Castle by J. Robert Lennon

This book was mentioned in The Millions' post on books to keep an eye out for in 2009. They quote from Lennon's website: "A man buys a large plot of wooded land in upstate New York, only to find that someone has built a castle in the middle of it--and the castle is inhabited." Always looking for books that get me out of Oprah's trade fiction, I decided to try it.

What a weird and frustrating read. Lennon is a great writer - his ability to describe a situation or location or create a character's persona was excellent. However, his writing style did not carry the book past its challenges with plot and theme. Eric Loesch, the main character, returns to the town he grew up in after some set of not-known-to-the-reader circumstances, and immediately purchases a large plot of land. The first half of the book, in which Loesch is fixing up the house he bought and exploring the area, reminded me of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go - detached, deliberate, and frustratingly hinting at dark secrets to be revealed later in the book. While Ishiguro delivers on the buildup, Lennon's payoff is just plain weird and unmotivated.

In the second half of the book, Loesch reveals a huge chunk of history about his past that explains much of his distant and anti-social behaviour. The mystery of the castle is resolved, then more recent events in Loesch's life are revealed as well. While there are some themes common to all these points in his life - compliance with authority for one - the second half of the book was pretty disconnected and choppy for me.

Obviously Lennon had some ideas he wanted to convey and a thematic way he wanted to tie them together but it did not work for me. I guess part of it is that Loesch is not very likable and delving into his past to find out why isn't something I cared about. I'd suggest that Hannibal Lechter is the only character I've ever disliked but become invested in finding out his personal history.

I would probably try something else by Lennon because he is well-regarded but this was not the book for me.

The Addict by Michael Stein

I first heard about this book in my June issue of Brown Alumni Monthly. Dr. Michael Stein is a professor at Brown and this book chronicles the relationship he has with a patient who is trying to correct her all-consuming addiction to painkillers.

Stein runs a program that provides buprenorphine as an alternative to Vicodin; while there are differences between this type of program and one that replaces heroin with methadone, the parallel is valid for the purposes of understanding the story. He seems to be compassionate but not soft, and was definitely likable as a narrator. Lucy, the title character, is likable too, despite her low self-image and erratically sad behavior relating to drug abuse.

The cover of the book include the subtitle "One Patient One Doctor One Year" but this is an oversimplification. Stein's book covers several patients' stories, which not only provides some context for Lucy's story but also for Stein's. A leading expert on addiction, Stein easily covers research on drug abuse, clinical trials he has run, as well as several intimate portraits of patients in a very readable format.

What most held my attention about this book is that it was the first one I had read from the doctor's point of view. I have read several books on mental health and addiction, including Appetites, My Name is Bill, Parched, Drinking: A Love Story, Prozac Nation, Holy Hunger, and More Now Again, but they are all from the point of view of the patient. There are glimpses of the doctor's point of view in many of these books, but always through the patient - in fact one of the most memorable parts of Prozac Nation occurred when Wurtzel had just attempted suicide and she hears her (excellent) Dr. Sterling on the phone commenting to another doctor, "Well, you know how it is, me and all my suicidal patients." Wurtzel grants her some "gallows humor" and the book quickly moves on...but I always wondered about the doctor's side.

And Stein provides a great view into that - his most striking characteristic is his measured competence, appropriately interspersed with concern and worry. We see Lucy as he does - weekly or monthly, with no additional information as to what the time is like in between other than her depictions of it. She is a sympathetic character, and clearly a favorite patient of Stein's (if they have favorites), but she is imperfect and he is appropriately distanced and clinical in his description of their interactions.

Lucy seems to be really invested in changing her life. My view into addiction, heavily influenced by the books listed above, is obviously slanted towards high-functioning addicts who can write and publish a book (or collaborate with an author). It was interesting in contrast to read about a recovery journey that was 'in-progress' with a patient who was motivated but not so much so that she was writing a book.

