What Happened in November, 2014

Review

This month, I have been reading and listening to some long books.  In fact, as the end of November approached, and I realized that I hadn't even done one review, I put down . . .And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer (not for the first time!), and picked up 1Q84 by Haruki Murikami, so that I could read it on paper when I wasn't listening to the audio version, and have at least one book to write about. 

IQ84 is set in Japan in 1984.  Apparently, in Japanese, 1Q84 is pronounced the same as 1984.  There are two main characters, Aomame and Tengo.  Aomame steps out of a taxi in a traffic jam, goes down a stairway, and finds herself in a parallel universe.   At first Aomame can't tell that she is in the wrong dimension, but then she begins to notice subtle clues, like news stories that everyone knows about but that she can't remember, and the appearance of a strange second moon in the sky. 

Tengo was a bit of a child prodigy, who as an adult is making ends meet by working in a "cram school" (tutoring center?), while he struggles with writing a novel.  A colleague who is judging a writing contest brings Tengo a strange offer.  If Tengo will re-write a promising piece that a teenage girl submitted, the colleague is certain that it would win a prize, and possibly become a best seller.  Tengo has already read the entry, and was oddly interested in it.  Despite his ethical reservations, he can't resist.

Aomame and Tengo were friends when they were 10 years old.  "Friends" may be overstating it, but they attended the same school, and sympathized with each other because of their unusual family situations.  Every Sunday, Tengo's father who worked for a broadcast network, would go from house to house collecting fees.  Sort of like if the cable guy came to your house every month instead of Comcast sending a bill.  Aomame's parents were members of a strict religious group, and they took Aomame around with them every Sunday when they proselytized.  The two children would see each other being dragged along by their parents, and feel a kinship.  One day they held hands.  Apparently that was enough for them each to live the rest of their lives thinking about each other.

All of the usual Murakami topics are here - cats, menstruation, classical music, etc.  While thinking about this, I stumbled upon this great page, which graphs how often Murikami mentions 10 different motifs in each of his novels.  I would add a few more to her diagram.  In fact, if you took all of the sentences out of this book where Tengo was contemplating his erection or Aomame was complaining about the size of her breasts or the texture of her pubic hair, I think the book would be 50 pages shorter.

One thing that surprised me and that I haven't noticed in Murikami's other books was that the translation was really horrible.  Murikami has lived in the US from time to time, and was even an associate professor at Princeton, so, I would expect his English to be excellent, and that he would be concerned about the translation.  There were some times when I would have used a different word, like when Aomame asked if she was annoying Tomaro, and she really meant to ask if she was disturbing him.  No big deal.  But it bugged me when they kept saying that Tengo's dad was in a sanatorium when he was clearly in a nursing  home and when Tengo couldn't stop talking about his "older girlfriend".  There must be one word in Japanese that means "older girlfriend" and another that means "girlfriend".  In the translation it was just awkward as Tengo was always thinking about his "older girlfriend" or going to visit his "older girlfriend", especially when the fact that she was older than him was basically irrelevant to the story.

At first, the story seemed overly simple.  At one point, Aomame basically said "Oh, I think I am in an alternate universe now"  which was strange.  But the story wound around like a cinnamon bun, getting tighter as it went, until everything came together well in the end.  In terms of Murikami books, it is still not my favorite, as that position belongs to Kafka on the Shore.  It may come in third for me, behind Kafka and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. 

1Q84 was a NYT Notable Book for 2011.  It was the longest audio book that I have ever listened to, with 38 discs.  In paper form, it is 925 pages, and definitely a Big Fat Book.

Tags:  Big Fat Books, Sci-Fi-ish, NYT Notable

Challenges:  Rewind, Audiobook, I Love Library Books

Book Group Reports

The Neighborhood Book Group took November off, but The Typical Book Group got together this month to discuss Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson.  I was glad that we picked this book to read, because it is one that I read a couple of years ago, and still think back to from time to time.   In short, MPLS is about an old retired army officer living in the English countryside, with no intention of challenging the status quo.  Then the Major meets Mrs. Ali, who is a local shopkeeper, and everything changes.  The things that were once important to him seem stodgy and trivial, and he recognizes the unspoken prejudices among his friends and relatives.  Mrs. Ali is of Pakistani descent, but has always lived in England.  Still, to the Major's acquaintances, she will always be foreign.

The Typical Book Groupers all loved the Major.  He reminded us of Harold Fry from The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.  Both the Major and Harold opened their minds when they were old enough to be set in their ways.  We also talked about what event was the Major's "last stand".  There were so many possible choices, and we each seemed to come in thinking that the last stand was something different from what the others thought.

Next month we'll discuss The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

Tags:  Book Group Reports

In Other News

SCORE!

 

My expectations were low.  There was nothing that I wanted.  I didn't even go on the premier members only night.  And still, I found some great books at my library's semi-annual used book sale.  The only book that was even on my radar as something that I sort of wanted was Middlemarch, since I got My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead at the last sale, and knew that I wanted to read the original first.  That one was easy to find. 

Then, I stumbled upon Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton, which The Neighborhood Book Group is thinking about reading as part of our "foodie" genre.  Next, I found The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton.  Two of my friends, Kim and Ann, have read this one recently, and they both loved it.  Usually, I like what Kim likes, but Ann and I can be polar opposites in what we think makes a good book. Still, I'm looking forward to reading this one, and I got a great hard cover copy.

My coolest find was an obviously never before read copy of  Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, in French.  One of my neighbors who went with me to meet JSF a few years ago was in college working on her French minor at the time.  I think she'll be happy to get this one.

 

I also picked up Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus which I have had in my hot little hands at earlier sales and put back down.  However, this book, like . . . And Ladies of the Club covers the Civil War and a long period thereafter.  Also like . . . And Ladies, Oldest Living  was published in the 1980s.  This book is also almost as long as . . . And Ladies too, weighing in at 718 pages.  I may not rush into this one.

