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Plus some other crap you aren’t expecting!
It’s been a while since our (my) last meeting, and I have to take some time out to thank Facebook for having applications like iRead and Goodreads and all these other virtual bookshelves that served to remind me of the many tomes I have consumed over the past few months. Not that there was much worth remembering, but how would I have known that otherwise? Answer: I would not have. And so much the poorer would be this edition of Mad’s Book Club. So count your blessings, amigos, it could have been worse.
I will start off by reviewing two YA series that have graced the virtual pages of this category before: Scott Westerfield’s Uglies trilogy-cum-quadrology and Erin Hunter’s Warriors.
Scott Westerfield
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
Extras
I read Uglies a couple years ago and was sufficiently entertained and intrigued by it that I decided to read the rest of the series. Unfortunately, I had gotten Uglies on loan from the library, and the wait for Pretties was so long–something like 209 holds, or whatever–that I put off reading it until my kids bought me the whole series for my birthday this year. The original trilogy (ending with Specials) centers on Tally Youngblood, a teenager in a dystopian future where government maintains social and ecological stability by surgically altering the citizenry’s brains, suppressing those unwanted human tendencies that lead to violence and exploitation of natural resources. Oooh! When you turn sixteen you get compulsory cosmetic surgery that makes you conform to an approved standard of beauty and also turns you into something of a dingbat, albeit a happy one. All fifteen-year-old Tally wants is to become pretty and “bubbly,” but when her best friend runs away to escape the compulsory surgery and join a group of ugly rebels who still have their wits about them, the government tells Tally she must go find her friend and help the government destroy the rebel cause or she can’t get the surgery, which means she will stay ugly forever. Bogus! That is the premise of the first book. It’s difficult to talk about the premise of the next two books without giving away crucial plot twists. Suffice it to say that Tally Youngblood’s work is never done–nor is her suffering for a cause greater than herself.
I quite enjoyed Uglies and Pretties, but by the time I got to Specials, I was finding Tally just a teensy bit tiresome. She had become a tragic figure–still a complex character, but somehow just not as sympathetic as she should have been, all things considered. Maybe I’d just had enough by then. Unfortunately, my son had already bought me Extras, so I had to read it, even though my enthusiasm for the series had waned. Fortunately, Extras shifts perspective from Tally to an entirely new character and a brand-new dystopia. Extras sort of takes it for granted that you’ve read the Uglies trilogy, but it’s about a society newly freed from government mind-control and now based on a “reputation economy.” Instead of everyone being pretty (and the same), now everyone competes for fame and attention. As usual, while the citizenry is preoccupied with shallow pursuits, something sinister is going on behind the scenes. Extras breathed new life into the series, although I can’t imagine where it can go from here.
Warriors: The New Prophecy by Erin Hunter
Midnight
Moonrise
Dawn
Starlight
Twilight
Sunset
I call these the “fighting kitty” books because they’re about feral cats who have organized themselves into clans who live by what they call “the warrior code.” For feral cats, they are surprisingly civilized. Not like those rogue cats you find hanging out in barns. But I get ahead of myself. Of course I have already reviewed Midnight in a previous edition of MBC, but now I am able to tell you that the rest of the New Prophecy series is FREAKING AWESOME, particularly the last three books. I couldn’t put them down. Well, I had to, so I did, so obviously I could, but I didn’t want to. I was totally invested in their kitty lives. The premise of this second Warriors series (I haven’t read the first) is that the kitties’ forest home is in danger from the Twolegs (humans) and four cats are called by Star Clan–their warrior ancestors–to lead their clans through this perilous time and to eventually find a new settlement. I don’t think I am giving anything away there, but if I am, screw it.
These books have everything–adventure, battle, blood feud, mystical visions, existential angst, tragedy, romance–yes, I said romance, kids! Sometimes you even forget you’re reading about a bunch of cats–until they start licking each other’s ears or something, and then you remember. But that’s not the point. The point is that they’re really good books. Highly recommended!
Three by Tom Perrotta
The Abstinence Teacher
Little Children
Election
This isn’t a series of books, but for some reason I got this wild hair to read Tom Perrotta in bulk, so I read all three of these books within a couple weeks, and in the order shown here. The Abstinence Teacher is about this sex ed teacher, Ruth, who runs afoul of the neighborhood evangelicals, who force an abstinence-only curriculum on the school. That’s bad enough, and then Ruth’s daughter’s soccer coach, who seemed like a cool enough guy when she first met him, turns out to be a member of that crazy evangelical church that’s making her tell her students that sex is bad for you until you get married. When the soccer coach, Tim–an ex-druggie/hippie-turned-born-again dude–leads his players in a team prayer, Ruth flips out and then it is so on, crazy evangelicals. Actually, the book is not just about Ruth and her hostility (duly earned, I must say) toward the crazy evangelicals but also about Tim, who is evangelical and crazy but not so certain how he fits into the crazy evangelical world now that the initial afterglow of finding Jesus has worn off. I quite enjoyed reading about his struggles with trying to be a good husband and a good father and a good Christian. I even enjoyed reading about Ruth and her issues, but I think I would have enjoyed her less if she hadn’t had such colorful gay friends. I found the ending a tad abrupt and unsatisfying, but perhaps Perrotta meant to leave me unsatisfied, kind of like abstinence itself. I don’t know. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all.
Little Children is, I think, a better-realized novel than The Abstinence Teacher, but one of the most depressing books I have read in quite some time. It’s primarily about Sarah, who spends her days caring for her three-year-old daughter because she never did figure out what else she wanted to do with her life, and Todd, who is playing stay-at-home dad to his three-year-old son while ostensibly studying for the bar exam. Todd is married to a gorgeous woman who has more ambition for him than he has for himself. Sarah is married to an older man she doesn’t love and who doesn’t love her. Why they got married in the first place is one of the story’s unanswered questions, but then, no one really cares because the point is that Sarah and Todd have an affair and that’s when everyone starts realizing how totally freaking unhappy they are with their lives. I cannot tell you kids how painful this novel was to read. I mean, it held my interest, and I cared much more about these characters than they had any right to make me care about them–which makes me wonder what it is about me that makes me so sympathetic to such people, unless it’s that I too have failed to live up to the expectations I set for myself when I was younger, but then again, I have not found myself committing adultery with hot SAHD’s on the playground, so whatever. Where was I? Oh yes. As I got closer to the end of the book, I kept thinking, “There is no way this can end well,” and sure enough, I got to the end and all I could think was, “I’m so depressed now.” Did anything tragic happen? No. I had just been pumped full of the awful loneliness and disappointment of too many strangers’ lives. What does that say about the book? I couldn’t tell you.
