Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)

Our latest book club read (go DAFFODILS!), suggested by the always amazing Corie, is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004). I sometimes feel like I gush a little too much on this blog (maybe because I'm easy to please, or maybe because I read things I know I'm going to like), but at the risk of overgushing and giving the hard sell to my fellow DAFFODILS, I loved loved loved loved loved this book.

If you and I get into a discussion about aesthetics, you will soon realize that my favorite aspect of a story is its structure. It isn't the only thing, but a crappy structure (or a bad ending) can ruin a movie or book for me, and a solid structure can lift up an ordinary story and make it into something worth exploring. Cloud Atlas has one of the most unique and well-executed structures I've seen in a long time, and that alone is enough to hook me as a reader.

Here is the structure in a nutshell, without giving too much away: six stories, each interrupted halfway through, except for the sixth, which is told in its entirety. After the center story ends, we finish the fifth story, then the fourth, then the third, then the second, then the first. Sometime during each story except the first, a connection between that story and the preceding story (which seem to have nothing to do with each other) is revealed.

Luckily, Mitchell offers way more than just structure in this engaging exploration of the past, present, and future; cultural domination; nuclear politics; and escape escape escape. And he does all that while juggling the stories of a 19th century notary on a ship in the south seas, a risk taking bisexual composer taking refuge from his debtors as an amanuensis in Belgium, a mid-70s California journalist investigating nuclear cover-ups, a snarky British publisher who has been locked up in a nursing home against his will, a revolutionary clone in corpratist future Korea, and a plucky young man and his mysterious visitor on post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Whew.

Mitchell writes all of that in a way that makes sense, sticks to the structure without being too cutesy, and tackles writing styles ranging from a mid-century epistolary novel to a clockwork-orange science fiction vocabulary explosion. Plus it is fun to read!

I'll set a discussion of the themes and many complexities of this novel aside for our book club meeting and leave it at this: you should read this book. And I should read it again.

Mutants by Gordon R. Dickson (1970)

Way back last summer I had an extremely fun Eastern Nebraska / Western Nebraska / Fort Collins vacation and while we were wandering around in Fort Collins, I picked up this wonderfully covered collection of short stories by Gordon R. Dickson called Mutants (1970). It finally migrated up to the top of my very slow-moving reading pile, and I'm happy to announce that the contents are just as great as the cover.

While some of the stories are a little dated, there are some very strong contenders included in this collection. One of my very favorites is the sci-fi / western story "Roofs of Silver," where a group of scientists from the home planet check in on a community of settlers who colonized a new mining planet 100 years ago and have been living as a closely knit group since then. One of the scientists "goes native," marries a settlers daughter, and leads the group to believe that he is a rehabilitated "wild one" -- one of the humans on the planet who is not part of the settled community. When the scientists' scans show that the community is becoming inbred and unstable, our protagonist refuses to believe the evidence and tries to conduct his own experiments to prove that the instability is in the wild people on the planet, and not in his new family.

Other stories include galactic space opera style battles, small environmental morality tales, and a prim and proper spinster who is given super human powers by a chance visitation from a little dude from a different dimension who makes her clock strike 13.

Dickson is particularly great at the first few sentences of his stories:

But you know, I could sense it coming a long time off. It was a little extra time taken in drinking a cup of coffee, it was lingering over the magazines in a drugstore as I picked out a handful. It was a girl I looked at twice as I ran out and down the steps of a library. ["Of the People"]

Reru did not like to see humans eat. So he was waiting in the living room while Taddy and his parents finished breakfast. ["Listen"]

The last dog on Earth was dying. ["By New Hearth Fires"]

Miss Lydia Prinks was somebody's aunt. Not the aunt of several somebodies, but the aunt of one person only and with no other living brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, or nieces to her name. A sort of singleton aunt. It would be possible to describe her further, but it would not be in good taste." ["Miss Prinks"]

Well, it was about four in the afternoon. You know how it is that time of day at Savannah Stand, with most of the day-charter flyers back in the ranks. All the hanging around and talking and the smell of cigarette smoke in the air, and the water stains drying back to the pale color of the concrete from the flyers that have just been washed down. You know what a good time of day that is. ["Home from the Shore"]

And it isn't just the beginnings of these stories that are good -- Dickson was a prolific and widely published science fiction writer, and there is no doubt that the man could write a solid story. While I have a slight preference for science fiction short story anthologies by a variety of authors, the stories in this collection are each unique and make up a very lovely book. With a very amazing cover.

