An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

I noticed this book in the 'new arrivals' section of the library. The title caught my eye so I decided to try it.

This book is about a man who turns his life around after serving a jail sentence for accidentally setting fire to Emily Dickinson's house. Twenty years later, his history starts catching up to him as other writers' houses are burned down and he is the prime suspect. In figuring out how to defend himself, he reconciles with his estranged parents and learns more about their marriage and his childhood. The book was part mystery, part novel.

The narrator was likable enough as a character although I didn't think that he (or the other characters) were particularly well-developed. The story's quirky style held my attention, but I don't think this is a book I'll remember at the end of the year.

The Blind Assasin by Margaret Atwood

I love love loved this book. Webster bought it for me at the airport when I discovered I didn't like the other book I had brought with him. I typically enjoy Atwood and I think this is one of her best.

The book has two stories in it: the main narrative and a novel that one of the characters wrote. I usually find these types of books frustrating (see Lamb's last novel) but in this case, both stories kept my interest equally. Also, I was not disappointed by the climax that ties the stories together.

The outer (?) story is about a woman looking back on her life, which includes growing up being raised by her tycoon father with her unusual sister followed by an unhappy society marriage. The inner (?) story is about two un-named lovers across class boundaries in an un-named city in an un-named time. It feels more like Atwood's sci-fi style.

I only wish that I had read this as part of a book club because I am sure I missed several layers that I would have gotten from discussions with others.

ps: I was struck by how beautifully this was written only after starting the next book I read which was written just fine but was not as beautiful as Atwood's poetic style.

Book Weekend

I had a nice weekend in Rochester celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday with a large raucous group of her friends. Though I had met many of them before, I discovered several avid readers in the group. See below for the book recommendations I picked up. I think I may have picked up some new blog readers too!!

At dinner on Saturday, I was seated next to the lovely Amy, author of a soon-to-be-published book that I can't wait to read! At one point in the conversation she asked me what books I would most recommend. I said, "to what audience?" and she said, "just the books you'd hand down, or what you would call the most influential, or the ones you'd talk to Oprah about." I chuckled, commenting on how those are three very different questions and then stalled because I didn't have a great answer for any of them. Though I compile the booklist each year, I haven't ever kept a running favorites list which often trips me up in conversation. It's like when my boss recently asked me what U2 song I liked best, I stumbled and stuttered and came up with something off Joshua Tree. Not my finest moment, and not representative of my devotion to Bono et al.

Anyway, I should work on a more comprehensive answer to that set of questions. It would be a good project for me.

Book recommendations:

1. Amy : Random Family by Adrian LeBlanc; Courtroom 302
2. Bob and Beth: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner; China Road; Master and the Margarita; Barbara Kingsolver's new book on local eating
3. Connie: Land Without Hats by Julie Mugal
4. Mary: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

Keep 'em coming.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I really liked this book. It was an "emergency" purchase at a closing bookstore and I lucked out.

The story follows a family in Nigeria in the 1960's. It alternates between the early part of the decade, filled with affluence and culture, and the later years, filled with civil war. There are many well-developed characters from different classes that make the story a full picture of the time period from many points of view.

Uniquely, each chapter read like a short story although the book had a strong narrative linking the individual episodes. I really liked this especially at the beginning of the book because it gave me a self-contained set of events to think about each night.

I also appreciated learning about Nigeria. Looking back at my booklists, the majority of African writing I've read has been set in Zimbabwe. While there were certain themes present in this book that were familiar to other books - treatment of ethnic minorities, existence during war time, ordinary people surviving great trials - there was also a great deal of information on Nigerian history that I didn't know. Some of the characters in the book were involved in the creation of Biafra, a short-lived independent nation that seceded from Nigeria. I had never learned about that.

I think this is my favorite thing that I've read this year so far.

The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart

Terri, a new reader of my blog, recommended this book as one of her favorite 13 books (she couldn't stop at a top ten - familiar!) It is the story of a young woman who has been the caretaker for an old man who dies. The last thing he leaves for her to do is to re-connect with an old friend with whom she had a falling-out many years previous.

I enjoyed reading this book - the writing was very good and I was curious to find out what the story was behind the end of the women's friendship. The interpersonal interactions and character development was incredibly well-done for as short a book as this was. I also thought the resolution was fairly good and appreciated the narrator's explanation of why the story ended where it did. What most struck me about the story was how one event in someone's life could so strongly define their future.

