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.

Kicking it old media school

[gallery columns="2"] I don't know why this keeps happening, but I go months without writing a book review for print, then I write a couple -- and they both run on the same day. Go figure. It happened again today, with my review of Without A Paddle by Warren Richey in today's Miami Herald and my review of The Possessed by Elif Batuman in Solares Hill (only available these days as part of the Sunday Key West Citizen). Both are nonfiction and both are memoirs. I liked both books very much, though I came at them quite differently, which makes sense because they are very different.

Without A Paddle is the story of a midlife crisis, reached at age 50 when journalist Warren Richey is divorced and unsure about his purpose on the planet. He's got a promising new relationship and a son he loves deeply but his life has taken an unexpected turn. He falls for a sea kayak (purchased in what sounds a lot like Florida Bay Outfitters to me -- that's where we bought our kayaks!). Anyway he soon becomes part of a group of expedition kayak and sailboat racers called the WaterTribe that does these crazy cross-Everglades and other races -- and eventually what's called the Ultimate Florida Challenge, circumnavigating the state by water, with no mechanical power, and a 40 mile portage between rivers across the top. This is not my idea of a good time, but Richey pulls it off and he pulls the book off, too. I had some trouble in the beginning with the short chapters jumping around but I came to like and appreciate it.

Whereas, I loved The Possessed right from the get-go. I think Batuman is, essentially, more my kind of writer -- very funny and acerbic without being nasty. She's also appreciative and realistic about the people she's writing about. Batuman started out as a grad student in linguistics and Russian literature, and goes down some serious academic rabbit holes but maintains a real world perspective -- at least enough of a perspective that she can write about that world in a way normal humans can understand. Yes, it's true, I am bitter about academic writing -- especially in the humanities -- making itself unintelligible to the rest of us. Because if they're not shedding a wider light on human culture for the world, what exactly is the point? But I digress. Batuman's book covers a lot of territory, from an Isaac Babel conference at Stanford to a conference at the Tolstoy estate to a summer in Samarkand studying Uzbek that sounds far more entertaining to read about than to experience. But I didn't mind the jumping around a bit -- for one thing, the sections were whole, not short. And Batuman is a terrific writer. Both highly recommended. Without A Paddle: 3 1/2 stars, The Possessed: 4 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.

Waiting for the oil

This is not book related but it is writing (by me) so I'm posting it here. Plus it's my blog, dammit. My second Letter from Key West for WLRN's Under the Sun ran this morning -- and will run again at 5:44 p.m. today (Thursday 5/27) on WLRN, which is 91.3 in Miami, 100.5 Key West and online at www.wlrn.org. It's not as fun a subject as my first piece for Under the Sun, but it's something that's been all of our minds around here recently so I figured I'd say it.