InsaneJournal

Books, 2008
1. God's Secretaries, by Adam Nicholson, 2. American Born Chinese, by Gene Yang, 3. Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper 4. The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper, 5. Greenwitch, by Susan Cooper, 6. The Grey King, by Susan Cooper, 7. The Silver on the Tree, by Susan Cooper, 8. Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, 9. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman, 10. The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman, 11. The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman, 12. The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick, 13. Just An Ordinary Day, by Shirley Jackson, 14. The Transformation of Authorship in America, by Grantland S. Rice.


15. My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir.

He really likes the Sierra Nevada. Really, really likes. Really a lot. I cannot overstate how much he likes the Sierra, and how often he exclaims over it. I've spent some time in the Sierra, and I think it's pretty awesome, but my fondness for the range pales in relation to Muir's. Pales, ha! it's desert-bleached bone in comparison to the lush purple sunsets of Muir's regard.

But it's an amazing book anyway. I learned a ton, about sheep, and Yosemite (there was an article in the paper recently about the low numbers -- and falling -- of people visiting the valley these days. It's a problem, this fetishization of the vacant valley. It was never vacant, and it certainly shouldn't be kept that way now), and about what genuine enthusiasm for a subject sounds like. Fannish squee ain't got nothing on John Muir and the Sierra Nevada.

16. Kiss, Kiss, by Roald Dahl

I love Roald Dahl. He's a genius. He's also a twisted fucker. Seriously, the man was insane, and had a horrifying imagination. In a good way, of course. The short version is, if you like stories like Hayseed's Displacement, and I do, then this stuff is for you. Otherwise, all the murder and mayhem might freak you out. Favorites are "William and Mary" -- Mary finally gets her own -- "The Way Up to Heaven" -- I would have done exactly the same thing, because I hate being late for trains, too -- and "Genesis and Catastrophe" -- mothers get shafted, any way you slice it. "Royal Jelly" and "Parson's Pleasure" disturb even me -- "Parson's Pleasure" in particular. And I don't even know anything about furniture. For quite reasonable reasons, while I'm totally fine with Mary and Mrs. Forster and on their sides completely, I can't quite accept what Claud et al do to Mr. Boggis, even though he totally deserves it. But the commode didn't!

But more importantly, it's collections like this that remind me why I adore short stories so much. Because there is really very little in the world a wonderful as a good short story.

17. Spies, by Michael Frayn

Stephen is an interesting character -- he's got teapot ears and is, in many ways, the precise opposite of a Mary Sue: he has tons of opportunities to do the right thing, and never does it. He's got his reasons (chief among them are being a bullied little boy during World War II), but Frayn is a genius about making the reader entirely sympathetic to Stephen (and everyone else. And in making the reader question what would be the best course of action to take, because maybe Stephen did do the right thing. Although I doubt it). And my goodness, Keith's mother. I love Keith's mother. I could read an entire book about Keith's mother. Two books. And it's got an interesting frame: Stephen returning to his childhood home, some 50 or 60 years after the fact, and remembering the events of those few weeks when he and Keith set about to do something and achieved something else entirely.

18. Blue Shoes and Happiness, by Alexander McCall Smith

Mma Ramotswe is awesome. How do I know this? Because when Mma Makutsi, her assistant (who had gone to the Bostwana Secretarial College) asks where Mma Ramotswe's tiny white van got those two scratches, Mma Ramotswe said, "That is nothing. That is just a bang that happened." In fact, to be slightly more precise, it was "not a big thing. I was parking the van in town and there was a post. It had no business being there. Somebody had put the post in the wrong place, and it hit the side of van. There was a little bang. That is all." (He ran into my knife ten times.)

Actually, the most interesting thing about these books is the extremely self-conscious style that McCall Smith uses. All of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books are fascinating reads, stylistically.

On the other hand, it's even more fascinating that a white guy from Scotland can impersonate a black woman from Botswana and make gazillions of dollars on it. Fascinating in the same way that the Nazis are fascinating. How'd they do that?

19. Fault Lines, by Nancy Huston

My first foray into my eternal quest to read this year's Orange Award short list (I gave up on the long list until I could get the short list under control), it took me 200 pages to figure out I was reading a book about the Holocuast. Only it isn't: it's about Jews during World War II, and it's not about the Holocaust. How did that happen? (It's sort of about the Lebensborn, which means it's also about how devastating political policies can destroy people for generations.) Also, none of the characters (with the exception of maybe Randall's dad Aron) is at all sympathetic. It's kind of weird that I liked the book so much.

But the structure is fascinating, and the voices and style are brilliantly inventive. The way the book is told and the story being told are equally evocative.

