Coping with Books: "The End of Your Life Book Club"

Book: The End of Your Life Book Club
Author: Will Schwalbe
Pages: 336
Copy: library book
Read: I finished this book on December 26
Spoilers: the mother dies at the end--but you know that from page one

I still can't figure out why I don't love this book. I mean, I read it quickly and enjoyed it well enough. But something about it is off. This partly may be because I've read few memoirs--I may just not know quality when I see it. But I don't think that's it. It could be the writing style--though I usually abandon books that aren't written in a way I like. It's not death--I've read about that before. It might be the cancer--my mom went through breast cancer--but I don't really think that would bother me. Something about this book niggles at me, like a vaguely sore tooth.

The premise is engaging--a man starts a two-person book club with his dying mother. They read a wide variety of books, and he writes about each book and his mother's reaction. These stories are intertwined with stories from his life and his mother's life. At times the organization is a little unwieldy--I think Schwalbe is trying to accomplish an awful lot--but it's always pleasant to read.

In many ways, Schwalbe has provided an engaging guide to caring for a dying parent. He is so careful and so thoughtful, it is clear that he loves his mother and wants the best for her. I don't know that this book would help anyone who's had a parent recently die cope, but I think this book would help some who is going through the final stages of a parent's life--or even just preparing for the day when that comes.

This is a moving elegy, a thoughtful tribute. It doesn't take many pages before you are as in love with Mary Anne Schwalbe as Will is. Her death is moving. Schwalbe lets you into his private thoughts and feelings through his mother's illness, and such vulnerability is quite amazing. The reader isn't held at arm's length through this book; the reader is brought into the hospital, into the house, into chemo therapy. I appreciate that. Schwalbe has provided another way to cope with an ill parent, and I'm grateful he is as open as he is.

Perhaps a second reading, some day, will help me figure out what it is that is bothering me about this book. Perhaps this is just a prickly book that needs to grow on me. I will certainly think about this book often. I will certainly try to sell this book at work. I think this book is good for everyone--people with parents still living, people with parents dead, people with ill parents, people with healthy parents. Young people who don't need to worry about their parents; people who do worry about their parents. This book is quite readable and I think people who only read sparingly will still enjoy it. Find a copy and give it a shot--it may change the way you think of fatal illnesses.

--Benvolia

Not As Messy As You'd Think: "In Praise of Messy Lives"

Book: In Praise of Messy Lives
Author: Katie Roiphe
Pages: 261
Copy: library copy
Read: mid-December
Spoilers: back to essays!

I requested this book from the library because I read a review that discussed how controversial Katie Roiphe is. I was excited--a woman essayist who starts fights! This is the woman for me! Naturally, her book was a complete disappointment.

Her writing style isn't that interesting. She may attack Joan Didion in a long essay, but her own style isn't so different. She uses some personal details, but never fleshes them out (she complains that Joan Didion's memoir is described as "'deeply and intensely personal,' and yet what is striking is how impersonal the book actually is." Roiphe's essays may be "deeply and intensely personal," but they're still strikingly impersonal). She has little in the way of style--I didn't linger over any of her sentences, the way I did with Joan Didion and even Anne Fadiman. Her writing style is academic and utilitarian. There is little color and no music in her sentences. This is the style of modern academic essays, but I expect more from personal essays--especially essays sold to the wider public.

Perhaps the most aggravating part of this collection of essays is the banality of Roiphe's insights. It is no compliment to myself when I say I could have made the same observations as Roiphe. She doesn't enlighten--she points out the obvious. There are few interesting criticisms and almost no intriguing social commentary. George Orwell could take a very basic and very boring part of culture and make astonishing claims about what those things said about society as a whole. Roiphe can't do that.

What intrigued me the most is the fact that Roiphe seems secretly conservative. She writes all about her unconventional family--she is raising two children on her own--and writes at great length about all the criticism she gets. But I never got the feeling that she actually accepts her situation. To me, it seems that she actually agrees with all the criticism. But there's also the sense that she loves to be a martyr. "Look at poor me, raising two fatherless children! Give me your pity and your criticism, because I deserve it!" In more capable hands, Roiphe's life story could have been striking. (I couldn't help but think that if Cheryl Strayed had written Roiphe's book, it would have been absolutely the most stunning book of the year. In Roiphe's hands, everything falls utterly flat.)

