December 2015 Reading List

Finished up the year with a big push to get loose ends tied up and as many books completed as possible.  Here's what I read in December:

1. The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness
2. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
3. Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano
4. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
5. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
6. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
7. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
8. Sand by Hugh Howey

What a relief to finally finish the All Souls Trilogy with The Book of Life.  While I enjoyed the first two novels I found it all a bit tiring by this third installment. The endless movement from location to location to escape some imagined peril; the moments of intense romance between the vampire and witch; the fierce but trite loyalties and familial infighting -- argh! I just wanted to find out what The Book of Life really contained and hope for a blood rage cure.  I met my goal but the cost...

What a difference the next book was.  The Sense of an Ending is brief, but poignant and haunting at the same time.  The middle-aged narrator reflects back on his life after learning that the death of a teenage friend was not what he thought it was.  Barnes slowly lets the story reveal itself like a detective story -- leading us on a roller coaster of emotional revelations. I felt like I was the narrator and I was totally absorbed in the revelations.  Brilliant.

Elizabeth Street, to me, didn't know what it wanted to be.  It was a tragic story about Italian migrants and why they had to come to America.  It was a story of the beginnings of the mafia.  It was about the importance of family.  But what I felt it needed to do was just be one of those things because the result was disjointed and the writing styles jarred against each other.  Perhaps Fabiano experienced much of this story through her own family history and just needed to get it down.  The result to me was just ok.

I see a lot of books by Jojo Moyes.  For a road trip earlier in the year, my wife and I started to listen to the audio version of this book.  We got less than half way through and forgot about finishing it.  I guess that means it didn't really grab either of us.  I decided to finish it this month.  I thought I knew where it was headed but I wanted the confirmation.  And  I was pretty much on the money.  Chicklit.  Pure and simple.

I had no idea what Middlesex was about -- a friend recommended it to me and didn't say anything more. It's about a lot of things: moving to another country; the importance of family; why it's important not to marry your siblings and other important lessons like that.  If nothing else, I learned that the definition of gender is not a mutually exclusive absolute.  Instead it's more of a sliding scale with every point in between those two poles being available for some form of sexual expression.  But mostly it's just good storytelling and Eugenides is a master at it.

Another master of storytelling is Ishiguro.  I've previously read Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go -- both stories that are memorable and very British.  With the Buried Giant, Ishiguro tackles another topic that is as British as they come -- the legend of King Arthur.  More specifically, the events a couple of generations after King Arthur has gone.  Arthur has forged a nation in an uneasy alliance between Britons and Saxons but has left behind the means to keep the peace.  But this is perhaps a spoiler because this information is a long time coming.  At the beginning of the story one doesn't even know what period of time they're even in, as the relationship between the central characters of Axl and Beatrice could be taking place in any village in Britain at almost any time.  Such is the skill of Ishiguro to develop meaningful characters without the context of period.  Brilliant.

I saw the American Psycho movie years ago when it was made.  I picked up the book on a whim to dig in a bit more on what made Patrick Bateman tick.  One is assaulted with the very definition of "yuppie" in the mid to late 80s.  Designer clothing, diet, facial regime, exercising, music, dining out -- it's all there.  If you lived through the 80s this book is an unpleasant reminder of what they were all about.  You could be anonymous out in the open.  Instead of mergers and acquisitions, Bateman states that he's into "murders and executions" and everyone laughs.  I did find the descriptions of the violent acts too horrific to dwell on -- deeply disturbing.  But I am glad to have read this book as it is easier to be in the mind of Bateman through his narrative than through the screen.

And the last book of the year appropriately mirrors the first.  I started off with Hugh Howey and the 2nd book in the Silo series.  This last book is also by Howey but a standalone story called Sand.  Having got near to the end I felt sure this must be the first in a series (and perhaps Howey will yet do this) but he did manage to tie things up neatly in the last few pages. Sand is more satisfying than Half Way Home that I read recently.  It's a post apocalyptic world again where much of Colorado is covered in sand.  Humans have adapted the concept of diving in water to diving in sand.  Howey's use of this paradigm is simple and brilliant as it sets the scene for the entire story.  Sand is not as gripping as Wool (though they were both written and released as a series) but it proves that Howey is great at imagining a near future for us and immersing us into it.

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November 2015 Reading List

A slow month.  Must be the Holidays.

1. The Dinner by Herman Koch
2. Half Way Home by Hugh Howey
3. Wilderness by Lance Weller
4. Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

The Dinner is a great book.  As the reader starts in on it there are amusing stabs that Paul, the narrator,  makes towards his brother who is in line for Prime Minister at the next election, at a dinner in a suave restaurant.  You might ask yourself how Koch will be able to keep this up for an entire novel.  By the "main course" Koch has peeled away various layers of narrative dead ends to reveal the true dilemma.  The two brothers' sons have committed a heinous crime and the moral dilemma is what the brothers and their wives are going to do about it.  I must say that I found it hard to go along with the outcome.  I agree somewhat with the reasoning but something in me abhors the result.  And perhaps that is Koch's power -- perhaps this was intended.  After all, what better outcome could there be in thinking about a moral issue that affects most of us than to be thinking about it much later than if there was a nice neat result?

Half Way Home is, I think, not Mr Howey's best work.  A quick tale describing the situation that a bunch of premature, tank-grown adolescents find themselves in on a strange pre-colonized world.  There is some imaginative descriptions of this hostile planet but the outcome is somewhat predictable.  Perhaps this is YA fiction and my expectations are too high.

Wilderness is my favorite book for this month.  Weller is a marvel in his writing. Vivid and evocative prose makes every sentence a joy to consume.  A Civil War veteran's life is examined both during that War and thirty years later when he is nearly done with it.  Weller goes back and forth those two time periods telling two stories of the quiet strength and unspeakable pain this veteran has endured.  We might visualize what it is like to experience hand to hand combat through realistic battle scenes like those seen in Saving Private Ryan or Patriot or scores of other movies.  But Weller, to me, brings another dimension to the inevitability, hopelessness and pointlessness of it all.  I have more books on my shelf to read concerning the American Civil War and if they're anything like this I'm in for a harrowing time.  In the meantime I look forward to Weller's second novel, American Marchlands.

It's only as I set to writing this summary that I learned that Brilliance if the first of a trilogy. Huh.  I thought the ending was nicely tied up.  Sure there are questions in my mind about what happened to the community of brilliants in Wyoming but I had that Hollywood feeling that it was all going to work out.  Apparently not.  Will I read the other two books? Maybe -- I haven't completely decided.  So what's it about? Since the 1980s some kids are being born with exceptional talents that the rest of us might consider savant-ish.  As they grow up there arises the inevitable tensions between the "haves" and the fearful.  One government agent, a brilliant himself, goes undercover to get his man.  But what he learns along the way brings everything he believes into question.  Yada yada.  The trip is entertaining but... I'm still deciding.

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