Citizen Reader

Evidently I'm just reading the wrong graphic novels.

I read all of Ted Rall's and Pablo Callejo's graphic novel The Year of Loving Dangerously: A Graphic Memoir, and about the only lasting impression I have of it is that it left me depressed as hell.

And then I thought, every time I read graphic novels I end up depressed as hell. Consider: David Small's Stitches. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. Art Spiegelman's Maus. Neil Gaiman's first episode of Sandman (Preludes and Nocturnes).* What I can't decide is, do I end up depressed because so many nonfiction graphic novels deal with somber and graphic stories, or do I end up depressed because I either don't understand the book (this is always the case with Gaiman) or because literally picturing things is too intense for me? It's a quandary.

But. Back to Rall's graphic memoir, in which he tells the story, and Callejo provides the drawing. The teaser for this story is "dumped, fired, arrested, expelled, and evicted--Ted Rall lost everything in the summer of 1984. Survival meant breaking all the rules." And that's pretty much it, really. Through no real fault of his own (and due to an unforseen medical emergency), Rall got booted out of Columbia University in the summer of 1984 and didn't have any place to stay in New York City. What he did then, basically, was put together a string of one-night stands and amorous encounters so he usually had a place to stay at night.

Which is resourceful, to say the least. But I still found it depressing. (Mr. CR didn't understand me at all when I was trying to explain my feelings. I think he was just impressed by the chutzpah of the solution.) Maybe it's because the cartoon of Rall on the cover doesn't look all that happy (although the women around him do). Maybe it's because later in that summer he had a slight STD scare, and nothing puts me off the idea of a summer of free lovin' more than the idea of an STD. But all of this is neither here nor there. As an attempt at a graphic memoir, there's nothing wrong with this book. I picked it up primarily because I find Ted Rall to be a very interesting writer, in the same camp as Matt Taibbi,** and I'll always look at anything he writes. But this one just wasn't for me.

*There are exceptions. Brian Fies's Mom's Cancer, although it was really sad, didn't actually leave me depressed, nor did Mat Johnson's Incognegro, which was just such an unbelievable story I didn't know how to feel about it.

**And like Matt Taibbi, he is completely underrated, which is wrong. If you've never heard of Rall, please do look into anything he's written.

Memoir moratorium.

Every horrible review you've read of Julie Powell's Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, is right on.

I was not a huge fan of Powell's bestselling memoir Julie and Julia; I read it mainly because I love Julia Child and I was curious about it. When I read it I thought it was easy to see that it was compiled from blog posts, and not very cohesively at that. The story was okay, but I thought it could have used a lot tighter editing.*

So when she published this, her second memoir, I knew I probably wouldn't love it, but I actually got curious after reading some bad reviews of it. (This is why I never mind "bad" reviews. Sometimes they pique my interest more than positive ones do.) So I read a lot of it over the weekend, getting to maybe the halfway point before I had to stop. The story is, once again, fairly simple: Powell decides she wants to learn how to be a butcher, so she apprentices herself in a butcher shop a couple of hours away from her home in New York City. At the same time, she is experiencing a rocky period in her marriage--primarily because she has been having an affair (that she doesn't want to stop) for some time, and her husband knows about it.

For whatever reasons, I really enjoyed the bits where she discussed her growing mastery of meat cutting techniques. (I've been ridiculously hungry for burgers and steaks lately, which probably increased my fascination.) But the parts about her affair and marriage? Too weird for me, man, by half. When I got to the part where she went out and engaged in "the worst sex in the world with a total stranger" in order to forget her lover and then immediately texted him about it, I not only put this book down, never to return, but I have now placed a moratorium on all memoirs for at least a week. Uch. Rough sex with strangers and a foodie hook. Is this all it takes to get a memoir deal these days?

*I say this as a blogger: blog posts are not really writing, and books simply thrown together from blog posts are not really books.

A book I should have read BEFORE going to Great Britain.

While Mr. CR and I were in Great Britain in October, I was embarrassed because every time something came up about the royal family, I kept forgetting who was who, and who was the parent of who, and who the Queen Mother was, and how they were all related. I rather think Mr. CR expected me to know that kind of stuff, as I spend every possible moment I can reading about Great Britain, watching BBC programming, or looking at British online newspapers.*

What I should have done before we went was read Richard Hough's very interesting, very comprehensive, but not too overly detailed historical biography, Born Royal: The Lives and Loves of the Young Windsors. Now, the "young Windsors" he's referring to there are not William and Harry and Co.; he is in fact talking about the children of King George V and Queen Mary of Teck: David, Bertie, Mary, Harry, John, and George.

And that's where the confusion comes in. Who the hell are these people? Well, now, thanks to this book, I can clear that up for you: David is Edward VIII, who abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson; Bertie is King George VI, who became the father of the present Queen Elizabeth. Bertie (King George VI) married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, also known as Queen Elizabeth, but when Elizabeth II (the current Queen) took over, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon became the Queen Mother. Whew. Got that? All of this leads me to believe that the English monarchy needs to 1. start picking some different names, and 2. stop calling their children by multiple names, and then having them change their names when they become the monarch. That's not too much to ask, right?

