fault for not being aware of their names beforehand, as I'm sure they're mentioned throughout in nicely subtle dramatically ironic style.)

Mantel doesn't really take sides on whether Anne Boleyn was guilty or not, which I think is done well. (I've read some complaints from the pro-Anne contingent, but I think Anne is nicely ambiguous and not unsympathetic here.) As usual, this left me wanting to re-read Wives of Henry VIII, but this time I am also eagerly anticipating the third book in the trilogy. Bring on Jane Seymour! Bring on Anna of Cleves!

Redshirts (by John Scalzi)

Redshirts is a charming sci-fi novel that focuses on the "redshirts" on an Enterprise-like vessel who realize that a disproportionate number of them die, and that there seem to be strange rules governing their world. Love John, love the concept of the novel, love the sense of fun and humor throughout the book.  I'm going to throw out a couple of issues I had with it though.

First of all, a lot of the characters sound like prototypical Scalzi characters, and many of them use his verbal tics. (One character says something like "I am. I so very am." that I feel like is as classic Scalzi as you can get.) As a result, they're not very well differentiated. (Could be at least partly on purpose, but given the meta twists at the end, I think the characters could have had a little more depth to them, even if it was very broad or cliche.)

Second issue: It feels like this book could have used more sentence-level editing. It has a loose, fun style that you wouldn't want to edit away, but couldn't someone go through and fix the dialogue tags? Every single piece of dialogue doesn't need a "he said" or "she said" after it, and that is an easy editorial fix.

I was also confused about one of the twists. The rule seems to be that in the Intrepid's timeline, the show Chronicles of the Intrepid doesn't exist. So they go back in time using Intrepid timeline rules to 2012--but shouldn't that be the 2012 within the world of the show? The show shouldn't exist there either! So how does it? (I guess that can be explained by the final meta twist, but it bugged me the whole time I was reading that section, even if I did love how that whole 2012 bit played out.)

And I also think Jenkins just laying out the rules of the world was a little too Jenkins ex machina for me. I would have loved if it took a little more time to figure it out, or if we figured out how Jenkins figured it out, since it seems impossible for him to have the level of knowledge he did about, say, Star Trek. Maybe I was reading too fast and missed it, or I don't quite understand the rules of the world.

All of this is not to say that I give the novel anything other than a thumbs up--it is really fun and fast to read and breezy and all that good stuff. But a good edit would have made it even better, in my  humble opinion.

Homer & Langley (by E.L. Doctorow)

We chose this book for our book group, and being a huge fan of Ragtime, and interested in the Collyer brothers story, I was excited to read it!

It's an incredibly fast read (200 pages, it took me no more than a couple of hours) and a fascinating story. The Collyer brothers were basically the male versions of Big and Little Edie, eccentric real-life mega-hoarders who were ultimately killed in a way I won't spoil, but it seems fairly accurate in the book. The accuracy in the way the deaths were handled is slightly surprising because the book takes a lot of liberties with most other real-life facts, moving the action forward in time by a couple of decades, switching the birth order around, and having the brothers encounter various characters representing historical time periods--Japanese citizens placed in internment camps, nuns killed in El Salvador, and pot-smoking free-love hippies, to name a few.

The book group discussion nailed the problems with this pretty well: it often feels contrived and Forrest Gump-esque, and it's also unnecessary when the real-life story is so fascinating. (Two other books about the brothers, Ghosty Men and My Brother's Keeper, stay closer to the actual history.) I feel like what Doctorow manages to pull off in Ragtime (a real cross-section of Americana) is what he was going for with the history here, but the reader can really see the strings this time, and I would have rather spent more time on the internal lives of the brothers.

I did really enjoy the characters, and found them sympathetic and believable. Loved Homer as an unreliable narrator. Loved Langley's project of collecting and cataloguing newspapers in his attempt to make a newspaper that would be accurate no matter when a person read it. Loved the haunting ending. But I also see the validity in the critiques above.

So I guess my review is mixed, but overall I'd give it a thumbs up. I guess the thing I liked the most about it is its mood: the story of eccentricity gone to the extreme reminded me of Grey Gardens, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Remainder, and Martin Dressler all at once.  Possibly those four (one movie, three books) are all superior works though.

Stranger Here (by Jen Larsen)

I just finished reading Stranger Here for the third time, so I guess I should write about it! (The first time was in rough draft form, the second was a lightning-fast read where I was mostly noticing what was added, cut, and changed, and of course skimming for my name. Then the third time I read it for real.) It's hard to know what to say about a book that I am a character in. (I have "bosoms" and big eyes and I wink saucily, so you know, it's a fairly true-to-life representation.) Is it biased if I say that it's a really really good book?

Jen writes about her weight-loss surgery and about how becoming thin didn't magically fix her life. It's definitely not a formulaic memoir, and it's written in her signature amazing style, honed by years of brilliant blog writing. People gave it four stars, it sold out its first print run, it seems like everyone who's reading it loves it, even those who don't know Jen personally. So it's not just me, is what I'm saying here.

As for the whole me-as-character thing, I remember many of the incidents and conversations in the book vividly and I think she captured them well. I still remember the meal at the Greek restaurant that she mentions, where I tried Greek yogurt with honey for the first time, or the first day she moved to San Francisco, when we were young and silly and rode those carts around the supermarket. I think one of the best qualities of our friendship and one of the reasons it endures is that we aren't judgmental of each other, and I think that came across in the end.

Read the book!

American Pastoral (by Phillip Roth)

I really enjoyed this one. Broadly, it's a look at the culture changes of the 1960s through the lens of people in positions of privilege in the 1950s--which is, the people who have something to lose. Through the main character, Swede Levov, we see the disintegration of the American dream. Yes, the characters are a little extreme and borderline caricatures at times, but this is easily explained by the fact that the whole story is a projection of the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, who has his own agenda. (I can see it not working for people, though; the characters aren't exactly sympathetic.)

