Books: The 2017 Classics

BEHOLD! The classic novels I'll be reading in 2017:

JANUARY: The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman. "The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand, despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy that they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through military ranks. He's willing to do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But 'home' may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries." I like to do one true sci fi classic each year & this one got a lot of votes.

FEBRUARY: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt. "Voodoo. Decadent socialites packing Lugars. Cotillions. With towns like Savannah, Georgia, who needs Fellini? Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil takes two narrative strands--each worthy of its own book--and weaves them together to make a single fascinating tale. The first is author John Berendt's loving depiction of the characters and rascals that prowled Savannah in the eight years it was his home-away-from-home. Then, on May 2, 1981, the book's second story line commences, when Jim Williams, a wealthy antique dealer and Savannah's host with the most, kills his "friend" Danny Hansford. (If those quotes make you suspect something, you should.) Was it self-defense, as Williams claimed--or murder? The book sketches four separate trials, during which the dark side of this genteel party town is well and truly plumbed."

Books Update: Quarter 4

Congrats on making it through another year, you crazy diamond, you! This year I read 80 books & over 32,000 pages. We're now at the tail-end of quarter 4, so let's talk about what I've been reading over the last three months.

As you may or may not already know, I've been reading a classic a month for the last two years. It started as a one-year project in 2014, but I've enjoyed it enough to keep going with it & will probably continue until it starts to feel like a chore.

January through April

May & June

July through September

These were my last three classics of the year:

October: The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oliver Wilde (1890, 166 pages). 4 stars. This was my spooooky Halloween read! Young, beautiful, innocent, naive Dorian Gray sits for a portrait for an artist friend, who proclaims the painting his best work. Dorian is suddenly struck by the horrible thought that he will age and lose his beauty while his portrait will remain beautiful and youthful forever. In a fit of panic he desperately prays that his and the painting's roles should be reversed, so that the painting ages while he stays young and beautiful. Not only does his wish come true, but the portrait also begins to reflect the condition of his soul. Creepiness and philosophy ensue. The writing is clever and gorgeous, and Wilde is a master of dry wit & witty repartee, plus it's less than 200 pages so pretty easy to knock out on a plane ride or similar. But, it is worth mentioning that it's still not a light read. Some parts of it are quite dense and heavily philosophical (I found myself carefully re-reading many sections because I didn't catch or process it all the first or second time around), so definitely something to save for when you are fully alert and not distracted.

Slade House, by David Mitchell

I really enjoyed this book but explaining why is complicated.

First, I should say that before Slade House, I read every other David Mitchell book except for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet*, I believe in this order:

The Bone Clocks (2014)

Ghostwritten (1999)

Cloud Atlas (2004)

Number9Dream (2001)

Black Swan Green (2006)

Though I was struck by the gorgeous and skillful language of all five, Bone Clocks was far and away my favorite. Soon after, I read a review in the NY Times where the critic wrote that it "felt like a misfire," with a plot that "felt soft and formulaic" and read "like second-rate fantasy fiction" (of course, I vehemently disagreed!), and that the recurring characters from Mitchell's previous books seemed “less like Yoknapatawpha and more like Marvel.” Not having read any of his other books at the time, this didn't mean much to me, but I did pick up on the fact it wasn't intended as a compliment.

Over the last year, though, I've read everything except Jacob*, so now I see what he was getting at: Although the books are all self-contained, they do all seem to take place in the same universe, with the same characters or clans of characters appearing regularly (sometimes as central figures, sometimes as cameos), and taken as a whole, I could sort of see Mitchell weaving together a larger story, each book existing in its own little narrative eddy. So it was unsurprising to me to hear that Slade House was sort of a sequel to Bone Clocks.

For better or worse, that was the effect of reading Bone Clocks first. It's definitely the most explicit, sprawling, lay-it-all-out, this-is-what's-going type of story of the six, and I can see how someone might not pick up all the connections if they started with Ghostwritten and read according to publication order. I also think maybe that explicitness was what some people didn't like about Bone Clocks, having become accustomed to the oblique nature of the books that came before. (Also, I'm a huge fan of what you might call "intellectual horror" or "literary horror" or whatever, which I think Bone Clocks has a lot in common with, and I can see maybe a subset of Mitchell's usual audience not really going for that.)

