2024 Books: September to December
I think this will be the last period of the golden age of reading books for this blog. What happened is I was trying to relocate both personally and professionally to Los Angeles from San Diego. The personal part was relatively simple; I found a partner who lived and worked in Los Angeles and committed to the relationship. The professional part proved much more difficult, and I ended up essentially living in Los Angeles and working in San Diego for five years, and for five years before that, living and working in San Diego and making frequent weekend trips to Los Angeles. In other words, lots of driving. That reality was paired with the growth of Audiobooks as a side-effect of the ability to consume Audio media via stream vs having physical media OR a download of a file. Specifically, the Overdrive Audiobook Library app was created in 2010. I listened to my first Audiobook in 2014, which would have been at the beginning of my driving period. In 2015 and 16, I was spending most of my drive time listening to Spotify.
By 2018 I was in a groove, Audiobook-wise and there followed a golden age, the recipe was frequent, long drives and the Overdrive and then Libby library Audiobook app. I also took full advantage of the nearly infinite reach of the Los Angeles Public Library system, particularly when it came to tracking down obscure titles from the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list and the 1,001 Novels: A Library of American project. Neither project was practical until the Los Angeles Public Library came onto the scene.
For the past five years, I've been conscious about trying not to be *too* busy with work, on the theory that I would need to be available if and when I got the chance to transfer my legal career from San Diego to Los Angeles and reading and listening to lots of books was part of that- staying sharp without loading myself up professionally. It obviously wasn't the best choice for my finances nor my professional profile but looking back at the decision-making process I remain satisfied with my choices.
This process came to an absolute height at the end of last year- I'd heard through the grapevine that my professional transfer from San Diego to Los Angeles was imminent and so I was purposefully trying to keep my caseload light in anticipation of all the work I'd be doing in Los Angeles.
At the beginning of this year I had to actually start doing that work, as well as making fewer trips to San Diego (down from 2 to 3 trips a week to under one trip a week). I think probably the reading of actual books will tick back up eventually as I adapt, but Audiobooks are done, I'm going to be listening to one Audiobook a month going forward.
Published 9/5/24
The Safekeep (2024)
by Yael van der Wouden
The Safekeep is the first 2024 Booker Longlist book I've read since they announced last month. A now common experience is realizing that some of the books haven't been published in the USA yet, particularly galling since that includes two potential winners- the new Rachel Kushner book and Richard Powers latest offering. Before the longlist was announced, I'd already tackled There There by Tommy Orange and Jim by Percival Everett in my book club. Another nominee, Knockout by Rita Bullwinkle is my next book club pick. I'm unlikely to read a new Claire Messud novel, which means there are only a half dozen or so books to look at from the longlist- with two of those not being out in the US.
The Safekeep got a great review in the New York Times in May, with the subheading describing it as "tricky [and] remarkable." That is code for "this is a really good book." I think I put in on my library request list- both the Audiobook and the book itself. By the time my request was granted, the Booker Longlist had been announced (end of July) and The Safekeep was on it. Enough time had gone by that I was initially confused about the very nature of the book- thinking perhaps that it might be translated from Dutch and maybe nominated for the Booker International Prize instead of the Prize itself. As I now know, The Safekeep was written in English by a resident of the UK but it is set in and about the Netherlands in the post-WWII era.
Describing a new release of literary fiction as "tricky" tells a potential reader that there is something going on with the plot- as simple as a third act plot twist or as complicated as something that experiments with reader expectations in a modernist/post-modernist fashion. "Remarkable" just means that it is really good without being specific about how or why. After listening to the Audiobook I agree with both descriptions, though I would add that I was half way through the listen before I really got on board- which itself is a sign of a good book- one that draws you in.
When I started listening to the Audiobook I was immediately struck at how little I liked the protagonist Isabel- a young Dutch woman living alone in the house her family retreated to during World War II. Her Mom is dead, leaving her alone in the house, which is promised to her older brother- a man-about-town type. There's also a gay brother who left home as soon as he could, and a shy maid that Isabel enjoys bossing around. Isabel's careful equilibrium is ruptured when she has Eva, feckless Louis' lay-of-the-month thrust upon her when Louis is called away on business and Eva has just lost her apartment.
At the most basic level, The Safekeep is a spicy LGBT love story set in 1960's Netherlands- and it works at that level. But then there is the "tricky" and "remarkable" part of it, which defies the format of a blog post. I'll say this much- I wouldn't be surprised if The Safekeep makes the Booker shortlist.
