More Business Trip Reads

This time, it was short trip to Los Angeles, but it did involve airports and flights, ergo, reading, ergo, here are my reviews:

Closed Casket (by Sophia Hannah)

Airplane fluff for sure. This is an "authorized by the estate of Agatha Christie" mystery with Hercule Poirot at the center.  I saw it in the airport bookstore and then checked to see if it was free via my library app. IT WAS. (Still not over it.) So it was easy to take a chance on, and a fun, breezy mystery. It doesn't approach classic Christie (obviously) and really reads more like really excellent Poirot fanfic (yes, it exists).  But I enjoyed it enough to download the other Hannah/Christie novel, The Monogram Murders (see below) for the flight back.

City of the Lost Monkey God (by Douglas Preston)

A non-fiction pick for my work book club. This is the story of the search for a lost city in Honduras, the titular city of the lost monkey god. The author's time spent at the site (on two occasions) was fairly brief and the story wouldn't really work chronologically, so the narrative was choppy as a result, lacking the  tension, depth, or pacing of Into Thin Air. (I immediately downloaded and reread Into Thin Air, one of my all-time favorite books to reread, as you may remember.) It's interesting nonetheless, if ultimately depressing, and I did learn a lot about Honduras and the inevitability of a global pandemic. So that was fun.

The Monogram Murders (by Sophia Hannah)

The other fake Agatha Christie, and equally fluffy and enjoyable. I thought this plot was way too complicated; the reveal didn't have a fun "aha" moment because I'd lost track of who was connected with whom and what, and there was a bit too much going on with the final denouement. But it was a fun library book I read on an airplane, so in that sense, it was perfect! I will definitely gobble up any other entries in this series.

Joy (by S. Kay)

An old online journal acquaintance posted about her novella in our Faebook group, and I noticed that it had been published by a micro-press (Maudlin House), which enabled me to check out the book, support a former journaler, and check off one of the categories of the Read Harder Challenge, all at the same time. This is an enjoyable little novella that reads like a prose poem, with anti-heroine Joy at the center of it all.  Texts, tweets, blog posts, poems, all play a part in this work. I would have enjoyed this if it was many times longer, as I loved Joy, but the small size makes it easy to digest, ponder, and re-read. Thumbs up!

IQ (by Joe Ide)

The second selection for the book group we started at work. The genre we chose for this round was mystery and this was the book I put in the hat. There's a lot of pressure when your blind recommendation gets chosen! Happily, I thought this was terrific; I hope my fellow clubbies agree.

Joe Ide grew up in South Central Los Angeles and loved Sherlock Holmes. So he's created a character, Isaiah Quintabe, or IQ, who is the South Central version of Sherlock.  The central case here involves a rapper who is afraid someone is trying to kill him, but there are side cases here and there as well, a backstory that unfolds throughout the book, and a nice sense of closure at the end while still setting up for a sequel.

I loved Isaiah (and by the end Dodgson -- his Watson -- as well). Such a likeable hero, a well-drawn setting, a fun mystery, a sprinkling of humor, and an emotional journey for the main character. If you like contemporary mysteries, I highly recommend this one and will be first in (virtual) line for the next one.

Vacation Reads

We spent last week traveling to and around Boston for a family vacation. I read seven books on the trip (gotta love airplane reads) and it was a nice mix of stuff. Here are my reviews:

Punch Escrow (by Tal M. Klein)

Fun, hard sci-fi. It doesn't quite stick the landing, but I will definitely read the sequel that Klein sets up in the epilogue. I'm picky about sci-fi but all three of my vacation reads in this genre were good! This one was found via Scalzi.

Half a Life (by Darin Strauss)

Memoir that I read for a new book group I'm in at work. This is the story of a guy who, "half-a-life ago" when he was eighteen, hit a classmate with his car and killed her.  Great hook, but this memoir  feels half-baked. (He doesn't address how the accident impacted his passengers, for example.) He's also way too defensive about his own past emotions and apologizes for them a lot, even though there's no need for him to. I got the feeling he might actually not have enough distance yet. Some really excellent writing, and I thought the ending was powerful, but overall this didn't move me the way it should.

