Recent reading roundup

I'm currently immersed in one of this summer's Hot Books -- The Passage by Justin Cronin -- which I'm attempting to read with Salon's Reading Club (look for a future post contrasting that with the One Book One Twitter experience reading American Gods -- the short version is that I like the Salon experience better, at least so far). And there are a couple other titles I've read in the last month between everything else -- though now we've got the cable with the World Cup on and the Tour de France right around the corner so my reading rate could slow right down. (There are three copies of The Passage in the Monroe County Library system, by the way, with two requests pending so if you want this one you should get on the list.) But here's a report on a couple of recent reads before they get too far into the rearview mirror. My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliviera -- historical fiction set during the Civil War about a midwife who longs to become a surgeon, with lots of family drama going on. For some reason, this one just didn't grab me though I did finish it. It struck me as one of those "look how much research I did into the time period" historical novels. That stuff needs to come through not quite so obviously. We do have it in the Monroe County Library collection, just not at the Key West Library. I'll give it 3 stars.

The Big Skinny by Carol Lay -- a graphic memoir (my favorite genre in the graphic format, I'm finding) about a woman's decision, at around the age of 50, to finally lose weight and keep it off. How does she do it? Why, she counts calories and exercises more! Amazing! The book has a great opening where Lay is at a party and some woman is marveling at her weight loss, asks her how she did it -- and is deeply unhappy with Lay's answer. People would prefer there were some magic bullet, of course, rather than the old "eat less and exercise more" answer. The rest of the book is both Lay's story of why she was chronically overweight and the strategies she uses to stay thin. I liked it a lot. Not in the Monroe County Public Library collection, unfortunately -- I got it through Interlibrary Loan (thanks, Palm Beach County!). 4 stars.

American Gods -- Neil Gaiman's novel about a war between the Old Gods (Norse, Egyptian, you name it) and the New Gods (technology, media, etc.) on American terrain was chosen for the inaugural One Book One Twitter read and I jumped on it for two reasons: I'd been meaning to read that book and I was feeling mildly guilty for being Twitterphobic. It was an interesting way to get to know Twitter and I'm glad I finally read some Gaiman. But it wasn't the best way to read a book, especially this book. I wound up finally jumping ahead of the two-to-three-chapters-a-week reading schedule and finishing it in one big rush. And I liked the novel a lot but I'd like to re-read it, not according to some Twitterific schedule. This one, by the way, is in the Key West Library collection. 4 stars.

Speaking of graphic memoirs, or memoirs in graphic novel format, or whatever the hell you want to call them, I'd been meaning to read Stitches by David Small since it came out -- it got fantastic reviews. And we even have it at the library. But I hadn't gotten around to it -- until I was looking at the program for the upcoming ALA conference and saw that Small will be appearing there, along with Time Traveler's Wife author Audrey Niffenegger (whom I had no idea was an artist, too). Anyway it was enough to send me over to our small-but-growing graphic novel collection to check it out on Saturday. I opened it after work and I think I finished it before the sun was down. It's great -- harrowing, for sure -- like all memoirs, in the graphic format unhappy childhoods make terrific narratives. And Small's art is great, too. My favorite in this level is still Alison Bechdel's Fun Home -- but this one is a close second. In fact, the only graphic memoir I think I didn't like was one where the "author" was not the artist. I'm not sure why -- it just didn't feel authentic in some way. But this one did. A great book. 4 1/2 stars.

(Most of) the humans are dead

I first learned of James Howard Kunstler back in the 1990s when a friend sent me a galley copy of Home From Nowhere. That nonfiction book was a revelation, explaining why suburban sprawl is depressing and more traditional architecture and urban development is not (in other words, why I had chosen to live in Old Town Key West instead of Weston). I feel a little reactionary about it and I'm not against everything modern but in the Jane Jacobs / Le Corbusier divide, I'm on Jane's side all the way. I noted that Kunstler was, at that point, primarily a novelist but was grateful that he had chosen to write, and write well, about urban planning, a subject in which I have always taken a small but persistent geeky interest. * Since then, I have followed Kunstler's career as a polemicist about the coming post-oil world -- which he thinks is coming a lot sooner than the rest of us are prepared for -- and occasionally looked in on his blog (which has the endearing name of Clusterf**k Nation). But I had never read any of his fiction. Until recently, when dystopia became a topic of interest. Not just because of earthquakes, volcanoes and oil spills although that certainly all seems to make one think post-apocalyptically. And my sister mentioned she had been reading Kunstler's novel World Made By Hand. So I ordered it up via interlibrary loan (thanks again, Alachua County!).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQcJ2ZYY&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

The story is set in an unspecified but obviously near future, when America has essentially fallen apart and reverted to a pre-industrial society after oil wars, nuclear bombs and a lethal flu epidemic. The setting is Union Grove, New York, an upstate small town that has survived better than most but is starting to fall apart.