I really enjoyed this one. It's a very readable history, and, at 300 pages (and packed with pictures), it gives you just enough personal and family details to keep you interested. In a weird twist of fate, Mr. CR read this one before I did, and we've had a great time talking it over. We are in agreement that old King George V (father of the "young Windsors") was kind of a, well, it's late and I'm tired, so "prick" is the only word that's coming to mind. The book also includes a truncated family tree, and Mr. CR and I are also in agreement that we're stunned these royal families all turn out as well as they do (hemophilia notwithstanding) when you see how closely related they all are. Did you know that the present Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip are both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria and third cousins? Well, now you do.

*I can't help it. They're just more interesting than our newspapers. Plus that way I can pretend I live there.

I Capture the Castle fails to capture my heart.

For years people have been telling me I had to read the novel I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith, immediately, if not sooner. And it's always been people I really respect, both as friends, and as readers.

So I finally did.

And I liked it. I read the whole thing, and pretty quickly, as I was interested in the story. (And you knew I'd be interested in a book set in Great Britain, ina falling-down castle.) But I've got to be honest: I didn't love it, love it. I didn't love it like I expected to love it.

The story is about seventeen-year-old Cassandra, and her rather unorthodox family life, living with her author father (who hasn't written a word in years), her beautiful sister Rose, her unconventional and artistic stepmother, her younger brother, and the hired hand (Stephen) who they don't actually pay. The story is good and is narrated by Cassandra in an appealing first-person voice; the family is on the brink of destruction from poverty, Rose is frustrated because she thinks she'll never meet a man to marry in their circumstances, Stephen is fruitlessly in love with Cassandra...and if that all weren't enough, two brothers who had been living in America suddenly show up as the heirs to a property next door. Hilarity doesn't really ensue, but Cassandra's love for and frustration with all of her family members makes for some nice comic touches.

God, that's a bloodless description, and as much as I liked the book, that's kind of how I feel about it. Just kind of average. What it HAS put me in the mood for is to re-read Dodie Smith's classic The 101 Dalmatians, which is largely set during Christmas and would therefore be a fun December read. So that's what I'm going to do.

Men I Love: First in a Series

Today's book and tomorrow's book are about as different as books can be, but they share one trait: they are both about men I really, really like. "Love" was probably a little strong, but sometimes I just like to get your attention.

I am on record as a certified Patrick Swayze fan. I was, therefore, quite excited to find my copy of his (and his wife Lisa Niemi's) book The Time of My Life waiting for me at the library the day before yesterday. So excited, as a matter of fact, that I blew through it yesterday. (It's not a dense text, and it's got two sections of photos.) And, my high opinion of Patrick remains intact. If anything, I'm even more impressed with him than ever. I hadn't known anything about his dancing and ballet career (which ended when a serious knee injury, suffered during high school football, become too much of a problem to ignore) or his longtime marriage to Niemi (no small feat in show business).

The writing's nothing to write home about, but it's serviceable. It's not overwrought, I'll give it that, and for a man who's writing about his life and career while trying to beat pancreatic cancer,* that's pretty impressive. And then there's stories like this:

"We did a lot of rewriting for the big final scene [in Dirty Dancing], but one line that I absolutely hated ended up staying in. I could hardly even bring myself to say 'Nobody puts Baby in a corner' in front of the cameras, it just sounded so corny. But later, seeing the finished film, I had to admit it worked. And of course, it became one of the most-quoted lines in the entire movie. I even quote a version of it myself these days, saying 'Nobody puts Patrick's pancreas in a corner' when people ask how I'm doing.'"

Come on. That's funny.

I am not one of those people who mourns celebrities like I knew them. But I am still sad that Patrick lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. If you must read one celebrity memoir or bio this year, consider this one.

*This now makes two books about pancreatic cancer that are better than Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture: the other is Miles Kington's How Shall I Tell the Dog? And Other Final Musings.

Surprise of the year.

Just when I think I'm never going to like another bestselling novel again, along comes something like Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife.

I really, really, really liked The Time Traveler's Wife. I totally didn't expect to; it was a bestseller and a very popular book at the suburban library where I worked.* I'm not entirely sure why I did. But there you have it. I started it at the beginning of the weekend, and it felt like a mere blink of time when I finished it at the end of the weekend.** I even liked its cover, which for once, seemed made for the book, rather than a bit of phoned-in stock art.

Maybe I liked it because it was weird? The story is this: Henry is a time traveler, but he can't really control when or where he goes; as a consequence, he sometimes visits Clare, the woman he marries, when she is still a child; he often also visits earlier versions of himself, which are the really mind-bendy parts of the narrative. And that's it, really. (Well, there's more, but I don't want to give away any secrets.) I think what I loved is that, although this is a love story, is not really a sentimentalized love story. Henry can actually be quite the jerk sometimes, and Clare both accepts their decidedly strange life together and rails against it. Even when tragedy strikes (and it does, and you knew it was going to), Niffenegger, to her credit, doesn't try to spin it into any larger kind of life lesson (a la Mitch Albom), unless that lesson is "well, not much we can do about all this."*** Now that is a life lesson I can get behind.

