Books 26-30: 2011

26- The Titan's Curse
By: Rick Riordan
Genre: YA fiction
Three words: Percy Jackson continues
See previous entry regarding Percy Jackson. I am sure he continues to have magnificent Greek and Harry Potter inspired adventures...I just will not be reading them.

27- Hate List
By: Jennifer Brown
Genre: YA fiction
Three words: School shooting fallout
This YA novel, which we will be reading at my high school bookclub next year, follows Valerie, the girlfriend of the perpetrator of a school shooting as she tries to piece together her life in the aftermath. She returns to the high school after summer break. Her boyfriend is dead, having shot himself last, and the media has made her a victim, a hero, and a criminal. Valerie herself is unsure of which she is- while she had no idea what her boyfriend was planning, she did co-create the hate list, a notebook that included all of the victims and seemed the shooting's primary inspiration. I found it a compelling read, though the ending was a bit hurried and trite, and I'm eager to hear what my students make of it during book club. I would far prefer we could read Asher's 13 Reasons Why- same issues, more compelling book- but it has some inappropriate sexual content, so we're reading this instead.

28- Between Shades of Grey
By: Ruta Sepetys
Genre: YA fiction
Three words: Russian Anne Frank
This book details life in a Siberian work camp through the eyes of Lina, the daughter of a political prisoner. It's told in first person POV, and has a similar tone to Anne Frank's diaries; the focus is not just on the difficult times but how a teenager, specifically, behaves in these difficult times. Lina fights with her mother, worries about her father, and falls in love. It was an easy read and far brighter than most Holocaust fiction, but go read The Book Thief instead.

29- The Paris Wife
By: Paula Mclain
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Book Club
Three words: Hadley's Life Sucks
Seriously, this poor woman was a sickly, overprotected child. She meets the much younger, dashing writer Ernest Hemingway and is swept off her feet. They move to Paris where she has a child and they are blindingly poor. Once Ernest starts to become successful, he also starts having an affair with the couple's friend Pauline. He then blames the marriage's break-up on Hadley, because she didn't just ignore the affair. None of this qualifies as spoilers, because even if you don't know anything about Hemingway, Hadley tells you from the beginning that the relationship is doomed. Mclain vividly creates the world of the doomed couple, and if you're a Hemingway fan (like myself), it's fun to watch pieces of trivia you know pop up in the story. There are a few strange POV shifts that break the flow of the novel, but other than that it's an enjoyable, though not remarkable, read.

30- A Moveable Feast
By: Ernest Hemingway
Genre: Memoir, Literary Fiction
Three words: Drink, Starve, Write
I've had this novel since I visited Hemingway's Key West home years ago, but it took the inspiration of Mclain's novel to finally get me to read it. It was interesting to see how this book obviously influenced Mclain's novel and even how the oft besmirched Zelda Fitzgerald (slightly vindicated in Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin) rated in Hemingway's eyes (not well at all). Hemingway's memoir is the prototype for all the stereotypical descriptions of starving Parisien writers that have come after- so much, that it often feels like reading a cliche instead of the work that started the trend.

Book 16-20: 2011

16. The Aspern Papers
By: Henry James
Genre: Literary fiction, novella
Three words: No ghosts, children
Yup, the first Henry James story I've ever read that wasn't about ghosts, children, or some combination of both. I was inspired by Berendt's book and the similarities between this story and that of Exra Pound's mistress, detailed in the book. The entire experience was strongly connected to Berendt's book; they made excellent companion pieces. Other than that...well, it was Henry James. You either like him or you don't. As a Victorianist, I do.

17. Tender Morsels
By: Margo Lanagan
Genre: YA
Three words: Bear sexual assault
I heard about this book on SmarthBitches. Bitch magazine posted a list of "100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader." Tender Morsels was included and then removed "because of the way that the book validates (by failing to critique or discuss) characters who use rape as an act of vengeance." Now I have read this book and I can't see that it has a particularly strong feminist message or that it in any way validates rape. Rape happens in this book: rape, incest, and some particularly disturbing bear sexual assault. It is a very warped retelling of the Snow White and Rose Red fairytale. I don't find it empowering for women because the main character of the story is a perpetual victim and only ever able to escape the cycle of victimhood by living vicariously through her daughters. While she does survive her many ordeals, and that is certainly a triumph in itself, she is never able to create a life of her own. That being said, what a silly nonreason to remove this book from the list, which is what all the hullabaloo was about in the first place.

18. Darkest Mercy
By: Melissa Marr
Genre: YA
Three words: Fairy series ends
Yay, this series is over! Yes, I couldn't stop reading it, but it just kept dragging on and on, and I couldn't really enjoy it anymore either. It was kind of like LOST in that way. Except without any brainteasing whatsoever and all loose ends neatly tied. Anyway, it's over now.

19. Lord Perfect
By: Loretta Chase
Genre: Romance
Three words: Super boring romance
This book was incredibly boring. I was hoping it would hold up to the giddy magic of Last Night's Scandal, being that it details the intial meeting of the two main characters of that book. It took me many weeks to slog through the book, stopping in between to read other books. I only finished it, truly, because I wanted to add it to my count. So I'm off romances again, for awhile.

20. A Very Long Engagement
By: Sebastien Japrisot
Genre: Literary Fiction, Book club selection
Three words: So it goes
No one else from book club really liked this one; it was like Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five meets romance, detective story, and epistolary novel in a dark, French bar for a drink. Just like Vonnegut's novel repeats the refrain "and so it goes," this repeats "that's the way of the world" and it develops a horrifying picture of war and its aftermath. The book opens with five soldiers accused of self-mutilation and dumped over enemy lines instead of being executed. Years later, Mathilde, the wheelchair bound fiancee of one of the soldiers, tries to piece together the events before, during, and after and if any of the soldiers possibly survived.

Book 11-15: 2011

11. Plain Kate
By: Erin Bow
Genre: Young Adult
Three Words: Witches, Woodcutters, Gypsies
This YA novel read like a retold fairytale (I should know- I've read a lot of them), but no fairytale I've ever heard before. It told the story of Kate, a talented woodcarver, living in a superstitious age in some Eastern European country where anyone strange was suspected of witchcraft. I enjoyed it at the time, but there's little memorable to recommend it two months after my initial reading. I cried when one of the characters died; that's fairly unusual.

12. A Northern Light
By: Jennifer Donnelly
Genre: Young Adult, Book Club selection
Three Words: It's no 'Revolution'
I suggested this for book club because Donnelly's Revolution was so sublime, and this is the previous book that put Donnelly on the YA map. It was historical fiction based on the sensational murder of Grace Brown, which also inspired Dreiser's An American Tragedy, which I have not read. The main character, Maddie, was sympathetic, as she struggled to figure out her place in a world where women still had very few rights. Donnelly incorporated an interesting gimmick where she had Maddie choose a word of the day everyday, which was defined and anchored the chapter thematically. However, the story was somewhat predictable and nowhere near as compelling as Revolution. It made a poor choice for book club because there simply wasn't that much to discuss.

13. The Virgin Suicides
By: Jeffrey Eugenides
Genre: Literary Fiction
Three words: Narrators watch virgins
If you're reading this blog (and very few people are), you've probably already read this book. I feel I am one of the last people to join this particular party. Like critics before me, I was fascinated by the narrator(s), the unnamed boys giving us a voyeuristic look into the lives of the Lisbon sisters (not all virgins, despite the title). The relationship between the sisters and narrators is the crux of the book.

14. The City of Falling Angels
By: John Berendt
Genre: Nonfiction
Three words: Magical Venetian mystery
My second nonfiction book of the year- huzzah, me! I have had this book on my shelf forever, as my mother lent it to me right after it came out (oops). I found the book less linear than Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but I still envied Berendt's easy assimilation into a foreign culture. It made me want to return to Venice, hang out with rich people, and read Henry James (the latter I did, shortly after).

15. River Secrets
By: Shannon Hale
Genre: Young Adult
Three words: Another Bayern book
I keep reading Hale's Bayern books because Goose Girl was so excellent, but nothing has lived up to it. I felt glad to finish this one, because I believed it to be the last (I was wrong). No matter how much I enjoy stepping into Hale's world, I don't feel like I bring anything back with me. YA can be so much more than cotton candy, but Hale's latest Bayern books are just that. They're fluffy. They dissolve. I don't know, that's the end of that metaphor and this review.

Books 6-10: 2011

6. Revolution
By: Jennifer Donnelly
Genre: Young Adult
Three words: Surprise Time Travel
Oh, this book.
I gushed about it enough that I convinced my book club to choose an earlier Jennifer Donnelly book, Northern Lights, as our first YA book club selection. The novel begins with Andi, a very angry, sad girl living with her crazy mother in NYC and attending one of those elite private schools that so often appear in the YA genre. At first I found the novel difficult to read because Andi was so very broken that her voice- the novel is first person POV- was difficult to endure. Soon I found the novel difficult to put down.

Andi's pain comes from the death of her younger brother, a death for which she feels responsible. When it looks like Andi may not pass her senior year, her distant scientist father swoops in, institutionalizes her mother (about time) and takes Andi to Paris with him for Spring Break, so he can monitor her progress on her senior project. In Paris, Andi's father is set to perform DNA testing on a preserved heart, thought to be that of the Dauphin, eight year old Louis-Charles. The parallels between Andi's dead brother and the Dauphin are hilighted when Andi discovers the lost diary of Alexandrine, an aspiring actress during the French Revolution who became the young Dauphin's companion. The book has romance, music, secret parties in catacombs, fireworks, intrigue, research among rare manuscripts, and surprise time travel. The time travel almost made me hate the book, but then I accepted it and became engrossed all over again.

