Reading in Place - Florida, the Bahamas, and At Sea

When I travel, I always make an effort to read something related to where I am.  Sometimes those connections are a bit of a stretch, but it can be a fun challenge.  Earlier this month, my husband and I went to Florida for maybe the tenth time, and the Bahamas for the third time.  For Florida, I had previously tried reading Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen, but I wasn't in the mood to go back to it.  Plus it is in the "wrong" part of Florida, set around and in the Everglades.  I was headed to northern to mid eastern coast of Florida. We would be staying in Vilano Beach, right outside St. Augustine before heading south to Port Canaveral to get on a ship.

It was my plan all along to finish Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy while in Florida, and had been holding on to Acceptance (#3) until I was there.  Now, the setting of the trilogy is technically "Area X," which may or may not be near Florida, but I felt like it was as close as I could get! It was a perfect read for our few days in Florida.  It was cold there, empty, and between the actual landscape and the setting of the book, I wandered Area X in my dreams.

 

"This island is about fourteen miles long, six broad, and forty in circumference, containing what I would estimate as about eight-four square miles or more than fifty thousand acres. The pine-and-oak forest comprises most of the interior, sprawling down toward the shore on the landward side, but the side facing the sea has been assaulted by storms, and there you will find mostly scrub and moss and gnarled bushes."

Another book I kept coming across in my searching was Continental Drift by Russell Banks, which travels from Florida to the Bahamas and dips into New Hampshire and Haiti as well.  Not only is it set in the Bahamas, it is specifically set in Nassau, where we were headed.  This novel has some voodoo in it but also a lot of the author's experience, and he captures the feeling of Nassau in the language and entrepreneurial spirit.  

"A few miles west of Elizabeth Town, the road dips and slants toward the sea before it makes the bend at Clifton Point and curves back along the north side of the island to Nassau, and from the road, the land on both sides seems empty... The bougainvillea, cassia trees, mahoe and annatto, a tangled weave of flower, thorn and hardwood, rise up like a hedgerow and block the human life and cultivation that go on there from the sight of passersby - tourists in rented cars, teenagers on motorbikes, policemen from Nassau in their Toyotas, air-conditioned tour buses filled with peering, pink-skinned ladies and gentlemen from the continent."

 This little passage made me laugh because while in Nassau we were on a bus where the driver intentionally went the wrong way down a one-way street, forcing people off the sidewalk, insisting, "It's my choice." So I suppose I was a pink-skinned lady from the continent. I didn't read this book in Nassau, but on the ship, before and after. Other books I considered bringing with me for the Florida-Bahamas connection are the Travis McGee crime novels by John MacDonald.  I had one on the way to me via Paperbackswap.com but it didn't make it in time.  Most of the other books I have found set in the Bahamas are travel memoirs, such as Boat Girl, which is decent but not great.

Not finding a lot specific to my places, I expanded my search to the Caribbean and just ocean-themed reads.  I had exhausted many of the Caribbean novels I knew of, from The White Woman on the Green Bicycle to Krik? Krak!  Many of the novels set in the Caribbean are written by native authors, which I always prefer, but they were specific to an island other than where I was headed.  I prefer to save those until I end up in those places! 

On my shelves of science fiction and fantasy books, I had a few fantasy novels by female authors that I had not yet read, having to do with the ocean (and in the end, they shared a far more specific theme that would be giving some things away!).  The New Moon's Arms, by Nalo Hopkinson, is set on an imagined Caribbean island. The author is from Jamaica and has lived various places in the Caribbean and Canada, and I really liked her novel Sister Mine.  I started with the Hopkinson, and them moved to Singer from the Sea by Sheri S. Tepper.  This one was a much farther ocean, on the planet of Haven, and the main character (whose name is Genevieve or Jenny) has an unexplained (at first) connection to the sea.  This was a perfect book to read while the ship was moving through the water, sitting on a balcony with the ocean breeze ruffling the pages.  I liked mixing fantasy novels into my place-based reading.  It still worked!

"At this season the terrace tops were furred with golden stubble, horizontal lines of brightness against black rock that towered above ice-glittering, echoing fjords. The journey was mesmerizing. Here great waves swept over the reefs between the islands, sometimes a gentle susurrus of ripples, sometimes great shouting geysers of spray that erupted from blow holes on the lagoon side. As nowhere else in Haven, here was the feel of the great sea, the presence of it, the push and sway of it, and so Garth said, the threat of it as well." - Singer from the Sea

More from the Tournament of Books

 

Since "The Big Game" weekend, I have polished off three more books from the Tournament of Books list.  All have been hard to put down, which I suppose is the highest type of recommendation, although I rated them 5-4-3.5 stars respectively based on my own tastes and opinions. 