 

My nightstand now includes Mary Called Magdalene by Margaret George, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka, Bossypants by Tina Fey, and Secret Ingredients:  The New Yorker Book  of Food and Drink. 

 

All of these, plus 2 for my husband for a total of $17.00.  Not bad at all!

 

December Preview

NYT Notables - It is November 30 today and the NYT Notable Books list for 2014 is no where that I can find!  It will surely be included in my December newsletter.

 

I plan to read these books in paper form:

 

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett, if I can get it, or Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen, if I can't.

Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King

 

(Sounds a lot like last month's preview - doesn't it!)

 

I plan to listen to these books in audio form:

 

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett, if it's easier to get on audio

What Happened in October, 2014

Reviews

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Ever since Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer, there has been an awful lot of Goldfinch bashing going on.  The prime complaints seem to fall into one of two categories, the first being that Tartt needed a more cutting editor, and the second being that Tartt's characters spent too much time talking about drugs.  I, on the other hand, am in the camp of The Goldfinch defenders, which I sort of didn't expect. 

The Goldfinch is a long book, at 771 pages, but that alone does not mean that Tartt needed a better editor.  I can't say that not a single word could be cut, but neither I could cite many examples of areas where I was bored.  For the most part, the parts where one could think that an editor was needed were times were Tartt was deliberately prolonging the story to show how time was dragging on for the main character, such as at the engagement cocktail party, or while he was alone in Amsterdam.  I loved every page, and wish for another hundred or two.  As for the drugs, if this was too much for you, please don't read Edward St. Aubyn. 

Lest you think that I entered into this book with rose colored glasses, I have never been Donna Tartt's biggest fan.  Time and time again, I tell people that if they liked Tartt's Secret History, they will love Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl, which is similar, but in my opinion, better.  I rarely even talk about Tartt's The Little Friend, as it was really not that great of a book, but for some reason, it is one of those books that sticks in my mind with images reappearing constantly.  In The Goldfinch, Tartt hits the mark, and earns her reputation.

The Goldfinch starts with Theo and his mother visiting a NYC museum exhibit of Dutch artists, where a girl with red hair catches Theo's eye.  Theo is drawn to the girl, who is at the museum with a man who appears to be her grandfather.  He follows them, when suddenly a bomb explodes, and Theo's life is forever changed.  Theo becomes an unwitting art thief, and spends the next 20 years  hiding his treasure.  Theo's mom is killed in the explosion, and as a result, he moves in with his wealthy friend, Andy, and his family.  As might be expected, Theo's deadbeat father reappears, and whisks him off to Las Vegas.  In Vegas, Theo meets a new friend, Boris, whose life is at least as dysfunctional as his own.

Theo is charmed in that he has amazing people in his life.  Boris, flawed as he may be, is just what Theo needs, right when he needs him, time and time again.  Hobie, who Theo meets while trying to figure out what certain things that happened at the museum meant, shapes Theo's life, and gives him all of the stability that he was missing. Andy and his family, the Barbours, give Theo the illusion of normalcy, while also giving him a place to belong, if he wants it.

I listened to The Goldfinch on audiobook.  It was read by David Pittu, who won two Audies for his performance.  He should have won even more - as many as were available.  There had to have been at least 30 characters, all of whom had distinctive voices and accents.  The voices for Hobie and Boris were my favorite.  Pittu made Hobie seem old, dignified, and somehow more affluent than the customers who shopped in his store.  He made Boris sound impulsive, risky, shady, and yet still trustworthy and loyal, all with a Russian/Austrailian/Ukranian accent. 

I loved The Goldfinch, and will happily read it again, hopefully in the near future.  I am adding it to my list of Favorites.  The Goldfinch was a NYT Notable book for 2013.

Challenges:  Audiobook Challenge

Tags:  Big Fat Books, Favorites, Pulitzer Winner, NYT Notables, Awesome Audio,

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey is the story of an ex-pat experience, as told by a husband who felt that it was a complete success, and a wife who felt miserably out of place.  George and Sabine Harwood moved to Trinidad in 1956, just as the colonial rulers are losing power.  The new Prime Minister, Eric Williams, promised to change the country and free its true citizens from the control of outsiders.  George loves Trinidad, and loves the ex pat lifestyle, so much that he never wants to leave.  Sabine sees Trinidad with more weary eyes, and is hopeful that the people will find the leader who they are hoping for in Williams, even if he scares her with his anti-establishment promises.

There are a couple of stories that are going on in White Woman.  The first is that of a revolution, as seen through the eyes of an outsider.  Sabine, the only white person at the rallies supporting Williams, is hopeful for him and his followers, and would be more than happy to leave Trinidad to them.  When he gains power, and fails to make the changes that were promised, she sees him falling into the ways of the former rulers, and is disappointed that he is letting his people down, even if she was never an intended beneficiary.  While reading this, I couldn't help thinking about Kwame Kilpatrick.  As a person who lives near but not in Detroit, I was excited for Kilpatrick to be elected.  He was young and Detroit and whole metro area was ready for someone fresh to make a change.  Instead, the Detroiters who elected him were rewarded with scandal, corruption, and outright theft.  Like Sabine, I was on the outside, looking in, but hoping that the new leader would make a difference, even if the changes wouldn't directly help me.  Also like Sabine, I was disappointed and disillusioned with the results, even if a part of me knew that I was foolish to hope for more.

Another story that unfolds through out White Woman is that of people who catch each other's eye in a crowd, and never quite let go.  One day, while she is riding her bike, Sabine and Eric Williams lock eyes.  While they don't know each other, they feel a connection.  Over the next several years, they run into each other from time to time, and fall into conversations as if they have been speaking daily, saying things to each other that no one else would say.  While it could never happen in America, Roffey makes it seem completely reasonable that the Prime Minister of Trinidad would speak freely with a woman who he has only briefly met, but who looked really cute while riding her bike.