Election is a short book–I read it in about an afternoon–about a high school student election with more behind-the-scenes intrigue than was ever evident the student elections where I went to school. Of course, at my school we didn’t have a candidate who’d supposedly slept with a teacher and ruined his marriage and career, nor did we have a brother and sister competing against each other because the sister’s girlfriend decided she didn’t want to be a lesbian and threw herself at the brother, who then had no idea why his sister was suddenly so mad at him and her former BFF. What am I giving away here? Nothing. What happens in this book? There’s an election. People screw each other. (Figuratively, but in several respects. There is no literal screwing because that would involve hardware, and no hardware is mentioned in the book.) They sign yearbooks. The end. I can’t say if I liked this book or not. It was a diversion, but in the end, I was like, “What?” I can imagine the movie might have been better.
One thread that runs through all three of these books is this: marriage is for chumps. You get married, you inevitably fall out of love, start to resent the person, and then you end up committing adultery or something equally unwholesome. It is unavoidable. At least for heterosexuals. It is unclear whether or not homosexual couples must necessarily meet the same fate. We will probably have to wait until there is more data to interpret.
Four Random Books
A Dry Spell by Susie Moloney
I bought this book used, on a whim, mostly because I was under the impression that Stephen King had endorsed it. Not that I trust Stephen King with all my literary decisions, but you know, Stephen King is a Veronica Mars fan, so I trust him to a certain extent, on a certain level, about certain things, such as whether or not a book will entertain me on my long “vacation” to California. As it turned out, though, Stephen King did not write an endorsement for A Dry Spell, but I was reading the endorsements so quickly that I read a blurb that merely mentioned a comparison to Stephen King as being a blurb by the actual Stephen King. So there it is. Let the buyer beware, kids! Read those jacket blurbs very carefully.
Actually, A Dry Spell isn’t a bad book. It’s about this midwestern town that’s having a really long drought, totally inexplicable as every neighboring town has gotten rain over the last four or whatever years, but not Goodlands. How’s that for a ham-fisted name? It’s almost like it’s supposed to be symbolic or something. Well, Goodlands is apparently suffering some cosmic punishment, but the banker who’s become the town pariah for foreclosing all these good people’s farms decides to take matters into her own hands one drunken evening and she hires this cat who’s supposed to be a rainmaker. Well, he is a rainmaker–a strangely attractive one, as it happens (wink wink)–but can he make it rain in Goodlands, which is not suffering your garden-variety drought but some cosmic-retribution drought? That is the question. And if he does make it rain, interfering with cosmic justice, will there be cosmic consequences? That’s the other question. Yet another question might be, “Can he end the drought that plagues our put-upon banker’s heart? Can he bring moisture to the dry plains of her soul???”
Here’s the answer: Eh. Like I said, it wasn’t a bad book. It entertained me well enough for the $3.50 I paid for it. I have no regrets. Unlike some people in some books I could mention.
The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman
Now this book I liked. It’s about a woman who gets struck by lightning and falls in love for the first time in her life. It’s a lovely book about grief and loss and human relationships and the joy of living. I would tell you more about it, but really, there’s not much more to say. It’s a good book. What does it say about me that the books I like best get the shortest reviews? I think it says that I am tired and have been writing too long about things that aren’t interesting, and now I have no energy left for what ought to animate me. My priorities are out of whack.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
As the front cover promises, it is the same classic romance, only with an ultraviolent zombie subplot. In this version, all of the Bennett girls have been trained in the deadly arts to combat Satan’s undead army. It’s humorous because the plot goes on as it’s supposed to, only every so often they have to fight off some “unmentionables.” Oh, and Darcy takes it on the chin from Elizabeth’s roundhouse kick at some point. Anyway, it’s just a novelty. How much you enjoy the book will depend on what your threshhold is for zombie-related humor. Perhaps you will find that it grows tiresome, in which case you should probably just re-read the real Pride and Prejudice. If you’re looking for something with a little more action, maybe this is for you. The romance is still what drives the story. It’s a good one, with or without the undead.
Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain
Did I mention that I got an autographed copy of this book? I missed Cain’s appearance at Powell’s by two days. I was on vacation or I would have caught it. So disappointing. Well, whatever. Where was I? Oh yes. As for an actual review, what can I say? This is the long-awaited follow-up to Heartsick and Sweetheart. There is no point reading the third if you haven’t read the first two, but those of you who have been following my sick obsession with Cain’s sick, sick story about a homicide detective’s struggle to overcome his obsession with the serial killer who held him captive and tortured him will be glad to know that this is the last book in the series. At least it appears that way. One never knows, but I certainly hope so because I can’t afford to invest any more of my soul in such a depraved world. I devoured it. It was disgusting and wrong, but I did it anyway. And now I’m going to read some Henry James.
You can probably skip the smoking jacket for this edition, as I haven’t been reading anything PBS-worthy as of late. I’ve been in this funk, see, and when I get in a funk, I like to read books about killers. It makes me feel alive. Just kidding. I don’t know why I read them. I’m just armchair-psychologying it here, folks. So if you don’t like books about killers, you can skip to the end, where I talk about Erin Hunter’s Warriors series, or you can skip this blog altogether and do something worthwhile and productive. Your choice!
(Note: Every last one of these serial killer books contains unsavory subject matter and unrefined language.)
Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain
This is the sequel to Heartsick, that sick, sick, sick serial killer book that I so enjoyed on my plane ride to Vegas back in February. Detective and certifiable basket case Archie Sheridan is still trying to get over his issues with Gretchen Lowell, the psycho b-word who held him captive and made him drink drain opener while she practiced carpentry on his torso–but he’s not having much success, unfortunately. Meanwhile he’s got a few new murders to solve, murders which may be connected to the political scandal that journalist Susan Ward is trying to bust wide open. And then Gretchen Lowell has to start pulling some crap from prison that I can’t get into without giving away major plot points. You think you have problems? Be grateful you don’t live in one of Chelsea Cain’s novels, that’s all I can say.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–I am a big fan of Chelsea Cain’s writing, and if she wrote the Portland phone book, it would be clever and riveting. I love the characters that she’s created, and the story is solid, but Sweetheart has an unfinished feel that Heartsick did not. Heartsick left itself open for a sequel, but it was in itself complete. Sweetheart just didn’t seem quite complete to me. The murders were solved and then there was this heartbreaking denoument that left me deeply unsatisfied. I mean, plot-wise I was satisfied, but character-wise, I was not–which I suppose means that Cain needs to write a third book, and then I can forgive her for doing to my emotions what Gretchen Lowell did to Archie’s spleen.
Last Witness by Jilliane Hoffman
Special Agent Dominick Falconetti and Assistant State Attorney C.J. Townsend (a lady state attorney–they’re sleeping together, FYI) are on the trail of a psycho killer who is murdering cops and mutilating their bodies. On the surface it seems to be a drugs and dirty cops scandal…but one of our main characters is hiding a dark secret, which she dares not reveal–but if she doesn’t reveal it, people are just going to keep getting murdered. What a dilemma!
Last Witness is a reasonably exciting book (albeit terribly gory–yes, even by my standards; I don’t recommend a close reading of any passage where a dead body is discovered), but as I was reading it I kept getting the sense that it might be a sequel, because the characters’ back stories seemed a heckuva lot more interesting than the story I was reading. Turns out, it is a sequel to Retribution, which I have not read and is not available at my local library. I’m contemplating buying a used copy for $.01 from a third-party seller at Amazon because it sounds good, but I’m also trying to decide how much I care. I mean, there are so many serial killer books out there, so little I want to pay in postage.
On the other hand, I would certainly read other books by Jilliane Hoffman, if they fell into my lap or something. Then again, there’s not much I won’t read, so long as it’s on my lap and all. I think that much is clear.
Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell
I had never read any Patricia Cornwell prior to picking up this book. I’d long been meaning to read some Patricia Cornwell and her Kay Scarpetta mysteries because there are few things so appealing to me as murder mysteries solved by lady pathologists, you know what I’m saying? Well, maybe you don’t, but trust me, it’s one of my pleasures in life. So I randomly checked this book out at the library because it was in the bulk paperback section, which is a good place to find sicko serial killer books when you’re in a hurry. (It does no good to look in the mystery section because you have to slog through so much Agatha Christie/Mary Higgins Clark/F Is For Felony-style stuff before you find something really lurid and wrong.)
I have to say, this book didn’t do anything for me. It might have had something to do with the fact that it’s a later Kay Scarpetta mystery, and I got the impression that Scarpetta was getting old and weary and not having met her before now, I just didn’t appreciate her angst the way I was supposed to. I didn’t appreciate the other recurring characters’ angst, either–except for Scarpetta’s niece, Lucy, who I thought was spunky and deserved to be in her own book instead of stuck as a bit player in this middle-aged drama. To be honest, I can’t remember for the life of me how the mystery in Book of the Dead got resolved. More to the point, I can’t recall if it got resolved. That usually indicates a problem, but whether it’s a fault of the book or my own middle-aged memory and the fact I’ve read so many serial killer books in the last month or so, I couldn’t tell you.
However, I haven’t given up on Cornwell or Scarpetta altogether. I’m thinking I should try an earlier Scarpetta mystery before I write off an entire series of books containing psycho killers AND a lady pathologist. It just doesn’t make sense to limit my options, right? Then again, I’m in no hurry to rehabilitate Cornwell’s image in my eyes. She’s on the back burner for the time being.
Kisscut and Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter
First of all, could there be a more perfect name for a serial killer book writer than Karin Slaughter? No, there could not.
Second of all, Slaughter really does her name proud. These are high-quality serial killer books.
I read Kisscut first, and as I read it I realized that it was a sequel to something, but it didn’t matter because the story worked perfectly well on its own. The book opens with a standoff between two teenagers at the local skating rink; one ends up dead. The victim is a patient of Dr. Sara Linton, the town’s pediatrician, who is also the county coroner. Oh yes, she is! (You see how this book can’t be anything but awesome.) Her ex-husband, Jeffrey Tolliver, is the chief of police. They still have feelings for each other, but there’s a crime to be solved here, kids. Actually, several crimes. For a small community, an awful lot of bleep goes down. Tolliver’s top detective, Lena Adams, is back at work after a very traumatic experience that she still hasn’t dealt with emotionally, so that makes things even more complicated. I can’t really get into more of the plot without giving stuff away; suffice it to say there’s lots of dark secrets and abuse and crime-ring stuff. But it’s the characters that make the story worth reading (you know, assuming you don’t have a problem with lurid and degrading subject matter).
Which is why I read Blindsighted, the book that introduced these characters. They are trying to catch a serial rapist/killer. (Even though Dr. Linton is a pediatrician, there are no children involved in this one.) Women are in jeopardy. People have angst. Even though I knew, from reading Kisscut, some of the things that would happen, it didn’t spoil the plot at all, and it was the characters that I really enjoyed reading about anyway, so there you have it. You know the book is good because I’m not going on for several paragraphs about how much it sucked. I will definitely read Slaughter’s other Grant County books (even though it rather strains credibility that so much horrible crime would be going on there and people wouldn’t just abandon the place en masse).
I mean, it’s a pediatrician who’s a coroner who’s got the hots for her ex-husband. How am I supposed to resist?