Only one essay from this collection has stayed with me. In "Making the Incest Scene," Roiphe writes about the way that incest has become the go-to "dark secret" of modern literature and how no one does it believably. While I think her criticism is spot on, I'm not sure incest is as pervasive as she imagines. Still, while I've thought about that essay once or twice since I read this collection, her analysis and observations in that essay are as superficial as all the other essays. The essay has no point but to point out incest. It goes no deeper.

I really can't figure out what is so controversial about Roiphe. Once or twice I caught myself frowning as I read her essays, but I never felt the need to rail against her. Her essay on Joan Didion bothered me a little, but I thought she made fair points. How does this woman start fights? Perhaps it is the way she writes about her family--I could see some "family values" readers becoming irate about that. Still, how she's earned a name as a "bad girl" eludes me. Orwell says more outrageous things, and he's been dead for almost 63 years. Roiphe is going to have to try a lot harder if she wants to make a lasting impression on American letters.

I don't hate this book, exactly, I'm just disappointed. Yet again another essayist has failed. Perhaps the essay form is just too out-of-date; it seems like no one knows how to do it right anymore. How can a collection this light and shallow cause any sort of controversy at all? Is it because a woman is expressing her opinions? I can only hope that isn't the only reason. Surely women are allowed to express their opinions without being labelled a "controversial writer." George Will writes his opinion all the time, and he's been called "the most powerful journalist in America."

This might be a good introduction to essays--I mean, Roiphe is readable, and shallowness of interpretation might help a person get use to reading cultural essays. Still, I'm not sure exactly who the target audience here is. Women? I hope not. Women deserve well-written essays too. I suppose I can only recommend this to people who want to stay abreast of pop literary culture. I really don't care what is written, it has to be written well. Roiphe needs to learn more about craftsmanship before she can become truly enduring.

--Benvolia

Elminating the Mystery: "A Gun for Sale"

Book: A Gun for Sale
Author: Graham Greene
Pages: 184
Copy: Penguin Classic that I stole from my brother years ago
Read: early December (I read this for my noir mystery reading group)
Spoilers: nothing extraordinary--I mean, you already know people die

I think it's interesting--and by that, I mean I vaguely regret--that I assigned this book as a noir mystery. First off, there really isn't any mystery. There's suspense, there's uncertainty--but because the book is primarily from the point of view of the murderer, there isn't much mystery. There's a little unraveling that needs to be done, but Greene lays everything out, so it's easy enough to predict what is going to happen. I doubt Greene truly wants to leave people in the dark. Second, there isn't really a central detective the way there is in most noir mysteries. Third, the woman isn't a femme fatale in the usual sense.

I was surprisingly pleased with this book. I tried to read Brighton Rock a couple years ago and got completely bogged down. This book is more snappy, and has a little less of the Catholic moralizing that makes Brighton so gloomy. In the place of Catholicism, there's war. War infects the whole novel, from first page to last. The frenzy, the fear, the release--Greene captures the entire pre-war experience perfectly. He also knows why wars happen now--the book is an indictment of industrial warfare and the effect it has on common people.

What I found particularly interesting was the use of the sole female character. Noir mysteries are almost painfully sexist--women are sex objects, or they're manipulative, or they just want to control men, or they're just there to make phone calls and post letters. Anne is a femme fatale--men are captured and die because of her--but she isn't one in the way, say, Brigid O'Shaughnessy is. She really tries to avoid causing death and mayhem, but she gets trapped and has no choice. She makes morally ambiguous choices, tries to help the criminal, and ultimately makes choices that are in her best interest, not in anyone else's. In many ways, she occupies the space usually held by the detective. It is an interesting move on Greene's part, and it does a lot to upend usual noir tropes.

Greene's use of noir cliches accomplishes that which Chandler was never able to. Green transcends the conventions of genre fiction and manages to make a noir mystery into literature. He does this without the literary flourishes that Chandler attempted. His writing is understated and calm, moving ahead without those cringe-inducing metaphors and similes. His dialogue is stilted, though, and characters tend to monologue in a way that isn't particularly realistic. Additionally, even the criminal speaks like a well-educated, well-off man, which complicates the character. Is Raven as well-educated as he claims? Is he affecting a persona? Or is Greene making all the characters equal by making them all speak in relatively similar ways? There are clear class divisions in this novel, but the divisions aren't marked by the way a character speaks.

