You know those books that come along, disguised as brainless beach reads? The ones that look all innocent, but before you know it, have you swipinJFC.
You know those books that come along, disguised as brainless beach reads? The ones that look all innocent, but before you know it, have you swiping away obnoxious notifications (buzz off, work/kids/friends!) from your screen because you’re too busy...reading?
Know what kind of book I mean?
Yeah, me either, because I haven’t come across one in a fuckin decade.
I don’t know who Anna Pitoniak is, but I do know that it’s not nice to sink me—the fiction-hater who especially loathes spending a dime on bad books—for $17 and keep me up reading til 2AM on a weeknight. (Put a warning on that sh*t next time, Anna: it’s been two days and my friends and family want to know where I am).
You can find a synopsis of Necessary People anywhere, so you don’t need me to get into it. Just ignore anyone who says this is the story of two friends who couldn’t be more different—face-value that nonsense, and pay attention to the subtle hints along the way, or you’ll miss the whole point.
It’s not just that the writing is decent (fine, at times, it’s on the verge of brilliant) and the pacing, surprisingly good (okay, whatever, it snatches you up like a riptide, whisking you out to sea before you have time to wonder what the hell happened).
It’s not even the plot, which is almost too perfect to be believable (okay, I’m bullshitting you now—the story is shocking in its “just-fucked-up-enough-ness” to be a little too real).
Half the time, bad fiction gets away with being, well, bad because of lots of nifty tricks that readers miss, or simply don’t pause to question. But I can’t even get to that point in contemporary fiction anymore—I pull the trigger much sooner. For me, it’s that pesky suspension of disbelief thing: it’s almost never carefully navigated enough to get me past page 3 in 99% of today’s novels.
Maybe that’s what got me from the first page of this book: the fact that Pitoniak never once takes it for granted that we simply believe her, which makes the story immediately engrossing, (un)comfortably familiar, at times anxiety-provoking, and ultimately, totally addictive.
Because when you read this book and work your way through the throngs of narcissists, sociopaths, and fuckin certifiable psychopaths, it makes you do more than wonder if the whole world has gone mad as you try to figure out who’s good and who’s bad. It has you seeing all sorts of faces you recognize: those you’ve worked for, dated, lived with, loved. Perhaps more frightening than the recognition of those you know in this story are the glimpses you’ll inevitably catch—both past and present—of yourself: who you once were, who you were on the verge of becoming, and who you are now. And no matter in which characters you see yourself—the good ones, the bad ones, the worst ones—the unsettling part is when you close the book...because you’ll realize that back here in reality, no matter who you are or where you exist in the pecking order, your real life is populated with the twisted personalities depicted in this novel. You may not be one of them, but you know who they are (most of them, anyway)—you interact with them every day.
>shudder<
Welp.
That’s the kind of thing that’ll keep you up at night, writing a goodreads review at 3AM with your thumbs while trying to unpack what the hell you just read. Brainless beach read, indeed. (Thank God it only happens once in a decade).
It takes odd circumstances -- the wind changing, hell freezing over, et. al. -- for me to bother with fiction anymore. Let's call November 2016 one ofIt takes odd circumstances -- the wind changing, hell freezing over, et. al. -- for me to bother with fiction anymore. Let's call November 2016 one of those "odd circumstances," where I was so disgusted with reality that I couldn't even stand to read about it for fun: I dropped my beloved narrative nonfiction and memoirs mid-read and took up The Girl with All the Gifts instead.
It was the right choice. And surprisingly, The Girl with All the Gifts turned out to be one of the best books I've read in years.
Wait. What?
I know.
For me to read a novel is one thing. But for me to love said novel so much that I have this weird urge to hug the author? It's a strange universe indeed.
So let's talk about what's going on in this book.
First, ignore any official synopsis that you find online. Whoever wrote the blurb on Amazon should be fired, and all of the other official synopses simply sell this book short -- they're worst I've read for any book, ever.
Since the publishers were too lazy to come up with compelling (or even relevant) copy to promote their author's work, here's a quick summary of what you need to know. The Girl with All the Gifts is the story of an institutionalized girl in post-apocalyptic England who develops an emotional bond with her female teacher. As the story unfolds, the bond between the two intensifies and morphs into the catalyst for a wild, unexpected plot twist. That same bond remains the girl's driving force throughout the novel, right up to the very last page. I'd call it all very touching and sweet, but the freaky-as-fuck zombies sprinting around, the humanity-destroying virus growing in a giant cocoon in central London, and the tribe of murderous child-monsters are just enough to keep it real.
Anyway.
