Books Worth Reading

Book News and Views

November 5, 2009 at 2:59 pm | In Authors, On the Web | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ayn Rand, Post-apocalypse, Science fiction, Stephen King

Cover of Under the Dome: A Novel

I have a ton of links saved up, so let’s get right to them!

Have you tried Twitter’s new lists feature yet? I have created lists of authors and book news sites, which you may choose to follow (but they are biased toward genre fiction and my favorites). P.S. Let me know if you are on Twitter, because I’d like to follow you.
It’s November, so Stephen King must have a new book out. Here’s the trailer and some early reviews for Under the Dome. He also has a new poem in Playboy and a new story in the New Yorker. And he’s writing a comic book.
Ayn Rand is not my favorite author (to say the least), but two new biographies shed some light on her perplexing continued appeal. Here’s a review at Slate.
Love to read about the apocalypse? I know I do! One writer shares why he likes to write about it. Here’s a nifty graph showing how the nature of the apocalypse has changed over time in post-apocalyptic fiction. Another graph by the same author categorizes apocalypses (apocalypi?) into various groupings, something we organization-nerds always love to see.
Finally, don’t forget that November 18 is International Science Fiction Reshelving Day.

My Favorite Reads: A Bunch of “Best of” Book Lists

November 1, 2009 at 2:24 pm | In Books, Reading Lists | 2 Comments
Tags: Fiction, Literary fiction, Literature, Nonfiction, Speculative fiction

For a while now, I have been maintaining a collection of “best of” book lists, which I wanted to share with you. These lists are divided chronologically and by broad genre, and are composed solely of books that I have read and given 4 or 5 stars. They are hosted at Lists of Best and updated as I read more.

Best pre-20th century literature – Includes poetry, drama, nonfiction and fiction.

Best of the 20th century:

Note: I separated literary fiction from speculative fiction because I think there was a real separation between genre writing and more mainstream writing during this time. While the genres of horror, science fiction and fantasy weren’t invented during this period, they were definitely robustly explored and defined. Also, this keeps the lists from getting way too long.

Best of the 21st century (thus far):

Note: I merged literary, or mainstream, fiction back with speculative fiction deliberately because I think that now the lines between genres are blurring. Clearly, Neil Gaiman and Stephen King are genre writers, but how would you classify Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, David Mitchell or Cormac McCarthy? Better to call it all just fiction, and read it all.

The best of the best – five-star books only.

Happy reading!

What I Read This Month: October 2009

October 31, 2009 at 2:37 pm | In Books, Monthly Reading | 2 Comments
Tags: Dorothy Bryant, Fantasy, Madeleine L'Engle, Margaret Atwood, Nancy Farmer, P D James, Science fiction, Speculative fiction, Young adult

Cover of The Children Of Men

This was an excellent reading month. I started a new project to read more science fiction written by women (which I am blogging about), and that inspired me to read a lot of high-quality books.

First up, I actually bought and read a brand-new book, which is unusual for me. I finished Margaret Atwood’s excellent companion piece to Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood. It is set during the same dystopian/apocalyptic period as Oryx and Crake but follows two female characters who are members of a religious-environmental cult called God’s Gardeners (there are even hymns). I have to say that I enjoyed this novel even more than Oryx, although it had the same kind of abrupt, unexplained ending that led me to believe a third novel might be planned. I wrote a much lengthier review here.

Two rereads this month: The Children of Men by P.D. James and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Both were as good as I remembered, although I was surprised to discover how much the film version of Children of Men veered away from the novel (it had been years since I read it). I was remarking to a friend that my 19-month-old son wasn’t really talking yet, and she compared him to Wrinkle’s Charles Wallace — definitely a compliment, that.

Some new books as well: The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant and The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer. The first was billed as sci fi, but really it is a utopian fantasy. It was still quite good, although it struck me as a little naive. The second is intended for young adults, but I found it enthralling and not nearly as simplistic as most YA books I read.

I am currently taking a departure from this month’s trend and reading Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island for my book club. Since I am a bit of an Anglophile, and I love anything that gently pokes fun at the British, I am already enjoying it very much.