While I liked Stein as a (true-life) character and came to trust him as a doctor, I did wonder if Lucy would have benefited from seeing a psychiatrist too - Stein is an internist who provides talk therapy along with the buprenorphine. I didn't notice anything about their interactions that made me think he was not providing great health care but I also don't know how a psychiatrist would have changed her chances of recovery.

I appreciated reading this book and look forward to picking up Stein's other memoir, The Lonely Patient, sometime in the future.

Rising from the Rails by Larry Tye

I heard Larry Tye interviewed on NPR and was strangely interested in reading his book about the impact the Pullman Porters had on the making of the Black middle class. This isn't the type of book I usually choose but something about it struck me. I have shamefully decided not to read Infinite Jest this summer after trying for 34 pages, so this book became a kind of penance.

The book reminded me of the serious nonfiction I used to have to read for classes in college. Tye had obviously researched the book impeccably, interviewing porters and family members to gather a complete collection of anecdotes which he used generously throughout the book.

I had known very little about the Pullman Porters - but Tye gave some good background to get even the casual reader up to speed. After emancipation, ex-slaves had very few choices for careers. George Pullman had started a sleeping car business and needed attendants who wanted job opportunities so badly that they would accept sub-par conditions and expectations. He also wanted attendants for his cars that would blend into the background as "invisible" and ex-slaves fit both of those bills - thus an industry and labor force was born.

Pullman porters were treated horribly, scarcely sleeping, ridiculed by some passengers and co-workers, and underpaid with no chance of promotion. But they were also given an opportunity to travel and get exposure to the country that was not afforded to most ex-slaves or to their offspring. This job, Tye argues, enabled Blacks in America to create a middle class that previously had not existed for them.

Tye does a wonderful job covering the breadth of the story, including topics such as the porters' depiction in media, their training program, their family life, and a large section on their creation of a workers' union, which was one of the lengthiest processes in history for this type of union. He provides significant background on George Pullman, whose company employed the porters, and A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the union. Tye even takes a slightly long detour into Martin Luther King's draft into the civil rights movement.

This book opened my eyes to an era and a particular set of lives that I hadn't considered before.

Larry's Kidney by Daniel Asa Rose

I was really excited about reading this book that I heard about on a blog a few months ago. It is subtitled "Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant--and Save His Life" which basically summarizes the book for you.

Given the flippant charm of the subtitle, I expected the book to be funny, but it wasn't. I thought that Daniel's cousin Larry was a pathetic character - socially awkward in a way that presented like Asperger's. This book seemed to exploit his story rather than chronicle it. Rose also began the book with some notes on his decision to write the Chinese character's speech in the pidgin English he perceived they spoke in. While his intention may have been authenticity, the execution was tasteless.

Rose has another book about his visit to Eastern Europe with his children to trace the route his relatives took in an effort to escape the Nazis. While that subject seems interesting, I'm not likely to try it any time soon given the tone of this book.

The Other by David Guterson

I tried to read Snow Falling on Cedars (also by Guterson) when it was popular, but I had a hard time getting into it and gave up. When the description of this one caught my attention I decided to give it a try.

The story is about two friends who meet in high school. One (Neil) is from a working class family, the other (John Williams) from a rich family. After a formative trip where they get lost in the mountains for several days, Neil goes on to lead a traditional life and John William decides to live in the woods alone. The book is told from Neil's point of view, looking back on their relationship over thirty years later.

The majority of the book held my attention. The writing was superb - very dense and descriptive but I did very little skimming because I was interested in what I was reading. Neil was the narrator, and his style of telling the story was reasonably detached - looking back and describing the feelings he had at different times, but with a slightly clinical voice. This was when he was talking about both his own history (e.g. how he met his wife), and John Williams'. I kept changing my opinion on whether the book was about Neil or John Williams, but that was a satisfying challenge to grapple with while I was reading.

My only disappointment was with the last 10% of the book. After a tightly written narrative about the relationship between the two men and their choices, Guterson reveals some of John Williams' background through a long rambling monologue delivered by his father and a misplaced set of anecdotes revolving around his mother. The information revealed did not tie the entire book together well enough to justify the mediocre writing. That aside, I enjoyed the book overall, but I don't appreciate the book now that I am done with it as much as I did while I was reading it.

