Reading Envy 003: 3 of 5 Stars

On our third episode, we were joined by Julie Davis, referred to fondly on this podcast as Sister Julie Loquacious (gold star if you catch the reference).  Julie has a multi-faceted internet presence indeed!  Scott knew about her several years ago from her blog, The Happy Catholic, and then she showed up on an episode of SFF Audio.  They started their own podcast, A Good Story is Hard to Find, where they examine film, television, and books through a Catholic lens.  Two Catholic lenses.  Julie also records books you should know about on Forgotten Classics.  She is always reading a wide variety of books, so we were very happy to have her as our second guest! 

Julie whittled down her list to three titles she has been reading recently:

• S - JJ Abrams,
• Bone Dance by Emma Bull
• The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

Jenny selected three from her last month, okay five:

• Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer
• Positron by Margaret Atwood (no longer available for purchase since Margaret turned it into a novel, The Heart Goes Last )
• One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak

Scott expounds on his three selections, and on the self-publishing world:

• Crying of Lot 49 - Pynchon
• The Loon - Michaelbrent Collings
• Cold Dish (Walt Longmire #1) - Craig Johnson

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 003: 3 of 5 Stars


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Tournament of Books: Ozeki vs. Hamid

I'm playing along with the Tournament of Books! 

Today's book match:

A Tale for the Time Being v. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

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This is an interesting pairing of books, both of which I originally gave 3/5 stars.  Both have to do with a very modern Asia, one that has been deeply effected by significant change.  In A Tale for the Time Being, it is natural disaster - the tsunami and earthquake in Japan.  In How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, it is the economic shift, providing new opportunities where they may not have been any before.

Both novels employ unique storytelling styles - the Ozeki is told in pieces through a discovered journal addressed to the Time Being, and the Hamid is told as a self-help style book, written almost entirely in second person.  The Ozeki is overly complicated and the Hamid is deceivingly simple.

How complicated?  You wouldn't believe everything that is crammed into A Tale for the Time Being - the journal of 16 year old Nao living in Japan, her great-uncle's diaries from World War II, a biography of her grandmother Niko, and a later-parallel story of Ruth, an author living in Canada who finds Nao's journal and other ephemera washed up on her island shore. Just these ideas and concepts were almost one too many, and then the author decided to throw in a touch of bizarre quantum mechanics, people struggling with Alzheimers, memory loss, suicide attempts, bullying, and a bizarre character trying to plant ancient plants.

How simple? The tone of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is pretty basic, with each chapter focusing on a different topic a person would need to rise from slums to a self-made success in business.  It wasn't until after I finished that I realized I had also learned the story of the character in there, that I knew about his lifelong obsession with the Pretty Girl, and just how far he would go to try to make a buck.  In the end, it wasn't as simple or as positive as it felt while reading it.  I think this kind of writing, and any time you get a story down to its bones, takes a masterful turn.

I'm not sure how the official judge will think, but for me, I wanted to tell Ozeki to go back, remove all but one accessory, and pull it back into a cleaner story.  There were good parts but in the end all the angles muddied the waters.  I'm giving this round to How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia!

ETA: The official ruling over at Tournament of Books.  

Tournament of Books: The Luminaries vs. Hill William

I'm playing along with the Tournament of Books! 

Today's round puts up two very different books:

The Luminaries vs. Hill William

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Full disclosure: I did not finish The Luminaries.  I know that it won the Man Booker Prize and I know I shouldn't talk about books I have not finished, but let me try.  I read 80 pages, but the book is over 800.  There are definitely things I may have missed.  In comparison, Hill William is a mere 200 pages, made even shorter by being written in stories.

The interesting thing to me about this pairing is that I really loved an earlier book from both of these authors.  I was first introduced to Eleanor Catton when I read all the nominees for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2010, and her novel The Rehearsal was on the list.  Where The Luminaries is sweeping in scope (a favorite phrase of professional reviewers to describe historical fiction that just maybe attempts to do too much), The Rehearsal is much smaller - just a few character in a girls' school with a scandal as the plot trigger.  Still, small does not mean insignificant.  I felt she captured the emotions and the characters so well.  The story is told non-linearly and I was completely interested the entire time.  When I heard she was coming out with a new novel, I was very excited.  I got a review copy, even more excited.  But it was like reading an entirely different novelist.  I have to admit I just don't care very much about the gold rush in New Zealand, and found the characters in the first 80 pages not to be nearly as compelling as the characters in the smaller world of The Rehearsal.  I still don't feel guilty for setting it aside as "not my thing," but I am willing to admit that I did not stick it out with Catton to really understand what she was attempting.

Scott McLanahan wrote an earlier book to Hill William called Crapalachia: A Biography of Place.  They are both stories based on his childhood, family, and acquaintances where he grew up in the hills of West Virginia.  Crapalachia was funny yet still managed to convey his deep love for his family, as crazy as they could be.  Hill William is more gritty, more realistic, and pretty darn uncomfortable at times.  Uncomfortable as in I sometimes wished not to be reading it.  The author is smart to continue writing in stories. Even though the stories are related, they are also over soon, and he can put in a truth about poverty or rape, but it can punch you in the face and walk away.

This isn't the first time discomfort will come up in a Tournament of Books discussion, so I'll save most of my waxing for another book, but one thing I know for sure - it is better for a book to stick with me than for me to abandon it.  And for that reason, this round is an easy call: Hill William by Scott McLanahan.  I fully expect the expert ToB judge to pick The Luminaries, and here is where I need to decide if I'll go with my own brackets to the end.  I think I should.  Any thoughts?

ETA: See the official ruling at the Tournament of Books.

Tournament of Books: Life After Life vs. Woke Up Lonely

I'm playing along with the Tournament of Books!  I finished almost every book this year, and honestly was impressed by very few.  This could get interesting.  I'll play along with their brackets, but will declare my own winner at the end.  This is a fun journey ever year into recent literature.

First - the pre-tournament play-off round.  Is this something that happens in basketball?  Ha.

Life After Life vs. Woke Up Lonely

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I'm afraid this round is an easy call.  One book has stuck with me, and one I had to re-read my review to try to even recall what the book was about, and I'd read it far more recently.  Never a good sign.

Life After Life got a lot of acclaim this past year, making the shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize), and had positive reviews in the NY Times and Publishers Weekly. The story is very English in subject matter and philosophy. I really loved the first 2/3 of this novel, about Ursula Todd, who dies shortly after birth in 1910 but gets the chance to live and die a multitude times more. The story goes back and forth between 1910, the Great War, and World War II, but depending on how the story goes it might take place various places in England, even Munich in one concept. It is like those old Choose Your Adventure novels only the reader doesn't get to choose. The author could have done that and had a similar result. The story doesn't really get linear until about 2/3 in, and for me that's where I wasn't as interested. I've read a lot of novels about World War II I guess, and I didn't find a lot of new there. I still enjoyed the book very much. I had to keep reminding myself that this was the same author of Emotionally Weird (a book I loved because it made me laugh) and Case Histories. 

Woke Up Lonely, on the other hand, suffers from inconsistencies that led me not to enjoy it as much as I might have otherwise. The characters have incredible power - one is an international cult leader so influential that North Korea has started developing a relationship with him and the feds are watching him, the other is a master of disguise and spying - but both fall apart because they miss each other (they were married at one point). Great portions of the book feel like the author got tired - at one point the cult leader is recording a message for his daughter in case he is killed (and so the author didn't even need to write dialogue or action in that entire section), at a later point his ex-wife is writing to him on hostage negotiation notecards, at a point in the novel which should be exciting but instead turns into one very long list. It felt lazy, and ultimately I did not even remember this novel.  It's a shame because I love cults, fictional or otherwise, and I really wanted to love this book.

So the pre-tournament win goes to the only book to also end up with an entry in JennyBakes, my trusty baking blog: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.  (Warning: this book may make you hungry!)

