Attachments, Rainbow Rowell

Nick Gentry, Lander, 2010

(July 27) At least 3 stars, because I really liked it and really looked forward to getting back to it in between readings (unlike some other recent books that I shall leave nameless).

But I found with this book -- and with other Rowell books -- and maybe with all books????? -- that the premise starts out at a leisurely pace with lots of detail and complication, and then the problem(s) get(s) solved lickety-split and without the tender care that the set-up got. Or, at least in this book, the climax did not seem as special as the storylines leading up to it.

I really like in all her books how there is some kind of cultural anchor to real time… and usually a technological one, too… this one had the Y2K issue, which is hilarious, kind of. Fangirl had Harry Potter fandom and the ubiquity of laptops; Eleanor and Park had punk and Walkmans; this one has late '90s romcoms and Y2K.

But she is a wizard when it comes to hilarious dialogue.

p. 84: When Lincoln realized he was rewriting the theme song to Cheers, he decided to stop thinking and just play.

p. 94: I don’t even go to the adult Gap anymore. Once you’re an imaginary mother, it’s hard to take time for yourself. 

The premise was so, so good, but Rowell didn't want to make the ejected boyfriend unlikable (I guess), because he does nothing unlikable and yet none of the characters in the novel like him. He’s too cute, too immature, too much a musician? See, these are all reasons to like a fella. And he’s totally unrealistic for telling Beth straight out that he was never going to marry her, especially since he wasn’t under any pressure to set that record straight. A guy like him (immature and maybe irresponsible??) would not want to rock his happily sailing boat, I would think… would lie about his intentions… would try to keep the girlfriend hoping.

I don’t enjoy Rowell’s making-out scenes so much. Her style with these worked with Eleanor and Park, but doesn't seem quite right with late-20s people.

The label “enjoyable light read” was made for this book.

Eleanor & Park, Rainbow Rowell

Gun Legler, Redhead, 2012

(June 26)  I really liked it; have been liking all her books since Fangirl; this has a sweet love story and a kind of looming tension that is the unusual twist in the love story format. Ending is a bit strange, mebbe.

Finding the Dragon Lady: The Mystery of Vietnam's Madame Nhu, Monique Brinson Demery

Milton Caniff, The Dragon Lady from Terry and the Pirates (1937-48)

(August 5) This took me ages to read. Only 225 pages, but it took months.

 I put a library request in for it when I saw the author interviewed on The Daily Show. The story sounded fascinating!

But I quickly moved into this reviewer’s camp: “Promising in the beginning, the narrative is frustratingly repetitive and shallow. It's the story of an author’s frustration at being led on, told by leading the reader on. There's a compelling, fascinating, dramatic story to be told, it's unfortunate that Ms. Demery is unable to tell it.”

Many positive reviews say that they were pleased to learn more about the Vietnam War, and I did learn more about the Vietnam War, but that is kind of going to happen by default with this topic, I would think; and I thought Demery was repetitive even with the war information. The same coup was described at least three different times, with expanded detail each time, and each time as if we hadn’t covered that incident yet.

It all just felt so padded.

Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell

Elizabeth Jaeger, BFF, 2009

(April 18) Teen books are the best books!

Sigh! I quite enjoyed this book for the witty dialogue, and that's what makes you want to read, to “hang out” with these people, more than a driving plot or any such thing.

The “plot” is a coming-of-age, as usual for teen books, but this time it’s a young woman coming to terms with a mother rather than a young man with a father, and it’s a refreshing twist.

Goofiest naming choice ever… “Cather” and “Wren” ::wa-wa:: ::rimshot::

And the fandom thing is well done. 

Loved: page 397: Well done, English language! 

Can’t remember where I got this -- I’m sure it was one of my blogs, possibly Lainey, but can't confirm. 

Want to read more Rowell, especially Eleanor and Park.

The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds, Alexander McCall Smith

Amelia Fais Harnas, Self-Portrait as Saint Pompette, No. 2, 2012 

(March 22) I was quite enjoying this -- there were some nice complicated problems lining themselves up for Isabel to solve, and so many interesting little questions:

- the stew decision at the pot luck dinner
- the unused china gift
- the woman with the port wine stain
- the no-cucumber-sandwiches visit
- the untrustworthiness of Duncan Marlowe (Isabel quite likes him, but he gets angry too easily and too often; it would be all too typical for Isabel to like him and then watch him turn out to be out a crook, because, as we know, Isabel is almost always dead wrong -- but I was so looking forward to the thwarting of the trust!)

And then, BANG, the book was suddenly over with a note to all the suspects claiming the mystery has been solved....

***
I wrote the above right after I read the book, followed by about another thousand words of high dudgeon berating Alexander McCall Smith and enumerating all my grievous disappointments in this book, along the lines of this review http://www.amazon.com/The-Uncommon-Appeal-Clouds-Dalhousie/product-reviews/0307949230?pageNumber=2 and many like it on Amazon.

Now, a year later, writing this up, I feel more forgiving and nostalgic about the book and about Alexander McCall Smith in general -- he is so entertaining, he has given me so many hours of entertainment... I am grateful for his every word.

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, Alexander McCall Smith

Thama Kase (Thamae Kaashe), Different Snakes, 2013

(March 8) I never tire of these.

Throughout this one, I began to think “Violet Sephotho is getting a bit cartoony”... but I was wrong to think that… I should have trusted AMS. In fact, I fell into the very trap all the characters in this book plunge into -- jumping to a conclusion.

Great two-sentence scene: “The silence continued. One or two of the men shifted uncomfortably in their seats; others remained quite still, as one stays still in the presence of great danger, hoping that the source of the danger will not notice one.”

Lovely image: “They sat together on the verandah, watching the sun sink beneath the canopy of acacia that made the horizon. The sun was copper-red, a great ball, and it floated down so gently, as if to nudge us into the night, to let us take the garments of the dark about us slowly and deliberately, without haste and without fear.”

The love of Africa in these books always makes tears stream down my cheeks.

Did notice that the book ended rather abruptly after fairly leisurely build-ups to the climaxes in the various “mysteries.” The characters usually get to relish the confrontation scenes, but… well, maybe that’s why they’re being dialled back: we’ve seen that.

Forever Chic: Frenchwomen's Secrets for Timeless Beauty, Style, and Substance, Tish Jett, and Lessons from Madame Chic: 20 Stylish Secrets I Learned While Living in Paris, Jennifer L. Scott

(February 8, February 19) I read Tish Jett's book because it was mentioned on the "That's Not My Age" blog… and was quite taken with it… read it in three days flat… not that it was that hard a read… 240 pages and it was mostly beauty and fashion advice, which I am consuming pretty much constantly, like a slow I.V. drip, from a variety of sources, anyway… but this was unusually engaging… I guess because of the "French" part… there was just something so inspiring & cleansing & no-nonsense-yet-highly-indulgent about it… I felt like I wanted to move to France, or at least live forever like I was already in France.

I was so hungry for more that I started reading "The Daily Connoisseur," a blog by Jennifer Scott, and put her book on hold at the library (apparently there is a whole industry of books touting Frenchwomen as role models… one of the Amazon reviews of Forever Chic said: "Even if you own Helena Frith Powell, Debra Ollivier, Anne Barone, Mireille Guiliano, Jennifer Scott and Marie-Anne LeCoeur you will not be disappointed in this new book.")

Scott ended up being similar and yet completely different… she's younger (like, much younger) than Jett, but also duller and less engaging, and more "do this-do that," and more "I'm in the blogging for the money."

Nonetheless, what she has observed about French women came shining through and that was all I wanted from her.

Scott gets very philosophical -- her book becomes a lecture on a spiritual path, really, and this increases as she goes on.

At the same time, I was mystified by how profoundly Scott could recognize a Good Thing in the Famille Chic and the Famille Bohemienne but then how banally she would apply it to her own life. Strangely, she pits the fine taste and love of life she saw in French women against holes in the back of the tights or yoga pants of two different American ladies she has seen.

It's true, people should not wear tight-fitting lower-body clothing with holes in the rear, but surely we don't need to look to the chic of the French to get that. Surely we get more subtle wisdom from them?

Tish Jett was less odd that way ...more enlightened about what could be learned from another culture… and everything she said just seemed so valuable… and doable… and correct and rewarding (somehow!). I copied out many of her lists and bullet points.

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy With Autism, Naoki Higashida

Emelisa Mudle, Joy to the World

(December 28) Saw this featured on the Jon Stewart show and was interested, particularly because this year I have read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Still Alice.

I was really interested to see whether  this account would jive with Curious Incident, since that author was trying to create the state of mind of an autistic person based on observing them, rather than on knowing how they are from the inside, like Higashida.

And reading this, I kept reminding myself that autistic people are probably all different from one another like non-autistic people are, even though Higashida spoke of "us" and how "we" are as though they are all the same.

So -- autistic people are not flat and affect-free the way Curious Incident author paints them, based on Higashida's narrative... in fact, Higashida makes them seem as if they are the most passionate and emotional people ever... their outbursts are frustration-based, according to him, because they wish to be understood and to do the right thing but can't because of problems with memory and with control over their own motor functions.

This was the most striking thing about the book -- how deeply Higashida felt things and how greatly he worried about hurting other people by actions he couldn't control, while pleading for patience and understanding.

Very sweet book. Higashida really loves nature and this becomes so charming, and he movingly explains why repetition and simple things are so comforting to autistic people. Their humanity is compromised by a faulty OS.

Curious Incident guy would make you think autistic people are not very human at all, and have some private logic for how they behave. But no. According to Higashida, they don't want to do the crazy things they do and they can't rationalize these activities.

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

Michal Ivan, Old Man Figure Drawing, 2013

(December 30) Read this because a favourite new blog mentioned it as the blogger's favourite book. When I looked it up, I discovered it was a New York Times bestseller and highly touted elsewhere… so off I went.

I liked it a lot but would not give it more than a 3 out of 5. I liked its style and voice quite often, but there was a lot in it that was just so -- "sigh... everyone’s done this before a million times." And by "this" I mean: captured the charming sarcasm of New Yorkers of the 1930s to '60s (mostly Jewish ones); looked at the lifetime of horror inflicted on Jews by Nazism by way of the small individual life of one or two refugees; written a book about a fictional book that turns out to be the book you are reading (well, this one doesn’t do that exactly, but it’s very close).

It reminded me a lot of The Book Thief, in fact, although the plot is quite different. There is the humorous Jewish sarcasm and a lot about writing and being a writer.

In fact, I'm a little tired of writers writing about writing at this point. Sometimes it feels like the only activity anyone is interested in reading about is the process of creating something to read.

This book, though, is more multi-layered than the usual book about a fictional book, because the fictional book in question is claimed by a number of different authors, and this is, kind of, the tension that has to be resolved.

But there's a trip-up: before we get to sample it, the fictional book is characterized as "amazing" and "life-changing" by some of the characters who have read it, and it is plagiarized by wannabe writers, and it is immediately published by publishers who receive manuscripts of it. Our expectations are high. When we finally do get to sample some of the chapters, we find out it's not that remarkable a book. I mean, I just didn't find it that great -- the excerpts are kind of silly and jejune. I can't imagine a whole book of the kinds of passages offered in the excerpts would be life-changing.

Perhaps more to the point, in terms of my own reaction to the book: I was not interested enough in unravelling all the layers of who was writing what and who was who to go back and figure it out when I got confused. I would just think: "I will go look it up on the net when I’m done," and, now that I am done, I don't think I'll even go and do that.

Yes, lives could potentially cross and criss-cross in extremely complicated ways unknown to the people living them, but in a book I want that all to work out to a conclusion that is insightful, not just "wow, weird coincidence."

Also significant: young people don't have any idea at all of what it feels like to be 60 or 40 or even 20 years older than they are. When you are in your 70s or 80s, you are not acting like a teenager no matter what weird thing life is throwing at you. You can be "immature" in old age, but it's a different version of immature, imo. So Krauss's elderly people are not convincing to me.

I'm dwelling on things I didn't like here, but I didn't hate this book at all. I liked it fine. But I can't understand why it was a bestseller or anyone's favourite.

The Meaning of Sunglasses; and a Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable, Hadley Freeman

Alexsandro Palombo, Marge Simpson Loves Coco Chanel, 2012

 (November 5)  Simon Doonan says, “I shrieked my way through this book” and, while I didn’t shriek my way through this book or shriek at all, girl is a clever writer.

Sample:

Prada styles itself as the label that's okay for intellectual feminists to like. You have to wonder how precarious a woman's self-image must be to be damaged by showing an interest in fashion, and it is on this kind of knife-edge, poised between careful cerebralism and mocking artificiality, that Prada balances.