So. I say all that to say that if you enjoyed Bone Clocks, you are more likely to enjoy Slade House than if you enjoyed Mitchell's other books more and Bone Clocks less. It's short, apparently an elaboration on a short story he wrote called The Right Sort. If Bone Clocks flirts with intellectual/literary horror, Slade House straight-up propositions it. The story is divided into three parts and revolves around a mysterious manor house (the eponymous Slade House), with each part following a character as they visit the house and its odd inhabitants. Not all of their fates are happy. If you've read Bone Clocks, by the second or third story you see the connection between the two books and will probably figure out sooner than other readers how it's going to end.

I can see why readers who enjoyed Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten more might not be as big on Slade House. It's short and fairly to the point, not quite as literary, and more focused on telling a grizzly tale than on patiently and artfully developing nine-dimensional characters and abstract, highly literary themes. Still, Mitchell's skill with language and story craft in general shines through, which made it (at least for me) a satisfying, undemanding, yet highly entertaining read.

* I started Jacob in December and abandoned it after 100 pages because I just could not get into it. (Sorry, David Mitchell; six out of seven still ain't bad!)

Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff

Oh, man. I don't even know where to begin with this book except that it was amazing. I actually think the marketing copy included a pretty decent summation: Every relationship has two perspectives, and sometimes the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets.

The relationship in question is that of Lotto & Mathilde, madly in love and married at the tender age of twenty-two after knowing each other for all of two weeks. The first half of the book tells the story of their marriage from Lotto's point of view, and though the writing is utterly gorgeous and the characters dynamic and multi-dimensional, it's on the darker side, without much in the way of comic relief. The second half, though, is Mathilde's story, which fills in a lot of blanks in sometimes jaw-dropping ways. (Fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, this is why you'll love it.)

The genius of this book lies in the juxtaposition of the two voices, addressing issues of destiny, creative potential, and the nature & meaning of marriage. Not a light read, but beautifully & poetically written without sacrificing the authentic voices of the characters, and the complexity and cleverness offers enough relief from the darker nature of the story to make it brilliant.

Books Update: Quarter 3

Fall is finally here, if only officially (did I mention it's been 80s & 90s in San Francisco for weeks? Not okay), and as we close the book on September, it is time once again to speak of, well, books.

As you may already know, I've been reading a classic a month for the last two years. It started as a one-year project in 2014, but I've enjoyed it enough to keep going with it & will probably continue until it starts to feel like a chore.

January through April

May & June

July: A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving (1990, 637 pages). Ahh, John Irving, you got me again! Sweet, depressing, hilarious, & raw. The story follows Johnny Weelwright (1st person narrator) & his best friend Owen Meany (tiny, brilliant, charismatic, & possessed of a bizarrely shrill voice) from their childhood together in a small town in 1950s New Hampshire through early adulthood, while periodically flashing forward to Johnny's middle age in Canada. The relationship between the two is weirdly cemented when uncoordinated, nonathletic Owen somehow manages to hit a baseball at the end of a Little League game that hits Johnny's mysterious mother in the head, killing her. After that, Owen is convinced he is "God's Instrument," with everything & every moment in his life leading to a single purpose. I think it's the sheer audacity & improbability of the whole thing that made it one of the best books I've read in a while.

August: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847, 507 pages). I think sometimes it's difficult to fully appreciate classics because the reason they are classics has mainly to do with the context in which they were written. Reading Jane Eyre for the first time in 2015, I have to admit that I spent most of it rolling my eyes & ready to chuck it across the room. Really? Really, Jane? It's so painfully clear that Mr. Rochester is a dire shitbird, and you are utterly pathetic for not realizing this almost immediately. (Though, I will also admit that she gets a little less pathetic as the book goes on, but he is still a shitbird, and their conversations are honestly kind of gross.) BUT, I do get that it was rather revolutionary and radical for 1847 and (kind of hilariously) was actually lambasted for being anti-God/Church (ie, a woman every once in a while having an original thought and maybe occasionally for half a second not doing exactly what some rando self-important dude tells her to do). Still, a part of me was screaming throughout, JANE, YOU IDIOT! DTMFA!