The official judge for this round is author Geraldine Brooks, and you can read her verdict as well as the commentary afterwards at the official Tournament of Books site. 

Jenny's Books Added - February 2014

Books and Tea February 2014 (eBooks and digital audio not pictured)

In January, I started the monthly tradition of posting about the books I'd added to my collection, whether or not I read them.  The list that follows will be quite a bit longer because I added quite a few digital books this month!

In the physical pile:
The Savannah Walking Tour & Guidebook by Paul Bland
Annihilation (Southern Reach Trilogy #1) by Jeff VanderMeer
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
As They Were by M.F.K. Fisher
Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir by Frances Mayes
Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times edited by Neal Astby
George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger (audiobook)
Eminent Hipsters by Donald Fagen (audiobook)

In the virtual pile - eBooks:
Positron #1-3 by Margaret Atwood (I'm Starved for You, Choke Collar, Erase Me)
A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg
The Here and Now by Ann Brashares
Days of Blood and Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone #2) by Laini Taylor
Deep Winter by Samuel W. Gailey
The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma
Euphoria by Lily King
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

In the virtual pile - audiobooks:
Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple by Deborah Layton
Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson
Archetype (Archetype #1) by M.D. Waters
The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness
I Shall Be Near to You by Erin Lindsay McCabe
Shift Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey
Dust by Hugh Howey
One More Thing by B.J. Novak
The Martian by Andy Weir

Oh goodness.  The list alone is long enough for a blog post, so I will try to keep this short.  No, I have not read all of these.  The large mass of books this month is largely to do with downloading books I had queued up in NetGalley for fear of losing them, spending credits in Audible for fear of losing them, and being on this strange audiobook kick.  Not print. Audio. That's really weird for me.  I have worked my way through seven audiobooks this month (only one purchased before February 1), a number that is incredibly high for my usual consumption!

One book on this list has an interesting story to it.  I am a member of the book club for the International Center of the Upstate, and once a year we bring in a local author.  Susan Tekulve came to talk about her novel In the Garden of Stone, but I also left with a few authors written down to try.  She said she often reads everything an author has written before moving on to the next author, and that she was currently in the middle of M.F.K. Fischer.  I hunted down one of her books through Paperbackswap.com, but have not tried it yet.  I have a few unread foodie books at home; I should probably quit bringing them home but they stare at me with those EYES.

I got a few other books from Paperbackswap.com - The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (for my reading goals 2014) and Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times. This is an incredible book of poetry that I first found through interlibrary loan and I've had on my wish list for years now. It was perfect timing for it to become available this week - I need some uplifting poetry! I'm debating whether I should send this to my mother or not. It is out of print, so I'd have to get her a used copy regardless.

Most of you probably know that I coordinate reviews for SFFAudio.com.  I get a lot of audiobooks at my house, although less come in boxes than had previously.  Most of the time I'm just seeing long lists of all the shiny new books coming out, and that leads me towards reviews or purchases.  I got the Kilmeade, Fagen, Layton, McCabe, Ness, and Waters this way.  Another reviewer wrote about The Martian, but I spent my own Audible credits on that one, as well as the Novak, the two Howeys, and the Lawson.  Most of these I have either finished or have them downloaded onto my iPhonish for the next week.  I have a short commute but if I listen through lunch and during walks, I can get through a lot of audiobook at 2x speed.

Another source for review books, NetGalley, is to blame for almost all the eBooks on this list, everything except the Atwood, Wizenburg, and Stewart (these three I blame on Kindle Daily Deals!).  I took a break from Sue Monk Kidd after seeing her speak (long story) but I am glad to be in the middle of The Invention of Wings.  It is based on the true story of Sarah Grimke, an abolitionist who was shunned from the pre-Civil War Charleston of the early 1800s.  I'm heading to Savannah and Charleston in a week, so it is nice to immerse back into a bit of its history before taking my sister around. 

I didn't explain every book that I've added, in fact I feel a wee bit sheepish at the volume of this list and post.  You can follow my reviews of every little thing more closely at GoodReads, listen to me talk about books on the Reading Envy podcast, purchase my delicious blend of Reading Envy tea (coconut earl grey) or stalk me elsewhere on the internet.  There is a magical place where I post pictures of books and beagles....

Review of Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr.

I don't often post reviews to this blog that I'm already posting in GoodReads, but I think for books that I think are fantastic and spectacular, I will do so.

 Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is going to be a long review because this book took me two months to finish! I had this anthology for several years before I cracked it. My podcast co-host mentioned one story from it and I decided to thumb through it too, and I was hooked. These stories command attention in a way hardly anything I read does. I had to read several of them multiple times. I couldn't skim. I had to ask questions and think about them, and several are still swirling in my head. I had to take breaks in between to think and reflect, and I couldn't read more than one at a time. These are the best kinds of stories, and I have a lot to say!

But first, a line from the last page of the last story:
"You carry despair as your gift."

The Girl Who Was Plugged In is my favorite story of the entire anthology. I know it won a bunch of awards, and for good reason. It is thought provoking and terribly sad and I can't get the ending out of my head. It is about a girl who is plugged into a virtual reality, with her brain and emotions running a physical avatar. She falls in love but it's impossible. So gut wrenching! I say a bit more about it on the Reading Envy podcast, Episode 2.

"She loves him back with her whole heart... Except. Except that it's really P. Burke five thousand miles away who loves Paul. P. Burke the monster down in a dungeon smelling of electrode paste. A caricature of a woman burning, melting, obsessed with true love. Trying over twenty-double-thousand miles of hard vacuum to reach her beloved through girl-flesh numbed by an invisible film. Feeling his arms around the body he thinks is hers, fighting through shadows to give herself to him. Trying to taste and smell him through beautiful dead nostrils, to love him back with a body that goes dead in the heart of the fire."

Houston, Houston, Do You Read? was probably the most disturbing story in the anthology, especially the idea of the "night side" of people. Phew. I'd like to forget it, actually. I suppose that points to the ability Tiptree has to create such a visceral reaction.

With Delicate Mad Hands is a story that keeps getting more intense and more strange. I kept thinking we'd hit the limit and on it would go, until you're talking about Pig Empires. I read this one another time because I was convinced I had dreamed it, that surely there wasn't such a weird story in the universe. No, there it was. This was probably my second favorite. Tiptree (aka Alice Sheldon) takes the revenge fantasy where it has never gone before.

We Who Stole the Dream probably has the most imaginative world-building. I think I like Tiptree best when her stories are in space or virtual space. This is a great example of a space story, with themes of oppression, war, slavery, genocide. Another good one is A Momentary Taste of Being.

On the Last Afternoon, on the other hand, seems to be set maybe in Florida (although it could be another planet) and these sea cow like creatures are wiping out humanity with their mating cycles (not by mating with them, they just have this enormous size... hard to explain)... It was a good example of humanity being minimized by uncontrollable nature, another theme she seems to use a lot. I wanted to skim this story because the creatures made me uncomfortable, especially the Nonion head that the patriarch is always talking to.
"Man is an animal whose dreams come true and kill him."
[

The Girl Who Was Plugged In is my favorite story of the entire anthology. I know it won a bunch of awards, and for good reason. It is thought provoking and terribly sad and I can't get the ending out of my head. It is about a girl who is plugged into a virtual reality, with her brain and emotions running a physical avatar. She falls in love but it's impossible. So gut wrenching! I say a bit more about it on the Reading Envy podcast, Episode 2.

"She loves him back with her whole heart... Except. Except that it's really P. Burke five thousand miles away who loves Paul. P. Burke the monster down in a dungeon smelling of electrode paste. A caricature of a woman burning, melting, obsessed with true love. Trying over twenty-double-thousand miles of hard vacuum to reach her beloved through girl-flesh numbed by an invisible film. Feeling his arms around the body he thinks is hers, fighting through shadows to give herself to him. Trying to taste and smell him through beautiful dead nostrils, to love him back with a body that goes dead in the heart of the fire."

Houston, Houston, Do You Read? was probably the most disturbing story in the anthology, especially the idea of the "night side" of people. Phew. I'd like to forget it, actually. I suppose that points to the ability Tiptree has to create such a visceral reaction.

With Delicate Mad Hands is a story that keeps getting more intense and more strange. I kept thinking we'd hit the limit and on it would go, until you're talking about Pig Empires. I read this one another time because I was convinced I had dreamed it, that surely there wasn't such a weird story in the universe. No, there it was. This was probably my second favorite. Tiptree (aka Alice Sheldon) takes the revenge fantasy where it has never gone before.

We Who Stole the Dream probably has the most imaginative world-building. I think I like Tiptree best when her stories are in space or virtual space. This is a great example of a space story, with themes of oppression, war, slavery, genocide. Another good one is A Momentary Taste of Being.

On the Last Afternoon, on the other hand, seems to be set maybe in Florida (although it could be another planet) and these sea cow like creatures are wiping out humanity with their mating cycles (not by mating with them, they just have this enormous size... hard to explain)... It was a good example of humanity being minimized by uncontrollable nature, another theme she seems to use a lot. I wanted to skim this story because the creatures made me uncomfortable, especially the Nonion head that the patriarch is always talking to.
"Man is an animal whose dreams come true and kill him."

(hide spoiler)]
I don't even know what to say about some of the stories that end so perfectly or magically or sorrowfully that to describe them at all would ruin the experience. These should be savored and read and then re-read. Highly, highly recommended.

Why I Love Disaster and Destruction

Photo courtesy of Sasha Maksymenko in Flickr

I have had a strange week. Among other negative events, I had an e-mail from my mother earlier in the day on Wednesday that she shaved her head (she is at the end of her first of six chemo treatments and the hair is already gone.) I couldn't sleep.  I stumbled across a link to a story about the protests in Ukraine, and found I could watch them on a live stream.  Loud voices, two men, I think perhaps they were broadcasters or protesters, were speaking loudly throughout.  Not speaking a word of Ukrainian, I have no idea what they were saying, which added an element of fear and chaos to what already felt unsettling.

Even though I was up until 2 AM,  I slept better than I had all week.

That's a bit disturbing, isn't it?  Maybe it's not.  I've been re-re-reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, and in the section on developing the right brain, as part of the second habit, he mentions the benefit of expanding perspective. He says that an unplanned negative experience can knock us out of our left brain. While he focuses on visualizing success as a way toward positive growth, the little bit I resonated with was what I think I was unintentionally gaining from absorbing my mind with the protests and violence in Kiev.  Oh, perspective.  There is more going on in the world than involves my small family. There is worse violence and struggle. Even with this fact, there is still the hope that revolutions bring change and violence can end. 

This, my friends, is why I am also completely absorbed by the subgenre of speculative fiction that is dystopia, post-apocalypse, disaster, destruction, etc.  Whatever name you have for it, whatever flavor it is, it really is a favorite.  It always has been, even when life is going okay. Beyond the creative ways authors develop for humanity to implode or disappear, the real magic happens in the after.  What kind of societies rise up? What religions do they have? What do politics look like and who has the power? Authors who address these questions in creative ways (positive or negative) keep my attention.  I realize most people wouldn't immediately grab a book of destruction when life is going awry, but it is worth a try! 

A few recommendations:
The Earthseed series (only two books) by Octavia Butler
MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood
Silo series by Hugh Howey (several omnibus publishings - Wool, Shift, Dust)
Wastelands edited by John Joseph Adams, for short story fans



Outside speculative fiction, which has the best destruction since there are no limitations, I can also recommend books on cults.  Usually biography and memoir, people who have lived through them and escaped them.   Hooray! I need to find more books on cults and communes to add to my GoodReads shelf. 

A few recommendations:
Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple by Deborah Layton (I listened to this book this week! The print is older but the audio is new.)
My Life in Orange by Tim Guest



What is your reading escape?  What expands your perspective?