BOOKS I JUST READ

It is my fervent belief that this book should be required reading in every high school in America. It’s that good, so good that I think if every high schooler read it, this country would be better, filled with more emotionally developed people, maybe filled with people who are more understanding and empathetic.

This book is devastating. It’s not a feel-good book, and actually this book completely wrecked me for the week after I read it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, it was so completely powerful, compelling, intense, every word that means anything that reminds you of getting yelled at when you were a kid, or maybe the first time you read Of Mice and Men. I cried then and I cried the night I finished this book, both nights feeling completely at the mercy of an author. That’s what Random Family does, it brings you to the emotional state of a 9-year-old that just finished Of Mice and Men. What is Random Family about? It’s about a family in the Bronx, and their lives. That is all.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s book is every cliche people say about a good book. But most importantly, it did what David Simon tried to do in writing The Wire, it slowly creates a city, moving backwards from a single point. LeBlanc immerses herself in the Bronx, in this family, and less wouldn’t have been enough to result in this book. At times, I wondered how she could possibility be so close to her subjects without involving herself in their lives, how she had the strength to observe so faithfully. Her act of journalism is truly staggering when thought about this way, which is one of the reasons I was crying and something I still can’t stop thinking about. Even though she didn’t insert herself into the story at all, her strength, observation, and insight are what remain with me after the incredible story she’s relayed has ended.

(Adrian Nicole Leblanc is a MacArthur fellow, and is currently working on a project about comedians in New York.)

Posted at 9:53pm and tagged with: Random Family, lit, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, one column,.

February 11th 2012

Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem

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Just about when the title of the book is explained, I started to love Motherless Brooklyn. That’s when I saw the tenderness and humanity in it, the little gem of something shining through the prose. Somehow, I assume that Lethem loved this book the same way as he was writing it, an expansion as he got to know his characters better, as they lived and did in his own neighborhood; his neighborhood sketched, then inked, then painted, and then photographed on the pages.

The driving force behind Motherless Brooklyn is a a kind of quest, even though at first it seems like Lionel’s Tourette’s Syndrome. It takes such a front seat in the beginning pages but is soon second nature, the spastic prose becomes normal and the calmness of the surrounding characters becomes unusual, especially since their normalcy becomes associated with a kind of heartlessness, an apathy that in juxtaposition to Lionel’s outbursts and warmth seems cold, evil, and strange. This warmth that emanates from Lionel almost infects the reader, we hope and yearn for him to find love, to find comfort, to be accepted. We don’t only cheer Lionel on when we read Motherless Brooklyn, we feel empathy for him, we imagine his life and hope it can be better.

When I look out my window, I see the street where the action unfolds. When I get off the train after work, I’m walking on the streets Lionel Essrog stalks. And yet, Lethem was able to make them a little more real to me. He wrote about things I actually see every day, places and people he saw too, and through his writing, I see them better. I like that. It’s rare you get the chance to read about a place you live in or love from an author’s point of view, but Lethem’s Court Street is no shade, is no disappointment.

Posted at 12:56pm and tagged with: Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn, lit, one column,.

February 7th 2012

She Came to Stay - Simone de Beauvoir

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I’m trying to think of an un-offensive way to write that She Came to Stay was like Hemmingway at his best but if he was a woman. It was set in Paris, and about the peaceful love between two that turns into self-doubt in one. We usually only get this story from a male perspective, Hemmingway’s, but in She Came to Stay we see the woman’s side. The love between Francoise and Pierre is threatened by the introduction of Xaviere, as Francoise is slowly consumed by self-doubt and Pierre by disgust for Xaviere’s selfishness and jealousy. The triangle of humanity seems to feed all three corners with something that enables them to act like the worst versions of themselves. De Beauvoir succeeded in creating one of the most complex, skittish, odd, and sullen characters in literature in Xaviere. Xaviere is the bad blood in the triangle, and when Pierre leaves for the front, Francoise must deal with Xaviere’s evil nature and her own creeping doubt.

Posted at 1:16pm and tagged with: lit, She Came to Stay, Simone de Beauvoir, one column,.

January 26th 2012

Bossypants!

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As a total Tina Fey fangirl, I was surprised I hadn’t read Bossypants yet, and when my mother-in-law found out, she bought it and sent it to me right away. She loves Tina Fey too, and we’ve talked about how we both wanted to be her when we grew up. Only neither of us could really explain exactly what this would have sounded like if we had mentioned it back in the day. And now we were just happy someone got to be Tina Fey when they grew up, that someone that awesome and that funny exists.