September: The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair (1905, 335 pages).

Welp, I guess I'll go shoot myself in the face now.

The Jungle is about the trials & tribulations of a Lithuanian family that settles in Chicago to pursue the vast riches and endless opportunity that they have heard are there for the taking in welcoming, democratic, class-blind America. Lololololol. No but really, it's one of the most depressing books I've ever read in my life. I get the historical significance of this book and that the fact that it's completely and utterly depressing as hell is the whole point, so three stars for that. But when you have only one color in your palette (shit-color, for instance), it loses its effect real fast & you stop expecting anything else. Most of the other books I've tagged as "depressing as hell" offered at least a few strokes of other colors occasionally, if for no other reason than to provide enough contrast for the horrible parts to maintain their effect (and presumably to stop you from pausing to kill yourself). Not so here. It's shit sandwich after shit sandwich, and any time things start to look maybe-kinda not so bad for the protagonist, you know that a shit sandwich with an extra-crispy cat litter crust is just around the corner.

OTHER RECENT READS:

I have read a lot of stuff lately but here are the titles I most highly recommend:

The Ocean At the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman (2013, 181 pages). 5 stars. Beautiful, creepy, imaginative, & sad. Essentially: All things Neil Gaiman. More along the lines of Coraline and The Graveyard Book than Neverwhere / Stardust. Hard to explain any more clearly than that.

Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk (1996, 218 pages). 5 stars. I picked this up in the airport because I wanted something short to read on a plane, & having only seen the movie & never read any Chuck Palahniuk, I was curious. Super entertaining & amazingly well-written & well crafted! My only regret is that I wish I'd read it before seeing the movie. I also enjoyed the afterword at the end about how the book began as a six-page short story no one paid any attention to & evolved into an international blockbuster. The question now is, which Palahniuk to read next?

The Blue Girl, by Laurie Foos (2015, 220 pages). 5 stars. A super quick, easy, fairly minimalist read, and at the same time amazingly, gorgeously, breathtakingly written. I'm not sure how you do both of those things at the same time, but somehow Foos pulled it off. A silent blue girl has appeared in an unnamed lake town; after one of their daughters saves the blue girl from drowning, three sad, middle-aged women with sad, middle-aged husbands, teenage daughters, and troubled sons sneak out at night to the cabin in the woods where the blue girl lives with an old woman to feed her the secrets they've baked into homemade moon pies. When the kids catch on, everything changes. Again, I don't understand how she did it, but these 220 dream-like pages weave together some of the most brilliant character development I've read in a while with profound narrative themes & symbolism. Not a wasted word anywhere. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

I'll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson. (2014, 371 pages) 5 stars. This may be the absolute best modern YA novel I've ever read in terms of teenage characters who are actually believable in terms of how they think, act, and (especially) talk. It's also just a lovely, if bittersweet, story about a set of artsy teenage twins trying to navigate their own & each other's tumultuous lives in the wake of their parents' own issues, and manages to strike a nice balance of humor, heartache, sweetness, and raw teenage emotion without veering too much into melodrama (or trying so hard to ape modern teenage lingo that it's painful). Still a *bit* too much schmoopy in places for my taste, but not so much as to make me want to vomit (which more or less seems to be the norm with YA). A great read for 12/13+, but there's plenty going on for adults to appreciate as well.

A Head Full of Ghosts, by Paul Tremblay. (2015, 288 pages) The story follows the Barrett family (out-of-work, hyper-religious John, his cynical, frustrated wife Sarah, and their two daughters Marjorie and Merry, fourteen and eight respectively) as Marjorie descends into (severe mental illness? Demonic possession? A desperate bid to salvage the family's financial situation?). John gets the local minister involved, who in turn gets the family a reality TV deal ("The Possession"), which in turn leads to Complications, all of which is narrated by eight-year-old Merry. The real genius of this book, though, is that it's kind of meta-horror. Instead of telling the story purely from eight-year-old Merry's perspective, Tremblay ups the ante by framing it as told by twenty-three-year-old Merry to a bestselling author who is writing a book about the events, and then interspersing those interviews with blog posts about the reality series "The Possession" written by a quirky & mysterious horror junkie. Because of the reality show, a lot of what happened is on film, but a lot of it isn't; there is also the reliability of Merry's memory to take into account. This all adds up to an undercurrent of uncertainty about what did and did not actually happen and to what extent was the situation was medical, supernatural, or faked by Marjorie and/or the exploitative reality TV producers. Brilliantly written, start to finish.