I have not loved Roth in the past but I thought this one was compelling and beautifully written. As an exploration of all that underlies and undermines the American dream, it works beautifully. Just the dinner party at the end, when everything the Swede thinks he knows starts to unravel, is worth the price of admission. A worthy entry into the Time 100 canon.

"This is how successful people live. They're good citizens. They feel lucky. They feel grateful. God is smiling down on them. There are problems, they adjust. And then everything changes and it becomes impossible. Nothing is smiling down on anybody. And who can adjust then? Here is someone not set up for life's working out poorly, let alone for the impossible. But who is set up for the impossible that is going to happen? Who is set up for tragedy and the incomprehensibility of suffering? Nobody. The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy--that is every man's tragedy." (p. 86)

Building Stories (by Chris Ware)

By far the best of the tournament books I've read so far, even though I've enjoyed all of them. But this book, a graphic novel, is incredible, and it's the first one that feels, to me, like a genuine literary achievement.

The hook of Building Stories is that it comes in a large board-game-sized box full of newspapers, comic books, pamphlets, even a game board. The pieces can be read in any order, and they tell the story of the inhabitants of a certain apartment building. (So the reading experience, where you learn some sketchy outlines and then fill in the blanks as you go, means you're building the stories. And it's also stories about a building. Double meaning! I see what you did there, Chris Ware.) This also means your experience of reading it will never quite match up with anyone else's, since whatever you start with informs the rest of your reading experience. After I opened the box, I grabbed one piece and aych grabbed another one, and we both had two totally different entry points. (She wanted to find out about one key event in the protagonist's life; I wanted to find out what happened to the bee.) Once you finish, you will immediately want to start over again from the beginning to catch everything you missed.

The main character is a woman with a disability (handled wonderfully) and body image issues and depression (ditto) who is not quite likeable, but somehow sympathetic in her utter realness. I am actually stunned that Chris Ware is a dude, because this female character is so complex and authentic, and she is definitely the main focus of the book. Well, her and the bee.

I've heard great things about The Round House, but will not be surprised if Building Stories makes it almost to the end of the tournament along with that one. The only downside is that it's expensive, and it doesn't really lend itself to Kindle or library lending. I've already got three people in line to read mine. Five stars!

The Recognitions (by William Gaddis)

I've been reading The Recognitions since at least last August, so I am thrilled to cross it off my list, even if the introduction does have this wisdom to impart: "A few critics confessed they could not reach the novel's conclusion except by skipping. Well, how many have actually arrived at the last page of Proust or completed Finnegans Wake? What does it mean to finish Moby-Dick, anyway? Do not begin this book with any hope of that. This is a book you are meant to befriend. It will be your lifelong companion. You will end only to begin again."

I love that quote but am not sure if The Recognitions is a book that I long to re-read. I'm sure it would be much clearer the second time around, and it is a rich, dense book. But I would put, say, Ulysses, War and Peace, Moby-Dick, Infinite Jest, and parts of Finnegans Wake all on my "tomes to re-read" list before this one, I think. But that is just personal preference.

It's a really interesting (and difficult) novel. There are lots of main characters who are often being confused with or mistaken for each other, mostly by the characters, but I think sometimes by the reader (since Gaddis most often does not name people, and expects us to pick up their identities based on speech patterns, context, and other clues.) People also change names, go by different names, assign other people nicknames. This all works perfectly thematically, as many of the characters are forgers or counterfeiters or masters of disguise. In parts, the novel is darkly comic, but overall it's fairly slow going to make sure you understand what's happening, and most of the characters are unsympathetic, a few of them in funny ways (like Otto, who is constantly obsessed with what effect he's having on other people) and most of them in frustrating ways (like Wyatt, who seemingly never manages to finish a sentence). 

There are also tons of allusions (I enjoyed all the ones to "Prufrock" and "The Wasteland" in particular) and reading it is therefore a somewhat Joycean experience. I referred to the annotations constantly, since I really do think they enhance the text. But phew! Not sure if the effort-to-reward calculus was in my favor here. I will have to sit with this one for a bit. 


Since the book is almost 1000 pages, here are two quotes for the price of one. One wise, one melancholy.

"Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way? But we do, everyone treats anyone that way, saying I have had these defeats and disappointments, but you whom I encounter you know what you will say, moving, in accord with your nature which is here in bloom, but I do not yet understand, I, for myself, do not yet understand. Since I my problems are not yours therefore you must have none, but live alone inside yourself, therefore here are my problems and we shall share them." (p. 758)


"He came back to his room from early Mass, where he had also got a look at the gigantic organ and confirmed his arrangement to play it later in the morning, and also... sought the intervention of that saint still to be rung in that morning on behalf of three souls equally dear, and equally beautiful. And it was those he thought of, and not the work he thought of, as he stood alone in his room and looked at the work, which was all that was left." (p. 955)

Only four books to go!

Sisterhood Everlasting (by Ann Brashares)

The fifth Traveling Pants book! I borrowed a friend's Kindle, and it is a gold mine. (She's the one who had Where'd You Go, Bernadette, along with a bunch of other books I've been wanting to read.) I'd heard this one was "depressing" so I figured someone probably died at the end. I have thoughts about that, but I will spoiler them.

So someone doesn't die at the end, but really towards the beginning, and everyone else is cast into these depths of grief that go on and on and on and on. I had to finish the book in one night because I couldn't stand to close the book when everyone was so sad. And they are sad for the vast majority of the book. So yes, depressing. Everyone in this book needed a therapist. (Carma is an actress, doesn't she have one on speed-dial?)

Other problems: it was very obvious that Tibby had a terminal illness, but none of the characters figure it out until the end of the book. Also apparently she was ravaged by disease, but her body looked normal when they went to identify it? The whole magical farmhouse in Pennsylvania with cottages for all her friends was fairly ridiculous. And I loved Bailey, but there's this weird "motherhood is the answer!" theme by the end of the book that seemed a little one-note.

