The Uninvited Guests

Oct7 by Anna

By Sadie Jones

This is just the strangest little book! Kinsey recommended it last year as a good spooky story for Halloween reading, and I’ve only now gotten around to reading it. I’m not even sure quite what to think. Oh, I liked it a lot, but was never quite sure where I was standing with it, either.

It started as one of those impoverished English gentry books (you know, where the insular family starts to decay along with their surroundings?); it reminded me a bit of Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle. Then things took a turn for the worse and it was a bit of an adult Lord of the Flies, which was actually pretty horrifying, though still in a disconcertingly genteel way. As the various mysteries were revealed, though, I realized exactly what this book is: it is a written Edward Gorey illustration.

In fact, it is so much Edward Gorey that when I searched to find a representative illustration, I found the following eight that are literally characters or scenes from the book. I’m putting them after the cut, not because they are spoilers, really, but so I don’t fill up the entire home page with lots and lots of Gorey illustrations. Continue reading →

Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News

Oct3 by Rebecca

Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News
By Dan Rather and Digby Diehl
2012
read by Dan Rather

I almost quit this book several times, as I struggled to make it through the first three CDs of the ten-CD audiobook. Not because it was bad (I wouldn’t have had a problem quitting if it were just bad), but because it was very well done recounting of a couple of very hard stories. In the first two chapters, Rather recounts breaking the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Bush National Guard scandal, and having to deal with the push backs and the attempts both external and internal to CBS to squash those stories.

In my imagination, the news business is run by the type of irascible fictional news editors like J. Jonah Jameson of the Daily Bugle (from Spiderman) and Perry White of the Daily Planet (from Superman). They’re gritty and obnoxious abut are all about getting the news out there and aren’t going to put up with anyone trying to quash a story:

“I’ve got a story,” I said. “My source has leaked a lot of highly classified information, and the paper could get in a lot of trouble if we run it. But if we don’t, my source is going to keep trying until he finds someone who’ll print it.”

Jameson’s face lit up like Christmas. “That’s just about my favorite thing in the world to hear,” he said, and chomped on his cigar for emphasis. “What’s the story?”

— The Scoop (an Avengers fan fiction) by Hollimichele

And yes, I realize that’s a highly romanticized notion of how investigative reporting works, and yet, it is the image I have in my head. From Rather Outspoken, I got the impression that Dan Rather has a similar idea of how the news should run. News, by it’s very nature, is something new and the people who are currently in power, happy with their power, and happy with the status quo, are not going to want told. If no one is offended or angry about the news, then it’s probably not very useful news. A news organization, then, should know that it’s setting itself up to fight a series of battles, and those organizations who ignore stories and refuse to fight are failing at their jobs.*

With this vision in mind, for Rather, seeing CBS cave in to political pressure is a personal betrayal as well as a professional one and just… hard. For me, it’s painful to see that betrayal and to realize that, as a member of a very different generation, it doesn’t really surprise me at all. I have an idealized vision of news reporters, but I don’t actually believe it’s real.

Luckily, after that, Rather turns to looking with a more large-scale perspective on his life and career and goes back over events of the past. I do wonder though, if it becomes easier for me because he begins to discuss events that happened before I was born and if they would remain difficult to hear for people who had lived through them and could feel those traumas again in the recounting, of the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights movement, the Watergate scandal…

Anyway, it was a very good book, and while I didn’t always agree with Rather on his politics or his interpretations, I do whole heartedly agree with him on the importance of an informed public and the dangers of a progressively more corrupt news industry.

* Speaking of people who are failing at their jobs: I’m going to take a moment to call out the U.S. Congress: if they can’t keep the government running, then maybe we need to get a new Congress. Is there a way to make a vote of not confidence? This is the type of dirty politics that Rather managed to immerse himself in so he could report on it, but that I find so distasteful that I can barely stand to listen to.

The Raven Boys

Sep26 by Kinsey

First of all, let me say that the people I write this blog with are very, very smart. I haven’t been writing many reviews lately because I’ve been too busy with things that they’ve already told you about. But just in case you missed any of Anna and Rebecca’s previous recommendations, I add my full endorsement to :

The Lizzie Bennett Diaries–these are so good, I now own merchandise.

White Cat–as I said in a comment on Anna’s review, this whole series was like Harry Potter meets the Sopranos.

The Tightrope Walker–-very 70s and fun.

Frost Burned–one of the more enjoyable of the recent Patricia Briggs books.

But I finally got around around to reading something new. The first Maggie Stiefvater I read was her teenage werewolf trilogy that starts with Shiver. The story was fine, if maybe a little weighted down with teenage romance, and maybe sharing a little too much DNA with the Twilight books. But The Raven Boys, the first book in her new Raven Cycle, felt much more original and confident.

The boys of the title are teenagers attending a fancy school in Virginia, and Blue is a local girl who gets caught up with their efforts to solve a supernatural mystery. Magic is treated very calmly here–Blue is from a family of psychics, and ghosts and time travel and Arthurian legend are all just common currency–so don’t expect a lot of explanation for how anything works. And since this is clearly intended to be the start of a series, a whole lot of guns are introduced in this first act that have yet to go off. But I liked the characters and, even more, liked the tone of the book. This isn’t a bleak story, but it is creepy and ominous, and it gave me the shivers reading it at night. The second book in the cycle, The Dream Thieves, just came out on Monday, and I have that squiggly sort of feeling about reading it–I can’t wait to find out what happens, but I’m not sure I can bear to find out, since I know things can’t possibly end well for everyone. It’s going to be an excellent thing to read as the year races towards Halloween.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Eerie, magical mystery

You might also like: White Cat, or Grave Mercy, or Beautiful Creatures, or any of those young adult magic/fantasy series. But let me also recommend another YA book about a boarding school that has a similar melancholy, atmospheric tone, minus the magic: Jellicoe Road by Melinda Marchetta.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Sep21 by Rebecca

The Men Who Stare at Goats
by Jon Ronson
2004
read by Sean Mangan

This book is awesomely hilarious. Hilarious, if, you know, you can get past the very real horror that is mixed in with the craziness. Apparently, I can. In many ways, the book as a whole reminded me of Keller’s Catch-22, an awesomely hilarious comedy all about the inhumanity of war.

And unfortunately, I once more have to warn for animal harm. Given the intent (by the men who stare at goats) of doing harm, I shouldn’t be surprised, but given the proposed method (i.e., staring), I found I was surprised after all. (It hadn’t occurred to me to ask: where are these goats coming from?) Plus, once we’re past the animal harm, we then move on to torture of prisoners.

Somehow it still manages to be super funny.

Jon Stewart on the Daily Show called Jon Ronson’s writing “investigative satire” and that’s pretty much what it is. This book is also an illustration of the phrase: “Truth is stranger than fiction, (because fiction has to make sense.)” In the final chapter of this book, Ronson sums it up by explaining that this is the story of how, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the discouraged and demoralized U.S. army attempted to incorporate some of the “New Age” culture that was developing, but in true military style, rather than seeking new ways to find peace, they looked for new ways to make war.

Ronson himself is also quite the character: a soft-spoken, somewhat nebbish guy. He’s gone on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, twice, so you can see him for yourself. It’s worth seeing him for yourself, especially if you’re planning on listening to the audiobook version of this book, because, in stark contrast to Ronson, Sean Mangan reads the text with a deep intent and melodrama that just adds an extra layer of hilarity to it all.

There are a lot of conversations in which the various interviewees are saying something either crazy or horrifying or both, and Ronson is recounting the conversation:

So-and-so said: some crazy and/or horrifying thing

I said, “hmm.”

Now imagine that spoken in a deeply melodramatic fashion.

“I said,” Mangan intones, “hmm.”

I, the listener, can’t help but giggle.

To use Kinsey’s practice of a Three Word Review: funny, informative, disturbing

In The Woods

Sep13 by Anna

By Tana French

I really liked this book: it has a plot that I couldn’t anticipate and building suspense that I couldn’t put down, and the characters are where it really shines. The narrating detective’s female partner, especially, is tough, smart, and likable, and that’s a lot less common than it should be. My favorite passages of the book just follow the various officers working through the minutiae of the investigation. However, there were a couple of issues that kept me from loving it:

First, a pet peeve: I just hate foreshadowing. I know that is an important writing device for building suspense, but I hate it when the narrator says stuff like, “if only I knew then where this would all lead” or “at the time I was so sure I was right.” I just hate it, and this book was chock full of it. I will say that French put it to better service in this novel than I’ve seen in used before, but it still didn’t make me like it. I prefer to advance through the story at the same time as the narrator, and see missteps retroactively as well.

Second, from the very beginning, even on the back cover blurb (so this isn’t a spoiler; the full plot spoiler follows below the cut), it is known that the narrating detective’s past is related to this new crime. Though the book primarily focuses on the present-day murder, the cold case, with the same setting and similar victims, runs as a parallel undercurrent. Our narrator knows he shouldn’t be working this case, but he is obsessed and becomes increasingly unbalanced throughout the book. French does a very good job of subtly depicting his unraveling mentality, and I gradually began losing patience with his growing belligerence and incompetence and all-encompassing self-involvement.

So, I found the actual reading of the book a bit more a chore than I like in my for-fun books, but the twist ending (which I couldn’t even guess at) made it all worth-while, and I want to bring it up because I want to gasp over it with other readers, specifically Kinsey, who recommended it to me and mentions the second and fourth in the series here.

WARNING: I’m seriously spoiling the entire mystery in the following paragraph. Pet peeves aside, I really do recommend this book if you like the grittier-type murder mysteries and suspense, and if you haven’t already read it, you should check it out without my spoiler. Continue reading →

Femme Fatales: Femme and A Dame To Kill For

Sep8 by Anna

Femme

By Bill Pronzini

Ah, Bill Pronzini. You were one of my early introductions to pulp mysteries, and I have a lot of left-over affection for you, but I’m afraid I may have outgrown your nameless detective.

I hadn’t read a Bill Pronzini novel in at least 15 years, but I ran across this very short novella in the new releases shelf at the library and picked it up, as I do love a femme fatale! I also had very fond memories of Pronzini’s nameless detective series from high school; they are somewhat run-of-the-mill novels, but are told in first person by a detective who is never named (I was also at the time watching Clint Eastwood’s “The Man with No Name” series, so it was a bit of a theme).

I read Femme in the space of one delayed flight, so probably over 3 hours total, and it was the fluffiest of fluff. I have a bit of a problem with novellas, actually. Whereas authors seem to put extra effort into short stories to be concise and compact as independent entities, novellas have a tendency to just come off as reading like general outlines for a future novel, and this one was no exception.

The plot, characters, and setting were quite generic, which is especially problematic when it comes to a femme fatale. A woman who uses her very femininity to lure men to death and destruction really needs to stand out. This particular femme seemed no different than the average murderess on any given Law & Order episode. I get that it is more difficult to make violence stand out in this modern age, but that’s what makes writing a femme fatale such a challenge.

Now, if you want someone who is up to that challenge:

A Dame To Kill For

By Frank Miller

Frank Miller’s A Dame To Kill For is the basis for the new Sin City movie coming out next year, and coincidentally the only Frank Miller graphic novel that Rebecca owns. I really enjoyed the first Sin City movie and was torn over whether to read the graphic novel for the second one, and thereby “spoil” it for myself, but finally decided that part of the fun of the movie is seeing what a brilliant job it does of bringing to life each individual illustrated panel. (I saw in a “making of Sin City” that they actually used the graphic novel as the original story boards for the movie, which makes a lot of sense, given Frank Miller’s very cinematic style.)

While it is no spoiler that Frank Miller loves a femme fatale (or ten), I’m going to go ahead and spoil this particular book (and upcoming movie), so proceed with caution. Continue reading →

She Left Me the Gun

Sep5 by Kinsey

I love memoirs–I’ve said this before–and can read one after another, but even I get a little tired of the endless string of “Here’s The Unique Way that My Parents Messed Me Up” stories. I certainly understand how a traumatic childhood can allow for the kind of narrative arc that works well in memoirs, but they are such a drag to read. Which is one reason that She Left Me the Gun: My Mother’s Life Before Me by Emma Brockes was a such a refreshing change from the usual memoir.

Though told from Emma’s point of view, the book is really about her mother Paula, who was born and raised in South Africa but emigrated to England as an adult. After arriving in London, she got married, had her daughter, moved to the country, and lived out a normal, sedate village life. It was only after her mother died that Emma started looking into some of the vague things that her mother had said about her past. It takes Emma a fair amount of research, including multiple trips to South Africa and visits with extended family, to piece together exactly what happened to her mother before she got to England, and I’ll just say that very little of it was good.

The book goes into some detail about what happened to Paula, and offers an intriguing glimpse into everyday life in modern South Africa, as Emma ends up spending a great deal of time there meeting family and doing research. But the real heart of the book seems to be Emma trying to get her head around both who her mother was, and how much of the past she has the right and/or responsibility to know. Her mother kept this information from Emma for her whole life, and clearly wanted her to be as protected as possible; by discovering the truth, does Emma undo her mother’s work? Did Emma really know her mother, if she knows nothing of the first 30 years of her life and the momentous events that shaped her? (Emma does a great job of explaining that kid feeling of, “My mom was born, and then she had me. The end.”) And after her mother has died, does Emma have an obligation to learn what happened, so that SOMEONE knows exactly what her mother had to overcome?

The biggest question asked here, though, is just how does someone start over again? No matter the specifics of what happened to Paula, the upshot is that at 30 years old she walked away from a troubled life in South Africa and started all over again in London. She got married, had a child, and remained, as her daughter describes her, a vibrant, funny, functional person. How does someone do that? How could Paula do it when so many others couldn’t? The book doesn’t really answer that, of course. It’s a bigger mystery than one book can solve and Paula herself isn’t around to offer her thoughts. I wish she were, because she sounds like she would have been a riot, even if she couldn’t tell you how she did this magic act of creating a new life.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Inconclusive, but satisfying.

You might also like: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, another memoir by a daughter that is (largely) about her mother. In this case, the unknowable part seems to be how Walls ended up so functional when her mother was so dysfunctional, but it addresses some of the same key questions about how you construct a life.

Simplexity

Aug30 by Rebecca

Simplexity:
Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)
By Jeffrey Klugger
2009
Read by Holter Graham

This was a fascinating book, although it wasn’t quite what I had expected. The subtitle is a bit of a misnomer as the book doesn’t really address why things become complex or how they can be made simple. Instead, it shows that many simple things actually are quite complex and many apparently complex things actually are quite simple. So I suppose it does tell you how, if only by showing you how to shift your perspective.

The book is essentially composed of a series of case studies. The studies range from the evacuation of the Twin Towers on 9/11 to regular New York traffic patterns, from stock market fluctuations to cholera outbreaks to Jackson Pollok paintings. All of these are used as examples of the simplicity-complexity continuum, in which both extreme regimentation and extreme chaos are conceptually simple, while in between these two extremes is the place where some extremely complex patterns form.

As is, perhaps, appropriate for a book on this topic, I’m not quite sure what else to say about it. It would be easy to recount some of the interesting details, of which there were many, but the premise itself was quite simple: some things are simple, other things are complex, but it is not always obvious which is which.

Kluger presents a different way to examining the world, and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuellson

Aug24 by Rebecca

Yes, Chef
By Marcus Samuellson
2012
read by Marcus Samuellson

Now, Marcus Samuellson is a successful celebrity chef. Way back when, he was a toddler in Ethiopia dying of tuberculosis, and then a kid in Sweden determined to become a professional soccer player, and then a young man in Europe and America trying to get a job and work his way up the career path. This is the story of how he got from there to here, and it’s an excellent story.

One thing that really impresses me with this book is how he manages to not only tell about his actions and experiences in the past, but also to portray his perspective and thought process in the past. When he was writing about his childhood, he wrote as an adult recounting his childhood, but as he was writing about his experiences as a young adult growing into a mature adult, his writing also changed to reflect the change from being driven young man with an overriding ambition to being a much more socially aware adult who didn’t take family for granted.

I was really glad that I experienced this as an audiobook, not because it would have been at all bad as a standard book, but because the audio version is read by Samuellson himself. He doesn’t have the perfect elocution of a professional audiobook reader, but he does have real emotional connection to the story he’s telling. As an autobiography, it gains even more power by being told, literally, in his own voice.

Also, his descriptions of food make me wish that I was more of a foodie. I like food, but I also like simple flavors. Samuellson’s descriptions of the rich and complex flavors that he loves are tantalizing.

The one problem I had with the book is that some of the transitions are pretty abrupt, and a couple of times abrupt enough to be confusing, where I wasn’t quite sure what happened. Also, I got the distinct impression that he was living by the same parental advice I got, that “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Not that all of his experiences were good by any means, or even that all the people were nice (not at all!) but no one and nothing is presented as unmitigated badness, and that is something I appreciate. Sometimes that might mean skipping over a period of his life, maybe, but for the most part Samuellson seems to genuinely like and respect people. Even the most difficult people (and there are apparently a lot of difficult people in the cooking community, good grief – I’m extremely glad that I don’t have to put up with that) have something good about them and Samuellson sees that.

Anyway, I enjoyed this book a great deal and I definitely recommend it so that you can enjoy it, too.

Rest In Peace, Elmore Leonard

Aug20 by Anna

Man, 2013 has not been a good year for authors! Today, Elmore Leonard passed away, and even if you don’t think you are familiar with him, you are sure to be familiar with some of the movies and television shows he wrote or inspired: Out of Sight, Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma, and Justified, to name just a few. I was first introduced to Leonard through the very short-lived tv show Maximum Bob which ran for just seven hysterical episodes in 1998, but inspired me to read the novel with the same name and become a lifelong fan of the author.

I consider him one of the founding fathers of the craziness-in-Florida niche genre continued by Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen, and if you haven’t read any of his work, you should definitely check it out if you want to laugh at some head-shaking craziness that doesn’t seem that farfetched anymore. Honestly, with Florida, you laugh so you don’t cry, and Leonard is very good at making the reader laugh. In eulogy, Vulture posted Leonard’s Ten Rules of Good Writing, and it is easy to see why I am such a fan.

—Anna