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  British Stories

Yankee Broadcast Network by John F. Buckley and Martin Ott

Although I haven't done any Industry Requested Reviews in a couple of months, I still get requests every day.  One request that caught my attention was that of John Buckley and Martin Ott, who wanted me to review their book of poetry about television.  While they were really straight forward about what their book was, I guess that I was a little surprised that literally every poem related to television.  My fault - not theirs.  What disappointed me though was that while they think about television enough to want to write a book of poetry inspired by it, they seem to really hate it.

For most of us, television is a guilty pleasure, but for Buckley and Ott, the pleasure is all gone, leaving nothing but guilt, and a dash of disgust.  One of the things that caught my attention when deciding to accept the review request was their poem called "The Real Housewives of Wayne County."  Wayne County, in case you don't know, is the county where Detroit is located.  However, it's also the county where Grosse Pointe (remember "Grosse Pointe Blank" starring John Cusack?) is, which makes Wayne County an area where extreme wealth abuts complete poverty.  The poem that Buckley and Ott wrote relied only on the Detroit brand names and stereotypes, and missed the opportunity for a study in contrasts.  In fact, they could have renamed it with the name of any county, and inserted the names of products made in that county, instead of "Better Made" and paczki.

My favorite poem was "Burn'ded" which was obviously a satire of Ashton Kucher's show, "Punk'd".  In the Buckley and Ott version, there are many people playing ever escalating "pranks" ending with a home grown terrorist who eventually sees the episode in which he stars with his fellow inmates.

Yes, Yankee Broadcast Network was exactly what it promised it would be.  I just didn't like it as much as I hoped I would.

Tags:  Industry Requested Reviews

Book Group Reports

The Neighborhood Book Group met to discuss The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.  There were 8 of us who met, and only 4 had finished the book.  2 more were not quite finished, and the other two of us (I was in this group) never picked the book up.  At the beginning of the meeting, I would have said that of the people who read it, half liked it, and half didn't.  Unfortunately, after discussing various unlikely twists and coincidences, the people who had started off saying that they liked it changed sides.  I think I won't bother trying to pick this one up. 

We chose to discuss Sweetness because we are trying to read something from various genres, and this one was chosen as a mystery.  In December we will meet again to discuss The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which we have classified as science fiction.

The Typical Book Group met this month to discuss . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  We picked this book as our summer Big Fat Book (BFB) in June, and delayed meeting until October to discuss it.  Even with this delay, of the 9 people at book group, only 2 had finished the book.  There were 3 more of us who had started it and were in various stages of progress, but the rest didn't even give it a try.

I talked about . . .And Ladies in my August and September wrap ups.  Basically it is an 1100+ page book about a book group that formed in the late 1800s, and the course of the lives of the original members.  As I've mentioned, I frequently fall asleep after reading only a few pages.  The two groupers who finished the book said that somewhere around page 500, the story picked up so that they could easily read 50 pages at a time, and that they thought about the book all of the time when they weren't reading it.  I'm somewhere around page 700 now, and I am not experiencing that at all, but then again, I've been putting it down for 2 or 3 weeks at a time and coming back to it, instead of immersing myself in the story.  Maybe this month I'll stick with it until I'm done.

All told, the people who finished the book liked it, and thought that it was worth reading.  I did notice though that one of them only gave the book 3 GoodReads stars.  So, while I'm now expecting something worth finishing, maybe I won't expect it to be life changing.

Next month we'll read Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson.

In Other News

The Man Booker Prize was announced on October 14.  This year's winner was The Narrow Road to the Deep North  by Richard Flannigan.  Based on the Amazon reviews, this sounds like a really good book.  The main character is an Australian surgeon in a Japanese POW camp during World War II.  I'll be keeping my eyes open for more on this one.

November Preview

People, I am burnt out on blogging, and almost even dreading it.  So, I'm not making any promises about even doing a monthly summary for November.  But in case you are interested in what I am planning to read and listen to, here you go:

In Paper Form:
. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  Yes, I promise to finish this book in November.
Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett, if I can get it, or Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen, if I can't.
Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King

On Audio Book:
1Q84 by Haruki Murikami
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

What Happened in August, 2014

Reviews

And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

I tried.  Seriously, people, I tried.  For a full month I have been reading . . . And Ladies of the Club and I am still only 1/3 of the way through. 

. . . And Ladies of the Club was a popular book in the 1980s, and The Typical Book Group picked it as our summer BFB (Big Fat Book).  The story starts just after the Civil War, when two of the main characters, Sally and Anne, graduate from college and enter the real world of Waynesboro, OH.  They are asked by one of their teachers if they are interested in becoming part of a yet to be formed literary women's club, and they quickly agree.  From there, we meet 10 other women who become club members, their families, and their husbands. 

400 pages in, I am still in the late 1800s, three of the club members have died, and several others have been admitted.  The members have confronted social and political issues, like calls for prohibition, presidential elections, and the challenges of reuniting a divided country. 

The story reads like a classic, with not a lot of action, and lots of social dilemmas.  While I don't find it  boring, it is so soothing that it frequently lulls me to sleep after 5 or fewer pages.  So, I'm taking a break.  I would hate to waste two months reading a book only to say "meh" at the end.  We'll see.  If I read a couple more books and keep thinking about this one, I'll come back.

Tags:  Historical Fiction, Big Fat Books

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle is a company, likely based on Google or Facebook, where everyone who is smart and young wants to work.  They have a campus, which they would prefer that you not leave, where bands clamour to perform, where food and health care is provided and where innovation is constant.  The Circle wants to find out everything that is knowable in the modern world.  Do 27 year olds prefer Cancun or Hawaii?  How many grains of sand are there in the desert?  What happens when you transfer sea animals that have never before been seen into a Circle designed habitat?  The Circle is all about transparency.  If a person visits a park and doesn't post pictures to Facebook to tell their friends about it, why didn't they?  Were they ashamed?  Are they trying to hide their activities?  Or are they being anti-social?  It is quickly determined that all people are entitled to all experiences.  If you go to an art show in California, and I am stuck in Michigan, I can be there with you if you post about it.  But if you don't post about the experience, you are stealing that opportunity from me.  

Mae, a floundering Carlton College graduate, begins to work for The Circle when her friend, Annie, invites her to apply.  Mae quickly finds herself overwhelmed with gratitude to Annie, but also surprised by how much of her life The Circle wants to consume, and how much she is willing to give it.  Mae's dad is suffering from MS, and she is able to get better insurance coverage for him through The Circle.  In exchange, The Circle will monitor all of his care, which will obviously require live video supervision from 10 different cameras in his house.  Soon her parents begin to feel that this is too much, but Mae is insistent that The Circle knows best. 

The Circle is a commentary about how much of our privacy we are willing to give up while getting little in return.  As a customer experience worker, Mae finds herself devoting valuable time to people who she has never met but who have asked her to like them, instead of spending time with her family members and real life friends.  The instant gratification of having another "friend" and getting a favorable rating outweighs anything that Mae believes her parents could provide to her.

Part 1984, part "War Games", and part MaddAddam, The Circle predicts a not so distant future where online participation is mandatory.  Individuals control crime by mounting inexpensive video cameras which anyone can log into and see through.  This sounds good enough, but in a world where secrets are considered lies the superficial takes the place of the real.  Margaret Atwood calls much of her work "speculative fiction" instead of "science fiction", which is very apt in this case.  We can't be too many years away from a time when much of The Circle's technology is possible.  It is as though The Circle is a predecessor to the corporations that control the world in Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy.  In MaddAddam, each corporation has a campus and controls the lives of its employees, but there secrets are essential, and the corps will do anything to keep their secrets from getting out.  In the timeline of speculative fiction, The Circle would be placed between Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore and Oryx and Crake.  The Circle was a NYT Notable for 2013.

Eggers did an incredible job of imagining the world that could be.  Some of the technology that he explains, especially the "See Change" video cameras which can be mounted anywhere and are so inexpensive that they are readily available to everyone, seems possible.  My guess is that this is something that Eggers has mulled over, and that he hasn't gotten too many hours of sleep, for fear of the future.

The Circle was read by Dion Graham, who also read several of Egger's earlier books including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What.  To me, he is the voice of Dave Eggers.  It is a testament to Graham's ability that he is able to read these stories with such a range of topics and characters.

Challenges:  Audiobook Challenge, I Love Library Books Challenge

Tags:  NYT Notables; Sci-Fi-ish

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Have you ever had that feeling that if you just had something to do over again, you would do it differently?  So has Ursula Todd.  In Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, the novel consists of a series of episodes in Ursula's life.  There are three primary story lines, being the stories of Ursula's birth, that of her 16th birthday, and that of her World War II experience.  In each of these, the first time the story is told, it ends horribly for her, and she dies.  Each story is then retold, with Ursula making slightly different choices, as though she knows that she is trying to keep something from happening, but doesn't quite remember what.  Again, something horrible happens, and she dies.  The stories are retold again and again until Ursula has carefully navigated around all of the hidden hazards of her life, and can move on to the next episode.

Ursula feels a strong sense of deja vu, and eventually realizes that she has the ability to change the course of history, one tiny interception at a time.  If her maid falls down the stairs and can't go to a celebration in London, she won't bring the flu back to Ursula's household.  If she befriends Eva Braun, could she prevent World War II?

Atkinson's novel twists and turns while moving two steps forward and one step back.  It is almost as though she took Ursula's life, couldn't decide which way to go, and told the story every way that she could imagine.  However, the result is so carefully constructed that the novel presents Ursula's choices almost as a form of Darwinian evolution rather than simple drafts that didn't work out.

Life After Life was a NYT Notable Book for 2013, and the 2013 GoodReads Choice winner for Historical Fiction.

Tags:  Historical Fiction, NYT Notables, WWII Civilian Stories, British Stories

September Preview:

In September, I plan to read and review the following in paper or electronic form:

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks
. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hoover Santmyer (Try, Try again!)
The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon

I also plan to finish listening to The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, and will post about that, and will start listening to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  However, at 32 hours, I am unlikely to post a review of this one before October.

 

What Happened in July 2014

 

Reviews:

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal

Edmund De Waal is a famous twenty-first century potter (did you know that there was one?) who I first read about in this NYT article.  Although the article was intended to be about De Waal's new exhibit, the reporter talked enough about De Waal's family memoir, The Hare With Amber Eyes that I had to add it to my TBR list. 

What is amazing about Hare is that while it could have been the epitome of vanity publishing, instead it is a really great book, without bragging or pouting.  De Waal's family first made its fortune in Odessa through grain trading.  His great-great grandfather pushed the family into Europe, where they established banks in Paris and Vienna.  De Waal's great uncle was Charles Ephrussi, whose name was familiar to me, but for a while I didn't know why. Charles was the third son, and was able to avoid the family business and do things that were more interesting, like collect art.  He lived in Paris in the time of the Impressionists, and his collection included works by Pissaro, Monet, Renior, Cassatt, and Degas, all in one room of his home.  When De Waal discussed his uncle's relationship with Renoir, I knew why I knew Charles.  Charles Ephrussi is the man in the top hat in Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party.  Susan Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party is a book that I loved reading, and is on my list of books that I would like to re-read this year.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) I lent my copy to my friend, Kim, so I couldn't take a detour into fiction while reading Hare.

That's OK, because in Hare, the truth is better than the fiction could have been.   When Paris became obsessed with Japanese art in the 1800s, Charles jumped in, and amassed a collection of netsuke.  Netsuke are small, intricately carved objects, made sometimes from stone, ivory, or even wood.  Time passed, and the netsuke went out of style.  Charles sent his valuable collection to a nephew, De Waal's grandfather, as a wedding gift.  De Waal's grandfather went on to live in Vienna, where he ran the family owned bank.  According to De Waal, his grandfather's pre-World War II wealth, in today's dollars, was $400 million.  Unfortunately for the De Waal family, they were Jewish, and living in a Nazi state.  By the end of the war, most of the wealth was gone, but amazingly, the netsuke survived and passed through another generation, before landing in De Waal's capable hands.

While billed as the story of the netsuke, this is really a story of a family living in an incredible time.  It somehow doesn't read as a memoir, so much as a telling of historical events in a new and interesting light.  Definitely worth the read. 

Challenges: I love library books

Tags:  Memoir, Non-Fiction, WWII Civilian Stories, Paris

McSweeney's 44

McSweeney's is a quarterly something that generally includes short stories and articles, and was created by Dave Eggers.  I say that it is a quarterly "something" rather than magazine or journal or book, because it is really none of these.  Sometimes it comes with the stories loose in a box, sometimes it looks more like a magazine.  Usually, it looks a lot like novel, which is the case with 44.  The main contributors to 44 were Joe Meno, Rebecca Curtis, Tom Barbash, Jim Shepard, Stuart Dybek, and Wells Tower.  There was also a 82 page tribute to Lawrence (Ren) Weschler, to which many others contributed.

One of my favorite parts of 44 were the letters to the editor, which were all witty and quirky, and generally what one would expect from McSweeney's readers who are hoping to get published themselves. 

Jim Shepard wrote a particularly un-McSweeny-ish story that I liked called "The Ocean of Air", about the Montgolfier brothers who were the first to invent a hot air balloon safe for human travel.  I also liked Stuart Dybek's piece, "Happy Ending" which tells the story of a man, Gil, attending a party thrown by a mogul who claimed to be unhappy.  Gil shows the mogul how happy he is by inventing a scenario which would make his life much worse.  Another interesting story was "Birthday Girl" by Tom Barbash, where a driver who is possibly (almost surely) drunk hits a young girl, and then tries to make things right.

The story by Wells Tower, "The Dance Contest" is well written and interesting, but also strange.  It is about a man named Osmund Tower, the fictional father to Wells, who finds himself imprisoned in the luxury wing of the Theb Moob Mens' Prison in Thailand, due primarily to his naivete.  While he may be in the best possible part of the prison, it is a prison none the less.  The Captain in charge comes up with the idea of rewarding the prisoners with prizes, based on their performance in a dance contest, as judged by Internet viewers.  Cruel and unusual?  You decide.  What I didn't get about this piece is why Tower wanted to make it seem like his character was his father.  Why not just name him Tom Sutherland or Osmund Miller?

Although I, personally, didn't need such a long, funereal, tribute to Ren Weschler, he seems to be a person I should know more about.   I would recommend starting with the Errol Morris conversation with Weschler, and then skipping ahead to Jonathan Lethem's tribute.   If they leave you wanting more, 44 is well stocked.  As always, I finished McSweeney's feeling a little smarter (and maybe a little more smug) than when I started.

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  Keeping it Short, Historical Fiction, Non Fiction

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam is the third book in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy.  The first book, Oryx and Crake, focused on Jimmy, a guy in his early 20s who survived some sort of a plague, and wonders if he is the only human who made it.  He lives among people he calls "Crakers" because they were developed in a lab by his friend, Crake.  Much of that book was told through flashbacks about Crake and their shared love, Oryx.  The second book, The Year of the Flood, was told mostly by Toby and Ren.  They are members of a group, The God's Gardeners, who try to live in a more simple way among the corporations and criminals of the modern world.  MaddAddam again focuses on Toby, but this time the story is more about two other God's Gardeners, Zeb and Adam. 

MaddAddam takes place after the waterless flood of the plague, and begins right where The Year of the Flood ended.  Toby, Ren, Amanda and Jimmy are all in a confrontation with dangerous painballers, who are criminals who have fought to the death and survived.  Toby is happy to be reunited with her old crush, Zeb, and much of the book is Zeb telling about his life as a boy with his brother, Adam.  Adam and Zeb had to flee from their abusive but powerful father, the Rev.  Zeb found adventure slaying bears and impersonating big foot, while Adam went on to recruit like-minded people to become MaddAddams and God's Gardeners.

While MaddAddam brought resolution to the series, I found it a little lacking compared to the earlier two books.  Ren and Jimmy were marginalized and treated like children here, when they had much stronger roles in the earlier books.  At the end of the trilogy, I still don't know what the point of the MaddAddams was.  Was it just to be a  group of people gathering information about the bad things the corporations were doing?  The MaddAddamers don't seem to do anything, although they investigate a lot, and know a lot.  Also I'm totally lost about Adam.  Was he really into his Adam 1 God's Gardeners persona, or did he establish the God's Gardeners just as a front to hide corporate escapees and further the MaddAddam cause?  Much of the plot was also redundant, with Zeb telling his story to Toby, and then Toby telling the same story to the Crakers.

My favorite part of MaddAddam was the Crakers.  When Crake invented them, he intended them to be post-religion, and had no idea that they would come to worship him and Oryx as deities.  He also didn't anticipate Toby teaching one of them, Blackbeard, to read, or the creation of a Craker bible, the Book of Toby.  Atwell was also incredibly timely in describing how the religion of corporations can lead to the destruction of mankind.  In light of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, the world as she predicts it is all the more likely.  In MaddAddam, Adam and Zeb's dad was the leader of the Church of PetrOleum.  As he preaches, the "Petr" is from the apostle, Peter, and the "oleum" is because of all the references to oil in the Bible.  Clearly, God created oil for our use, and any government attempt to regulate the drilling or sale of oil is a violation of the religious beliefs of the Church.  Maybe, just maybe, we could learn from the mistakes that Atwood's characters make in the name of a self serving religious belief.

MaddAddam was a NYT Notable Book for 2013.

Challenges:  I Love Library Books and AudioBook

Tags:  NYT Notables, Sci-Fi-Ish, Questioning Religions

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

During the early days of  the siege of Sarajevo, in 1992, a cellist with the Sarajevo Opera named Vedran Smailovic, played his cello in ruined buildings and at funerals which were frequently targeted by snipers.  In The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway takes Smailovic's story, and sets it to fiction.  In Galloway's Sarajevo, a young woman who calls herself Arrow is working as a sniper defending the city.  A man with a young family, Kenan, walks from one side of the city to the other in order to fill water bottles for himself and his neighbor.  An older man, Dragan, tries to get to the bakery where he works and where he knows bread is waiting for him.  Each of these characters faces the possibility at every intersection that he or she may be shot by a sniper or hit by a shell.  All of  them are eventually drawn to the cellist.

Sarajevo fell from being the host of the Olympics in 1984, to being a place where a person could expect to get shot while walking down the street just eight years later.  Galloway's characters face their new reality while not quite believing that it could be true.  Each of them refuses to be that person, living in that city.  They believe that if they can hold on to their integrity and standards, Sarajevo has hope of being restored.  Unfortunately the siege and the war waged on for years after this story ends, and after Smailovic left the city.

The Cellist of Sarajevo is the story of life in a war zone, where no one is coming to help.  It tries to be a story of hope, but the reader is left with the feeling that if Arrow, Kenan and Dragan aren't killed on one day, they may be the next.

There was some controversy about Galloway's use of Smailovic's actions in this book.  Galloway defends his story as being fictional but inspired by Smailovic's public acts.  Smailovic apparently was not told about the book before it was published and felt exploited by it.  However the story came to be told, it is worth knowing.  

Challenges:  Rewind, I Love Library Books, Audiobook

Book Group Reports

The Neighborhood Book Group

The Neighborhood Book Group met in June to discuss This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper.  I was a lame book-grouper, and had to leave after only half an hour to go play bunco instead.  Life in suburbia!  Luckily, this book group is all business, so I actually got to do some book discussing before I left.  With the movie coming out this fall, we talked a lot about the characters and the stars who will play them.  Although I love Tina Fey, I just can't see her as Judd's sister, Wendy.  Like 90% of the characters in this book (Am I underestimating?  Is it 100%?), Wendy is having an affair, and her life is just basically  sad.  Maybe Tina will make her situation seem less pathetic.  We also talked about who was the most dysfunctional.  This discussion could last hours.  Most of the group sided with the mom, Hillary, or the younger brother, Phillip.  And, this is where I left them, so I'm not sure where the conversation went from there. 

Next month they (we?) will discuss The Vacationers by Emma Straub.  I'm so bogged down in The Typical Book Group's summer BFB, that I don't think I'll have time to get to this one.

 The Typical Book Group

The Typical Book Group never meets in July, but in June we pick a Big Fat Book (BFB) to read all summer long.  This year we picked . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  Talk about a BFB.  My copy is 1184 pages, and it's actually a little uncomfortable to hold. After two weeks of reading, I am only 200 pages in.  I'll have to pick up my pace if I'm ever going to make it through this!

Tags:  Book Group Reports, Big Fat Books

In Other News:

Local Libraries

Are these cute neighborhood libraries popping up near you? 

My friend, Debby's father-in-law installed one in his front yard.  There's another one in the park at the end of my street.  They are the cutest things.  The idea is, you can pick a book to take, and leave a book for someone else to read.  No sign out slips, no late fees.  It's the honor system at its best.  Debby's F-I-L lives in a bit of a hoity-toity neighborhood, but in an area where lots of people walk, so I think his library will get lots of action.  Doing my best to convert young future Republicans to a more reasonable party, I deposited a copy of The Believer, which is a book review magazine by the McSweeney's people, as well as a cookbook, and my copy of Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.  In exchange, I took a copy of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which has been on my TBR list since it became a NYT Notable.  Score!

Winner, Winner, Goldfinch Dinner

Guess what?  I won a copy of The Goldfinch audiobook by Donna Tartt.  Remember way back when when I was giving away a copy?  No, I didn't enter and win my own contest.  Because The Goldfinch won two Audies, there were two copies to give away, and I entered the giveaway on Wholly Books.  And I won!  I can't wait to get it and start listening!

Loss of a Legend

On July 3, we lost Louis Zamperini.  The real story here is not that a 97 year old man died, because really, what more could we expect?  What is remarkable is that Zamperini was still alive.  Zamperini was a former Olympic athlete who was shot down over the Pacific during World War II, and then taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese.  His story is told in Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which Angelina Jolie has turned into a soon to be released movie.  Here is a link to the NYT Obituary.

Man Bookered

On July 23, the Man Booker Prize Longlist was announced.  This was the first year that authors from everywhere around the world were eligible, rather than just authors from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth.  So, with Americans now eligible, 5 made the list.  The only author who made it this year who I have read is Joshua Ferris, and the reviews of his recent book, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour have been pretty mixed.  Some might have expected The Goldfinch, which already won the Pulitzer, to edge out a few of the lesser known picks.  However, it was no surprise that Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn didn't make the cut.  Lost for Words is a thinly veiled satire of the Man Booker Prize, and it would have been a shock if the Man Booker judges were thick skinned enough to select it.  The Shortlist will be announced on September 9.  My money is on David Mitchell's new book, The Bone Clocks, even though it hasn't been released or reviewed on this side of the pond yet.

Tags:  Man Booker Listed

August Preview:

In August, I hope to review the following books:

Audios

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - I'll only get started on this one - it's 32 hours!

Traditional or EBooks

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (IF I make it through Ladies)

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson  (OK - this will be a stretch!)

Reason #27 Not to Play with Dead Rats

In 1665, England had a problem.  People were dying of a mysterious disease that no one knew how to stop.  It started in London, so of course anyone with the means left the city.  By leaving, however, the Londoners took the plague with them to the neighboring villages and towns.  One village, Eyam, found the plague to be within its borders, and took the drastic step of quarantining itself.  It is in this village that Geraldine Brooks sets her story, Year of Wonders.

In Year of Wonders, Anna is a young widow and mother who takes in a boarder to help her make ends meet.  The boarder is a tailor who travels outside of the village on a regular basis.  Soon he falls ill and dies, directing Anna to burn all of his unfinished work, for fear that it has been contaminated.  After other villagers begin to die, they realize that they have been overtaken by a plague.  They make arrangements with a neighboring town to keep them supplied with goods, provided that they do not leave the village and risk infecting others.  This quarantine is the idea of the rector, Michael Mompellion.  Time passes and more and more villagers die, causing them to question their decision and their leader.

While I was listening to Year of Wonders, I kept wanting to yell to the characters "Now go wash your hands!  Right now!  With soap!"  They didn't listen to me, but in reality, it may not have mattered if they had.  The thinking now is that the plague was spread through flea bites.

Although this sounds like a terrible book, in the first chapter Brooks introduces us to characters who  lived through the disease, and mentions some who died.  It is definitely more a story of survival than a story of tragedy.  I have read all of Brooks' novels, and Year of Wonders is probably my second favorite, behind People of the Book.  Other Brooks novels that I have reviewed on this blog are March and Caleb's Crossing. 

Year of Wonders was a NYT Notable Book for 2001.  For the Challenges, this one is a triple countsie - Rewind, Audiobook, and I Love Library Books.

Next Up on CD:  Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood

Still Reading (and Loving!):  The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

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

The Forgotten Terrorist

In 2004, the following books were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction:  Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins; The Known World by Edward P. Jones; and American Woman by Susan Choi.  Pop quiz:  Which book won?  Answer:  The Known World by Edward P. Jones.  But have you ever heard of it?  2004 must have been a strange year in fiction.  I have read the winners from 1999 through 2003, and then again for five of the years after 2004, but I don't recall anyone I know even talking about any of the 2004 finalists.  I had never heard of any of them myself, until I read My Education by Susan Choi last year, and was impressed to read that she had been nominated for the prize for her earlier novel.

American Woman is a fictionalized version of Patty Hearst's time in hiding with the members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.  In case you were born after 1974,  Hearst was kidnapped by the SLA.  The group made certain strange demands from Hearst's very wealthy family, but was never satisfied with their responses.  After some time, the group robbed a bank, and Patty appeared to be an active participant in he heist, rather than a hostage.  A shootout with the SLA followed, with only two members and Hearst surviving.  This is where the story in American Woman begins.

While the name "Patty Hearst" was familiar to me, I was young enough when the true story unfolded that I didn't remember all of the details.  Choi stayed very close to the truth in her telling, but changed the names and invented dialogue.  Patty, who wanted to be called "Tania" in real life is called "Pauline" in the book.  A fact that I never knew was one of the people in hiding with Patty was a Japanese American woman named Wendy Yoshimura.  In the book, Wendy is named Jenny Shimada, and the story is told from her perspective.  If  you don't already know about Wendy, and if you even might read American Woman, don't click on the link above until after reading the book, so the ending won't be spoiled for you.

Wendy/Jenny was completely overlooked by the press at the time.  She was born during World War II, while her Japanese parents were living in an internment camp within the US.  Growing up, Jenny's father faced hard times, not feeling like he had a place in either the US or Japan.  As a teenager, Jenny lived in California, and found friends who were discontent with the government and wanted to make a statement.  Jenny joined their protests, and soon found herself in over her head.  As Jenny's time with Pauline came to a close, Asian Americans came to her aid in a way that Jenny neither expected nor felt that she deserved.  Those Asian Americans, and not just Japanese Americans, did everything within their power to help Wendy in real life.  Choi, who Wikipedia says is half Korean, is another Asian American keeping us from forgetting Wendy Yoshimura's name.

The story in American Woman is a little slow.  This only makes sense, as Jenny and Pauline are supposed to be in hiding and keeping a low profile.  Choi explores the question that the American public struggled with during the Patty Hearst trial:  Was Patty/Pauline a hostage or a willing participant?  If she was a willing participant, why was that, and does she deserve to be punished for her role?  Choi doesn't pick sides in Patty's story, but she is clearly a strong supporter of Wendy.

American Woman was a NYT Notable in 2003.  It is also another book toward the I Love Library Books Challenge.  In case I got you thinking about the Pulitzer Prize, this year's winner in fiction was announced earlier this month.  It is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which I can't wait to read.

Next Up:  The Titans by John Jakes

Still Listening To:  The Cuckoo's Calling by "Robert Galbraith"

Happily Ever After

According to Jeffrey Eugenides' character, Madeleine Hanna, "the marriage plot" began with Jane Austen, and is a story involving  courting rituals, proposals and misunderstandings, and ultimately ending in marriage.  The plot then progressed through Henry James and Leo Tolstoy, to the point where the marriage is not a happy ending, but only the beginning of a relationship where the woman is hopelessly trapped.  By the beginning of the twentieth century, the marriage plot had died out.  In 2011, Eugenides brought it back, with a modern twist.

The Marriage Plot, as written by Eugenides, is set in the early 1980s on a college campus, and involving three key characters who are about to graduate.  The first is Madeleine, who is writing her thesis on the marriage plot, and hopes to become "a Victorianist." Madeleine romantically uses fictional characters as her role models, starting first with Ludwig Bemelmans' character with whom she shares a name.  Madeleine is in awe of Leonard, who grew up in Oregon, but now attends Brown with Maddy, and is very popular with the ladies.  Mitchell is another Brown student, who happens to be in love with Maddy, and wants to pursue a study of divinity.  Like Eugenides, Mitchell comes from Grosse Pointe, MI.  Eugenides' brings the marriage plot into the semi-modern day by playing the love triangle out in an era where women had opportunities to establish careers, live as successful single women, and when need be, divorce without social stigma.

Another twentieth century aspect of The Marriage Plot is that Leonard has been diagnosed with manic depression.  Maddy fell in love with him during a manic period, but he didn't realize his love for her until the depression took hold.  While all of Maddy's friends and family members warn her against trying to save Leonard, Maddy just can't help trying to rescue him from his illness.  Eugenides does a great job of showing the manic depression through its highs and lows, and the reader can sympathize with both Maddy and Leonard, and understand the challenges that their relationship will face.

It was a bit of a cop out for Eudenides to set his book about love after the women's movement in the eighties, even though it was published in 2011.  In the intervening years between the eighties and now, I would like to think that relationships and opportunities for women have changed.  On the other hand, maybe he is deliberately leaving the door open for him or another author to write the twenty-first century marriage plot. 

The Marriage Plot was a NYT Notable for 2011.  I'm counting this book for the Rewind, Audiobook, and I Love Library Books challenges.

Next up on CD:  The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

Still Reading:  American Woman by Susan Choi

Flood Insurance

In The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, a group of people who call themselves "God's Gardeners" are preparing for a waterless flood that they believe will afflict humanity.  They are not sure what form that flood will take, but they prepare by learning about plants and wildlife and creating store houses of supplies.  TYOTF is the second book in the series that began with Oryx and Crake, and many of the Oryx characters make appearances.  We catch glimpses of Jimmy as a boy, but more closely follow the stories of his girlfriend from high school, Ren, and her fellow Gardeners. 

The Gardeners are sort of a cult, and sort of a progressive religion.  They worship saints such as Saint Stephen King, and Saint Diane Fossey.  On the whole they strive to be good people who are preparing for the inevitable in a thoughtless and selfish world.  However, the people controlling the Gardeners just might be working to make the waterless flood come sooner rather than later through eco-terrorism.  Darwin would be appalled when the flood actually strikes.  It is not the strong that survive, but the lucky and the secluded. 

TYOTF is a more linear book than Oryx and Crake.  Oryx went back and forth between the present and Jimmy's memories, with the reader trying to figure out what was happening when.  In TYOTF, the story progresses through years of the Gardner calendar, starting in about year 4, and ending in year 25.  Because the stories cover the same time period from different perspectives, one could really read either book first.  It would be interesting to talk to someone who read TYOTF first, to see how their impressions of the characters differ from those of a person who read the books in their proper order.  TYOTF actually ends about four hours after Oryx, which is good because Oryx ended with a cliff hanger.  For the last 1/4 of TYOTF I kept wanting to tell Jimmy to stop and not jump off that cliff.  Those extra four hours resolved the issue that was left open in Oryx, but left the characters with another dangerous challenge to face in the final book of the series, Maddaddam.

My dad listened to TYOTF  on audio book, and insisted that I had to listen to it instead of read it.  He was totally right.  There are at least 10 Gardner hymns in the story, which I would have skimmed at most if I was reading.  In the audio version, the hymns are set to music, with guitars, percussion and back-up singers.  None of the hymns are destined to be Top 40 hits, but it showed the Atwood put a lot of thought and care into the audio version by including the songs in this way.

The Year of the Flood was a New York Times Notable Book for 2009.  I am counting this one for my Audiobook and I Love Library Book challenges.

Next Up on CD:  A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay

Still Reading:  Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Manson Part II

Like everyone else, as a teenager, I read Helter Skelter:  The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, and I thought I knew the whole story.  When Jeff Guinn's book, Manson:  The Life and Times of Charlie Manson came out 39 years after Bugliosi's, I wondered what more it could say.  I mean, it's not like new evidence has recently come to light.  But then the reviews started coming in, and it was clear that Guinn had found a good story to tell.

The subtitles of the two books tell a lot about the differences between the Bugliosi and Guinn Books.  Bugliosi's is the story of the Manson murders and the trials, as told by the lead prosecuting attorney, just 5 years after the Tate murders.  Guinn's book tells about Charles Manson's life, the formation of his "family", and yes, about the murders and trials.  I listened to Guinn's book in audio form, and can report that the murders occurred on disc 8 of 14 discs.  Guinn fully develops Manson's life from childhood, without trying to make the reader (or listener) feel sympathetic.  He is a reporter reporting, and he finds good information that Bugliosi either didn't know or didn't think was worth mentioning.

Bugliosi wrote his book just after the trial finished, from the perspective of the prosecutor's office.  Even if he tried to conduct interviews for his book rather than just relying on the prosecutor's file and trial record, would anyone have talked to him?  He still had connections to the prosecutor's office and the statute of limitations hadn't expired for even minor crimes that might have been mentioned. 

As Guinn explains, in Los Angeles in the 1970s, the culture of the law enforcement system was to ignore allegations against stars and the children of stars unless implicating them was unavoidable.  While Bugliosi mentioned Manson's relationship with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and Terry Melcher, who was Doris Day's son, he down played the friendships as tangential and just an interesting and scary fact of Manson's life.  Guinn spends much more time exploring Manson's friendships with Wilson, Melcher and other people involved with the music scene. After so many years had passed, Guinn seems to have been able to get more people talking about Manson and their own connections to him.  Unfortunately, Wilson and Melcher both died years before the book was released, so Guinn did not have their first hand accounts.  Guinn also writes about how Manson recruited his followers and why they stayed with him in much greater detail than Bugliosi did in his book.

Manson:  The Life and Times of Charles Manson was a NYT Notable for 2013.  If you have any interest at all in Manson and his followers, this book is worth your time.  In terms of 2014 challenges,  I am counting this for both the Audiobook Challenge and the I Love Library Books Challenge.

In Other News:  I saw the movie based on Winter's Tale last night.  As you may know, the reviews have not been great, and I think I know why.  The movie focuses almost exclusively on Peter Lake, his relationship with Beverly Penn, and Pearly Soames' attempts to get revenge.  There are whole story lines that are not even mentioned.  No Praeger, no Hardesty, no Jackson Mead.  The only turn of the millennium character is Virginia and her daughter, Abby.  While my copy of Winter's Tale is 748 pages, it was as though the screen writers took 75 pages from the first part of the book, 25 pages from the second half, and called it "good enough".  For a lover of the book, it wasn't.  I did like the movie, but it seemed like just a cliff notes version of one part of the story, hitting me over the head with the battle between good and evil, and ignoring the rest.  What I didn't expect was that the movie would make me want to read the book again.  Like, now.  It's already on my "Redux" list of books that I want to re-read this year, and I am really looking forward to it sooner rather than later.

Next Up on CD:  The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Still Reading:  The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie