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.