Prada's reputation as the acceptably intellectual label stems primarily from the designer Miuccia Prada. Rare is the profile of Mrs. Prada, as she is known, despite Prada actually being her maiden name, that does not make reference to her university degree and youthful dalliance with communism, as if they were proof of her unique cerebralism. As for the former, this carries the not inaccurate suggestion that everyone else in fashion is an uneducated cave dweller who thinks Chekhov is a pattern. In regard to the latter, some might question whether a move from communism to fashion design is more suggestive of fluid personal values rather than a show of deep intellect, but that belief seems to belong to the minority, judging from the tones of awe in which this biographical tidbit is constantly repeated. 

And she says many profound things about fashion and feminism… and did well at being both British and American.

Snark level? Very high.

Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall: How I Learned to Love My Body by Not Looking at It for a Year, Kjerstin Gruys

Art Babbitt, Queen Grimhilde, 1937

(September 12) I read this because I saw Gruys interviewed on The Colberrrr Reporrr, and it sounded like a cool concept.

Strangely, however, I found it a dull read and struggled to finish. This in itself was interesting, because I could tell that if I had read the equivalent text as blog posts over the course of a year, I would have probably enjoyed it… in the way one enjoys blogs, I guess… as a little lighter weight than books.

And so I have concluded that what is entertaining detail in a 700-word blog post twice a week is tedious detail in a book. Often while reading Mirror I wondered about the detailed scene-settings offered when some of the principals discussed a vague aspect of the “project.” I kept hoping these details would eventually prove to be important to Gruys's experience of a mirrorless year, but they never were.

There was one kind of nice moment when Gruys has a dramatic epiphany about her mother-in-law, and that was well served by the reams of banal details about the MIL that had come before, but there’s no real sort of book going on here. There is no organization, no foreshadowing, no thesis presented, no shape at all. It is like a blog, but without the “benefits” of a blog, which include the live relationship between the author and readers, and the slow, authentic timing.

And, then, more seriously, I don’t think Gruys went very deeply into her topic. She was quite vague about her reasons for wanting to go mirrorless… she just talked about “living for her values” and such platitudes. She didn’t offer a detailed analysis of her mirror use prior to starting. Did she think she used mirrors a normal amount or too much? What would those amounts be? She seemed to think that everybody would get how weird it would be to avoid looking in mirrors for a year, like we’re all the same in our devotion to mirrors. What exactly is wrong with looking in mirrors?

I wanted the set-up: I wanted to know how Gruys used mirrors. Did she look at herself every 10 minutes to check something or did she spend hours on end practicing speaking and facial expressions to use in public or did she just stand around adoring herself? We don’t know.

Affects the whole story.

 Even more disturbing: once the project starts (and even well before the start) the word “makeup” comes up every other sentence. It’s not clear why that is her biggest concern… I mean, she says vaguely that she’s “vain,” but there are so many things to be vain about concerning one’s appearance, and she doesn’t worry about 98 per cent of those at all. I would be all worried about getting earrings on... and about whether I would be allowed to use a mirror to look for an eyelash or a piece of grit stuck in my eye or to examine the areas between teeth… and I think I’d be more worried about my hair not looking like a rat’s nest than makeup… or about my beard and mustache… yet none of these issues ever came up. It was makeup, makeup, makeup… planning a way to wear makeup without a mirror, going into a big theory and testing method to prepare for applying makeup without a mirror, on and on… was she covering up some real problems or was she afraid to look blah and tired the way everyone who stops wearing makeup looks? We don’t know.

And this is her doctoral dissertation topic!

Random peeves:

• Gruys seems to think that wanting to do girly things is the same as wanting to look in a mirror.
• Feminism is linked to using mirrors for vague reasons. 
• p. 16 -- a long passage about how she piled some new books she bought. Why so much detail about this? It's too much even for a blog post. 
• The "tradition" of “taking a good long look at yourself in a mirror on your wedding day” is a "tradition" I’d never heard of until this book. 
• p. 147: “How annoyingly self-involved I’d been” BEEN?? As I say -- there's no moment of truth, so it's hard to know what change she sees. 
• The fact that Gruys did this just before getting married seems to up the ante: so the stakes were maybe how lovely her wedding pictures would look? They turned out lovely -- but could they have been better?? I think only someone of her demographic -- age group, income level, fashion experience -- and a fellow Bridezilla -- would get the drama of this. 
•  I didn’t get the mascara epiphany on p. 152. 
•  She seemed to see herself in mirrors every other day despite this conscious undertaking. 
•  She didn’t seem to love her body in the end, which she often mentioned as a personal failing related to mirror-gazing. 

Colbert Report, I can’t trust your book recs.

Still Alice, Lisa Genova

Candice Bohannon Reyes, Dementia, 2009 (?)

(August 15)  Quite liked it. Read it because, when I mentioned to Andrea that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time made me wonder if I had Asperger's Syndrome, it reminded her of Still Alice, which made her think she might have Alzheimer Disease. Like Curious Incident, this is written from the point of view of the person with the condition... which is such an interesting challenge in both books: since neither author actually has the condition they present from the protagonist's point of view they can't claim complete authenticity, but they know enough about the condition to try for near-authenticity (Haddon had worked with people with autism and Genova is a doctor who has treated people with Alzheimer).

Basically, it's interesting to see what narrative techniques get used to convey disassociation, obsession, superstitiousness, etc. (Curious), or memory lapses, cognitive confusion, disintegration, etc. (Alice).

And I really enjoyed what Lisa Genova tries here. It's a clinical case (but totally fictionalized) so there is no big dramatic arc -- Alice just finds out she's got early-onset Alzheimer's and tries to cope with it as it progresses. And yet the story is as compelling as any proper “heroic” drama. You want to know what happens next as this disease develops. The tension mounts: at only halfway through the novel, it seems Alice has already lost so much... how much worse would it get? you wonder. And Alice early on tries to provide herself with an escape hatch, something I think I would try to do myself; it was gripping to watch that play out.

So Genova successfully persuaded me that the early stages of dementia would be as she presents them.

And, yes, it did make me feel I might have early symptoms of Alzheimer's in real life. Did Andrea and I get this impression because we all do have some symptoms of dementia by a certain age, or because Genova wants us to see how easy it is to deny the symptoms?

