Lazy reader

Yep, still no new post. I've been lackadaisically reading "Foul Matter" by Martha Grimes but I just can't commit. I think I am too distracted by my pregnancy. Or, rather, by the imminent end of my pregnancy. I am embarrassed, though, to see I finished my last book on June 14th and am only half-way through an easy read as of today.

The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein

BEST BOOK I'VE READ IN YEARS!!! I'm not going to say too much about it because I don't want to spoil the magic of this book for anyone. Please read it. It's wonderful.

What I will say:

The premise of the book is a dog, on the eve of his death, looking back to tell you the story of his family. The book is not about the dog (Enzo), but he is a pretty fun character throughout. I loved some of the goings-on inside the head of the dog as he dealt with his instincts vs. his canine dignity. It provided some nice comic relief among the devastation that was going on in the Swift family.

The story is about the Swift family and, specifically, Denny Swift, who faces circumstances that are almost unbearable to the reader at times. But he is a champion and you can't help but stick with him no matter how things turn out for him. Yes, I stuck with him even as I almost ran into light poles on Wacker Drive since I considered my walk between the train and office to be 6 precious minutes wasted if I didn't spend them reading this book!

And I loved the juxtaposition of the moving story of this family and Denny's challenges with the racetrack. That is, NASCAR/stock car/Formula One type racetrack. I do not care for car racing, but it operated as a perfect metaphor in this book.

What I can criticize:

Nothing. And I don't think I am going to read any reviews of this book because I don't want to hear anyone else's criticism either. I'm going to keep it perfect in my mind. If you don't like it, please just don't tell me. I'm normally not like this (I normally appreciate a good debate over a book), but I'm feeling really emotionally volatile about this book.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I don't have a ton to say. Quick, fun read. The biggest problem with the book: it is a mystery novel and the main mystery was completely predictable. But there were plenty of side plot twists that could not have been predicted, so those kept the book interesting. You can also easily predict who Blomkvist is going to couple with, but it's not really so much a relationship book so who cares. The best part of the book is the characters. Charming, flawed, dysfunctional folks who I will definitely read about again. In fact, I think the second Blomkvist/Salandar book came out fairly recently... I'll put it on the list.

Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese

Talk about falling in love with characters! Verghese's gift is making you love someone in 3 paragraphs or less. There wasn't a single character that you didn't care about here, no matter how small of a role they played. In fact, it was some of the minor characters that added that certain je ne sais quoi to this book for me, particularly Almaz (with her undying love and devotion to the doctors of Missing hospital), the Staff Probationer and Tsige (with their undying sense of responsibility/gratitude/indebtedness to Marion), and Deepak (with just plain brilliance). Of course, I loved Marion and his adoptive parents Hema and Ghosh most of all. And I hated Stone, Shiva, and Genet... but you can't hate a character without them being worthwhile enough to love them in their literary capacity. And I guess I loved them too because I cared what happened to them and kept rooting for them to right their wrongs.

Shiva, Marion's twin was fascinating. So brilliant but contained in his own mind. I am not sure about Marion's assessment that he only had the ability to look forward... he had a terrible sense of consequences for someone able to look forward.

I do tend to love "buildings roman" novels, which this is. I also tend to not like overblown, dramatic plots, which this is. But while I could not forgive Hosseini's "The Kite Runner"'s overload of plot coincidences, I did forgive it here. Even though there were a number of pretty unbelievable dramatic happenings, it flowed naturally enough that I bought it. Plus, it does seem like the Ethiopian community in New York/Boston might be fairly small, so chance happenings are not impossible.

I loved the historical backdrop in Ethiopia. I loved the medical details, although the surgical descriptions had a gross-out factor for me. I loved the writing. I loved the tease of being told where a certain segment of the story was going, but then being forced to wait out a pertinent tangent in the story before getting to the conclusion of the main segment. That definitely made for some fast reading of a long book... but I hope I didn't miss any particularly good portions by reading TOO fast!

So, overall, this book gets an A and a strong recommendation from me.

The Heretic's Daughter, by Kathleen Kent

This is a great book. Well-written, well-researched, and well-liked by me. There were two things about this book that were on the verge of being complaints but wound up as wonderful positives:

(1) Pace. I was worried at the beginning of this book because it slogged a little bit. Knowing that it wasn't a particularly long book, I was worried that it would be one of those books that set up and set up and then raced to the finish. But as soon as I got to the point in the beginning of the book where I said "this is kinda slow," she cranked it up a little. And as soon as I got settled into that pace, she cranked it up a little more. Resulting in the perfect formula for the perfect pace. The book was split almost perfectly in half, with the mother's arrest for witchcraft occurring halfway through. So we got half background/family life, half trials/prison life. Good formula. Kind of the same formula as Life of Pi, which was also paced wonderfully.

(2) Excessive metaphors. When I was in the creative writing program in college, I never wrote a really good short story. But almost every one of my stories had some good moment in it - a description of something that was nicely done. In my imagination, Kathleen Kent took ALL those good moments from stories she'd written or that were just inside her head and decided to put them all in this, her first novel, in an attempt to make sure the book was good. The result for me would normally be eye-rolling. But her descriptive metaphors were so good that my eyes stayed squarely in their sockets and I just enjoyed. She had a description of searching for a spider on its massive web that, for me, rivaled the scene of Gatsby staring off at the green light, one of my all-time favorite literary passages. What beautiful words, Ms. Kent. I hope you still have some saved up for your next book.

I had a hard time settling in to the language of this book at first. The narrative is designed to put you in the 17th century along with the dialogue. I got into the swing of it, though, before the first chapter ended and it was very effective in painting a picture of the times. The stoic love that develops among this family is era-appropriate, believable, and heart-breaking. She did a great job making each character come out of the woodwork in their own time. Especially Thomas Carrier (don't make any assumptions that the Heretic's Daughter's heretic parent is her mother!). But the most amazing thing about this book is the horrific picture she paints in the Salem prison. I can see the piles of barely-alive bodies, hear the women's screams, smell the filthy clothes, and it's all horrible.

I knew very little about the Salem witch trials before reading this book. It left me wanting to know more. A project for another day!

Coming soon...

Right now, I'm reading "The Heretic's Daughter" by Kathleen Kent. After that, probably "Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese.

I don't really ever re-read books. I'm different from most of my (very well-read) extended family in that way. But now that I've started logging, I think I may gradually re-read my faves to be able to make a fresh record of them. But, oh, that will be an undertaking, because most are very long! So, slowly but surely look for these faves: "Trinity" by Leon Uris, "Winds of War"/"War and Remembrance" by Herman Wouk, "Five Smooth Stones" by Anne Fairbairn, "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger, and "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving.

Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger

I read this book with great anticipation, The Time Traveller's Wife being on my list of TOP 5 favorite books. And it let me down.

There is no denying that Niffenegger is an amazing writer. She tells a story beautifully. Like The Time Traveller's Wife, the plot is preposterous. But she so eloquently asks you to suspend your disbelief that you don't mind doing so. The plot was fascinating and I had no trouble reading this book quickly. But I was left unsettled and unsatisfied. And there was just no falling in love with these characters, like Henry and Claire in The Time Traveller's Wife. Probably because it was hard to believe their love for each other.

There was an overload of romance: Robert and his lost Elspeth, Robert and Valentina, Valentina and Julia, Julia and Martin, Martin and Marijke, Edie and Jack, Elspeth and Jack, Julia and Theo as a p.s., blah, blah, blah. There was no need to intertwine these characters to this degree. I think I could have gone for some more ghoulish vengeance rather than all of the ambiguous romantic emotion. The ending called for some good revenge rather than the sort of riding off into the sunset thing that happened with one of the characters.

I did love Martin as a character. His OCD was so charming. And I did fully believe the love between him and his wife - him "taking her out to dinner" over the phone was lovely.

SPOLIERS AHEAD: I am going to try to talk in vague terms to have this be a very mild spoiler, but stop reading if you want to be on the safe side.

The Edie, Elspeth, Jack triangle was a BORE. And confusing. The original Elspeth tried playing both parts to bait him, but he knew and rebuffed her. But she thinks he didn't rebuff her? Because he started to play along. And then he had sex at a party with the original Edie? But he doesn't think he ever bedded the original Edie? So, did he think the woman at the party was a stranger altogether, or did he actually get twin confused and think it was his Elspeth he'd been with? And if he didn't think he'd gotten original Edie pregnant, and knew they'd pulled a switch and sent pregnant Edie along to America, why'd he go along? Did he know they'd eventually switch back? He couldn't have, so he must have been OK with switching gals after all. So, he says to himself, my insecure girlfriend has been playing tricks on me, trying to trap me, I think I'll play along, make her think I like the other one, then I'll take the other pregnant one to America with me, and when she's done nursing whoever's spawn those kids are, I won't say anything if they switch back. What?!?