Reading Bossypants was fun. It was like talking to Tina Fey one-on-one, less the Liz Lemon-isms that you inconciously turn into Tina Fey traits. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did, when Tina wrote about her co-workers, and listed their “most valuable jokes.” I realized I assumed Tina wrote them all, that Tina was Liz, and Bossypants showed me where I was wrong. Which was fun. Of course I wanted more about things like her relationship with Amy Poehler, more tidbits about her real life. But I got the feeling that readers of Bossypants (me too) are just happy to have any illusion of hanging out with Tina Fey.

Posted at 5:46pm and tagged with: lit, Tina Fey, one column, Bossypants,.

January 19th 2012

MOONDOGS - Alexander Yates

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Moondogs, by Alexander Yates, is fantastical and adventurous, but it also contains some truth about human nature within it’s “mystical realist” pages. Even though you’re reading about a seemingly super-powerful rooster, a magical posse of men, and an earthquake-causing lady, you’ll also be witnessing some human emotion that normally does not coexist with such fantasy strewn pages. The character of Efrem, even though not touted in the summary of the book’s amazon page, was the vehicle for all this human suffering for me.

Efrem is a man who can shoot exceptionally well, and he is taken in by Reynato Ocampo to join his own league of extraordinary gentlemen. But Efrem is subtly complex in the midst of the macho, sad, and comic characters in this book (Ocampo, Benny, the rooster) and that endeared him to me. I understood his idealism and confusion, and Yates writes his perspective almost tenderly. I greedily and speedily read through MOONDOGS, but the parts I loved best were about Efrem. His sense of justice, his super ability, and his eagerness to love were elegantly constructed, and his character was vivid and alive, almost effortlessly so.

It’s this effortless construction of character, which is pretty much universal throughout, even though I had a soft spot for Efrem, that makes this novel shine.

Posted at 5:56pm and tagged with: Moondogs, Alexander Yates, lit, one column,.

January 16th 2012

THE FLAME ALPHABET - Ben Marcus

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We are all going to hear a lot about The Flame Alphabet and its author Ben Marcus in the coming months, which in my opinion is very good. Because this is the kind of book that gets hotly debated in bars. I anticipate controversial reviews. Not unlike those of one of the authors whose blurb graced the back cover of the very beautiful jacket, Thomas McCarthy. McCarthy’s Remainder and C spawned the kind of attention, controversy, and excitement that I envision surrounding The Flame Alphabet. In fact, I compare Ben Marcus to McCarthy enthusiastically, they both write vehemently interesting prose in which artistic adventures of diction take the passenger seat to the plot and characters. But Marcus seems to have an ulterior motive, and he seems more serious and intense. He seems to believe wholeheartedly in the worlds he builds; his investments seen in The Age of Wire and String, Notable American Women, and even more powerfully so, in The Flame Alphabet.

The Flame Alphabet is about an epidemic whose cause is traced to children’s language. Kids can literally kill with their words, and once the link between the rampant illness and their vocalizing is established, they rove the streets in packs and gangs, mercilessly stalking adult prey and assaulting them with sound. They watch the adults wither, powerless. Eventually, a quarantine is enacted, and parents are forced to leave their children behind, or put them on buses. We experience the chaos through Sam. Without Marcus’ unique voice or intensely skilled writing ability, this book would be a good idea and could be turned into an M. Night Shamalyan movie. But Marcus is the ultimate experimental writer of our time, and he never lets The Flame Alphabet surrender to its apocalypse bent. He keeps Sam strange, determined, singular. He keeps Esther’s flaming beauty compelling, her tenderness for her mother a flaw in her own ideal self. Clare’s willfulness and love for her daughter, while killing her, also keep her self-aware. Each paradox makes its owner seem weak and almost hateful. Along with evoking sadness, we experience the most complex feelings that the lowest of humanity inspires, like pity and revulsion.

The triumph of The Flame Alphabet is actually the unquestioning way we witness the unreal events unfolding, the way we trust Sam, his honesty and his ugliness in his struggle to survive. While Marcus is claiming language is poisonous, he’s also showing us the truth of human nature within Sam’s character with the last breaths this reviled language has left. Sam becomes uglier as the book continues. He reverts to a naked animalism, he becomes selfish, violent, and impossible. He does all this because he becomes obsessed with this family, unable to process the idea of their individualism or the possibility of their deaths. Sam fixates on reuniting his sundered, dying, pathetic family, and commits false, disgusting acts in order to do so. Marcus is showing us something twisted and sickening about human character; the poison of words is meanwhile simplifying and purifying the surroundings, making it seem as though Sam’s obstinate refusal to let go of language is a basic betrayal, an almost counter-evoluntionary defect.

Posted at 7:00pm and tagged with: The Flame Alphabet, Ben Marcus, lit, one column,.