Fiction, zombies and post-apocalyptic nonsense aren't my thing, but I have a weakness for good writers. And when authors are as talented as M.R. Carey, I apparently don't give a fuck what they're writing about because I devoured this book, zombies and all.
I was shocked by the sheer quality of Carey's writing. I mean, if you're going to write a zombie apocalypse novel, why not crank it out according to formula and let your editor run spell-check while you move on to your next project? Not so with this author. Unlike so many fiction writers today (I'm looking at you, Pulitzer/Booker Prize winners), Carey actually bothered to make his zombie horror story both entertaining and well-written -- that's more than we can say for most novels published year in and year out.
Seriously. Have a look.
Our 10-year-old narrator, who has no concept of alcohol, describes weekly lessons with a drunken instructor. "Mr Whitaker is having one of those up-and-down days when he brings his bottle into class–the bottle full to the brim with the medicine that makes him first better and then worse. Melanie has watched this strange and mildly disturbing progress enough times that she can predict its course...He drinks the medicine ... His body relaxes, losing its tics and twitches. His mind relaxes too, and for a little while he’s gentle and patient with everyone... but he keeps drinking and the miracle is reversed. It’s not that Mr. Whitaker gets grumpy again. What he gets is something worse... He seems to sink in on himself in total misery, and at the same time try to shrink away from himself as though there’s something inside him that’s too nasty to touch."
Okay, I know I've been out of the fiction world for a while, but I haven't read such a compelling description of alcoholism from a child's point of view since the opening chapters of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Jesus.
Anyway. Let's keep going.
As our child narrator describes the blooming branches in her teacher's hands, it becomes apparent that the girl's feelings are more than an attachment to a maternal figure. "The [buds] bulge right out from the stick, as though they’re being forced up from inside it. And some of them are broken; they've split in the middle and they're sort of peeling into ever-so-slender green lips and brackets."
Well, I'm blushing. That's hot.
But let's not forget my personal favorite, where a doctor researching the zombie-virus describes its effects as thus: "The fungus spreads through the ant’s body and explodes out of its head–a phallic sporangium skull-fucking the dying insect from the inside."
I'm sorry, but "skull-fucking the dying insect from the inside"? With Orange Hitler dominating the news and lighting up his stupid Twitter feed 24-7, I really needed to read a sentence like that right now -- it just takes the edge off. (Like I said, I want to hug this author).
I can go on. Hell, I could do this all day:
"The remains of a four-by-four lies beside them, its front wheels gone, looking like a steer down on its knees and waiting for the bolt gun to be pressed to its head."
"Of course, that's only a conceptual stone's throw from the thought that her survival is a side effect of mediocrity."
"Houses she once aspired to live in flick past her, squat and dark like widows in a Spanish cemetery waiting patiently for the resurrection." (Holy fucking shit).
"The pain from her damaged hands is now a persistent and agonising throbbing, as though she had an extra heart beating in each of her palms in very imperfect synchrony."
"Ten feet away, hidden until that moment by the magazine although she’s not making any effort to conceal herself, is a girl. She’s tiny, naked, skinny as a bag of sticks. For a startling moment, she looks like a black and white photograph, because her hair is jet and her skin is pure, unmitigated white. Her eyes are as black and bottomless as holes drilled through a board. Her mouth is a straight, bloodless line." >shudder<
"It’s like before the Breakdown people used to spend their whole lives making cocoons for themselves out of furniture and ornaments and books and toys and pictures and any kind of shit they could find. As though they hoped they’d be born out of the cocoon as something else. Which some of them were, of course, but not in the way they hoped."
God!
At this point, I don't care if M.R. Carey writes comic books or the copy on cereal boxes -- I'm a convert, and I'll read whatever this dude writes.
Carey's writing reminds me of just why I fell in love with fiction in the first place, and why I spent years pursuing lit degrees: because when it's done right, fiction -- even post-apocalyptic zombie fiction -- can be a masterwork of the written word, a reflection of the human condition, and one of the highest, most beautiful forms of art.
In short, I friggin loved this book, and I can't wait to reread it.
Holy hell. A writer I actually like. Shocking, I know, so pay attention.
Since Goodreads and Amazon are overrun with paid reviewers and authors' friendHoly hell. A writer I actually like. Shocking, I know, so pay attention.
Since Goodreads and Amazon are overrun with paid reviewers and authors' friends 5-starring their books, let's get that out of the way first.
I don't know Ann Brocklehurst. I stumbled upon her website in 2013 because she was the first person to call bullshit on Linda Tirado's poverty essay, and we ended up trading some Twitter messages over that whole scam. Oh, and when her Tirado article resulted in some low-blows from Gawker douchebag Adam Weinstein, I thought Brocklehurst showed remarkable restraint -- I'd have been out for blood.