The Longest Date: Life As a Wife, by Cindy Chupack. (2014, 212 pages) 5 stars. I picked this one up after hearing a podcast interview with Chupack & finished it on a single plane ride. It's pretty short, and manages to be funny and entertaining even when she's writing about some pretty heavy stuff. Even so, she pulls absolutely no punches, laying bare just about every facet of her relationship with her husband, from their courtship as late-thirty-somethings to raising an adopted child at fifty. And I think it's that completely candid openness that makes it such a compelling read. It's not, "Marriage is hard work but if you pick the right person and really love each other and practice gratitude or whatever you'll make it through the tough times." It's more like "I'm the luckiest person alive!" on some days and on others "SWEET JESUS WHAT HAVE I DONE," and for her getting married was agreeing to stick it out, even on the SWEET JESUS days. (That, and coming to terms with the fact that she was a control freak & now had someone permanently in her life that she couldn't control.) If you've ever had a moment when you're like, "Oh god, why can't we be like all those nice, normal people who are super in love all the time & never have any horrible moments together???," this book is a great reminder that nobody is those people, because we are all real, live humans with strengths and flaws and history and baggage, and that's what you sign up for when you marry a real, live human.

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda, by Becky Albertalli. (2015, 303 pages) 5 stars. What a sweet, wonderful, (sadly) subversive book. The last twenty pages or so actually had me kind of weepy (in a good way), and if you know me at all you know how rare that is for a book. This and I'll Give You the Sun have reaffirmed my belief that yes, there IS, in fact, really excellent YA left in the world. Like all the best books (I'm discovering), the marketing copy just really does not capture what makes this one so great. Come down to it, it's basically about gay-but-not-out 16-year-old Simon negotiating all the usual sixteen-year-old orders of business (school, friends, family, extracurriculars, crushes, feeling generally awkward & out of place), but with the added wrinkle of an anonymous email penpal about whom he knows nothing except that said penpal is a fellow gay-but-not-out junior boy at his school. Hijinks, turmoil, laughs, and all the feels ensue. (Also, mad props to Albertalli for a) writing a gay protagonist (1st person) who is just a normal kid and b) handling the whole teen boy coming out / figuring out how to relationship in such an earnest, thoughtful, brilliant way, particularly for someone who, as far as I know, has never been a gay boy)..

Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff. (2015, 392 pages) 5 stars. Oh, man. I don't even know where to begin with this book except that it was amazing. I actually think the marketing copy included a pretty decent summation: Every relationship has two perspectives, and sometimes the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. The relationship in question is that of Lotto & Mathilde, madly in love and married at the tender age of twenty-two after knowing each other for all of two weeks. The first half of the book tells the story of their decades of marriage from Lotto's point of view, and though the writing is utterly gorgeous and the characters dynamic and multi-dimensional, it's on the darker side, without much in the way of comic relief. The second half, though, is Mathilde's story, which fills in a lot of blanks. The genius of this book lies in the juxtaposition of the two voices, addressing issues of destiny, creative potential, and the nature & meaning of marriage. Not a light read, but the complexity and cleverness offers enough relief from the darker nature of the story to make it brilliant.

* * *

Currently Reading:
The Fifty Year Sword, by Mark Z. Danielewski

Currently Listening To:
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

Up Next:

• The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
• A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny (because October)
• The Magician's Land, by Lev Grossman (last in the trilogy)
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson (feels like a perfect Halloween read)

Taking future suggestions as always. :)

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, by Becky Albertalli

What a sweet, wonderful, (sadly) subversive book. The last twenty pages or so actually had me kind of weepy (in a good way), and if you know me at all you know how rare that is for a book. This and I'll Give You the Sun have reaffirmed my belief that yes, there IS, in fact, really excellent YA left in the world.

Like all the best books (I'm discovering), the marketing copy just really does not capture what makes this one so great. Come down to it, it's basically about gay-but-not-out 16-year-old Simon negotiating all the usual sixteen-year-old orders of business (school, friends, family, extracurriculars, crushes, feeling generally awkward & out of place), but with the added wrinkle of an anonymous email penpal about whom he knows nothing except that said penpal is a fellow gay-but-not-out junior boy at his school. Hijinks, turmoil, laughs, and all the feels ensue.

Really, what makes this book so fantastic (besides the fact that it's just really well written overall) is the genuine, believable feel of all of it. The kids sound, act, and talk like real teenagers and, like real teenagers, can't be easily pigeon-holed into the stereotypes that plague so much YA media (the bully, the hot girl, the nerd, the jock, the theater geek, etc.). High school feels like an actual, run-of-the-mill suburban high school and not like college or Gossip Girl or Saved By the Bell, which I feel like is something that adults who have not spent massive amounts of time in ordinary high schools with ordinary teenagers seem to lose sight of sometimes.

Also, mad props to Albertalli for a) writing a gay protagonist (1st person) who is just a normal kid and b) handling the whole teen boy coming out / figuring out how to relationship in such an earnest, thoughtful, brilliant way (particularly for someone who, as far as I know, has never been a gay boy). I basically want to give this book to everyone I know, so they can give it to everyone they know. All the stars.

A Head Full of Ghosts, by Paul Tremblay

Last Wednesday I read an article on LitReactor called "6 Reasons Everyone Should Read "A Head Full of Ghosts" by Paul Tremblay". Apparently this book has been getting rave reviews by everyone and their mother since it came out in June, but this was the first I'd heard of it. I am not much of a horror fan so I suspected it wouldn't really be my thing, but LitReactor has often steered me very very right, so I read the article. And got the book the next day, and read it the day after that.

Friends: I could not put it down. It is for sure one of the best books I've read this year, and yet 100% completely different from anything else I've read this year.

I owe the LitReactor article a lot, because the genius of this book is not really the kind of genius that is conveyed easily in a two-paragraph marketing blurb. The story follows the Barrett family (out-of-work, hyper-religious John, his cynical, frustrated wife Sarah, and their two daughters Marjorie and Merry, fourteen and eight respectively) as Marjorie descends into (severe mental illness? Demonic possession? A desperate bid to salvage the family's financial situation?). John gets the local minister involved, who in turn gets the family a reality TV deal ("The Possession"), which in turn leads to Complications, all of which is narrated by eight-year-old Merry.

That's basically the setup you get from the marketing copy, and based on that alone I probably would have skipped it because a) not really into horror and b) sounds a bit cliché, to be honest. But the real genius of this books is that it's kind of meta-horror. Instead of telling the story purely from eight-year-old Merry's perspective, Tremblay ups the ante by framing it as told by twenty-three-year-old Merry to a bestselling author who is writing a book about the events, and then interspersing those interviews with blog posts about the reality series "The Possession" written by a quirky & mysterious horror junkie. Because of the reality show, a lot of what happened is on film, but a lot of it isn't; there is also the reliability of Merry's memory to take into account. This all adds up to an undercurrent of uncertainty about what did and did not actually happen and to what extent was the situation was medical, supernatural, or faked by Marjorie and/or the exploitative reality TV producers.

In that context, the various horror clichés and tropes click into place. Rather than making the story predictable and derivative, they add layers of complexity to it and enrich the question of real/not real/supernatural/fake, and give the horror junkie blog posts lots to dig into in that obsessive-internetty-kind of way that the best bloggers have.

Finally, the dang thing is just brilliantly written, start to finish. As the LitReactor article put it, there are no bit parts. The real conflict & tension in the book is created by the interplay between complex, three-dimensional characters with vastly different goals and desires and understandings of what's happening. (I was particularly impressed with how believably eight-year-old Merry was written.)

All that said, A Head Full of Ghosts will not be for everyone. There are some disturbing scenes that, while they make complete sense in context and are not played for shock value, will be deal breakers for the squeamish (and possibly hyper-religious). But if you're more concerned with a smart, tense, well-written story that hooks you from the first page, you might give it a shot.

Books with which [book:A Head Full of Ghosts|23019294] has things in common, but is completely different than:

• House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski
• Night Film, by Marisha Pessl
• The Shining, by Stephen King
• The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson