Category Archives: Book I’ll Forget I Read

May 30, 2011 · 2:32 pm

Mourning Diary: Self-Indulgent

                 For the first time since beginning 10-10-12, the book I chose for my “short” category was actually… short. Roland Barthes’ diary of his mourning of his mother spanned 250 pages, but each page includes only one or two sentences, reflecting on his grief and sense of loss.

I found the diary self-indulgent, which shouldn’t be surprising given that it’s a diary a genre necessarily preoccupied with the self, but somehow the book read as grotesquely self-indulgent. It sets up as its premise the affective consequence of losing someone else and then begins an outpouring of the effects on the self: sense of impending mortality, dissociation from time, incorporation of affect into writing and work, newly discovered freedom of living a life untethered from a mother. Had the book abjured the claim of being about Barthes’ mother I might find no complaint – the snap sentences are moving, painful and above all, thoughtful – but as it is, I could not reconcile the distance between purported purpose – mourning a mother – and given text – meditation on the mourning self.

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May 23, 2011 · 6:53 pm

The Thief: As great as NWMD is terrible

      The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner and the Newberry Honour Winner for 1997, is just so great. Our anti-hero, Gem, captivates the reader from the opening scene in his jail cell to the closing scene in his bedroom. I wanted him to succeed, yet I worried about his decisions, though I somehow came to believe his justifications for his actions. Knowing as you do how much I love good character, it should be little surprise that I loved (really really loved) The Thief.

The narrative does a masterful job letting the reader believe they have deduced secret ‘facts’ of Gem’s life – and this reader did deduce certain elements – but nevertheless codes some plot details with such subtlety that the climax remains suspenseful and surprising: we are taken in, not taken advantage of; we are rewarded for close reading, but still given the pleasure of a surprise twist.

More praise for plot: the adventure manages to contain itself. Where other YAF adventure stories (or adult adventure stories for that matter) fall prey to endless delays, meandering side-journeys, and excruciating details of campfires, trail food, and horses, The Thief delivers enough detail to convince and captivate, but arrives at the destination by such a direct route as to leave no question that it really is the destination that holds the magic and adventure, and not the journey.

The interweaving of Greek-cum-novel-civilization mythology and the struggle of our (darling) Gem to make sense of the apparent power of the Gods in everyday life is careful, measured and thought-provoking: what, the novel asks, do we owe to destiny and what do we owe to our own wits?

It’s really just so good. And something like 120 pages. I. tells me that there are two other books in the series, but this one ends with a decisive conclusion, something I admire and appreciate, as this is a complete work in its own right, and not simply a set-up for later books and other purchases. I’ll likely read the other two books because I loved this one so much, but I may save them, as they really are “Gems.”

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April 25, 2011 · 9:51 pm

Animal: Sad Aborted Puppies

     I think Alexandra Leggat’s Animal is about more than abortions and puppies. In fact, I know it’s also about uneven expectations in relationships, compromises, and the lies that appearances belie, but when I think of my overall impression what comes to mind are abortions and dogs. I don’t even think the short story collection has a single story with an abortion in it (miscarriages, yes) but somehow many of them contain the same kind of sadness: aborted love, aborted futures, aborted choices. As for dogs, characters routinely long for particular dogs. Not in the way a teenage girl longs for a prom date, but in the way older women long to return to their younger bodies so as to live in them with pride and confidence: that is, a frustrated, anxious and sad kind of longing. I’m not sure why it’s dogs they long for, and not, say, other people. Perhaps because the collection as a whole suggests other people ought not to be trusted, ought not to be relied upon, because they will inevitably be selfish.

I preferred stories in the middle section of the collection – no good reason why. On the whole I felt too many of the stories ended with a “This is a very symbolic ending!” kind of wrap-up, and that characters received uneven development. All the same, the rich thematic scope and some brilliant descriptions of suffering women makes the collection a worthwhile read if you’re into depressing scenes in bathtubs.

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April 20, 2011 · 3:39 am

Freakonomics: More Freak than Nomics

      Freakonomics proudly proclaims in its introduction, and again in its conclusion, that it is a book without a unified theme. This being the case, telling your reader there is no unifying theme (re: point) does not make this lack in any way… okay. While I enjoyed the disparate sections of the book for their confident tone, measured pace and didactic, (albeit sometimes overly hand-holding) explanations of everyday phenomena, I found the overall absence of an argument/organizing idea/central question to be frustrating and perplexing.

I am bothered by a book that claims to be about looking for relationships between far-fetched phenomena when it is really about an author having noticed two similar phenomena, having deduced plausible explanations, then grouped the two things together only to claim that the deductions came about as a result of novel questioning (questions like: what do a drug dealer and a sumo wrestler and an aborted fetus have in common?). Novel questioning might better be thought of as something like this: what makes this book without a theme, or apparent point, a bestseller?

Further minor complaints: “economists” are credited with doing much of the work of sociologists; cause-and-effect is not the same thing as “incentive” based decision making; causality and correlations often mysteriously swap when the given example requires.

Minor praise: a collaborative book always impresses me.

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