Anyway.
Since I have a weakness for smart people who are also good writers (there are so few of them), I've checked in on Brocklehurst's other writing now and then. I felt totally validated by her take on Serial, I got all fascinated by her archived New York Times articles about Germany in the first years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I enjoyed her eBook The Mysterious Death of Jeffrey Boucher when I read it last year.
That's about it. I like her writing a lot, but I don't know this chick, we're not friends, and I'm not writing this based on some free advance review copy. She pinged me on Goodreads letting me know about her new eBook, I bought it from Amazon, and here we are.
Preamble over. Let's talk about the book. (Or rather, eBook: sort of like buying a feature article without the rest of the magazine -- it's cheaper, and you're not stuck with all of the stupid perfume ads).
The story covers 8 days of testimony at a sexual assault trial in Toronto. As far as rape trials go, it's all pretty standard: a 17 year-old girl accuses her star athlete ex-boyfriend of sexual assault; he swears it was consensual; alcohol was involved; there are troubling photographs of the girl's injuries; both parties have been caught telling inconsistent stories. The court gets to sift through this mess and make a decision.
Although it may seem like the same sexual assault narrative we've heard a thousand times before, there's something quite different going on in this particular trial--and in its retelling.
Something is missing here...but what?
There are none of the shocking details that you find in the Rolling Stone campus rape article by Stephen Glass Sabrina Rubin Erdely. And unlike Krakauer's Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, there are no emotional interviews between author and accuser, no victim-blaming cop harboring political ambitions, no scandal dividing a community.
It goes on.
No screeching updates on Jezebel.com, no images splashed all over WaPo of a girl dragging a mattress with her everywhere, no psychopath doxxing a possible rape victim, no idiots plastering their asinine thoughts about sexual assault all over Twitter.
In short, there is a distinct lack of high drama that one would normally expect in a book like this.
And good Christ, the lack of hysteria was so refreshing.
The Toronto trial was civilized: it was a confidential matter (you won't be able to Google these people), the court scrutinized the evidence and made a fair decision. Case closed.
As for Brocklehurst's take on it all? Don't expect any of that Krakauer-esque rage to come seeping through the text. Actually, I don't remember her giving an opinion on much at all -- really, she only tells readers what took place. (I think in the pre-Internet days, that was called "reporting"?) I'm already partial to emotionally absent narrators, but good God...this gave me flashbacks to the 1990s, when you could pick up a newspaper and read an objective account by a trained journalist you could actually trust. (Well, except for Stephen Glass, but whatever).
And while I had an extremely emotional reaction to Missoula, I actually found Ann Brocklehurst's book to be much more unsettling. It wasn't just the natural tension that arose from the frank reporting. I think the best way to articulate it is this: when you cut away the noise and just focus on what happens during a rape trial...it's fucking upsetting. Sexual assaults are difficult to prove, the accuser and the accused are both traumatized (albeit for different reasons), kids' futures are at stake, and the court has the fun job of figuring out who's lying.
Yeah, I bit my manicure off. Always a sign of a good read.
I don't really have a lot to add to the discussion about this book. Clearly, it's an undisputed master of both biography and storytelling.
Here's what I don't really have a lot to add to the discussion about this book. Clearly, it's an undisputed master of both biography and storytelling.
Here's what I will say...
I both envied and adored the author's writing ability, and the more I read, the more convinced I became that Hillenbrand is the only writer worthy of telling Louis Zamperini's story. In her exhaustingly researched and meticulously detailed story, flickers of literary greatness light up every page, from the sadistic prison guard who "had been whipping about camp like a severed power line," to a love interest whose beauty wields a wild power: "Louie wasn't the first guy to be felled by Cynthia. Dense forests of men had gone down at the sight of her."
Hillenbrand even manages weave terror with poetic beauty:
"A neat, sharp form, flat and shining, cut the surface and began tracing circles around the rafts. Another one joined them. The sharks had found them." (As if surviving a plane crash over South Pacific weren't freaky enough).
"As they passed the fortnight mark, they began to look grotesque. Their flesh had evaporated. Their cheeks, now bearded, had sunken into concavity. Their bodies were digesting themselves."
"He watched [the sock] flap in the current. Then, in a murky blur beyond it, he saw the huge, gaping mouth of a shark emerge out of the darkness and rush straight at his legs."
Honestly. Who bothers to write this well any more??
If I had to dig up one complaint about an otherwise perfect book, I'd say that I was left feeling a little "so what?" about the whole thing. In the end, it was a cool story, but it didn't offer much beyond that. It's simply a the tale of an amazing life -- we can't assume it's the story of a great human being because we never learn anything about Zamperini other than what he did and what happened to him. We never learn anything personal about him, which is fine, but it never really humanizes him.