Middlesex being made into a series

Nice - Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, is being made into a TV series on HBO. Wow! I loved that book and the Pulitzers aggreed. I am dying to know how HBO is going to cast it and how they plan to tell the story.

Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog by Kitty Burns Florey

I think I first noticed this book, subtitled, "The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences" on my favorite book blog: The Millions. The book is delightful - it's 8x6, thin, and cleanly formatted and illustrated. I don't usually notice the design of the books I read but this was hard to miss. It's worth a trip over to Google Books to see a sample page.

Florey's book reads like a long essay - I could imagine this being in the New Yorker in a few segments. It was a mix of literary history, her personal story, details about diagramming sentences, and a little social commentary thrown in. I had always enjoyed diagramming sentences in school (it was like math during English) and it was interesting to read the history of how and why it was invented.

I encountered a few laugh-out-loud moments (which reminded me to put Bill Bryson's books on my reading list - I was once on a flight with someone reading Bryson's A Walk in the Woods and she laughed uproariously for the entire flight) but mostly just enjoyed the writing. She spent a long chapter discussing what famous writers may have covered in school vis a vis diagramming and how it may have impacted their style - James, Stein, Twain, Cooper, Proust, and Oates to name a few. I was surprised how shockingly out-of-date her irreverent references to George W. Bush seemed.

The penultimate chapter was the only one that seemed out of place to me. As a copy editor, Florey encounters many grammatical errors. In this chapter, she enumerates her least favorite ("ain't", double negatives, and "youse"), weakly connecting this to the rest of the book by considering whether diagramming these errors would make it obvious they were wrong. While I appreciate a discussion of grammatical errors as much as the next logophile, I didn't think it fit with the rest of the book.

That criticism aside, this was a quick, likable, and memorable read.

Daemon by Daniel Suarez

Gregg mentioned this book on his blog and it was a great break from the serious reading I'd been doing. Since reading Cuckoo's Egg as a teenager, I have enjoyed technology-based thrillers, and this was a great one. I had some trouble finding it at first since it was initially pulished under the psudo-psuedonym 'Leinad Suarez'.

This book is about a world-famous techie who dies and appears to be controlling events from the grave. The characters quickly find out that it is a set of computer programs (known as daemons) that he's written that begin a set of events upon his death. A World of Warcraft-type online game plays a central role in the execution of his plan.

I read this book quickly, and enjoyed the combination of action, technology, and philosophy. Unlike the drivel about technology we often see on television (what's that Lassie? someone's hacked the blowfish algorithm and the router is launching an attack on the firewall?), this was well-researched and imaginable. While some reviewers see it as a cautionary tale about the dangerous future of a world run by machines, I just found it to be a fun read. Hopefully I won't regret that sentiment in 2060!

Lost Paradise by Kathy Marks

I heard the author of this book interviewed on NPR and was so interested that I decided to take it out of the library. The book is about the Pitcairn Island, where the Mutiny on the Bounty crew settled. In the past ten years, a storm of sexual abuse accusations by adolescent and pre-adolescent girls on the island have erupted, and Marks' book covers the ensuing trials and fallout. Over time, the truth emerges - sexual abuse of young women by older men is a multi-generation problem within Pitcairn, tacitly accepted by men and women alike, hidden behind false morays of Polynesian promiscuity.

The first several chapters of the book relay Marks' experience as one of the six journalists credentialed to cover the trials on this island of just 50 people. In a community that small, journalists can hardly remain the outsiders who do not impact the story, so Marks does her best to report on her experiences as a visitor, describing both the efforts to reach the remote island as well as the lukewarm reception she and her coworkers received. Over the course of the book, she covers a history of the island, the events leading up to the trials, and the impact the trials have had on this tight-knit community.