The men: Eric was a saint for putting up with how Bridget treated him throughout this entire book. I can't believe there was a happy ending there. Carmen's boyfriend Jones has no redeeming qualities at all, so there's no tension there whatsoever. The Lena and Kostos story is of course old hat at this point, but it still totally got me. It was my fave. 


All that being said, it's still a pants book, which made me automatically invested in the characters and their stories. I completely felt for them, and cried at many points. Ultimately I'm glad I read it, "depressing"ness and all.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (by Maria Semple)

So I am (informally, because god knows I don't need another reading project) trying to read some of the 2013 Tournament of Books books. Several of them were on my to-read list anyway, because I've been hearing a lot about them.

This is a fun, quirky satire of Seattle's privileged class by one of the writers of Arrested Development. It's actually probably a spoiler to call it fun, since it wouldn't be so fun if Bernadette turned out to be dead, for example. It's somewhat epistolary, in that it's made up of a variety of letters, emails, memos, and whatnot, with some connective material supplied by our quasi-narrator, Bernadette's daughter Bee.

The characters are very well drawn, though I think there are some character shifts towards the end that feel a little implausible. For instance, evil Audrey Griffin's sudden change of heart about everything, or even Bernadette herself. I loved the emails between Bernadette and her virtual personal assistant. I loved all the Portlandia-esque loving satire of Seattle itself, especially in terms of the politics at Galer Street School. I found Bee very sympathetic. Overall this is a fast, fun read that I would recommend.

As a side note, this is the third of the Tournament of Books novels (along with Beautiful Ruins and Gone Girl) that I've found to be more fast and breezy, rather than hefty and "literary." Maybe it's just by comparison with The Recognitions, which is my other current book and is doorstopily, densely literary. This is not to dismiss their merit, because I think they're all good books, but just an observation.

The Woman Who Died a Lot (by Jasper Fforde)

As soon as I saw someone on Twitter mention that there was a new Thursday Next book, I immediately clicked "download" on my Kindle. (I almost never am willing to pay the "hardcover" Kindle price, but for Thursday, I will make an exception.) I love this series so much.

I really love the mindworm plotline (which was cleverly done here, as usual--Fforde is always clever) and I love Thursday's kids Friday and Tuesday, and all plotlines involving Friday and time travel, and Tuesday and her genius. I enjoy Thursday's love/hate relationship with Phoebe Smalls and the idea of the Day Players. I think Aornis Hades is a way better antagonist than Jack Schitt, but I guess we get them both here. I love Thursday as a character and she and Landen as a couple, I think it's a really good entry in the series, and I recommend the whole series to any book nerds out there.

This one ends on a semi-cliffhanger involving (character names spoilered) Pickwick and probably Jenny that made me really interested in the next book. I kind of feel like this one is better than the last one, and the next one will be even better. (I still adore First Among Sequels and think it would be hard to top that one.)

YAY FFORDE!

(I should get around to finishing Shades of Grey someday, shouldn't I?)

I’m Dying Up Here (by William Knoedelseder)

Another book that I read in one giant gulp, this one about standup in the 70s. Makes a nice companion piece to Mark Maron's recent interview with Budd Friedman, the owner of the Improv.  (I'm told I should also listen to the Jimmie Walker interview. And the Robin Williams ones, if they're still available.)

The book is fascinating, if a little biased--the author is BFFs with Richard Lewis, and it shows; he also clearly got a lot of help from Tom Dessen, a comic I have never heard of but who plays a big role in this book (and played a very important role in the comics strike). There are a lot of pages dedicated to the strike of the Comedy Store, which is in some ways the least interesting part, and the book ends almost immediately after the strike is settled. I wanted a slightly different focus, a slightly longer epilogue, a little more detail. But overall, a really interesting read for comedy fans!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (by Stephen Chbosky)

A Christmas gift that I read over the course of an evening, which I always find somehow satisfying.

I definitely understand some of the complaints that I read about this book--that the character of Charlie is too naive, that his friendship with Patrick and Sam is unrealistic, that he's quite popular for someone supposedly unpopular, that his life touches on basically every ABC afterschool special adolescent trauma imaginable. But I really didn't think about any of that as I was reading it.

Instead, I connected Charlie to Sam Weir in Freaks and Geeks, a character that really was naive, rather than the typical uber-sophisticated adolescent. I really enjoyed the character's voice and was invested in his journey and the rest of the novel's characters. And I enjoyed that some of the themes and ideas are sophisticated enough to discuss in an adult book group (I know of one that's discussing it next week).

I don't really have anything profound to add beyond the fact that I liked it and am in a way still digesting it.

Year-End Book Wrapup '12

I do so love a good year-end book wrapup! So let's get to it, shall we?

This year, I read 44 books, 12 of which were by women. (I would feel more imbalanced about this, except that 24 of them were for the Time 100 list, and all 24 were by men, because books by men are all I have left. Eight of those 24 were part of the 12-novel cycle A Dance to the Music of Time.)

I really really wanted to finish the Time 100 list this year, and really worked hard at it, but I started teaching again in the fall, and it became quite difficult to balance all my responsibilities toward the end of the year. At this moment I am 75% of the way through The Recognitions and after that, I think I have four more books to go. If the fates allow, I should be able to declare triumph on this project (and start my next project) before the year is through!

Top five books of the year:

1. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenedies
I debated among my current top three, but ultimately it was the beauty of Eugenedies's prose that put this over the top. I love novels that create a quietly melancholy mood, and this one is just perfection.

2. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
I decided to teach this novel next semester, which should be more fun than Frankenstein this semester. (The students claimed to enjoy it, but it was kind of a snore, and there was a lot of plagiarism since it's such well-trod territory.) This is such a vibrant, all-American book. I'm excited to re-read it. 

3. Money by Martin Amis
Man, what an awesome book this was. Dark and weird and fucked up and meta and cool. I would have loved to read more Martin Amis this year to see if he's always this good.

4. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth
An end-of-the-year read that I admired more than flat-out enjoyed, but I admired it a lot, so here it is. Incidentally, the top four of this list is all Time 100 novels. Whoever put together that list did a terrific job. It's such an amazing list.

5. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
I've actually seen this book show up on quite a number of year-end best-of lists. I think most people already know if John Green is their jam, and if so, have already read this. It is really good.

Honorable mentions: The Confessions of Nat Turner, Deliverance, Ready Player One, Beautiful Ruins, The Sheltering Sky, Wolf Hall, and parts of A Dance to the Music of Time.

Bottom five books of the year:

1. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
Not here because it's a poorly written book (far from it) but here because it is the one book this year that truly bored me to sobs.

2. The Charm Bracelet by Melissa Hill
And now I'm realizing that I really didn't read anything all that bad this year, at least not compared to years past. This is not in the least offensively bad, it's just kind of blah. Hooray?

3. The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
Sorry, but those dialogue tags alone qualify it for a spot on the list. I think it was basically okay though. Just didn't really do it for me.

4. Top of the Rock by Warren Littlefield
Again, not terrible, and I'm overall glad I read it, since several of the oral histories were fascinating. But it could have been so much more.

5. The boring parts of A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
I finished one book and went straight into the next, and I read twelve of these in a row, so it's difficult for me to keep these straight. The ending went a little off the rails and there were a couple of very boring wartime volumes. But overall I have a lot of affection for this series, as I spent many months with one or the other of its volumes in my pocket at all times. 

Beautiful Ruins (by Jess Walter)

Came very highly recommended, both by friends and by end-of-the-year booklists. I was about 75% done with it and was thinking, wow, it's kind of amazing that this book is being treated as literary fiction. You would think it would be dismissed as "chicklit" since it is so easy to read and written by a woman and centers around a female character and her romantic life.

Except then I found out Jess Walter is a dude. Well, that explains that.

Setting aside the question of whether the book would have gotten the same reception if Walter was a woman, which I doubt, it is an engrossing and relatively quick read. It begins with the arrival of a dying American actress in a remote Italian town in the 60s, and moves back and forth through time to the present day, when we see how the characters' lives have been affected by the events of decades ago. The characters are great, the story is interesting, the incorporation of real Old Hollywood is clever, the prose is smooth and assured, and the ending is satisfying. What more can you ask for?

I think it's probably a little overpraised (I feel like I've seen it praised everywhere), but that doesn't mean it didn't get a big thumbs up from me.

The Charm Bracelet (by Melissa Hill)

My penultimate book of the year was this throwaway romantic comedy fluff. As readable as it is, it is sadly not very good fluff.

It's about a (very likeable) single mom named Holly who finds a charm bracelet in the vintage store she manages and is trying to get it back to its owner. In the meantime, it's about a guy named Greg who quits his Wall Street job to try and make it as a photographer and follow his dreams, and his girlfriend is clearly money-obsessed and unhappy about his career change. It's obvious where this is going from the get-go (but then, romantic comedies so often are). However, here were some of my issues.

1. Characters don't use contractions in dialogue half the time. They all talk like Data from Star Trek: TNG.  This is incredibly distracting.

2. Melissa Hill must be British, because even though her novel is set in New York and all her characters are from New York, they say things like "throw a spanner in the works" and "this thing is different to that other thing."

3. Speaking of New York, the New York Times is a big plot point, but all the characters who work there call it the "NYT" (in spoken dialogue) instead of the "Times." I doubt it.   (Also, she doesn't know how the crossword works, as the clues aren't worded correctly. As someone who does the crossword every week, this annoyed me.)

4. Greg isn't very sympathetic. He doesn't do any work on his "photography career" before quitting his job, but somehow gets handed assignments by the "NYT" almost immediately. I sympathized with his bitch girlfriend, and agreed with her that he should have mentioned that she'd be paying the mortgage for a while before he quit his job.

5. The ending is a totally ridiculous cheat. I will spoiler it: Greg's mom, who throughout the book thanks to flashbacks we believe has died of cancer, turns out at the very end to somehow be miraculously alive and the "treatment is working" so it's implied that she's not going to die after all. Earlier in the book she was in hospice care! In hospice! Plus, all these major things are happening and Greg sees his father to discuss his proposal to Bitch Girlfriend, and his mother's jewelry, and in every single conversation they discuss Greg's mother as if she's dead and they can't possibly discuss any of this with her.  In hindsight, this makes absolutely no sense.

Anyway, my list of issues notwithstanding, this book isn't terrible. Holly is likeable and the premise is cute (even if there are a ton of red herrings that go nowhere. Apart from the contractions and the Britishisms, the writing is totally fine. I just wouldn't actually recommend it.

Every Day (by David Levithan)

Read this on the plane on the flight back from Singapore with Ian reading over my shoulder. The premise is that the narrator is a 16-year-old person named A. who wakes up each day in a different body. (Rather Quantum Leap-esque.) S/he then falls in love with Rhiannon, the girlfriend of one of the people whose bodies s/he inhabits.

This was a neat premise and a fun read, though I had some criticisms. A lot of the individual "leaps" got a little mini-PSA (transgender kids deserve understanding! depression is a sickness! gay kids are just the same!) and the love story/attraction seemed a little sudden. The love story also starts at the very beginning of the novel, and I kind of wish we'd had a little more establishing of the "rules" of A's world before diving into the love story. Also, I feel obligated to mention a hint of fat-phobia in one of the vignettes.


But ultimately the book was very enjoyable. I liked the ending, though it did remove some agency from Rhiannon, which I did not like. Basically don't think about this one too hard, and you'll enjoy the read. Sounds like I'm damning with faint praise, but it's definitely enjoyable YA. Maybe not worthy of all of Entertainment Weekly's gushing, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Call It Sleep (by Henry Roth)

Maybe not the Great American Novel, but certainly a great American novel. It's about the Jewish immigrant experience, which definitely qualifies as a great American theme. And it's just beautifully written.