Ah well, we can't all be perfect.
The snark in me thinks the last thing we sucky Gen Y-ers need is a reminder of the superiority of the Greatest Generation, and wonders how one can survive a plane crash, being adrift at sea for 6 weeks in shark infested waters, and a Japanese POW camp, only to fall prey to Billy Graham...
But whatever. Fuck my tiny complaints and disregard my snark.
This was a great book. Crazy story written by one of the most talented authors I've ever come across.
The African Queen is one of those few ass-kicking novels that comes along and reminds me that there is the occasional sparkling gem of classic genius The African Queen is one of those few ass-kicking novels that comes along and reminds me that there is the occasional sparkling gem of classic genius buried beneath the massive dung heap of contemporary fiction.
Don't read this book to find the movie in written form. The book and the movie are two different things. The film features Katharine Hepburn in varying states of gorgeous as she travels wild-eyed down a river with the inimitable Humphrey Bogart in an opposites-attract love story. The novel is much, much more, and it's way better.
From the first sentence of the book, we know that Rose Sayer isn't exactly the docile and unwaveringly virtuous missionary woman she's supposed to be. "Had she been weak minded enough to give up" and give in to a bout of malaria, she'd be in bed; instead, she stubbornly resists her illness, praying with her brother and quietly pondering "the absence of her corset" and thinking about the fact that she's "wearing no under clothing at all beneath her white drill frock." (Obviously, this is a chick who's going to go wild the second she's no longer under male supervision. Thank God).
Enter Charlie Allnut, a machinist and a boat captain in Central Africa who should be, by rights, courageous and practical. From the second Charlie appears on the page, we learn that he's "philosophical," "passive," and "content to follow orders."
As soon as Charlie and Rose are alone together, they begin to transform. That is, when order collapses and they're forced to abandon the institutions they've been born into -- rigid Christianity for her and banal practicality for him -- Charlie and Rose become who they really are at their core, and they discover what it really means to live.
After thirty years of "passive misery" in deferring to men, Rose finally makes decisions. Allnut, who has spent his life trying to avoid trouble, learns to face danger, follow a passion, and develop a sense of higher purpose. Even the smaller changes they undergo are charming: Allnut turns to prayer going down the rapids, while Rose's mind "work[s] like a machine" as she navigates; Rose gets buff from all of the manual labor on the African Queen, and Charlie, for once in his life not slacking, almost works his small frame to death; and both, when faced with "the wild beauty of the Ulanga," develop a sense of accomplishment and "seethe with life."
Well.
Throw in a pulse-racing adventure down an African river, plus one of the hottest sex scenes I've ever read (precisely for what it doesn't say), and you've got one hell of a novel on your hands.
As for the writing? Worthy of a smirk, an eyebrow raise, and admiration:
"A woman sewing has a powerful weapon at her disposition when engaged in a duel with a man. Her bent head enables her to conceal her expression without apparently trying; it is the easiest matter in the world for her to simulate complete absorption in the work in hand when actually she is listening attentively; and if she feels disconcerted or needs a moment to think, she can always play for time by reaching for her scissors. And some men--Allnutt was an example--are irritated effectively by the attention paid to trifles of sewing instead of to their fascinating selves."
(Just more proof that British writers are ever superior to their American counterparts).
And let's not forget what I can only call "river porn," or, the most suggestive piece of nature writing I've ever seen:
"There was sheer joy in crashing through those waves. Rose, with never a thought that the frail fabric of the African Queen might be severely tired by those jolts and jars, found it exhilarating to head the launch into the stiff rigid waves which marked the junction of two currents, and to feel her buck and lurch under her, and to see the spray come flying back from the bows."
(Whoa. Is it any wonder that, just 3 pages later, she sleeps with a guy without knowing his first name?)
Obviously, there's a reason I read this book in one sitting on a Friday night, only to begin it again on Monday morning. I adore the writing, I find the adventure thrilling, and I think the love story is touching.
Most of all, I enjoy the fact that two people, when forced to abandon their societal roles, discover the beauty of the natural world, and of life itself. We learn that they're fundamentally good people, and by living as who they really are, they become better people.
It's rare to find this much going on in a novel, and that's precisely why The African Queen is one of the few great works of fiction that truly stands out among the garbage.
KICKED ASS so much that I'll probably read it a third time. And a fourth. ...more
With Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality, something unprecedented has happened in the publishing industry: With Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality, something unprecedented has happened in the publishing industry: they published a book by (wait for it!) a good writer. >>gasp<< I know. I'm as shocked as you are, really.