It would be interesting to read a trained sociologist's view of the same events, although Marks' book was delightfully readable. She discusses themes of control and power - not just as they relate to sexual assault but in how they are used in the community. She also keeps revisiting the idea of "the myth of Pitcairn Island", thought to be an Polynesian idyll without any of the negative aspects that exist. Her openness to report on the critiques of her own coverage was commendable but didn't tone down her obvious (and seemingly justified) disgust with the treatment of the case: the accused men were charged and sentenced leniently, then returned back to society early, easily returning to their positions of power. Meanwhile, the accused women were ostracized by the community, including their families, and pressured into recanting.
Towards the end of the book, she explores all the categories of people in the community who let down generations of women by letting sexual abuse go unchecked. She also addresses several potential theories for the abuse, as well as other similar communities without this problem. I think she tries too hard to draw conclusions and make recommendations rather than just tell a story that speaks for itself. That said, I liked the book overall and continue to reflect on the story.

Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

In preparation for starting Infinite Jest, I was committed to finishing Omnivore's Dilemma ("OD"). Laura and I had decided to have a long-distance book group on this book so we had been trading emails about different sections for the past several months. This was a good way for me to read a book - always get more out of discussing my reading with other people and Laura is an excellent corresponder with a smart point of view. I also enjoy reading more than one thing at a time and this became a good background process.

OD, like Pollan's In Defense of Food, exposes some of the unhealthy and illogical parts of our food production system. This book is structured in three main sections - the first covers the 'military-industrial complex" of food, following a single cow through the mass beef industry to a meal that ends at a McDonald's. The second section explores organic and sustainable eating. And the final section covers Pollan's experiences hunting and gathering all the ingredients for a single dinner he prepares.

I liked that Pollan went and experienced each of the types of food production first-hand, reporting and not just researching. While it did not have the same impact on me that IDOF did, OD was a good read.

In the first section, he covered the science and economics around corn production, including, I kid you not, a large section on 'corn sex'. He also covered a history of fertilizer and general efficiency in our food chain. The sections on the beef industry immediately reminded me of The Jungle.

Pollan fascinated me with his examination of the organic food industry. He drew a distinct line between organic and local, which really made me think about where my food comes from. He also presented a different model of running a farm that varies the vegetation and animals in different locations year to year, providing a long-term sustainable model that generates far more yield and far less waste than how we farm now.

I was a little more disappointed with the last section, where he hunts and gathers, finding it to be more condescending and self-aggrandizing than the rest of the book. That said, there were some good points about how hunting one's food can change one's relationship with eating. He also gave an extensive and weirdly fascinating background on mushrooms. But overall by the time I got to the meal he prepared I really found the premise to be kitchy and more about making his point than anything. His anecdotes were fun to read but I had kind of stopped learning by the end.

The two points he made in the (too-short) denouement was that there should be "transparency" in our food and he recognized that both McDonald's and his homegrown meal are outliers in how we can really eat. I agree with both of those and see them as reasonable conclusions to his book. I think that if I had not read IDOF first, this book would have had even more impact on me. That said, I'd recommend it to both readers of IDOF and those who have never read Michael Pollan.

Beginning Infinite Jest

So I am trying to commit to this Infinite Summer program on the web where a set of smart people help me read David Foster Wallace's 1000+ page Infinite Jest this summer. I am intimidated by the book. I am sad to lose some of the time I would otherwise spend reading other stuff. I am concerned that I don't know enough about Hamlet. I am heartened that Jason Kottke says I don't need to worry about the Hamlet stuff. I am loathe to get one of the Infinite Jest readers' guides that is recommended because the 1000+ pages is enough to worry about. Having started the book (barely) I am impressed by the density of his writing - DFW does not waste a single word. And I keep thinking, what the heck is he doing?? with all his characters.

That's a lot of feelings for being on page 37 of a book I am kind of worried is going to ruin my summer.

The Gathering by Anne Enright

Sara Coe recommended this book to me, so I put it on my library queue. It was the story of an Irish family who come together when one of the 12 adult children dies. I expected it to be an easy read with familiar themes. Instead, it was an incredibly unusual book.