20. Skin, by Roald Dahl

More creeptastic stories from Dahl. The best one in this collection is the titular story, which is deeply creepy. It's horrid. And awesome. And if "The Sound Machine" isn't enough to make you a vegetarian, then you're a lost cause. (I admit: I like veal too much to ever be a vegetarian. Alas.)

21. The Road Home, by Rose Tremain

This is another Orange Award short-list book, and the eventual winner, and it's really very good. Very topical, as well: it's about immigration, and displacement, and eternal hope. And the global brand that is Chevrolet. There's a lot of cooking involved, too.

I can see why it won (of the three Orange short list books I've read), but I didn't like it nearly as much as the other two. It's a little too -- perfect. It's as if someone decided to write a book-by-writing team, and included everything that ought to be included in these sorts of things. It reads like a very nice television miniseries, I guess.

22. When We Were Bad, by Charlotte Mendelson

Another book about a large and sprawling, multi-generational Jewish family that is not actually All About the Holocaust (and another Orange Award short-lister). It's about -- well, really it's proof that Tolstoy might have been talking crap when he said, "All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The Rabins are pretty much unhappy in the same way that most families are unhappy. Although in the end they might be getting towards something resembling less soul-destroying misery than they had been before their lives started to fall apart. It's an idea, anyway.

It's an interesting balance, too, in this book: there is just enough detail to keep you reading, and just enough characterization to make things fun, but not so much that it takes any deep thinking or stretched the mind. Solid is perhaps the word for it. Of the three that I've read so far (three more to go of the short list, and we're not thinking about the long list at the moment), I liked Fault Lines by far the best, even though it was the most gimmicky in terms of style, and the hardest to read in terms of content.

23. Noughts and Crosses, by Malorie Blackman

Not surprisingly, I read a lot of inheritance of the IRA in this book; South Africa is the more obvious parallel, but I don't know enough about that history to see it as vividly. On the other hand, Sephy is kind of dim, Callum is an idiot, Jude is a psychopath, and I have no idea what Mrs. Hadley was doing the night that Meggie was supposed to be covering for her (I do know, but since it has such huge ramifications, I'd have liked a little more detail. Context. Texture. Whatever. Or, you know, a book about Meggie and Mrs. Hadley. Not like that! Okay, maybe like that).

There are sequels, but I don't think I'm going to be reading them. It was good, it just wasn't all that. Or maybe I'm just not the demographic (YA through and through, and all about romance triumphing over all. Even when one half of the romance does stupid and irreversible things). I always have the same problem with Romeo and Juliet -- that's not romantic, it's just stupid.

24. Murder in Mount Holly by Paul Theroux

All those edicts about showing, not telling? No one bothered to inform Paul Theroux of them.

Also: boring. I can't pinpoint why, but I was just really not interested. I like the set-up, though. It could have done wonders.

25. Dr. Slaughter by Paul Theroux

Well, I'm thankful that my academic career didn't turn out like this. And I have to say, this is one of those stories that could only have been written by a man. I don't mean that as a compliment.

26. Dr. Demarr, by Paul Theroux

I wanted this to be better than it was. It's the best, by far, of the three Theroux (short) novels I read all in a row, but it's still not that interesting. The set-up was fascinating, and the build-up was great, and then it turns out Gerald is quite unsuitable for a protagonist in every way imaginable. I'd have preferred a book about Tallis; at least she's interesting.

I did like the notion that George and Gerald didn't like each other at all; it seemed very "real families" to me.

27. Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, by Elmore Leonard

The illustrations are excellent.

Perhaps that's not the most generous of praise. The illustrations are brilliant, and the rest of it is one longish -- or actually, a very short -- blog post on extremely thick paper. But it's sort of useful: Rule 10 is, "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." A good rule, that. He also has a thing against adverbs.

On the other hand, he also says, "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." Then again, he's looking to remain invisible as a writer, which is a laudable intention, it's just not always my intention. Sometimes I want to be present as a writer, sometimes I want to make the reader read something and think, "My goodness, how did she do that?" I doubt I succeed, but it's the eventual aim.

28. The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey

I like mystery novels.

I can't remember when I first heard about the Elizabeth Canning case, but I've always wondered about the sort of person who will blame other people -- innocent people -- to mask their own failures. That seems the worst kind of hideousness. There was a CSI: New York episode on a while ago where a wife murders her husband and a limo driver, and has set the stage so that the limo driver is the guilty one -- he killed the husband, and and wife in turn killed him in self-defence. That sort of thing seems a great deal worse, morally speaking, than merely killing two people because you wanted to. (I have perhaps shady morals.)

So: I like Robert Blair. I like Marion Sharpe. I even like Mrs. Sharpe and Stanley and Nevil and Aunt Lin. I like everyone in this book, and I am very sad to see them go. We had some memorable times together.