I also knew there was some element of an older man (in his 30s) hanging out with a young girl who was going to become his wife, and I thought that might be weird, but it really wasn't. When I thought about it, I realized, yes, I wish I could go see Mr. CR in grade school, just out of curiosity, so that made that aspect of the book a little less weird. I know, I'm really selling it, aren't I? It's not as creepy as you think it might be!

So come on, read it. I'm dying to talk it over with someone.

*Yes, I'm one of those awful snobby people who don't often enjoy the books and authors everyone else loves.

**It's a surprisingly fast read, for not really having all that much of a driving plot, and for being a pretty thick book.

***"This" being life, generally, and Henry's time-traveling predicament, specifically.

A little memoir with a bit of heart.

I have no idea why I requested Mark Millhone's memoir The Patron Saint of Used Cars and Second Chances; all I know is one day it was there, at the library, waiting for me, so of course I had to bring it home. (Books to me are like puppies or kittens. I want to adopt them ALL.) Once I got it home, I read the dust jacket to see what it was about: a man buys a used BMW online and, after picking it up, roadtrips it back to his home with his father in tow. The twist? The year the author is coming off of has not been a good one: one son spent weeks in intensive care after developing pneumonia at birth; his mother died; his other son was horribly bitten across the nose by the family dog; and his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Add a marriage situation that's teetering on the edge, and I think it's fair to say Millhone was under a bit of stress.

Enter the car: he thought, if his family could just start over with a new car, new roadtrips, new memories, etc., they'd be able to get on with their lives after their annus horribilis and find more strength in one another.

I won't reveal if the car worked; the memoir's only 192 pages long so if you're interested in finding that out it won't take you long to do so. The memoir's not perfect; after a while, the author's reliance on the details of his horrible year starts to sound a little overdone (hey, it was a really bad year. I get it. But other people have bad years too, and a lot of people across the world have really bad luck all their lives), and there's a couple of incidences in his treatment of the family dogs that made me a bit uncomfortable,* but there were also parts of this memoir that charmed me. For example, when his son sees the jagged line of stitches across his nose for the first time:

"'Why'd this have to happen?! Why?!' he cried, burying his face in my shoulder...

'You're the bravest boy,' I repeated, not knowing what else to say.

'I don't wanna be brave!' he cried.

Me neither, kid. Me neither." (p. 151.)

That's kind of honest, and I couldn't help but be touched by it just a bit. In the end, though...I think I mainly appreciated that it was short. That's a terrible reason to like a book, really, but I can't help it. I appreciate authors who recognize I've got lots of other things to read and who keep their books, accordingly, under 200 pages.

*I won't say too much, but I'll say this: dogs bite, and it's horrible when it happens, and I wouldn't want to think about what I would do to a dog that bit my child, but...kicking a dog in anger just doesn't seem like it's going to help any situation. Animal lovers, consider yourself warned.

A sigh-worthy British read.

Yeah, here's a shocker: I'm more interested than ever in reading books about British history.

I also thought it might be fun to combine the side of my personality that responds to chick flicks (yeah, that would be the "big sap" side) with the side that demands British history details, so I picked up Sarah Gristwood's Elizabeth & Leicester: Power, Passion, Politics, about Queen Elizabeth I and her longtime friend and counselor Robert Dudley (the later Earl of Leicester).

All in all, it should come as no surprise that I found this one a satisfying read. There's a bit too much "did they or didn't they?" speculation, but in all fairness, I suppose that's the question a lot of people have about the Virgin Queen and, by all accounts, a man she honestly loved. It's not the thing I find most interesting about their relationship, though, particularly not when you consider the speculation about how Dudley's first wife died (did he or didn't he have a hand in her death, so he had a better shot at marrying Elizabeth), and the overall question of Elizabeth's personality. Why didn't she--and, as the author points out, the best evidence that Elizabeth really didn't want to marry is that she never did--want to get married? That is the crux of the matter that I find the most fascinating. Was she afraid a marriage would be the end of her power? Was she afraid of the risks of childbirth? Did watching her father's treatment of his many wives, you know, sour her on the whole idea?

This is an interesting book, but it may not be the best place to start if you're looking for a full biography of Elizabeth; it really does focus on the relationship. It is, however, a librarian's dream: it's got lovely source notes in the back about related reading, a short appendix on film versions of Elizabeth's life, and a very comprehensive index. Kudos to the author and publisher for all those things.

Incidentally: I included pictures of two different covers for this book, neither of which I am particularly fond. By all accounts, Elizabeth ruled just as much with her head as with her torso. So why don't we get to see it? For some reason these beheaded women portraits on any covers--fiction included--creep me out.

Sadness, illustrated.

I don't have much to say about David Small's graphic novel memoir, Stitches.*

Small, an artist and illustrator,** did not, by all conceivable standards, have a happy childhood. His mother and father had an unhappy marriage; his mother had all kinds of issues of her own (including health issues: she was born with her heart on the opposite side of her chest, and personal problems: Small describes "her furious, silent withdrawals" that "could last for days, even weeks at a time"); and he suffered from multiple illnesses, including a sinus condition, which his father, a radiologist, treated himself, with (you got it) radiation. The end result of that? At the age of 11, Small developed a cyst on his neck, which wasn't removed until three and a half years later, and which of course was cancerous.

That's right: his dad gave him cancer.