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
Midnight by Erin Hunter
Midnight is the first book in the New Prophecy trilogy in the Warriors series. I first heard of the Warriors series from one of you gentle readers (TR maybe?), who suggested it for Mister Bubby after he finished Harry Potter and was looking for something new and exciting. I have to say, I was incredulous. I mean, it’s about cats. Warrior cats. That is to say, “Warrior cats? Really?” No offense to them, but I don’t usually think about cats caring enough about anything to become “warriors.” No, not even feral cats. Not that I’ve met a lot of feral cats in my day, but…you know…they’re cats.
Anyway, I filed it in the back of my mind because MB enjoys fighting and he enjoys animals, but he got interested in some other books and I didn’t think any more about the fighting kitties until MB dragged me to the school book fair and announced that he just HAD TO HAVE one of these fighting kitty books, so I bought it for him, and that’s how he got totally into this series and how he talked me into reading Midnight–which he, interestingly enough, has not read, but he had checked it out of the library and knew he wouldn’t have time to read it before it was due but thought that somebody should. And so, wanting to share in my son’s literary interests, I agreed, even though I really thought I could go my whole life without reading a fighting kitty book and be perfectly content.
So here’s the thing about these fighting kitty books–they’re actually very entertaining. Sort of like Watership Down meets The Incredible Journey meets…well, I don’t read a lot of animal-based literature, dig? But though I started with limited enthusiasm, I found myself getting pretty into it. I liked these cats. I respected their warrior culture. I cared about their fates. Which is more than I can say for some of the books I’ve read this month.
So there’s a prophecy that a great calamity is coming to the forest where these four warrior cat clans live. The clans are rivals, but they coexist peacefully, so long as everyone stays on their own territory. They all follow Star Clan, which I guess is their kitty religion–a type of ancestor worship, from what I’ve been able to gather. Anyway, Star Clan prophesies this calamity and they choose one cat from each of the four clans to go on this quest. The chosen cats get these visions and they have to go on a perilous journey to fulfill their destiny and save their clans from imminent destruction.
After finishing Midnight, I thought, “I can’t believe I just read 300 pages of cats going for a walk and I liked it.” I liked it so much, in fact, that I’m currently reading the second book in the trilogy, Moonrise–and I have this sinking feeling that when I finish reading about this generation of fighting kitties, I might have to read about the previous generation as well. (I mean, how did Firestar go from being a household pet to being the leader among feral felines? Inquiring minds want to know!)
I’ll try to read more stuff with redeeming qualities for the next club meeting. But I promise nothing.
Joy Fielding is like Mary Higgins Clark in this respect: if you’ve read one of her books, you’ve more or less read them all; nevertheless, I read them all. There is something oddly comforting about their predictability. Not all of Fielding’s books are thrillers; several are just straight-out melodramas, some of which have been made into Lifetime television movies, I’m sure–or if they haven’t, they ought to be.
Anyway, regardless of what genre Fielding is writing in, here is the book she writes time and again: A middle-aged woman with two teenage daughters is divorced from their father, a very successful lawyer who left her for another woman. The ex-husband is a total jerk; the other woman is a bimbo. Our heroine, the middle-aged woman with two teenage daughters, does not have to work because she got a great deal in the divorce settlement, and it’s a good thing because she married very young and never had the chance to pursue higher education or a career in any meaningful way, though she’s certainly intelligent. Not so intelligent that she could avoid marrying a complete a**hole, but intelligent enough to know that when mysterious things start happening in the neighborhood, something is up. Her friends and her family members think she’s overreacting and just needs to get over her ex because seriously, it’s been seven years and isn’t it about time she found herself another man? They know someone who would be perfect for her. But I digress.
Our heroine is NOT overreacting. Something IS up. She doesn’t know what, exactly, and she knows she sounds completely crazy, that she’s not acting like a sane, reasonable person, but she’s been under a lot of stress lately. One of her daughters is giving her grief. Her ex is no help and that bimbo wife of his is always rubbing stuff in her face. She hasn’t had sex in three years (at least). Her boobs are sagging. She hasn’t been sleeping well and she has these crazy, vivid dreams that are very disturbing. (She also sleeps in the nude a lot, which isn’t really pertinent, but I thought you might find it interesting all the same.) Not to mention all the weird crap that’s been going on in the neighborhood that she just knows is not a coincidence but something really sinister at work (or is it play? hard to tell).
She gets laid. The weird crap turns out to be something really sinister after all. She is vindicated. There is hope of a better future for her. The end.
So even though I’ve read all of Fielding’s books before, I thought I hadn’t read this specific one: Lost . The synopsis on the inside sleeve didn’t seem familiar. (I know how ludicrous that sounds, but just bear with me.) So I started reading it, and suddenly it did seem really familiar. I know, I know, but I’m talking really familiar–too familiar. And yet I could not remember for the life of me how the heroine got vindicated in this one, so I thought maybe it was just my imagination–or, you know, the fact that I’ve read any of her other books–and so I kept reading.
Well, after a few chapters it became apparent through various details–detailed details–that I had indeed read this book before. I couldn’t remember what happened–other than the getting laid and vindicated parts–and it was driving me nuts, so I skimmed through the rest and it all came back to me. What didn’t come back to me was why I read the whole thing the first time because I have to tell you, kids, this book was awful. Yes, even by my standards. Sure, the plot was formulaic and flimsy, but all of that would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the main character, who I know I have met before–many, many times–but this time I actually wished that she were a real person SO I COULD PUNCH HER IN THE FACE REPEATEDLY. Yes, I know your daughter is missing, I know your ex-husband is an a**hole, I know your neighbors are acting weird, the dog’s peeing on your carpet, your butt isn’t as firm as you’d like it to be, but do you really need to correct everyone’s grammar ALL THE TIME? Really? Not that that’s your biggest fault, but it’s so opposite-of-endearing and so representative of someone who is always whining and overreacting to crap that I just don’t care if you ever get your daughter back or the dog-urine stains out of your carpet, and that is the real problem here. Unfortunately, it’s a serious one.
And that’s all I have to say about Joy Fielding’s Lost.
(Another edition of Mad’s Book Club is in the works and will probably appear tomorrow. Well, it will definitely appear tomorrow, unless I break both my arms or lose internet access or something equally tragic. Don’t get too excited, as all of the books are about serial killers or fighting kitties. If that ain’t your cuppa, you can feel free not to come back tomorrow. I mean, you’re always free not to come back, but if you specifically stay away tomorrow, I won’t be offended. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve read all these books in the last four weeks or so and there are a lot to talk about, even if there isn’t much to say about them–not that that’s ever stopped me–but this one wasn’t in keeping with the serial killer/fighting kitty theme, so I decided to talk about it here instead of there–or now instead of then–sort of a sneak preview of the inanity to come.)
Still no cookies? Oh, well.
The best part about all of these grown-up books is that each is relatively short (under 300 pages). I like me some short grown-up books. (Of course, I like long grown-up books, too, but short is almost always good just by virtue of itself.)
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Princess Zurg gave me this book for Christmas. PZ has given me a lot of books as presents. (Her father guides her choices. She herself wouldn’t know Toni Morrison from Marisha Pessl.) What I love about getting books from PZ is that she always inscribes them, “Dear Mom, I hope you enjoy this book. Love, PZ.” It’s very cute. Fortunately, she’s never given me a book that I didn’t enjoy.
Set in very-late 17th-century America, A Mercy is narrated through various points of view, several people whose lives are connected by the common thread of slavery. It centers, however, on four women struggling to maintain a farm that is failing as a result of the death of its benevolent homesteader–there is the widow, her Native American servant and two black slaves. There isn’t a lot of plot to give away here; it’s mostly a lyrical rendering of human pain and the different ways in which people are enslaved, regardless of their color and legal status.
I was a huge fan of Morrison’s earlier books, and I realize it takes cheek to say this about a Nobel-prize winner, but I’ve found her work since Beloved to be hit and miss. I can’t read her without being reminded of all the poor imitations by amateur writers trying to be her, and sometimes I can’t help thinking, “Would Toni Morrison be getting away with this if she weren’t Toni Morrison?” I had that thought once or twice when I started reading A Mercy, but once I became engaged in the story, it stopped being an issue. When I finished the last sentence, I thought, “Wow. That was something.” But I found the entire journey intriguing. I think this book is one of Morrison’s best.
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
And now for something completely different! I picked this book off a sale rack at Powell’s on a whim. It was probably the title. Come on, The Dud Avocado? You’re not the least bit curious? I knew I had to read it when I saw that it was highly recommended by Groucho Marx. It is a picaresque novel about an American girl in Paris who takes various lovers and makes various blunders in her wild-hearted quest to suck all the marrow out of life.
There isn’t much to say about it except that it’s very witty and deceptively light reading. I saw it compared to Sex in the City. I haven’t watched much Sex in the City, so I can’t swear the comparison is apt, but I suspect it is. Anyway, you have to read it just to figure out what a dud avocado is. I’m not going to explain it to you.
Heartsick by Chelsea Cain
Here’s something you have to know from the outset: I have had a girl crush on Chelsea Cain since she was writing the Let’s Go! column for the Oregonian weekend edition. I bought this book because I’ll buy anything she writes. As far as I know, this is only her second novel, the first being Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, a hilarious parody of the Nancy Drew series. Heartsick, by contrast, is a serious mystery about sicko serial killers.
There are two parallel main characters: Archie Sheridan–a police detective who spent ten years tracking the Beauty Killer, eventually getting captured and tortured by her (her!) for several days before being returned to his life a very, very broken man and who comes out of his painkiller-addicted retirement to catch a new serial killer that is terrorizing Portland–and Susan Ward, the punk newspaper reporter assigned to cover Sheridan’s hunt for the After-School Strangler. Susan’s got problems of her own, but let’s face it, she’s got nothing on Archie, who is so messed up in the head that he’s been visiting his former torturer (the Beauty Killer–were you paying attention? her name’s Gretchen) in prison every Sunday afternoon for the last two years. Oh, it’s weird all right. But in a good way.
At least it was good for me. The whodunnit aspect is actually a tad predictable, but I didn’t care because I was so fascinated by Archie’s relationship with that psycho b-word who sliced him open and fed him drain opener and still holds an uncanny power over him. It’s not a funny book, of course, but Chelsea Cain does inject her peculiar wit into the writing and feeds her characters some clever dialogue. I do love me some Chelsea Cain, so you’re going to have to forgive me for loving this book even though it’s twelve shades of sick and wrong. If you like a good serial killer book, you might want to read this one.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I see that the sequel, Sweetheart, is up for sale on Amazon, and thus I have some shopping to do. Happy reading, amigos!
Who brought the cookies? Anyone? No one? Ah, well, maybe next time.
So! This is a special bonanza edition, with three juvenile novels to review as well as three adult ones. Yeah, that’s all it is. No Hoss or Little Joe homages. It’s little-b bonanza, kids. Sorry to get your hopes up.
First the kid stuff: Princess Zurg’s teacher (she of exclamation point fame!) loaned these three books to me because PZ had recently read and enjoyed them at school and thought I would like to know what PZ was reading and enjoying. And now I am discussing them in case you’re looking for books your tween might want to read and enjoy. Or in case you enjoy reading books geared at tweens. No judgment here, kids.
Absolutely Normal Chaos by Sharon Creech
This is about a thirteen-year-old Mary Lou’s wild and crazy summer, in which her mysterious cousin with the hillbilly name comes to stay at her already-crowded house. What is Carl Ray doing there? Why is he so annoying? It’s a mystery. But it isn’t just Carl Ray that’s disturbing Mary Lou’s calm. First her neighbor dies. Then her best friend gets annoying. Then she falls in love! It’s absolutely normal chaos–get it?
The novel is narrated by our heroine, journal-style–a gimmick which works well enough in the beginning, but at some point in the story Creech seems to decide that she needs to inject a little more realism, e.g. Mary Lou goes a few days without writing anything even though really important stuff is supposedly going on, and she starts sounding less like a writing prodigy and more like, well, a thirteen-year-old girl. I found that a little annoying.
Overall it is an engaging story. I had the “mystery” of Carl Ray figured out, well, immediately–but in fairness, I am thirty-seven years old and have been around the block a few times. (At least I’ve read about other people going around the block on multiple occasions.) It’s not like it’s supposed to be a whodunnit anyway. It’s just a thirteen-year-old girl’s surprisingly eventful summer. Solid three-star book for tween girls, I’d say, but not for the top of the reading list.
Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
In the midst of the Great Depression, ten-year-old Bud is running from abusive foster homes and that dumb old orphanage he’s been living in since his mother died four years earlier. He never knew his father, but he’s pretty sure Dad is this big-shot jazz musician in Detroit, and he is determined to go there and find him once and for all. He meets many interesting folks on the way.
As PZ said, the book is sad and funny. That is, it talks about some sad things, but Bud tells his own story in a very humorous way. You gotta love Bud. He’s got spunk, by golly! And pluck, too. It is also interesting as a period piece, for those of you who enjoy historical stuff. Highly recommended.
Bloomability by Sharon Creech
I can’t say that Absolutely Normal Chaos had me itching to read more Sharon Creech, but since she was there anyway (books having been loaned, see), and since she is a Newberry Award-winner, I figured what the hey. Well, I knew from the first chapter of Bloomability that it was no Absolutely Normal Chaos. This sucker was a winner. Is a winner, I mean. I mean that it keeps on being a winner even though I’m no longer reading it.
Thirteen-year-old Dini is “kidnapped” by her aunt and uncle, who have afforded her the opportunity to attend an American school in Switzerland. She says she is “kidnapped” because at first she isn’t so hip to the idea. She’d rather stay with her crazy nomadic parents who can’t seem to stay put at any one address for more than a few months at a time. (No wonder her older sister is pregnant and her brother is in jail.) She’s never been on an airplane before, let alone in a foreign country. It’s scary! Dini, speaking as a homebody, I totally hear you.
However, Dini learns a lot of things in Switzerland, and not just Italian. Mostly she learns things about herself. As reluctant as she was to leave her family, she’s never been able to put down roots. She’s never felt secure enough in any place to venture outside her own little bubble and experience the world. In Switzerland she learns about friendship and about home and about blooming (where you’re planted–to use the old greeting-card cliche).
I really enjoyed the characters and the narrative voice in Bloomability. It’s a delightful book (though not the one Creech won the Newberry for). I think it will appeal especially to girls, but PZ’s teacher said the boys in her class enjoyed it as well. Many stars!
This Book Club is so bonanza that it’s going to have to be spread over two posts. Stay tuned for Part Deux: The Grown-Up Books!
Just finished it.
So.
Effing.
LAME!
Seriously, I wanted to throw the book against the wall. I haven’t felt that strongly about a book since Dr. Ferber’s Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problem. Bah!
It wasn’t a horrible book, so why am I so upset? Because lameness damages my calm. And that ending was
lame
lame
lame
lame
LAME!
Stupid best-selling authors. I hate ‘em.
After months and months of reading mostly non-fiction, I finally went on a novel spree. A novel-reading spree, which is hardly novel for me, but which seemed relatively novel after reading so many non-novels. I have a stack of paperbacks this thick–the stack being thick, individual paperbacks varying in thickness–I bought from the Goodwill and garage sales, and I am determined to plow through them before I allow myself to buy any more books, novel or otherwise. Most of them are old titles, but perhaps you, like me, are very slow about getting around to reading the books that everyone was talking about three years ago. Or perhaps you’d enjoy a stroll down memory lane, book aisle. Either way, this meeting of Mad’s Book Club will come to order. Got your comfy chairs? Got your smoking jackets? Excellent. Engage!
Battle Royale, Koushun Takami
In a dystopian world, a totalitarian government has a special program: each year forty high-school students are taken to a remote island, where they are armed with various weapons and instructed to kill each other, or be killed. Last one standing wins the “game.” How do you like that? Won’t complain about your senior prom again, will you? So these kids are all classmates with various interests and abilities, most not particularly ambitious for life as an assassin, but it’s not like they can just sit down and refuse to play because they have to wear these special collars, and if no one kills anyone in a 24-hour period, everyone’s head explodes! If you try to remove your collar, your head explodes! So what if you’re basically a good kid who doesn’t want to murder anyone but isn’t too keen on waiting around to get nailed by somebody’s crossbow either? Maybe you don’t want someone unloading their Uzi on your friend, huh? It’s a conundrum. A moral dilemma, even.
This is an English translation of a Japanese pulp classic, and while I have no basis for judging the quality of the translation, the writing occasionally comes off as awkward or stilted–yet at the same time, it seems absolutely authentic to the teenage characters who provide the narrative points of view. The book is more about being a teenager than it is about totalitarianism. While anti-fascist, it’s not an allegory about fascism, per se. It’s about friendship and trust and honor and whatnot. The characters are very well-drawn. In case you couldn’t tell, it is an extraordinarily violent story; each chapter ends with a body count. It is a real page-turner, though. If you like books about killing and stuff.
Giraffe, J.M. Ledgard
True confession: My husband bought this book for me two Christmases ago, and I have just now finished it. No, it isn’t that long–just over 200 pages, I think–nor is it boring. It’s a beautifully-written book that just happens to be the opposite of plot-driven; hence my ability to put it down and leave it down for large stretches of time. What’s it about? Well…there are these giraffes taken captive and transported to a Czechoslovakian zoo during the communist regime, see. And there are these Czech people who…have thoughts…about…communism…and giraffes…and…stuff. No, it’s interesting, I swear! It is an allegory of communist oppression. But it’s one of those books you have to read all the way through in order to get the measure of it. When I came to the end, I said, “Wow.” Out loud. Sincerely. It’s heartbreaking. But good. And I’m not just saying that because I am the Giraffe.
The Undomestic Goddess, Sophie Kinsella
From the sublime to the ridiculous. Can you believe I’d never read any Sophie Kinsella before this? Well, I hadn’t. So this one is about a big-shot lawyer who loses her job and stumbles into a gig as a housekeeper, despite the fact that she knows absolutely zero about keeping house. Don’t question! Just believe! Anyway, my expectations were low, as they should have been, and I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a very funny book. I don’t think I need to tell you that it’s also contrived and predictable. I probably should mention that in the last fifty pages or so, it sort of loses its momentum and doesn’t seem to know where it’s going, even though the rest of us do know exactly where it’s going (see “predictable”)–so that’s a bit of a problem. Methinks Kinsella could have tightened that up a bit without losing much sleep. However, despite the disappointing conclusion, I now find myself well-disposed to read more Kinsella because golly, she is funny. I like the funny.
Plain Truth, Jodi Picoult
And believe it or not, I had not read any Jodi Picoult before this, either, though I’ve had My Sister’s Keeper on my shelf for quite some time. I was picking out books to take to the beach, and I opted against My Sister’s Keeper because I was afraid it would be too depressing. So instead I chose the book about the Amish girl accused of infanticide. Clearly I have a refined sense of the depressing. I cannot deny it. So Plain Truth is a murder mystery: A newborn baby is found dead, abandoned on an Amish farm. It’s determined that the Amish farmer’s daughter gave birth to the baby; she becomes the prime suspect in the baby’s murder. Problem: the girl not only denies killing the baby but denies even having the baby. What’s a defense attorney to do? Did I mention the defense attorney? She’s the main character. She’s got issues: 1) She’s not even sure she wants to be a defense attorney anymore because she has to defend all these scummy murderers and stuff. 2) She wants to have a baby and she isn’t sure she can defend someone who probably killed her own baby. 3) She’s related to the accused. Dunh dunh DUNH! 4) She fears intimacy. How that last one is related to the trial, you’ll have to read the book to find out. Suffice it to say there’s plenty of drama to go around.
Anyway, what was interesting for me was the portrait of the Amish community and way of life, and the difference between “plain” (Amish) values and English (modern American) values. It’s not really about religion or faith, but more about individuality versus community. I thought that was fascinating. It’s more psychological drama than mystery, but that really pays off when the big secret is finally revealed. At least it did for me. I’m easy.
Note: I am currently reading My Sister’s Keeper, and I was right: it is depressing and so not appropriate for the beach. Unless you enjoy crying at the beach, in which case it is perfect. Review pending.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon
So this book’s claim to fame is that it has an autistic narrator, which is brilliant. I mean, the idea of an autistic narrator is brilliant, and the execution thereof is brilliant. The narrator himself is an autistic teenager named Christopher. It starts out as a murder mystery–who killed the neighbor’s dog?–but that mystery is “solved” about halfway through the book, and that’s when the plot really thickens. Or rather, the real plot–what’s going on with Christopher’s family?–thickens. It’s interesting how Christopher’s narration maintains this clinical detachment but he’s so real and human that the emotional impact of events is just devastating. I’m chalking this up to the deftness of Haddon’s prose. I think this is an excellent novel for adolescents, except that it does have a fair amount of strong language. (“Fair” meaning more than a little, less than gobs and gobs. So if that sort of thing bothers you or your adolescent, do not take me up on my recommendation.) But it is also an excellent novel for adults and other people.
Well, that wraps it up for this time. I still have a truckload of books to finish before I’m allowed to buy any new ones, so wish me luck. I’ll keep you all posted.
So at my daughter’s new school, the kids are reading this book, Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. You may have heard of it. It was also a movie. I’ve never seen it; maybe you have. You may know of Carl Hiaasen, or even be a fan of his work–his usual genre is adult comic mystery. I’ve never read any of his books, though I’ve meant to. I’ve heard they’re clever. Hoot was his first book for the juvenile market. (He’s written another since then, Flush, about which I know nothing.) So yeah, the kids at Princess Zurg’s school have been reading it, and PZ has been none too thrilled about it. Actually, she’s been morally outraged.
Well, “outraged” is really too strong a word. She has concerns that the book is not appropriate for her because it has some bad words. Words like a slang term for flatulence that rhymes with “art” (most prominent). Words like “damn” and “hell.” Words like “ass.” Words like “dumbass.” You might think it odd that I’ll write out damn and hell and ass but I shrink at spelling ****. That’s because in our house we allow our children to say “damn” and “hell” so long as they’re using the words in the religious sense. We’ll even let them say “ass” if they’re using it in the donkey sense. (Especially if they’re reading the Bible–so, you know, religious usage. Last night we were reading the Book of Mormon together and I told them they could say “dumbass” so long as they pronounced it “dumb…ass.”) They are not allowed to say ****. Because we are not animals, okay? Good manners are important, and so far I’ve had no luck getting them to eat with utensils, so don’t begrudge me my small niceties. Please.
Anyway, PZ knows the aforementioned words are not being used in any religious sense in this book, Hoot, and thus these words are making her feel uncomfortable, like she’s doing something wrong, i.e. reading inappropriate material. She knows she’s not supposed to read inappropriate material. Well, Sugar Daddy and I have told her that these words, distasteful as they might be, are pretty mild by most obscenity standards, and she probably isn’t headed down the slippery slope to Pottymouthville just by reading this book, and she certainly isn’t committing sin; we think she should finish reading the book because it touches on some issues she might find interesting, and it would behoove her to get some practice ignoring minor irritations and focusing on the big picture, as it were. However, we’ve also said that if she keeps reading and the book is really, really making her feel bad, Western Civilization would probably survive if one less fourth-grader in the world was able to engage in thoughtful discourse about Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot; we’d talk it over with her teacher and find her another book to read. (We talked this over with her teacher, who is totally cool with this plan. She just wants the kids to read.)
So PZ is still reading the book, but she still complains about it. The other day she came home and was embarrassed because the book talked about “kissing someone’s butt.” And that’s just gross, right? Not to mention wrong, if you’re going to take a literal read of that expression, which PZ does, as she has led such a heretofore-sheltered life. At her old school, she was among children who tended to act younger than their age; here she is among children who tend to act older than their age, and that is the baseline for how the adults treat them. She is still trying to wrap her head around that.
Because I’d encouraged her to finish the book, I thought I should read it myself, so I could have more useful conversations about it with her. I found a copy at my local library branch–which was provident in itself, as my local library branch is teeny-tiny and mostly has copies of nuthin’–and I finished reading it this weekend. It’s a mildly entertaining book. I wasn’t bored by it. I didn’t find it riveting. I also didn’t find it terribly sophisticated, and I hesitate to posit that my standards were simply too high. I read at least seven of the Left Behind books, for crying out loud, not to mention The Nanny Diaries. But I don’t want to get off on a tangent. Hiaasen has probably forgotten more about plotting mysteries than I will ever know, so whatever–”whatever” as in, whatever failings I imagine the book to have from a literary standpoint, it’s still entertaining and it also raises some thought-provoking questions.
The story is about some kids who try to save an owl habitat from some corporate developers. The thought-provoking questions are “how far should you go for a cause you believe in?” and “is it okay to break the law if your cause is just?” and “which is more important in making a moral decision, your mind or your heart?” These are questions I want PZ to ask herself and to discuss with me. This is part of why I want my kids to read, so they will think about issues that might not enter their brains otherwise. Also, so that they’ll leave me alone so I can read. But that’s less pertinent to my story here.
Moving right along, I realize that this scenario is going to recur with greater repercussions as PZ gets older and she’s asked by her teachers to read books that contain far more offensive material than that found in Hoot. Yes, PZ is bound to lighten up a bit as years go by, but I wouldn’t bank on her lightening up that much. I mean, sure, that would be my dream–lighten up, sweetie!–but I’ve known plenty of people with sensitive natures that never have lightened up. Not by high school, not by college, not by ladies’ auxiliary book club night. I tried to start a book club for my ladies’ auxiliary several years ago, and one of our (very few) members had definite concerns about whether or not the books we read would be “up to Gospel standards,” whatever that means. Well, I think I know what she meant by that, but how on earth do you answer that when your first selection is Fear of Flying? (Just kidding, we never read that–though how awesome would that have been? Hee hee hee.)
When I was high school age, I went to church with kids who felt caught between their moral values and their school’s required reading. They found books like The Catcher in the Rye and Brave New World offensive and morally objectionable, and they didn’t see why they should have to read them. Well, on the one hand, there is not a shortage of good books written in English over the last 200 years, and probably there are enough without “objectionable” material to fill a class syllabus. I sure won’t try to argue that point. However, it’s not that simple. It’s pretty easy to lead a full life and even pass yourself off as an educated person without having read The Catcher in the Rye. Probably you could skip Brave New World also. But you’d be missing a lot more than you would by skipping Hoot. Amongst the orgies and the general debauchery there are larger themes–and moral arguments–being articulated. (The irony is that it always behooves religious zealots to read anti-Utopian novels, but it’s hard to get the full benefit when you’re fixated on the naughty parts.)
Then there’s Huckleberry Finn. No one I went to school with ever objected to Huckleberry Finn on moral grounds–not that these kids loved the n-word or even appreciated good literature, but the n-word just wasn’t a big enough deal for them to protest. But there are other students, elsewhere, for whom the n-word is a big deal, much bigger and more offensive than the F-word. While I’m sure there are all kinds of high school graduates–some of them honors students, alas–who have never actually read Huckleberry Finn, I don’t think that’s a good thing. One could argue that by skipping Huckleberry Finn you are missing out on more than you would miss by skipping The Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, Catch-22, and Bless Me, Ultima–but the real point is the same old story: you’re missing the larger themes, the moral lessons, because you can’t get past certain words or the exposition of certain events.
So don’t get me wrong–I don’t argue that students should always have to read every book on every public school reading list. I imagine there will be books my daughter is uncomfortable with that maybe I don’t think are so vital to her education. But I’m now hyper-conscious of how subjective this is. How much is too much to miss? Myself, I don’t like missing anything. But PZ has different sensibilities than I have. I want to be sensitive to that, but at the same time I want her to challenge herself. (Also, have you read the Bible lately? It’s filthy! I don’t want to put her off religion any more than I already have.) So while it’s much too early to stress out over, I have to blog about something, and here it is (or was–I guess it’s mostly over now). How do you decide what’s too “inappropriate” and what’s appropriate enough?
I’m in the market for a good novel. And by “good” I don’t necessarily mean Man Booker Prize good. I mean “will this entertain me and keep me off the streets?” good. Generally, I like to alternate between deep, profound books and pure swill. Occasionally I go for the in-between. So please recommend a book that you enjoyed. Not one that you think I will like, because you don’t know what I like. I’ll read anything. I’ll read epic stories about dysfunctional immigrant families, spanning seven generations, borrowing heavily from the work of Ezra Pound. I’ll read about Satanist sorority sisters and their sadistic sexual exploits. Truly, I have no standards when it comes to the written word. It’s a character flaw I like to pass off as eccentric charm.
So go ahead, recommend a book to me. If it sucks and I hate it, I won’t hold it against you. My husband told me to read Lord of the Rings, and we’re still married. Of course, I never finished Lord of the Rings. I won’t finish your book, either, if I hate it that much, but you shouldn’t take it personally. Feel free to tell yourself that I’m really busy and my mind is going, and I just can’t appreciate good literature like some people can.
There’s no prize, per se, for recommending a book that I end up loving. Just the joy of knowing that you’ve enriched my life.
No matter what book you recommend, each time I see that book I will think of you and I will either say, “I will always be grateful to so-and-so for recommending that book to me” or “Thanks to so-and-so, that’s four hundred pages of my life I’ll never get back again.” Either way, you will live forever in my memory. Who among you can resist immortality of that order?
I thought as much.
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