That brings my list of books read to 12.  I'm getting closer!  All three were also very geographically specific, so I'm counting them for my Around the USA reading challenge as well.

The 2013 Tournament of Books Finalists - Read (with reviews linked)

• The Round House by Louise Erdrich (my review)
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (my review)
• Arcadia by Lauren Groff (my review)
• May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes (my review)
• The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (my review)
• Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (my review)
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (my review)
• Dear Life by Alice Munro (my review)
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn my review)
• Ivyland by Miles Klee (my review)
• Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple (my review)
• [Winner of the Pre-Tournament Playoff Round] - I'm hoping it is the Fountain, since that is the only one I've read:
• Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (my review)

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
State: Missouri

This audiobook was 19 hours and I finished listening to it in three days. That's on my 3 mile commute. I just couldn't stop. I'd make up reasons to listen. This is a very well-written thriller that I can hardly discuss without giving things away. I almost hate myself for liking it because of all the hype, but it really pulls you in and makes you want to know where it is going. I don't read many thrillers, but this was a good one!

The audiobook is a great way to "read" this, because the chapters are divided between Amy, who has gone missing, through her diary, and Nick, her husband who is a key suspect. The two readers, male and female, really bring the story to life.

Ivyland by Miles Klee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
State: New Jersey

This is a first novel by the author, and I wasn't familiar with his shorter fiction, although I've read almost everything by two of the four authors he lists as his influences - Michel Houellebecq and Nicholson Baker. Based on this book, I'm surprised not to see J.G. Ballard or Philip K. Dick on that list, because I could easily see this novel being influenced by either of their work as well.

Of course, I have read extensively in the dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction worlds. Not much of this one is explained, other than it taking place in New Jersey, but that isn't really a complaint. The reader is dumped into a world of chaos and disorder, and while details are mentioned in passing through various storytelling techniques (going back and forth in time, the story coming from different characters, some who only appear once), you are never really given enough information to fill in the gaps. The world is clearly dominated by Big Pharmaceutical, except not in the stark, sterile way in worlds like in Sleepless by Charlie Huston. In fact, there is rarely a feeling that anyone is actually in control in Ivyland. The cops are taking people home in fleets of ice cream trucks, the infrastructure is falling apart, and everyone seems to have access to drugs that may or may not be what they claim to be.

Half of the people in Ivyland are hardly coherent, either from a virus, or flawed chemical treatment before/after a virus, or because they are addicts. I'm still puzzled over most of them, and pleased by others (a very memorable professor is probably my favorite). The experience of reading this novel is also interesting. The first 100 pages tend toward information dump with a lot of characters and time periods, but fast-paced and interesting. The last 100 pages grow terribly sad as the story goes in directions I didn't expect. At least, if I've read it correctly. The entire thing left me unsettled as a reader. I look forward to what Klee does in the future.


Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
State: Washington

The author tells the story in a very fragmented way - letters, e-mails, legal action, newspaper stories, etc. You find out later that the daughter of Bernadette is the one trying to tell the story this way. I enjoyed this method of storytelling, the same thing that I enjoyed in novels like The Historian. But then it is as if the author doesn't trust her own storytelling, and starts interspersing these elements with narrative from various perspectives, or commentary from the daughter. I found this unnecessary and redundant and not in the same spirit as the rest of the novel. I think she didn't have quite enough faith in the readers to follow the story she was telling!

This is very much the story of a rich northwestern wife who is displaced in her new residence of Seattle after fleeing a career as a successful architect. We get very little about the daughter, and her strengths and quirks tend to shift to match the needs of the story. She didn't have quite as much of her own identity as I would have liked.

Arcadia by Lauren Groff

 

State: New York (Upstate) - 3 of 52
Baked good: Raw citrus cheesecake

Arcadia by Lauren Groff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Why I read it: I've had this on my to-read list for a while, but the fact that it was listed on the Tournament of Books pushed me into moving it up on the list.

As a librarian, one of the worst sins to encounter in writing is using someone else's work without crediting it. Groff has some very poetic language in parts of this book, an element of the novel that many reviewers keep mentioning as one of the good parts. Too bad it isn't always hers. She must have used the "center cannot hold" at least twice, it may have been three times. A nice concept. I think Yeats thought so too, when he wrote it. There are multiple moments like this that took me out of the story in annoyance, not just Yeats.