Noir mysteries rarely explore political issues. They are usually too wrapped up in the mystery at hand to comment on the wider world. Chandler may mention war a few times, but he doesn't comment on why the war is happening or how it impacts common citizens. Hammett seems to forget any other world exists, other than the world of the novel. Greene uses noir conventions to make a political statement and in doing so, he not only elevates the genre, but he also reveals how pervasive politics can be. Just because a man is a murderer doesn't mean he won't feel the impacts of an impending war. Just because a woman has to make ambiguous moral decisions doesn't mean war won't mean anything to her. The novel barely contains these complexities--if Greene had made his story much longer, it no doubt would have shattered--but that it manages to speaks to its power and its writer's talent.

I'm going to try some more Greene now. I know part of the reason I hesitated to read him is because George Orwell wrote a rather damning review of The Heart of the Matter for the New Yorker. He writes elsewhere about "Catholic writers" and how much he dislikes their work. I'll perhaps avoid the more Catholic of Greene's work at the beginning, but I'll still give him a shot.

As for recommending this particular novel, I can see it appealing to anyone interested in industrial warfare or anyone who is interested in noir mysteries but not in genre fiction (a small population, to be sure). Like most noir, this book is unlikely to appeal to most women, just because the woman (and there is really only one, though there are a couple supporting female characters) isn't well drawn or particularly believable. Still, any woman who likes noir mysteries will find something to like in these pages. This might be a good way to introduce a person to noir mysteries, but only if they know that few other noir stories are as literary.

--Benvolia

Prettying Up Murder: "The Lady in the Lake"

Book: The Lady in the Lake
Author: Raymond Chandler
Pages: 266
Copy: Vintage Crime paperback I've had for years
Read: November 13-16 (I read this for my Noir mystery reading group)
Spoilers: I won't give away who murders who, if that's what you mean

I think there are two kinds of people in this world: people who think Raymond Chandler is a great Noir mystery writer and people who don't. I'm one of the latter. Now, let me explain.

I think two things go into whether or not you like Chandler. The most important factor is who you read first, Dashiell Hammett or Chandler. If you read Hammett first (and enjoy him), then Chandler is an upstart copycat who has no idea what he's writing about. If you read Chandler first, then Hammett is an insane violence junkie.

The second factor is how snobbish you are about genre fiction. Chandler tries hard to make his writing read like literary fiction--using overblown figurative language, obvious allusions, and complex murders that require bizarre coincidences that are only barely plausible, laboring under the impression that complexity equals literary. If you think genre fiction is pointless money-grubbing (read this thoughtful if still painfully elitist piece on the debate between genre and literary fiction--it'll at least give you ammunition, even if it doesn't change your mind), then you can read Chandler happily because he's trying so hard to escape the genre. That being said, he seems to genuinely love Noir mystery, so his desire to escape could really be an attempt to elevate the genre. Unfortunately, to my mind, he reinforces the so-called problems of genre fiction rather than transcending them. Hammett, on the other hand, never tried to escape his genre. He more or less created the genre and then broke the mold. No one--granted I haven't read everything but that's why I'm leading a Noir mystery reading group--no one does Noir better than Hammett. I think that kills Chandler. He wants to be the literary version of Hammett, but that's impossible. Hammett existed happily enough within the confines of genre. Chandler can't stand genre.

The Lady in the Lake is a page turner, I'll give it that. The timescale is off-the-charts unrealistic (almost The Da Vinci Code bad, minus the airplanes), but it's easy to ignore that detail. The case starts out as a simple missing persons, but the body count builds rapidly (interestingly, only one person is shot to death--the rest are killed in a more hands-on way) and the mystery deepens. That the solution requires...well, I don't want to give everything away. But the solution is divisive. Some (probably those pesky Hammett fans) will find the solution absolutely ridiculous. Others (probably those staunch Chandler fans) will find the solution ingenious. I doubt anyone will find it boring.

The violence is mostly off-stage. Sure Marlowe gets beat up a couple times, but all the deaths happen before Marlowe arrives or while he's unconscious. That being said, the first murdered body is described in rather gruesome detail. Eat your lunch after you've read the first 60 pages. But other than that first body, the violence and death is pretty understated. Think Greek tragedy, not Stephen King.