Roth does amazing things with language. He makes the English spoken by the multiingual immigrants very broken and Brooklynese, but the at-home tongue of the protagonist's family, which is Yiddish, lyrical and fluid. It's the story of a young boy's coming of age. It's a very Oedipal family triangle, which is to say, he's very close to his mother and his father is tyrannical and unsympathetic.

(The preface suggests the novel is just like James Joyce because the main character is clearly destined to be an artist. I see zero textual evidence for this reading, but that doesn't mean Joyce isn't evoked in other ways, such as the use of stream-of-consciousness and the polyglot language.)

I actually haven't loved many of the Jewish-American writers on the Time 100 list; I don't love Phillip Roth, and Saul Bellow bores me to tears. But this novel--which is the only one Roth ever wrote, drawn from his own experience--I loved. 

Definitely a classic, definitely holds up, and very glad I read it.

Top of the Rock (by Warren Littlefield)

It's told in an oral history style, like the awesome SNL book Live from New York, which I really wish they'd re-release with an update on the years since the book came out. This would have been awesome if it had focused on a more in-depth oral history of each of the shows that was part of Must-See TV.  But instead it focuses more on the behind-the-scenes of Littlefield himself, and why he is awesome, and why his firing was unjust, which, nobody really cares, Warren Littlefield.

Plus, there are all these slams on post-Littlefield NBC which, certainly Jeff Zucker was a disaster and the whole Jay Leno thing, but the idea that NBC has stopped producing quality comedy when they have Parks and Rec and Community, and the first few seasons of The Office, is just silly.  There's also some off-putting slams against Big Bang Theory, referring to it as "nerds trying to bang a slut" or something. I don't even watch the show, but that description is just misogynist and gross. (I don't think it was Littlefield who said it, but he definitely agreed with the supposed "low quality" of ABC sitcoms.)

Really, this should have been a book entirely about Friends or Seinfeld or ER. That book would have been awesome.

The Confessions of Nat Turner (by William Styron)

This one was a little complicated for me. First off, it is a really really good book. Well written, gripping, a fascinating story, interestingly structured, and definitely not what I was expecting, which was an unrelenting and grim look at the abuses of slavery. I mean, Styron doesn't gloss over anything, but his take is fresh and different, and not without humor or complexity. He does give Nat, a slave, a very elevated and formal diction throughout, but I interpreted it as capturing the complexity of his thoughts, rather than a literal representation of his education. And it feels well-researched and authentic. 
 
However, as Styron's afterword discusses, it does seem fairly presumptuous that this book was written at all--that Styron is assuming the voice of Nat Turner, an important figure in African-American history, and inventing his motives. Styron is very defensive in the afterword as well, and name dropping his friend "Jimmy Baldwin" left and right, which is very "but one of my best friends is black!" of him. I really think he had good intentions and maybe he's right that the initial wave of African-American criticism about the book isn't or wasn't entirely fair. But I'd like to read current African-American criticism on the book. I trust black voices on the black experience more than Styron's, fair or not.

But it is a really good book anyway.

Ragtime (by E.L. Doctorow)

Ragtime! I saw the musical years ago, but really don't have much recollection of it at all, so I wasn't sure what to expect from the book. But it's so terrific! It's very easy to read, but so complex. It's relatively short (336 pages) but it's incredibly broad in scope, covering turn-of-the-century America from immigrants in tenements to J.P. Morgan in his fancy Manhattan mansion. And it's just enjoyable to read. I mean, it's funny and sometimes bawdy and full of crazy details.

Doctorow writes about three families. One comprises characters known only as Father, Mother, Mother's Younger Brother, etc.; the second is a the family of a man named Coalhouse Walker, Jr. whose fate touches on the black experience in America; the third is a family of Jewish immigrants in the slums. Their fates intertwine with a cast of historical characters whose plotlines are taken from history, but they are brought so vividly to life. (Did you know J.P. Morgan thought he was a reincarnated Egyptian god and spent a night in one of the Great Pyramids? Because I sure didn't.) Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit, Robert Peary, Henry Ford, and tons of others. The three families meet and interact with these characters and each other, and ultimately they come to represent the melting pot of America. (But not in a boring, homeworky way.)

I feel like this would be an amazing novel to teach. And not to get all four-days-before-the-election political or anything, but there is so much in here about the poor being exploited by the wealthy that reminded me of the importance of unions and the evils of certain rich people who only care about the rich getting richer and about business success, and not about making the American dream accessible to everyone. Relevant, fun, entertaining, amazing. A true classic. Read it.

Exactly six minutes after the car had rolled down the ramp an identical car appeared at the top of the ramp, stood for a moment pointed at the cold early morning sun, then rolled down and crashed into the rear of the first one. Henry Ford had once been an ordinary automobile manufacturer. Now he experienced an ecstasy greater and more intense than that vouchsafed to any American before him, not excepting Thomas Jefferson. He had caused a machine to replicate itself endlessly. His executives and managers and assistants crowded around him to shake his hand. Tears were in their eyes. He allotted sixty seconds on his pocket watch for a display of sentiment. Then he sent everyone back to work.

Gone Girl (by Gillian Flynn)

Entertainment Weekly's incessant raves for this book, along with my friend Sony's endorsement that this was a good airplane read, finally wore me down. I got this on my Kindle for reading on vacation, and I spent a day when the power was out basically just reading it.

The plot: Nick's wife Amy disappears. Did he kill her? When we read Amy's diary, do we learn Important Things? Told in alternating Nick/Amy point of view, and the various plot strands and points of view do a nice job intersecting.

The good: a page-turner! Is nicely ambiguous. Features a pair of possibly unreliable narrators. Was hard to put down. The voices of Nick and Amy are well delineated and you can tell them apart for sure. Well written, definitely.

The less good: The ending. I will hide this to be super safe with spoilers, because you should avoid them and then just go read it. { It isn't that it's ambiguous, because I like ambiguity, it just seems to peter out somewhat and the final resolution seems super, super implausible. }

I will say if you like literary crime stuff along the lines of The Lovely Bones or suspense stuff like the non-boring middle part of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you will probably like this book. So read it and then tell me what you think of the ending.