[As an aside: My copy was printed in 1978 and it looks like it was printed last week. Maybe they used some super-special science fiction acid free buffered paper here, or maybe it came to Fort Collins from the fourth dimension!]

The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein (2011)

Ah, the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program knows me so well. Their fancy algorithms put me in touch with another novel I had never heard of before that I absolutely loved. Sarah Braunstein's The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (2011) is not a fun and happy read, but it is a compelling and fulfilling one, and I'm very glad it was magically sent to my doorstep.

One of my favorite story elements is structure, and the structure of this novel is unique and perfectly suited to the interlinked characters, places, and times. The book is divided into parts, each of which begins with a chapter titled "Leonora." Leonora is twelve, and we know from the very first time that we hear from her that she is going to be kidnapped. Her story, popping up throughout the novel, anchors us as we drift between the other characters while the connections slowly become more concrete and inevitable.

The stories of the other characters initially seem like vignettes held together by the theme of missing children -- literally missing in the case of runaways and abortions, but also missing in the sense of disconnections, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities. Paul lives in an isolated cottage with his lonely mother Goldie, and Thomas, an abortion doctor's nurse, has been peeping through their windows for years. Judith is a surly teenager who runs away to the city with her sketchy boyfriend Q and calls to be rescued, or witnessed, by a family friend and his teenage son. Sam's mother drove her entire family into a train when he was three, killing everyone but him. Now he balances the goodness he wants to show to the aunt and uncle that raised him, and the anger and rebelliousness that eat at him from the inside.

This novel is filled with people who are lost, unsatisfied, and unsure what to do next. As the novel moves forward through time, characters age, intersect, lose each other, and find something else. Nothing is entirely resolved, but everything is settled, and the book comes together beautifully. Braunstein has a descriptive and empathetic writing style that fills out every character, even the most tangential, and the tension in the book's plots make this a fast and moving read. Highly recommended.

[p.s. Corie, I am totally going to lend this to you the next time I see you.]

Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov (1938)

Nabokov is one of those authors that I like too much to rush out and read all his books, because then there wouldn't be any more to read. Instead, I savor one every year or two and then set the rest aside for future enjoyment. Laughter in the Dark (1938) is such a perfect knife-twistingly hilarious story that I'm glad I finally picked it up off the shelf.

Every review of this book seems to quote the first couple of sentences, so I'll join the club and include them here. They do tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the story and why it is being told:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man’s life, detail is always welcome.

This doomed love affair between the wealthy older Albinus and the vampy, sexual, and young Margot is often cited as being "practice" for Nabokov's most famous novel, Lolita. While there are definitely parallels between the two novels, the feel of the two is very different for me, and I don't think Laughter in the Dark should be thrown away as a lesser novel. This is a tragic story with a foregone conclusion, but Nabokov's insistence on heaping one misfortune after another on this group of fascinatingly unlikable people has a lot of humor in it. I don't want to spoil it, but the rescue scene towards the end of the book is one of the funniest things I've ever read, and I didn't expect to be that amused by this book.

The widely available English version of this novel was translated from the Russian by Nabokov himself in 1938 (after he was dissatisfied by the original English translation) and revised again in 1960. I couldn't imagine a different translation of this book where every word fits perfectly in its place. This is a fast read with a perfect balance of comedy and tragedy, and just enough moral lessons for a person to sink their teeth into.

***

Has anyone seen the 1969 film version of this with Anna Karina? I'm pretty interested in how it translates to the screen...

The World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990 by Charles Wright (1990)

I have a dirty little secret: I am horrible at reading poetry. I read all the time. I love fiction, non-fiction, everything I get my hands on. But poetry is my downfall. I read it too fast, I can't tell if I like it or not, and my mind always starts to wander. I want to be good at reading it, but usually just get frustrated and put it down.

But not this time!

