Zig-zagging by Tom Wilson -- Book Review and Tour Stop

"This game of ours always began the same. Dad would draw a picture of Ziggy happily strolling along, unaware of some horrible misfortune about to befall him. Ziggy might be zooming off a cliff, walking unknowingly into an open manhole, or oblivious to a meteor plummeting head-on his way. After Ziggy had been drawn into one of these dire circumstances, Dad would flip the placemat around, hand me his pen, and say, "Tommy, it's time for you to SAVE ZIGGY!"

This book is a cross between the memoir and inspirational genres, as Wilson writes about his experiences taking over responsibility for Ziggy from his aging father, dealing with the early death of his wife, battling depression, wrestling with faith, and finally founding his marketing firm Character Matters and finding a place for his pain and Ziggy.

I enjoyed the memoir, and wished Wilson had written more about his personal life and included fewer inspirational platitudes, although I understand why they're mixed in. The first portion of the book is the strongest, where Tom talks about his relationship with his father and how Ziggy played into that dynamic while he was growing up.

The book also has a Ziggy cartoon mixed in for every 5 pages or so--offering Ziggy's insight into the situations as Wilson relates them, which is a great touch for the book. All in all, Zig-zagging is an interesting peek into the private life of the man behind the Ziggy cartoons I love to read in the paper.

Buy Zig-zagging: Loving Madly, Losing Badly How Ziggy Saved My Life by Tom Wilson

SEE TOM DRAW ZIGGY (AND TALK ABOUT HIS BOOK):




This book is currently on tour with TLC. View the tour schedule and visit the publisher for a chance to win a copy of Tom Wilson's Zig-zagging.

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch -- Book Review

I went to Cotillion Training School for the same reason my friends went: my mother wanted me to. This was important to her, the same way it was important to have a picture of her great-great-grandfather dressed in Confederate gray over the sideboard and for us not to be seen in Dad's truck when we were in town.

I was packing for Spring Break and trying to decide which books, out of my large TBR pile, I should carry home. I had four books started and needed to pick a few more, so I thought I would read the first page or two of the other books in the stack to decide.

Oh, the best laid plans...

I read the first 100 pages of Girls in Trucks before convincing myself to put it down and finish packing. The writing is wonderful. From the beginning I connect with Sarah. She's done the perfect daughter thing, now she wants to live her own life. The only problem is, she's not very good at it. She dates the wrong guys and can't seem to land that job she wants in New York. Life just isn't lining up like it's supposed to.

But when does life ever really go as planned, and do we want it to? I think that's what this book gets at. Everyone has goals, ideas of what their life will be like, but what happens when things don't work out? Do we change plans, or ourselves?

"Being unfaithful to yourself is not as hard as you'd think. I will never compromise myself for someone else, I always thought. I'll kill myself first. But it's so easy. It's like wearing earplugs. It's as if you've put your head under the pillow during a thunderstorm, so that all you can hear is the faint sound of muffled rain."

Girls in Trucks spans somewhere around three decades, I think, and is written more in pieces than as a novel. Sometimes I had to stop and reread to figure out how old Sarah was, which could be frustrating. The end frightened me as well, because I thought, for about 15 pages, that the author had written this great book and then was going to end it with a trite wrap-up, but she avoids that trap nicely.

This turned out to be a great read, up to all the hype I'd seen, and I can't wait for Crouch's next book.

On a sidenote: DON'T READ THE JACKET COPY. It gives too much away. Trust me, just start reading--you'll be a hundred pages in before you realize it.

Buy Girls in Trucks from amazon.com

Katie Crouch talks about her book and her experiences as a Southern gal living in New York City:



(Does she look a little like Debra Messing from Will and Grace to anyone else?)

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake -- Book Review

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell."

This is a gem of a work I discovered while writing a paper for my class on British Romanticism. More a piece of art than a book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is beautiful, confusing, thought-provoking and a bit insane. My favorite part of the book is the Proverbs of Hell. Blake writes that he wanted to explain what hell is like so he brought back its wise sayings, because a people's proverbs tell you what is important to them. The list is a mishmash of contradictions. Some of the sayings could have come straight out of the biblical proverbs, while others fly in the face of Christian teachings.