Sugar (by Kimberly Stuart)

Super cute rom-com about a pastry chef who takes a new job and ends up on a restaurant reality show with her ex-boyfriend.  Has a couple of "people don't talk like that" dialogue moments (my pet peeve) but only a couple. Sprinkled throughout are some unfortunate anti-fat moments also. But mostly very charming and light, good vacation read, with a fun plot and a good main character.

Texts from Jane Eyre (by Mallory Ortberg)

I wanted an excuse to buy this, and vacation became my excuse. Mallory Ortberg is hilarious and this little book is a gem.

The Custom of the Country (by Edith Wharton)

I needed a book for the "published between 1900 and 1950" category of the Read Harder Challenge, and somehow I had never read this before. How can that even be considering how much I love The Age of Innocence? This was amazing. I love Wharton's anti-heroine, Undine Spragg. I love the classic Whartonian social machinations. I love the subtle, rich writing. This is spectacular in every way. 

The Three-Body Problem (by Liu Cixin, trans. Ken Liu)

I'm going to swap this out as my "set at least 5000 miles away from your house" pick, because this is set in China and translated from the Chinese, and I think meets the spirit of the challenge better.  I love both the storyline and the style of the translation. Great, Hugo-award-winning sci-fi novel, and the beginning of a trilogy.  Also delves into the Cultural Revolution and that part is interesting as well -- although the virtual reality parts may have been my favorite. Thumbs up!

11/22/63 (by Stephen King)

An excellent pick for the airplane ride home, I have to say, as it is a classic Stephen King doorstoppy page-turner. I was a huge IT fangirl when I was younger, and I loved the Derry side-plot here.  The time travel into the 60s allows King to indulge all his most folksy folksiness (the "Land of Ago" for example) but overall this is a gripping and detailed time-traveling love story. King at the top of his form.

Moonglow (by Michael Chabon)

The last Chabon book I tried to read was Telegraph Avenue, and I thought the writing was so horrible that I got barely half a chapter into it.  I am very curious to dig it up and see why I hated it so much, given my enjoyment of Moonglow.  Maybe it's a return to Kavalier and Clay form, or maybe Telegraph Avenue caught me on a bad day.

At any rate, this is an account of the life of Chabon's paternal grandfather, and the history he imparted to his grandson in the final days of his life.  Chabon jumps around in time to cover his grandmother's and mother's history as well. And of course, in all the interweaving stories, all the revelations of family secrets, the moon serves as a central theme.  It's assured, well-paced, wonderfully written, funny at times, authentic -- just a classic literary fiction delight.

Mislaid (by Nell Zink)

I feel like I cannot improve upon this review. But I will try, because panning a book is fun!

I truly disliked this book. The writing is precious and mannered -- I kept visualizing the author as an MFA student who was very pleased with herself -- and the characters behave in zero ways that are recognizably human. The "satire" of race is completely nonexistent -- compare to something like The Sellout or The Good Lord Bird and you see how it fails. I care about the teenage characters marginally more than the adult characters, but they all seem like shadow puppets of people. There is no authenticity here.

My notes: "Characters and their choices seem implausible." "Do not care for writing style." "Ending fun but way too pat and again, implausible." "Dislike button."

 tl;dr: hated it.

The Good Lord Bird (by James McBride)

This had been on my "to-read" list for a long time, since it won the 2014 Tournament of Books! I sometimes have to gear myself up to read something that tackles the subject of oppression, though -- even in a satirical way, as this one does.

This is the story of a boy named Henry Shakelford, who is freed from slavery (somewhat accidentally) by John Brown, who thinks he is a girl and nicknames him Onion and brings him along on his adventures. And I have to say that it was something I had to push myself to read all the way through -- not because it is grim in any way, but because it's a little discursive and does not always have a clear forward momentum. It's kind of biding time for 2/3 of it leading up to the raid on Harpers Ferry. We even lose track of John Brown for like 100 pages.

