Books I’ve Read Lately

Here are some short reviews of books I've read lately. If you'd like more information or more details about any of them, let me know!

Moonglow

Michael Chabon

A wonderful “fictional memoir” (I have no idea how much of this is true and how much is false) that is  beautifully and lovingly written.  The narrator tells the story of his grandfather, a no nonsense, space-race obsessed  man, and his undying and unquestioning love for his mysterious, beautiful, and ill wife.  There’s some fascinating stuff here, too, about the space race and its connection to militarized rockets.  As a soldier during World War II, the grandfather aspires to capture Wernher von Braun, the creator of the V-2 rocket. I knew very little about von Braun; I loved this sub story and the whole book. Highly recommended.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

Matthew Quick

A troubled teen in a terrible situation contemplates and plans a murder / suicide.  Dark and sometimes darkly funny, I’d recommend this to fellow teachers or anyone who has met or will ever meet a teenager.  Sometimes life’s despair is truly felt and deeply held and difficult to manage without people on your side, and (too) many young adults don’t believe anyone is on their side.  

Young Blood

Matt Gallagher

A young lieutenant in Iraq tries to win the war (except it’s the “counter-insurgency” now, as his higher ups, say, because it’s been 10 years since the invasion) while at the same time maintaining his own decency and reputation.  Don’t be afraid of this book if you don’t like War Books.  There are elements of the genre here (some senseless violence, some purposeful violence, some terrible language, and a resigned and ironic melancholy from the soldiers) but it’s not just a book about war, and that’s why I recommend it so highly.  

IQ

Joe Ide

Isaiah Quintabe is an inner-city Sherlock Holmes-like character, intelligent and sarcastic, who  solves problems and mysteries for neighbors.  In doing so, he’s paying penance for an earlier mistake, and, partially, showing off that big IQ that gave him his nickname.  A very fun read to, what I hope, becomes a very fun series.

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead

This book won the National Book Award and the praises of President Obama among others, so I don’t know what to add to that.  I thought it was a great book, and I’m already looking forward to re-reading it (and maybe teaching it at some point?  Anyone doing that yet?).

The Risen

Ron Rash

It’s fine. Read it if you like Ron Rash.  If you haven’t read any Ron Rash start with Serena or The Cove, or some of his short stories, not this book.

Before the Fall

Noah Hawley

I liked the first three fourths of this book, and then my interest (or the writer’s interest, maybe?) just faded out.  To borrow a metaphor from the novel, the book swims, sometimes in multiple directions -- but at least it’s MOVING -- but then it treads water, and treads water, and treads water until you’re just hopeful it tires itself out.

To The Bright Edge of the World

Eowyn Ivey

An earnest and ambitious Colonel is sent to map an uncharted Alaskan river valley, a place so untamed that  “a thin line separates animal and man.”  (And the author means literally: Indian women turn into swans. Maybe. There are other examples). I’m a sucker for heroics and mysticism and love (the Colonel’s wife is back at camp, alone and pregnant expecting the couple’s first child) and I thought this was a great book.  

The Family Fang and Lucky Us

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

Lucky Us by Amy Bloom

I recently finished a couple of books about dysfunctional families.  In both, the parents manipulate the children, the children yearn for affection (sometimes meekly and sometimes with outrageous acts of defiance) and other family members are lascivious drunkards who are not, unsurprisingly, untrustworthy shills.  And yet, in both novels, the families survive and function, somehow, on some level.  

I love books about dysfunction for the same reason everyone else does:  They are inspiring!  Books like this show us how much the human spirit can overcome, how strong people are despite the challenges offered to them.  They bring us hope, they make us re-think what we, as people on this imperfect planet, are capable of.  They, they ..

OK, whatever.   I love them because they give me a sense of superiority! Everyone loves the view from the moral high road, right?  What’s better than closing a book about a dysfunctional family that somehow manages to survive (and thrive!) to find your own relatively well-adjusted family smiling up at you?  

Nothing.  Nothing is better. I can tsk, tsk at that poor family in the book, knowing I would help them if I could -- that’s the kind of guy I am, maybe mentor them or put them in touch with some appropriate resources if, you know, they weren’t fictional -- and then easily dismiss the imperfections of my own brood.  My son was caught cheating on a test?  My daughter is becoming a hypochondriac?  No worries, because at least they didn’t FRAME A FRIEND FOR WAR CRIMES! Raising a daughter who frames someone for war crimes??  THAT is poor parenting.  THAT is a weird family!  

Two related thoughts:

1. I hope this impulse of mine is just human nature and not a sign of some serious mental failing on my part.  I do try and fight this impulse and, for what it’s worth, sometimes I succeed.

2.  My children are not perfect, but neither have they been caught cheating on a test and / or becoming a hypochondriac. Yet. It’s still early in my parenting, though, so no judgement on my part.

Anyway, these two books, The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson, and Lucky Us by Amy Bloom, have much, much more going for them than their ability to make me feel good about my scrappy, day-to-day family life.  They are both funny and touching.  They have characters you will root for and characters who are so resilient, so inspiring, that you’ll want to be a better person yourself. Honestly. Additionally, they both cover decades, not days,  so that we can see the breadth of a family and its interactions, and that's a nice break from something focused on just a few days (like Catcher in the Rye, which I've recently been teaching).

A few words about each:The Family Fang is funny and outrageous.  The Fangs have always incorporated their children into their bizarre and sometimes dangerous performance art, and as the children, “A and B,” come of age they start to realize how much their family and its madcap and inspired set pieces have influenced them.  I didn’t love the last hundred pages as much as I did the first two hundred, but it’s still worth a read. There’s a longer review and summary here.  And, oh my, a movie with Jason Bateman coming out at sometime?

The second book, Lucky Us has two sentences in it that make it an automatic “must-read.”  And I swear to you that these words are in the book:

“My wife came from a very good family.  The Reardons of Ohio.”

HA! I kid you not.  (Reardon is my name, by the way).  The author even spelled Reardon correctly!  I hope one of my daughter’s future husbands uses that line… 

Lucky Us is a fast read, 234 pages with generously-spaced margins and (in my edition) large-enough-to-read-without-your-cheaters font.  It’s about a manufactured family and the disparate desires that force them  apart and the unspoken responsibilities that bring them together.  There’s so much more to it, and you can certainly find more thorough reviews elsewhere, but I’ve already gone on longer than I meant to.  

In sum, for whatever reason you read them, both are worth your time!

A Song of Ice and Fire

Also known as A Game of Thrones

I have never self-identified as a reader of fantasy.  It wasn’t in judgement or fear of being called a geek -- I’ve almost always been a geek -- it was just that I would have said I was more into, I don’t know, books without dragons, with humans instead of dwarves and passion in lieu of magic.  I say that, and I believe that, but when I did a little research about popular fantasy novels, I found I had read almost all of them.  What does that mean???  I’m self-delusional? People in general like fantasy even if they think they don’t? Good fantasy is just good writing and good writing is popular?

I think the answer is “All of the above.”

In any event, I spent the end of the summer reading and loving the Game of Thrones books, more correctly known, I guess, as A Song of Ice and Fire series.  They’ve become very popular due to the successful HBO adaptation, but among fantasy readers, these books have always been highly acclaimed.  And as such they have been written about, and discussed, and argued over ad nauseam.  So I won’t say much, but I will note just a few thoughts:

1.  The books are massive, with each one being at least 1,000 pages in the trade paperback versions I was reading.  A lot happens, but it’s the sheer number of people and places, the intricacies of the relationships between and among characters and locations, that makes this thick, dense series a marvel.

2.  The names!  The characters have names, of course, but they also have titles.  And nicknames, and relatives and wards and epithets that they often use to identify each other.  And their swords have names and their towns and castles and keeps.  It’s relentless.  Here’s an example from A Feast of Crows:

A crowd had gathered round to wish him well and seek his favor.  Victarion saw men from every isle:  Blacktydes, Tawneys, Orkwoods, Stonetrees, Wynches, and many more.  The Goodbrothers of Old Wyk, and the Goodbrothers of Orkmont all had come.  The Codds were there, though every decent man despised them.  Humble Shepherds, Weavers, and Netleys rubbed shoulders with men from Houses ancient and proud; even humble Humbles, the blood of thralls and salt wives.

                   And if you’re wondering if you really have to keep all of those names and places straight in your head, the answer is YES! But with some help from Mr. Martin, as I learned.

3.  Because of its length and breadth, this series constitutes some of the more challenging reading that I’ve ever done.  I finally learned, by about the 500th page of the third book, that I needed to be patient with my reading.  I would start a chapter utterly confused, with only the slightest inkling of a memory about who a character was or what the setting signified.  But as the chapter went on, the connections became clear. Martin doesn’t abandon his readers, but he challenges you to KEEP UP!

4. The last few hundred pages of ALL of these books just race by.  Or I raced through them.  In any event, the suspense is ratcheted up, the action becomes heated, and the resolution (or a resolution -- there are still at least two more books to go!) seems near.  It’s just highly recommended reading!

Summertime!

I've enjoyed the first few weeks of the summer and have split my reading time between school-related prep (reading Siddhartha and Things Fall Apart in order to get ready to teach Comparative Literature in the fall) and straight-up pleasure reading.  Here are are some very quick thoughts on the books I’ve read lately.

Life After Life  by Kate Atkinson

A very cool premise very well done.  In short, it’s one woman's story from birth to death with the hook being that our protagonist has multiple births and deaths (and lives), an existence somewhere between Groundhog Day and the underrated Source Code, movie-wise. Some of the scenes are indelible and the book definitely made me think about the fragility and capriciousness of life and death. A last note on this one: I read this on a Kindle and I don’t recommend that format for this book. I found myself wanting to flip back to certain sections to confirm dates and remember names and locations, and this was much harder with an e-reader than with a good old-fashioned paperback.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

I remember connecting with this book in high school, and I loved it on my re-reading.  I can’t wait to teach it because I know it will appeal to those young adults who are trying to figure out their place in the world, physically and spiritually (which, of course, is ALL young adults). The book reminds me to strive, to seek, but also to slow down and appreciate.  In our hectic world, it’s instructive to remember that when asked about his skills, Siddhartha replies, “I can think, I can wait, I can fast.” I’m not sure those skills are part of the Common Core, but their simplicity and purpose resonate with me. Listen to and learn from the river, readers!

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

And while we are seeking and striving (and being patient) the world around us is changing.  The  accomplishments of our youth,  the glories of our salad days, they don’t mean much when change comes.   It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just life.  Siddhartha begins to understand and accept this and adapts. Okonkwo, the protagonist in Things Fall Apart, has a harder time with it.  This is another book I can’t wait to teach next year.

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

A stone-cold thriller.  A nearly washed-up special agent, a nearly unsolvable murder…. Sign me up! This was just a perfect chaser to the big questions of Siddhartha and Things Fall Apart.  Sometimes you want to figure out your purpose in life, to question your faith and your family and everything you hold dear.  And sometimes you want to dip into a world where men carry automatic weapons and women wear sultry dresses.  If you want to get your Bond or Bourne on, this is not a bad choice.

Slow Getting Up by Nate Jackson

I loved this book.  Nate Jackson, a six-year veteran of the NFL, tells about life in the league,  not for those 10 to 12 stars on each team the NFL promotes and celebrates,  but for the other 30 or 40 who are scraping for a job.  Of particular sadness – and shame for the NFL – is Jackson’s recounting of the medical procedures and shots and treatment that are de rigueur in the training rooms of the NFL.   Jackson is quick to point out that the players are complicit in this routine --- they want to live the life, after all – but most people will see the athletes as just cogs in the football industrial complex known as the NFL. It’s a funny and inspirational and sad story.

The Good Lord Bird

It’s been so long!  I could blame my grading or my spring yard clean up or training for and running The Flying Pig Marathon (Just the relay race -- I’m not CRAZY!)  But I won’t.  It was just a lull in my reading and writing. A lull.  I had read so many good books in a row – books that I read every night, books that kept me from my grading and general obligations – that it was bound to happen.  I didn’t really like a book after I ripped through those two Phillip Meyer books until I picked up The Good Lord Bird (GLB), and even this one took me 3 or 4 weeks to read! At any rate, the lull is over! 

James McBride, author of GLB, is best known for The Color of Water, a book I put down after 50 pages (no offense, James).  I just didn’t like it.  I resisted reading Good Lord Bird for a while, but then it kept having success in The Morning News Tournament of Books, eventually winning the whole thing, so I felt like I had to give it a go.  I respect the TOB judges and general commentating community there at The Morning News; they have rarely pointed me in a wrong direction.

And that was the case for The Good Lord Bird.  The voice is fresh and original and hilarious.  Many parts of the book reminded me of Huck Finn: the unique voice of a young boy, the masquerading of that young boy as a girl and /or other characters, the skewering of the racist and mean-spirited locals, the themes of slavery, the powerful force of inertia, even in the face of injustice.  Hey!  I’m giving someone a dissertation topic here!  Are you listening?

GLB is the story of Henry “Onion” Shackleford, who is “saved” by the white abolitionist John Brown.  When Henry’s father is killed, John Brown takes him away from his master (even though Henry didn’t necessarily want that….) and enlists him in his cause.  Early on, Brown mistakes Henry for a girl, and for a variety of reasons (mostly to get out of work) Henry maintains that disguise throughout the entire book. 

Henry calls John Brown “The Old Man,” and describes him as God-fearing and God-loving, courageous and driven in his one great cause.  He prays for hours, doesn’t seem to need food or sleep, and is maniacally single-minded in his pursuit of freedom for the slaves.   I came to respect McBride’s version of Brown, as the author intended, I believe.  The Old Man is a little crazy, that’s for sure, but his heart is pure. 

The reader knows what happens at Harper’s Ferry even as Brown and his followers are planning the raid (that’s dramatic irony, people) and so even as Brown is deceived and betrayed and beset by bad luck we can marvel at his strength of character and moral fortitude.  Even our young narrator – a self-preservationist if there ever was one -- is abashed at his desire to save his own skin.  John Brown sets that kind of example. 

McBride’s book made me want to learn more about Brown and his raid, and the internet didn’t disappoint.  I was surprised so many of the details of GLB were true, especially Brown’s relationship with Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.  Actually, the more I write about it, the more I wonder if The Good Lord Bird would be a useful book to teach in my American Literature class….  It may be time for a re-read with that purpose in mind!  The lull is over!

American Rust

American Rust

Philipp Meyer

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had to return Meyer’s The Son to the library and that even though I wanted to write about it, I just couldn't do it without the book in front of me.  Well, my friend (and fellow reader) Gaff fixed that particular problem when he purchased American Rust, Meyer’s first novel, and lent it to me.

It’s a good feeling, isn't it, to start a novel that you are almost sure you are going to enjoy?  It’s like playing a new U2 album for the first time or ordering the spaghetti at the (Youngstown shout-out!) Boulevard Tavern:  I am predisposed to enjoy it because it’s a relatively known quantity that I've enjoyed before. The flaw in my logic, of course, is that I've listened to thousands of hours of U2 and had dozens of plates of pasta at the Boulevard.  Those are large sample sizes.  With Meyer, I had only the one novel, The Son.    But here’s the thing:  The Son is so sprawling and epic and bloody and purposeful that it can’t be ignored.  Obviously, I’m not the only one who noticed this – The Son is receiving many great reviews and, based on rumors, is said to be in the running for this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction.   I didn't know Philipp Meyer before I saw The Son listed on theTournament of Books site, but after reading it I was ready to read anything else he had written.  And that includes, of course, his first novel American Rust.

(One personal note here.  My dad was not the reader my mom is, but he enjoyed certain books.  I think he would have loved The Son.  He actually used to tell us that he was kidnapped by Indians as a kid and grew to be accepted by the tribe.  That is exactly what happens in The Son!  And a good chunk of the book takes place in Texas, where he spent more than a few years.  Many books make me think of my mom or my brothers and sisters, but The Son was the first book in a long time that made me think of my dad).

So to regroup:  I sat down believing I was going to like American Rust.  And I was right.  It’s a very different story in scope and setting than The Son:  Set in a Rust Belt Pennsylvania town, it tells the story of five or six characters who are trying to understand and overcome what has become of their once-bustling city and their suddenly makeshift personal lives.  Two high-school buddies, Isaac and Billy, are at the center of the plot (a run-in with vagrants leads to violence) but even though the novel is a page-turner, it is the evocation of place and character that you will remember once you’re done with it. 

The characters are especially memorable.  Despite the gutting of the steel businesses that ordered their lives, most of the characters in American Rust are imbued with a strong sense of humanity.  Additionally, most of the characters, despite the myriad personal problems that low employment and low wages usher in, are thoughtful and introspective.   By switching the narrative point of view for each chapter, Meyer allows multiple characters to tell their story, letting them express their full and sometimes flawed humanity in their interior dialogues.  This has the moving effect of peeling back the outer shell of pride, or bravado, or ambition, or confidence– or whatever mask these characters wear for the world – to display the thoughtful and worried and complicated and bruised people underneath.  The people of the Rust Belt have sometimes felt discarded, abandoned like the out-of-date coke plants and machine shops they used to run, but that doesn't happen in American Rust.  For Meyer, and the reader, these characters matter.  They have importance. 

Maybe this is why, even though these characters aren't perfect by any stretch, we root for them, even in the face of despair.  We root for them because Meyer reminds us that everybody matters, and we are rewarded by finding out that even in the face of despair, there is hope.

I’d recommend The Son or American Rust without hesitation.  Once you read one, you’ll want to read the other.

The Signature of All Things

So The Tournament of Books starts this week, and I still have many, many books to read!  The sad truth is that I am not going to get through them all.  Oh well.  I've still read and enjoyed a number of great books! And I'm plowing through The People in the Trees right now, so I'm actually doing fine.

 I wanted to write about The Son for this post, but I had to return it to the library or face severe late fees (someone else had put it on hold!  The nerve!). The Son will have to wait, then, because I can't write about a book unless I have it right in front of me. In the meantime, a quick review of The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert, of Eat, Pray, Love fame.  

Before the review, though, an observation: While I was carrying Signature around, people saw me reading it and they would say, "That’s the new book from that Eat, Pray, Love" woman, right?  I didn't love that book.”  Seriously, I heard that five times.  I call that either short-term memory or, maybe, "movie-induced memory."  

And it’s funny because  when Eat, the book, came out, EVERYONE loved it.  EVERYONE read it!    If you went to the airport during the height of the book's popularity, a full 30% of the travelers were reading Eat Pray Love.  And you'd see some flight attendants sneaking peeks at it, too!  People were reading this book in schools, in hammocks and on beaches.  And now, in 2014, people don’t like it?   Now, for some reason, people are backing away from Eat as if it were a 1939 appeasement policy.  Me?  Like Eat, Pray Love?  You must have the wrong person.  I denounce that book!  I've never even seen this book!  I heard my neighbor read it, but.... What do you mean you have video of me recommending this work to my book club? 

What happened? My theory is that the movie happened, and that people didn't like the movie or maybe didn't like that the story had become a whole thing, but you can draw your own conclusions.  I still think that Eat, Pray, Love is an interesting insight into one woman’s journey.

Anyway, onto Signature.   It tells the story of a woman named Alma and her quest to study and understand the world around her, to live up to her father’s reputation, and to love and be loved. The story covers over a hundred years, spanning her father’s humble upbringings, his meteoric rise, and then (the main story-line) Alma’s life and loves.

I liked it.  I definitely liked it when I was reading it.   If you are interested in biology and botany then you should  pick this up.  I was also engaged by the naked ambition of some of the characters.  I was reading this novel during the Winter Olympic games, and I could see a similarity between the sacrifice and drive of the athletes and the sacrifice and drive of some of the characters in this novel.  It takes great confidence and hunger to lay everything on the line for one specific goal, and  in my opinion, the story of anyone who has that ambition, that drive is going to be the subject of a fascinating story. Signature does work on this level. 

I recommend this novel, but with reservations.  Mostly, I think, I want people to read this book so that I can talk about it with them.  What did others think of Alma’s plight?  Did other readers think the story ended with a whimper? Was the whimper satisfying? What are we to make of Alma's attempts at intimacy? Is this a spiritual book? A metaphysical book?  If you've read this book, I want to talk to you!  And again, that may be the sign of a good book!

PS  In the picture above, the book is sitting on a bed of moss that resides in the courtyard of my school.  I credit The Signature of All Things for helping me see the moss differently. (Once you read the book you'll get it).

.  

.  

A Tale for the Time Being

So I’ve read just four of the T.O.B. books so far (Read my previous post for some background).  I enjoyed Jhumpa Lahari’s The Lowlands but thought The Namesake was better (I may be alone in that).   Kiese Laymon’s Long Division was challenging and hilarious.  I want to re-read it and think about it some more.  Phillip Meyer’s The Son was so good, so EPIC, I’m going to have to write about it next.  But first, I want to consider A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki’s brilliant novel of two interwoven tales of women searching for peace and purpose.

The story begins with Nao, a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl  introducing herself to an unknown reader, an unknown “you.” Is she writing to me?  Is it a general “you?” The answer comes in the next chapter when we meet Ruth, a writer who has moved with her recently-convalesced (and peculiar and interesting) husband.  One day, while walking on the beach near her house, Ruth finds a package which contains, among other items, Nao’s diary.  Ruth decides to read the diary at the same rate Nao wrote it (which is maybe a bit of authorial chicanery.  At a couple of points Nao’s story becomes very compelling and very suspenseful; the idea that Ruth would NOT read ahead at those points seems strange).  

While it may be odd for Ruth to not blitz through the diary, the arrangement does help create a lot of suspense for the reader.  You see, Ruth believes that the diary has washed up on her beach as a result of the tsunami that hit Japan in March of 2011.  Were Nao and her family victims of the disaster?  As we read (and Ruth reads) Nao’s account of her family, her trouble at school, and her relationship with her great-grandmother (a Buddhist nun named Riko) we become caught up in Nao’s future, which is, of course Ruth’s present and our present.  Where is Nao now?  Why can’t Ruth find any record of her or her family online?  Why is there a kamikaze pilot’s watch tucked in the flotsam along with the book?The suspense is tremendous and at points I wanted to yell at Ruth: Just read the ending already!  Is Nao OK? Just finish it!

This book is suspenseful, a bit magical, and very spiritual.  In my favorite part, Nao goes to stay with her very Zen, very cool 104 year old great grandma Riko for a summer.  Her grandma lives in and takes care of a  secluded mountain-top temple which is, of course, the perfect place for Nao to learn how to deal with her overwhelming school and family problems.  The temple is described so beautifully, and Riko is portrayed so lovingly, that once you are done reading this part of the book you will want to convert to Buddhism and travel to Japan.  At least for the summer.  At least I did.

I’m only half joking, by the way.  One of the reasons we read at all is to find our place in the world. What is our purpose?  What is our meaning?  The characters in the book are all seeking as well.  Nao is searching, her parents are struggling, Ruth is trying to find her own way and her own place …. Only Jiko has her own place and her own peace, it seems.  Could this be because she has taken the vows of a bosatsu, a Buddhist saint, someone who is committed to helping all others become enlightened before she herself does?  Is her peacefulness a result of her discovery of her purpose?  And is this something we can all accomplish?

I loved this book.  I hope it advances at least a few rounds in the Tournament of Books so that even more people will hear about it, pick it up and enjoy it!