Roundup: 5 books read (click the titles for my full review or reading notes).

The Year of the Flood, The Children of Men, A Wrinkle in Time, The House of the Scorpion

The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You

My rating scale:

1 star: Abandoned before finishing. Don’t waste your time.
2 stars: Poor. Avoid with extreme prejudice.
3 stars: Average. Read it, have a good time and move on. Or not.
4 stars: Great. Push it on your friends and family.
5 stars: Excellent. Keep it, treasure it, reread it.

Disclaimer: My ratings are very personal and may have little to do with the book’s artistic or commercial merit, or its place in the literary canon. Rather, the rating reflects how the story, characters and writing spoke to me and augmented my understanding of the world.

Book News and Views

October 24, 2009 at 1:44 pm | In Genres, Writing | Leave a Comment
Tags: Alternate history, E-book, Post-apocalypse, Science fiction, Stephen King

Once again, I present a bevy of reading- and writing-related links for your weekend perusing pleasure.

Are you a writer stuck for a plot twist? Here are 43 essential third-act twists. I am partial to “all the butlers did it.” (Dresdan Codak)
Here is Where is a blog about forgotten important places in American history. Boing Boing suggests you mine the sites for alternate history plots, but it’s also interesting reading for history and travel buffs.
And speaking of alternate history, Today in Alternate History is a blog recounting historical events that never happened.
Switching over to the post-apocalyptic genre, here is an excellent essay on the “cosy catastrophe” sub-genre. I guess some of us are actually looking forward to the end of the world. (Tor.com)
By the way, does the label “science fiction” still apply, or are we living in a post-SF world? I prefer the label, even if just for separating the geek from the chaff. (Guardian)
A first look at The Talisman comic book adaptation leaves me a little underwhelmed, but what do you think? (Entertainment Weekly)
Some e-book news: Futurismic reviews the B&N Nook reader and Google plans to launch an e-book store to compete with Amazon (via Mashable).
It is tough being a parent and a writer. Sonya Chung delves into the Mommy problem. (The Millions)
Taking a cue from LOLCats, here is LOLerature. I guess authors don’t talk any better than cats.

Old Favorite: July, July

October 19, 2009 at 2:20 pm | In Books, Reviews | Leave a Comment
Tags: Literary fiction, Tim O'Brien

July, July, Tim O’Brien (2002)

It is July of 2000, and the members of the class of 1969 at Darton Hall College are having their 30-year reunion, one year too late. In this novel we meet several of those not-so-gracefully aging flower children, now shopworn and wondering what their lives were really all about. And as the reunion progresses, we journey back into each one’s life, to other Julys in other years, when important choices were made and paths were taken that could not be reversed.

While the story and its characters are a bit confusing at first, jumping from person to person so it’s difficult to keep straight who is who, who loves who, who is married to whom, that is all intentional, and its meaning comes clear as each person’s story unfolds. Because that’s what memory is like, not a smoothly unfolding continuum but a jumble of moments, the most important moments making up a patchwork of a life. The book feels uneven from time to time, or rushed, or as if some characters get short shrift while others – particularly David, who represents the Vietnam experience – appear far too frequently, but none of that really matters.

Because these perfectly ordinary people are, in the end, completely compelling, and so are their perfectly ordinary lives. Breast cancer, Vietnam flashbacks, jiltings, divorces, affairs, the stupid mistakes we all make and we all can relate to, are lovingly detailed. And these characters, despite their many, very human faults, are our friends, our spouses, ourselves – and all the more endearing for it.

Old Favorite: Tepper Isn’t Going Out

October 16, 2009 at 1:49 pm | In Books, Reviews | Leave a Comment
Tags: Calvin Trillin, Literary fiction

Cover of Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel

Tepper Isn’t Going Out, Calvin Trillin (2001)

This is a little novel that actually ends up saying quite a lot – about the city of New York, about the modern idea of celebrity, about the seemingly random connections that give order to a chaotic universe. But mostly it’s about parking.

The main character, Tepper, is a hobbyist parker. He finds a legal spot and squats there, because he actually isn’t going out. This strange habit eventually makes it into the newspapers, turning Tepper into a kind of modern-day guru on the mountaintop. New Yorkers make the journey to his current parking spot to ask his advice on any subject.

Eventually, Tepper’s parking habit entangles him with the mayor of New York, who is obsessed with keeping order (and who is not-so-subtly modeled on pre-9/11 Rudy Giuliani), and so the story gets rolling, culminating in street riots, demonstrations, trials – but all conducted in a very quiet, orderly manner. It’s a subtly humorous book that will make anyone want to go parking, but not go out.

Old Favorite: Mystic River

October 15, 2009 at 1:46 pm | In Books, Reviews | Leave a Comment
Tags: Dennis Lehane, Literary fiction

Image via Wikipedia

Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)

5 stars!

Lehane is a writer who can conjure up powerful, evocative, unusual images in a very succinct way. This gift makes his characters, settings and story ring very true, and that – plus an underlying theme of hopelessness and the bitter taste of life – imbue this novel with power.

The story begins when three boyhood friends – Sean, Jimmy and Dave – are fighting in the street. They are interrupted by a car driving up, and a man who pretends to be a police officer persuades Dave to get into the car. The boy who comes back four days later is no longer Dave but a damaged soul. Fast-forward 25 years, when Jimmy’s daughter is brutally murdered. Sean is the police officer investigating the case, and Dave, for reasons connected to that fateful day when he got in that car, is the prime suspect.

Everything is connected, this book says. The future events of your life completely depend on whether you did or did not get into a car when you were eleven years old. That’s why this story seems so bleak – none of these characters can escape their fates, and eventually Jimmy and Dave stop trying. Only Sean holds out some hope by trying to overcome the cynicism that his job has engendered in him and reunite with his family.

Screeenwriting 101 — Dennis Lehane (gointothestory.com)
Up Front: Dennis Lehane (nytimes.com)

Old Favorite: The Corrections

October 14, 2009 at 12:40 pm | In Books, Reviews | Leave a Comment
Tags: Jonathan Franzen, Literary fiction, National Book Award

Image via Wikipedia

The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)

What I think makes this book amazing is that it is only about a rather ordinary family — a character portrait of a father at the end of his life, his wife and his three adult children. Yet it remains absolutely engrossing from beginning to end. Would we find our own families as fascinating if we were allowed into every nook and cranny of their lives, into their most secret thoughts? Franzen has flayed open each member of the Lambert family and shown us everything with no flinching, from insanity and death and wasted lives to failures of marriages, careers and love affairs—all the messy stuff that gets to the heart of what it means to be human. As Franzen sums it up:

“The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid the price for the privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself.”

Despite all that, I wouldn’t say that The Corrections is a downer. It mirrors life in that way, too: sometimes melancholy or depressing, some points of utter despair and other spikes of hope, but mostly just moving on.

#1: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (themillions.com)

Old Favorite: Mr. Phillips

October 13, 2009 at 12:13 pm | In Books, Reviews | 1 Comment
Tags: John Lanchester, Literary fiction

Cover of Mr. Phillips

Mr. Phillips, John Lanchester (2000)

When you boil it down, nothing much happens in this engrossing little novel. It chronicles a day in the life of Mr. Phillips, an accountant who was recently laid off and, afraid to tell his wife about his predicament, spends his days wandering through London. As he moves aimlessly from bus to train, from museum to restaurant to church to bank, and then back home again, he keeps up a constant internal narrative, thinking about his past and the women he’d like to sleep with and the statistical probability of a person dying before he could cash in a winning lottery ticket.

While it doesn’t sound like a very exciting read, the story caught hold of me and kept me enthralled. Mainly, it’s the writing; the words are so precise, and the writing style rolls the reader right along with Mr. Phillips through his day. But it’s also the character of Mr. Phillips himself. At first glance, he is merely an unassuming middle-aged man, the kind of person we see around us every day, but the swirl of thoughts inside his head are a fascinating mix of the mundane and the startling – one minute he’s thinking about sex, the next he’s doing sums in his head. By the end of the book, we have not just traveled around London with Mr. Phillips – we have practically become him.