My only criticism of the book was that while I was reading it I could never remember "what I was in the middle of" when someone asked. Once I finished it, I almost forgot to include it in the blog until I noticed it in the pile of books to go back to the library. I usually like to think that the best books are memorable, and this one was not.

Credit where credit is due

Last night I bumped into Dooyon, someone I had met last year at a party and had a great discussion with about books. I realized talking to her that she is the person who had recommended Michael Pollard's In Defense of Food to me that I so enjoyed last year.



I also remembered talking to her about starting a book club in Boston - I still can't believe that I can't find half a dozen people who want to get together and talk about a book that they have all made the effort to finish. Yikes. Laura and I are going to try it with Omnivore's Dilemma, but she is in Delaware so we will email our thoughts to each other.

Inauguration Day

Today was President Obama's inauguration. Wow. He swore his oath of office on Lincoln's bible which I think is pretty cool despite my discomfort at the strong presence of religion in the ceremony.



But, he could have chosen any book at all to swear on - or not use a book at all. It got me thinking - what book would I put my hand on if I were affirmed into office - a political statement with a Michael Pollard book? A favorite novel? Caroline's Knapp's Appetites? Something from my childhood?



Perhaps if I were someone who thrived on public service the choice would be obvious.

Girls Weekend - two new bookstores

Away this weekend with three of my best girl pals to celebrate Jamie's birthday.

As a pit stop on the way up north, we stopped at Seasoned Booksellers in Rochester, VT. http://www.seasonedbooks.com/ Cute old mansion, crammed with used and new books only loosely organized, clean bathroom, and nice coffee shop with homemade baked goods - Pure heaven. I could have spent the entire weekend there.

Later in the weekend I realized I didn't like the book I had brought with me (Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra which I will try again in the future but just don't have patience for right now). At 4:58 we flew into Tempest Book Shop in Waitsfield after a day of shopping and before Apres-ski (er...Apres-shop?) My friend Sara loyally declared we were having a "book emergency" and the proprieter was kind enough to let me scan a few piles of books until I found something I wanted - Half a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about Nigeria. So far so good. The Tempest (sadly, website-less although wifi-enabled in the store) was clean, bright, and had a lovely model train hoisted from the ceiling.

Though not a bookstore, it was also wonderful to reunite with Laura, whose comments on books are always thoughtful and eye-opening. She gives me hope that having kids does not preclude reading!

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

I was disappointed with this book.

And maybe my expectations were too high because I had loved Lamb's two other novels. But I did not enjoy reading this book. Late last year I wrote about being hesitant to read Garden of Last Days because it was a 9/11 book and I didn't think I wanted to read about that. This book was about both Columbine and Katrina - and it treated both of those subjects in a reasonably predictable and PTSD way - just why I didn't want to read about recent crises.

To compound this, the narrator was not very sympathetic - sort of like a meaner, more careless version of Demille's John Corey. Both he and his wife were explosive, emotionally-stunted people whom I did not like. I kept talking to them, saying "why don't you just tell her you feel that way," and "jeez, just talk to him about how you feel - let him in."

Finally, the second half of the book intersperses the current narrative with letters and a Masters Thesis about the narrator's ancestors. B-O-R-I-N-G. Over the last few years, I have developed a far greater tolerance for historical fiction and alternative methods of moving a story along than just narrative text, but this was unbearable. It was also yet another major theme to weave into an already-crowded story.

The only piece I found interesting was the narrator's visits to his wife in prison. Lamb had obviously researched life in a women's prison carefully (as evidenced by his two compendiums of non-fiction writing by women prisoners since his last novel), and it showed in the writing.

Hopefully Lamb is hard at work with something I'll like more.

What is Coming in 2009

Great preview of books to look forward to this year.

http://www.themillionsblog.com/2009/01/most-anticipated-2009-may-be-great-year.html

Thanks to everyone for your recommendations in response to my 2008 booklist. I am grinding through Wally Lamb's book right now and will post about it soon.

Top Books of 2008

Happy New Year, readers.

2008 was a notable year for me personally -- I married Webster and finished grad school. Literarily (is that a word?) it was a great year too; I read over 40 books with almost a third of them being non-fiction and nearly half making the "Top Books" list.

If you read the reviews (click on the book for the link), you'll see that many of these were recommended by you - my readers! Please continue to send recommendations to me, because they increase the number of good books I get to read each year. And don't forget that this blog is updated throughout the year with short reviews of what I've most recently finished.

So without further ado...the list.


Book that most changed my life: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan - Examination of what and how we eat in America today and how to improve it. I still think of what I learned often while cooking or eating.


Fiction I could not put down:

• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen - Old circus performer looks back on his life
• Run by Ann Patchett - Affluent white family adopts two black children in Boston
• A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier - Life in the semi-dead world that people go to as long as someone living on Earth still remembers them
• What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman - Mystery about sisters, abducted 20 years earlier
• Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond - Woman loses her fiance's daughter at the beach one day
• Garden of Last Days by Andrew Dubus III - Imagining of one of the hijackers last few days before 9/11 and the lives of the people he interacted with

Runner-up Fiction:

• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks - Imagined history of the Sarajevo Haggadah
• The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao - Dominican adjusts to life as an immigrant in a memorably voice.
• A Free Life by Ha Jin - Chinese family seeks the American dream as immigrants
• Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon - Women hosts radio show in failing Latin American country
• The Gravediggers Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates - Epic about a woman's life escaping abuse and poverty
• In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar - Coming-of-age book set in Libya in the 1970s.

Great Non-Fiction:

• Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood - Microsoft Exec is inspired to leave Microsoft and start a global charity for libraries in developing counties.
• When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin - White man returns to Zimbabwe to see the collapse of the country mirrored by the collapse of his aging parents' health
• Monkey Girl by Edward Humes - An examination of the recent fights about intelligent design versus evolution in school systems
• Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - Woman grows up in abject poverty with unfit parents
• The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman - Gentiles who own a zoo save numerous Jewish families during WWII with nationalistic and naturalistic motivations
  

So that's it for 2008. Here's to a 2009 that is happy, healthy, prosperous, and full of great books.

Love, Sheryl

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

I bought this at Borders a couple months ago and really enjoyed reading it. It's a true story about a family who owns a zoo in Warsaw Poland in the 1930s. When WWII breaks out, they become part of the Polish resistance, assisting numerous Jewish families to hide and escape Poland.

The character development was superb. The motivation of both the husband and wife, based on their love of nature and their nationalist, was clear throughout the book. The characters were depicted as greatly compassionate and intensely brave but not without their foibles.

Another thing I liked about the book was a general history of Poland during WWII that explained some of the military and national issues that I had not known. My knowledge of WWII is rooted in Holocaust studies and the impact on the Jewish community, but it was interesting to read about the larger geo-political issues that created that environment.

I also appreciated being reminded of some major figures in the Warsaw ghetto, such as Janusz Korczak, gentile doctor who cared for Jewish orphans and died at Treblinka with them, and Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira, who brought joy and hope to a community in great despair. I did struggle with Ackerman's style of writing sometimes, though, when she wrote of the Nazis journalistically instead of with anger and hate.

Overall, a really interesting read about ordinary people compelled to the extraordinary in a time of crisis.

Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen

This book was on the New York Times' 2008 Notable Books list. I was surprised to find it on the shelf at the library and picked it up right away. The novel is by an American who has studied in Argentina, and her style includes the magical realism commonly found in South American literature. She is also a doctor, which comes through in her writing.

The story follows a psychiatrist who is treating a patient who has disappeared. At the same time, he begins to suspect that there is a woman in his house pretending to be his wife, and that his wife has disappeared as well. As he embarks on a trip to Argentina to track down his wife, we start to wonder if he is losing his mind or experiencing a strange collection of incidents. The unreliability of the narrator becomes a major part of figuring out what is going on.

While I enjoyed the first half of this book, I found the second part, leading into the climax, to be more tedious than anything. The things happening in the book were confusing and I could not find the links and symbolism that should have been there for me to appreciate his breakdown completely. I did think Galchen ended the book well, but I would have appreciated better editing in the middle.

Under the Tree this year

Yay. I received two books from the top of my list for Christmas from my in-laws: Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed and David Wroblewski's Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I can't wait to read them.

Hybrids by Robert Sawyer

I flew through this, the last of Sawyer's three books comprising the Neanderthal Parallax, during our delayed flight to Rochester for Christmas. I really enjoyed both Humans and Hominids, and held off on reading this as long as possible.

Like the previous two books, this is about the characters on both sides of a portal that links our world with that of an alternate world based on Neanderthals' not becoming extinct. In this book, Mary and Ponter work out what it means to be a couple in love across these two worlds.

I enjoyed this book but thought that Sawyer tried to cover too many issues in too short a book. Within the 400 reasonably-fonted pages was an attempt to address our penal system, privacy, homosexuality, fidelity, and a few other big items. While I always appreciate the social commentary science fiction enables, I thought this book could have been better without quite so much of it.

That said, I did like the book and will miss looking forward to more books with these characters.