Wednesday, December 31, 2014

My Year In Books

So I read a bunch of classics this year, but I read a bunch of other stuff as well (66 tomes in all, if you trust GoodReads), & figured you guys might enjoy a "Best Of" books list rather than a sappy recap of my not-all-that-notable running year. (FYI, there is some overlap with the previous post.)

January:

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Isaac Asimov's Foundation meets Neal Stephenson's Anathem, at a third the page count. I'd call it more spec fiction than sci fi; it takes place in the distant future where the vast majority of science, technology, & culture has been obliterated by nuclear war & reactionary fundamentalist sects, so parts of it feel more medieval than futuristic. Brilliantly & shrewdly written, confronting questions of history, philosophy, theology, ethics, and the cyclic nature of human civilization, without ever getting preachy or didactic. As relevant now as in 1960. Fans of Asimov & the like should love it.

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't, by Nate Silver. I loved this book for the same reason that I loved The Predictioneer's Game and Data, A Love Story. All of them lie at the intersection of math/statistics/data/modeling and psychology/sociology. While I still think Nate Silver is brilliant, after reading this book I have a better understanding of just how terrible at modeling and predicting so many other people are (& I'm talking about people who are paid for making predictions) & why it's so easy for him to look that much more brilliant by comparison. The great tragedy of this book is that the people who are most likely to read it are probably the people who already have a pretty decent understanding of data/statistics, and the people who have a less-good understanding of those things are probably the people who would most benefit from reading it.

February:

Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir, by Jenny Lawson. I have never been able to get into The Bloggess's blog, so I didn't seek out her book when it was first released. But then Patrick Rothfuss gave the audio book a five-star review, and it did not disappoint. I listened to it on the spin bike when I was recovering from my stress fracture and literally thought I was going to fall off sometimes because I was laughing so hard. (Also, as she grew up in rural Texas, there were parts that probably struck me as even funnier than they would have otherwise because I was like, "Yep, it is *totally* just like that.") A quick, easy, hilarious, entertaining read (or listen as the case may be--I think I might actually recommend listening over reading in this case because Lawson's narration is just. That. Fabulous).

Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. You do not get to talk about how you understand the fabric of this country and how we've gotten to the place we are until you read this book. Just no. I think I first learned about Uncle Tom's Cabin in 11th grade & the blurb in our textbook was like, "This woman wrote this book depicting the realities of slavery & it kind of went viral & started the Civil War," and then we got to read about a bunch of white people shooting at each other & getting their limbs sawed off for the next 5 chapters. Honestly, I think would have been better off just reading this book. It's one thing to read a novel about slavery written in the present day or recent past, but there is a whole other weight that comes with reading something that was written and published before the Civil War. If you can get through this book without becoming utterly enraged and heartbroken about the things that went on in this country, for hundreds of years, under the full protection of the law, to say nothing of what the fall out was (and continues to be), you are either un-American or inhuman or both.

April:

The Long Run, by Matthew Lane. The next time you start feeling sorry for yourself or like you're going through some hard times and are feeling frustrated & discouraged about how long the road seems, give ol' Matty Long a hundred pages or so. If you still feel the same way after, you are not human. I don't want to spoil the impact of the first few chapters, but the broad strokes are that Long was a Brooklyn firefighter, BQ marathoner, & Ironman who got run over by a bus (LITERALLY LIKE A BUS DROVE OVER HIM) in December 2005 & suffered a litany of absolutely horrific injuries. The book chronicles is journey from a miserable, barely recognizable, barely functional, physical & mental wreck of a human to, well, the guy on the cover of the book. So yeah. This book basically convinced me I don't get to feel discouraged about anything ever again.

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt. I'd been kinda-sorta meaning to read this book for a while & kept putting it off because I wasn't sure I was up for the all the darkness, but recently a friend was like, "No seriously. Amazeballs," so I took it with me on vacation, and she was absolutely right. On the one hand I kind of think I'd say this is a great read as long as you're not going through dark, nasty stuff at the time, but on the other hand, maybe this is *exactly* the type of book you should read in that case because you might decide that things aren't really all that bad by comparison.

May:

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. This book was sold to me as "a classic that's actually funny" and "like 'The Daily Show' in terms of tone & political poignancy," so I thought it would make a nice break from srsbzns reading. Ha ha ha ha. Not. Yes, there are some funny parts, and the absurdist-satire-"hell is bureaucracy" theme has its moments, but it definitely ranks among the darkest, most depressing and harrowing books I have ever read, because war & stupid people.