Here are the first few (Read slowly, let each one sink in before you move on to the next):

"In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence."

Blake is railing against a religious establishment he doesn't agree with, in a world that has been turned inside out by the French Revolution. If you haven't read this since it was assigned to you in Lit class, pick it up again, but make sure to find an edition with Blake original illustrated pages. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by how refreshingly beautiful Blake's writings and drawings are.

Buy William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books

Changing Places by David Lodge -- Book Review

"High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. They were protected from the thin, cold air by the pressurized cabins of two Boeing 707s, and from the risk of collision by the prudent arrangement of the international air corridors."

Sometimes, you go on a date with a really great guy. He's smart, funny and considerate. He takes you somewhere fun, opens the car door for you, and asks lots of questions about where you work and what you read. You laugh at his jokes and smile and really, really want to like him because he deserves to be liked. He's perfect and gorgeous--and total not doing anything for you.

That's how I felt about David Lodge's Changing Places.

The novel follows two professors, one from California, the other from England, who switch positions for a year in an exchange program through their respective universities. They not only trade positions, however, as each finds himself mixed up in the other man's personal life and political problems. It is the first in a trilogy of campus novels and the next two in the series were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction.

I know I should like it, and I can tell it's a good book if I look at it objectively. The passages are well written and clever. The author switches from prose to letter to screenplay style with great success, and even throws in a twist at the end when you think you have it all figured out. He works in themes about coincidence and fate and politics and education without coming across as if he did it on purpose.

It should have been a good book, but I just never could get into the story or care much about the characters. I finished the book and had nothing to say, which is one of the reasons why it took me nearly three weeks to write this review.

We had a few laughs together, me and Lodge, but if this was a date, I wouldn't call him back. On the other hand, I might give his number to a girlfriend. After all, he's a catch--just not for me.

Buy Changing Places on amazon.com

Slow Hands by Leslie Kelly -- Book Review

“Don’t stop me,” he whispered hoarsely as he tugged her ponytail holder off and ran his fingers through that thick, dark hair, spreading it across her shoulders. He tasted her soft earlobe, moving slowly down the long line of her delicate neck, nibbling lightly, savoring the unique flavors of skin and woman.
“Stopping you isn’t even a consideration.”

This isn't the sort of book you read for it's literary merit. The plot was predictable, the characters were typical, and the gimmick--she thinks he's a gigolo, which he lets her believe until he has time to win her over--is tired. Romance novels follow a tried and true formula that can get old fast, and this one doesn't deviate far from the model. That said... the sex is great.

Some romance novels skimp on the sex, which is really the whole point of the book, right? Slow Hands really delivers on the good stuff. In fact, if you're short on time, read Chapter 1, then skip to Chapter 5 -- instant satisfaction.

Buy Slow Hands from amazon.com

Sundays at Tiffany's by James Patterson -- Book Review

"Across from me at my table at the Astor Court was Michael: hands down the handsomest man I knew, or have ever known, for hat matter. Also, the nicest, the kindest, and probably the wisest."

As a college student starved for an easy-going read, James Patterson’s “Sunday at Tiffany’s” was full of promise. The snowy picture with a young couple embracing on the cover quickly caught my interest and I couldn’t wait till I was done with my schoolwork and this week's newspaper to start reading the story.

It felt great to cuddle up in my quilt and start reading for fun again until I read the first page of the book. The author's detailed description of an ice cream fudge sundae didn't manage to disguise the horrific writing. The story was filled with numerous adjectives that seemed to be there to distract the reader from noticing the lack of quality in the style. I love adjectives—they can breathe life into a story and transcend the pages of the book, but only if used properly Adjectives can also drag the story down, cluttering out the plot and themes, which is what happened. Still enthusiastic about reading a book other than Chemistry or Spanish, I plodded on through the pages. Neither the plot nor the style ever improved.