While Heads in Beds is being marketed as Kitchen Confidential with a hotel slant, there's a marked difference between the two books: Anthony Bourdain is a cocky chef who also happens to know how to open a Word Doc on a PC, and thus gets his half-decent memoirs published.
Jacob Tomsky, on the other hand? Goddamn, this kid can write.
Don't believe me? Have a look for yourself.
When describing his asshole manager, Tomsky writes that when his supervisor spoke, "it sounded as if his tongue were too swollen for his mouth, the words wet like a flopping fish." (Pen mightier than the sword and all that).
And if you can find me a passage anywhere that more perfectly describes the ambivalence of living in New York City, I'll buy you a Coke: "I couldn't help but think back to New Orleans. Hadn't I been happier there? I was a nicer person there, right? How come I'd even stayed this long in New York? I might have already left the city, but in a way New York put a hex on me. The gravity is so strong here, that center-of-the -world feeling, it made leaving the city unfathomable." I feel you, bro.
And then there is his description of New Orleans during Mardi Gras, which is nothing short of poetry. "I sat down ...watching the evening sun bleed from the streets, the city shifting into night, when it truly became New Orleans: the music, the constant festival, the smell of late evening dinners pouring out, layering the beer-soaked streets, prostitutes, clubs with DJs, rowdy gay bars, dirty strip clubs, the insane out for a walk, college students vomiting in trash cans, daiquiri bars lit up like supermarkets, washing-machine-sized mixers built into the walls...lone trumpet players, grown women crying, clawing at men in suits, portrait painters ... jazz music pressing up against rock and roll cover bands, murderers, scam artists, hippies selling anything, magic shows and people on unicycles, flying cockroaches the size of pocket rockets, men in drag ... the affluent, the beggars, the forgotten, and the soft spring air pregnant with every scent created by such a town." Whoa.
Hey Norton people, are you reading? Anthologize this shit already.
And don't worry. Despite the good writing and many references to classical philosophy and literature (and those references are correct, by the way, which in itself is surprising given that publishers crank out any old crap without bothering to check Cliff's Notes for accuracy), the book is hilarious (think of me when you get to the section about Room 212) and is bound to inspire a maniacal laugh or two.
The hotel info? Just an added bonus. All of Tomsky's tactics are likely to score you upgrades and free alcohol the next time you stay in a hotel. Sweet!
Hmmm, let's see.... Exceptionally good writing, humorous, and useful. Know what I call that? Un-put-down-able.
**Update** Once again, I'm left astounded by Goodreads reviewers. The shitty books get rave reviews and the outstanding ones get bad reviews because "**Update** Once again, I'm left astounded by Goodreads reviewers. The shitty books get rave reviews and the outstanding ones get bad reviews because "this book wasn't what I expected"?? Normally I don't give a damn if someone doesn't like a good book, but come on. You're pissed off that a book with Everest on the cover turned out to be a memoir and not a mountain climbing guide? You've got to be kidding me. Ugh, go read Fifty Shades of Grey or something.**
This book was absolutely wonderful. Not only was it un-put-downable, but it also had that even rarer quality of I'm-going-to-read-this-again-and-give-copies-to-all-my-friends. It even had the adventurous spirit of any great Jon Krakauer work and a narrative arc that would have Hollywood producers salivating. Damn.
You need to read this book. NOW.
Frances Slakey is a total babe, a science professor at Georgetown, and a record-setting athlete who pursued the highest peaks on every continent and surfed in every ocean ... Oh, and at one point he was also a completely detached, self-centered asshole who was indifferent to humanity and vowed never to marry, never to have children, and never to own a home. (Sounds like someone I would have dated in my twenties, actually. Thank God we never met.) :)
As Slakey tells the story of his cynicism softening and his self-contentedness unraveling, I felt myself smirking at the text. Sure, sure, tough guy goes fuzzy on us after he meets the right woman, then writes a book about it, yeah, yeah, it's been done, thanks for the story, dude.
Well. I was wrong. Oops.
Slakey's isn't some cliche' about going to the Himalayas and finding himself after climbing Everest and talking with a Buddhist monk. Rather, it's the story of one man's slow and imperfect transformation and gradual understanding of what it means to be human. And no, I don't mean that he finally got a heart like the Tin Man and is finally able to embrace his inner child and admit to watching Oprah. Nah, I mean that Slakey goes from being a self-centered tool to being someone who teaches, inspires, and finds solutions that positively affect humanity. In short, Slakey comes to do something we all should be doing: he does good.
Really, really great book. Touching, honest, and a damn good read.