June:

The Farm, by Tom Rob Smith. So this book was based on actual events that happened to the author. In the spring of 2009, Smith received a call from his father saying that he needed to come to Sweden immediately because his mom had suffered a psychotic episode & was in an asylum. And almost immediately after, a call from his mother saying she'd just been released from the hospital, everything his father had told him was a lie, that his dad was involved in a criminal conspiracy, and she was flying to London to explain the truth. You might think, well, obviously, this book has to go one of two ways. Nope. Smith keeps you guessing all the way to the end, with a couple of twists I'm happy to say I never saw coming. Ditto with the resolution. A smart mystery, tight writing, fantastic storytelling, and rich, believable characters? More of this, please.

July:

To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I don't fully understand the magic with which Lee has woven this story, but somehow she managed to write a sober, poignant, heartbreaking tale addressing some pretty hardcore themes (race, class, gender, family, community, loyalty, justice, rape, murder, and on and on and on) without it being depressing as hell (though I'm sure having the story told from the point of view of a precocious 7-8 year old has something to do with). I've been avoiding it forever because it sounded so dark and depressing, and though it deals with some pretty serious stuff, it's all unquestionably underlined by the ideas of hope, optimism, compassion, and unwavering belief in the fundamental goodness of human beings.

August:

Jitterbug Perfume, by Tim Robbins. After Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates left me rolling my eyes, I wasn't totally sure I wanted to wade any deeper into Tom Robbins. Jitterbug Perfume has become such an iconic book, though, that I felt I had to give it a chance on the strength of the recommendations I've gotten from people who loved it, and I'm happy to say that I enjoyed it. In a lot of ways this is just the type of book I'm looking for when I've been reading a lot of intense, srsbzns stuff -- it's whimsical, irreverent, and overall on the light-hearted side, but still well-written and possessed of a unique, intriguing plot and interesting, well-rounded characters. A quick, fun read if you're in the mood for something a little quirky & irreverent but still clever & well-written.

The Black Prism (Lightbringer, #1), by Brent Weeks. I'm always a bit wary of starting a fantasy series because there are just so many ways they can go horrifically bad. The Black Prism was a rare treat, though. Sure, there are a few cliched elements, but I didn't mind them because they were executed in such unique and fresh ways, which kept things interesting and (mostly) unpredictable. The young, brilliant, wise, gorgeous, powerful, beloved ruler/religious leader ("The Prism") has a sweet relationship with his mother. His long-lost-suddenly-resurfaced bastard is a sassy, chubby, uncoordinated 15-year-old who is too smart for his own good but has a heart of gold. The ex-fiance for whom the Prism still carries a torch is a hot shit, tough-as-nails soldier & one of his personal bodyguards. (Be warned, though - only the first three of four have been published & Book 4 is scheduled for 2016.)

September:

The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer, #2), by Brent Weeks. If anything, better than the first. The Prism continues to be one of the most well-written hero-type fantasy protagonists I've ever read. I continue to adore his kick-ass love interest & her martial arts skills. His insecure-yet-earnest, almost-too-smart-for-his-own-good teenage bastard son is so believable it hurts. Bad guys do honorable things and have understandable motives. Good guys sometimes do crappy things. Ambivalent characters abound. Political machinations are brilliantly executed. And over the course of book two, it becomes clear that certain narrative arcs are coming home to roost, some of them so artfully crafted that they didn't even look like narrative arcs until now.

October:

The Broken Eye (Lightbringer, #3), by Brent Weeks. Yeah; I'm not sure what else to say except that Brent Weeks is a genius & this series is becoming a contender for best fantasy series in the history of ever. Complex, dynamic characters with layers of back-story. Multiple ass-kicking female characters that defy tropes & stereotypes. Fantastic dialogue. Large-scale narrative planning that is clever, artful, and occasionally makes you think back two books & go, "Oh, SHIIIIIT." You will never stop guessing. My only regret? That I didn't know going in that the last book is scheduled for 2016.

The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity, by Steve Strogatz. I wish I could have read this book in high school, when I was *actually* struggling with math. At this point I read it more from the point of view of, "How could I use pieces of this with students and/or the teachers that I work with?" In these 30 short essays, Strogatz begins at the beginning (with the concept of counting) and winds his way through everything from basic algebra to calculus to advanced topics like group theory and topology, discussing each topic in a way that is not only friendly and approachable for the mathematical neophite (or phobic), but fascinating. And for all that the book is aimed at a general audience, I have to admit that I learned a few fascinating things about some topics that I didn't even learn in my advanced semester-long college classes.

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie. I'd put off reading anything by Salman Rushdie for years because I was afraid that my complete & utter lack of background knowledge about India might make it difficult to understand and/or enjoy. Let's be real, though; if a book gets the author sentenced to death in absentia, it is automatically a must-read. To summarize the feel, I would say that The Satanic Verses is Jitterbug Perfume all grown up--longer, more serious, a touch darker, a touch more "literary", but still dealing with themes of history, spirituality/religion, morality, life/death/rebirth, packed with quirky characters, and completely hilarious & irreverent. There are many people this book is not for (I suspect you know who you are), but if you like big, smart, multi-layered, beautifully written, baddass books that pull no punches, this one may be for you. Pay close attention & don't feel bad about reading with Cliff's Notes handy.

December:

The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell. Halfway through, I was ready to declare this the best book I've read all year. The writing is masterful. The characters are so thoroughly well-written that you almost feel like you've met them somewhere. Even the characters that only appear for a few pages come across as three-dimensional, and you can never tell whether someone is going to end up being a major character or not until it happens. The story premise, when I finally figured out, kind of blew my mind. In a lot of fantasy/sci-fi/spec fiction book, I feel like the lead-up is mostly just introducing people/places/things & waiting for something cool to happen. Not so in Bone Clocks. It's a good while before you get to the paranormal stuff, but by the time it happened I was already so engrossed that for a second I was like, "Holy shit, what is going on!" (Which makes total sense, given that most of the book is written from the perspectives of characters who are just normal people going about their normal lives at first.)

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl. I read Pessl's Night Film earlier this year and solidly enjoyed it, so figured I'd give Special Topics a try. In my opinion it was if anything better, with fewer of the (admittedly miniscule) issues that bothered me in Night Film. Donna Tartt fans in particular (see The Goldfinch above or The Secret History) would I think enjoy it. In fact, the story, characters, & themes bear an almost spooky resemblance to The Secret History (an outsider arrives at an exclusive/prestigious academic institution, falls in with a clique of students with a peculiar relationship with an intriguing/mysterious faculty member, & tragedy/mystery ensues). I found myself more engrossed in this book than anything I've read in the last 7-8 years, & if I hadn't been reading it over the course of a family holiday visit, I'm pretty sure I would have finished it in one sitting. It won't be for everyone but I thought it was fantastic.

And, just for giggles, let's finish off the year with one notable running factoid, which is that, for the first time since 2012, I actually broke 1,000 miles for the year! This should not be remarkable, but with the last two years I've had injury-wise, it is. After being unable/barely able to run for the first four months of this year I didn't think I was anywhere near that, but when I tallied everything up in early December just to see how close I might be able to get, it turned out that I was already there with nearly 100 miles to spare. So that was a nice surprise.

Have a FABULOUS New Year's, all!! I'll see you in 2015!!

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl

I read Pessl's Night Film earlier this year and solidly enjoyed it, so figured I'd give Special Topics a try. In my opinion it was if anything better, with fewer of the (admittedly miniscule) issues that bothered me in Night Film. Donna Tartt fans in particular (The Goldfinch, The Secret History) would I think enjoy it. In fact, the story, characters, & themes bear an almost spooky resemblance to The Secret History (an outsider arrives at an exclusive/prestigious academic institution, falls in with a clique of students with a peculiar relationship with an intriguing/mysterious faculty member, & eventual tragedy/mystery ensues).

I found myself more engrossed in this book than anything I've read in the last 7-8 years, & if I hadn't been reading it over the course of a family holiday visit, I'm pretty sure I would have finished it in one sitting. It won't be for everyone but I thought it was fantastic.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

2014 Books Update Part 2: June-December

Dudes, I just cannot talk about the holidays. Can. Not. I am mentally bloated with it. Maybe later.

I can always talk about books, though.

Back in January, I declared 2014 the Year of the Classics & assigned myself one classic novel to read for each month of the year (plus a couple of super short ones during vacation months). I may not have gotten my 3:30 marathon this year, but damned if I didn't KILL IT in the reading-classic-novels department.

(You can read the January-May update here.)

JUNE: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz. Aw, man. Why'd I have to read this? I don't remember who recommended this book to me, but whoever you are, I love you, but also kind of hate you. It's mainly about the eponymous Dominican Oscar de Leon, & does indeed chronicle his brief, wondrous (tragic, heartbreaking) life. But it also takes side trips to tell you about the (inevitably horrific & depressing) lives of other members of his family--sister, mother, grandmother, grandfather, etc.--all of which weave together to create the rich, complex, gut wrenching story of the entire family. Fresh, original, & inventive? Check. Writing that should probably also qualify as some sort of poetic acrobatics? Check. Utterly depressing pretty much start to finish? Check check check. An amazing read, but proceed at your own peril. Then go read Dad Is Fat or something.

JULY: To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. 1) Once again, timeless classics for the win. Can I give it 10 stars? 2) In my humble opinion, this is the bar to which YA fiction should aspire. 3) Atticus Finch is very probably the best (fictional) human being to ever walk the (fictional) earth. 4) I don't fully understand the magic with which Lee has woven this story, but somehow she managed to write a sober, poignant, heartbreaking tale addressing some pretty hardcore themes (race, class, gender, family, community, loyalty, justice, rape, murder, and on and on and on) without it being depressing as hell (though I'm sure having the story told from the point of view of a precocious 7-8 year old has something to do with). I've been avoiding it forever because it sounded so dark and depressing, and though it deals with some pretty serious stuff, it's all unquestionably underlined by the ideas of hope, optimism, compassion, and unwavering belief in the fundamental goodness of human beings. 5) How did no one assign me this book in school??? Required reading for all teenagers, I say, particularly in the South. 6) Actually, make that anyone who lives in this country. Just go read it.

AUGUST: Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert. I read some reviews of MB before starting it & noticed quite a bit of rancor directed at Emma ("Madame Bovary"), so I was expecting her to be a nasty, horrible, supremely unlikable witch. But honestly, I spent most of the book feeling sorry for her. She came across not as an evil whore but as a very sad, isolated child who spends most of her life desperately searching for some way to be happy. I mean I'm not condoning adultery but I don't find it all that hard to emphasize with a woman in that position (who is probably clinically depressed and living altogether in the wrong time period for getting some much-needed marriage counseling) turning (at length! After much shame & guilt over her feelings!) to a person and a relationship that appears to offer some glimmer of not-misery. And yes, obviously some very bad decisions around finances and money were made, but she is very very far from being the first or last tortured, unhappy soul to seek happiness in luxury and material possessions. So please. If you decide to give this one a read, cut the poor woman some slack for being born an isolated female in the mid-19th century with mental health issues & no real recourse besides "suck it up & be miserable."

SEPTEMBER: One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez. I have to admit, I'm glad I hung in there, because I did get to the end and kind of go, "Ohhhhhh, I see what game you're playing here, GGM. I guess." But I feel like it's the kind of thing that works better in concept than in actual practice, because I spent most of the book dragging myself from page to page & desperately trying to keep straight a hundred different characters most of whom have the same name, and by the time I got to the end I wasn't sure the payoff was really worth it. I feel like this is probably what it would be like to read the transcript of a telenovela written a hundred years ago by a philosopher. Also, it uses phrases like "hermeneutical delirium" and has a serious passage about trying to prove the existence of God via chocolate.

OCTOBER: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. I found this one interesting to read just because it gets referenced by people/culture/other literary works so often. I thought I was pretty sure I had internalized the story via osmosis, but it turns out there was a little more to it than I realized. I was also a little worried that the language might make it a slog (the same fear I had about Uncle Tom's Cabin), but it was actually pretty easy to follow. So yeah. A short, easy read, and now I can actually say I know the story, as opposed to just assuming I do because it's such a huge cultural icon.

NOVEMBER: Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne. I have a feeling I just read this book too late & maybe I would have loved it in elementary school. As it was, it just felt patently absurd, not all that interesting, and about 75% of the way through became an all-out slog that I only really finished because it's so short. Also the main character is a whiny little bitch who clearly just hates fun & adventure & should have stayed home with his girlfriend.

**NOVEMBER BONUS READ**: The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. Okay fine I haven't actually gotten around to this one yet but I am totally going to blow through it on the plane.