I felt like I was reading a private journal written by somebody in their late teens, rehashing how awful their parents were, rather than a story from a seasoned author. I have a beef with stories structured around the idea of a character blaming their weaknesses on their parents or relatives. After a certain age I feel that the character should step up and take control of their lives. I don’t want to hear about your eating problem, how ugly you think you are, or the awful manner in which your boyfriend treats you. Eventually the heroine’s problems in “Sunday at Tiffany’s” were resolved but the conclusion made me think the author ran out of things to complain about so he ended the book.

One moment in the book had promise—the sex scene between the heroine and the hero. But even as the hero was nibbling on the heroine’s breasts, the author quickly gave the reader the quick and dirty rundown. The lovemaking lasted less than a half of a page, more like a paragraph really. Like the rest of the novel, the sex scene was poorly executed and sloppy.

As I closed the book and left my toasty quilt behind in the chair, I thought about what I would write for this review. As much as I disliked the story, I appreciate the hard work the author probably put into it…BUT if you are going to commit to a sex scene or fill your novel with a monstrous number of adjectives, at least have the wherewithal to do it it well.

Buy Sundays at Tiffany's from amazon.com

Signed, Mata Hari by Yannick Murphy -- Book Review

“It helps to be fluent in a number of languages if you want to become a spy. I spoke Dutch, German, Spanish, French and even Malay. If you have a studious mind, this helps you become a spy. If you do not have a studious mind, this too helps, because who would suspect you, being ignorant of how to break a code, of knowing how to concoct invisible ink from a number of vials? Anything helps if you want to become a spy, because everyone wants to believe you are a spy.”

How many wonderful things can I say about this book before you begin to roll your eyes?

Mata Hari, an exotic dancer and professional courtesan, was accused of being a double agent for the Germans during World War I and executed by the French in 1917. Whether or not she actually spied for the French is debated, and the records of her trial remain sealed until 2017.

Signed, Mata Hari shifts subtly between 1st person and 3rd throughout the book, even occasionally flirting with a 2nd person perspective, which creates a dreamy sort of voyeuristic feeling for the reader. The chapters are short, but luxuriously crafted--almost poetical in their cadence. I felt drawn in immediately, as Mata Hari begins her story by recalling when she "walked across the sea," a memory she calls on throughout her life as a source of strength and courage.

"When I walked back, I turned around and looked over my shoulder to watch the sea advancing. Try and catch me, I said out loud, and what answered back was the sky, at first in low rumbles, then louder as thunder rolled closer. But it never did catch me, and I outran the tide and lived."

The story alternates between Mata Hari's memories and the prison cell she occupies. I felt, as I was reading, that perhaps she was telling me only part of the story--that perhaps she was telling herself only part of the story, as she offers glimpses of her life leading up to her imprisonment.

Even not knowing that Mata Hari was an actual historical figure, I enjoyed this read. The last chapter tipped me off to the fact that this is a truth-based fiction, and now, having read a little of the history, I can see how thoroughly the author incorporated her research into the text. Signed, Mata Hari touches on subjects like parenthood, sex, abuse and desperation without the reader even realizing that this beautiful and enjoyable book is saying something deeper about our humanity.

Murphy has written a wonderful, simple, beautiful book.

The Dead Guy by Doug Hewitt -- Book Review

"The name's Thigpen. Jack Thigpen. I investigate car insurance fraud. I'm not a double-nought spy, and I can't stomach martinis--no matter shaken or stirred--much to the chagrin of my wife. Martinis make me gag, but what I hate even more than olive-adorned, vomit-inducing adult beverages are scammers, con men, swindlers, and cheats. These shysters, sumbags, fraud-meisters, who absolve their consciences with the belief their crimes are victimless, instead perpetuate illegal activities that result in injury and death."

I received this book as a review copy, and at the risk of being blacklisted, I'm writing the review.

First of all, can I just ask: What in the world is going on with the grammar in that last sentence? This is the first paragraph in the book!

NO TYPOS OR GRAMMATICAL MISTAKES ON THE FIRST PAGE!

Moving on.

If you've read very many of my reviews, you've probably noticed that I focus on the voice and writing style probably more than I do the actual plot line--that's just the way I read and appreciate books. Now every writer or book has (or should have) a unique voice. Now, Hewitt was ambitious--he took on the stereotype that every bored film student with a camera has tried: the classic private eye...



Seriously?

Now, I'll be honest--I put the book down and walked away.

For a few days.

Then I considered that perhaps the book is supposed to be satirical--an entertaining spoof. Or maybe Hewitt has found a way to pull off this classic in an interesting new way. I went back and kept reading. Not only did the book not get any better, within 30 pages the author lost track of the PI voice--the only element that had any real potential of making the book a memorable experience.

Did I mention that Thigpen's best friend was shot? And he's chasing down bad guys that want him dead?! But it doesn't matter because he'll be dead in a few months from a fatal disease anyway?!! I'd wait for the movie: (I love the potato head characters!)



The Dead Guy didn't have a chance.


As always, feel free to disagree! Let me know what you think in the comments!

January Reads Roundup

I started out the month with a good reading pace, but had to slow down when school started, but nonetheless, I'm very happy with the books I picked this month--there were several stand-out excellent titles and picking a favorite was more difficult than normal.

Best Pick of the Month:
The Keep by Jennifer Egan -- this was a difficult choice, because I read several Best of the Month worthy books, but this one wins it by a hair. Haunting, magical, hilarious, complicated, frustrating -- this book will have your head running in circles.

Worst Pick of the Month:
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld -- I cannot emphasize how disappointing this book was. I'm more frustrated by good books with rotten endings than books that were rotten all the way through, because at least those I can stop reading before I become interested in any of the characters.

Also Read this Month:
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga -- give it 100 pages, it starts out slow but builds into something scary and engrossing.
Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles by Pierre Bayard -- this was in the picture finish for favorite of the month. An absolutely hilarious and engaging literary criticism for those who don't read literary criticism.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini -- beautiful.
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas -- this book is a lot darker than I was expecting, in a very good way. Complicated characters overlaid with romance and adventure, what's not to love?


Yearly Stats to Date:

Total Books Read: 6
Total Recommended: 5

Male Authors: 4 (4 Recommended)
Female Authors: 2 (1 Recommended)

See last month's roundup here.
Visit the reads roundup archive page here.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas -- Book Reivew

"Eh, gentlemen, let us reckon upon accidents! Life is a chaplet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink. Nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin"

My first introduction to The Three Musketeers was the 1993 Disney film version, which I would watch over and over, rewinding the fencing scenes to watch them again. (There's something so irresistibly romantic about sword fights.) I've always wanted to read the Dumas original, but thinking that I basically already knew the plot line, I never picked it up. Of course, that's the sort of clever-but-not-clever-enough thinking that gets kids in trouble on book reports and literature exams!

The movie and the novel might as well have been two different stories that happen to share a setting and several character names. Oh, and an amusing, ridiculous rivalry between the Cardinal's guards and the King's Musketeers.

Set in 17th century France, The Three Musketeers follows the adventures of D'Artagnan, a young Gascon who dreams of joining the King's Musketeers, and his three friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

I expected sword fights, romance, intrigue and adventure, but was pleasantly surprised to find a large helping of humor as well:

“This is the gentleman I am going to fight with,” said Athos, pointing to D’Artagnan with his hand and saluting him with the same gesture.
“Why, it is with him I am also going to fight,” said Porthos.
“But not before one o’clock,” replied D’Artagnan.
“And I also am to fight with this gentleman,” said Aramis, coming in his turn onto the place.
“But not until two o’clock,” said D’Artagnan, with the same calmness.
“But what are you going to fight about, Athos?” asked Aramis.
“Faith! I don’t very well know. He hurt my shoulder. And you, Porthos?”
“Faith! I am going to fight--because I am going to fight,” answered Porthos, reddening.
Athos, whose keen eye lost nothing, perceived a faintly sly smile pass over the lips of the young Gascon as he replied, “We had a short discussion upon dress.”

I actually listened to most of this story in the car. The entire book is on Librivox, and the fact that the story was read by amateur voice talent only increased the humor quotient (some of the readers were very good, others less so).

What makes this book a classic in my mind, however, are the dark moments. D'Artagnan is the main character, but in reality one of the least interesting. The real poignancy in the book comes from the portrayal of wise, yet haunted, Athos and the ruthlessly ambitious Milady. Whispered at in the movie but fleshed out in the book, these beautiful characters will stay with you long after you finish reading the final page.

Buy The Three Musketeers at amazon.com

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga -- Book Review

"Oh, I could go on and on about myself, sir. I could gloat that I am not just any murderer, but one who killed his own employer (who is a kind of second father), and also contributed to the probable death of all his family members. A virtual mass murderer.

But I don't want to go on and on about myself."

I buy very few books, but the library hold queue for this book was so long, and the reviews and discussions about it have been so compelling, that I broke down and bought a copy.

The basic premise of the story is that Balram (our murderer) has heard on the radio that the Premier of China is coming to India and wants to meet some of India's entrepreneurs. Balram, over the course of seven nights, writes to the Premier, explaining how he came from the "Darkness" of India's rural provinces to become a successful businessman in Bangalore.

The first hundred pages of this book are good, but not rave-worthy, which had me wondering what all the fuss was about. Then, there is a scene where Balram brushes his teeth for the first time:

"Brush. Brush. Spit.
Brush. Brush. Spit.
If only a man could spit his past out so easily."

For me, this was the turning point in the book, the place where the narrative went from interesting and mildly entertaining to if-I-put-the-book-down-I-still-won't-get-anything-else-done-because-I'll-be-thinking-about-the-book-so-I-might-as-well-sit-here-and-read-it-to-the-detriment-of-everything-else-I-should-be-doing. (Don't pretend that you don't know exactly what I mean.)

This book has been awarded the Man Booker Prize and provoked a slew of angry reactions from the Indian community. Adiga's The White Tiger is unapologetic, coarse, misinformed, bigotry-ridden and morally ambiguous. It has been accused of India-bashing and pandering to the West, and I can see their point. I don't, however, agree. The important thing to keep in mind when reading this is that it's one person's story and the narrative is told from his point of view.

As readers, we are not being asked to buy into Balram's view of the world, we're simply given the chance to see the world his way--a new perspective, and a provoking one.

Buy The White Tiger at amazon.com

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld -- Book Review

"That the world was miraculous, frequently in inexplicable ways, I would not argue. That these miracles had any relationship to the buildings we called churches, to the sequences of words we called prayers—that I was less sure of."

If you haven't read American Wife yet, I'm guessing the book is either on your TBR list or you've made a conscious decision not to put it there. I would suggest a third alternative: read the first 3 sections, and then:

PUT

THE

BOOK

DOWN!

American Wife, based very loosely on the life of Laura Bush (a.k.a. Alice Blackwell), reads like an leisurely, well-written epic. Narrated by Alice, the story is at times funny and often poignant. Unfortunately, after writing a beautiful, engrossing tale about a woman who would be first lady and her charming-yet-flawed husband Charlie, Sittenfeld trades in her storyteller's perch for a pundit's soapbox.

The narrative jumps ahead 10 years, past Charlie's stint as governor and into his second term as president, where we meet one-dimensional incarnations of Charlie and Alice, instead of the interesting, complicated characters that had occupied the book thus far. This fourth and final section takes place over a single day, most of which Alice spends making bland, unenlightened reflections on her husband and his presidency, and then concludes with an utterly predictable flourish.

I don't know if Sittenfeld thought she had earned her soapbox after the first 3 sections, or if she simply wasn't comfortable writing about life in the presidency, but this book could have been great. Unfortunately, the final section drags it down to barely mediocre.

Laura Bush will be publishing her memoir next year.

Buy American Wife at Amazon.com

The Keep by Jennifer Egan -- Book Review

How do you measure a book's success? Does an engaged audience equal a good book?
The Keep definitely engaged me:

• I groaned at the intentionally horrible writing on page 1 (It didn't improve from there).
• I scoffed at the ending when some of the loose ends find themselves tied up in neat little bows and some are never explained.
• I yelled WTF when Ray, the narrator, started butting in at random and when the baroness aged backward and forward and then backward again and when Danny started talking about "the worm" or "alto" or how he can just sense when there's a Wi-Fi connection nearby and...well, I don't want to reveal too much, but there were several WTF moments.
• Yet...I couldn't stop reading it.
  

So what can I tell you about Jennifer Egan's The Keep? I've stewed over this book and read other reviews, but I just don't know what to say about it. It's a modern-day Gothic romance written by a man in a maximum security prison. It's a story about how the past haunts us. It's a juxtaposition of modern technology with the supernatural. It's simultaneously intriguing and frustrating.

If you're looking for something immensely original to read, and you don't mind a few loose ends, you might enjoy The Keep. If you want to have your questions answered by the end of the book, I'm telling you, you won't. You have been warned.

I'm not sure whether or not The Keep was a good book, but I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it. If you would like to take a look at the first two chapters, they are posted online here.

Buy The Keep at amazon.com

Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening The Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles by Pierre Bayard -- Book Review

"The main premise of detective criticism is this: many of the murders narrated in literature were not committed by the people accused by the text. In literature, as in life, the true criminals often elude the investigators and allow secondary characters to be accused and condemned. In its passion for justice, detective criticism commits itself to rediscovering the truth. If it is unable to arrest the guilty parties, it can at least clear the names of the innocent."

This is literary criticism like you've never read it. When I picked up this book, I thought it was a fan fiction approach to Sherlock Holmes. What I ended up reading was an entertaining, thought-provoking and convincing argument that Sherlock Holmes did not solve The Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles.


Summary:
Written in a casual, easy-to-read style, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong is broken into 3 short sections. In the first, Bayard points out Holmes's mistakes and builds a case for Stapleton's innocence (Holmes concludes that Stapleton is guilty at the end of The Hound of the Baskervilles).

After convincing the reader that Stapleton is innocent, Bayard takes a detour for the second section into the history surrounding Arthur Conan Doyle and his character Sherlock Homes. He also talks about how literary characters pass in and out of the real world and argues that they can take on a form of autonomy and commit crimes which even the author doesn't know about. (It sounds a little kooky, I know, but it makes sense when you read it.)

In the third section, Bayard turns back to the case at hand and points a finger at the "real" murderer.

Review:
I started this book and couldn't put it down. There were some typos (it was translated out of the original French) and shameless self-promotion by the author, which bothered me, and the detour in the second section was slightly longer than I would have wished, but those are the sole objections I can make to this book. Part literary deconstruction, part imagination, and part pure genius, this book must be read by anyone who takes the slightest interest in criticism--you will never look at any book the same.

Besides, if you don't read it, you'll never know what really happened in The Hound of the Baskervilles; I'm certainly not going to tell you!

Buy on amazon.com


Sidenote: I talked about the PBS series Wishbone in a recent post, but wasn't able to find the clips I wanted, so for this post I have included the Wishbone re-telling of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. Obviously, this is a more traditional interpretation of the story than Bayard presents. Enjoy!

The Wishbone version of The Hound of the Baskervilles:

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini -- Book Review

"Seasons had come and gone; presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered; an empire had been defeated; old wars had ended and new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold."

I don't want to be presumptuous. I don't want project my own ignorance on whomever stumbles upon this post. So, I will only say that, as a well-read, well-informed citizen, I thought I knew, if not all the details, at least the gist of the situation in Afghanistan. I watch Anderson Cooper. I saw Charlie Wilson's War. But this book offers a timely perspective on a war that had been going on long before we got involved, a war many Americans don't realize we are still fighting.

Set primarily in Kabul, A Thousand Splendid Suns spans 30 years of Afghan history, following the unlikely friendship between two very different women, Mariam and Laila, brought together by mutual fear, grief and pure necessity.

What I found most striking about this book was the lack of sanctuary. Mariam and Laila live in an Islamic world, but even surrounded by prayer and mosques, they have no peace and no rest. Not only do they live in a war-torn country, where at any moment a bomb could fall on their home or a sniper could use them as target practice, the women are married to an abusive husband who takes out his anger, frustration, even boredom on his wives.

The story is at once foreign and familiar, as it explores not only how much one person can endure, but also the meaning of home when your country has been destroyed by decades of war.

Below, Hosseini talks about his inspiration for A Thousand Splendid Suns, and his journey to becoming a renowned author:


Have you read it? Do you plan to? Let me know what you think--leave a comment!

Buy A Thousand Splendid Suns on Amazon.com

December Reads Roundup

Looking back over the past month, I was surprised to realize that I gave more negative reviews than positive ones, and that both my favorite and least favorite book were Pulitzer Prize winners.

Best Pick of the Month:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz -- I know you've heard the rave reviews already, but if you haven't picked this one up yet, you've been missing out! Possibly the best book I've read in a long, long while.

Worst Pick of the Month:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson -- Beautifully written, horribly boring. Twenty years from now, college freshman will suffer through it in their Intro to Modern Lit classes.

Also Read this Month:
Away by Amy Bloom
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling

Stats:

Total Books Read: 7
Total Recommended: 3

Male Authors: 3 (1 Recommended)
Female Authors: 4 (2 Recommended)

Buy The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on Amazon.com

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson -- Book Review

"I was struck by the way the light fell that afternoon. I have paid a good deal of attention to light, but no one could begin to do it justice. There was the feeling of a weight of light--pressing the damp out of the grass and pressing the smell of sour old sap out of the boards on the porch floor and burdening even the trees a little as a late snow would do. It was the kind of light that rests on your shoulders the way a cat lies on your lap. So familiar."

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I gave up on this one. I know it won a Pulitzer, and the last Pulitzer Prize-winner I read was amazing, click here to see my review of Oscar Wao, but I just couldn't do it. I made it to page 76, but I kept falling asleep on the couch.

The language is beautiful and stark, but nothing is happening. The premise of the book is an elderly father recording the story of his family for a very young son, who the father knows he will not be able to watch grow up. It's a touching idea, and works well for the beginning, but I would have liked to have read more family stories and less, I'm watching you and your mother blow soap bubbles at the cat. Maybe I should have given it a few dozen more pages, but the New Year is right around the corner, and I wanted to return it to the library and get a fresh stack of books to choose from.

Feel free to explain to me what a terrible mistake I made, that the book actually gets good on page 80, because I really did want to like it, and might pick it up again at some point.

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for The Time Traveler's Wife. The deadline in January 31, 2009.

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The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling -- Book Review

"Though Death searched for the third brother for many years, he was never able to find him. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son. And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life."

I suppose I'm not really the target audience for this book, but I saw it at the library and was curious. I read the Harry Potter books and enjoyed them and thought Rowling's latest collection might provide some new insight to the world she creates in her best-selling series.

The book contains 5 fairy-tale-like stories with commentary by the late Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore. The only story with any real bearing on the Harry Potter lore will be the familiar "Tale of the Three Brothers" which is also found in the last book of the Harry Potter series. (It might actually appear earlier, I'm not sure)

In addition, the commentary adds little to the world of Harry Potter as anyone familiar with the series will not need an explanation concerning the animosity between the pure-blood and the muggle-born or the difference between an Animagus and someone who has performed a Transfiguration spell. There's nothing wrong with the book, but there's nothing especially interesting about it either.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Short Story Review

"Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partly crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a long smoke-colored beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question."

I don't intend to talk about movies very often on this blog, but because The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I figured I could get away with it.

I saw the movie the day after Christmas with my mother and sister (I'm home for winter break) and enjoyed it. The film was shot beautifully, although the teenage version of Brad Pitt was unconvincing (he still had old eyes; they should have begun using a different actor at that point) I liked the story well enough, although it seemed to lack a depth, and I was curious to read the original short story on which the movie was based.