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg

J. Howard Miller, We Can Do It!, 1942

(August 13) I didn't have any expectations about this at all… why did I read it? I have in my notes “because short and trendy.” It is well known and I kept seeing it recommended, but I don't remember whose recommendation tipped the scale… maybe Michele Landsberg's?

And then it was much more interesting than I thought it would be! I had this bias against people with MBAs: I have found them usually to be formulaic, best-practices-oriented, and phobic about originality or quirkiness, and since Sheryl Sandberg had worked for Facebook and Google, I assumed Lean In would be a business mogul's how-I-got-here story, offering a few tips and tricks to her fellow women, along formulaic lines.

But it was not that. Sandberg has taken a long, hard look at what holds women back from both the outside and the inside, and she offers solutions that are not easy-breezy and have to be grudgingly accepted. No "tips" or "tricks."

Sad but true: people, both men and women, don’t like to see women succeed in business. They criticize women for failings they would never even notice in a man. There is so much wanting to pull women down. So Sandberg says women must be nice, must jump through hoops successful men don't have to, must accommodate that negative attitude, until we get enough women in place that they don't have to do those things anymore. It's maddening, but she's right. The point is to get more women into positions of power.

Every fibre of my feminist being resents that women have to do anything different from men to get … anything! And it is so sad to accept that many people blame the victim.

But Sandberg is right.

So this is a practical approach to feminism from a practical MBA / manager type of person. Her theory on pregnancy / maternity leave: “don’t withdraw: work like a dog” was different and interesting, and no doubt absolutely correct.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

Victor Borisov-Musatov, Boy With a Dog, 1895

(June 14) I was surprised to find this so compelling: because it’s a novelty narrator, you feel like the focus might be on the verisimilitude and not on the bare plot... but I found I wanted to know what was going to happen to Christopher and was sorry to see the book end. This is part of the surprise -- that Christopher is so endearing -- given that he’s autistic spectrum condition and is without affect. At least one reviewer on Amazon said it was hard to like Christopher because he was so lacking in empathy for his fellow human beings... but I found him likable -- he is so scrupulously honest, consistent and curious... and you certainly can’t hold the lack of empathy against him.

 Whether this is really how autistic people think, it’s a compelling story.

 Another Amazon review said: “Although Christopher cannot grasp subtlety and nuances, the reader can, and that's where the true force of this exceptional novel lies.”

I noticed that, too -- being made to see how important it is to be able to interpret behaviour. There are these compliments to the reader.

But I wonder if I’m partially autistic, because I thought Christopher’s reactions to certain situations -- particularly to the “incident of the dog” -- are better, more admirable, than the behaviours of the so-called “normal” people.

 I wonder too about the consistency of the portrayal or whether autistic people themselves think they are something they are not. Christopher says he believes only in what is real, but he also has dreams and imagination -- about space if nothing else, but about his A levels and so on.

The Fault in Our Stars, John Green

Crystal Cook, Whispers and Trust, 2012

(June 8) Funny and sad at the same time, but in such an interesting and unusual way. “Funny and sad” is not a new combination and you are warned that this book is “that” well before you read it... but it is truly done in a lovely way in this book.

It was hard to find an image for it... I liked this first off, because of simply the broken girl, but the further you go the more you realize the broken boy is important, too, as well as the broken love. But it’s not at all sentimental... which rules out something like this or this,which are otherwise obvious (because of the evanescence... and the separation... and the way they suggest the eerie light of radiation! lol).

I settled on the image above because it suggests a couple of true things about the book -- the boy and girl are very much in love, and they also have to comfort each other quite a bit. These two aspects are well captured above. But it doesn’t capture the humour, which is also a huge part of the book. Alas, there is no artwork that would capture that.

They are such likable people and they are in such a sad situation.

Noted while reading: John Green must have felt weird when Newtown and the Boston marathon happened. O_O

Many resonances for me: “we all have the same culture, man!” Prufrock, Magritte, Gatsby, "The Red Wheelbarrow," Nothing Gold Can Stay... it is odd that this generation (16-year-olds in 2012) has the very same cultural touchstones as my generation. Like, no.

But who doesn’t love to see all their own touchstones anyway!

Also, BiPAPs! (and other nasal gear!)

Very enjoyable -- but, again, it’s weird to be saying something so sad is enjoyable.

Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier

John R. Chapin, In the Trenches at Cold Harbor, 1890

(October 2) I found this a very powerful book -- very hard to read, actually -- I had to steel myself to it every time I read it, as much as I loved it, and I spoke to more than one person who found it too hard to finish. Pat said it was “too violent” which is true, but it’s not always man vs. man violence -- in fact, it’s much more just the regular violence of nature and what it’s like to live in the mountains in the 1860s in the middle of a war. Frazier is a graphic, vivid describer and can be heartless with the details. He plays hard ball. It makes the stakes high. I especially had to steel myself to read the ending, for you had no idea whether he would spare Inman and Ada.

It’s kind of picaresque, but there is this overarching form of Inman returning to Ada, a quest whose significance increases and becomes ever more gripping even though the two are apart for so long. It’s a clever device. The more time we spend with Ada and Inman, the more we get of their memories, which at the beginning don’t hint at the depth of the relationship. It’s definitely Odysseus returning to Penelope and his kingdom, but here the relationship is so much more the driving passion.

The vivid details of mid-19th-century life in the southern U.S. are amazing, totally engrossing. I feel like Frazier got the habits of speech right, too. There are oddnesses of expression and vocabulary that you see in letters and newspapers of the time.

Was surprised by some of the Penthouse scenes at the end. LOL

Had a great writing style in general… very rich. Anything Inman thinks or says is interesting (“a sermon of Monroe’s, dense to the point of clotting”) and on and on.

The love story -- so moving -- so excruciating -- like a Jane Austen parlour.

Gripping, bracing, all those words that convey high-tension wire binding you thrillingly to a dangerous ride.

A passage I found very profound: “And then she thought that you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past. But a different person, a separate life. Certainly neither she nor Inman were the people they had been the last time they were together. And she believed maybe she liked them both better now.”

The most treacherous, perfidious, soul-wrenching sentence I have ever read in a book: “Even after all this time and three children together, Ada still found them clasping each other at the oddest moments.” It was the first sentence of the epilogue, titled “October of 1874.”

Empress of Fashion: A Life of Diana Vreeland, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart

Andy Warhol, Diana Vreeland Rampant, 1984

(June 1) Was previously interested in Diana Vreeland, but was astonished by the level of interesting she actually was. I loved Vogue in the '70s when it was high-art wacky, and never realized this was just specifically because of Diana Vreeland. It was her crazy, and her crazy only.