DECEMBER: The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. See above.

**DECEMBER BONUS READ**: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. See above.

In lieu of giving you a dewey eyed reflection on my Year of Running (I'm sure you'll see plenty of those anyway), I'm instead planning on my final post of 2014 being a list of my top reads. It seems like a lot of runners out there are also big readers, so I figured you'd might enjoy that more anyway. ;)

Monday, December 15, 2014

The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell

As a caveat, this is the first David Mitchell book I've ever read (I didn't realize until I was almost done with it that he was also the author of Cloud Atlas, which just never sounded like my cup of tea.) so I can't speak to how it relates to his other books, though from what I've heard, there are links. Apparently Bone Clocks is the 2nd book in a trilogy, of which The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the first, but I didn't feel like I was missing any important back story without it, and Bone Clocks stood on its own just fine.

Halfway through, I was ready to declare it the best book I've read all year--fiction, non-fiction, any genre, whatever. The writing is masterful. The characters are so thoroughly well-written that you almost feel like you've met them somewhere. Even the characters that only appear for a few pages come across as three-dimensional, and you can never tell whether someone is going to end up being a major character or not until it happens or doesn't. The story premise, when I finally figured out, kind of blew my mind. I suppose you could argue that it's not that original and unique, but to me it came across that way, and I'm sure that part of that has to do with the way that Mitchell strategically dropped one juicy morsel of information after another every ten or twenty pages for the first half of the book or so, making you work to figure it out, and never for a second doing that my-readers-are-probably-idiots-I-better-spell-it-all-out-for-them thing that has ruined so many otherwise good books for me.

I suppose since it involves paranormal stuff, it counts as fantasy, but one of the coolest things about it was that it didn't feel like fantasy until suddenly, without warning, something fantastical was happening. (Which makes total sense, given that most of the book is written from the perspectives of characters who are just normal people going about their normal lives at first.) A lot of times when I'm reading a fantasy/sci-fi/spec fiction book, I feel like a lot of the lead-up is just kind of laying the obligatory groundwork of introducing people/places/things & waiting for something cool to happen. Not so in Bone Clocks. It's a good while before you get to the paranormal stuff, and by the time it happened I'd gotten so engrossed in the incredible writing and engrossing characters and their stories that for a second I was like, "Holy shit, what is going on!" Which, again, I think is the whole point, since that's exactly what the main character is experiencing.

The story spans sixty-some-odd years and is divided up into sections told from the perspective of several different characters, which gives Mitchell plenty of room to show off his character-writing chops; each character has their own distinct voice and personality, which is even more impressive when you consider how disparate some of them & their situations are. The only reason I'd downgraded to 4 (maybe 4.5?) stars by the end was because there are a few sections I can think of that to me feel like they suffer from under-editing. Which is not to say that the writing and storytelling is not still excellent; just that, in retrospect, some of the sections that I'm sure were intended to paint as complete and thorough a picture as possible of the time and place and current narrator felt a little extraneous & ultimately like they somewhat detracted from the main story.

But still--one of the most impressive books of the year for me, to be sure--particularly in terms of the strength of writing/storytelling and unique/intriguing premise--and since it sounds like most people don't even regard Bone Clocks as Mitchell's best work, I'm sure I'll be seeking out some of his others.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

The Slow Regard of Silent Things, by Patrick Rothfuss

First: If you enjoy a clever, well-written fantasy with awesome characters & about 14 different layers to it and have not already done so, you must go back & read The Name of the Wind & The Wise Man's Fear (though Book 3 is not yet out & there is no word yet on when it will arrive). This book takes one of the lesser characters from that series, Auri, & gives us a deeper look at her life & world in a typical week. I suppose you could read it if you haven't read the first two Kingkiller books; there are just parts that won't make a lot of sense.

At ~150 pages & fairly large type, it's not a very long book, but the language is surprisingly dense and not surprisingly poetic; between that & the subtlety of the story (if you can call it a story?), you do have to read carefully and with intention & I found myself more than once going word-by-word over certain paragraphs again because I was not 100% convinced I'd picked it all up on the first read.

As Pat explains in the forward, this story doesn't have most of the features that stories are typically "supposed" to have (plot, conflict, dialogue, etc.), but it is a lovely little character study cut from beautiful language, and if you're enjoying the Kingkiller books so far, you will probably find it to be a nice read & refreshingly different.