I found the full text of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" online here, along with the rest of Fitzgerald's short story collection, Tales of the Jazz Age. I have to say I was not impressed. First of all, the "baby" born in the Fitzgerald version is a full-grown man, 5 feet 8 inches tall, to be precise. This is illogical. Of course the whole idea of aging backwards is illogical, but still, a fantasy must abide by the obvious laws of physics, or else explain them away (For example, if everyone in a story has x-ray vision, and then the protagonist says that he doesn't know what's going behind the wall, you have to explain why his x-ray vision isn't working).

In this case, the story seems to inhabit the same world that we live in, so aside from the gimmick of aging backwards, all other physical laws should be maintained (No walking on the ceiling). Herein lies my problem with the story: no woman can give birth to a full-grown man. Not only is he born full-grown, he has also been born with the ability to speak (why?) and a taste for expensive cigars (really?).

The story continues as Mr. Buttons insists on treating a full-grown, talking, cigar-smoking man as a newborn baby, insisting on dressing him up in children's clothes (made-to-order, of course) and giving him a rattle to play with. Benjamin, however, continues to act the age he looks, rather than the age he is, as he ages right back into the cradle. The movie on the other hand gives Benjamin a body that ages backward but a mind that moves forward, just like anyone else, which leads to more interesting situations.

The only thing the story and the movie have in common is the gimmick of a man who ages backward, and for that I'm glad, because at least the movie was enjoyable. Do you agree?

For a more thorough discussion of the movie at Life in the Short Lane, click here.

A preview for those who have not yet seen the movie:



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Buy Six Tales of the Jazz Age from Amazon.com

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz -- Book Review

"You live as long as I did in the heart of fuku country, you hear these kinds of tales all the time. Everybody in Santo Domingo has a fuku story knocking around in their family. I have a twelve-daughter uncle in the Cibao who believed that he'd been cursed by an old lover never to have make children. Fuku. I have a tia who believed she'd been denied happiness because she'd laughed at a rival's funeral. Fuku. My parental abuelo believes that diaspora was Trujillo's payback to the pueblo that betrayed him. Fuku.

It's perfectly fine if you don't believe in these 'superstitions.' In fact, it's better than fine--it's perfect. Because no matter what you believe, fuku believes in you."


I don't know how to review this book without sounding like an echo of all the reviews that have come before. I absolutely loved the book, read passages of it to my mother and sister (I'm home for Christmas) and even read out loud to myself to feel the rhythm of it. The writing is like everyday poetry, written to feel bare and natural. The Spanglish didn't bother me, I speak a little Spanish so there were only a few points where I ran across a sentence I couldn't approximate the meaning of.

I have a little experience with Hispanic culture, although I don't know any Dominicans, and I think that is part of what drew me into this book. I am 1/4 Puerto Rican and have visited some of my family there. The writing really reminded me of the easy they switch back and forth between Spanish and English in a single conversation, substituting whenever one language or the other supplies the better word. There's something rich and enticing about mixing languages, especially for someone like me who never got beyond the basics of a second language despite several years of schooling.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao pretends to be about Oscar, a fat, geeky Dominican teenager living in New Jersey, but in reality, it's a story about family and legacy. The book, which is narrated by someone who was once a friend of Oscar and his sister, spends most of its time travelling back and forth through several generations of Oscar's family, which may be cursed by the fuku, or not, it's never entirely clear. The story is laced with references to the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and even the Sound of Music and contains footnotes on Dominican history and the rule of Trujillo (also known as El Jefe, the Failed Cattle Thief, and FuckFace).

The book doesn't offer a pretty picture of Dominican life and culture, but rather is laced with sex, violence, and misogyny. Most of the characters are hard to relate to or feel sympathy for and at points you wonder why you care what happens to them at all, but yet the book draws you in. Like a train crash, you know its headed for disaster, but you just can't pull yourself away.

"I'm not entirely sure Oscar would have liked this designation. Fuku story. He was a hardcore sci-fi and fantasy man, believed that that was the kind of story we were all living in. He'd ask: What more sci-fi than the Santo Domingo? What more fantasy than the Antilles?
But now that I know how it all turns out, I have to ask, in turn: What more fuku?"

If you need a more detailed review, check out the always excellent New York Times Review here.

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