Why don't I have much to say? Well, other than saying that you should read this book (which I am indeed saying), I just don't WANT to talk about it. There are a few topics I just don't like to explore. Kids suffering is one of them. Health problems of any kind and the scariness of various health procedures is another. And the graphic novel format of this story? Not making it any easier to take, really. Not that I think it should be easy to take. But for some reason I just never have a lot to say about graphic novels of the nonfiction type. I always find them interesting; they just never stand out as my most memorable reads, even when they are very memorable. Maybe the pictures make them too REAL, and not enough like books? I don't know. Evidently I'm just too much of a text girl, and that's that.***

*I know, it doesn't happen very often, so try not to fall over in shock.

**He often collaborates with his wife, children's author Sarah Stewart, as he did on the wonderful picture book The Library.

***Goodness, evidently I had more to say than I thought about this one.

The death knell for fiction.

And who sounded it for me? Lorrie Moore, that's who.

For various reasons I got on the hold list pretty early for her new novel, A Gate at the Stairs. And none of them were bad reasons. For one, if I can remember correctly, I actually kind of enjoyed her novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? For another, she works in the city where I live. Also? I write for a reader's advisory database (the fabulous Reader's Advisor Online--and yes, I'm completely unbiased*) and I thought this would be a big fiction title that I should know something about. The consequences of all of those reasons were that my Friday night reading was given over to this book, and what a waste of a night it was. Folks,** this novel is one hot mess.

Now, I'm actually getting weary of enumerating ways in which modern novels suck. (I'm not going to touch the new Dan Brown with a ten-foot pole, sorry, I actually read the Da Vinci Code all the way through and so have completed that homework.) But I think I can tackle this one in a short paragraph: there isn't any subject that Moore doesn't throw in to this novel for maximum effect. We have, just to name a few: 1. a young woman, Tassie Keltjin's, coming of age, in a college city and away from her rural Wisconsin farm upbringing; 2. her mother is a Jewish woman stuck on the farm who seems vaguely unhappy with her lot; 3. Tassie goes to work for an older woman in her college town as a nanny; 4. The child she's nannying is a biracial girl that the older woman has adopted; 5. She falls in love and has a tempestuous physical love affair with a man named Reynaldo; 6. Oh yeah, the events of 9/11; 7. She deals with racism on the street when people yell at her and the biracial child; 8. The marriage of the couple for whom she nannies is falling apart; 9. her younger brother signs up for the military and gets shipped out--guess what happens; and 10. the woman for whom she nannies has a secret past that means she can't handle life with her new adopted daughter.

And somehow? With all that? I was so bored I kept falling asleep, and I never could remember if the main character's name was Tessie or Tassie. Those don't seem like good signs.

Thank you, Lorrie Moore.*** I am officially off fiction until further notice.

*I went to journalism school, people, and if there's one thing you learn, it's that you must at all costs act like you are objective, even when we all know that's impossible.

**The second thing you learn in journalism school is to put a human face on your stories and never, never to sound too elite; hence, "folks." Don't knock it. It got George W. Bush elected twice, and he didn't even have to go to j-school to learn it.

***Moore also didn't have the balls just to set the book in Madison, Wisconsin, although there's some pretty clear references to the city. (Other reviewers have pointed out her "isn't it so cute?" attitude toward Madison in interviews like this one, as well.) Okay. The next time you have your characters visiting a sex supply store in a fictional city, Ms. Moore, at least don't give it the same name as the most well-known erotica shop in the city you're NOT setting your novel in.

This just in: It hurts me to disagree with Bookslut, but I don't think I can agree with Amy Hanridge's review of this book. At one point she even compares Moore to Carol Shields, which also hurts me. It's like comparing Jodi Picoult favorably with Anne Tyler. Yikes. Do yourself a favor; skip this book and read anything by Carol Shields instead.

Not smart enough for pop culture.

The other day this book came in at the library for me: Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry.

I totally don't remember why I requested this book, or where I heard about it. (Sadly, this happens a lot; my memory is a sieve, except of course where BBC miniseries and their stars--about most of whom I can recite their ages, their spouses, and their most well-known roles.) So when I picked it up and saw the cover with the little porcelain doggies, I got excited, thinking maybe it was an actual auction catalog.*

But then I got it home and saw the blurbs on back from Dave Eggers and Amy Sedaris, so now I'm guessing it's some kind of clever humor book that I'm entirely missing the point of. It's laid out perfectly, just like an auction catalog, with lot numbers, short descriptions, and price estimates, only the artifacts here are the remains of a couple's relationship:

"LOT 1224: Two Aprons. One red-and-white striped cotton, label reads 'Daniel Boulud Kitchens.' One vintage flower print, no label. Laid into pocket of latter is a note on the back of a shopping list handwritten from Morris to Doolan. Reads in full: 'Dear one, Third batch of macaroons definitely the best. X.' 7 x 2 in. Both aprons size small. $5-10." (p. 88.)

So yup, I'm pretty sure that's we have, the story of a couple's break-up (I guess; I haven't looked closely enough to find any evidence of the break-up, most of the blurbs I've seen have been for rather pedestrian couple-type things), in auction catalog form, and now, in real time, I'm going to click over to Powell's and see if that's right...and, yup, here we go: "In Leanne Shaptons marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who arent real people, but might as well be)."