The novel is written in the first person, which is always a difficult move for a writer of mysteries. The author can't give too much away, which means the detective can't think too much. This runs the risk of making the detective seem like a bumbling idiot. Unfortunately, this novel suffers a little from that. It's difficult to tell whether or not Marlowe actually knows what he's doing. He just seems to sort of wander around, getting beat up and finding dead bodies. Then the big pay-off scene comes around and he suddenly knows everything. (For the record, Hammett also uses the first person occasionally, but his detective doesn't seem quite so bumbling to me. Chalk it up to bias, I suppose.)

Two final notes. The diction is awkward. Marlowe tends to use fairly sophisticated diction, which is jarringly out of place in a Noir mystery. He's also a bit of a snob, commenting on the quality of his food and drink, a move that makes him a little dandified.  And then there's the figurative language.

"The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips."

"One drop of that in the hollow of your throat and the matched pink pearls started falling on you like summer rain." 

The first is the way Marlowe describes the time he spends waiting outside the office of his soon-to-be client, the second describes a perfume. Both sentences occur within the first six pages. Did you wince a little? I winced. That kind of language shows how hard Chandler is trying and how completely he is failing. (Okay, okay--he fails to me. Not everyone agrees.) I can't really see a hard-boiled detective thinking like that. The figurative language reinforces the sense that Marlowe has either slipped down a few pegs socially, or that he has no idea what he's doing--that he's just playing at detective.

Alright, who should read this? I think young people (say 16 or 17+) will love Chandler. He's a little gross and a little violent, just enough to titillate a young reader who hasn't read many mysteries yet. People from LA are likely to love Chandler, just because he celebrates the area. Established mystery readers are going to either be Chandler fans or not, so be careful. Ultimately, the Noir mystery genre is a little more of a man's genre--the women are pretty stock, often deeply sexualized, and often either evil or dumb. Some women won't care--they'll just like the mystery--other women will be offended. That's a deeply personal opinion, so I'd never try to really influence anyone one way or the other. Just keep it in mind.

--Benvolia

Is Marriage Really Worth It?: "Middlemarch"

Book: Middlemarch
Author: George Eliot (or Mary Anne Evans, if you prefer)
Pages: 802, including endnotes
Copy: a Barns and Noble Classics I bought years ago (it's pretty ugly and it has tons of typos--find a better copy to read)
Read: I read this for book group, so I started it the middle of October and finished it November 11th
Spoilers: exceedingly minor ones--don't worry, I don't give away specifics

This book came with such high praise, I should have known I wouldn't love it. Almost without fail, whenever a book comes with recommendations, I dislike it. That being said, I didn't hate this book. I can see myself reading this book again in 20 or 30 years and having it make a huge impact on me. That's not to say that this book is meant for 40 or 50 year-olds. I think it has a lot to say to young people, especially young people who are in a relationship for the wrong reasons.

One of the reasons I didn't overwhelming enjoy this book is because I just ended a relationship I was in for the wrong reasons. This meant I read most of the book cringing and yelling at the various characters who marry exactly the wrong person for exactly the wrong reasons. That being said, I think this book has one of the most important quotes any young person could read:

She was not in the least teaching Mr. Casaubon to ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking herself anxiously how she could be good enough for Mr. Casaubon. (Chapter V)

 That is the sort of advice everyone should get quite early in their lives, especially women. I think women spend much of their lives changing themselves to fit whatever they think their men want, and never pause to wonder why their men aren't trying to do the same. That's why I think this quote is so important to many young person, not just women. I don't think many men realize just how much women feel the pressure to change. (I'm sorry to hold up society's emphasis on heterosexual relationships--if anyone wants to chime in about how this dynamic works in relationships I haven't experienced, please do. I'd love to hear if it's different, the same, more complex, less complex...however it works.)

Now to the plot. This is a book about marriage. Unlike Jane Austen, who traces the courtship of her characters but ends the novel at the marriage, George Eliot explores the actual marriage. Courtship is basically skipped, but the marriage part is meticulously detailed. This is both tedious and endlessly fascinating. There are two marriages that are explored in great detail, and one was a great deal more interesting to me than the other, but I think the two different marriages need to be contrasted against one another. No matter how annoying I find Dr. Lydgate and his foul wife, his marriage contrasts sharply with Dorothea's marriage to Mr. Casaubon. If one or the other were missing, the novel would fall apart.