The Boy Book, The Treasure Map of Boys, and Real Live Boyfriends (by E. Lockhart)

I finished these at various points in my vacation, but I will lump them all together because I don't have a ton to say about them individually. This is a very fun "quartet" of books about Ruby Oliver, and although it does end up being a little predictable as far as the end-game developments go, it still is enjoyably complex about female friendship and imperfect parents and panic attacks and other real-life issues.

For example, I was glad that (spoiler for The Princess Diaries too): Ruby never made up with her heinously bitchy friend Kim, even though they used to be best friends. Lily in The Princess Diaries I am looking at you.  

There are a few slang words that are annoying (who says "Ag" instead of "Ugh," anyway? "Ag"?) and a little cutesy, but as far as YA goes, this was fun. Can you tell yet that I don't have much to say about these books? THEY ARE CUTE READ THEM OKAY THE END.

I promise my review of Ragtime will be marginally more interesting.

The Boyfriend List (by E. Lockhart)

I didn't finish any books in September. I'm still making my way through The Recognitions (at 25%) and schoolwork has taken up a lot of my time. Once my evaluation is over at the end of the month, I should be able to get back into Ragtime.

In the meantime, I heard about a YA series called the Ruby Oliver Quartet, and I decided to give it a shot. This was the first of the four books and was very charming (so much so that I just ordered used copies of the other three books). Ruby is in therapy because her social world has imploded and she's started having panic attacks, and her therapist tells her to make a list of all the boys who have ever meant something to her.

I don't find this series to be predictable at all (not to spoil anything but the boyfriend list has a lot of names on it, a lot of whom make plausible love interests for Ruby) and it has some really nice little touches, like the Seattle setting (and Ruby's home on a houseboat), a diverse cast, feminism sprinkled in here and there, and appealing characters, most notably Ruby herself.

What with everything else I have going on, some totally fluffy YA was a great choice. Very fun and enjoyable.

Deliverance (by James Dickey)

Never having seen the movie Deliverance, all I knew about the story was something vague about banjos and men getting raped. And hillbillies. Turns out this was accurate, except there are also canoes.

As soon as I finished it, I talked to Ian about it (he has seen the movie but not read the book) and it sounds like the film and novel mesh pretty well: all the moments that stuck out in my mind also stuck out in his the same way--the kid playing the banjo accompanied by Drew on guitar, the increasing tension, the paranoia at the end, the sense that the characters Will Never Be The Same. The other thing that sticks out in my mind that Ian can't remember is the guy climbing the cliff in the moonlight. What a scene!

The books at the end of my Time 100 list have been pretty sloggy--Augie March was horrible, The Recognitions is enjoyable but incredibly long, Blood Meridian was just grim. Deliverance isn't exactly cheery, but the prose is very clear and vivid, the pace is fast, the story is exciting. It's a good read.

"I touched the knife hilt at my side, and remembered that all men were once boys, and that boys are always looking for ways to become men. Some of the ways are easy, too; all you have to do is be satisfied that it has happened."

Wolf Hall (by Hilary Mantel)

Backdating this post since I finished it two days ago, just in time for my book group meeting on Thursday night! Even though the book is 600 pages long, we had six book group members in attendance and all of us had finished it. And it was a great discussion as well.

This book is the first in a planned trilogy about the reign of Henry VIII from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell. It starts as Henry's busy ditching wife #1 and ends when he's with Anne Boleyn, and with the death of Thomas More. You do probably need a certain amount of background knowledge of the time period to enjoy the book, but I wouldn't say a ton. (Knowing the name of Henry VIII's third wife certainly helps.)

I enjoyed the book, but in my opinion it doesn't hold a candle to Antonia Fraser's Wives of Henry VIII, which is an amazing nonfiction book that covers all of Henry's marriages. It's also not as breezy and trashy as The Other Boleyn Girl. (Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize, so I don't think it's going for "trashy" at all.)

The one thing that really bugs me about how it is written is Mantel's use of pronouns. She uses "he" to mean Cromwell even when Cromwell is not grammatically the referent of the pronoun. So it reads very confusingly. Sometimes you have no idea who is actually doing something, since at any given moment, "he" could either be the person who makes grammatical sense, or Cromwell. This is incredibly annoying. The beginning of the book also jumps around a lot in time, for no real reason.

One of our book group friends, Laura, theorized that the "he" thing is to remind us constantly that the book is from Cromwell's subjective point of view. (She also has started the next book in the trilogy, and said Mantel stopped doing that with the pronouns, apparently because everyone in the world complained about it.) We also talked a bit about the title--Wolf Hall is the home of Jane Seymour, who is a minor figure in this book. I think it represents the coming downfall of Anne Boleyn, personally. Someone else mentioned the court being like a hall of wolves, which is certainly also accurate.

We also discussed Cromwell's blind spots in terms of his loyalty to Cardinal Wolsey (at the beginning) and Henry himself, which confused some people. I said that the book begins with Cromwell's beating by his abusive father to explain this very thing--he's searching for a father figure, and thus his blind loyalty to the two men that he serves. (Without the book club discussion, I would not have come up with this theory, but I like it, so here it is.)

So there you go. I think we all enjoyed reading and discussing this one, even if it's neither as historically rich as Fraser's work or as unapologetically trashy as The Other Boleyn Girl. But if you're fascinated by the time period and don't mind 600 pages of pronoun fuckery, this might be the book for you!

Blood Meridian (by Cormac McCarthy)

This novel was difficult for me to read. Not because of the unrelenting and grotesque violence (which there is plenty of, described in the most dispassionate manner possible), but because of descriptions of scenery. Oh, descriptions of scenery. 