I guess it's funny, but it's a bit too far down the rabbit hole for me. Pop culture humor like this usually just ends up making me feel dumber, and if I need that, I'll just go about my daily business--I don't have to read a book for it.

*I am addicted to auction catalogs, and auctions, although the auctions where I live tend to offer primarily bed linens, lawn tractors, and maybe a bit of antique glassware or a few guns thrown in. If you want a totally decadent time sign up for the online catalog service at Bloomsbury Auctions; every now and then I get auction catalogs about rare books and prints and even the catalogs themselves are drool-worthy.

Can't get enough of Jancee.

I really, really enjoy author and memoirist Jancee Dunn.

A long time ago I was flying back home from visiting a library conference in Boston, and I remember sitting in Logan Airport, where my flight home was slightly delayed, and fretting that I would miss my connecting flight at O'Hare. You may not know this about me, and I largely try to keep pretty calm about things, but when I fret, it's Olympic-level stuff. (Mr. CR is no slouch at fretting either, although his fretting more resembles the soul-sucking weariness of worrying, while my fretting is often a more jittery affair.) So I sat in that airport fretting, praying, shifting in my seat, fretting some more, and looking at my booking tickets and my flight times a million times.*

And then I took out a memoir I'd picked up at the conference, titled But Enough about Me, by Jancee Dunn, which was a thoroughly enjoyable romp through her New Jersey adolescence and her eventual work at MTV2 and with Rolling Stone. The title of the memoir was perfect; it was in fact a memoir about her own life, but Dunn is so personable, so unassuming, so quietly funny, that you really do want to hear more about her. More importantly: her book was so great that it completely took my mind out of the airport and off flight times, which was a blessed relief. (I made my plane at O'Hare, by the way, but just barely.)

So it was my very distinct pleasure to stumble upon her new collection of essays, Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo?: And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had to Ask. I brought it right home, and, even though I was fretting about other things this weekend, she once again did me the very great favor of lifting me right out of my life and into hers. It certainly doesn't hurt that I think we have a few things in common; here is how she starts the essay titled "Don't Be Weird":

"I ask you: If my definition of total happiness is a long trip to Japan, or India, or Morocco, then why is it that I can't manage to leave my apartment when I'm in America? I never want to go anywhere. I can barely cope with a trip to the dry cleaner." (p. 128.)

Now, I'm not taking any long trips to India, but her phrasing of "I can barely cope" about the drycleaner visit is perfect. Just perfect. When you share that characteristic, it's not that you don't like to go out, or don't feel like you should go out, it's really like you feel you literally can't cope, even with something that isn't that hard. So I know Jancee knows of what she speaks, and I love her for it. This collection is not as strong as her earlier memoir, and it's got a bit of a "slightly older woman wondering if she should have a baby" arc to it that readers not interested in kids might find a bit trying, but overall? Great stuff. And another wonderful way to avoid the frets. I'll take it.

*All over the slight possibility of missing a connecting flight home from a city that is a mere three hours' drive away from where I live. I know. Ridiculous. You start to get the picture why I don't travel, or even leave the house, a whole lot.

All right, I'll admit it.

Bring on the chick lit books. Although I pride myself on being honest about books that I think are bad (I'm looking at you, Thomas Friedman), I will freely admit that I have no standards, no cynicism, absolutely no discrimination whatsoever when it comes to chick lit books. I pretty much love them all.

This week's case in point was Holly Denham's Holly's Inbox, which is an entire novel told through the emails of receptionist extraordinaire Holly Denham's life. Although you might find the epistolary (emailistolary?) format tiresome, it does have one big payoff: it reads fast. Sure, this book is 665 pages long. But it can still be read in a couple of hours, which has the added benefit of allowing you to quickly finish the book and slam it down with a meaty thunk and really feel like you've accomplished something with your afternoon.

This novel is also set in Great Britain, which is a second sure way to get me interested (it's been compared to Helen Fieldings's Bridget Jones's Diary, and although I liked it, I must say it is no Bridget Jones's Diary). It also ended a trifle abruptly, I thought, although a sequel is in the works so perhaps that's why. But it is fun; the following is an email from her coworker in reception, as Holly has just started the job:

"From: Patricia Gillot

That's nice for you, darlin. Just keep grinning at people for today, and I'll do the rest. Hopefully by the end of the month you might know your arse from your elbow."

Of course her tough-as-nails co-worker turns out to have a heart of gold; Holly has the obligatory gay male best friend; the perfect guy turns out to be a sleaze; the man who formerly wronged her turns out to have been wronged himself. Formulaic, simplistic, it's got it all. And I ate it up with a spoon. Please refer to my first paragraph, and then feel free to mock me--IF you don't have any reading skeletons in your closet.

Literary fiction worth reading.

I spent the weekend* reading Kate Christensen's novel The Great Man, and loving it. It's the story of one Oscar Feldman, a well-known American painter, whose only role in this book is to be the man who was loved by a variety of fascinating women. (The book actually opens with Oscar's obituary.)