Eliot does have a few side issues she wants to explore, though, which means that several chunks of this novel discuss marriage only indirectly. One of these side issues is medicine in the 1820s and 1830s, a topic that is about as exciting as it sounds. A great deal of medical reform began around this time, but even Eliot can't make it that interesting. Instead, it boils down to petty bickering between the old guard and modern interlopers. Perhaps to those interested in medical history these sections will be funny or more interesting than the marriages, but to me they distracted from the main plot and slowed the novel down. There is also a blackmail plot, which is marginally more interesting than the medical history. However, the bad past doesn't seem that bad and the victim suffers what I thought was an unrealistic punishment. However, I think my reaction may be a modern one; it certainly seems plausible that people of the 1800s would have been horrified. Finally, there is the issue of the Reform Act, a historical event that seems fascinating but Eliot treats the subject unevenly. In several sections, the Act comes to center stage, but Eliot never really looks at the subject in depth. Perhaps the original audience of the novel would have known all the circumstances surrounding the Act, but I think Eliot could have fleshed out the debate more and made it more central. It certainly seems more interesting than the medical subplot.

I noticed a few interesting things about this novel. Eliot seems to have some sort of economic or capitalist critique going on, but it's hard to tease out. It's hard to say if she's actually critiquing industrialism and the other trappings of capitalism, or just noticing their effect on the lives of people. I think it would take a great deal of research to figure out just what she's saying (research that I don't want to engage in, primarily because I find this novel just tedious enough that actually spending that sort of time with it would probably make me want to stop reading altogether). Also interesting is the way Eliot uses babies as a way to characterize marriage. This is so unrealistic that it's endlessly fascinating. One marriage is childless, but the rest of the marriages result in at least two children. Somehow Eliot uses children to reflect on the strength of a marriage, while also using children to reflect on the parents. I don't want to give too much away, but if you read this book, pay attention to the babies. They seem loaded with symbolic importance, the sort of symbolic importance that is absolutely impossible in real life. In an otherwise realistic novel, this symbol is striking.

Eliot's real power lays in her asides and in the voice she gives her narrator. She has some of the finest insults in 19th century literature and some of the strongest observations in literature. The narrator of Middlemarch comes and goes unpredictably, but whenever the narrator is present, you're privy to some of the funniest observations (or drolly accurate summaries) I've ever read. That being said, this book is going to appeal to very specific people. People who like classics could attempt this book, but I'd recommend reading it in a group. Otherwise you might not have the strength to force yourself through it. Because this novel looks particularly at marriage, I'd recommend it to classics readers who are marriage or are in a committed relationship (not because I want to cause problems, but because I think it's always good to think about your relationships and what you're sacrificing). This is also a classic in feminist literature (if it isn't, it should be). Eliot looks directly at the limited choices women have (marry or don't marry, and even if you do marry your choices are incredibly limited) and how those limited choices destroy women. Finally, to any young people who feel ambitious, I'd suggest you read this book. Suffer through some of the dull parts and you'll learn all you need to know about adult relationships--their pitfalls and their joys.

--Benvolia

What Comes Next?: “After”

Book: After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

Editors: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Pages: 359

Copy: advanced reader copy

Read: finished September 2

Spoilers: minor details, but nothing that ruins anything

Upon first seeing this book, I had my usual, aggravated reaction to anyone who lumps apocalyptic and dystopian literature together.  Luckily, the editors anticipated me.  Windling and Datlow admit that “blistering arguments about what should and shouldn’t be labeled dystopian fiction” (which they rather annoyingly refer to as dyslit from throughout the rest of the introduction) “have consumed whole Internet forums, convention panels, and book review columns…As for us…we’ve chosen to take a broader road in the creation of this anthology, including both dystopian and post-disaster tales…”  Fair enough.  While I cling to the classic definition of dystopia, I appreciate anyone who takes a moment to explain the difference and admit they what exactly they are doing.

The collection opens with an interesting, if rather short, story by Genevieve Valentine.  While Valentine’s position isn’t precisely a new one (this story bears some resemblance to Stephen King’s The Running Man, in that both stories deal with reality TV—Valentine’s version is much more YA friendly, though, lacking the goriness of King’s novel), she does a good job introducing teen readers to this subgenre of dystopian literature.  (On second thought, anyone who’s read The Hunger Games will already know the reality TV-dystopia.  Still, Valentine’s story comes from enough of a different angle to be interesting, if slightly derivative.)