I've talked about this before, but a few years ago I realized that whenever I zone out on what I'm reading, it is inevitably on a description of scenery. Descriptions of people, of emotional states, of action, I'm fine with. But for some reason, it's difficult for me to concentrate through descriptions of scenery. And this book is like *evocative and poetic description of bleak scenery* *dispassionate recounting of savage violence* *more scenery described at length* *maybe someone says a sentence or does something* *but then there is more scenery again*

This might sound like I'm faulting the book, but in fact, the descriptions are great. They are so cinematic. I couldn't stop thinking about the Coen brothers' version of No Country for Old Men. I have not read the book, but the movie landscape really stuck with me as a visual memory. This has a similar type of feeling, a bleak and harsh landscape so evocatively described that you can see it in front of you with a terrible beauty.

The Road is similarly bleak, but it isn't all about the scenery and the violence, since it also has characters you can really feel for. The closest thing Blood Meridian has to a protagonist is introduced as a cruel and amoral killer with a thirst for violence. It's only relative to another character who is even more cruel and even more amoral that he becomes at all sympathetic, and even then, it all happens in the last few chapters.

Plotwise, Blood Meridian explores the historical account of bloody and lawless warfare on the U.S./Mexico border, including the slaughter of native Americans and the slaughter of buffalo, but generally encompassing the slaughter of just about everyone. It's been compared to Moby-Dick and I agree that it says something uniquely American about how these characters view the world and the landscape. They see it as theirs to shape and theirs for the taking, except that nature (both the natural world and the baser instincts of human nature) can be overwhelming and pull them down.

I liked this snippet from Wikipedia: "A major theme is the warlike nature of man. Critic Harold Bloom praised Blood Meridian as one of the best 20th century American novels... but admitted that he found the book's pervasive violence so distasteful that he had several false starts before reading the book entirely." Distasteful is a good word. In addition to the violence against men, women, children, and animals, the characters refer to an "idiot" who is kept in a cage as "it" and they throw the n-word around a lot. I know it's appropriate to the characters, but I find it even more distasteful than the violence, personally. So, you know, to sum up, it isn't exactly a fun read. But it certainly packs a punch.

It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.

The Adventures of Augie March (by Saul Bellow)

Saul Bellow. Oy vey.

I have two giant complaints about Augie March. Number one is the plot, or lack thereof. Number two is the sentences.

Starting with the latter first, let me just say that I am not afraid of sentences. One of my favorite authors is Henry James. And those are some sentences, let me tell you. But at least with James I can generally figure out what the sentences mean, and they have a sort of lyrical beauty. Not so with (some of) these sentences in Augie March. A painfully boring 600+ page book gets even more painful when you have to keep re-reading these annoying Saul Bellow sentences to figure out how to parse them. Here is an example:

"If you thought toward something outside, it might be Padilla theorizing on the size of the universe; his scientific interest kept the subject from being grim. But in such places the slow hairy fly-crawl from drop to drop and star to star, you could pray the non-human universe was not entered from here, and this was no sack-end of it that happened to touch Cook County and Northern Illinois."


Like, where is the subject of this sentence because I CAN'T FIND IT SAUL BELLOW I HATE YOU. 

And the plot. So the "adventures" of the title are just Augie March meeting a lot of people and describing the people and being very very passive about his entire fucking life. Kurt Vonnegut said every character should want something, even if it's a glass of water. I barely, in 600+ pages, got a clear sense of what Augie wanted except occasionally when he wanted one woman or another. It's just endless descriptions of people and Augie just doing nothing. Or when someone offers him a job or a direction, he's just like "naah" for no clearly explicable reason. There's this interminable section in the middle where he goes to Mexico with this girl to train an eagle to hunt, and that might sound exciting but in fact it is as deadly dull as every other part of this book.


Toward the end of the book, once Augie is home from the war, he finally seems to have a job and finally wants something (to "become himself" which leads to some good moments, and more concretely, a family). I am interested in several of the characters. There are some interesting meditations on identity and life and so forth. And then the book ends. RIGHT BEFORE ANYTHING POTENTIALLY INTERESTING HAPPENS. $#*&!


If anyone actually enjoyed this book, I would love to know what you enjoyed. I mean, I don't think it is a bad book or that people who like it are wrong; it has its moments of insight, some lovely descriptions and interesting sentences. I just was not on its wavelength. I'm sure there are people out there going, Bellow is a genius! And you love Henry James, are you high!? But between this and Herzog (aka Herzzzzzzzog) I think Saul Bellow is just not my jam. 

"You will understand, Mr. Mintouchian, if I tell you that I have always tried to become what I am. But it’s a frightening thing. Because what if what I am by nature isn’t good enough?' I was close to tears as I said it to him. 'I suppose I better, anyway, give in and be it. I will never force the hand of fate to create a better Augie March, nor change the time to an age of gold.'"

You Take It from Here (by Pamela Ribon)

I had a miraculous day off last week, and I spent a good chunk of it reading You Take It from Here, which is only the latest book on my exploding shelf of Books Written By People Who Are Also My Facebook Friends. It's sitting between Wendy's The Wilder Life and John's Redshirts to remind me that I have many very talented friends.

I feel compelled to point out that I made it to at least page 25 before pouring myself a glass of wine to accompany the reading experience. The characters had already been boozing it up for several chapters by then, I think, so I showed remarkable restraint. (This is a compliment.)

All this is to say: I think this is Pam's best novel yet. I tore through it in a few hours because I had to find out what happens next. The characters feel real. I think the letter-to-Jenny structure works really really well to focus the narrative, though ultimately I didn't quite understand their estrangement. And I really love that it's about female friendship in a messy, complicated way. The ending was lovely and made me cry. I guess I could nitpick things if forced to, but why? She did an awesome job, and I am so proud to have Pam on my BWBPWAAMFF shelf!