Update: 12/12/13: This book is so goddamn brilliant that I'm reading it again. I can't find either of my paper copies, which means I lost my signed coUpdate: 12/12/13: This book is so goddamn brilliant that I'm reading it again. I can't find either of my paper copies, which means I lost my signed copy :(, so I just downloaded it... It's good to spend money on amazing books.
As I was buying this book for one of my grad school classes, I didn't expect Orozco to be a good writer, and certainly not an exceptional one. I was more or less convinced that my purchase was to fund the writing career of someone who was likely a friend of the professor. Well. Sometimes (albeit rarely) I'm dead fucking wrong.
When I finished this book, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I was obsessing about the stories and felt the need the go sit outside and contemplate life for a while. (The last time I felt this way was when I first read "The Lady With the Little Dog" by Chekhov.)
There is something unsettling and unnerving about these short stories. The characters are raw and realistic, the humor is biting, and the narration is distant. We're simply told what is, and not what to feel, yet one comes away with strong emotions. These are portraits of people that any of us could have been at some point in life: a person who turns to food in the throes of grief; a jittery temp employee who finds intimacy in odd places; a person with a lifelong secret. Even the larger-than-life characters (a brutal Latin American dictator; a violent athlete; a war vet now immobilized by obesity) are depicted in ways that render them remarkably human.
Perhaps my favorite part of this book is Orozco's subtlety. He almost never tells you that a character dies, but death is inferred or implied in ways that are so beautiful that they take on a mystical quality. Also, he possesses the rare skill of describing the weather without sounding like an asshole -- his simple descriptions of the sky or the light from above intensify scenes in ways that few writers are able to accomplish.
The result of all of this is that you come away from the book being completely moved, though you were unaware of any of it happening at the time.
"Just move your legs. Because if you don't think you were born to run, you're not only denying history. You're denying who you are." --Born to Run.
Th"Just move your legs. Because if you don't think you were born to run, you're not only denying history. You're denying who you are." --Born to Run.
This book is really, really simple. If you're not a runner, the book will entertain you like the best of any of Krakauer's stories. If you do run, it will change your life. Actually, if you don't run and this book doesn't change your life, something is wrong with you.
The "I can't run because of my knee/back/feet/Achilles tendons/whatever you-fill-in-the-blank" excuses no longer hold water after you read this book.
So, get your copy, get outside, and move your legs. Run, because we are all made to do it. Get out there, run like a muthafucka, and live bad-ass. NOW.
Kicked so much ass that I will probably read it again.
Normally I'd never take a book recommendation from NPR. Much like the New York Times, I'd expect public radio to encourage me to read agenda-driven drNormally I'd never take a book recommendation from NPR. Much like the New York Times, I'd expect public radio to encourage me to read agenda-driven drivel that bores the hell out of me. So, imagine my surprise when, circling a parking lot looking for a space, I hear the following premise on an NPR book review:
"The billionaire creator of the world's most widely used virtual reality system has died and left behind a series of riddles hidden throughout his virtual world. Whoever successfully solves these riddles will inherit his vast fortune. A massive hunt ensues."
And ... ZING! I downloaded the book and couldn't put the damn thing down all week until I finished it.
This book has all of the essential elements of serious ass-kicking: easy to read, a fast-paced plot, an underdog hero that you can't help but root for, a love story, explosions, humor, suspense, and lots of bad guys. The world of virtual reality, the references to the 80s, and the nostalgia for simpler times just add to the entertainment.
The best part? You don't have to be a computer nerd, a video game enthusiast, or a child of the 1980s to appreciate this book. This is simply a great story that transcends genre, written by a clever guy who always stays 20 steps ahead of the reader. It's about frickin time.
It's not often that I like a book, so listen up and listen well.
If someone had given me the bare bones outline of Tipping the Velvet and suggest I reaIt's not often that I like a book, so listen up and listen well.
If someone had given me the bare bones outline of Tipping the Velvet and suggest I read it, I'd have kindly told them to piss off. I have a job, a kid to raise, and an already low tolerance for contemporary fiction. A book about cross-dressing lesbians in Victorian England wouldn't spark enough interest in me to get past the title page.
Silly me. Good thing I thought that "tipping the velvet" was a reference to the theater (hint: it's not) and mistakenly believed I was buying a book about East End actresses. This mistake was a blessing, and this novel renewed my faith in modern fiction.