The World of the Ten Thousand Things by Charles Wright (1990) showed up on Harold Bloom's western canon list, and since I have made it a life-long project to work my way through the list, I figure now is as good a time as any to dive into some poetry.

Obviously the way I had been reading poetry (the same way I read fiction) wasn't working for me, so I decided I'd try something new: Every morning before work I would read one or two poems out loud, and then read them silently. Then I'd put the book down. The next day I would re-read silently the poems I read the day before, and then read another poem or two out loud. I essentially read the book three times (and it took three months), but I feel like spending that much time with the words -- and particularly reading them out loud -- really helped it all to sink in.

This book is actually a collection of four of Wright's poetry books, written between 1980 and 1990. Wright is a past winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, so as you might imagine, this is a nicely written collection. Wright's poems explore memory, language, death, time, seasons, nature, and all that good poetic stuff, but they are firmly rooted in experience, his personal past, and the geography and natural beauty of the places that surround him. Most of the poems are two or three pages long, although some are as short as half a page, and a few are much longer -- including a forty-page journey through a single year. While the themes and style are consistent across the collection, we still see Wright change his focus and play with different tones and formats as the collection progresses.

While I really enjoyed reading this collection, I'm not sure I've mastered the art of talking about what I like about poetry yet, but I'll keep practicing and see what I come up with next time...

***
I just spent twenty minutes flipping through the book and trying to find something to quote, but it is hard to find the perfect thing. Instead I'll just quote the first part of the first poem in the collection, which happens to be one of my favorites:

From "Homage to Paul Cézanne"

At night, in the fish-light of the moon, the dead wear our white shirts
To stay warm, and litter the fields.
We pick them up in the mornings, dewy pieces of paper and scraps of
cloth.
Like us, they refract themselves. Like us,
They keep on saying the same thing, trying to get it right.
Like us, the water unsettles their names.

Sometimes they lie like leaves in their little arks, and curl up at the
edges.
Sometimes they come inside, wearing our shoes, and walk
From mirror to mirror.
Or lie in our beds with their gloves off
And touch our bodies. Or talk
In a corner. Or wait like envelopes on a desk.

They reach up from the ice plant.
They shuttle their messengers through the oat grass.
Their answers rise like rust on the stalks and the spidery leaves.

We rub them off our hands.

Pulp Fiction: The Dames edited by Otto Penzler (2008)

I may have mentioned before that I have the best husband in the world. Part of the reason he is so great is that he can spot just the thing I would love to read. A case in point: Pulp Fiction: The Dames, edited by Otto Penzler with an introduction by Laura Lippman (2008). This book features 22 stories and one set of comics that were published in detective and mystery "pulps" of the 20s, 30s, and 40s. That would be pretty great in and of itself, but what brings this collection together is that each story features a woman -- sometimes as a simpering sap, sometimes as a hard-as-nails thief, and more often than not as a smart and sexy gal who uses her looks and her brains to either solve the case or get away with the loot.

There are a few well-known names in the collection (Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Cornell Woolrich), but most of the authors are either forgotten bestsellers of the past or untraceable hacks who wrote under a pseudonym. Penzler's introductions are wonderful -- providing just enough context about the author and the original publisher, without going overboard -- and they serve as a solid introduction to the world of pulpy publishing. The quality of the stories varies, but they are representative of a genre that included both the literary Hammett and the low-rent Spicy Detective.

While this is not a feminist collection by any means, there are a lot of spunky gals that can hold their own in the man's world of gangsters, police, journalists, and private eyes -- even if they do wear extremely tight dresses and bat their eyes a few times while doing so.

This is a really great collection -- highly recommended if you like mysteries, gangsters, or pulpy action and adventure.

Bubbles

I always suspected it.

Last Act by Christopher Pike (1988)

Lately I've been reading some later-period Christopher Pike books that I had never read before, but Pike's Last Act came out in 1988, when I was twelve -- perfectly timed for my post-Little House on the Prairie / Narnia love and my pre-Stephen King glut. But would the 34-year-old me like this as much as I did 22 years ago? (In addition: 22 years ago? How the hell did that happen?)

Well, I don't know that I liked it as much, but it still packs that Pike punch, and it is a much tighter and more enjoyable mystery than some of the later ones. In Last Act, Melanie Martin and her father have moved from San Francisco to a small town in Iowa after her parents' divorce. She is having a hard time making any friends until she impulsively helps popular Susan Trels with a trigonometry quiz, strikes up a conversation, and ends up going to audition for a play that Susan is directing at the high school. Melanie gets the part and is thrown into the tangled relationships of Rindy (beautiful, rich, and distant - she and Melanie got into a fender bender earlier in the year), Marc (handsome, athletic, Melanie's dream man), Carl (young and dorky, Rindy's brother), Jeramie (tall and crazy, but smart), and Tracy (ditzy and rude). Susan directs this group in a play filled with twisted relationships, unrequited love, injury, and jealousy that conveniently matches the real-life teenage emotions of this group from before Melanie came to town.

At the end of Act 2, Melanie's character shoots the beautiful Rindy. They had practiced the scene dozens of times, and Melanie loaded the blanks into the gun herself, but when Rindy falls there is way more blood than there should have been, and she never gets up. Melanie, with the help of a friendly detective, sets herself to untangling the twisted lives of her new friends and solving the murder of Rindy to clear her own name.

This book follows a lot of Pike's usual plot points: beautiful people who seem mean end up being nice; beautiful people who seem nice end up being evil; and perfectly ordinary teenage angst harnessed into elaborate plots of murder and revenge. Still, the hokey dialogue and descriptions are kept to a minimum here, the mystery is solid (although unrealistic), and the climactic scene is action-packed and suspenseful. If you have been thinking of re-reading some Christopher Pike, you couldn't do better than picking up Last Act.

A Geography of Secrets by Frederick Reuss (2010)

I recently received a review copy of A Geography of Secrets (2010), the fifth novel by Frederick Reuss, through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. The books I get through the Early Reviewers program are always interesting to read, but only rarely do I luck on one as beautifully written and nicely constructed as this.

A Geography of Secrets is told in alternating chapters -- the third person story of Noel Leonard, a federal defense analyst; and the first person story of our unnamed narrator, a mapmaker whose father, retired from the Foreign Service, has recently died in Switzerland. Both men are based in Washington, D.C. and the city and its bureaucracies, and their influence on the two men, are lovingly described by Reuss.

Noel is feeling disconnected from his only child, a daughter, who recently left home for college and won't return his calls, and he and his wife are drifting apart. He can't tell them (or anyone) about his job analyzing maps and drone footage to plan military attacks with the defense department, and when his decisions lead to a school being bombed in Pakistan, his delicate balance of routine is irrevocably shifted.

Our narrator travels to Switzerland for his father's funeral and meets a friend of his father's that he had never seen before. This pushes him to dig into the past and learn the truth about the work his father did for the government and the real implications of the end of his parent's marriage when the family was living in Germany.

The two narratives intersect briefly at the beginning of the book and then unexpectedly (and perfectly) at the end. Choosing to structure the book in a back and forth switch between first and third person provides a satisfying foundation to this exploration of the things we say and the things we withhold. Reuss is a beautiful writer -- descriptive without being flowery, with (for the most part) realistic dialogue and convincing interactions. The male mid-life crisis has been explored over and over again in literature, and while I like a lot of those novels, I generally have a hard time relating to them. Reuss does the genre justice, and this book was a pleasure to read.

Frommer's Montréal & Québec City by Leslie Brokaw (2010)

I've always wanted to take a trip north of the border, so I recently picked up a travel guide to Montréal and Québec City, because if you are going to go to Canada, shouldn't you go to the part with the oldest buildings, the different language, and the exciting separatist movement? Of course you should!

Montréal is very appealing as an urban and kind of cosmopolitan getaway, but I think in my ideal trip I'd spend a day or two there at the start and end of the visit, and spend the rest of the time in Québec City and the little towns nearby. If you don't ski and aren't particularly interested in shopping, it seems the big things to do in Québec City are stroll around the old streets looking at old buildings, sit down and look at the river, or sit in a café, restaurant, or bar and eat and drink tasty things. These happen to be some of my favorite activities ever!

This Frommer's guide was a great introduction to the region -- it was nicely written with clear maps, gave just enough detail without being overwhelming, and included a pretty detailed section on the history of the region, which is something I really like to have in a travel guide.

Also, the national dish in Québec is the amazing sounding poutine. I seriously can't think of any better reason to go to Canada and I wish I had a big bowl of gravy and cheese curd covered french fries in front of me right now.

A Killing Frost (The Tomorrow Series #3) by John Marsden (1995)

Dr. M got this book free at the end of one of his teaching classes, and while I don't usually like to start a series in the middle, I wanted to put the book in my "sell" pile* and just couldn't let myself do that until I'd read it. It's really kind of a compulsion.

I didn't know until I started exploring things that A Killing Frost (1995) (originally titled The Third Day, The Frost) is the third book in Australian author John Marsden's extremely popular Tomorrow Series.

In the first book in the series, Ellie Linton (our narrator), a rural Australian teenager, and six of her friends go camping in the bush outside of their small town. When they get back, they quickly notice that there are no people around and all the farm animals are starving. After finding a warning from her father, Ellie and the other teens learn that the country was invaded by a foreign army (never named in the book) who wants to imprison the Australians and colonize the country. They go back into hiding and end up fighting a guerrilla war against the invaders, with their actions building up and becoming more and more ambitious.

By the time we get to this third book, some of the group is dead and some are imprisoned. Ellie and the remaining friends are extremely bored in hiding and decide to walk to the big regional port, which is being used by the enemy to bring in people and weapons. They come up with a plan to attack the port, but at great risk to themselves. And if they survive the explosion, they realize the enemy won't be able to ignore them any longer.

While I almost certainly would have enjoyed this book more if I had read the first two books in the series, Marsden gives enough background that the book works reasonably well on its own. Motivations and emotions are sometimes spelled out a little too clearly, and sometimes the characters and dialogue are pretty broad, but I think that can be forgiven in a young adult book. The action and suspense scenes are very well written and make the book hard to put down -- I can see why the series has been such a success with young readers. I didn't like the book enough to seek out the rest of the books in the series (which was initially supposed to be a trilogy, but ended up having seven books plus a follow-up series called The Ellie Chronicles), but if one landed in my lap I'd probably give it a read.

[* holy shit, I just looked the trade paperback version that I have of this up on Amazon and its going for at least 50 bucks! Mayhaps I will get lucky...]

Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill (1962)

My good friend Corie recently lent me a pile of books which included Diana Athill's 1962 memoir Instead of a Letter. I hadn't heard of Athill, who has had a long career as a editor and publisher in England, but I've definitely heard of the authors she has worked with, including Jean Rhys, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, and Simone de Beauvoir. While she has written several other memoirs, this one, her first, doesn't focus on her publishing career. Instead, it tells the story of her growing up, her young adulthood, and her relatively lonely life up until her early 40s when she writes the book, all of which hinge on a devastatingly failed relationship.

Athill grew up in a well-off family in East Anglia that didn't have nearly as much money as it used to, but still had its name and a big family estate in the country. She was always a big reader, but never that interested in school. Still, the family decided she would go to Oxford and when she was 15 they hired an Oxford undergraduate to come tutor her and her siblings. This was Paul, and Diana fell in love with him before she even saw him. Her adolescent admiration turned into friendship and later a mutual love. They slept together, went to parties and pubs, and eventually, when Diana was herself at Oxford, they got engaged. Paul joined the Royal Air Force and went off to spend a year abroad while Diana finished up school. They had a passionate correspondence which suddenly stopped on Paul's end. Diana kept sending letters -- pleading ones, angry ones, questioning ones, but he didn't write back. For two years. And when he did, it was a cool letter requesting that she release him from their engagement because he was going to marry someone else.

This confusing and cruel treatment would be a blow to anyone, but particularly so to a passionate young woman who had seen her life goals as marrying Paul, being a military wife, and having children. Her confidence was shocked and her ability to enter into another open and trusting relationship was hurt. Even more so when Paul dies in the war and she never gets to confront him or ask him why.