This was a good biography, because the biographer is a responsible scholar who is also aware of what is interesting to read, and she can furthermore write beautifully.

Despite this goodness, you feel like you have gotten only the slightest taste of Diana, because you just want to hear a steady stream of her riffing off of things she liked, not just tidbits of it in between biographical facts.

Dark Places, Gillian Flynn

Edward Gorey, from The Gashlycrumb Tinies, 1963

(July 19) An unofficial motto can be found on p. 145: “life was grim.”

For the first three-quarters or so of this book, I was like -- yecchh -- this is just one long gross-out -- but I did want to read to the end to see how Flynn wrapped it up. Dark Places definitely has that grabs-your-interest thing going, like her others -- it just seems even more obsessed with the disgusting, sordid, gross details of daily life than the other two, and they were pretty bad. It’s almost like Flynn is an adolescent boy. She overdoes the ew factor.

In terms of “world-making,” though Flynn acknowledges advice from agricultural experts in the Acknowledgements, it’s clear she doesn’t know how a farm is run, and this bugged me.

And, she equates poverty with smelly laundry and unwashed clothes in general -- such items get described in full at every opportunity. It’s like people with income problems wouldn’t be so pathetic if they just washed their clothes a little more. ::eye roll::

These things give the book an amateurish feel, which only makes sense since it was a first novel.

A lot of the Amazon reviewers who awarded Dark Places only one star say the same as I do -- “loved Gone Girl, read this because of that, but this is so depressing and revolting I almost didn’t finish it.”

So, at the three-quarter mark, I was thinking I’d be giving this book less than 3 stars -- even though I was kind of hooked on the story. At that point I thought I would pretty much be constantly on the verge of vomiting through the last 70 or 80 pages just to reach the denouement.

BUT THEN

At roughly the three-quarters mark, the plot got so unbelievably interesting. I mean, my curiosity was already piqued or I would have stopped reading, but -- pow. All of a sudden a lot of unexpected resolutions to the main mystery start to make some weird kind of sense. And there is a scene with the narrator and a niece that is a horror-movie classic and yet is done with words on the page.... pretty amazing.

This made the whole book suddenly seem way more clever and well-crafted. Maybe a reader gets played by the book like this, with the icky but neutral story line going on for so long. Lulled by the ick.

So. 3 stars. Or even 3.5.

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn

Alphonse Mucha, Medea, 1898

(January 1) Got this (Flynn's first novel) because I liked Gone Girl so much. This was a little harder to love.

It seems to me from both books that Flynn's not sure if she wants to be a horror writer or a mystery writer -- there's a lot of random monstrousness from the get-go, with hints that the randomness is maybe not so.

Even though gross, this book's first part is engrossing... heh heh heh... but, halfway or two-thirds through, the pacing suddenly changes and the whole thing ends very abruptly. To me, it felt like the classic author-just-wanting-to-get-this-done rush (there’s a little of this in Gone Girl, too, actually: there's initial enthusiasm for the great idea, but the momentum dies away).

I was also lukewarm on the Southern Gothic elements. Macabre Southernness is so popular: why?

Third strike for me: Sharp Objects tries to be triple-x-rated sexy, which is weird when mixed in with the grotesque elements of the story.

And yet: overall not so terrible that I didn't want to finish it!

The Age of Persuasion, Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant

(December 20) Really enjoyed this -- really like the topic already, but Terry O’Reilly provides a lot of added value. Interesting insights and big-picturing. Inspired me to look up old TV commercials I saw as a kid and had forgotten... couldn’t believe how weird they now seem, e.g., "Sold American."

Book was also cool for its layout and editing. There were no real graphics, only whatever you could do with sidebars... which was a great deal with these people. And they were all worked in so beautifully... was all very creative while at the same time respectful of the reader (unlike some books that throw in six pages of plates and illustrations in the middle of a sentence, this layout did not cause you to lose the flow of the reading). Great book, but I really admired the editing.

Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter

Edward Hopper, People in the Sun

(November 24) Liked the story, liked the narrative structure: everyone is writing a book or a screenplay or a play or a memoir or a movie treatment... some people's lives are being turned into movies or books as soon as they live them and some people are living stories that came out of books or movies... basically, it's all these stories going on... plus the overlay of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (the history of whose relationship I just read and I think this author did too).

Liked all the stories. Wanted a separate novel for each one.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky

William E. Elston, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Self at 17 Yrs.), 1983

(November 5) Although it uses all the popular components of YA (teen) novels I’ve read lately -- the standard suicide, sexual abuse, confusion about sexual identity and an abortion -- it isn't a totally predictable book, and that's a redeeming feature.

Charlie is more than just a compendium of all the teen traits... he does have them all, but he’s really endearing. So the novel is quite likable overall.

But there's big question for me at the end: who is Charlie writing to? Apparently I am not alone, for this is a highly googled question surrounding the novel. No one has a convincing answer. Many suggest "you, the reader" ...which is... ::sigh::

A mystery set up as tantalizingly as this one should offer a clue to a satisfying answer... even multiple satisfying answers would be fine..."satisfying" is the operative idea here.

I liked Charlie's definition of a good movie: "you feel different afterward." Agree.

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Buddy Nestor, Jana Brike, 2010

(September 30) So, so good. Inhaled this. First book I’ve read in a long time that made me want to call in sick to work in order to stay home and read it.

Very twisty and turny, not unlike Fingersmith -- but here the pleasure was in knowing that a surprise was coming ...or many surprises were coming... or maybe they weren’t! It was that kind of clever book. The hints that cast suspicions are so broad that you know there will be some kind of undercutting of that.... but there could also very well not be!

Psychological thriller, though, rather than just con-man gaming, as with Fingersmith.

Such acute observations of the difficulties that can arise in marriage.

I loved it but then read reviews at the Jezebel book club and had to agree that the last part is not as satisfying as the first... possibly because Flynn could not devote a proportionate amount to time to the denouement as she did to the set-up. Most everyone can come up with an ending clever enough to match the beginning, so Flynn could have, too... but she probably didn’t want to waste two brilliant ideas on only one novel.

But I really loved it and (maybe until I read the negative reviews) I was willing to forgive Flynn for copping out a bit on the ending.