Tipping the Velvet carries a variety of themes that have bored me since my first Women's Studies classes in college: identity, cross-dressing, gender roles, and sexuality. Yet, alongside these nearly foreign concepts were the universal themes found in all great works of literature: passion, lust, betrayal, scandal, violence, redemption, and love. So, what did it leave me with? A book that shot a breath of life into all of those tired old themes. A book I couldn't put down, and not just for the positively raunchy (and at times touching) sex scenes that had me blushing to my hairline. No. What kept me hooked was the astoundingly good writing:
When describing being backstage at the theater after a performance, "I caught a glimpse of ladders and ropes and trailing gas-pipes; of boys in caps and aprons, wheeling baskets, manoeuvring lights. I had the sensation then - and I felt it again in the years that followed, every time I made a similar trip back stage - that I had stepped into the workings of a giant clock, stepped through the elegant casing to the dusty, greasy, restless machinery that lay, all hidden from the common eye, behind it."
When telling us about a dirty mirror, we're told that the "small looking glass [was] as cloudy and as speckled as the back of an old man's hand."
When discussing the ways of her tyrannical lover: "There is a way rich people have of saying 'What?' The word is honed, and has a point put on it; it comes out of their mouths like a dagger coming out of a sheath. That is how Diana said it now, in that dim corridor. I felt it pierce me through, and make me sag. I swallowed."
Yeah. Writing like that will keep you up at night.
The hot sex scenes? The bizarre gender roles that previously would have left me uninterested? The story itself? All just added bonuses. This chick could write about paint drying and make it fascinating. She makes cross-dressing, hooking, and other >ahem< "unmentionables" ;) seem completely exciting, alive, and blessedly normal. I love it.
Finally. A work of fiction that doesn't suck or make me feel like I've gotten dumber by the time I've finished it.
Jeannette Walls had the kind of parents that make even the freakiest families on Wife Swap look like saints.
These are the kind of people who let theirJeannette Walls had the kind of parents that make even the freakiest families on Wife Swap look like saints.
These are the kind of people who let their 3 year-old cook hot dogs, and when she catches on fire and has to get skin grafts, they end up breaking her out of the hospital. They are the types that put three kids and a newborn in the back of a U-Haul truck and don't notice that the back gate flies open as they speed down the highway. They spend every cent on booze and food for themselves while their kids don't have one decent pair of shoes and root through trash cans at school for something to eat. They tell their daughter that her near sexual assault is just a "perceived crime." They blow every chance they get, from inheriting a home and letting it be overrun by roaches and termites and vagrants, they lose job after job after job before finally settling in some holler in West Virginia that probably made Loretta Lynn's childhood home look like a mansion. The whole book is a series of bad choices and disasters, and everything keeps getting worse.
Amazingly - especially among today's writers - Walls never once sinks in to bathos. She never even tells us what she herself was feeling. She describes her family dysfunction and triumph against adversity without getting in our faces. Given that so many writers lately are emotionally manipulative, there was a huge feeling of liberation in having an emotionally absent narrator. Combine that with great writing and you've got an official unputdownable book.
I don't know about you, but when I lived in New York, my life WAS my office job. That is, talking about sales This is the kind of book everyone needs.
I don't know about you, but when I lived in New York, my life WAS my office job. That is, talking about sales forecasts, writing up spread sheets and cursing Excel when I couldn't copy/paste from one cell to another, and being encouraged to think of ways I could improve the company while knowing I could be laid off at any minute. All so common, and all such a snore. Now, even my exciting life in Italy is still tedious at times, albeit for different reasons.
Then a book like this comes along to rip us out of the goddamn delirium of every day life.
This is the true story of when men were men and the world was a place to be explored and conquered so that the blank places on maps could be filled in and the Queen could get a few more jewels in her crown. The ballsiest of all explorers, Percy Fawcett, thought that hiking through the Amazon in a search for the legendary city of El Dorado was a good way to spend his time. KICK ASS. And there's even more fun here: swarming mosquitoes that carry disease, small catfish that like to lodge themselves IN the anus or urethra and can only be removed by surgery, blood-sucking bats, disease, parasites, and Indians in the bush just waiting to shoot you with poison arrows and shrink your head, sell it to collectors, and have it turn up in a pawn shop in Vegas. WICKED! Fawcett's eventual disappearance and the likelihood that an ancient, advanced civilization thrived in the Amazon and was wiped out by conquistadors are sobering reminders that this incredible story is as true as it gets.
This book is a mystery, an adventure tale, and travelogue all rolled into one fly-through read. And it's the kind of thing that makes spreadsheets, the 9 to 5 drill, and even Excel, bearable.
Well, well, well. Now here's a thriller with a nice twist: a serial killer is on the loose in Stalinist Russia. Except that in Stalinist Russia there Well, well, well. Now here's a thriller with a nice twist: a serial killer is on the loose in Stalinist Russia. Except that in Stalinist Russia there is no such thing as crime. Well, except for political crimes like reading banned litterature, looking at someone the wrong way, "plotting" against the state by working too close to a Western embassy, making a drunken joke about Stalin, etc. But murder? No, comrade. Not unless Siberia suddenly sounds good to you.