As I started the book, I found the exposition a bit heavyhanded -- it was nice to learn what had happened to the world I knew, but it didn't make sense for the narrator to be explaining it all. Soon enough, though, I was caught up in the story and I wound up reading it in one giant gulp -- I love it when you catch a wave on a book like that (it helped that it was a Sunday of a holiday weekend) and it was especially nice after my recent reading experience. I had trouble catching on with The Difference Engine and I'm reading American Gods according to the One Book One Twitter schedule, which is two to three chapters a week.

One thing Kunstler does especially well is capture both the attractions and the difficulties of a post-industrial society, where you grow and make the things you eat and use. I felt this same pull of longing at the end of Julian Barnes' satirical England, England, where England has devolved into a similar state. Maybe it reminded me a bit of my rural childhood where my family did grow food and put up preserves and raise sheep and make clothes and know how to build a lot of things. But Kunstler is also realistic about the problems of life without clean water, power, antibiotics, a reliable system of law enforcement and justice, etc. Lots to think about, and a good story to carry you along. I'm giving it four stars.

A sequel called The Witch of Hebron is being published in September and I happened to snag a galley copy of that the other day, and I'll be reading that, too. Not sure if I have the fortitude to take on Kunstler's most recent nonfiction, The Long Emergency. It's weak and probably dumb to practice denial when you live on a low-lying island at the end of a 120-mile road smack in the middle of Hurricane Alley. I know this. I just don't know what I can do beyond vote for the right people and practice my own minor acts of sustainability like riding my bike and recycling and drying the clothes on a rack instead of the dryer. I know I should think about these things more and make my opinions heard, but I also know that if I engage I will start feeling simultaneously responsible, enraged and powerless -- which is no way to live and a big reason I left journalism.

Speaking of denial, in case anyone is wondering what's up with the music video it's obviously not directly connected but you have to love the Flight of the Conchords take on futurism -- especially the binary solo, which appears here in the credits. This might be playing the acoustic guitar while the Gulf of Mexico burns, but so be it.

* Stealing a move from Citizen Reader here and adding a footnote for something too long to include in the mainbar -- one of my favorite parts of Home From Nowhere is the two theories proposed by California architect Peter Calthorpe for why midcentury development got so damned ugly. Theory 1, the Stroke Theory: During World War II, the entire Western world went through such trauma that we, as a society, suffered the civic equivalent of a stroke and couldn't get it together to use our brains and hearts on this stuff so we just threw up a bunch of ugly, junky crap. Theory 2, the Stupor Theory: During World War II, G.I.'s had the adventures of their lives (at least the ones who survived) and when they returned their everyday lives were so stultifying and depressing by contrast that they spent the rest of their adult lives drunk and just threw up a bunch of ugly, junky crap. Either one works for me.

Different strokes

If I need to read the Wikipedia entry on a novel after finishing it, does that mean I'm stupid or the book wasn't meant for the likes of me? A bit of both, I think, in the case of The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, which I just finished (it's not available from the Monroe County Public Library, I'm afraid, but you could get it like I did via interlibrary loan -- thanks, Alachua County!). This book, according to a very handy list I found at Flashlightworthy Books -- a fine source for book recommendations of all kinds -- is one of Steampunk's founding texts and Gibson is one of those guys you're just supposed to read, right? Steampunk/alternative history hasn't been one of my genres, traditionally, but I do love the steampunk aesthetic -- all those gears and cranks and analog contraptions. Not to mention blimps. LOVE blimps. Anyway I thought I'd give this one a try.

I was a little concerned when LibraryThing, which has a "will you like this book" function that is interesting though not quite as much fun as their "unsuggester," opined that I probably would NOT like The Difference Engine, probability VERY HIGH. Not sure why, except that my online library probably has very little in common with those of people who loved the book. It did take me awhile to get into, but I would like to blame that on the fact that I was reading a couple other books at the same time, not the book or myself. It was fun to figure out who the real historical figures were (Lord Byron and his daughter, Ada, John Keats, Benjamin Disraeli and more) and how their fates had been altered by the book's premise, that the computer revolution came at the same time as the industrial revolution and triumphed over Britain's historical land-based aristocracy. And more -- America by 1855 has splintered into several hostile nations, Britain is at peace with Napoleon III's France, etc., and science has utterly triumphed over religion so figures like Charles Darwin are lauded public heroes, not just famous thinkers. I just wish the whole thing felt more like a novel and less like a puzzle I was supposed to figure out. This isn't my first foray into alternative history -- that would be Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, about which I've gushed before (it's Britain during the Napoleonic Wars -- with dragons!). But those books didn't leave me feeling dumb, perhaps because they focused more on character and plot than concept.

Anyway I'm glad I read this, because I feel slightly less ignorant about steampunk. I plan to read more Gibson, especially since my husband has taken to leaving a paperback copy of Neuromancer prominently around the house. And I plan to read more steampunk, though I think I'm going to go graphic next with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which happens to be sitting on a shelf upstairs. That way I get to broaden my knowledge and get the aesthetic thrills. And I'm reasonably sure that like a true Alan Moore project it will be better than the movie. I'm giving this 3 1/2 stars (out of 5). If anyone's interested in finding out more about steampunk, I recently came across a couple interesting articles: This one from Salon and this one from Library Journal.

Catching up

You know what's really cool about finding a series you like after it's started? You can gobble the books up ... none of this waiting around for a year or two for the author to produce the next installment (maybe that's why people like James Patterson and Stuart Woods so much -- you only have to wait around for a month or two!). But I digress. This week, I unfortunately caught up to C.J. Sansom with the fourth installment of his Matthew Shardlake series, Revelation. Fortunately I don't have to wait that long -- the fifth title, Heartstone, is due out this fall. This situation is especially frustrating because this series just keeps getting better, in my estimation. Maybe I'm just getting fonder of the characters or more familiar with the milieu but Sansom is doing a great job keeping up the intrigue and filling in the setting of London late in the reign of Henry VIII. This time, Shardlake is called in to help investigate a serial killer (a couple centuries before that term existed) -- mostly the debate between the characters is whether the killer is mad or possessed by the devil. Either way it's a scary chase involving Shardlake's friends, household and of course himself. I'm going to give this one -- the only in the series you can get from the Monroe County Library collection (we have it in print and audio) -- an A, or 4 stars out of 5. But I recommend starting from the beginning of the series, with Dissolution, the first in the series -- you can buy the earlier titles or do like I did, and order them from interlibrary loan.

A couple other quick links while I have your attention. Keys residents should check out our newly redesigned library website -- and a darn sight prettier it is, too! It also includes some book recommendations from staff throughout the Keys -- you look under "books and more" and then "staff favorites." Also I've done some revising to the links on this site -- new additions include Citizen Reader, a kickass book blog from a librarian who appears to read even more than I do and Flashlightworthy Books, a cool site of book lists. I find this especially handy for book recommendations in genres about which I know next to nothing, such as slipstream and steampunk.

Happy reading!

More than 140 characters on recent reading

First of all, I did finish Elif Batuman's The Possessed and I intend to review it for Solares Hill so no review type copy here except to say that I liked it very very much and give it an A. Or four out of five stars if that's the system I wind up going to, which I might. Maybe even four and a half. After finishing that I started on Neil Gaiman's American Gods ... and started following the One Book One Twitter experiment on Twitter. I'm not going to go into the reasons I resisted then finally caved to Twitter -- David Carr does that far better than I in this piece from the New York Times. I don't think it will supersede Facebook in my online life -- most of my friends and family are on Facebook; I hardly know anyone who Twitters. I signed up for a bunch of book-related feeds and will use it for local stuff. (Hey Key West Citizen -- it's great you guys have a Twitter feed and all, but I think the point of Twitter is that you post to it occasionally -- as of this writing the most recent post is 11 days old -- that's not very, um, newsy.) I am starting to get the protocols, with feeds and hashmarks etc. though I still feel like a blundering ignoramus in danger of making an online fool of myself. But I can see its appeal and think it might even be a good exercise for someone like me, who has a tendency to think I must be up on all things all the time. That's impossible on Twitter and good thing, too -- so you just check in, see what others are saying and maybe follow a couple interesting links.

As far as a reading/literary experience goes ... well, it's not a coherent conversation of any kind, that's for sure. More like dropping into a big cocktail party where you don't know anyone but everyone's pretty friendly, and eavesdropping and engaging in a couple quick exchanges. Is that edifying? I'm not sure. It's kind of fun. I can't say I've gotten any big insights into the book from any of the posts that I've read. But I'm grateful to the people who made this happen because 1) they finally got me to read American Gods and 2) now I finally have a rudimentary understanding of Twitter.

I can see that for others, including Neil Gaiman, Twitter is an important part of their lives. I don't know that it will ever become an important part of mine. And I really would like to resist Yet Another Online Timewaster. But it's been an interesting introduction.

The bird pictured here, in case anyone was wondering and didn't already know, is a Northern Mockingbird, Florida's state bird and the primary twitterer of local environs. Recently, many people I know have been complaining about this bird twittering outside their windows early in the morning. Personally I don't mind that but don't like it when they divebomb you because they think you're too close to their nests.