Falconer (by John Cheever)

A book on Ye Olde Time 100 list, and the shortest one I had left, at 211 pages. It's a novella about a guy in a prison--the prison's name is Falconer. It opens up with some pretty obvious, Old Man and the Sea-level Jesus Imagery. (He has criminals on his right and his left, talks about nails, and innocence, and I was afraid it would be a lot like OMatS where I was like OMG HEMINGWAY I GET IT HE'S JESUS THE OLD MAN IS JESUS I GET IT ALREADY. But instead it works nicely here; it's pretty clearly established and comes back very clearly at the end, but the middle is more vignettes of prison life and the symbolism is more subtle. (Also, the man-on-man prison action is kind of interesting, given Cheever's bisexuality. It's presented semi-lovingly.)

I wouldn't call this a must-read on the level of The Virgin Suicides or anything, but I did enjoy getting to know a little bit of Cheever. And I would give it a thumbs up, if not a wildly enthusiastic one. (In contrast, I am currently reading the endless, endlessly irritating Augie March. Ugh. Saul Bellow.)

"There were the stalenesses of the courthouse to remember, the classroom window shades, the sense of an acute tedium that was like the manipulations of the most pitiless and accomplished torturer, and if the last he would see of the world was the courthouse, he claimed he had no regrets, although he would, in fact, have clung to any floorboard, spittoon or worn bench if he thought that it might save him." (p. 199)

The Sheltering Sky (by Paul Bowles)

A beautifully written novel that is less like a novel and more like a meditation on existence and on death. I was spoiled because I read the preface, which gave away the major thing that happens 70% into the novel (why do they do this, why) but one of the interesting things in that preface was the idea that Bowles wanted to try to write about the experience of death "from the inside." He does a great job with this.

I'm going through my highlights (which is my favorite thing about the Kindle app; how easy it is to highlight passages you want to revisit) and so many of them deal with the metaphor of the sky. In this novel, the sky is a protective covering for the "giant maw" that lies behind it, so a lot of the characters have ominous experiences looking at the sky. And it works perfectly with the novel's idea that we are all covered under this giant illusion that protects us from the reality of death.

The plot is a group of dilletante Americans traveling through Africa, and I feel like there is so much to think about with how they get consumed by the landscape and what the landscape represents. I haven't decided how I feel about how the "natives" are presented; I think Bowles is self-aware about this stuff, and that his characters are the obtuse ones, not the author. He also acknowledges that Kit functions "as an object" during the final, rapey parts of this novel, (she is systematically raped! but she kind of likes one of her rapists! but her identity is slowly being eroded! and she ultimately realizes she has to escape!) but he doesn't really explain why he does this.  So I have to think about this too.

Anyway, do you enjoy pondering mortality and working through various possible post-colonial and feminist readings of a text? Then this book is for you! (Really, it was a great, meaty read.) (Any insights welcomed in the comments.)
 
Trivia! A quote from The Sheltering Sky is on Brandon Lee's tombstone. It's one that I highlighted too; how could you not?

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

Here's another good one.

The Virgin Suicides (by Jeffrey Eugenides)

So fucking good.

I loved the movie, of course, but it had such a Sofia Coppola tone to it, I wasn't sure that the book would live up to it. Well, it turns out the book is equally great, if not even greater. It's just so melancholy and haunting and beautifully, beautifully, beautifully written. Love the conceit of the narrator being the neighborhood boys. Love the characterizations and the depiction of adolescence. Love the meditative nature of the prose. The best book I've read so far this year.

"We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them."

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend (by Emily Horner)

A YA novel about a girl who has to deal with grief and her own sexuality after her best friend dies. Great title, great premise, what could go wrong? In fact, the central romance of the book is handled really well, and I definitely enjoyed reading it all the way through.

I do have some criticisms, though. It feels a little John Green lite, to me. Like Horner was going for that sensibility, but didn't quite pull it off. The characters (especially the supporting characters) are a little underdeveloped. We hear that Jon is gay and "fabulous" but he doesn't do anything gay and fabulous that I can remember off the top of my head. Oliver (who was her best friend's boyfriend) never seems like anything other than a dick. (I don't think he's supposed to be an unremitting giant asshole, but he is.)

There are also some implausible plot developments and moments and conversations that kept pulling me out of the book. There are a few little ones, like a teacher inexplicably risking his career for next to no reason, but here's the big one: half of the book (the weaker half) is about the narrator, who is 16, going on a bike trip from Chicago to California. And camping by the side of the road! Are her parents crack addicts who don't care abut her? Is she an orphan? No and no--her parents are overprotective Quakers. And yet they let her do this! Right after her best friend has been killed in a car accident! There is no way these people exist. No way. Nope.

(I did enjoy the depiction of Quakerism, though. Quakers rule.)

So there you go. I enjoyed the book more than this blog post might suggest, but it doesn't really compare to John Green. Then again, what does?

The Wilder Life (by Wendy McClure)

This is a book that we own in both hardcover and paperback, a book written by a friend that I adore, a book that I kept dipping into but kept procrastinating the actual cover-to-cover reading of. You see, I wasn't a Little House girl. I was a Little Women girl* and an Anne of Green Gables girl** and to a lesser extent a Betsy-Tacy girl and for sure a Babysitters Club girl. But I never read any of the Little House books. None! How is this possible!

(*I toured the Alcott house in Concord, and it was super awesome. We saw the real-life "Meg's" wedding dress and "Amy's" art and learned so many things about Louisa May Alcott. **On my life list or bucket list or whatever dumb name you want to call it is "do an Anne of Green Gables tour of Prince Edward Island." I want to go so bad.)

So my idea was that I was going to read the Little House books before I read all of Wendy's book. And then Wendy came to town and I bought yet another copy of her book (supporting my friend! supporting local bookstores!) and then I opened it and got sucked into the narrative and realized that it really didn't matter that I hadn't read the Little House books, because Wendy is such an awesome writer and her prose just sucked me in and it's funny and smart and a terrific little glimpse into this Little House world.

I mean, I still want to read the Little House books (even more now, since I've been pre-sold on them now). But I can assure you that even if you haven't, you will still love The Wilder Life. Because Wendy McClure is an awesome writer. The end.