What you end up with is a fast-paced mystery about a desperate manhunt for a serial killer, and a flawed political system trying to stop it at all costs. What can I say? KICK ASS.
Cool story, ending a little too neat, but over all, ROCK! ...more
Picked this up in 2003 when I was bitter about my first love coming to an end. As I started reading, I realized that this was not some silly little chPicked this up in 2003 when I was bitter about my first love coming to an end. As I started reading, I realized that this was not some silly little chick-lit book of sappy guys-suck rants, but one of the best poetry anthologies I've ever read. It includes some moving verses by May Swenson, along with William Carlos Williams, Margaret Atwood, Donne, Auden, and good ol' Bill Shakespeare.
This book won't mend a broken heart, as it claims. If you want to do that, slash the dude's tires and sleep with his brother. If you want a kick-ass collection poetry divided into the categories of age, Sadness, Self-Hatred, False Hope, Resolve, Relapse, Real Hope and Moving On, this is the book for you....more
Sadly describes to a tee every boyfriend I've ever had ... and have yet to have, apparently. You'll find every guy in here .. and a little compatibiliSadly describes to a tee every boyfriend I've ever had ... and have yet to have, apparently. You'll find every guy in here .. and a little compatibility test at the end, because after all, you do have to choose one of these bastards. :)
In all practical theory, this book should be on my 'Sucked' shelf. It's a tale of the Middle Ages, the gross injustices of the time, and it truly amouIn all practical theory, this book should be on my 'Sucked' shelf. It's a tale of the Middle Ages, the gross injustices of the time, and it truly amounts to a thousand-page Medieval soap opera. It hasn't got much to do with its predecessor The Pillars of the Earth, except that it's in the same location 200 years later, with characters that are "descendants" of the Pillars characters. There's none of the complex building and architectural aspects found in Pillars, the graphic sex and violence has been toned down, several aspects of the plot are predictable, and the dialogue seems strikingly modern for a novel set in the 14th century. So, why is this book not on my 'Sucked' shelf? ...
Because it KICKED ASS.
With all of the above-mentioned problems in the book, it takes on hell of an author to pull off this kind of novel. Kenn Follett just plain rules. The story goes at a breakneck pace, the descriptions of the feudal system are fascinating, and the characters are complex and multi-faceted. For every (small) predictable plot twist, there are a million little shockers, and at the end, there are a few questions about the truth lingering. Frickin great.
I also found Follett's descriptions of the complete powerlessness of women and the ultimate authority of the nobles described with total intensity, and they are displayed over and over again through the stories of the characters. Equally interesting were the power struggles between the church, the people, and the nobility. Conflict everywhere! Love it!
Another great aspect of this book was the concentration on Medieval ideas about health and medicine, especially during the time of the plague. Given that monks are the only physicians, the best cures are blood-letting and applying goat-shit to open wounds to form a "healthy" pus. If you sit closer to the altar in the church hospital, you'll heal faster. [Although slight scientific advances are made in the book, the lingering affects of the church's bogus medical ideas seem to have transcended the centuries to live on in modern Italy: cover your stomach to avoid catching a cold, wait 3 hours after eating before you swim or you'll drown, sunflower oil is good for the flu, humidity causes low blood pressure, and canker sores are caused by indigestion. A complete aversion to all forms of medicine are also fundamental in this society. (i.e. Yesterday my French friend Sandrine had a headache. Italians don't like to take Aspirin because it will "destroy your liver," but Sandrine is French and has no problem with taking meds, so I offered her an Aleve. "If you don't want medicine, be Italian and kiss this," I said to her, holding up my pocket-rosary.)]
Anyway, great book, totally fascinating, very different from Pillars of the Earth, and written by a guy who truly is a master writer.
Vassar professor Don Foster's true story of being a literary detective. He outed the unibomber, discovered a lost sonnet written by Shakespeare, and eVassar professor Don Foster's true story of being a literary detective. He outed the unibomber, discovered a lost sonnet written by Shakespeare, and exposed the guy who wrote Primary Colors. He's able to do this simply by reading, arguing that each person has their own writing style as individual as their own fingerprints. Pretty cool read....more
Read this when I was stuck in an Italian hospital after an appendectomy when I was sixteen. Loved this and would love to reread it, plus the sequel. TRead this when I was stuck in an Italian hospital after an appendectomy when I was sixteen. Loved this and would love to reread it, plus the sequel. Thanks to Nicole for introducing me to this one. :)...more
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