The women in question are Oscar's wife, Abigail Feldman; his longtime mistress, Claire (Teddy) St. Cloud; his fellow artist and sister Maxine; his daughters (by Teddy) Ruby and Samantha; even his mistress's best friend, Lila. Each of these women relates her own story of her life with Oscar as they take turns speaking to two very different biographers of Oscar's life. It sounds complex; it's not (or it is, but in the best possible way).

I loved this book. What is totally great is that the women in this book could have been caricatures; the "artist's wronged wife with the autistic son," the "selfish mistress who kept her lover away from their own daughters," the "bitter sister." But they weren't. They were all fascinating, strong, interesting women in their own rights, and in their relations with the "great man," the reader (or at least this reader) gets the sense that they paid their moneys, they took their chances, and they lived with their decisions. Oh--and there's a secret too. An art secret that will make the reader wonder (even more) if Oscar truly was a "great man."

Just lovely. As an added benefit, this book made me feel so young. Lately I have been feeling so tired and old (in my thirties; ridiculous, I know) that to read this book about ladies in their seventies, not without their issues and aches and problems, who are still--and this is a phrase that it hurts me to type but it's really the most appropriate one--hungry for life, made me feel very, very good, and perhaps like I should buck up and try to enjoy what's left of my own youth.

I do think this is a novel that will appeal more to women, although I'd be interested to hear when men think of it too.

*I also spent the wekeend going to see the chick flick The Ugly Truth (which was awful, but we were mainly there to see Gerard Butler, so no harm, no foul) and watching the Guy Ritchie movie RockNRolla with Mr. CR (which was really pretty fantastic). Yup, I'm starting to see why I was having some problems hitting my deadlines.

But do we see him?

Over the weekend I read a novel titled Now You See Him, by Eli Gottlieb. I liked it quite a bit, and it had a lot of plot twistlets (more like little "ah-ha" moments than big plot twists). The narrator, a man named Nick Framingham, is not so much unreliable as he himself is uninformed, but I do love the air of suspense that even a vaguely unreliable narrator lends to a story.

The entire book follows Nick's struggle in the months after his former best friend Rob Castor shoots his former girlfriend and then himself. As he pieces the puzzle of Rob's life together, his own marriage starts to fall spectacularly apart, particularly when Rob's sister Belinda comes back to their small New York home town and turns to Nick for help (which is complicated by the fact that Nick and Belinda used to date).

I'm making it sound horribly dull; it's not. I think I'm starting to figure out that it's not so much that I don't enjoy reading fiction, it's that I find it very hard to talk about. When it's good, I like it very much, I immerse myself in the story, but when I'm done, I just want to be done with it. With nonfiction, I find myself often wanting to think more about the books and their subjects when I'm done, and that means I like to review and talk about them more. I wonder if I've become such a Puritan that I feel vaguely guilty to simply read and enjoy a novel, and therefore want to move on from it as fast as I can, whereas with nonfiction, I often feel like I've learned something and therefore the time was profitably spent.

Either way--it's a good novel. I'd be interested to hear if others have read it and if so, what they thought.

Golden week.

Although last week was a rather long week for completely non-reading reasons, it was one of those charmed weeks where I rather enjoyed every book I picked up--even books I normally wouldn't have thought I would like.

A case in point is Nathan McCall's Them, which I read about somewhere, and although I didn't think I would read the whole thing, it sucked me in. The story is basic, and one that is happening in all sorts of cities in America: Forty-year-old Barlowe Reed, a single black man, is living in a primarily black section of Atlanta known as the Old Fourth Ward. He works hard as a printer, hates paying taxes, and mostly enjoys a good cold beer at the end of the day in the house he rents. When his new neighbors turn out to be a white couple, though, the reader can see what's happening: gentrification.

It's not a subtle book by any means, and reviewers and readers (at Amazon) have hammered it for McCall's reliance on stereotyping, particularly where the white characters are concerned. But I thought it was interesting all the way through, and for once I didn't really mind the stereotyping, which made the book's title all the more appropriate--after all, we're all a "them" to somebody else, regardless of who we are. (I find it interesting, moreover, that "stereotyping" is lambasted in this book, but nobody dares bring up the word where the collected works of Jodi Picoult are concerned, which are rife with stereotyping.)

And I liked the main character, Barlowe Reed. I would like any character who gets in a fight at the post office because he hates flags and he doesn't want stamps with flags on them, let's face it ("They tried to make me buy flags, Nell. What you expect from me?"--p. 10.) This was a different read for me; and I think it might pair well with a nonfiction book like Judith Matloff's Home Girl, in which the author herself was the agent of gentrification in a Harlem neighborhood. I'm also going to look into McCall's memoir Makes Me Wanna Holler.

Great title, great author, great book.

I loved, loved, LOVED Stacy Horn's Waiting for My Cats to Die: A Morbid Memoir.

Of course, with a title like that (much like Anneli Rufus's Party of One: A Loner's Manifesto) you knew I was going to love it. But why should you read this book? Well, if you think you might have anything in common with a woman in her early forties who's looking for love, struggles with work and the parts of her job she can't stand, and who cares desperately for not one, but two cats who have diabetes and require some intricate cat care regimes, you might, like me, find that you feel quite close to Stacy Horn.