The writing reminded me of what happens in my head when I am alone in the car for several hours - the narrator meanders through several years and interactions and episodes in no discernible order. But by the end of the book a cohesive story had come together. Like with a few books lately, I was tricked into thinking the book was about one character (the dead brother) when actually the protagonist emerges as the narrator as the story unfolds. If pressed, I'd describe it as a coming-of-age novel about a middle-aged woman.

This book won the Man Booker Prize in 2007 - I liked it but didn't think it was the best thing I had read all year. I wonder if I could have identified it as a prizewinner if I hadn't known.

Weekend at the Vineyard

Web and I went to the Vineyard (that's Martha's for the benefit of those of you not from New England) this weekend to visit Jamie who is living there this summer. While cleaning out the boarding house that she is managing, she found piles and piles of old books. I love the variety & juxtaposition. Also the colors of the pages - check out these pics.






I also checked out two bookstores in Vineyard Haven, one of the small downtown areas on the island. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the first store we wandered into - it was a stationary store with books in about the first third of the area. The most notable thing was that the books all had current event and political themes, even most of the fiction. Webster and I chuckled at how much the bookshelves looked like the ones at our house! From Michael Lewis to Ascent of Money, Descartes' Bones, Krugman's latest book, and for fiction, Edgar Sawtelle, both of Khaled Hosseini's books, Wally Lamb, and plenty of other favorites of ours. It was kind of uncanny!

Next we went to Vineyard Haven's more well-known bookstore, Bunch of Grapes. This bookstore burned down last year and just re-opened last week, so I was fortunate to get a chance to visit.

I'm not sure I would have known that there was a fire had I not been told, but knowing it I am pretty sure I could smell both paint and smoke. The selection was great - and a wonderful selection of new trade fiction that grew my reading list by about a mile. The upstairs had expansive ceilings with exposed wooden beams, ceiling fans, and a huge stained glass window. I exercised extreme willpower and did not purchase anything, but that would not be scalable were I to spend a summer on the island.

In the spirit of books this weekend, I also finished two more I had been in the middle of that I'll review shortly - The Gathering and Omnivore's Dilemma. Jamie also lent me Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which I'll get to later this summer. Starting tomorrow night I crack into Infinite Jest. And I'm not afraid to admit that I am scared.

The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser

This book is subtitled, "The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft" and is about the robbery of millions of dollars worth of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The robbery took place on St. Patrick's Day in 1990, and the author was interviewed on NPR around the anniversary of the heist.

Boser does a fine job of describing many of the facets of the robbery. He covers all the facts from the night it happened and profiles many of the suspects and law enforcement officials involved in the case. He also discusses other significant art heists and provides a detailed personal history of Gardner herself and the origins and guiding principles of the museum. Many of these sections read like good spy or mafia novels - it was hard to remember this was nonfiction.

Later in the book, Boser becomes a central character, as his reporting on the heist turns into a consuming quest to solve the crime. We see the author's life put on hold as he travels around the world and meets with less-than-savory characters to try and solve the case. While his book claims to have made a major breakthrough in uncovering the identities of the art theives, what is more interesting is his obsession with the story and ultimate ability to walk away from the investigation.

Someone in the book comments that if (when) the art is finally returned, there will be a line from "here to downtown" to see the pieces. I will surely be on that line.

Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann

I enjoyed reading this book although I also had some major problems with it. There are two stories - one of a young man traveling in South America whose girlfriend gets killed in the early 2000s, and the other of a young soldier during WWI. Each of the narratives is interesting enough and the characters were well-written.

The stories alternate and ultimately tie together in a familiar, almost formulaic way. I don't think I've grown tired of every book written in this way (see A Brief History of the Dead and The Blind Assassin) but I think Scheinmann's execution was unimpressive. It was like he had two books in him and decided to find a way to tie them together.

Two factors, however, soften my opinion of the book. One is that this is a first novel and the other is that the WWI story is based on his own grandfather's story. It was kind of cool to find that out in the end and realize that this was a way for him to be closer to family history.