That said, I'm a sucker for a commune story. I went through a phase of reading novels, memoirs, and studies of communal societies, and have visited several in the United States - New Harmony, IN; Amana, IA; the Shaker Village in Pleasantburg, KY.... it is something that will always be interesting to me. The novel focuses on four stages of Bit, a child born to wandering hippies just as approach property inherited by one of their members in upstate New York. First his young childhood, then his early teen years as the commune predictably falls apart, then his life as a new father in Manhattan, right after the towers fall, and then with his aging parents.

I enjoyed the details of Arcadia - the floury air from baking their own bread, the soy-everything diet, the unwashed bodies, the failed attempts at democracy. It was easy to picture, and I was grateful for the lack of religious undertones for once. I feel like the author took the easy way out in having a central male leader figure, but perhaps some things are stereotypes because they are true. In that case, she is forgiven for the pot as well.

The last section of the four, trying to portray a world facing down pending disaster of spreading disease, was her least believable story. The irony is that it gives a weight to the importance of living off the land, while having shown how difficult it is to make an alternate society work in the long-term.

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The Lichtenberg Figures by Ben Lerner

State: Kansas (4* of 52)

The Lichtenberg Figures by Ben Lerner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Why I read it: Hunting around for authors from Kansas and this volume had received quite a bit of acclaim.

I came across Ben Lerner when I was looking for writers from Kansas. Lerner writes poetry and has published one novel, Leaving the Atocha Station. He is what I would call a very academic poet - very self-aware, intentionally creating structured poems, using words most readers will need to look up. (Goodness, take what I said and magnify it by 100 - check out this video lecture of him speaking on poetic logic and structure.)

This set of poems is described as 52 "sonnets," although they aren't sonnets in the traditional rhyming scheme sense, but rather just in the number of lines each has. The sonnets are unnumbered and unnamed, making them difficult to reference. Over all there are many moments of humor, self-reference, paradox, and conflict. He mentions a few characters, one so often I tried figuring out who he is, and most people have decided he is an imaginary figure (Orlando Duran). A few of them are dedicated "To Benjamin," which some believe to be the poet himself.

He does mention Kansas a few times - Topeka several times. And then there is a biting description of Kansasians (is that what we call them?):
"...There is a suffering somewhere else,
but here in Kansas our acquaintances
rape us tenderly and remain unchanged...."

One of the "for Benjamin" sonnets includes this little segment which is my favorite:
"Sensation dissolves into sense through this idle discussion,
into a sense that sees itself and is afraid. Still, we must finish our coffee
and partition epiphany
into its formative mistakes...."

*I haven't yet posted #3 because of a baked good plan I had.  SOON.

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Review of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

 State: Indiana (2 of 52)
Baked Good: Persimmon Cookies

 The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Why I read it: On the list for the 2013 Tournament of Books, and to represent Indiana in my USA challenge.

I need to stop reading YA books. I'm not the target audience.

No, it's not just that. I'm getting old. I'm Scrooge. I'm a curmudgeon. Young love and Cancer Patients who Learn Important Lessons About the Universe just don't meet any of my needs from a book.

Oh, when I was younger, and life seemed very serious, I loved to be brought to tears from a Noble Dying Character or an Unrequited Love Story, but I am just not that girl anymore.

Why am I using all capital letters. It seems like every time I read a book like this, the author is either wanting to impress me with how very important/precocious/special the characters are. John Green, the author, even references "cancer novels" in his novel, and while it is clear he thinks his is not included, I don't think he actually got as far from that genre as he thinks.

Hazel still Suffers More Than a Teenager Should. She still Learns Valuable Lessons, and Although Battling Terminal Illness, Still Falls in Love. And In the Midst of Great Sorrow, she can still recite Great Works of Literature. Oh, please. This is supposed to be a realistic portrayal of teens? It is pretty amazing how well they get on with their parents....

Okay, I'm sorry, all I can feel is sarcastic. I don't see how it is special enough to be nominated for the 2013 Tournament of Books or why people have swooned over it the way they have. I know it was important for the author, who spent some time in his early 20s working as a chaplain at a children's hospital, to finish this book idea he'd had in his head for eleven years. But I find some of his newer ideas (older books) better. I loved An Abundance of Katherines, so don't see this as dismissal of the author completely.

Besides being on the list for the 2013 Tournament of Books, I read this because it was set in Indiana, for my Around the USA challenge. It was fun to hear mentions of places I have been, including a sculpture garden that was planned back behind the Indianapolis Museum of Art that was still unbuilt when I moved away. One sculpture takes on special meaning in the novel. Characters tromp through Broad Ripple and drive up Keystone, and I could see these places in my mind.

The audio version was well done, and though I hear the author also did his own, I think this is best read by a woman since the story is told in first-person and the main character is female.

Book Beginnings: Shadow Country

I was too drained to do any book blogging last night (classes start Monday), but I'm going to take a break from my syllabus tweaking to post my book beginning on a Saturday!  

One of the things I love about GoodReads is the number of groups a reader can join.  It is easy to find community based on what you love to read.  I joined On the Southern Literary Trail last year in an attempt to read more southern lit, since I moved to the south in 2006.  I haven't always been able to join in on the book selections, but the discussion is always very in-depth, and people are always bringing in additional research.  I learn so much more than I would on my own!

Most of the time, there are two books a month - one that falls pre-1980, and one that falls 1980 or after, in an attempt to read both "classics" and contemporary literature from the south.  This month, there was a tie in the contemporary category.  I only have time to read one of these books, but this one was already on my shelf at home to read for my Around the USA in 52 Books challenge.  It was $1 at a used bookstore, and I had never heard of the author, so I decided to take a chance.

The book is Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen.  It is a mighty tome, originally published in three volumes.  The author always wanted it to be one cohesive novel, so he rewrote it, removed 1500 pages, and republished it.  Shadow Country ended up winning the National Book Award for fiction in 2008.

Basic description: Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.

I've read about 30 pages so far, and that isn't much of a book that is 900 pages.  The chapters are really short, introducing characters, but as you'll see from the first few lines, the atmosphere is dark and violent.  I'm looking forward to learning more about this historical figure, and experiencing a part of Florida that I haven't yet visited.  

Prologue: October 24, 1910
"Sea birds are aloft again, a tattered few. The white terns look dirtied in the somber light and they fly stiffly, feeling out an element they no longer trust. Unable to locate the storm-lost minnows, they wander the thick waters with sad muted cries, hunting seamarks that might return them to the order of the world."

Review of The Black Flower by Howard Bahr

The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War by Howard Bahr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Growing up in the northwest, the Civil War / War Between the States/ War of Northern Aggression gets a brief mention, but classtime tended to focus on local history. Fur trade, Oregon trail, Native Americans. Since moving to the south, it has become more clear how very recent events like this war were, and everything seems related to it in some way. Most of the time, I get mistaken for a Southerner, but I always feel like I should know more about the history.

This book was selected for the December read for the On the Southern Literary Trail Group, one I joined intentionally to have greater exposure to southern lit. This piece of historical fiction serves two purposes - one more southern novel, but one that takes a very intimate and specific look at a small group of Confederate soldiers surrounding the events of the battle in Franklin, TN, in November 1864.

Most of the story circles around a rifleman named Bushrod Carter, although sometimes it goes off on tangents following other characters' backstories. My favorite bits of the book were between Bushrod and Anna, a girl helping out at a home the soldiers end up at for rest and recovery. You might be rolling your eyes and saying, "Oh, typical girl," but I'm not a war novel person most of the time. This would have never been something I would have picked up on my own to read, but I'm glad I did. It humanizes the events and the soldiers, it brings the situation to a very realistic place through descriptive and emotional writing, and makes some connections to the future (the present) that I was nodding along with, things I recognized in the southerners I know.

The most memorable moment for me is the author talking about the impact the war had on the women, after burying their dead, but also after welcoming home the men who hadn't died in battle.

"...This the women could not forgive. Much was taken, too little returned; distinctions blurred, and the hearts that might have lain like picked roses in the women's hands were buried forever under the stones of the dead.

So the women would not forgive. Their passion remained intact, carefully guarded and nurtured by the bitter knowledge of all they had lost, of all that had been stolen from them. For generations they vilified the Yankee race so the thief would have a face, a name, a mysterious country into which he had withdrawn and from which he might venture again...."

One Yankee slur in passing I'm including here so I can go research it:
"'Never fear,' said the Major. He smiled his broad smile, the corners of his mouth crinkling. 'The day ain't dawned I can't outrun a tribe of cheese-eaters.'"
Cheese-eaters? Ha!

Music is so frequently mentioned that I hunted down the songs explicitly mentioned and created a Spotify playlist. Annie Laurie is used throughout, a Scottish-origin ballad that seemed to comfort the soldiers, in fact they seemed to prefer it even as heading into battle, over a rousing march (much to one band-leader's chagrin!).

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