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 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!)

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

The Alchemy Test

For years, I had heard about The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, but I really didn't know what to expect from the book.  The first surprise was its size.  My copy is only 167 pages, and that is with the words spaced out and wide margins.  The second surprise was how profound a story it is.

Santiago, a shepherd boy in Spain, has a recurring dream about the pyramids in Egypt.  He soon finds himself sitting next to a stranger claiming to be a king, who advises him that he needs to follow his dream, and pursue his Personal Legend.  Capital P, capital L.  A person's Personal Legend is the thing that he or she is really meant to do, and the universe will conspire to help that person achieve the goal.  There will be omens that must be followed.  If the omens are ignored for too long, the universe will stop talking to the dreamer, and ultimately, the Personal Legend will be lost.

Like most dreamers, Santiago has lots of reasons not to listen to the omens.  First and foremost, it is hard.  It is easier to find a job, get good at that job, and stay at that job forever, than to leave a profitable job in pursuit of a goal one may not reach.  Also, there is love.  Falling in love might lead the dreamer to believe that his Personal Legend isn't worth it if following it means losing his soul mate.  Soon after meeting the woman who he loves, Santiago meets the Alchemist.  The Alchemist tells him  "You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend.  If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love."

The Alchemist has elements of the Muslim faith, Judaism, and Christianity.  It is clearly a story of faith, without claiming that one religion is superior to the others.  Additionally, in the story, Santiago is not following God's word, but is following the voice of the universe. 

The Alchemist is a book that everyone should read.  Whether they love it or hate it, I don't care.  I just think it should touch everyone's life.  The Alchemist is on my son's 11th grade summer reading list, along with several other titles.  The kids get to select which books they read, but they have to read a certain number.  I'm excited that probably 90% of the 11th graders from my son's school will read it, simply because it is shorter than any other choices. 

If The Alchemist is not on reading lists in your area, it would make a great graduation or even wedding gift.  Although it doesn't rhyme or have illustrations like Oh! The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss, the message is the similar, and it will look a little more dignified on a dorm room book shelf.

My one criticism is that The Alchemist could be read to be sexist.  There aren't any meaningful female characters other than the gypsy at the beginning.  The Alchemist says that Santiago's love, Fatima's, Personal Legend is to find him.  It's demeaning to Fatima that her greatest goal should be to find a husband.  I choose to believe that a woman could fit into Santiago's role just as easily as a man could fit into Fatima's, and that the lessons should be read to apply to all.

I listened to The Alchemist on CD.  It was read by Jeremy Irons, who had a great voice for the story.  I also checked the CDs out of my library, so I am counting this for 3 challenges - The Rewind Challenge, The Audiobook Challenge, and The I Love Audiobooks Challenge.

Next Up on CD:  I'm already two discs into Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood.

Still Reading:  Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Love in the Labyrinth

Long, long ago, before The Typical Book Group even had a name, we had a book exchange.  It was at that exchange, in 2010, that I picked up a copy of The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie.  Ever since then, Labyrinth has been sitting in my nightstand, waiting for me to get around to reading it.  Finally, I jumped in.

The Rose Labyrinth is the story of Lucy, a woman who needed a heart transplant.  Once she received her new heart, she began having "memories" that weren't hers.  She soon came to the conclusion that she was remembering things that had happened in her donor's life.  She began to believe that prior to his death, her donor was attempting to unravel a mystery that tied his British family to John Dee and William Shakespeare.  Meanwhile, she also fell in love with her doctor.  Together they take up the cause of solving the clues that Dee and Shakespeare left, which oddly relate perfectly to their own lives.  At the same time, a group of extremists from the US are also following the clues, believing that Dee had received divine guidance that would bring about the rapture foretold in the Book of Revelation.

This book has a bit of everything, and that may be its downfall.  It's not really historical fiction, but it has historical figures.  It's not really science fiction, but there is some time travel and a futuristic medical storyline.  It's not really a The Da Vinci Code style mystery, but it says that it is on the back cover.  The GoodReads reviews are pretty horrible, and I think that's because people went in thinking that the book would be one thing, and it was something entirely different.  The author also aligned the "bad guys" with right wing Americans, so I could see card carrying Tea Party members being offended.

All told, if you like a little sci-fi, a little historical fiction, and a little action packed puzzle solving, you'll probably like this book.  It had parts that were really interesting, and when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about the story and wanting to get back to it.  Yes, there were too many coincidences, and yes, it is incredibly unrealistic that this seemingly random group of people would have so much esoteric knowledge that would serve them so well.  If you go in with an open mind, expecting a book that doesn't fit a specific mold, you should enjoy this one. 

This is the third book down for the Rewind Challenge.

Next Up:  This is Not an Accident by April Wilder

Still Listening to:  The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Virtually Real

In Upload by Mark McClelland, the main character, Raymond Quan, is a teenager living in a group home in 2060.  He has a job working for a wealthy 85 year old man, Nicholas Tate, who had made his money through insider trading tech stocks.  Tate, like many people, spends most of his time in a V Chamber, living in a virtual world of his own creation.  Some people, like Raymond's father, become so V addicted, that they can't live life in the real world.  Most people have a virtual presence, but still live a real world life, with a job and a family.

While exploring how to improve his own virtual world, something goes wrong, and Raymond is convinced that he could be charged with a serious real world crime.  We fast forward to 2069, and Raymond is working for a company working on an uploading project.  The company is attempting to upload a monkey into the virtual world.  The result would be that the monkey would die in the real world, but would live forever, and enjoy his life, if his brain was uploaded into the virtual world first.

McClelland drops the bombshells of Raymond's crime as though they were breadcrumbs.  He gives us details so shocking that you re-read to be sure that you have it right, and then he quickly moves on, as though those specifics are no big deal.  Soon, someone else is following the trail, and Raymond begins to consider whether he should upload his brain into the virtual world in order to escape a reality that is closing in fast.

Raymond is an odd, but well developed character.  He lacks social skills due to being raised in a group home and being so focused on his virtual world.  At his upload company, Raymond meets a woman and begins to fall in love, only to stumble on the intricacies of normal social interaction.  He tries to fill his virtual world with everything that he could possibly need in case he were ever to actually upload.  However he is so overconfident in his skills and naive that he overlooks the obvious.

Upload is a good book, exploring a really interesting concept.  If we could create a world and move into it, would it be better?  What would we forget?  What would we get sick of?  Do we need our bodies in order to live a fulfilling life?  If I was writing the story, I would have resolved a few of the issues differently, but McClelland also thought of things that I would never have considered.

I read Upload at the request of Mike at Sandpiper Publicity.  I received a free copy of the book, but other than that, no promises were made and no payments were received.  I would recommend this book to anyone who likes technology focused sci-fi, and especially to any sci-fi lovers who live in Ann Arbor or attended U of M.  McClelland is a U of M graduate, and much of the story is set in the Ann Arbor area.

You might remember that last month I said that I might do two Industry Requested Reviews in November.  Instead, I did none.  I just missed finishing Upload in November (better late than never), and I never got a copy of Melt:  The Art of Macaroni and Cheese.  I'm probably better off without that one!  My next IRR will be Perfect by Rachel Joyce.  I'm taking a chance on this one.  Joyce also wrote The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry which I just started listening to.   If I can't stand Harold, I might not be so anxious to jump into Perfect.

Next Up:  Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese.

Still Listening to:  The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Speculative Snowman

Where should I start talking about Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood?  If I start at the beginning I'll be starting at the end, but if I start at the end I'll start at a new beginning.  It's all so strange, and yet frighteningly familiar.

The book itself starts with post-apocalyptic Snowman, explaining simple objects to people who he calls "the children of Crake".  He is naked, with few possessions, and he sleeps in a tree to avoid the genetically modified animals who might attack him on the ground.  The time shifts between Snowman's present and his memories of his past, starting with his childhood.  Snowman, who was then known as Jimmy, grew up in a compound, like everyone else that he knew.  The compounds were owned by competing corporations, working to secure the smartest people who they could find to create new breeds of animals, new cures for diseases, and new sources of food.  The normal people who were thought not to be as smart as those living in the compounds lived in "pleeblands" between the corporate bases.

Growing up among the elite brains of the era, Jimmy lived a fortunate, but highly guarded life.  He never left the compound.  Ever.  The ocean was a few miles away, but he had never even seen it.  Still, he was certain that his life was better than that of the pleebs.

Jimmy's best friend in the compound was Glenn, who was also known as "Crake".  Together they played computer games and surfed the Internet.  There were sites where the tweenagers could watch live executions, sites where they could watch people commit suicide, and every variety of porn site that a person could dream up.  It was on an Asian kiddie porn site that Jimmy and Crake first saw Oryx.  While still kids themselves, they were mesmerized by something about Oryx's eyes as she looked into the camera.  They took a screen shot of her face, and each kept a copy.

The years go by, and the boys grew in different directions, with Crake becoming a rising star as a bioengineer.  Soon he was basically running his compound, and designing things that no one else fully understood.  Jimmy was working in a third or fourth rate compound when Crake brought him to work for him, eventually making Jimmy his second in command.  Obviously, since I started out by referencing an apocalypse, something goes wrong.  Jimmy/Snowman questions his culpability as he tires to help Crake's children make their way in the new world.