My biggest problem with this book was Robert's failure to heed his own warning. He knew his Elspeth could be cruel and calculating. He gave the warning to not trust her. And then went right along with very feeble convincing. And after things went badly, he did nothing to try to reverse it all. I can think of a couple of ways they could have reversed it.

A lawyer's note: Julia does not get to stay in the flat. The flat reverts to the second named beneficiary because she did not honor the condition of not having her parents there. Yes, they said that the ban seemed inappropriate at that time, but there were no loopholes in the will. The triggering event happened, so, sorry Julia, you're out.

Sellevision, Augusten Burroughs

Hilarious! This book follows around the hosts of a TV shopping channel, Sellevision. Max is arguably the main character who gets hilariously fired in the first chapter. Peggy Jean is a perfectly-coifed church-goer with the picture-perfect family (except, of course, for the alcoholism, drug addiction, child pornography obsession, and various anger issues). Bebe is the show's matriarch - the gold standard by which everyone else tries to measure themselves. She gets all the best air times and products to sell. Trish is the billionaire's daughter and that's about it. Leigh is the pretty young one who is garnering more and more Sellevision success in the wake of her affair with show exec Howard Toast. Like Max, she also exits the show in hilarious fashion. So does Trish, come to think of it. Am I forgetting anyone? I don't think so.

Things I loved: (1) The slow, casual way I figured out that the story was taking place in the future (key hints: the popularity of the movie Titanic II and Barbara Streisand's Vice Presidential candidacy). (2) Howard Toast's inner monologue after a particularly emotional discussion with his suffering mistress (favorite example: That's some nice rhinoplasty). (3) Peggy Jean's rationalizations for drinking. (4) Trish's father's midnight opening of Tiffany's (poor Pricewaterhouse boyfriend!). (5) There's a lot more that I loved, but I don't want to get into spoilers that matter.

Things I didn't love: (1) Bebe. She was perfect, and her story worked out perfectly for her. There was a hiccup that was going to be hilarious, but it didn't pan out. Yes, something kinda bad happens to her in the end, but it really wasn't that bad and was an afterthought. (2) Trish was boring except for the one plot with her dad opening Tiffany's. Oh, and the end, of course.

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

I LOVED THIS BOOK! It is the first World War II book that I've read from a German's perspective. Fortunately, we're talking about a good German here -- a young girl who is definitely not a Nazi. The narrator of the book is Death, which was interesting. Sometimes, I forgot who the narrator was, and so I would have to read a paragraph twice after reminding myself. I'd like to blame the book for that since I'm normally not a stupid reader, but I'm pregnant right now so it probably was me. At any rate, I enjoyed this book so much that it was never a chore to re-read anything. Our narrator was a little tricky. He claimed to not like surprise endings so he claimed to be telling us the ending up front (like the upcoming death of a main character), but he still hid the really key parts. Leisel Meminger, our hero, forms great relationships in this book. Her connections to Papa, Max, Rudy, and Ilsa (oh, and the racist grumpy lady across the street) are endearing and believable. The author took the smallest things in Leisel's life and made them special. And he took every little word of this book and made it special.

I think I heard this story is based on the author's real-life grandmother or something like that, but I don't care. A good read is a good read to me regardless if it's a "true story" or not.

The Moonflower Vine, Jetta Carlson

The much-forgotten cousin of To Kill a Mockingbird, Carlson's only novel is a wonderful read. It follows the adventures and tragedies of the Soames family (Matthew and Callie, and four daughers, Jessica, Leonie, Mary Jo, and Mathy) on a Missouri farm. The story unfolds nicely as it jumps in time by telling each family member's story seperately from a different time period. I saw the "twist" ending coming from a mile away (and, so, rolled my eyes a little bit when it happened), but it did not take away from my overall enjoyment of this book.

Long Live Kilgore Trout!

I haven't read a Vonnegut book in years. At least 10. But that's what got me started at around age 17 with the obsessive reading. Now, at almost 32, I haven't gone without a book in progress for more than a couple days, no matter how busy by life got. If I don't have a book going, it plagues me. I worry about what I'm going to read next.

I decided today that I wanted to start logging my reading. I doubt I'll have time to actually blog, a log will have to do. But I want to have a record of that which makes me so thankful that we have a much more beautiful and complex way of communicating than a series of farting and tap dancing. RIP, Mr. Vonnegut and Long Live Kilgore Trout!