After these ones I’m all caught up! Hoorah!

These two books I wanted to save and do together. For one thing I’ve just finished them so I’ve got plenty to say, and for another, they’re an interesting contrast.

#18: Larry’s Party by Carol Shields
#19: The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

Carol Shields is the Pulitzer winning author of the Stone Diaries, a book I have not read, and Anne Tyler is the Pulitzer winning author of Breathing Lessons, another book I have not read, but is also the author of many many other books I have read that were a joy to read. It’s so nice when a great book that is also an entertaining book is recognized as being literature despite commercial success. In her book Moo, Jane Smiley hypothesized the measure of commercial success of an author as being directly opposed to the author’s critical success. And that explains why so many Nobel laureates are people that I’ve never seen on the bookshelves until after they win the prize.

Anyway.

Unintentionally, I read these two books right after one another (Shields and Tyler are close together on the bookshelf and I’m trying to finish reading everything there), and they share the fact that they are both novels written by women who feature men as the protagonist. I enjoyed Tyler’s work much better, partly because it had a real plot. In her novel, a repressed man who recently lost his son goes through a divorce, meets a free spirit and is liberated. It’s been done so so many times since this book came out that it’s hard to remember that at one point this plot was unique. So unique in fact that in the movie version GEENA DAVIS won an OSCAR for playing the free spirit. OK? If that doesn’t say a well written part than nothing will.

Shield’s version was one man’s life story. Told badly. A man marries young, becomes passionately obsessed with hedge mazes, gets divorced, gets married again, becomes a big success in the world of hedge mazes, gets divorced again, starts dating someone else, and throws a big dinner party for all the women in his life. The book also has a peculiar quirk of retelling the same events over and over again in exactly the same way. To my thinking, this was symbolic of the hedge maze and doubling back on a false path, but it bored me TO TEARS! It would have been an interesting conceit if she told the different story from a slightly different perspective, or with slightly more information, but hearing about his career at the flower shop in exactly the same way four different times? Snoozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzze.

Tyler also succeeds in how she portrays her protagonist. Both books are written in a not quite omniscient 3rd person, but Macon Leary is fully realized while I don’t know Larry Weller from Shield’s book at all. We learn so much about Macon through his interactions with his family, through his repressed actions, through the way he conducts his business and how he treats his dog. Larry seems to go through life without anything impacting him at all. The whole time I was reading Larry’s Party I wanted to call Shields up and tell her that writing about how a man spends his day does not necessarily tell us all we need to know about a character. Today I knitted a blanket and mopped the floor. Do you know all about me now?

The capper in my hatred for Larry’s Party was the final scene. All of a sudden the book is about male/female relations, when that was never brought up before. And I actively disagreed with much of what the women in Larry’s life proposed women to be. I wanted to throw the book across the room.

In short: Larry’s Party? sucks.
The Accidental Tourist? reliably good.

This pile of books is never going away, so I’m going to cheat to catch up. These are nearly all books I read at the very beginning of the year that I didn’t know what to write about anyway, so I just need to nut up and get them out of my way so I don’t start to avoid this little project of mine.

#12: Stiff by Mary Roach.
Most non-fiction I read like I take a vitamin. It’s good for me, so I choke it down. Even the ones that I think will be interesting reads, like the book I’m reading now on the history of Muzak, often end up losing me unless the author is really great. Mary Roach is really great. This book is my favorite non-fiction book I’ve read in years because the subject matter – what happens to bodies willed to science – is fascinating in the best morbid sense, but Roach is also hilarious. She manages to be entertaining without being offensive considering the subject matter, which I imagine takes a very deft touch indeed.

#13: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Everyone in the world read this book ages ago, but I’m just now getting around to it and cursing myself for taking so long to do it. I’ve never really enjoyed short stories, just as I don’t always enjoy poetry. The format just doesn’t do anything for me. Lahiri is such a sharp exception to my impressions that she’s making me reconsider my stance entirely, to the point that I’m even considering writing some stories, when I’ve only ever envisioned novels before. My main beef with the short form is that it’s not enough. It’s not enough to make me care about the protagonist, it’s not enough to show a clear emotional arc, it’s not enough to teach me a lesson. Lahiri conquers all of those concerns. The first story in the book, A Temporary Matter, haunts me still. It so clearly delineates how easily a marriage can go awry that even I, content in my better than average marriage and safe within all the protective boundaries we surround ourselves with, could see how a simple fissure can become a cavern. Lahiri’s great strength is her structure. Every story read like an architectural schematic to me, every sentence had a purpose to the plot. It was masterful.