Atwood apparently does not feel that this book is science fiction, but instead is "speculative fiction", because it doesn't deal with "things that have not been invented yet."  That is scary, and I hope that she is exaggerating.  While listening to Oryx and Crake I thought a lot about what science fiction is, and why I am finding myself so attracted to it lately.  I was specifically thinking about Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and whether that is science fiction or not.  In Penumbra's case, I think it's even more likely that the technology mentioned in the book may already exist, in the hands of a chosen few.  With that in mind, Penumbra might also be considered speculative fiction. I'm tagging these, and the other sci-fi books that I've reviewed here as "Sci-Fi-ish" in deference to Atwood's assertion.  Whatever it is, I like them both.  With no offense intended to the reader of Oryx, I think that if Jeff Woodman or  Wil Wheaton had read it, I might have been persuaded to add it to my list of favorites.

Oryx and Crake was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for 2003.  It was also a NYT Notable for that year.  I hadn't heard of Oryx until I read a review of the book that is the third in the trilogy, MaddAddam, and I thought that if I wanted to read that one, I should probably start at the beginning (there I go again) with the first book in the series.  The second book is Year of the Flood, and I will be adding that to my TBR list.

Next Up on CD:  The Iliad by Homer

Still Reading:  True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

Penumbra's Conundrum

When Clay Jannon takes a job at a bookstore that is open all night, he wonders what is up.  The store has few if any best sellers, random classics that Clay assumes are the store owner's favorites, and a whole library's worth of books that are not for sale.  The customers are as odd as the bookstore itself.  A few "normal" people come in, but Clay is more likely to encounter odd customers who are desperate for a certain book from the lending library, and immensely relieved find it.  Because he is working the night shift and has so few customers, Clay has a lot of time on his hands.  As a beginner computer geek, Clay designs a method of tracking what the lending library customers check out, and he notices a strange trend.

In Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Book Store by Robin Sloan, the primary conflict is between the old and the new.  A 500 year old society is studying old books of codes in an attempt to find the secret to immortality.  Across town, a newish company, Google, has a team working on discovering the same secret, but through modern and futuristic technology instead of ancient codes.  Clay is the force that leads the two groups to work together, with those focused on the past embracing technology, and the Googlers challenged by "OK", which is what they call "old knowledge".

Penumbra had some of the feel of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, with technology doing amazing things which are taken for granted by the users.  Both books are also similar in that the key to solving the puzzle is hidden in plain sight in the same manner.  I'm not going to spoil that one for you - read the two books and you'll know what I am talking about.  A difference, however, is that Penumbra is set in the modern day, and the reader is left wondering which of the technologies that Sloan describes really exist, and which he invented.  Predictably, I spent time Googling just that as soon as I finished the book.  Some of the reviews that I have read have warned that Penumbra was written in 2012, and will only be relevant in 2012, because of its reliance on then current technology that will soon be dated.  I couldn't disagree more.  Sloan did choose to use the name of a real company, Google, and to talk about things that Goolge may or may not really be doing.  But even if Google does have the technology that Sloan describes, it won't be available to or understood by non-techies for years.  At one point, Mr. Penumbra compares Google to a start up company from his day, Standard Oil.  Yes, it is possible that Google won't be here in 50 years, but it will still be discussed and its practices will be studied due to the revolution that it caused.  Sloan seems to be saying that the new technology doesn't make the old knowledge irrelevant, and instead, the old knowledge can enhance the technology.

Sloan grew up in Troy, Michigan, which is a neighbor to my village.  Despite its great school system and affluent residents, Troy has struggled to support its library in recent years.  In fact, its voters have decided more than once that the library is not worth keeping, and should be closed.  Fortunately, for now, reasonable minds have prevailed, and the library remains open.  I was happy to stumble upon this great interview where Sloan credits the Troy Public Library specifically for his success as a writer.  I'm happy to link to the interview, so that when future Troy voters Google "why should we keep the Troy Library open", there is one more chance that they will find the interview with a great author crediting their library for giving him "a reason to write".   

I checked the NYT Notable Book list for 2012, and was shocked not to see Penumbra there.  I'm not the only one.  Penumbra, and another book that I loved from 2012, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, were both listed on Flavorwire's list of "25 Notable Books Unfairly Overlooked by 'The New York Times'".  I absolutely agree with Flavorwire.  Penumbra was also picked by BookPage as one of the 25 Best Book Jackets for 2012.  It's funny how many books made both Flavorwire and BookPage's lists.  Anyhow, I totally agree with BookPage too.  Although the cover, which you can see at the top of this post, looks relatively plain, I was surprised when I turned off my light to go to bed, and could still see the books on the cover glowing.  The glow in the dark cover could have seemed really childish and gimmicky, but for this particular book, it was like a neon sign twinkling outside of my window, reminding me that while I may be going to sleep, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is still open, and waiting for me.

Next Up:  The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

Still Listening to:  Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

Intro to LARPing

A few months ago I went out to dinner with one of my old friends.  We were catching up on what our families have been doing, when she mentioned that her nephew is really into LARPing.  Did I know what that was?  No!  She explained that LARP is an acronym for Live Action Role Play, and that it basically means that her nephew dresses up in costumes with a big group of other people, and they act out different scenarios over the course of a weekend.

When Justin Calderone emailed me to ask if I would review his book, LARP:  The Battle for Verona, I was ready.  I already knew what LARPing was, after all!  So I agreed.

LARP:  The Battle for Verona is a LARPer's fantasy.  The first third is focused on the politics of LARPing.  Then, our LARPers meet an unexpected challenge.  Their town, set on an island off the coast of Washington State, is invaded by Mongolians.  The US Army doesn't know how to fight these primitive warriors, but the LARPers are prepared.  They have been battling medieval style every weekend for the last 10 years, and are excited to try out their moves for real. 

Did I mention that this is a fantasy?  Seriously.  If you are looking for a story based in reality, this is probably not the book for you. However, if you can let go, and give the LARPers a chance, it is a fun, quick read.  Also, it is worth mentioning that while this book is intended for adults, it would be appropriate for high school and even middle school students who are strong readers, as it doesn't really have much violence, and there is no sexual content or strong language that I can recall.  In this book, the nerds finish first, even though it took them until they had been out of high school for 10 years to win.  That might be just the message that a teenager who is having a rough time in school needs to hear.

I have no idea if other people are writing about LARPing.  It seems like an area that would make great fiction.  If I understand correctly, LARPers come up with a fictional scenario, and improvise, based on their characters' imagined traits.  They are different from war reenactors because they are not trying to re-create something that already happened, but instead are crafting their own story as they go along.  I liked the part of Calderone's book that was focused on the LARP group preparing for their scheduled battle, with all of the power struggles and ego stroking that involved.  A great storyline for a different LARP book would be to start there, but then add a real life murder or series of murders within the LARP battle.  The LARPers could then try to solve the crime before they become the next victims.  Actually that might even make a good CSI episode, if that show is still on!

In the interest of full disclosure, as I mentioned, the author, Justin Calderone, contacted me and asked me to review his book.  He sent me the book, in .pdf form, and I agreed to read and review it.  No promise were made, no payments were received.  I cut back on my Off the Shelf Challenge commitment for this year to give me the time to do one "industry requested" review like this each month.  I've received several requests this month, and next month I will be reviewing Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie, Jr.

Next up:  My Berlin Kitchen:  A Love Story with Recipes by Luisa Weiss

Still Listening to:  The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott

How to Read Clouds

For years, my sister has been recommending that I read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.  In my defense, I tried.  In fact, I think that I gave it about 215 pages before giving up, which is pretty generous.  When I last tried reading it though, my daughter was just going through her testing for dyslexia, and I had a lot on my mind, other than trying to piece together the tangled web that Mitchell was weaving. 

This past Christmas, my sister bought me Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green by Mitchell.  She knew that I had tried CA before, and gave up, but she thought I should give it another try.  I wasn't exactly in a rush.  But, then I read Black Swan Green, and really loved it.  So, I agreed to give CA another look.

Even the second time around, Cloud Atlas was not an easy read.  Part of the problem is that for the first half of the book, the reader is trying to figure out what is going on.  But this time I realized that if I would have just hung in for 20 more pages the first time, I probably would have been hooked.  So, if you are interested and want to know how to read the book without getting frustrated, keep reading.  On the other hand, if you want to be surprised about how the book works, stop reading here.  I'll insert a nice picture of the CA movie poster, so you don't have to read more than you want.

OK.  For those who are still with me . . . see that tag line above?  "Everything is connected"?  Yes, it is.  To prepare yourself for reading CA, start with the back cover.  On the back of my copy, Michael Chabon describes the book as "The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes. . . "  Remember that.  Then, look at the names of the chapters.  You have "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing", then "Letters from Zedelghem", then "Half Lives:  the First Luisa Rey Mystery", then "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish", then "An Orison of Sonmi-451", then "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After".  Halfway though Sloosha's Crossin', you are halfway through the story of the book.  From that point, you will revisit the characters from the earlier chapters, in reverse order, starting with Orison of Sonmi, then Timothy Cavendish, etc.

Each chapter seems to be entirely unrelated to the others, with different characters, taking place in different periods of time.  The chronology, as it is, begins with Adam Ewing during the California Gold Rush.  It then progresses in each chapter, with the Timothy Cavendish chapters being the closest to modern day, and Sloosha's Crossin' being in the (hopefully) very distant future.  After the Sloosha's Crossin' chapter, time goes backward again until we return to the 1800s. 

Knowing this, I think you are now prepared to read CA.  The first time I tried it, I just didn't get why we were ending each chapter in the middle of a story, but never getting back to it.  You will get back to each story, but it will take a while.  As I read, I tried to look for the connections, and had corners turned down in my book all the way through the first Sonmi chapter, marking where I could look back to the precious hints I had recognized.  After Sloosha, however, Mitchell hits the reader over the head with the connections, in a way that ties everything together.

There are recurring themes, and Mitchell explores how each plays out in the different eras.  The battle of good versus evil begins with bullies as the bad guys, progresses to corporations as evildoers, and then progresses into the future even further, where we return to bullies. 

Mitchell has a couple of great and timeless quotes.  The first that I really liked, possibly because it could have fit just as well in Black Swan Green was "Prejudice is permafrost", which is in the first Sonmi chapter.  The second, which doesn't blog as well as it read, was from Sloosha,where two characters were talking about what separates the civilized societies from the violent ones.  The more optimistic character says that in the violent societies, there are savages with beautiful hearts, who might make a difference one day.  The doubting character says "'One day' was only a flea o' hope for us."  "Yay" says the other character, "but fleas ain't easy to rid."

Cloud Atlas is a good book, with a lot to discuss when it is finished.  Why are there two characters named Adam?  Do the birth marks mean what I think they do?  What caused the Fall?  Do the Henderson Triplets create the Sonmi culture?  But it would be a lot for most book groups to digest. 

Cloud Atlas was a NYT Notable Book in 2004.

Next up:  Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.  Yep, I managed to get it, even after it made the NYT Notables!

Still Listening to:  The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Magic Enough

Imagine a circus, which arrives in a field, at night while you sleep.  Unlike every other circus that you have ever seen, the only colors on the tents and decorations are black and white.   Unlike any circus that you have ever heard of, this circus is open from dusk to dawn.  This is the circus that Erin Morgenstern imagined in her novel, The Night Circus. 

In the night circus, unexplainable things happen. These happenings are not the result of magic, but of the skill of two particular people who are engaged in a secret contest with each other.  The contestants, Celia and Marco, claim not to be magicians or wizards, but they are able to make the circus feel as though it is enchanted.  Celia is an illusionist in the circus, and her feats range from changing the color of her dress to complement the clothing of others, to arranging for the circus to travel via train between cities such as Sydney, New York, and London.  Marco works behind the scenes, but creates attractions that astound Celia and the circus goers alike.  The story is set in the 1890s, and the first years of the 20th century, mostly in London and in cities in the Eastern United States, but it could have been set anywhere and in any time.

Bailey is a young boy when he first discovers the circus, and he is immediately enthralled.  He meets twins, Poppet and Widget, who are about his age, have a circus show, and treat him as though he is their best friend.  Poppet has the ability to read the future in the stars, while Widget can read people's pasts. What Widget reads, he records, not in writing, but in bottles containing smells that remind people of of where they have been.  Poppet realizes that there is something special about Bailey, even if no one can quite figure out what it is.  My favorite quote from the book is spoken by Celia to Bailey, and it is this:  "You're in the right place at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done.  Sometimes that's enough."  In this circus, it turns out that it is.

Morgenstern's circus is amazing.  One tent contains a cloud maze.  In another, everything is made of ice.  A wishing tree keeps wishes constantly burning, and feeding off of each other.  The entire circus always smells like popcorn and caramel.  I could go right now.

I listened to the book on CD, and while the reader was great, I think that I may have liked this one even better and found it more powerful, if I had read it myself.  Apparently a movie is in the development stages. If it is done right, it should turn out to be a "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" for adults.

At the end of the book, a visitor to the circus is handed a business card with an "@thenightcircus" email address on it.  Even though I'm an adult, and generally am not suckered in by these gimmicks, I am finding myself oddly tempted to write and let the addressee know that I really love his circus, and think it should swing by Michigan soon.

Next up on CD:  The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Still Reading:  Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell