Great House Redux

In February of 2011, when I first read Great House by Nicole Krauss, I tore through it in 6 days, and as soon as I finished, I wanted to read it again.  Finally, this year, I did. 

Great House is the story of an enormous desk, and the people who owned it through the years.  Sort of.  It is told through four different stories, and each story has two parts.  I described the stories in 2011, and I hate to repeat myself, but the shortest synopsis of the stories is this.  "All Rise" is told by Nadia.  She is a writer who received the desk from a person named Daniel who later disappears under ominous circumstances.  She turns the desk over to Leah.  "True Kindness" is a great father-son story showing the distance that can grow between two people.  The son, Dov, wanted to be a writer, but his father so discouraged him that he became a judge instead.   The third story is "Swimming Holes".  This is the story of Lotte, who is a writer, and her husband, Arthur.  Lotte escaped the Holocaust as part of the Kindertransport, and she doesn't like to talk about that part of her life.  When Lotte gets Alzheimer's late in her life, she inadvertently lets Arthur in on some important secrets that she has kept for years.  Where Lotte got the desk is a mystery, but she gives it to Daniel.  The final story, "Lies Told by Children" is of Izzy, and her strange relationship with Yoav and his sister, Leah.  Their father, who is called by their surname, Weisz, escaped the Holocaust, but his family's home was ransacked, and his father's desk was stolen.  It is his life's purpose to reclaim all of the items stolen by the Nazis and the family's opportunistic neighbors.

When I first read the book, I was left with lots of questions.  I wanted to find the connections between the characters that I knew that I had missed.  This time, I did everything differently.  I read the book quickly in 2011.  Instead of going even faster on the second reading, I took more than twice as long, and read with a pencil in hand.  I underlined every name, eye color, and year.  I made parallel time lines for each story inside the front cover of the book, and kept checking them.  And after the first story, I was embarrassed.

It was so obvious!  How could I have missed it?  Clearly, Daniel was Leah and Yoav's father, who just used a different name with Lotte and Nadia.  It was plain as day that Lotte was his mother.  Until I read further, and it was clear that she was not, and he was not.

After my second reading, with attention to detail, notes and time lines, I still feel like I have missed the connections.  Don't get me wrong.  The novel is great, and it isn't confusing.  I just feel like there are clues and I am still not seeing them.  My best guess after the second time around is that Lotte and Weisz were siblings or cousins who lost each other in the war.  Daniel is related to both of them.  Maybe he was a descendant of another sibling.  It's possible that he was a nephew to them both, or a descendant of a cousin.  I don't have a good connection to the "True Kindness" characters, other than to speculate that the father could have been involved in the theft of the desk somehow or he could have sold the house in Israel to Weisz.  But maybe that's not the point.  Maybe the whole point of the book is that if we look hard enough for connections between people, we can find them, whether they are real or imagined.  It's the Keven Bacon game, times ten thousand.  Maybe the characters are all just people who happened to live near each other or are unrelated owners of a desk.  Maybe Lotte put an ad in the newspaper that she had a desk for sale and Daniel saw it.  Nothing more.

This is the first book that I read for the Year of Re-Reading Challenge.  Great House was a NYT Notable Book for 2010.

If you are reading this before June 13, 2014, don't forget to click here to enter to win the audiobook of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

Next Up:  The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

Still Listening to:  The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

Life Changing Summer Camp

While reading The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer I found myself constantly torn between wanting it to go on forever, and wanting to know what would happen next.  The adjective that is coming to mind is "lovely", but that sounds so unlike me.  Really though, The Interestings is a lovely, lovely book. 

It all started when my daughter's former art teacher suggested that she should go to a sleep away art camp.  I had never even considered that my daughter was qualified to attend an art camp, or that there was one for her, for that matter.  I told her teacher that I was so glad that he had recommended this, and that it could be life changing for her.  I wrote the deposit check, put a stamp on the envelope, and picked up a new book to start reading.  That book was The Interestings.

I went into The Interestings knowing that it was about a group of people who met when they were young and had high expectations, with the reader watching them grow up, and seeing the expectations adjust as plans change and sometimes fail.  I had assumed that it was going to be similar to The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud, where the people all meet in college.  Instead, the characters met at a life changing sleep away art camp.  And I was hooked.

Would my daughter's art camp be as important to her as Spirit-in-the-Woods was to these characters?  Would my daughter be more like the charmed and perfect Ash, or like the awkward and lovable but envious Jules?  Could she possibly be like Ethan, the true artistic genius who turns his creativity into a commercial success story?  And then later, please don't let her be like Ethan.  You'll see why.

In The Interestings, Ethan, Jules, Ash and her brother, Goodman, return to Spirit-in-the-Woods, the Utopian camp, each summer.  Their friends also include Jonah, who is the son of a famous folk singer, and Cathy, the talented dancer whose body lets her down.  These kids are driven, and they believe that they are special.  As they graduate from high school and outgrow art camp, they stay in touch as they try to find success in their fields.  Most of the story is set in New York City, where they all live after college.  We first meet the characters in the 1970s, then we progress through New York's aids infected 1980's, the dot com 1990s, and of course, 2001.  The story finally ends when the characters are in their 50s, and some of them are just hitting their stride.

There are some great quotes in this book, beginning with the author's dedication, "For my parents, who sent me there."   Maybe my daughter's art camp will inspire her to write a similar dedication to me someday . . . Note to self:  try to resist setting unrealistic expectations for summer camp.

In fact, although the book is primarily about this group of self obsessed friends, my favorite quotes all involve the family relationships.  The first is Ethan's haiku summary of the book that Ash thinks explains her life, "Drama of the Gifted Child":

"My parents loved me
narcissistically, alas
and now I am sad"

The next is Jules thinking about the relationship between Ash and Goodman:

"The love between a brother and a sister just over a year apart in age held fast.  It wasn't twinship, and it wasn't romance, but it was more like a passionate loyalty to a dying brand."  My kids are only 14 months apart, but they have not yet found that passionate loyalty.  Hopefully it will come with age.

Another great quote is Ash responding to a worried mom, who is concerned that her daughter won't find work as a director, and should try something safer:

". . .if she does really, really want it, and if she seems to have a talent for it, then I think you should tell her 'That's wonderful.'  Because the truth is, the world will probably whittle your daughter down.  But a mother never should."  I cried a little at that one.

Finally, Jules gives Ethan great advice about how to relate to his son who has autism:  "Love your son . . .Love him and love him."

The Interestings also fits into my "secret formula".  There are several books, like The Secret History by Donna Tartt and Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl that follow a formula that I seem to fall for.  The formula involves a person going to a new school, and recognizing a coed clique that she wants to join.  Once the clique finally accepts the newcomer, she realizes that the group has a secret that she would be better off not knowing.  Usually a teacher is also involved.  The Interestings doesn't fit the formula perfectly, but it comes pretty close.  In The Interestings, Jules doesn't seem to realize that the clique exists until Ash invites her to join.  The secret comes later, and instead of being a secret from outsiders, this secret exists within the clique itself.  A counselor, instead of a teacher, is in on the plan from the start. 

There was so much that I loved about this book.  Each time that I thought that it was predictable and was falling into cliches, Wolitzer threw in a perfect twist to keep the story interesting.  There are so many more topics that I could talk about, like Jules' envy, Ethan's relationship issues, Goodman's arrogance, and Dennis' just plain goodness.  These are all characters who you should really get to know.  I'm adding this one to my growing list of Favorites.  The Interestings was a NYT Notable for 2013.

Next Up:  Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks.  This is the next Typical Book Group pick.

Still Listening to:  Winter of the World by Ken Follett.  I've just reached the half way mark on this one, but the second half should go faster, now that the holidays are over and I'm back to my daily driving routines.

Just Amazing

It is time for you to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, and in fact, I might ask, what has taken you so long?  Amazing was published in 2000, was a NYT Notable Book for that year, and won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2001.  And still you haven't read it?  Neither had I, despite the fact that it had been sitting in my nightstand for 3 or 4 or 5 years, just waiting for me.

Amazing is the story of Josef Kavalier, who starts off as a teenage boy living in Prague as Hitler rises to power.  Josef is interested in magic, and worships Houdini.  His mentor, Bernard Kornblum, teaches him illusions and the tricks of escape artists.  Joe's training is tested when he escapes from Prague and manages to find his way to the United States.  Joe's cousin, Sammy Klayman, is living in New York, where one day Joe appears.  Joe and Sammy are about the same age, and form a quick bond.  Sammy wants to find Joe a job at the Empire Novelty Company, where he works.  Joe has an artistic talent that gives Sammy a great idea.  What if he and Joe could create a comic book that Empire could publish to compete with the new Superman comics?

Joe has never even heard of a comic book before, but he trusts Sammy, and will do what Sammy says to help him get a job.  As Sammy tries to persuade his boss to start a comic book, Joe draws up a few quick sketches of a Golem.  A Golem is a character from Jewish folklore which is formed from inanimate materials, such as sand, but becomes alive and powerful.  The Golem is all wrong as a superhero for America in the 1940s, but with Sammy's boss' tentative approval, they try to come up with something else that the American public will embrace.  And so, the Escapist is born.  The Escapist fights Nazis and other evil forces, and becomes an immediate hit. 

Sammy and Joe's boss becomes incredibly wealthy from the success of the Escapist, and even Sammy and Joe are making more money than they need.  Joe saves every penny to try to help the rest of his family escape from Prague before it is too late.  The juxtaposition of the golden age of comics in the US versus the oppression of Jews in Prague is stark, and leaves Joe feeling lost and conflicted. The years go by, and the cousins grow up and grow apart, while always remaining connected by one woman, Rosa.  Rosa is the inspiration for their most successful female character, Luna Moth.  The love triangle between Joe, Sammy and Rosa is entirely unconventional, but it works. 

There are a couple great quotes in Amazing.  The first that I loved is when Joe is explaining that he's not satisfied to write the Escapist in more commercially viable terms.  He says "I'm tired of fighting, maybe, for a little while.  I fight, and I am fighting some more, and it just makes me have less hope, not more.  I need to do something . . . something that will be great, you know, instead of trying always to be Good."

Another is explaining why Joe loved comic books, even years after he had quit working for Empire:  ". . .he loved them for the pictures and stories they contained, the inspirations and lubrications of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could dream for fifteen years, transfiguring their insecurities and delusions, their wishes and their doubts, their public educations and their sexual perversions, into something that only the most purblind of societies would have denied the status of art."

A few years back, when I was reading McSweeney's 36, which included Fountain City:  A Novel Wrecked by Michael Chabon, I mentioned how he had given us such intimate details of his writing process and personal life, that I knew that he slept in the nude, which was maybe a little more than I wanted to know.  In Fountain City, Chabon comments about how although he hadn't realized it, other people had told him that in his novels he seems to have a thing about sleepwear.  I laughed the first time that I noticed a detailed description of pajamas on page 471 of Amazing, but by the end of the book I had turned down the corners on 4 more pages of PJ descriptions.  A thing indeed.

I have often wondered, and complained to anyone who would listen, about why Carter Beats the Devil by Glenn David Gold has gotten so little attention, when it is a truly great book.  I have attributed its lack of acclaim to the fact that it was published less than a month before The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen which was ridiculously (but deservedly) hyped, and also less than a month before 9/11.  It seems obvious now, that while Gold and Chabon likely took years to write their respective books,  it was really unlucky for Gold that Chabon was able to publish a great book also focused on magicians just before Gold's book hit the stores.  While the stories are entirely different, there may have been a little bit of magic burn out in 2001.  But, if you do read and like Amazing, I recommend that you also give Carter a try.

I am adding The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay to my Favorites list.  At 636 pages, it is also a BFB.  Amazing is the last book that I need to complete my revised goal for The Off the Shelf Challenge.  This is THE book that has made doing the OTS Challenge for the last 2 years worthwhile for me.  I never would have gotten around to it if I hadn't had a goal of trying to get through the books that had been crowding my nightstand.  In its honor, and since it's only September, I think I'll extend my goal by another 5 books, to 25.

Next Up:  Who Asked You by Terry McMillan

Still Listening to:  Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

The Good Guys

When we first meet Benjamin Benjamin in The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison, his wife has left him and he has lost his children.  Because he had been a stay at home dad, he is also unemployed and in need of money.  He takes an adult education class in care giving, and decides to apply for a job as a caregiver for Trevor, a guy who is 19 years old, living with his mother, and suffering from muscular dystrophy. 

Like the mom in Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, Trevor's mom is more concerned about finding someone who her son will get along with than with finding the person most qualified to deliver professional care.  Right away, Trevor and Ben hit it off.  However, soon Ben's personal life gets in the way, and Trevor's mom fires him.  Through a series of clever notes and inevitable disasters, Trevor's dad convinces Trevor to come visit him in another state.  Next thing we know, Trevor and Ben have set off on a road trip. 

On their trip, Trevor and Ben find other lost souls in need of care giving, like Dot, a girl in her late teens who is trying to hitchhike from Tacoma to Denver, and Peaches, an enormously pregnant girl trying to change a flat tire in the rain.  To Ben's surprise, he begins to see that he actually is a mature adult, capable of finding and caring for the people who need him.  The next question is whether he can care for himself.

Although Trevor has muscular dystrophy, all he wants is to be treated like a normal guy.  While Trevor's substantial disability is never forgotten, it is clear that he is so comfortable around Ben, Dot, and Peaches because they see him as a person, not a person with a disease.  This is an especially timely book for the start of the Labor Day Weekend.  I have memories of watching the muscular dystrophy telethon every Labor Day Weekend when I was growing up, and this year I just might need to make a donation in Trevor's honor.

Judging a book by the cover, I expected Fundamentals to remind me of The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon.  I could see the van in the picture, I knew that there was a person in a wheelchair, and I expected a cross country road trip to ensue.  But where Homan and Sam stole away on their trip and figured it out as they went along, Ben and Trevor are organized and full of plans.  There are some similarities with the road trip in Beautiful Girl, especially as Ben and Trevor pick up their assorted mix of traveling companions, but not as many as I expected.  When I read the first chapter, about Ben interviewing for the job of caregiver because he didn't think he could find any other job, I immediately thought of Me Before You.  But where MBY tended toward the sappy love story, Fundamentals is a story of guys growing into themselves by gently encouraging each other out of their comfort zones.

What I did not expect, was to be reminded of one of my favorite books of all time, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  Ready Player One is a science fiction story about a teenage boy, Wade Watts, living in the 2040s, and trying to win a potentially life changing video game based on trivia from the 1980s. My son just finished reading it, and also loved it.  When he was done, he asked me what other book is like it.  As far as I was aware, there was none.  So, I was thrilled when Ben's character reminded me so clearly of Wade's, even though their stories are so different.  Let me just say that if Wade Watts was living in 2012, and was in his early 40s at that time, he would be Benjamin Benjamin.  They both have the same dry humor, accidental hipster posture, and self deprecating manner that make them characters to root for.

I listened to Fundamentals on audio book, and it was read by Jeff Woodman.  I would listen to him read anything.  He had perfect voices for Ben, Trevor, and Dot, especially.  There were times when Ben's daughter, Piper, began to sound like Dot, but I think that may have been deliberate.

I first heard of Fundamentals when I read about it at River City Reading.  Thanks, Shannon!  I am sure to talk about it lots more in the months to come, and I plan to pick it for The Typical Book Group when we meet at my house.

So, without further adieu, Go. Get. It. And. Read.  God that feels good!  I haven't gotten to say that since January when I read (and loved) Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I'm adding Fundamentals to my list of Favorites, and giving it 5 stars on GoodReads.

Next Up on CD:  The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve

Still Reading:  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Guess Again

On the eve of my 18th wedding anniversary, I started reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  Gone Girl  is the story of Amy Elliott and Nick Dunne.  Amy and Nick met in New York City, fell in love, and got married.  Amy tells the story in her diary, while alternating chapters tell Nick's point of view.  From the beginning, I felt like I knew people like them.  I would like people like them.  Maybe I am a little "people like them".  They seem to live a charmed life, even though they are going through a rough patch in their marriage.  But then, on their 5th wedding anniversary, Amy goes missing, and it appears that she has been forcibly abducted. 

From there, Flynn takes the reader on an thrill ride.  Who to trust?  Who to blame?   Nick doesn't react to the abduction the way that one might expect a husband to react, and quickly becomes the prime suspect.  I don't want to tell you much about why this is, but I will tell you that there is a character who seems to be based on Nancy Grace who is stirring the pot.

Complicating matters, Amy's parents have made a nice little empire out of a series of childrens' books called "Amazing Amy", starring their very own daughter, Amy.  In spite of their degrees in psychology, they turn Amazing Amy into something that real life Amy finds hard to emulate, while exploiting her life for their material.  Due to the Amazing Amy books, real life Amy has also found herself the target of stalkers, and of people who feel that they know her better than they really do.

Gone Girl is incredibly well written.  Before I started reading, I had seen tons of GoodReads reviews of the book, all of which were either 5 stars, saying that the book was great, or 4 stars, saying that the book was great, until the ending which the reviewer hated.  With that in mind, from the start I was trying to guess what the ending would be, and why I would hate it.  Flynn kept me constantly surprised.  What I will say about the ending is that I didn't like what happened at the end, but that it is deliberate, it is consistent, and it is a lot to think about. 

There's not much more that I want to tell you about this book, because it is the well planned surprises that make it so great.  I am adding this to my list of Favorites.  So, here I go again:  Go. Get. It. And. Read.   I haven't gotten to say that in a while.

Next up:  The Odyssey by Homer

Still Listening to:  Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison

Review and Preview

Goodbye 2012!  As far as years go, you really weren't so bad.  Maybe you were even a little good.  For Christmas I got The Patrick Melrose Novels and At Last  by Edward St. Aubyn, which shows that it pays to drop gift hints.  I also got the DVD of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, to add to my Jonathan Safran Foer obsession collection.  December is almost over, and as far as I am aware, no one has launched anything as exciting as the OASIS, which is the massively multiplayer game featured in Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, that was said to have been released in December of 2012.  I think we are better off without it.  I mean really, we can barely handle Words With Friends.

My favorite books that I read in 2012 are these:

1.  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
3. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
4. Stone Arabia by Dana Spoitta
5.  Helen of Troy by Margaret George

in that order.  Your favorite books that I read in 2012 (based on page views) are:

1. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
2.  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
3.  Helen of Troy by Margaret George
4.  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
5.  Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

in that order.  So we almost agree, which is good.

For 2013, I have decided to sign up again for the Off the Shelf Challenge.  The idea of this challenge is that the participants should read books that they already own, in order to move them off their shelves.   This time I am only going to commit to moving 15 books off of my shelf.  Last time I committed to 24, and read 26.  I don't want to commit to that many this year, so that I can feel like I can review books for authors or read books that I pick up during the year, without feeling like I am failing the challenge.  So, here is the list of books that I plan to read in 2013.  As I read them, I will cross them out, and provide a link to my review.




1.  The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott Reviewed 1/26/13
2.  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Reviewed 7/16/13
3.  The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano Reviewed 3/31/13
4.  Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks Reviewed 2/6/13
5.  The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury
6.  True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey Reviewed 11/16/13
7.  My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey
8.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon  Reviewed 9/21/13
9.  Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
10.  Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
11.  Zeitoun by Dave Eggers  Reviewed 2/14/13
12.  In the Woods by Tana French Reviewed 10/21/13
13.  Happy Families by Carlos Fuentes
14.  The End of Sparta by Victor Davis Hanson
15.  The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie
16.  Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin
17.  The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway
18.  The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings Reviewed 2/25/13
19.  Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand Reviewed 3/9/13
20.  The Iliad by Homer Reviewed 11/29/13
21.  The Odyssey by Homer  Reviewed 1/15/2013
22.  The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James Reviewed 4/6/13
23.  Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
24.  The Titans by John Jakes
25.  The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella Reviewed 5/2/13
26.  One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
27.  Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy Reviewed 12/16/13
28.  The Last Life by Claire Messud Reviewed 7/29/13
29.  The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell Reviewed 5/12/13
30.  We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
31.  The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett
32.  The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
33.  The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman  Reviewed 6/29/13
34.  The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
35.  At Last by Edward St. Aubyn Reviewed 8/22/13
36.  The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn Reviewed 8/6/13
37.  The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine Reviewed 8/22/13
38.  The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve Reviewed 9/11/13
39.  Brooklyn by Colm Toibin Reviewed 9/26/13
40.  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
41.  A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Reviewed 1/19/13
42.  Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
43.  Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

There are a lot of great books on this list, and I can't wait to get started!  I'll keep you posted on my progress.

For now, I am

Still Reading:  Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I am LOVING this book so far!

Still Listening to:  Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison

Listen Up!

When I read John Schwartz' NYT essay about the audio books that he listens to while exercising, I immediately added Ready Player One to my TBR list.  According to Schwartz, Ready Player One was "the perfect marriage between author and reader".   The author, Ernest Cline, is a self described geek who is obsessed with '80s pop culture. The reader, Wil Wheaton, was one of the stars of the movie "Stand By Me", an 80s classic, and he is actually mentioned in the story.

Ready Player One is set in the 2040s in the Midwest United States.  The Great Recession has completed its third decade, and people desperate for a safe place to live have flocked to cities.  There, trailers, campers, and vans are stacked, 20 or 30 high, with a metal framing keeping them in place, and with several families occupying each.  Inside these trailers, each resident is voluntarily hooked into the OASIS.

The OASIS is the invention of James Halliday, and was said to have been launched in December of 2012.  The OASIS is something like Facebook, or if you have kids the age of mine, the Webkins' world, on steroids.  Each OASIS user would create an avatar, and do things through their avatar like explore outer space, go to school, or even fall in love with and marry another avatar, who he probably has never even met in real life.  Like a drug, the OASIS is addictive, and given the bleak state of reality, millions of users log into it each day to escape their lives.

Halliday was a reclusive billionaire who, like Cline, was obsessed with 1980s pop culture.  When he died, Halliday revealed a giant game in the OASIS, where people could try to piece together clues to solve riddles.  The ultimate prize for solving all of the riddles is control of the OASIS and Halliday's multi-billion dollar fortune.  The protagonist, who I haven't even mentioned yet, Wade Watts, joins the hunt for clues and spends every moment of his free time studying 1980s books, sitcoms, TV commercials, and especially video games in order to prepare for the challenge.

Wheaton's reading of the story is excellent.  He uses "up talk" so perfectly that although I was listening to the book on CD, I wanted to see the paper version to see if Cline actually had inserted  question marks where commas should be in his characters' conversations.  He did not.  I went on every extra errand that I could think of so that I could drive more in order to keep listening, but it still wasn't enough.  Yesterday, I checked the book out of the library so that I could read it too.

Now mind you, I have not spent more than $10.00 playing video games in my entire life.  I don't consider myself to be 80s obsessed.  But I could not get enough of Cline's book.  Cline has thought through the OASIS so thoroughly that I am wondering if he has applied for patents.  If he is half the geek that he claims to be, then he surely has.

I agree with Schwartz that sometimes the reader makes the audio book.  I've mentioned before that I thought I might not have liked a book as much if it hadn't been read in the right way.  With this in mind, I'm adding a new "label":  "Awesome Audio".  Just in case you haven't figured out how labels work yet, by clicking on "Awesome Audio" at the top of the column to your right, every review that I have tagged with that label will show up.  You can tell which labels I have used the most by the size of the font.  There are many more "NYT Notables" than there are "Recipes Included", for instance.

One thing that the audio listener will miss out on is Cline's own game.  Like Halliday, Cline is said to have left clues in both the paperback and hardcover versions of the book.  If the astute reader collects the clues and figures out the puzzle, there will be a video game challenge, and a DeLorean will go to the winner.  I did spot a couple of words or letters that appeared to have been marked.  Given my gaming skills however, I'm out.

As Schwartz mentions, writer John Scalzi has referred to Ready Player One as a "nerdgasm."  I couldn't agree more, and consider myself totally fulfilled.   Go. Get. It. And. Read.  Or better yet, Listen.  I'm also tagging this one as a Favorite.

One more down for the Support Your Library Challenge!

And Now, Back to Reading:  The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali.  At first, I was rushing through this one, because I wanted to be able to read Ready Player One instead.  Then I finally realized that I could put this book down, pick up RPO, and then return to this (approximately 36 hours later) when I finished RPO.

Next Up on CD: Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin

New York Winters

At the end of 2010, I read A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin, and I liked it, but I couldn't say that it was life changing.  For some reason, after that, I picked up another book by Helprin, Winter's Tale, and added it to my nightstand, where it has sat, waiting for me to read it.  As part of the Off the Shelf Challenge, I am trying to plow through the books that have been just sitting around my house not being read, and I came to Helprin's book.  Now I only wish that I had read it in 1983 when it was first released.  In the right hands, Winter's Tale could change lives.

Winter's Tale begins with Peter Lake trying to make his way in New York City in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  The city is a rough and magical place, which only becomes more surreal when Peter meets Beverly Penn, a wealthy girl, dying of consumption, who takes him to her family's vacation home in the Lake of the Coheeries.  The descriptions of the Penn home, and especially of Beverly's rooftop sleeping deck are amazing.  Likewise, the descriptions of New York City during the hard winters of the early 20th century are enough to make one want to travel back through time.  Without giving away the whole story, we fast forward to 1995, meet new characters, and reunite with some from the past.  One of the modern day characters is seeking a perfectly just city.  Many of the others find work at the enlightened newspaper, The Sun, which is constantly battling to stay ahead of its better funded counterpart, The Ghost.  All of the characters seem to be living in a charmed, golden age, where harsh winters and cloud walls hide secrets that defy the concept of time.

The story in Winter's Tale screams to be interpreted for Biblical meaning.  Most obviously, the white horse, Athansor, invokes the image of Aslan, the lion in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe who was said to represent Jesus.  It is less clear to me who is who if I compare Helprin's human characters to their Biblical peers.  We have a fallen angel, who may be the devil.  Could Peter Lake be Jesus, or is Athansor Jesus?  Some characters seem immortal, and others rise from their graves.  I would love to talk to other people who have read this book about whether they feel certain characters may have been intended to represent figures from the New Testament.   Each summer, The Typical Book Group reads a Big Fat Book (BFB), and this year I have recommended Winter's Tale.  If they pick this one, I will be sorry to not have a new BFB assigned for me to read this summer, but excited to see what they thought about it.

An interesting feature of this book is that Helprin wrote it in 1983, predicting the future with specific focus on New York at the turn of the millennium, but I read it in 2012, with New Year's Eve of 2000 now seeming like the distant past.  Helprin predicts fires that will try to destroy New York at the turn of the century.  Speaking of the fire, Praeger de Pinto, who is then the Mayor of New York says "The city's not going to burn forever.  We're going to rebuild it. . . If this fire stops at night, we'll begin to rebuild on the next morning.  If it stops in the morning, we'll begin to rebuild in the afternoon.  When that happens, I want all the arsonists to be dead, and I want anyone who even entertains the idea of lighting a match to be able to remember what happened to the people who started this fire."  Couldn't you just hear Giuliani saying that on September 12, 2001?  How about this description:  "The bridges were crowded with uncountable thousands of refugees who streamed across their darkened roadways . . . They walked in stunned silence, children on their backs, briefcases and bundles in their hands.  The streets became a huge rag-and-bone shop as people carried off an infinite assortment of objects that they wanted to save."  Doesn't that sound just like the images of people leaving their offices to walk home on September 11?

I listened to the book on CD in my car, and then read ahead at home.  The audio book reader, Oliver Wyman, was amazing.  He had distinct and true voices for each of at least 20 characters, all of which seemed to fit them perfectly.  I would listen to Wyman read again any time.

In my humble opinion, this is one of the best books ever written, and it will definitely be on my list of Favorites.  Helprin's character development is fantastic, his scene descriptions are second to none, and although the stories twist and turn, they come together just as they should.  For some reason, this was not a NYT Editor's Choice Book (the 1980s equivalent of the Notable Book), and in fact, no book by Helprin has ever won any awards.  This is astounding, and disappointing to me.  NYT gave Helprin an excellent review, which you should read if I have not yet convinced you to read Winter's Tale.   Rumor has it that Winter's Tale may be made into a movie starring Will Smith.  Based on how well I have thought that The Help and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close have been interpreted on the big screen, I will be first in line to buy tickets.


So, Go. Get. It. And. Read.  Really.


Next up on CD:  Lit by Mary Karr


Next up on Paper:  Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth Reichl

Driving Hazards

Did you know that if, instead of going straight to work, you sit in your car listening to a book on CD in the parking lot of your child's school, you may wind up spending the morning with your dad, and your husband, and when neither of their jumper cables are long enough, the guy from AAA roadside assistance?  Yep.  It happened.  I was listening to Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, and it's just too good to only listen to while driving.

I am only about 1/3 into the story, but so far, it is like a long fairy tale for adults.  The main characters at this point are Peter Lake, an orphan who raised himself in New York City at the turn of the last century, his nemesis, Pearly Soames, and Beverly Penn, the woman he falls in love with while trying to rob her father.

This is another 27 hour long story, so I have a lot more listening to do.  I'm asking for extra long jumper cables for Mother's Day, because I just can't be sure that I won't drain down my battery listening again.

By the way . . . don't forget to vote for this blog in the Independent Book Blogger contest by April 23, 2012.  The link is on the top right corner of this Blog. 

Still Reading:  Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn

Happily Listening to:  Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

Ethical Lessons from 13 Year Old Boys

Last night, with one chapter left to go in Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, I made myself stop reading it.  I was afraid that if I finished it, I would never get to sleep because I'd have so many thoughts about the story swirling in my head.  However, if I knew I'd be able to read the last chapter in the morning, I could try to "sleep fast"** to get there.

The main character in BSG is Jason Taylor, a 13 year old boy growing up in rural, but upper middle class, England.  Jason has a stammer, which he explains is different from a stutter.  Taking place over the course of a year, Jason's social status fluctuates, with him being a king for a few precious days, and a pariah for most of the others.  He is tormented by bullies, but finds the strength to get through. 

Jason's relationship with his family is also strained.  His parents are going through a rocky patch in their marriage, and his sister is getting ready to go off to college.  The inability of a family to communicate with each other is one of my favorite themes, and Mitchell conveys this tension like one who knows it well. 

I have three favorite quotes from BSG, all from the chapter titled "souvenirs".

First is this, where Jason is talking to a woman in an antique store:
Jason:  "You don't know my parents"
Woman:  "The question here is, 'Do you'"
Jason:  "Of course I do.  We live in the same house."
Woman:  "You break my heart, Jason.  Oh, you break my freakin' heart."

The second is Jason, after watching his mom stop shoplifters in her store: 
"I noticed a new need that's normally so close-up you never know it's there.  You and your mum need to like each other.  Not love, but like."

The last is Jason, immediately after deciding that he likes his mum:
"Good moods're as fragile as eggs."
"Bad moods're as fragile as bricks"

As I was reading BSG,  I was really liking it, but it was reminding me of another book that I had read, and I just couldn't place which one it was. Finally, it came to me - The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt.

The Wednesday Wars is a children's book, which won Newbery Honors.  I first read it to my son when he was in 4th grade.  My son loves it when a book that I am reading to him makes me cry, and Wednesday Wars did a couple of times.  It's strange though, that Black Swan Green would remind me of a children's book.  My sister bought BSG for me, saying that it was one of her favorites, and her taste is generally (and in all things) much more sophisticated than mine.

Black Swan Green is set in rural England, in 1982, the year of the war in the Falkland Islands.  It is the story of one year in the life of a 13 year old boy, Jason Taylor.  Jason secretly writes poetry and is terrified that his "friends" will find out and make fun of him.  Jason's friends already make fun of him because of his stammer, which sometimes keeps him from saying certain letters.  Adults reach out to Jason to encourage his poetry and give him hope that the bullies won't win in the end.  Jason sees hypocrisy in the adults, including his parents, who want to keep gypsies from settling in their area.  Jason lives with his parents and his older sister.  Through the story, his parents' marriage disintegrates, and his relationship with his sister shows signs of strength.  The author has said that the story is semi-autobiographical.

The Wednesday Wars is set on Long Island, in 1967-68, during the Vietnam War.  It is the story of one school year in the life of a 13 year old boy, Holling Hoodhood.  Holling secretly acts in a Shakespeare play, and is terrified that his friends will find out and make fun of him.  Some kids in the school already bully Holling, and he is singled out for being Presbyterian in an otherwise Catholic and Jewish town.  Adults reach out to Holling to encourage his love of Shakespeare, and to compensate for a lack of attention paid to him by his parents.  Holling sees hypocrisy in adults who are mean to Vietnamese refugees.  Holling lives with his parents and his older sister.  Through the story, his parents' marriage shows signs of cracking, and his relationship with his sister becomes a lifeline to them both.  The author has said that the story is semi-autobiographical.

So, what makes one of these a critically acclaimed children's book, and the other a critically acclaimed book for adults?  The line is really not so clear.  I read Wednesday Wars to my son when he was in 4th grade, and to my daughter when she was in 6th.  The Typical Book Group also read it, after so many of us were talking about reading it with our kids.  Now my son is 13 and in 8th grade, and I think he's ready for Black Swan Green.  He is definitely mature enough for the content, but I'm not sure that he's ever read a book set in England with so many British phrases.  It might get frustrating for him to not know that "nick" means "steal" or that "snogging" is good, but he is very close to being ready for it.  Ready for reading the book I mean, not for snogging.

In both books, the 13 year old boys face ethical challenges that would be difficult for adults to manage.  The boys show their character, and do what is right, even when they really want to do the opposite. 

I guess my point is, if you liked Black Swan Green, and you have kids who are in 4th-7th grade, buy them The Wednesday Wars.  If you read The Wednesday Wars with your kids and you loved it, you will also love Black Swan Green.  I loved Black Swan Green, will add it to my Favorites list, and am looking forward to reading Cloud Atlas by Mitchell, which my sister also gave to me.

My favorite quote from The Wednesday Wars is this:
After Holling's sister returns home after a failed trip to California
Dad, to sister, very sarcastically:  "Did you find yourself?"
Sister, unbelieving: "What?"
Dad:  "Did you find yourself?"
Holling:  "She found me."

I can only hope that some day, my kids who fight daily over issues of such importance as who gets to sit in the front seat, will find each other too.


**My mom used to tell me to "sleep fast" when I was little.  I know right?  How does one sleep fast?  It usually meant that something great was going to happen in the morning, and that I needed to get to sleep quickly in order to get enough sleep to wake up early in the morning to enjoy it.  Like "we're going to Disney World in the morning, sleep fast!"  I also always thought that it was a wish that the night would go by quickly so that the morning could come sooner.  I tell my kids to "sleep fast" now, and they know what I mean.  It's strange, the things you do, that your parents did, that you never planned to do.

One more down for the Off the Shelf Challenge!

Next up:  March by Geraldine Brooks

Still Listening to:  Following Atticus by Tom Ryan

The Story of The Fakes

As I've mentioned in the last two posts, I really loved Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta.  The story is that of a brother and a sister through the brother's attempts to achieve success in the music industry.  The sister, Denise, is clearly the brother's biggest fan.  The brother, Nik, comes closest to making it big twenty years before present day in the novel. 

Spiotta is telling the story not of the "one hit wonder", but of a no hit wonder, as Denise observes.  When Nik realizes that critics aren't going to write about him, he writes his own reviews.  When there are no longer newspaper clippings to put into a scrapbook, Nik makes his own scrapbook, featuring what could have happened, as though it really did.  Nik creates bands, puts out CDs and even invents elaborate back stories for all of the band members, who are all really Nik himself.  Denise is somewhat concerned about the degree of attention that Nik pays to his alternate universe, but is also somewhat in awe.  Nik's attention to detail is such that, as he brags, if his Chronicles were to be discovered in the future, they would be believed as truth.

In addition to being Nik's biggest (only?) fan, Denise fills her time by taking care of her mother who is drifting into dementia, and struggling to have a relationship with her boyfriend and her daughter.  When Denise's daughter, Ada, decides to make a documentary about Nik, to show the world what an amazing artist he is, Denise questions her own loyalties, and her long held convictions.  Spiotta (through Denise) defines a family as being several people who all share in the same delusion.  Whether Nik is suffering under a delusion, or is an under appreciated genius, is the key question that Denise just can't answer.

Spiotta's writing seems effortless.  Stone Arabia  is only 235 pages, and it whizzed right by.  I would have liked another 200 pages, and it seemed as if Spiotta might have had enough material to fill that many pages, but just decided that it wasn't necessary.  The story ends without tying up neatly, and really, it's better that way. 

If you liked A Visit to the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, you will love Stone Arabia.  Like Goon Squad, Stone Arabia seems to give the reader an insight into the music industry, and into the souls of the artists.  I think that I will add this one to my list of Favorites as well.  I haven't said all that I would like to say about Stone Arabia, but I'm worried that what I still want to say might spoil the story for you.  If you would like to read my Stone Arabia spoilers, click here.

One more down for the Support your Library Challenge!

Next up:  Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Still Listening to:  Following Atticus by Tom Ryan

Extremely Good & Incredibly Right

I saw the movie, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, last night, and loved it.  I sort of expected to not like the movie, since the book is my all time favorite, and I knew that the movie couldn't do everything that is done in the book within the 2 hours and 6 minutes that it is on the screen.  While the movie was not exactly like the book, it is true to the spirit of the book, and well worth the price of a ticket.

My favorite scene from the book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, where Oskar looks up his dad's name in Mr. A.R. Black's card catalogue, was not in the movie.  In fact, A.R. Black was not in the movie, even though he was such an integral character in the book.  The other Blacks who Oskar visits in the book are also mostly absent.  The movie shows Oskar visiting lots of people, but we don't really get to know the people that he visits.  In the book, the grandma has a much more important role than in the movie, and in the movie, the grandpa has a much more important role than in the book, but it works.

My husband, who hasn't read the book, felt that something about the phone messages that the dad left on 9/11 was unresolved.  It didn't bother me, because I knew what happened in the book, and it was like the movie left off before what happened in the book could happen.  The issue of Oskar's mom being MIA throughout most of the book was resolved in the movie more completely than in the book, and I liked how the screenwriter did that.

All told, if I could buy the DVD today, I would and I'd watch it again right now.

Still Reading:  This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman
 
Still Listening to:  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.  Another Oscar.  I hope I like him too.

JSF at MSU

Each year, Michigan State University chooses a book for all of its incoming freshmen to read as part of its "One Book, One Community" initiative.  The idea is that if everyone reads the same book, they will all start the year having that in common, and having something to share with each other.  This year, the book that they selected was my all time favorite, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

The choice of this book was brilliant, due to this year being the ten year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.  Extremely Loud is the story of a boy, Oskar, whose dad is killed in one of the World Trade Center buildings.  At the time of the story, in 2001, Oskar is nine years old.  This means that if Oskar was a real person, he could be a student at MSU right now.

Tonight, Jonathan Safran Foer came to East Lansing to talk about his book.  He was incredible.  He talked a little about his work, and himself, and then opened the floor for questions.  When asked about his writing process, he said that he can't use an outline, because if he did, the best that he would ever get from himself is what he expected to get.  Instead he said that he tries for more.   "I want to do more than what I can do, and I want to write better than I am able to write" is how he explained it.  He also said that the best writers are not the people who start off as the most talented writers, but instead they are those who just keep writing.

At the end of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar receives a heartfelt letter from his idol, Stephen Hawking.  JSF revealed that earlier in the day, an MSU student had asked him if the letter was really from Stephen Hawking.  It took JSF a few minutes to understand that the student thought that the letter may have been written by Oskar's mom, instead of Hawking.  JSF said that he had never thought about that possibility, but now that he considered it, yes, the letter must have come from Oskar's mom.  How cool is that?  He is not only willing to discuss his book and answer questions about it, but he is willing to reconsider what it means.  He compared his books to the scores written for orchestras.  Just as the score needs the orchestra to be fully realized, his books need the readers' interpretations.

JSF was also remarkably generous with his time.  The line of people waiting for him to sign their books twisted and turned, and I have no doubt that some people are still in it.  He signed my son's copy of Extremely Loud, and my copy of Tree of Codes.  Extremely Loud is scheduled to come out as a movie next year.  I will have to see it, because I won't be able to stay away, but I am planning on being disappointed in it.  I just hope I can get my son to read the book before he sees the movie, because once he's seen that, I'm afraid the power of the story will be lost, and he'll never understand why I thought it was such a great book.

THIS JUST IN!  Thorougly unattractive picture of me with JSF!  Love it!

The Typical Field Trip

Tonight, 6 members of The Typical Book Group met at a movie theater to see the movie of a book that we read a while ago, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.  First off, I have to tell you that I loved the book, and am not quite sure why I haven't put it on my list of Favorites. (done!)  I normally am disappointed when a great book is made in to a movie, but not this time!

The movie, "The Help" is very true to the book.  The casting is perfect.  I love Emma Stone as Skeeter, Bryce Dallas Howard as Hilly, and Ahna O'Reilly as Elizabeth.  If I had done the casting, I would have had Selma Blair as Skeeter, and Reese Witherspoon as Hilly, but I would have been half a generation off.  It was important to the story that these characters all be very young. 

And the clothes.  I would take every piece of Skeeter's wardrobe, even though our coloring is completely different, I'm plenty of pounds heavier, and 2 decades older.  Well, every piece except the plaid jumper, but if it was all or nothing I'd take that too.

If you haven't read the book yet, you need to stop procrastinating and read it.  The Help is set in the deep South, during the time of the early civil rights struggle.  These 20 something women were hiring African Americans twice their age to raise their children, clean their houses, and do their cooking, all for less than minimum age.  As a Northerner, it seems ridiculous that this was happening in the 1950s and even 60's.  The story is told from the perspective of Skeeter, who is a college educated single woman, coming home after graduation to rejoin all of her high school friends, who are married and lunching while the help takes care of their children.  Skeeter can see the hypocrisy in loving the "help" who raises you, and then hiring her and treating her poorly while the same person raises your children.  She convinces some of the "help" to tell their stories, and publishes them.

If you find that you just don't have time to read one more book, in this case, you could see the movie and get the full story.

Still reading:  Left Neglected by Lisa Genova.  I am tearing through this book, and can't wait to tell you about it when I finish!

Still listening to:  The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb

Don't Avoid The Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan is unusual.  It is a fun, timely, quick read, that is also an award winner.  AVFTGS won both the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2010, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2011.  With credentials like that, one would expect an amazing, but maybe a difficult book.  Instead, AVFTGS is a page turner and a perfect summer novel.  In short, it is everything that it's cracked up to be.

AVFTGS is the first book that has made me wish for a Kindle.  Each chapter is a part of a complete story, including some, but not all of the characters in the book, from a random time.  The story flashes back and forth, without obvious clues such as dates indicating where we are in time or in narrative.  Each chapter contains subtle and obvious hints as to what will happen in later chapters. One of the characters introduced in the first chapter, for instance, doesn't become important to the story again until the last chapter.  A Kindle would come in handy here, because I spent a ton of time flipping back when a new character was introduced to see if that character had been mentioned before.  As I understand Kindle, no flipping would be necessary, and I would just be able to search for "Lizzie" or "Noreen" to see if they had been mentioned earlier and I missed them. 

Most simply, AVFTGS is the story of an aging producer, his protege, his girlfriend, and a groupie/klepto turned producer's assistant turned mom.  Other story lines involve a failed publicist, a failed writer, a failed actress, a failed dictator, a failed rock star (or two?), a failed presidential hopeful, and the children of all involved.  Some of the failures find success, and some of the successful fall to invisibility.

This is a great book.  I am adding it to my favorites list, and buying it for my daughter to put away until she is old enough to read it.  One short chapter details a groupie/girlfriend's regrets in a way that is poignant and memorable.  Another great chapter is written entirely in powerpoint style slides from the point of view of a teenager trying to understand her parents.  I might let my daughter read that chapter now.  The final chapter predicts the near future in which rock stars cater to babies, known as "pointers" for their ability to point to interesting things on an ipad-like touch screen, with the parents following the children's choices.  Somehow, this doesn't seem too unlikely.

I've said it before, and I hope to say it lots more:  Go. Get. It. And. Read.

Interested in rock and roll stories?  I've read more biographies in this area than fiction, although this seems like a topic ripe for fiction.  A really good biography that you may have missed is Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be by Jennifer Trynin.  Unlike other rock and roll biographies, this is the story of an "almost was" instead of a "has been", and is really interesting in that regard.

By the way, today it's been a year since I started blogging regularly.  What got me started was being really upset with one of my kids' teachers, and wanting to send a vicious email to him that I knew I would regret.  Instead, I broadcasted my rant onto the world wide web, and no one was harmed in the production of this blog.

Next Up:  Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe.  My husband just finished reading this one, and he was pestering me to read it before he even got to the end.  I have a hunch that the characters in this book will be easier to keep track of, because I know them all from People Magazine.

Still Listening to:  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  Talk about a great book with characters who are mentioned and then show up in more important roles later . . .apparently this style has been around for a while!

All Was Vanity

There are three books that I have read more than once, on my own both times.  There are many others that I read first for a class assignment and then later to see what I missed when reading on a deadline.  There are still others that I read first because I wanted to, and then again because my son wanted me to read them to him.  But the three books that I read twice just because I wanted to are Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, and now All is Vanity by Christina Schwarz.

When I first read All is Vanity, my kids were really young, and I didn't have much time for myself.  I remembered it as being a great book, but I've never met anyone else who read it, let alone liked it, and I wasn't sure if my impression of it may have been overly enthusiastic because I was so starved for grown up books.  On my second reading, I liked it even more than on the first.

All is Vanity is the story of Margaret, a woman who is smugly convinced that she is destined to be a novelist, and Lettie, her childhood friend who is now a stay at home mom to four children.  Margaret quickly finds that writing a novel isn't as easy as she thought it would be.  Lettie, meanwhile, is thrilled that her husband has accepted a new, higher paying job, and is anxious to improve her standard of living.

Both Margaret and Lettie feel a sense of entitlement.  They feel that they are not living at the level where they should be at that point in their lives.  While they don't realize it, they are on parallel tracks, where neither is satisfied with her position as compared to her peers.

What I remembered about A is V was Lettie's outrageous and uncontrolled, but somehow understandable, spending.  I remembered Margaret as the more reasonable of the two, who was guilty of encouraging Lettie's spending, but not really responsible in the end.  Truth be told, if more people had read A is V prior to 2008, the Great Recession would have been prevented.  Ben Bernake's warnings are nothing compared to Lettie's example.  But in this reading, I really understood Margaret better, and saw her faults which far exceeded her schadenfreude. 

All is Vanity is a really well written book, with interesting characters who will seem recognizable.  While it is a completely different story, The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walters is likewise a great book tackling the topic of a character's self created financial ruin.  What is impressive is that Schwarz was savvy enough to see the future of American consumerism and write this indictment five years before the cracks in our economy were discussed on daily talk shows.  Walters looked back in 2010, and wrote his story with 20/20 hindsight, but in 2003, Schwarz was dead on in telling the story of what would soon be.

Next Up:  A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Still Listening to:  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Recession Poetry

Recently I added All is Vanity by Christina Schwarz to my TBR list.  In 2003, when it first came out, I read A is V, and recognized some characters.  I passed the book on to friends saying, "I actually know someone like this.  Someone who can't pay her credit card bills but refinances her house to add a pool.  Someone whose brand new house might actually go into foreclosure.  Can you believe it?"  In 2011 we can believe it, and I wanted to read A is V  again to see if it still struck me as powerful and accusatory after "The Great Recession".

It turns out that before I got a chance to look back to A is V, I found a new book by Jess Walter that shows the financial collapse of the irresponsible spender (read:  Everyman) post-recession.  At least I hope we are post-recession.  In Walter's book, The Financial Lives of the Poets, the main character, Matt, is a journalist who decides to quit his job about a day before the recession hits, in order to write financial news in the form of poetry.  To compliment his bad timing, Matt's wife, Lisa, goes on an Ebay spending spree, buying up "collectibles" which she is sure to resell at a profit.  A series of horrible but surprisingly understandable decisions follow, showing the reader a fictional version of the financial collapse of the neighbor next door.

Financial Lives is a great book.  In fact, because I just don't want to have to decide if Financial Lives  is better than say Carter Beats the Devil, I've decided to change my page at the top of your screen from "10 Favorites" to just "Favorites" so that I can include more really good books there.  Walter found a perfect and believable voice for Matt, and even makes the concept of financial poetry seem credible.

Next Up:  McSweeney's, Issue 36 by Dave Eggers.  The box arrived in the mail about a week ago, and I can't wait to read the instructions!  You'll understand more soon.

Still Listening to:  What is the What by Dave Eggers.  Talk about a great voice for a character.  Both the voice as written by Eggers and as read by Dion Graham are amazing.  I was a little intimidated at the idea of listening to a book that takes up 17 discs, but I'm not in any rush to finish.

More, Please

After reading page 289 of Nicole Krauss' new book, Great House, I greedily turned to the next page.  And found it blank.  I flipped through the next few blank pages too, searching for words.  Then, desperate, I considered turning back to page 1, and starting all over again.  This is definitely a book that I will read again, and I'm not really a person who has time to read books twice.
  
I finished reading Great House while on a break during a seminar.  Once the seminar resumed, I couldn't help myself from disturbing the people around me by pulling the book out to confirm dates, to see who had blue eyes and whose were black, and to try to make the connections that I know I missed the first time through.  The next time that I read it, I will try to pay more attention to the paintings mentioned in each story. I'm wondering if they give hints to what will happen either in that story or in one of the others. I also want to think about the piano. It seems like it must mean something that two characters play a grand piano. Finally, I will notice what each character is writing - there is a writer in each story, and their work could offer hints. I may also be tempted to write a timeline and insert births, deaths, and important events to see how they all fit.

Great House was a finalist for the National Book Award for 2010, but the final award went to Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon. Now I will have to add Lord of Misrule to my TBR list, just to compare.

Yes, I admit it.  I am obsessed with Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss, who are pictured on your left.  They are my favorite literary couple, with Glen David Gold and Alice Sebold a solid but distant second.  When I pick up one of NK's books, I do so with the assumption that it will not be as good as the last book that I read by JSF.  But on my list of my 10 all time favorite books, Nicole Krauss is the only author with 2 books on this list, with both The History of Love and Great House.

For me, the sign of a really great book is that I want to talk about it as soon as I finish reading it.  To that end, I have added a page of "spoilers" to this blog, where I have posted  my ideas about how certain characters are connected, and how I wish (and have decided in my own mind) that others are.  To bring you up to date from the last posting, however, I will say that the second half of the book revisited each of the four stories that were in the first half, and most of the questions were answered.  The unanswered questions are the most tantalizing, because I think that they probably really were answered, and that I just missed it. 

Go. Get. It. And. Read.        Now.

Next Up:  The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd

Still Listening to:  Inheritance of Loss  by Kiran Desai

Jinx!

 I hope that I don't jinx the book by saying this, but I am LOVING Great House by Nicole Krauss so far.  The book was billed as the story of different people whose lives are tied together through their ownership of a certain desk over many years.  I expected it to be similar to People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, in which the lives of the various characters are unified through their ownership of a specific book.  I was even more convinced that Great House would be like People of the Book after reading that Nicole Krauss' husband, Jonathan Safran Foer, was working a version of a Haggadah, since the book that POTB featured was a very special Haggadah.

However, now that I am half way through Great House, it is reminding me of several books that I love, but not POTB.  The first chapter is about a woman living in New York and a man from Chile.  Without going into too much detail, it reminded me of The Tree of Red Stars by Tessa Bridal, which is set in South America, and in which several key characters "disappear" at the hands of a cruel and paranoid government. 

The chapters of Great House could each stand alone as short stories.  The second story/chapter, called "True Kindness" may be the best short story that I have ever read.  It shows with a simple, concise clarity the factions created in a family when one child meets a father's expectations, and the other, while successful in the world, does not.  This story made me think of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. 

The fourth story/chapter includes brother and sister characters that reminded me of those in The Secret History by Donna Tartt.  Additionally, the house in which they live is on the verge of becoming a crumbling British estate, so of course I am also reminded of the siblings in The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.  There's also the rumor of sibling incest, which makes me think of The Thirteenth Tale  by Diane Setterfield.  The image of a grand piano suspended from a high ceiling in place of a chandelier from this fourth story is stuck in my head and not likely to leave any time soon.

The second half of the book is promising to bring all of the story/chapters together, and I can't wait to read more.  I read over 100 pages today, and I almost want to slow down so that it lasts longer. 

Still Listening to:  The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai