Sticking it to your husband's mistress, and other lessons

My posting is more and more intermittent these days - with the wedding less than two months away and my job hunt in full force, I haven't had an overabundance of free time.

Anyway, my latest entry is Isabel Allende's Portrait in Sepia. I enjoyed it, but I have to admit that it didn't make much of an impression on me. It's not one I'll be rushing out to recommend to all and sundry but it's pleasant enough company for a while. Considering it was a bargain buy, I probably ended up getting my money's worth out of it.

The novel traces the story of Aurora Del Valle, the illegitimate daughter of a well-to-do second-generation Chilean in San Francisco and a half-Chinese beauty from the burgeoning middle class. As so often happens in these types of stories, Aurora ends up being passed from hand to hand, first living with her Chinese grandfather and then her Chilean grandmother after his death. She's been traumatized by some unknown event surpressed deep in her unconscious, but she finds an outlet in photography. Aurora relates the story of her life intertwined with that of that wacky cast of characters otherwise known as family.

I wish I could come up with more of a critique for this one, but I'm struggling to come up with anything that stood out for any reason, good or bad. It's beige. It's the bland, inoffensive music that's piped into stores and doctor's offices around the country. Not good, not bad, just kind of there. A bland book is the hardest kind to review because you just can't think of anything to say about it. At least with a crummy book I can have some fun snarking on it as I review. No such luck here though.

At least I should have more to say about my latest book for The Mystery Reader - this one is Will Thomas' Some Danger Involved. It's pretty clear this is a debut novel; the style lacks the polish of an established writer. That said, the story is twisty, clever, and eminently believable. Anyway, I won't spoil the fun of the full review. It should go live this weekend.

Let's get on with it

Just finished up Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs - flat out wonderful. I should send a thank-you note to my editor over at The Mystery Reader for sending this one to me. My full review should pop up over there by the weekend, but in the meantime I can't stress enough how much you need to read this book. This book is the kick-off for a new mystery series set in London between the two world wars, and I'm looking forward to eagerly devouring further entries as they're published.

Growing up and growing old

Sorry for the paucity of updates lately - it took me the better part of a week to finish Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. I'd heard a lot of really great things about this book, so when I saw it in the bargain bin for $6.99 I thought I'd give it a whirl. It doesn't really have a plot per se - it's more a series of vignettes following the five members of the Lambert family as they make their way towards 'one last Christmas' together at the family home in St. Jude, a typical Midwestern town. Father Alfred is suffering from Parkinson's and is utterly dependent on his social-propriety-obsessed wife Enid to survive as his body betrays him. Their children, Gary, Chip, and Denise, are all so wrapped up in their own lives and issues that they actively try to avoid their depressing/uncool/juvenile/irritating parents as much as humanly possible. Gary struggles with his marriage as his children become the weapons he and his wife Caroline use to manipulate and control each other. Chip, recently fired from his faculty position at an unnamed university for having an inappropriate relationship with a student, dabbles in writing a terrible screenplay and borrowing huge amounts of money from his sister to support his shiftless existence. Denise appears to be a highly successful restaurant chef, but her immaculate cooking hides a women careening from one bad relationship to another, a trajectory leading towards a breakdown of everything she values. As this highly dysfunctional group tries to survive that most familial of holidays, they eventually come to understand, at least modestly, what drives the people they've been running away from all this time.

In some ways this book is a typical Oprah choice (I'll save my rant about that for another post) - dysfunctional family, suffering, depression, pathos, etc. Thankfully for the reader, Franzen infuses the book with a generous helping of humor that prevents it from sliding into full-on suicide-inducing Oprah territory. Some parts of the book are genuinely touching, while others leave you with a palpable sense of disgust. It's hard to come away from the end really appreciating any of the characters as people. That said, in many ways it's a realistic view on how people relate to their families. We may share DNA with these people, but it doesn't mean that we understand them, respect them, or even like them all that much. Franzen's satirization of the Lambert children's self-obsessed worldview is the true delight of the book - he skewers the "me-me-me-me-me" ethos of 21st-century life with aplomb.

Overall, I'm not quite sure that The Corrections lives up to the massive swirl of hype surrounding it (Yann Martel's The Life of Pi does a much better job there), but it's a worthwhile read all the same.

Survival and loss

Forgot to post yesterday to give my review of Nicholas Basbanes' A Splendor of Letters. I'm a huge fan of all of his books, and it's particularly fitting that I was in the middle of it when I got accepted to library school. He specializes in 'books about books,' that genre so near and dear to bibliophiles everywhere. This latest follows in the same vein as his previous works in this three-part series, A Gentle Madness, which focuses on book collecting, and Patience & Fortitude, which focuses on the the meeting between collectors and libraries. In A Splendor of Letters, Basbanes talks about how some books have managed to survive to today, while others fell victim to changing tastes, political and religious struggle, and the inevitable assault of time. It's a loose series of vignettes about various books and their history (he touches lightly on Michael Servetus, the subject of the previously reviewed Out of the Flames), and they're all quite compelling.

However, what I really love about Basbanes' work is how he acknowledges the changing world of books and publishing that has resulted from new technology but still makes a compelling argument for the continued endurance of the delightfully low-tech book. I'm prone to scoffing at those who say that the book as we know it will cease to exist in ten years. I don't see it happening for the simple reason that I have yet to see any reason why e-books or Internet publishing (for anything other than academic journals) is appreciably better than what I'm using now. Books don't make my eyes hurt from staring at a screen for too long. They don't depend on batteries that require frequent recharging; can you imagine the battery crapping out on your book just as you get to the good part? They're cheap, readily available, easy to transport, they don't crash, and they won't be destroyed if you accidently drop them. Until a tech company can convince me that their product is better suited for the task, I'll stick with my old standby.

Finally, I've got a new review forthcoming for The Mystery Reader here in the next few days. This one's for Ann McMillan's Chickahominy Fever, a Civil War mystery set in Confederate Richmond in 1862. I'll own that this is not my favorite subject matter, but issues with the story trump those objections. I'm officially giving it three stars, but I'd rather give it 2 1/2. Keep an eye open for my full review soon.

Squeeeeeeeee!

Just got an awesome piece of news and I am completely unable to keep it to myself. I just found out that I've been accepted to FSU's masters' program for library science, which is huge. I've been waiting on pins and needles to see if I'd get in and to know for sure that I'll be able to get my degree at a solid school is a huge weight off my shoulders. I finally feel like my vision for my future is starting to take hold and become reality.

I'll see y'all again in a couple of days with my latest review - sorry for the slow-pokiness, but life is busy these days.

Requires supervision

It's all the Sureshot fiance's fault - he knew that if he sent me to a book fair unsupervised with a credit card it would all end in tragedy. The only thing that limited me was my arm strength, which has gotten fairly prodigious lately thanks to yoga. I ended up coming home with 8 books for myself, 2 for my mom, and 1 for my dad. One of my dad's favorite authors, Henning Mankell, gave a talk and I got one of his (The White Lioness) signed for him for Father's Day. I got my mom a signed first of Peter Robinson's Blood at the Root and a signed copy of Tomie de Paola's Strega Nona - both should be hits.

Reviews of the books I picked up for myself will emerge eventually - right now my to-be-read stack stands 35 strong so I've got a lot of work to do! Much to my delight, I did manage to snag a signed first of Jasper Fforde's The Well of Lost Plots from Booked for Murder, a mystery bookshop in Madison, Wisconsin. Since a friend of mine is moving up there here soon (her going away party is tonight, in fact), I'll have an excuse to go to their store. I also had good luck at the stall for St. Louis' Big Sleep Books - they had a great selection of signed mystery firsts and the proprietors (a mother/daughter team) are very friendly and really know their stuff. I've added links to both stores in my sidebar.

As the t-shirt of one of the vendors at the fair proclaimed, "Friends don't let friends shop at chain bookstores." Support your local independents - they have great selection and true 'book people' for staff. Yeah, they may not be as cheap as some of the big chains, but they often have stock you'll never see at Borders or Barnes & Noble. Part of what's so enjoyable about reading is the wonderful community that readers build, and independents are a huge part of that. But they can't survive without our support. One of my all-time favorite independents, John Rollins Books in Kalamazoo, Michigan, recently went under because it couldn't compete with the B&N just down the road. It's a shame, and the loss has prompted me to support independents whenever I can. It's not always possible, but it's worth making the effort. When you're traveling, make a point to pick up the phone book in your hotel room and see where the independents are in the area. Swing by - you just might discover a hidden gem. For those of us who can't travel as much as we'd like (such as myself), more and more independents are taking advantage of the Web to expand their reach. As I discover more of these stores, I'll add links to them so you'll be able to check them out for yourself.

Well, it's time to sign off and see if Smarty Jones can pull off the Triple Crown today. Belmont has proved to be too much for a lot of great horses. Will Smarty break the trend? We'll just have to wait and see.....

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

Perhaps a bit too comedic a subject line considering the book, but I couldn't resist. I finished up Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone's Out of the Flames tonight. It's about Michael Servetus, a 16th-century Spanish doctor/philosopher/theologian who was burned at the stake in Calvin's Geneva for heresy. Servetus is now regarded as one of the founding lights of Unitarianism, but at the time he was writing his ideas were about as heretical as you could find. Classic case of a genius who was ahead of his time - not only was he an accomplished theologian before he hit 20, he was also the first person to explain in print the basics of pulmonary circulation. He's pretty much forgotten these days, but the story is a fascinating one. Only three copies of his seminal work survive in modern times - one each in Vienna, Paris, and Edinburgh. The rest were burned along with him.

I think this marks the first book by the Goldstones that makes a significant venture out of the book business. While the book has its roots in the book trade, it's not the focus here as it is in their other work. They're accomplished writers with a clear grasp of their subject matter - the research they've done is more than evident. I love their style as well; the little tidbits of humor they sneak in are quite amusing. It's sad to say that I laughed more reading this book than I did with the first 190 pages of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.

Man, I really loathed that book. I literally could not finish it. I've had so many people tell me that it's so great, but I thought it was terrible. I never cracked a smile. I guess I'm just not amused by grotesque people.

Anyway, topic. I have a big fondness for books like Out of the Flames. It's a genre I like to call "the history of the obscure," where an author devotes a whole book to some small historical topic and shows how it had a much broader impact than it might appear on the surface. Notable books in this category that I happened to like include Simon Garfield's Mauve, Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky's Salt, and Dava Sobel's Longitude. For some reason this genre really appeals to me. I guess I just dig the notion that even the seemingly small or inconsequential can have a huge impact.

And now for something completely different, I've also just submitted my latest review to The Mystery Reader. This one's Lyn Hamilton's The Magyar Venus. Should be up for your perusal in a few days, depending on my editor's schedule.

Finally, the Printer's Row Book Fair is coming up this weekend, so I'll be off checking that out on Saturday. One of my dad's favorite authors, Henning Mankell, will be there so I'm going to try and get him some signed copies for Father's Day. If you're in Chicago this weekend you should definitely check it out - should be good fun.