For the most part, it's a straightforward memoir, with chapters with recurring titles like "Cats," "Romance," "Work," "Death," etc. For a woman in her early forties, Horn seems to think about death a lot, but that's only natural considering her areas of interest (more on this later); the poor thing also spends a lot of time caring for her beloved cats Veets and Beamers (as her vet says, "Ladies and gentlemen, guard your cats! Any cat that comes near that woman gets diabetes!"), and running the social networking website that she started way before such things were cool (called Echo, at echonyc.com, it's a place where New York City residents can chat). She even periodically includes interviews that she does with older people, with such questions as "What are the main differences between the young you and the you now?" (which is a great question). She also includes thoughts about her friends and romances and how the two sometimes just don't work:

"Joe and I keep waiting for our friendship to turn into a When Harry Met Sally thing. We have this level of comfort with each other. When I was obsessing about my stomach, for instance, we compared fat rolls. Does it get any better than this? Feeling unself-conscious enough around someone to compare fat rolls?Joe and I can't help thinking things would be even better if we could somehow move into the more-than-friends category. We're so close...In the future people may marry for friendship. Maybe Joe is simply ahead of his time. There is, I have to say, something exquisitely cmforting about Joe's knowing when my TV holes are. TV holes are the times when there's nothing good on and it's safe to call. Is this enough to make a marriage?" (pp. 71-72.)

Oh, I love her. I actually fell into this memoir ass-backwards; Horn is the author of the spectacular nonfiction books The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad (one of the best True Crime books ever) and Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena, from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory; after reading those books, I finally figured out that I should probably see if she'd written anything else, and up popped this book. Do read it. For a morbid memoir, it's a lot of fun.

Unsentimental parenting memoirs, part two.

How I happened to have both Michael Lewis's Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood, and Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, home at the same time, was a matter of pure chance.

Cusk is a British author whose novels I have been considering reading, because traditionally I enjoy British authors very much. So when I saw that she had written a memoir on being a mother, I thought that might be interesting too, so I requested it from the library. The next week, my copy of Home Game came in too, so by chance, I read two very interesting, very different, very slim (always a plus with me) nonfiction titles on the raising of children.

Although I enjoyed them both, I think the edge goes to the Lewis book, and that mainly for staying power. I really, really enjoyed the first few chapters of the Cusk book, but as it went on I lost interest, and I'll freely admit I only skimmed the last few chapters. (Bookslut has noticed this problem with Cusk as well; opining that she is better in interviews than she is on the page.)

But what I did love about it was some of its early, frank prose. Consider:

"This experience forcefully revealed to me something to which I had never given much thought: the fact that after a child is born the lives of its mother and father diverge, so that where before they were living in a state of some equality, now they exist in a sort of feudal relation to each other. A day spent at home caring for a child could not be more different from a day spent working in an office. Whatever their relative merits, they are days spent on opposite sides of the world. From that irreconcilable beginning, it seemed to me that some kind of slide into deeper patriarchy was inevitable: that the father's day would gradually gather to it the armour of the outside world, of money and authority and importance, while the mother's remit would extend to cover the entire domestic sphere. It is well known that in couples where both parents work full-time, the mother generally does far more than her fair share of housework and childcare, and is the one to curtail her working day in order to meet the exigencies of parenthood. That is an issue of sexual politics, but even in the most generous household, which I acknowledge my own to be, the gulf between childcarer and worker is profound. Bridging it is extremely difficult." (pp. 5-6.)

Now, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in that paragraph, and there's a lot of other paragraphs that are at least that interesting. So, two suggestions: if you're in the market for a Mommy Memoir that is filled with anecdotes about how having a baby completed the author and her baby is the cutest and the best baby ever, this book will probably not be for you. Also, if you do pick it up, don't be afraid to stop reading it if you start to find yourself losing interest. You'll feel better about the first half, which is excellent, if you don't force yourself through the second half, which simply loses a bit of its punch.

William Langewiesche, watch your back.

Anyone who knows my reading habits knows that I have a little (okay, big) fixation on William Langewiesche, nonfiction author extraordinaire. Recently, though, I have been finding my head turned by another nonfiction author: Michael Lewis.

I have thoroughly enjoyed Michael Lewis ever since I read two of his earlier books, the finance classic Liar's Poker and the sports classic Moneyball. Then he came along with the book The Blind Side, which was ostensibly about football, but was really a fantastic look at society, poverty, race relations, and sports all at once. And now he's struck again with a 190-page memoir gem titled Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood.*

I have no kids, and I've never been all that interested in kids, but for some reason I rather enjoy checking out parenting memoirs (particularly the less sentimental ones). This memoir, about Lewis's three kids (with his wife, former MTV newscaster Tabitha Soren), is decidedly not sentimental, which I'm pretty sure is one of the reasons I enjoyed it. It's also very funny; I laughed pretty much through the whole introduction (in which he explains how his three-year-old daughter learned the swear "word" "shutupyoustupidmotherfuckingasshole"). He's just got a way with words:

"I inherited from my father a peculiar form of indolence--not outright laziness so much as a gift for avoiding unpleasant chores without attracting public notice. My father took it almost as a matter of principle that most problems, if ignored, simply went away. And that his children were, more or less, among those problems. 'I didn't even talk to you until you went away to college,' he once said to me, as he watched me attempt to dress a six-month-old. 'Your mother did all the dirty work.'

This wasn't entirely true, but it'd pass cleanly through any polygraph...In theory, his tendency to appear only when we didn't really need him should have left a lingering emotional distance; he should have paid some terrible psychological price for his refusal to suffer. But the stone cold fact is his children still love him, just as much as they love their mother...Small children are ungrateful; to do one a favor is, from a business point of view, about as shrewd as making a subprime mortgage loan." (pp. 9-10.)

Now THAT is honest. Not real sentimental, but honest. I really enjoyed the whole book, and I hope you do too. And if you don't have the time to enjoy the book, just check out Lewis's performance on the Daily Show (below). Make sure to listen through to minute five or six, when he explains the Lewis family credo. It's awesome.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Michael Lewis
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

*If I have one quibble with the book, it's that I don't know that it requires a $23.95 cover price. $19.95 should really cover any book under 200 pages, hardcover or not. Please Note: This book also first appeared as diary entries at Slate magazine, so if you don't want to purchase it, just check it out there.

Stop rewarding this man.

Welcome back!

Well, I'm feeling cranky about a book, so it must be time to start posting again. I'm not sure I'll be back on the full five-day schedule right away, but I'll do my best. I didn't get all the dandelions, but I got a lot of them, and I'm still behind on some projects, but that's no surprise. I wouldn't know how to work if I weren't motivated by being behind.

So what am I cranky about? Well, the other day I was looking at some new nonfiction titles and some bestseller lists, just trying to keep up with the ol' nonfiction world (although I've been reading more fiction of late...details on that to come!), when I saw the title The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship, by Jeffrey Zaslow.

Hm, I thought. Now that's a title I normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. (It's got "sentimental" written all over it, and I've never been one of those gals who needed a big ol' circle of women friends, primarily because I have two awesome sisters.) But, I wondered. Jeffrey Zaslow. Why did that name sound familiar?

I went on my merry way, but I kept seeing the book pop up, and I kept thinking, "Zaslow. Why do I know that name?" And finally I remembered that I live in the 21st century and I could easily Google his name. And then it all became clear. Remember one of last year's biggest sentimental claptrap titles, The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch? (Dying professor gives last lecture to students, dripping with life wisdom and acceptance of one's mortality and all that jazz?) It was co-authored by Jeffrey Zaslow.

So, this year, because evidently The Last Lecture didn't make him enough money, Zaslow has decided to cash in on another trend, the importance of women's friendships (particularly as baby boomers, who have always been rather, let's say, fond of themselves, age and start to look back on their lives, experiences, and friendships), and has produced The Girls from Ames. It's about ten women friends (eleven, originally; one member of the group died at age 22) who went to school together in Ames, Iowa, and have stayed in touch.

There's really very little to review here. It's exactly the kind of book that you would think it is: it tells stories of how the girls met, where they all ended up, what challenges they've faced, who they married and how many kids they've had, and how they've all changed (or not changed) as they've aged. It's serviceably written and if you're into this kind of thing, I'm sure it's a fine read. And parts of it are very poignant--some of them had bad experiences in high school and college; one of them died too young; some of them have divorced and had children die; etc. And that's okay. Sometimes you need a good sappy read. (I'm guilty of that myself; see my enjoyment of Vicki Myron's Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World.) But I've got a couple of issues with this book:

1. First of all, why is this dude writing it? I know he wants to understand women and all, but for this type of book, I'd rather just see a woman take it on. For this reason, rather than this book, I'd suggest Cheryl Jarvis's The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment that Transformed Their Lives. Although it wasn't about lifetime friends, its premise that one woman advertised to find a group of women who would share ownership of an expensive piece of jewelry with her, and how they became friends, seemed less, you know, like a man telling a story of women's friendships mainly for profit.

2. This is how the book is described at Amazon: "It demonstrates how close female relationships can shape every aspect of women’s lives – their sense of themselves, their choice of men, their need for validation, their relationships with their mothers, their dreams for their daughters – and reveals how such friendships thrive, rewarding those who have committed to them." I found the "need for validation" clause EXTREMELY obnoxious. As though to be a woman is to have a need for validation.* I say, fuck that. And you can agree with me or not, I don't care. But wait. I am a woman, so I should care. Please agree with me? I need the validation.

3. I realize the above is the fault of some underpaid publishing assistant who is writing jacket copy, but this line, found on page 15, I'm going to blame completely on Zaslow: "As a clique, they had a reputation for being flirts--more social than academic, and more apt to tease boys than to please them. In reality, though, most of the Ames girls were very good students. And a couple of them actually pleased more than they teased."

Puke. So, all I can say is, I wish people would stop rewarding this man by buying his books. If you're desperate for a chicks bonding narrative, I'd look into The Necklace instead, and if you're interested in lifelong relationships, put this title down and invest in Peter Feldstein's and Stephen Bloom's superlative photography book The Oxford Project (which is also set in Iowa!) instead. But suit yourself. I wish I was woman enough to need the validation that your following my advice would provide, but I'm just not.

*And, "dreams for their daughters"? Are they not allowed to dream for their sons?