The next story, “After the Cure” by Carrie Ryan, is one of the best in the collection.  Having read Ryan’s YA book (The Forest of Hands and Teeth), I find this short story infinitely superior and far from the melodrama that deeply marred her novel.  “After the Cure” is psychologically complex and asks important questions about survivors.  Ryan’s contribution to the collection is one of the few I’ve thought about since, so interesting are the questions it asks and the answers it suggests.

Other standout stories include Matthew Kressel’s “The Great Game at the End of the World,” another deeply complex story with heavy questions; “Reunion” by Susan Beth Pfeffer, which kept me guessing with its complex post-rebellion moodiness; Jeffrey Ford’s painfully relevant “Blood Drive,” which may be a little difficult to read given current events; Steven Gould’s “Rust with Wings;” “Faint Heart” by Sarah Rees Brennan, which does joyful battle with clichéd gender roles; and Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Easthound,” which has as surprising an ending as can be expected.  That there are seven excellent stories in a collection of this sort is nothing short of miraculous.

I found three stories to be absolute failures.  Katharine Langrish’s “Visiting Nelson” has the seed of an excellent story, given that it is a melting pot of A Clockwork Orange, 1984, and other dystopias based in London, but she doesn’t accomplish enough.  She might have better luck if she extends her story, though only if she does so carefully.  Her writing isn’t so engaging that I would put up with it for long.  Gregory Maguire (whom, I will admit, I’ve never really enjoyed) offers a nearly unreadable story (“How Th’irth Wint Rong By Hapless Joey @ Homeskool.guv).  His narrators are nearly illiterate survivors, but they aren’t engaging and his story goes nowhere.  I’ll admit I was disappointed, but not particularly surprised given my track record with this author.  Jane Yolen’s boring, half-hearted contribution (“Gray”), though, is by far the greatest disappointment.  Perhaps because it is the only poem in the collection (and by far the shortest entry), it sticks out the most and fails to satisfy utterly.

Some who have read Garth Nix’s dark Shade’s Children may be interested in his story, “You Won’t Feel a Thing.”  I, though, was left a little cold.  Partly, it’s been a long time since I read Shade’s Children, but perhaps more important is the story’s uselessness to the wider story hinted at in Shade’s Children.  This short story didn’t change anything in Shade’s Children, or even deepen my understanding of that novel.  (It is perhaps a disappointment because he has accomplished what he failed to do in this story elsewhere.  “Over the Wall” explores some of the complexity of the world created in his Abhorsen Trilogy, adding something new and changing the characters just the right amount.)

This collection will be especially good for anyone searching for literature after The Hunger Games.  (Especially helpful is the “About the Contributors” at the back of the book, which makes it easy to find what else an author has written.)  This collection may not be very well-received by adult readers—the stories lack the moral complexity of truly classic dystopia.  That being said, this is a good introduction to the vastness of the genre and is an excellent book for anyone who collects dystopian books (guilty!).  This is also a useful collection for anyone interested in looking academically at the explosion of YA dystopia, because it collects many of the important themes of modern teen dystopias and lacks the annoying romantic melodrama of YA novels.

--Benvolia

Battles with the Spree: Nick Hornby's "Housekeeping vs. The Dirt"

Book: Housekeeping vs. The Dirt

Author: Nick Hornby

Pages:153

Copy: Sonoma County Library paperback

Read: first week of October

Spoilers: essays--so what's there to spoil?

This is the first book by Nick Hornby that I've read, and it isn't a bad introduction. While Hornby is perhaps better known for his fiction, he is a truly delightful essayist. He has an engaging voice and he isn't afraid to give his opinion (though The Believer requires all book reviews published in its pages to be positive--forcing Hornby to engage in some amusing acrobatics when he reads something he doesn't like), two important characteristics of an essayist. That his subject is rather narrow (he focuses on his opinions of books and rarely ventures further into social commentary as, say, George Orwell might) is his only limiting factor. However, Hornby is a surprisingly fascinating character, so his essays don't suffer dramatically; nevertheless, I must admit that I've forgotten most of his opinions, and it's been less than two weeks. He's amusing, but fleeting.

Perhaps the best aspect of his essays is his honesty about magazine-writing. He describes the many battles he has with his editors: the differences of opinion, the attempts at control and manipulation, and so on. To what extent he is exaggerating is difficult to ascertain, but even his exaggeration is amusing. (For instance, the number of editors fluctuates sensationally from, for example, 55 to 15 to 430. To this moment I have no idea how many editors he has, though in one quasi-honest passage he says there are 64. But I still don't believe him completely.) He seems like a particularly difficult person to deal with (at the very least, that is the personality he develops throughout the pages of his reviews), but he's always amusing in his crankiness.