January 13th 2012

LOVE AND SHAME AND LOVE

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Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love is one of the prettiest books you’ll find at the bookstore, and reading it is pure pleasure not only because of the way it feels and looks (it’s the best trim for a book I’ve ever seen!) but because of the prose. The prose feels weightless and effortless and flowing, but it’s meticulous, crafted, and careful.

The first chapter is laugh out loud funny, and when I went to see Peter read it, I did laugh out loud. The humor of the first chapter is almost like a vein throughout the rest of the novel, we see it sometimes, but more rarely. There’s more skin in the the rest of the book. The rest of the book oscillates between characters, between feelings, and between eras. It’s not a dizzying oscillation, but a pleasant one. The plot stays oriented, we always know which character’s at bat.

The characters are just as careful and meticulous as Orner’s prose, even though many endure crises and embarassments. They do stuff they’re less than proud of, but we follow them, and we follow Orner, and we want to know more. We want to see more perspectives, more eras, and more of the family Love and Shame and Love chronicles, the Poppers. I got the impression that these people were in control of themselves even when they were flying of the handle; bereft at the loss of a lover, cheating on spouses, punching them. Their trials seem like test questions they’re answering wrong on purpose, with Orner teaching them every trick and joke they know.

Posted at 3:49pm and tagged with: Peter Orner, lit, LOVE AND SHAME AND LOVE, one column,.

January 11th 2012

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FUTURE BOOK ALERT!!!!

NYT bestselling author of HOUSE OF HOLES and HUMAN SMOKE Nicholson Baker’s next novel and a work of nonfiction, moving to David Rosenthal and Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press, for publication in 2013 and 2014 respectively, by Melanie Jackson at Melanie Jackson Agency (NA).

(From Publisher’s Marketplace.)

Posted at 9:44am and tagged with: future book, lit, one column,.

January 10th 2012

Artemisia - Anna Banti

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I read Artemisia because of an essay of Susan Sontag’s, which happens to also be this edition’s introduction. It’s a good introduction, indeed, how could it have been better if it made me want to read the book? Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the loveliness that was Anna Banti’s Artemisia.

Banti has written an homage to this historically significant character, Artemisia Gentilischi, a famous female artist in the age of male dominance, and a rape survivor who accused her attacker in a time when one didn’t. This homage, this love letter, originally destroyed during World War II, was reformed, recreated with a bitterness that recalls Banti’s loss of her manuscript, and a sweetness that recalls her love of the character she brought to life, an Artemisia she knew existed, but one she didn’t know. In this way the reader sees two vantages, Artemisia’s and Banti’s, as Banti suffers through her loss of not only her manuscript, but her companion and Artemisia suffers through her difficult existence.

Artemisia functions as a double fiction whose bittersweetness is never overshadowed by pathos. We truly ache for both women as they feel the pain their art causes them continuosly.

Posted at 1:21pm and tagged with: Anna Banti, Artemisia, lit, one column, 2011,.

January 1st 2012

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I just got back from vacation and read so much while I was away! I have a bunch of reviews to write, but in the meanwhile, I’m so thankful to everyone who reads and interacts with BooksIJustRead. Thank you so much for making my literary life a full and happy one! I’ve expanded my reading horizons thanks to you, and am proud and excited for every note, comment, and email I receive. I reached my reading goal of a book a week in 2011 and am hoping to do the same for 2012. I’m kind of really excited and hopeful when I think about the books I haven’t read yet but will, the stories I will be writing, and hopefully, the awesome interactions this blog will bring my way. Happy New Year and happy new year in reading everyone!

Posted at 9:32am and tagged with: lit, one column,.

December 20th 2011

House of Holes

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House of Holes was an amazing, raucous, funny, and titillating read. I’m going to dissect why each of these adjectives are perfect descriptors of Baker’s Book of Sex.

Amazing - the writing here is incredible. Baker’s usual fine-tooth adjectives and methods for description were turned on their heads, yet stayed intact. Instead of an intensely introspective word garden, Baker instead focuses on each words rediculousness, sexual power, and originality. There were some parts of this book I can’t believe came out of the same brain as The Mezzanine.

Raucous - the characters in this book are on a non-stop adventure the likes of which could never exist on our society. The almost science-fiction aspect of parts of this book are overshadowed by the utter improbability of Baker’s ideas… and the ideas are rambling, exciting, and insane.

Funny - Baker has made sex totally funny and rediculous. You know how people say that if god exists, he’d be constantly laughing at our sex faces? Well that god is Nicholson Baker and the world he created is House of Holes.

Titillating - there are descriptions of sex in this book that the most creative pornographer could never dream up. People’s fantasies and experiences in House of Holes are at times electrifying, horrifying, and consternating. But at all times, the reader’s interest will be piqued, and you’d feel a bit squirmy if you read this book on the subway. Like, “can people read this over my shoulder? Should I put this book away?”

Posted at 5:54pm and tagged with: House of Holes, Nicholson Baker, lit, one column,.

December 19th 2011

My 11 favorite books of 2011!

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Here are the 11 books I read in 2011 and liked best in alphabetical order by author:

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA - Mikhail Bulgakov

STET - James Chapman

THE MARRIAGE PLOT - Jeffrey Eugenides

PORNOGRAFIA - Witold Gombrowicz

TICKNOR - Sheila Heti

NEVER LET ME GO - Kazuo Ishiguro

GRAVITY’S RAINBOW - Thomas Pynchon

HOME - Marilynne Robinson

SWAMPLANDIA! - Karen Russell

SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS - Bruno Schulz

WINTER’S BONE - Daniel Woodrell

The book I disliked most: THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie.

I had a really hard time making this list.

Posted at 11:12am and tagged with: lit, one column,.

December 8th 2011

State of Wonder - Ann Patchett

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State of Wonder is a lush and living novel about Marina, a scientist, who travels to Brazil. She’s chasing two phantoms- the story about the death of her colleague, Anders, and the woman he was chasing, a scientist whose lab, in the depths of the rainforest, is developing a drug for the company Marina works for. She’s caustic, selfish, and disdains interption. In a way, Marina is continuing Anders’ abandoned work, they were both sent to Brazil to track her down and get a status report on the miracle drug she’s developing, one that extends a woman’s fertility and staves off menopause until old age. Marina, Anders family, and Mr. Fox, CEO of the drug company and Marina’s love interest, are all shocked by the almost dismissive note she sends to announce Anders’ death.

Normally I don’t do so much plot recap, but for State of Wonder, Patchett’s impeccable plotting stood out to me. What seems almost fantastical on a back flap felt conventional and regular to me because of the way Marina’s life took on an almost mundane reality despite her mission. It was the lovely inner life of Marina in contrast to the complex plot that made this book really shine. Patchett’s plotting wasn’t the only thing admirable about this book, her sense of place, her characterization, and her ability to build tension between her characters seemed effortless while beautiful.

Posted at 10:29am and tagged with: Ann Patchett, State of Wonder, lit, one column,.

November 22nd 2011

Third Reich - Roberto Bolano

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I’ve had the feeling I had when I started reading Third Reich a few times, brought on by the opening pages of The Lord of the Rings, my first Hemingway book, and Tulips by Sylvia Plath, for example. It was the feeling of reading something I knew I’d remember and love my whole life, the feeling of being excited to explore a writer new to me, the feeling of wanting to immediately consume everything they’ve ever written. And this is what Third Reich did to me immediately.

As I kept reading, I kept finding more to like. The book, while reminding me of The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, also didn’t at all. Bolano had taken the idea of an obsessive, intrusive, all-encompassing war game and run with it, while creating apathetic, psychologically advanced characters and tension. This tension, along with lurking violence, death, and danger, kept me flipping pages, and the build-up of a contest between a phantom and a man whose life and motivation is draining away is almost painful. El Quemado, a burn victim living on the beach in a resort town in Spain, is challenging the German champion, Udo (the protagonist) in ways he never thought possible. The game mimics Udo’s strength and resolve throughout the book, he begins his vacation with a girlfriend, he’s happy, he’s motivated, confident. He begins his game with Quemado thus, and by the end of the book he is pitiful, scrambling, paranoid. I read with a growing pit in my stomach, growing voices of warning and advice in my thoughts.

This interaction and urgency in a literary work is a special thing, I think, and reading a book like this inspires a reader. Third Reich is not only a beautiful object, the cover is amazing, but the work really lives up not only to the feeling and look of the cover art, but the reputation of Roberto Bolano’s writing. Third Reich is an intense mixture of literaryiness, Kafkaesque bewilderment, science-fiction, realism, and psychological thriller. It’s strange to think that these elements could become compulsory within a single work, but Third Reich almost decides for you that you will obsess over it.

Posted at 10:20am and tagged with: Third Reich, Roberto Bolano, lit, one column,.

November 17th 2011

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Future Book Alert!

Author of ROOM, in its 23rd consecutive week on the NYT bestseller list with more than a million copies sold, Emma Donoghue’s ASTRAY, a set of stories spanning centuries and continents, returning to her roots in historical fiction.

(From Publisher’s Marketplace, and I should really really read ROOM already.)

Posted at 5:01pm and tagged with: future book, Room, lit, Emma Donoghue, one column,.