Published 9/6/24
Audiobook Review
Mara and Dann (1999)
by Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2007, which led to an early "viral" moment of her nonchalantly reacting to the news. When she won, the Committee noted that her bibliography included 50 titles and several genres. Lessing had four novels on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, which was published just before she won the Nobel. One of them, her 1979 book Shikasta, is from the science fiction portion of her bibliography, like Mara and Dann.
Mara and Dann flopped back in 1999- the New York Times called it flatfooted and tedious. It's a picaresque about a brother sister duo who have to flee southern Africa in the far-future, after a new ice age has rendered the northern hemisphere uninhabitable. Unlike the New York Times, I enjoyed Mara and Dann, specifically the Audiobook. Picaresque's are similarly well suited for the Audiobook format, since you are taken on a journey with the characters. Lessing's future Africa, called Ifrik in the book, keeps the reader in the dark for the first portion of the book, these austere portions are the ones that work best. As Mara and Dann work their way north the world becomes more familiar, and for me, less interesting.
Still, I'd rather listen to Mara and Dann again before I'd listen to an Audiobook narrated by a precocious but confused adolescent living in difficult circumstances.
Published 9/11/24
The Power Broker: Volume 1 (1974)
Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
by Robert Caro
Read by Robertson Dean
(2011)
Lists like the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America and 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die commonly keep fiction and non-fiction books separate. For example, in the two lists I just cited, there are zero works of non fiction. At least with the 1,001 Novels project the bias is in the title, but the 1,001 Books list has no excuse. One recent list to buck this separation is the recently published New York Times Top Books of the 21st Century, which combines fiction and non-fiction. Such an approach might have benefited the 1,001 Novels project. You can see why if you listen to the Audiobook of The Power Broker: Volume 1, which is just about as New York a book as one could possibly imagine. Indeed, there is an argument that its inclusion is required if a reader wants to really know New York, city and state. No single person has had a greater impact on how the entire state LOOKS than Moses.
Volume 1, which lasts 22 hours in Audiobook format, handles his rise, and takes us to the cusp of his monumental bridge, tunnel and freeway building projects that remade Manhattan in his image. We learn that Moses came from a patrician upbringing- a key element of his success is that he never needed to make money from his work and that his vision was inspired by the idea of a non-partial bureaucratic technocrat, who overcame all obstacles to benefit "the people." Caro presents it as an idea he came up with while he was doing post-graduate studies in Oxford University, and his school-child dreams of a core of highly disciplined, uncorruptible state employees was about as far from the facts on the ground in New York City as could be possible.
After some early career missteps, he was rescued from obscurity by a friendship with Belle Moskowitz, a reformer and early supporter of future Governor of New York Al Smith. Moskowitz recommended Robert Moses to Smith as a man who could get things done, as someone who could help Smith implement the progressive ideas he wanted to advance to distance himself from the Tammany Hall political machine from which he sprang and get him in the running for a run at President. Smith and Moses were an odd couple to be sure, and the depiction of their friendship is the unquestionable highlight of the book.
In Volume 1, most of the action is stage setting, as Moses begins to develop his vision of parks and freeways to drive to those parks. Most of the action takes place on the tip of Long Island, where Moses spent the 20's and 30's in endless litigation with the land barons who owned all the property out there. Parks were really popular with the general public and the press, particularly when those standing in the way are wealthy captain of industry. It's clear both from the action of the book and Caro's relentless foreshadowing that the combination of power and lack of public accountability would turn Moses into a monster, but by the end of Volume 1 that moment is still on the far-ish horizon.
Published 9/12/24
Nova Swing (2006)
by M. John Harrison
Read by Jim Frangione
Nova Swing is a 2006 science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke and Phillip K. Dick awards. It's the second volume in a three volume series that traverses the future-noir/new weird territory that readers associate with China Mieville, Jeff VanDerMeer, J.G. Ballard and the Stugatsky brothers from Russia. Also the films of Tarkovsky. Which is to say that it isn't as good as any of those reference points, but is in the same ballpark. I found it because I plugged the name of Mieville and VanDerMeer into Facebook AI and this popped out as an option- I'd never heard of M. John Harrison, who is an incredibly prolific writer of both genre fiction and non-fiction
Unfortunately, Nova Swing was not a great audiobook for a couple of reasons. First, it's the second book of a three volume set, so if you haven't heard volume 1, you don't know anything about the underlying scenario which is some kind of future universe where some kind of interdimensional incident has generated a set-off landscape where "tourists" bring back "artifacts" helped by tour guides, including the main character in the case and policed by local detectives who act like they are in the 1940's, even though it is set in the far future.