But again, it's not grim! The tone of it is humorous and relatively light, considering that it's about -- you know -- slavery. Historical characters and events are woven in but in a less-than reverential way. And in many places it's funny as hell:

"'Tell me. Which books in the Bible do you favor?'
'Oh, I favors 'em all,' Pa said. 'But I mostly like Hezekiel, Ahab, Trotter, and Pontiff the Emperor.'
The Old Man frowned. 'I don't recollect I have read those.'" 


"She wore a flowered blue dress of the type whores naturally favored, and that thing was so tight that when she moved, the daisies got all mixed up with the azaleas."

"I joined a choir in a Pentecostal church after taking a liking to a minister’s wife who slept around to save the wear and tear on her holy husband. I runned behind her several weeks till one morning the pastor gived a rousing sermon ’bout how the truth will set you free, and a feller stood up in the congregation and blurted out, 'Pastor! I got Jesus in my heart! I’m confessing! Three of us in here has porked your wife!'”

So it's funny and entertaining. But then McBride pulls a masterful bait and switch as the book nears its climax, the famous raid on Harpers Ferry. You aren't necessarily expecting it to pack such an emotional punch, and although Onion's narration doesn't lose its satirical tone, the emotion hits you anyway as the tragedy and import of the event starts to hit him, and us at the same time. McBride sticks the landing wonderfully.

The portrayal of John Brown in this novel reminded me forcefully of Don Quixote, and in fact the structure of the book reminded me of Don Quixote as well. It's about a religious lunatic on a crusade that's doomed to fail. He is skinny and looks older than his years, he wanders the desert, he inspires half-hearted adulation, he makes promises he can't keep, he barely eats. I mean, he's Don Quixote!  And at the end, you realize hat for all his insanity and all his failures, his raid on Harpers Ferry did ultimately kick off the civil war and John Brown did, ultimately, end slavery. The figure of amusement becomes a tragic hero.

“Some things in this world just ain't mean to be, not in the times we want 'em to, and the heart has to hold it in this world as a remembrance, a promise for the world that's to come. There's a prize at the end of all of it, but still, that's a heavy load to bear.”

Also, the title is a reference to a bird that makes you say "Good Lord!," the now-most-likely-extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker. I loved that theme too.

My Brilliant Friend (by Elena Ferrante)

This is the first book in the widely acclaimed Neopolitan series. Finally, I would know what all the fuss was about! Except... I don't really get what all the fuss is about. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book (I did) or that I won't continue on to the next books in the series (I probably will). But maybe it suffered a little from overhype.

The good stuff: the central female friendship is a complex mix of passionate love, rivalry, and envy,that is very persuasive. I also enjoy how Lila remains absolutely consistent as a character, but my sympathy towards her increases dramatically over the course of my reading as I began to see her how Elena sees her. It wasn't until the end that I realized what a trick Ferrante had pulled off there.

I also love the title, particularly because of a reference late in the book. The ending in general is super strong -- the bathing scene before the wedding is lovely, the final image is a great cliffhanger. It has a strong sense of specificity in terms of setting -- I absolutely 100% believed this was Naples at this time in history, post World War II. The world Ferrante creates is completely real and it's one I haven't read about before, so points for that too.

All that said, I do have a few quibbles. The prose itself I don't find particularly enthralling -- at times it was even awkward and somewhat confusing. But then again, it is in translation, so I made allowances for that. I know it's specific to the time and place, but I got really tired of all the machismo and paternalism that basically makes up the entire plot of the book. All the women are defined by their relationships to men, all the men do is posture and fight and browbeat the women, and many female characters are sidelined -- Elena's mother is a shadowy, hated background figure; sisters aren't really mentioned; Melina is just some crazy lady.

I am assured that once the novels get to the 60s, feminism comes into play and these mores are challenged. So this makes me feel like Ferrante knows what she is doing, and going for verisimillitude here.  I think I'll need to read the rest of the books to form a true opinion of that, and am curious if anyone reading this has gone further in the series and has thoughts on that.

All in all, this made for fun conversation and was a good read!