#14: The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
I remember only the lesson I learned from this book. Which is that a writing session can be productive even if only one good sentence comes out of it. I never truly believed that until I saw the impact such gems can have, both in me as the reader, and for the characters in her book. I tore through this book in one evening, probably in a pain pilled fueled haze, which probably explains why I can’t remember more. That and the fact that I read it in January and I haven’t thought about it since. But I know I enjoyed it. This will go on the reread shelf.

#15: Fluke by Christopher Moore
I read this after loving his book The Stupidest Angel. Like the other work of his that I have read, it’s brilliant and absurd and hilarious. Full of fascinating scientific tidbits peppered with the funniest observances, it was a terrifically rewarding read. So rarely do you get a truly smart book that is so funny and a joy to read. Moore has made me a big fan.

#16: Ordinary Love and Good Will by Jane Smiley
I adore Jane Smiley’s work. A Thousand Acres is stunning and Moo made my jaw drop at the thought of all the intricate research. In one sense she reminds me of Jane Austen, relating a comedy in manners in a brand new setting. Ordinary Love and Good Will are two novellas published together. I’ve been avoiding them on my bookshelf [see above for my feelings on short stories] but I forced myself to pick them up and I was rewarded for it. Smiley is so great at understanding human motivations. At making the most outlandish character sympathetic. These stories were great, but I was so crushed to see them end. Oh how I wish she had made both of these full novels. The meat was definitely there, I don’t know why she didn’t, but I didn’t feel like either one was finished.

#17: The Believing Heart: Nourishing the Seed of Faith by Bruce C. Hafen
This is book 1 in a three part series that Elder Hafen wrote on the subject of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Elder Hafen serves in the Quorum of the Seventy, which is a part of the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In the past I’ve had some trouble reading books written for the LDS audience because of their relentless optimism and downright cornyness. Elder Hafen will always hold a place in my heart for being brave enough to admit that life is not always full of sunshine to scatter, even if you are the best Mormon that ever walked. His honest and tolerant approach coupled with his wise council made this book a life changer for me.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

I loved this book. It’s really great to find a national bestseller that deserves to be a national bestseller. Every time I open up the paper to see the fiction list populated with nothing but trashy novels, I fear for the state of my nation.

This book is told from the perspective of an autistic boy who discovers a dead dog in the neighborhood. He loved the dog and is wrongly blamed for his death, so he goes on a quest to solve the mystery of who killed him. In the process he uncovers family secrets, but due to his disability he doesn’t realize he’s even uncovered them.

It was a fascinating read. I’ve had just enough contact with autistic kids over the course of my life to know that it’s a challenge I don’t think I’m capable of. My future sister-in-law works with autistic kids and she has the patience of a saint. But interestingly enough she does not enjoy working with kids with Downs Syndrome. She finds them to be stubborn and aggressive, while I’ve always found them to be love bombs. It takes all types, I suppose.

The author has worked with autistic kids and it shows. He has an understanding and compassion for this disability that shines in his work. It was so eye-opening to see a disability from the inside out. The challenges he faces, the overwhelming stimulation he has to overcome, the tunnel vision he has that blinds him from seeing facts of life that I take for granted.

I devoured this book in one sitting. It turned out to be a rare mix of entertaining, heartwarming, life-affirming, factual about life itself, and triumphant. This story could have easily devolved into the hallmark channel movie of the week, but it never did due to the strength of the narrator. Christopher Boone does take a moment to glory in his accomplishments and hope for the future, but that emotional gushing is tempered in the reader by understanding what he faces everyday, and by observing how much in life goes right over his head as he’s distracted by his bombarded senses. Seeing his success is bittersweet because we’ve witnessed the cost.

I’m shaking right now.

We freaking LOVE the Amazing Race here. It is *literally* appointment television for us, but we always get way too into it. We sit there on the edge of our seats, *literally*, gripping the pillows with white knuckles and bouncing up and down waiting to see the outcome.

This episode was AWESOME! With a car accident delaying a strong team and a last minute footrace to the mat and a come from behind and the ousting of a jackass team who deserved to go.

Bear always tries to talk me into going on the show, and I always say over my dead body. There’s just no way to go on reality television and come out looking good, for one thing. Secondly, I don’t think I want the entire world seeing how whiny and irrationally cranky I can get when I’m exhausted and wrung out. Plus, I’m not a famewhore. Granted, The Amazing Race is the least famewhory show out there what with the journey being a true reward full of exotic locations and once in a lifetime experiences and the lack of a reunion show for contestants to remind us who they are before they start their new career as a correspondent for Extra. But still.

Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow

FINALLY! I’ve FINALLY finished reading this book. It’s only taken me like a month! I have 5 other books sitting here waiting to be reviewed, but I have to do this one first so I can put it back on the bookshelf and work on relieving my bitterness.

I have very mixed feelings about this work. I understand all too well that it is Great Literature. And therefore not to be “enjoyed” necessarily, but to educate, inspire, and uplift. I didn’t enjoy it, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem. I didn’t feel particularly educated, inspired or uplifted either, and that’s probably what I should address.

Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976, shortly after this book’s publication. In the press release, the Nobel organization cites Bellow’s contribution to literature as, “emancipation from the previous ideal style” and his use of the anti-hero. I feel that, as a reader in 2005, I’m at a tremendous disadvantage in appreciating this book. His style might have been revolutionary in 1976, but there have been many revolutions since then and now it just seems…unformed. I suppose he started the change, but he did not finish or perfect it, so from my vantage point it seems like the first faltering steps of a kid learning to walk. Of course, walking from the perspective of an amoeba in the primordial ooze would be revolutionary and deserving of any honor available. A quick scan down the list of Nobel laureates also shows that they love their philosophers, so again it makes sense. This book is almost more philosophy than fiction.

Humboldt’s Gift also won the Pulitzer prize that same year, but the Pulitzer board is notoriously secretive about their selection process. If you win, you win. The end.

There is no doubt that Bellow is a tremendous writer. His descriptions of the vast number of different locations the characters travel to in this book are top notch. Tangible. And his characters are so distinct in their voices, that I could probably pick them out without any further identification. Each one has vocal quirks and phrases they use as crutches. His dialogue is perfection. But the book loses me with the main character. Charles Citrine is a famous and successful writer who is haunted by the estrangement and death of his mentor, terrorized by gangsters and divorce attorneys, manipulated by a floozy and her pimping mother, taken advantage of by everyone he knows…the anti-hero if there ever was one.

The central conflict in the book is art vs. money. Expression vs. stability. And every single relationship in Charlie’s life sets this conflict in play. But Charlie is so lost in his own head that he doesn’t even see it. Charlie is a genius, an intellectual, a philosopher, and every single thing he sees sends him off on tangents of intellectual splendor. My mom, thinking she was cute when she was trying to shock, used to call this Mental Masturbation. It’s a beautiful set up. As I’m describing this I’m reevaluating my reaction to the book because it seems like it will be brilliant. You can see so clearly how the structure will work, and yet it doesn’t.

With an anti-hero, you’re supposed to come around to him by the end of the book. Either he’s supposed to become a hero, or you’re supposed to empathize with him. Neither of those things happened for me here. Charlie did eventually discover his own path, which was great, and got rid of most of the parasites, which was bad because none of them left through his efforts. They all hung around until the money was gone, and then they left of their own free will while he was left with nothing. Which happened to suit the new austere artist in him, which is alright I suppose, but he didn’t learn any lesson other than “Mo money, mo problems.” Why couldn’t he discover his backbone?

This book needed an editor with a much firmer hand. The little penguin version that I have is nearly 500 pages long, and most of that is Charlie rhapsodizing about anthroposophy and regurgitating other philosophers thinking. A little of that would have gone a long way to show the artist’s disconnection from the world, his focus on higher things while everyone else is trying to bleed his pennies from him. Instead I got so bogged down in all the circumlocution that I debated if it was worth finishing the book. It was. This is a masterful book, but it’s heartbreaking when you realize how little it would have taken to make it so much better.

A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay

With all the setbacks that Bear and I have been experiencing lately, I can’t afford to buy a single new book until I read absolutely everything on my shelves. This is a good thing because otherwise, when would I ever get the motivation up to read Anna Karenina when it’s been sitting there for three years? Of course every time I read about a new book being released, I cry a little. But that’s OK.

A Student of Weather is one of the books I never would have read if I had a wallet full enough to provide me with the latest and greatest. It’s another one I bought at a clearinghouse on a vacation, and once the vacation was over, it no longer interested me. Now, every single time I go to a book clearinghouse, I see at least one copy sitting there, mocking me.

This is not a bad book. In fact Hay has won numerous awards in her native Canada. I can only think to blame the marketing department of the publishing house for the fact that so many copies were left to be clearanced.

The story is about Norma Joyce and her sister Lucinda, who grow up in the Saskatchewan prairie during a dust bowl like drought. This weather brings a young man named Maurice Dove to their town to study the grasses and the weather, and the very young Norma Joyce falls instantly in love.

Lucinda, her older sister, is the beautiful one, the talented one, the responsible one, while Norma Joyce is the dark and brooding one. And yet Norma’s ferocious determination gets her more of what she wants in life than Lucinda’s beauty ever could. I enjoyed reading about a character who appears to have every challenge, and still triumphs, but what I enjoyed most was the nature of those challenges. If this were a fairy tale then Norma would be the ugly stepsister while Lucinda won her prince. But in this day and age, beauty and mildness don’t go so far.

Norma becomes obsessed with Maurice who treats her cruelly and this part irked me. Norma was so young when they met that it makes sense she would have blinders on for him. People always seem to make allowances for their first love that they wouldn’t for others. But even as a young girl Norma was so formidable, I didn’t like the side of her that would crawl after a man, no matter how accurate it might have been.

Elizabeth Hay is a talented and smart writer. Her sentences are beautiful and peppered with truth. Her book is worth reading just for her descriptions and the wonderful little gems she unearths here and there.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

This is one review I’ve been putting off because I can in no way do it justice. Plus I read it early in the year so a lot of the details are already gone.

What I loved most about the book was not it’s grand theme, it’s profound symbolism, it’s commentary on the nature of man and family relationships, which are all true, but the fact that even at 601 pages, it was a page turner. How did Steinbeck accomplish that? I’m in the middle of a Bellow novel right now and though I recognize it as a piece of great literature, it’s also a snoozefest. I was so riveted to Eden, that I actually stayed up all night to finish it.

The premise of the book is way too ambitious and complicated to try and describe, but it’s similar to the bible account of Adam and Eve and their sons Cain and Abel. Throughout Eden, Steinbeck writes about the nature of evil, the nature of true wealth, discrimination, brotherhood, and predestination. Each of his characters struggles under the weight of what they’ve been given through their own personalities, expectations of others, hard luck, or poor choices, and they all feel trapped by it to some degree.

Adam, father to Cal and Aron, struggles to be a good father despite the poor example his own father set for him, and these provide some of the most heartwrenching and poignant scenes in the book.

” ‘You see, I don’t know,’ said Adam. ‘I don’t know anything about you.’
‘I’d tell you if you asked,’ Cal said softly.
‘I didn’t ask. I didn’t ask! I’m as bad a father as my father was.’
Cal had never heard this tone in Adam’s voice. It was hoarse and breaking with warmth and he fumbled among his words, feeling for them in the dark.
‘My father made a mold and forced me into it,’ Adam said. ‘I was a bad casting but I couldn’t be remelted. Nobody can be remelted. And so I remained a bad casting.’ “

It’s heartbreaking to watch this huge group of characters fight who they are to be who they think they’re supposed to be, just to find out that was wrong all along. But it’s so profound. Who doesn’t do that? Who hasn’t played dumb or played smart or played wordly or innocent because they thought that was the way to be?

I tend to be too lenient on authors because I’m so in awe of the fact that they’ve actually been able to finish writing the dang thing let alone find someone to publish it. All my reviews tend to skew positive, but that’s partly because I don’t mess around with books I think will suck. This one I just can’t seem to find words to accurately describe just how good it is.

And for once I’m not saying that sarcastically!

When our poor little car got jacked we were (and still are) up a creek. We’ve only been in town for 5 months, we don’t know anybody, the nearest family is five hours away, and we needed help.

This is one way where my church is freaking awesome. Man, if you need help, go to the Mormons. Ordinarily I would’ve gone to them, but we still don’t know too many people from church and the ones we do know wouldn’t have any expertise here. Instead everyone from Bear’s work rallied around us and helped us out. Everybody had a buddy or a husband or a brother who’d help us out by working on our car on the side and save us the shop costs. People were offering Bear rides all over town to save from the [gasp] bus.

And the cops have been so helpful too. I had to go to two different offices to get the car released, and then we had to go to the impound lot, and they all had the paperwork WAITING for us when we showed up. The impound people were writing us out directions and maps, taking charge so we didn’t have to wait for AAA. When we got the car back it was full to the BRIM with the crooks stuff and I was planning on selling it all on ebay, but there was just too much that could be used as evidence, so I turned it all over and the cop that came there was thanking me like I’d just arrested them myself. He gave me some tips on how I could try to get restitution and treated me like I was his sister.

Today this guy named Clyde came over when he has to work tonight from 4 to Midnight at the hospital, and spent 3 hours saving our bacon. He fixed the tires, got the door to close, jumped the car so we could close the sunroof before the rains came, got it to run, drove it to get gas, and almost had the ignition rigged before the starter went out. He was crushed. He was just bound and determined to get us on the road today come hell or high water. When he got stopped, he nearly sat down on the curb and pouted.

The car still needs a whole lot of work, but we can put that all off for awhile. We need to fix the starter and the ignition, and probably fix the problem we’ve been having with the gauges for months while we’re in there, and we should be OK. We won’t be terribly pretty, but we won’t be awful either. And that’s enough.

Who knew that it would take being a crime victim to restore my faith in humanity?