The book goes on and Athill gets a job at the BBC, meets her friend and publishing partner André Deutsch, travels, reads, thinks, and eventually starts writing. The back of the book (and honestly, my description of it above) makes this sound like it is about nothing but her relationship with Paul, whereas the book is really much more philosophical and self-reflective than that. Athill has obviously spent a lot of time thinking about her personality, her actions, and her desires, and that thoughtfulness is spread thickly amongst the anecdotes and happenings of her youth.

While Athill's experiences as a young woman are unique, very British, rather upper class, and happened in the 1930s, her descriptions of adolescent longing, sexuality, intellectual exploration, and family dynamics are relatable and universal. The book has a distant, well crafted tone that is missing from many memoirs (which today tend to be much more flashy and winky), which made it relaxing and enjoyable to read.

I'd definitely like to check out more of Athill's autobiographical work, including her most recent book Somewhere Towards the End about her old age. Here's to classy British ladies of letters!

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie (1959)

The always amazingly awesome Dan likes to read Agatha Christie books, and since she wrote so many of them, he sometimes accidentally buys one he already has. This worked out great for me, because he recently gave me his extra copy of Christie's Cat Among the Pigeons (1959), and I've really liked all the Christie I've read so I was quite happy to read it.

Cat Among the Pigeons takes place at Meadowbank, an exclusive English girls school run by the formidable Miss Bulstrode. But it starts in the middle eastern kingdom of Ramat where the ruling price is about to be ousted in a revolution and asks Bob Rawlinson his best friend, pilot, and friend from his school days in England to take care of his family nest egg -- a small but very valuable cache of exquisite jewels.

At the start of the new term at Meadowbank there are many returning students and staff, as well as a few new faces. However, not everyone is what they seem on the surface, and at least one of them is a cold blooded killer. When a school mistress gets in between the killer and the treasure, the murders begin.

Christie does a wonderful job of drawing a convincing proper boarding school and juggles the personalities and motives of a couple dozen characters masterfully. The key to the mystery isn't too hard to figure out, but there are a couple of secondary twists that are very satisfying and no pesky loose ends are left at the end of the book. This is billed as "A Hercule Poirot Murder Mystery," and Poirot does show up in the last third of the book to perfunctorily sift through clues and explain it all for us. I really like the character of Poirot, but in this book his presence seems tacked on and unnecessary and he really isn't given much to do.

So, don't read this one for the Poirot angle, but do read it for a satisfying mystery with a complex stable of characters and an oh-so-British setting. Thumbs up!

[Note: this isn't the cover of the book that I read, which is an 80s-tastic Pocket Books edition, but I like this one better. Photo credit.]

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If you like that new-fangled Twitter thing that is all the rage amongst the youngsters, you must follow @DrMystery99, who happens to be both the funniest man on Twitter and the love of my life. You will not be disappointed.

Achewood Volume 3: A Home for Scared People by Chris Onstad (2010)

I don't like book signings, author readings, or literary events. I just like sitting and reading books. And yet, I did walk to a local comic book store with my husband (and had "nerds!" yelled at us by some dudes in a car) so that I could stand in line for a couple hours, briefly meet Chris Onstad, and have him sign a couple of books. And it was totally worth it. Achewood is one of the best parts of the internet, and it just keeps getting smarter and more elegant with every strip. Plus there are still cuss words and the occasional crude joke.

Achewood Volume 3: A Home for Scared People is the third Achewood collection put out by Dark Horse Books, and includes the strips from May through October 2002. This happens to include my favorite strip of all time. Just look at it -- I defy you to find anything else as funny on the entire internet!

Much like Volume 2, all of the strips are presented with the alt text from the web site, and annotated by Onstad. And, once again, the strips are accompanied by a few wonderful character-based prose pieces -- one of Onstad's biggest strengths is the depth of his characters and their voices, and his ability to bring out those voices both in the comics and in the longer pieces.

If you like Achewood, or even if you just like very nice looking books, then Achewood Volume 3 should probably find a place on your shelf right next to Volume 1 and Volume 2. I know that's where I'm putting mine...

[note: I realized after looking up my review of Volume 2 that I opened it with the same story of going to the comic store, but its a pretty good story, so it won't hurt you to hear it twice.]

Lost Lustre by Josh Karlen (2010)

I received a copy of Josh Karlen's collection of biographical essays, Lost Lustre: A New York Memoir (2010), as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Despite some flaws, and a rough beginning, I ended up liking this one.

Karlen was born in 1964 and grew up split between his father's place in the bohemian, intellectual, and relatively well-off Village, and his mother's place in a new housing development right in the middle of Alphabet City, a poor, drug-filled, crime-ridden neighborhood that wouldn't really be gentrified for another twenty years. He went to an arts-focused public high school, flunked out, drank a lot, did some drugs, went to lots of punk clubs, graduated from an alternative high school, worked some crappy jobs, briefly visited the Amazon, and then was accepted to a college program in Wisconsin. He eventually went on to work as a journalist and then a lawyer, get married and move back to the city, and make some time for some serious reflection on his childhood, adolescence, and the nature of memory itself.

Karlen is at his best when he describes the experiences, people, and places of his youth. Sometimes his descriptions can get a little out of control, but for the most part his narrative is evocative and intriguing. Where he falters is when he gives into his overwhelming desire for self reflection and philosophizing on the nature of his life, the passing of time, and the act of remembering (particularly in the first essay, "My Sixties," which made me think I wasn't going to like the rest of the book at all). Of course any memoir springs from a need for self-reflection, but the best ones walk the balance between sharing experiences and ideas that reflect the human experience and devolving into "me me me me me me me."

The essays in this memoir seem to have been written for different purposes and collected later under one title, and there is some repetition of details between pieces which leads to a choppy flow for the book. On the plus side, this means that each essay can pretty much stand on its own, including the title piece, the longest and most developed part of the book, which describes Karlan's relationship with his boyhood friend who grew into a charming front man for a band and a horrible alcoholic who ended up dying when he was 29. Karlan loses touch with his friend and doesn't find out that he died until 14 years have passed, at which time he looks up all their old friends and tries to reconstruct the magic of their friendship and the downhill slide that Karlan missed while he was living his life and assuming that his friend was doing fine.

Having never even been to New York, I'm not sure how Karlan's descriptions and experiences compare to other city-dwellers, but for the most part I found them interesting and this would be a fun and quick read if you are a big fan of memoirs, self-reflection, or New York City.

The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir (1998)

I have a bit of a thing for royalty, particularly English royalty, and most of all, the queens. I've read quite a few fiction and non-fiction books that cover the reign of the Tudors in England, but I've never read a whole biography just of the exceedingly influential and interesting Elizabeth I until I picked up Alison Weir's The Life of Elizabeth I (1998).

This book primarily covers Elizabeth's time as queen of England, starting at the age of 25, although there is some discussion of her early life and her life under the reign of her sister, Mary Tudor. Those interested in more information on Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (Elizabeth's parents) will have to turn to another book, and although their story is pretty damn interesting, Elizabeth's reign is full enough to fill multiple volumes so Weir made a wise decision to limit the scope of the book.

Weir's book is well researched and very readable -- giving you enough social and political context to understand Elizabeth's actions and motivations, without drowning you in dates, details, and battles. Weir seems to focus more on the personal life of Elizabeth than the political one (although in many cases they are inseparable) and much of the book is devoted to Elizabeth's "will she or won't she" negotiations of marriage.

Beyond the question of marriage, a big focus in Elizabeth's life was her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, who she corresponded with extensively, imprisoned in England for 17 years, and eventually executed. Since I read a rather comprehensive biography of Mary of a few years ago, it was really fascinating to see their relationship described from the other side.

Overall, Elizabeth comes off as a very smart, funny, vain, powerful, and private woman who kept peace in England for 45 years during a period of religious upheaval in Europe, a task few other sovereigns could handle, and Weir's book provides a comprehensive and engaging look at both the woman and her reign.

Of course, it isn't all fighting the Spanish Armada, flirting with courtiers, and saving Shakespearean theatre from the Puritans. Weir makes sure to throw in some pretty amusing anecdotes. Like the time an Italian pyrotechnics expert had to be dissuaded from shooting live cats and dogs into the air as part of a display honoring a visit by Elizabeth.

Or this one:
When the Earl of Oxford broke wind when bowing before her, he was so ashamed that he went into self-imposed exile for seven years; upon his return, Elizabeth warmly received him, then said, with a mischievous twinkle, 'My Lord, I had forgot the fart.'

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli (2009)

I've loved all the graphic novels that my friend St. Murse has lent me, but Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli (2009) may be my favorite of them all.

This book starts with a lightning bolt -- Asterios Polyp is in a sad state in his apartment in New York City when it is struck by lightning and burns to the ground. He grabs a few objects and his wallet, and buys a ticket on a bus as far away as his money will take him which happens to be the aptly named Apogee, NY. Asterios wasn't always so sad and random. In fact, he used to have a successful career teaching architecture and he used to share his life with his wife, Hana, an artist. The story of how everything went wrong and how everything got to be sort of right again is told through flashes back and forward through the journey of Asterios Polyp.

That isn't even the start of it, though: Mazzucchelli's drawings are both straight-forward and complex, his use of color and the way his drawings reflect the philosophies of the book are genius, and the structure of the story is just perfect. This is a hefty and satisfying book to hold, and one that you will read way faster than you intend, so just plan on reading it twice. At least.

[p.s. Holiday travels and a long-reading book have disrupted my posting for the past few weeks, but I should be back to normal pretty soon.]

Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson (2004)

The always awesome St. Murse has been my go-to graphic novel guy lately, and he didn't disappoint when he loaned me Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage (2004).

Thompson, as you may remember, was the author of Blankets and Good-bye, Chunky Rice, both of which are awesome. Carnet de Voyage (which means travel journal in French) is Thompson's artistic diary documenting his 2004 European book tour and a personal side-trip to Morocco. It gives us a look at life on a book tour; a window onto Thompson's personal feelings, doubts and insecurities; and some gorgeous drawings of France, the Alps, Morocco, and Barcelona.

Since Thompson opened his life to his readers in Blankets, this loosely chronological collection of drawings and writings almost feels like a sequel (what is "Craig" up to now?!). His drawings of street scenes, old friends, and friendly strangers are more real than any photograph, and his documentation of his insecurities, disappointments, and triumphs make me interested to read whatever he wants to put out -- tightly structured graphic novel, loose and quick travel journal, or anything in between.

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi (2010)

My latest book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program is The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi (2010). This is Indian author Shanghvi's second book, and it has received some positive reviews, but for the most part, I just couldn't get that into it.

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay is the story of Karan Seth, a young photographer who comes to Bombay as a schoolteacher, falls in love with the city, and vows to document all its contradictions through his art. While working as a photojournalist, he is assigned the job of photographing Samar Arora, a former piano prodigy who gave up music and now lives the rich playboy life, accompanied by his boyfriend, an American writer named Leo, and his best friend Zaira, a famous Bollywood actress. Karan gets caught up in Samar's orbit, eventually becoming very close friends with Zaira as well. Things are further complicated with Karan meets Rhea, a beautiful (and married) potter with whom he has an affair of both the mind and the body. A shocking and violent event derails all our characters in the second half of the book, and the book closes as the characters come to terms with their changed world and their past decisions.

There is nothing wrong with the plot or, for the most part, the characters. My problems with this book have to do with the writing. Shanghvi never met an adjective he didn't decide to throw into his book, and he uses metaphors the way other authors use pronouns. Sometimes these metaphors are cringingly sexual:

Glee dripped out of Natasha like precum.

or

It occurred to Mantra that Priya had a crusty librarian's voice, one that could only be relieved with a dildo.

Sometimes they are just meandering and overly poetic:

Her voice wrapped itself around him; it was easy to imagine that at the end of the corridor of her voice there was a little room in which a blues singer was hiding from the world, serenading emptiness.

A little bit of this florid description goes a long way, and Shanghvi goes way beyond my level of patience for this kind of thing. His dialogue is also often at odds with his characters, moving the action along in sloppy skips instead of remaining true to the people and relationships that he has created for us.

All that being said, sometimes Shanghvi's technique of throwing all the adjectives into a bag, shaking it around, and pouring it onto the page ends up with some really nice and evocative descriptions of Bombay and his characters. And the plot really is engaging -- if it hadn't been, there is no way I could have forged my way through the text.

Only recommended if you have a lot of patience or a great interest in Bombay. Or if you haven't gotten your annual dose of adjectives.