I want to read more Flynn... apparently, there are two others: Sharp Objects and Dark Places.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, Alexander McCall Smith

Chidi Okoye, Images of Face Series 27, 2005

(September 6) I really liked it. Ultimately, McCall Smith doesn’t disappoint, though I have complained about a little grinding in the past. 

A lot more happens in these later books than in the first few -- now people’s lives are really in jeopardy -- there are serious crises to avert. Still, it all remains so cozy and likable. There were several sweet scenes between Phuti and Mma Makutsi, e.g.

It was interesting, or an interesting premise, to have the Clovis Andersen twist... but I don’t think the talking shoes are as funny as McCall Smith thinks they are, and so on.

Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself, Rich Roll

(August 11) Got this because of Judy Aldridge’s comments on Atlantis Home... both there and on the Amazon website, the book comes off as a mid-life crisis thing... as if the author had been an average Joe who re-invented himself as an elite athlete... the Amazon intro says: “incredible-but-true account of achieving one of the most awe-inspiring mid-life physical transformations ever.”

So I thought this would be interesting because the person would have discovered the same thing I have -- that you can get stronger in middle (and older) age. You don’t have to get weak. But that’s not what it is at all -- Roll was never an average Joe -- he was an elite athlete as a youth and young man, then succumbed to alcoholism for a decade or so.

Mind you, when he brings himself back to health and fitness, he is healthier and more fit than he ever was in his youth, and he did it all as a vegan... which is pretty amazing. But basically he’s an extreme guy. Everything he’s done has been done extremely.

So not quite the narrative I expected... and, really, the point of the book is to get you interested in the endurance-training vegan products Roll sells. Kind of an extended commercial for those things. (He’s creating his muse, à la the Four-Hour Work Week guy, whom he mentions, although he doesn't hint that he’s setting up a "muse.")

Still, it was an interesting story and he’s competent at telling it... there’s a familiar formula with these kinds of books -- a series of detailed highlights from nadirs or zeniths on the journey, then background filled in. But it was fine, not annoying.

And this is the first time I've ever found veganism appealing. He makes it so. Kudos there. He made me want to eat more healthily, and to try coconut water and almond milk.

He did not make me want to take up endurance sports at all.

The Hundred Dresses, Erin McKean

Donna Mehalko, The Breakfast at Tiffany's, 2013

(July 24) I already like the author and have followed her blog A Dress a Day for years, because she talks very entertainingly about dresses, and it’s a huge subject. There’s a lot of interesting engineering and physics in the making and wearing of dresses, not to mention the fascinating threads of history, philosophy, cultural anthropology and art woven into them.

A Dress a Day hits all those notes and more, just as you might expect from a lexicographer, and is by times funny, uplifting, poignant and wise, just as you do expect from a good writer.

This book gives McKean a chance to talk about dresses in terms of a Big Theme, and she does make the most of it. At first, you might think there can’t be 100 different modern dresses, and even if you created such a listicle you'd swear there couldn’t be a great deal one could say about each them, but very soon you realize McKean had to leave out many iconic dresses and you wish she'd had room to go on and on about some of them.

I liked the book because McKean is an entertaining writer, but I probably really liked it because it is a species of feminist manifesto: “Here are 100 different kinds of interesting women and what they wanted to think and do... and, oh, yeah, btw, here’s what they wore.” It is much more than a look at fashion.

The illustrations by Donna Mehalko are amazing -- she nails the essence of each dress with just a few spare strokes.

Remarkable Creatures: A Novel, Tracy Chevalier

Mary Anning With Her Dog Tray and the Golden Cap Outcrop in the Background, Natural History Museum, London, by an unknown artist, dated before 1842

(July 13) Recommended by Andrea -- she quite liked this author after reading Girl With a Pearl Earring and pursuing all her other work. She really, really liked this book.

I liked this book, too, but my initial enthusiasm for it began to dwindle as I realized it was a fiction based on real-life characters rather than a fiction "just borrowing" from real-life miscellanea. These “recreations” of real people’s lives rarely sit well with me... I'm bothered by the strain to hit all the notes in the historical figure’s Wikipedia page and the pointlessness of imagining “what might have happened” to this real person, which usually involves giving them all kinds of sexual preoccupations (because those are interesting to readers).

If you really are inspired by a real life, just plagiarize it and write a full-blown fiction, fergawdsake. What is the advantage of the half-fake?

On the other hand, there is a bit of a history lesson here -- you learn some history in a palatable way. But when I realize that's the intention, I resent it; it detracts from a book for me. Note to authors: please hide your condescension. At the same time, it is a terrible shame that Mary Anning’s importance was never a proper part of history before now. The book is a redress of an injury.

But, basically, this is like Mistress of Nothing, in that a real life is “imagined” using a lot of “true facts” so that it all seems more credible.

Though Chevalier is a very competent writer, I was disappointed by a few choices in this book. For example, she had a character describing the way So-and-So “peppered the world with” something or other (papers or dogma or such like). I doubt people of the the early 19th century used that expression that way. The same character explains a problem by mentioning the “tensions between” two groups of people. Again, a modern turn of phrase, probably incoherent to a 1824 ear. These two incidents were quite close together and coming from the same character, so maybe that’s part of the issue, but it was a bit jarring -- elsewhere Chevalier tries to mimic an early-19th-century habit of expression. Note to authors: be faithful to the speech patterns of your historical period consistently or be consistently unfaithful, one or the other.

Chevalier also sort of undermined the charm of Jane Austen novels for me by parodying a bit of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth from Persuasion.... and then, in case we didn’t get that reference, she fully spells out the possibility that Mary Anning's real life might have been a Jane Austen novel. Because Lyme Regis! Because 1820s!

So, yecch, I felt bit condescended to and lectured at -- over-guided --, and at the same time the discovering-fossils material was enjoyable and made me interested in the real-life person (not unlike The Mistress of Nothing). Grudging respect.

The Forgotten Affairs of Youth, Alexander McCall Smith

Jack Vettriano, Temptress, 2008

(May 23) Alas, these books are over too fast, this one in particular.

The concept is entering its Golden Age now.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective series was my first love ...this series I read just to kill time in between... but now I find I am liking this series better.

This installment offers many lovely interweaving streams; there’s excellent tangentializing by Isabel; and Izz wasn’t disagreeable with anyone, really.

Garden Spells, Sarah Addison Allen

(May 16) This was mentioned on Gertie’s sewing blog... she was making a white eyelet sundress because of the references to white eyelet dresses in this book (in fact, a white eyelet sundress is mentioned only once and clothing in general maybe three other times, max... so, huh?).

But it was a New York Times Best Seller... and easy to get from the libraries.

Odd combo of Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Like Water for Chocolate, and the Bill-and-Nancy plotline in Oliver Twist (but without the death... so not as odd as it could have been).

Written cheerfully, so easy to read... the points of view lurch around a lot, though, and the plot combo **is** very odd... so I can’t say I loved it, but it was likable. I need a 2.25 rating.

This author gets “Enchanting” and “Magical” from her cover-blurbers, and that is very accurate cover-blurbing.

The Shack, Wm. Paul Young

(May 11) I got this out of the library because I thought it was sci-fi, and it was, after all, a “New York Times bestseller.” Why not give it a try?

When I realized what it was -- a modern-Christian version of a Consolation of Philosophy or Divine Comedy (man talks to God and gets things clearly explained and allegorized) -- I just kept reading it, because ...how often am I going to get that?

The Amazon reviews are strongly and extremely divided (as with Twilight reviews) but even those who give it 5 stars make a point of acknowledging the “poor writing.” It’s really cheesy, but I wouldn’t say the writing is “poor.” It’s C+ writing. I don’t think you should confuse writing and content. Yes, the content is poor.

What I found really off-putting was a rumour I read somewhere that the real spiritual crisis that sparked Young’s vision of Christianity was an extramarital affair (all the other details of the story being autobiographical). Though a rumour, it sounds true -- it would explain some of the guilt and shame “Mack” seems to need, strangely, to expiate, and it would explain why the story of the loss of the child is so unconvincing. It sickens that he tried to fake up a story of the abduction and murder of a child to drive his point home while keeping it “autobiographical.” It’s an insult to parents who have actually experienced this, and at least one Amazon reviewer said he had turned to this book looking for comfort because he had endured that tragedy in real life. The extra-marital affair would have been a much more interesting, because honest, story.

So, shame on you, Paul Young, for being so contriving with your heartfeltedness.

Writing the Revolution, Michele Landsberg

Vanessa Beecroft, VB 52, 2003

(April 30, 2013) I am so retroactively impressed with Michele Landsberg. This woman did a great job -- both originally when she wrote these columns in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and was living the revolution, and again when she compiled this historical review. The book is the perfect blend of at-the-moment engagement with women’s issues and philosophical overview of suffrage afterwards.

Some of the issues are absolutely timeless -- her columns on women’s right to abortion feel like they were written yesterday. I was so riveted reading one of them once I missed my bus stop by two stops.

Actually, it was kind of unsettling to realize how necessary some of these hoary old protests were and still are.

Ai yi yi, it is so tiresome to undo the hatred and greed of 130,000 years of male-dominated human civilization, but clearly the will and the talent to complete the job is out there, and it will eventually happen.

Bejeweled: Great Designers, Celebrity Style, Marion Fasel and Penny Proddow

Joel Arthur Rosenthal, "Mogol" Flower Bracelet, 1987

(April 25) Beautiful, beautiful photos.

No organizing principle, really. The subtitle is “Great Designers, Celebrity Style,” and the book does cover those things, but with no apparent goal in mind. Research is thrown in randomly. You get the feeling there was a desire to do a scholarly inventory of 20th-century jewelry designers, but there was also a desire to gawp at celebrity jewelry -- and the two desires are not harmonized in any way.

It’s a testament to the importance of an organizing principle -- it’s hard to remember information when it’s not clear why and how it matters. I had to reread many passages again and again to understand why they were there. The research was interesting... but evanescent.

The big (beautiful) photos contributed to the disjointedness. The editors allowed the insertion of multiple pages of photo plates (with long cutlines) into the middles of sentences throughout the whole book. This made it very tricky to read.

Other signs of careless editing: at least three proofing errors.

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Alice, Little Paper Girl, 2010

(March 26) My biggest question about this book, an issue that puzzled me right from the beginning: Why is it categorized as Young Adult fiction? (It turns out it was a deliberate decision by the international publishers, who put a lot of faith in Zusak’s established reputation... but it is completely incorrectly categorized.)

 I liked it -- it is impossible not to be drawn in by the subject matter (being persecuted by Nazis; hiding a Jewish refugee) -- but didn’t love it enough to read it quickly. It certainly makes a good case in defense of the Germans who “allowed” Nazism to survive and thrive. They were already suffering enough loss and privation -- for the vast majority, the few precious people they had left were worth sacrificing everything else for, worth putting up with any kind of idiocy.

Recommended by Andrea, who was blown away by the persona of the narrator, and by the way he “spoiled” the events that were about to occur. This set-up seemed an old chestnut to me, and I’m not sure it added anything, though it wasn’t a drawback. ::shrug::

The Scottish Prisoner, Diana Gabaldon

Albert Kretschmer (1825-91), English and Scottish dress, 18th century

(January 25) I used to think of this series as "Claire and Jamie," but now I'm thinking of it as "John and Jamie."

I'm kidding.

I liked it just as much as I always like Gabaldon's books. They're rich and vivid, even if they do cause you to eye-roll a little bit every once in a while.

Letters From Egypt, Lucie Duff Gordon (edited by Gordon Waterfield)

Henry Wyndham Phillips, Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, 1851

(October 23, 2012) This was just delightful -- to experience Egypt through Duff Gordon’s eyes -- to learn to share her love of Arabs... I loved the charming, charming Arabs and now want them to rule the world.

Lucie Duff Gordon herself seems to have been wonderful -- everyone about her clearly loved her (except for her stupid-seeming husband. Very odd.).

Strange disorientation arises because this was written in Victorian times and is exotically located: sometimes LDG will tell a story and make a comment and you don’t get it at all. You can’t tell whether she’s being humorous, insightful, reproving or what. It’s cultural disorientation, I guess, and the very Victorian style.

Took me a long time to read this, possibly because unconsciously I wanted to defer the conclusion... obviously, the further you went in the book, the closer to LDG’s death you were.

This made me want to read more about and by Caroline Norton, and LDG’s Amber Witch.

Sloppy Firsts, Megan McCafferty

DragoArt.com, How to Draw Gerard Way, My Chemical Romance

(November 24) I ended up liking this, but things did not start well. The close parallels to Spoiled were off-putting, (1) because it felt (retroactively) like the Fug Girls were maybe plagiarists as well as lazy and (2) because I had plot fatigue over stories of teen girls who react badly to tragedies, screw themselves up, then get redeemed (via twoo wuv).

But about five-eighths of the way through, Sloppy Firsts suddenly became quite captivating and compelling, mostly because of an interesting boy who sails in and steals our heroine’s heart out of the blue, and who is about as anti-hero as you can get. So that was original and compensatory.

But will I go on to read the rest of the (five-book) series? No, I will not. In the end, Jess, the heroine, the first-person narrator, is just not that compelling to me.

The main thing about this reading experience was that it confirmed an uneasy sense I had that I can't trust the taste of a certain someone who often recommends books. She raves about certain books, such as this series, and gets me all excited. Alas, I have tried four different recommendations from her without sharing any of her rhapsody over them. They were all “OK,” but not rave-worthy for me.

So this is good-bye, L.... on the book-recommendation front, anyway.

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

Gabriele Iuvara, "Las Fura dels Baus in Dreams In Flight"

(November 12) Liked it a lot at first... it’s very rich visually... and pretty original... you don’t know where this concept’s going to go because it plays by its own rules... would make a lovely movie if they could recreate all the visuals... fun and compelling... imagery is amazing.

But

The concept never does go anywhere... the whole thing is conducted as though it’s a lot more profound than it actually is... it was disappointing that Morgenstern didn’t know fundamentals about Victorian or Edwardian life (for example, single ladies didn’t run into gentlemen on the street and then stop to have glasses of wine with them in little establishments) even though she took the trouble to set the whole thing in the late 1890s, early 1900s....

The novel does contain writing such as “holding her empty glass of champagne” …which was painful.... and I didn’t even notice all the passages mocked (gently but hilariously) by Amazon reviewers.

So it was a strange reading experience... "wondrous" morphing into "ridiculous" before your eyes.

Lucie Duff Gordon: A Passage to Egypt, Katherine Frank

Jean André Rixens, The Death of Cleopatra, 1874

(October 19) I want to give this high marks because of my great interest in the subject matter (The Mistress of Nothing was meh as fiction, but I could tell the source was fascinating). This biography was fine but I kept waiting and hoping for "the good stuff" and suddenly Lucie's life was over. And she wasn't re-animated at all -- she was still viewed from a distance by a third party. I wanted her to be more reverse-engineered than she was. I suppose (I hope!) I will meet the living Lucie Duff Gordon in the things she actually wrote.

Katherine Frank's search for Lucie Duff Gordon's story produced all kinds of huge mystical parallels with Lucie's life and with the Egyptian-god myths, which is all very cool and everything but really has nothing to do with a biography of someone else (in my opinion). She intrudes a bit with her own life and you have to wonder if her fascination with the numinousness of her research experience played a hand in how she shaped the biography.

But I can nonetheless tell that Lucie's was an interesting life.

Note on the plot choices in The Mistress of Nothing: it's so obvious to me why "Lucie" was harsh with "Sally" -- why didn't Pullinger see this? Or was it too obvious and boring? Or is there no way to work such a thing into a first-person narrative???

Spoiled, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Pepstar, Dominique: Tonner Daphne Dimples Repaint, 2009-11

(September 14) I wanted to read this because I enjoy Cocks and Morgan's blog -- the Fug Girls have a talent for hilarious one-liners.

But I felt like this was really a draft for a screenplay -- a screenplay that would have led to a funny, semi-believable movie -- but, in the interests of time or money or whatever, the Girls decided to go with a Young Adult novel because that is I'm guessing the easiest thing to publish... and it just makes all the weird plot constraints all the weirder and more constraining, and more artificial.

Or -- maybe in an effort to do something “different” with the genre they felt they had to have all these weird strained plot points.

Basically, there is no true and deep and genuine love for the Young Adult genre here.

But there were lots of hilarious one-liners, which is what I really wanted, after all.

I agree totally with this reviewer on the technical fail of this novel.

The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss

Rosanne Kaloustian, Illustration for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1990s (?)

(August 28) I liked reading this -- it made the idea of living like a trust-fund baby on four hours’ work a week seem totally doable, which is kind of exciting. It would be absolutely doable for someone like my brother... probably less so for someone in my situation... I really couldn’t reduce my office hours in my current job, but I suppose I could set up a “muse” (low-maintenance business that generates significant income).

Ferriss’s book is devoted equally to two topics, both how to reduce your work week and how to fill the resulting time. This seems strange to me. Why would people bother to free up their leisure time if they don’t have plans to do anything with it? I don’t need that half of the book, for sure. Did Ferriss have to pad in order to have a proper-length book?

Or maybe a "muse" is possible only if you’re the type of person who doesn’t have a busy off-hours life?

But it was fun to read anyhow.

Steve Pavlina recommended this.

The Mistress of Nothing: A Novel, Kate Pullinger

David Roberts, Luxor, Decr 1st, 1840

(August 17) I read this because it won the 2009 Governor General's Award for Fiction and I got several "live" recommendations for it... but I found it banal.

Pullinger uses a familiar device: taking up the point of view of a minor member of a cast (e.g., Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Thomas Cromwell) of a well-known story (Hamlet, the execution of Anne Boleyn) and telling the more famous story from that point of view. I don't find Pullinger so clever with it. The book is not convincing from any standpoint -- class, time period, whatever. Sarah Waters has spoiled me forever for fictitious Victorian narrators, I guess. Sally's voice is too educated and nuanced for a girl brought up in service.

The actual historical details that spawned this "novel," the bare-bones source, are interesting, but I don't think Pullinger did much with them, and, furthermore, I don't get the feeling of having "seen something" of Victorian Egypt despite this being the time and place of the story.

However, I am now mildly enthusiastic about reading Duff Gordon's letters from Egypt, and Katherine Frank's biography of her.

Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell

Paul Murray, Cutshin Creek, 2008

(July 19) Really gripping. At first, I thought, “Oh, no, a raw, earthy conflict... somebody’s gonna get raped or brutally killed, or I am gonna be horrified in some unknown way.” Yet such is the talent of the writer that I couldn’t stop reading anyway. And things were a bit brutal. It’s modern hillbillies, running meth and other drugs instead of moonshine, and with all their crazy codes of honour and toughness. But again, it’s love that drives them onward and to do good and evil, and it’s their love that makes me want to keep reading about them. Also, the whole thing was like a trip to an exotic world.