7. Jane
By: April Lindner
Genre: Young Adult
Three words: Rochester as Rockstar
What if Jane Eyre was a modern day nanny and Rochester was a tortured, brooding Rockstar? Lindner's novel certainly offers a new look at the classic, giving it the same treatment that so many Austen novels have been receiving. Does it work? Sometimes, as Jane bonds with Rochester's daughter in an isolated Connecticut mansion or hears a song he wrote just for her (instead of a ghostly, disembodied voice drifting across the moors). But it requires a large suspension of disbelief as well. If you are at all familiar with Bronte's original novel, these will not be spoilers. But...keeping a schizophrenic locked up in your attic in this day and age because all asylums are evil and disturbing places? Attempting to commit bigamy in a time when you don't actually have to marry a girl to sleep with her? Leaving college to become a nanny because you have no other options (hello? student loans?)? The situation of a Victorian woman-- the lack of choices, the dangers of a tarnished reputation, the utter reliance on a man and/or family-- simply do not translate to a modern tale. Still, I wouldn't turn down a modern day Rochester- with or without the crazy wife.

8. Last Night's Scandal
By: Loretta Chase
Genre: Romance
It's been awhile since I read an actual Romance novel, and I picked up this one at the recommendation of the Smart Bitches, who rarely steer me wrong. It was fluffy and fun and, literally, a joy to read. Romance novels offer few surprises. As my sister says whenever she flips through one: "That's one page closer to getting together. One page closer to getting together." True. But this book actually had me smiling, sometimes laughing outloud, as the two main characters did the will they/won't they (of course they will!) dance. I'm not sure why. They bantered. They resisted. Situations arose that forced them together. Nothing new there. They described each other's looks a lot, and always in the same way, which was a little annoying but did serve a purpose. Normally I read romances in a distracted manner, the way you eat lowfat popcorn in front of the television, shoving one piece after another into your mouth and not really registering any taste. But Chase made me really root for her characters and really become invested in their relationship. This is an element so often missing from romance. I think I will try some more Chase in the future.

9. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
By: Rebecca Skloot
Genre: Nonfiction
This is a book club selection, for my teacher book club at school. Nonfiction is not my bag, though I do want to try and read more of it this year. It's one of the most talked about nonfiction books of the year, and though I have no real basis to judge nonfiction (see above), I can see the appeal. There is so much to debate with this book, which purportedly is about Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman from Baltimore who had her cells taken at Hopkins without permission (a standard practice at the time); these cells became the first immortal cell line, used-- and eventually bought and sold-- by scientists all over the world. It is also the story of Henrietta's family, first ignorant, and then struggling to make sense of their mother's scientific contribution. It is also the story of Rebecca Skloot, young, intrepid, white and priviledged reporter, struggling to find the information she needs to tell Henrietta's story. The question of exploitation is at the heart of her story. Were Henrietta and her family exploited? Are we all exploited, to some degree, by the medical community? Is Skloot's novel itself a tribute or an exploitation? Once people have been exploited, can that ever be made right? Though sometimes I would find my interest drifting, especially in some of the more scientific sections, overall the human interest angle kept my attention. And it made me realize I need to learn facts, not just stories.

10. The Mistress of Nothing
By: Kate Pullinger
Genre: New Literary Fiction
Based on the true story of Lady Duff Gordon and her maid, who set up house in Luxor, Egypt when Duff Gordon's tuberculosis could not withstand the cold, English climate. The maid, Sally, falls in love with their Egyptian dragoon, as one does. Difficulties, based on class, gender, culture (those Victorian pitfalls) and race ensue. Life is not easy for a Victorian lady's maid (which those of us enamored with Downton Abbey already assumed).

Books 1-5: 2011

1. I am the Messenger
By: Markus Zusak
Genre: Technically Young Adult
Three words: slacker seeks puppetmaster
You'll find this book classified as young adult, but I found it a very sophisticated story. The same can be said for the first Zusak book I read last year, The Book Thief, a book about the Holocaust, narrated by Death Himself. The plot of Messenger follows Ed Kennedy, an underage cabbie slacker, who becomes a sort of secret-vigilante super hero when he is sent a set of playing cards dictating humanitarian missions. Beyond the general condemnation of the secrets of small town life, the novel examines how much we really know the people in our lives and how responsible we are for their happiness and well-being. It ends up surprisingly post-modern, and that's all I'll say about that angle. Overall, a hopeful book and an enjoyable read.

2. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
By: Aimee Bender
Genre: Literary Fiction, Magical Realism
Three words: whimsical, sad, metaphorical
There's been a lot of hype surrounding this book, which makes it difficult to gauge my reaction. I have trouble separating my feelings about a book from my reaction to its hype. The facts: At a young age, the heroine (Rose) discovers that she can taste her mother's despair in a piece of lemon cake. Rose goes on to discover emotions in all her foods: home-cooked meals, bakery cookies, school lunches, vending machine snacks. She learns to subsist on overly processed foods so she only has to taste the mechanic metal of the factory. Her relationship with food leads to a social ostracism that may or may not be self-imposed. Meanwhile, Rose is trying to cope with a depressed mother and brother and an emotionally detached father. Rose's talent, or curse- her relationship with food- becomes a far from subtle extended metaphor for how children can learn to cope with a difficult family life. Still, as Rose grows into adulthood, the metaphor developed a complexity, making the ending chapters more interesting than the beginning. My biggest problem with this book was that, just as Rose had difficulty making emotional connections to those around her, I had difficulty making any kind of emotional connection to Rose. I can't tell if this was Bender's intention or not.

3. The Cookbook Collector
By: Allegra Goodman
Genre: Literary Fiction
Three Words: Sisters, dot-com, food
This is a book club selection, suggested by myself. Like Sad Cake up there, it has been on a lot of "best of" lists for 2010. Unlike Bender's book, Goodman's furnished almost too many characters with which to form an emotional connection (not too many characters for me, but there have been complaints). I loved this book. Some reviewers compared it to Sense and Sensibility and, as there were two sisters- one romantic and one logical- what I really expected was a retelling of that novel. Which it was not. The Austenian comparisons remain apt if you think of Austen as someone who wittily portrays a slice of society in 3rd person omniscient. And Goodman's characters are also very concerned with money, marriage and class, so there is that.

The novel follows sisters Emily and Jessamine and the many characters orbiting their lives. Emily and fiance both run successful internet start-ups in the late nineties, so you know where this is going. Overnight they become millionaires, as do their friends and co-workers, and a lot of the book centers around how people dealt with the economic boom and the recession that followed. Jessamine is a perpetual grad student, studying philosophy, working at a used bookstore, and living with tree huggers (though she, herself, is afraid of heights). The bookstore's owner, George, is himself an internet millionaire, who got out early and uses the bookstore (and his beautiful house, cooking, and extensive wine collection) to tackle his ennui. I really wanted to have George's life problems. The eponymous Cookbook Collector comes into play when George finds a collection of antique cookbooks and hires Jess to catalogue them. Like Jess, I became fascinated with these books- a mixture of recipes sometimes delicious, sometimes archaic (sometimes both) and literary allusions. I have already spent too much space writing about this book, so to sum up: it is layered, nuanced, lovely. The book alternates between sucking you into foreign lands- the hush of a redwood forest, the challenge of the cookbooks, the bustle of an internet startup, the rituals of Jewish mysticism- and yanking you back to the real world of the nineties we all remember. Definitely worth the read.

4. Dash and Lily's Book of Dares
By: Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Genre: Young Adult
Three words: dreams, dares, diaries
I have loved Cohn and Levithan, writing either together or seperately, since I discovered Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (the book, which is infinitely better than the movie). This book was not as good, but it was a fun read. It opens with Dash finding a red moleskin journal left in The Strand bookstore, in the Salinger section. The book leads him on a journey of dares around the store. By the end, he's hooked and he sets up his own dare for the book's writer, Lily. The two teenagers spend the winter holiday sending each other on dares throughout New York City, wondering if their falling in love without ever meeting. It's a charming story, but for me it's most notable for Lily. Dash is typical Cohn-Levithan fare. Savvy, city-smart, and cynical, well-read in literature and pop culture. Dealing with an absent family. Lily, however, is an innocent, cockeyed optimist surrounded by a loving family. I enjoyed watching her adventures unfold, simple because she was such a different character for this duo to create. I also enjoyed The Strand. I miss The Strand.

5. V for Vendetta
By: Alan Moore and David Lloyd
Genre: Graphic Novel
Three words: Vigilante vs. 1984
I recently found myself at a party dicussing how I find most graphic novels disappointing because I started with The Watchmen, and it really doesn't get any better than that. So I went back Watchmen's creator...and I'm still disappointed. The Watchmen has its aloof, invulnerable superheroes, but its emotional core is Daniel and Laurie. This book was like having Rorschach as an emotional core, which does not work. I need comics I can emotionally connect with...I'm not an adolescent boy, after all. So I found V lacking. I did enjoy it for its post-apocalyptic viewpoint, as I have been reading a lot of that genre recently (mostly in young adult). And I'm still going to try some more of Moore this year.