Hornby reviews a variety of books, but each review is so short it's hard to decide whether or not you want to read the book yourself (though I'm not entirely sure getting you to read any of these books is the point--I think Hornby uses his essays to explore what is interesting to him by way of what he reads each month, which isn't a bad alternative). To be honest (since this isn't The Believer), Hornby's essays are incredibly scattered, occasionally making them difficult to follow. At times this collection felt like a very small piece of something much larger, with references that didn't make sense to someone jumping in to the middle (this is the second collection of articles from his column--perhaps his first, The Polysyllabic Spree, would clear up some of the things I missed).

At any rate, Hornby is a good writer and he has an excellent voice. His articles might be best for those who read omnivorously and who read a lot. His essays aren't aimed at the average American reader, which isn't to say they're written academically. But there is an obvious strain of elitism and snobbery that runs through them, a strain that might put off some readers. Then again, almost all essayists have those that love them and those that loath them.

--Benvolia

Flying Home: Katherine Catmull’s “Summer and Bird”

Book: Summer and Bird

Author: Katherine Catmull

Pages: 344

Copy: advanced reader

Read: finished August 27

Spoilers: there isn’t a traditional happy ending: biggest spoiler

Katherine Catmull’s book is wonderful, from its fairy tale atmosphere to its snappy authorial asides.  While Summer and Bird is aimed at readers 10 and up, I think almost anyone could read this book happily (which means grown-ups can buy a hardcover that isn’t overpriced: yay!).  The sisters are realistic and complex, the book weaves between points of view delightfully, and the writing is beautiful.

I love this book enough that it is difficult to know where to begin.  I think one of the finest points about this book is its use of fairy tales and mythology.  Catmull borrows from multiple stories (I think—this may be a more straight-forward retelling of a story I just haven’t read—correct me if you know better), but most of all she captures the atmosphere.  It’s impossible to describe the proper fairy tale atmosphere exactly, but Catmull nails it.  She obviously knows her stuff.

Another important facet of this book is its accurate depiction of sisters.  Summer and Bird are not simple characters and their relationship is as complex as any real relationship.  There is jealousy, but there’s also real love and tenderness.  The two girls will always have to struggle to remain on good terms, but it’s obvious they will always try because they love each other.

The more I think about this book, the better it seems.  The ending is not the “Happily ever after” of Disney movies, but the more difficult salvaging of the pieces.  This book displays a deeply disrupted family that will never completely heal, and that impossibility makes the book all the better.  I think in some ways this book may help any child with a spilt family, if only because Catmull refuses to sugarcoat the difficulties of accepting a parent that has (hopefully inadvertently) caused pain.

Catmull’s use of birds is astounding.  She has an eye for details, carefully differentiating all the different types of birds and their different habits.  (Perhaps this book is a good way to encourage future birders!)  While few of the birds inhabit their real habitat, that Catmull even bothers to describe such diversity is refreshing.  (Some kind of environmental reading of this book would be very interesting to read, if incredibly difficult to undertake.)

This book is fantastic.  Go read it, immediately, while I try to come up with a review that is more articulate.  Maybe my second reading will let me describe it in a less dazed fashion.

--Benvolia

Ms. Reader: Anne Fadiman’s “Ex Libris”

Title: Ex Libris

Author: Anne Fadiman

Pages: 157

Copy: borrowed from Sonoma County Library

Read: September 4-5, 2012

Spoilers: Again with the essays!

Yesterday, wishing to avoid investing my entire paycheck in books as I occasionally do when the feeling hits, I wandered around my public library and collected a huge stack of books (huge not in quantity but in size).  I’ll admit the diversity of topics represented in this pile makes me giddy: two Joan Didions (two hardcovers, one 1122 and the other 223 pages), a book simply titled Dissent in America (hardcover, 792 pages including index, but it looks as large as a dictionary), Reading Lolita in Tehran (a medium-sized paperback, 343 pages), a book on anarchism between the mid-1800s and the early 1900s (a heavy hardcover of 482 pages), and, of course, Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris (a charming shrimp of a paperback that barely covers 157 pages).  Perhaps the pile isn’t so large—I may have only been overwhelmed by the weight and the slipperiness of the dust jackets.

At any rate, I came home and consumed in two short sittings Ex Libris.  (Perhaps its slimness made it the most appealing.)  While Fadiman is no Didion (Fadiman’s essays are somehow softer, lacking the crisp phrasing of a truly accomplished essayist), she is a funny writer who obviously loves her books.  That makes her a saint to me.

Ex Libris contains short essays, each on some aspect of her reading life, whether it is her obsessive habit of proofreading everything or her guilty pleasure (catalogs).  As in any essay collection, some are better than others.

Fadiman opens with the fantastic essay “Marrying Libraries,” a meditation on what it means to combine libraries with the person you love and to whom you are married.  Along the way the essay explores the many ways people organize their books (perhaps by color, or maybe by author, or even by continent, as well as all the ways to organize within a category—once you divide your books by continent, how do you organize them?  Fadiman’s response may be overly complicated [British in chronological order, American by author], but a quite reasonable response if you’re obsessed with organizing your library).  (I reorganize my library at least four times a year, always in different ways.  As my best friend pointed out, books need new neighbors with which to converse.  I’ve always liked the idea of creating strange juxtapositions, just so I can ponder what sort of arguments books will get into as neighbors.  My two, double-packed shelves of mass-market paperbacks are giving me the most fun right now.  Somehow I doubt Carl Sagan’s Contact often ends up sandwiched between This Side of Paradise and Penguin Modern Poets 9: Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth, William Carlos Williams, but I image its quite happy there.  And I couldn’t guess what sort of circumstances would lead to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars ending up between Dialogues of Plato and Anna Karenin, but Plato needs to loosen up a little and read some science fiction.  How Red Mars is getting along with Tolstoy, though, is beyond my ken.  See how much fun this is?)

I also enjoyed her essay “My Odd Shelf,” a discussion of her literary obsession (failed polar expeditions—successful ones aren’t romantic enough).  Fadiman defines an odd shelf as “a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner” (21).  I hardly know which shelf is my Odd Shelf (I’m tempted to say my whole library is an Odd Shelf, but that seems doubtful).  Perhaps my environmental shelf is the obvious choice, though I’m tempted to say it’s my Penguin shelf, since I have a Penguin shelf right now, but I’m not sure devotion to a publishing house really counts.  (By the way, you know you’ve entered a whole new level of book-love when you can rank your favorite publishing houses.  Currently, my ranking runs thus: Penguin [within that category: their old mass market paperbacks, their beautifully designed hardcover Penguin Classics, their fantastic yearly Great Ideas collection, and finally their black paperback Penguin classics—they’re new stuff doesn’t count], Oxford Classics, Modern Library, and, finally, Vintage.)  At any rate, Fadiman will make you look at your library and try to work out which parts make the library and which parts make the Odd Shelf, a fun activity for a lazy day.

My only complaint with the collection is Fadiman’s occasional conceit and snobbery.  The essay that explores her obsession with proofreading demonstrates the drawbacks of being too honest—while admitting to her snobby garners some sympathy, she lost all my support on the last page of the essay, where she outlines all the places she could have saved various people or groups money with her affliction (as she calls it).  While the first step is always admitting to your quirky snobberies, the second step is letting everyone else live their lives without your judgment.  (Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” contains some salient advice: Excellent writing “has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear.”  Unnecessary apostrophes may be annoying, Ms. Fadiman, but they rarely make meaning unclear.)  The other essay of Fadiman’s that I disliked is “Eternal Ink,” a rather strange piece about her favorite pen and its replacement, her computer.  One thing that has always annoyed me about writers speaking about how they write is the strange emphasis they place on outdated writing techniques, as if writing with a quill automatically makes you a better author.  (Wendell Berry, who uses a pencil, is the only author I’ve come across that actually has a solid, unromantic reason for using older technology, which he explains in his essay “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.”)

To conclude, I’d recommend this collection of essays to any booklover of any age (the youngest readers will, at any rate, like to chew on the edges, which I think would make Fadiman quite pleased).  This book would make an excellent present if you have no idea what else to get a person who loves to read (especially if you don’t see eye-to-eye with them about their preferred reading material).  To those who are a bit daring, this might be a good book to present to people who don’t read.  I can’t think of a better introduction to book-love than this collection of essays, which, I hope, can convert even the staunchest anti-reader.

--Benvolia

PS I’m sorry, Ms. Fadiman, if you read this and locate egregious grammatical mistakes.  I belong to the Orwellian school of grammar.