The other issue with the Nova Swing audiobook is that all the name and proper nouns are made up gobbledgook words- the interdimensional locale is called the Saudade Event Site, the larger area is the Kefahuchi tract and the characters have names like Vic Serotonin and Liv Hula. And even though I don't see the comparison anywhere, much of the vibe of Nova Swing reads like a straightened-out, genrefied version of William S. Burroughs non-sensical cut up sci fi landscapes like those in the similarly named Nova Express.
Published 9/12/24
Toward Eternity (2024)
by Anton Hur
Before Toward Eternity was published last month I only knew Korean author Anton Hur as a translator of Korean Fiction into English. Specifically, his translation of Cursed Bunny, Bora Chung's 2021 collection of short stories, put him on my radar. Thus, when I read that his debut novel was a mind-bending work of science fiction, I had to have it and indeed I bought it during a recent visit to Powell's City of Books in Portland.
The plot starts out as a borderline philosophical inquiry into the nature of being: If you replace a sentient being molecule for molecule with something else (here the "something else" is called a "nanite"), is that new thing the same as the old sentient being, something different entirely, what? Hur then abruptly shifts to a far future world where the sentient androids created by nanites have eradicated natural humanity- or close to it- the only thing standing between natural humanity and extinction being a dissident bloc of nanites who seek to preserve diversity in the universe.
It is a... wild ride and a clear example of the result when speculative fiction and literary fiction collide. I really enjoyed Toward Eternity and highly recommend it for the cosmic science fiction reader.
Published 9/18/24
Hum (2024)
by Helen Phillips
I like American author Helen Phillips- I read her 2019 book, The Need and enjoyed it. I thought it was a good example of a way domestic fiction can be made interesting by the use of techniques drawn from speculative fiction: Throw some robots on top of that tired domestic routine! This is the same kind of deal- Mom has just been laid off from her job in a decrepit future metropolis where the AQI makes outside a no-go. The kids are shuttled from indoor location to indoor location and Mom and her task-rabbit husband live in a windowless box apartment. Life is grim. Mom agrees to undergo anti-surveillance facial modification surgery in exchange for a healthy payment, and she uses part of it to buy her family a three-day trip to the walled botanical garden in the heart of the city.
The "Hum" of the title are future ai powered androids that serve as replacement humans in various capacities- mostly as representatives of the future government or minders of the public peace. Although the over-riding theme is still the difficulties of being mom in the present/future world, the speculative elements make it less tedious than a book sent in the present or recent past that deals with the exact same subjects.
Published 9/19/24
Orbital (2024)
by Samantha Harvey
The New York Times review of Orbital by Samantha Harvey was maybe the first book review I read this year. The way it was described made me wince- it's set on the international space station and switches between the perspectives of the multi national astronauts onboard as the travel around the planet several times (each orbit is another chapter). They think about stuff, and stuff happens on Earth- a strong tsunami in the Pacific is the major earth-bound event- and that's the book.
In January I told myself I'd read it if it got nominated for the Booker Prize. It did. And then I put it off again because, again, my feeling was this is an example of the uninteresting side of the coin that is combining literary fiction with elements of speculative fiction. There is, to be sure, a "realist" non sci fi literature of near-earth travel, but I'm just saying setting a book in space is a typical element of science fiction. In Orbital we've got that and then the thoughts of these astronauts. I told myself, "I'll read it if it makes the Booker shortlist, and there you go. I was able to check the five-hour audiobook out of the library the day the shortlist was announced and listened to it at the gym and running for a couple of days.
I can see the perspective of the Booker committee. First, it's short, 144 pages, which is an UNDENIABLE advantage in competing for the Booker Prize. Second it's got an international perspective- the most international perspective, you could argue, which suits the favor that the Booker Prize shows to outward looking fiction. Third, she's an English lit insider who draws comparison Virginia Woolf for her writing style and themes and her 2009 novel Wilderness was longlisted.
Personally, I thought it was a good Audiobook because of the length and the different voices of the astronauts- Russian, American, Japanese. There are also several "set-piece" style descriptions of the Earth itself which are distinctive and memorable. But Orbital is def an example of modernist-inspired fictions where "nothing happens." I'm sure that statement would drive Harvey nuts, but that is my opinion. Whatever my personal feelings there is no denying that Harvey has the literary pedigree and that Orbital has the kind of moxy the Booker Judges seem to reward every year so...who knows. Maybe the winner.
Published 9/20/24
Under the Eye of the Big Bird (2024)
by Hiromi Kawakami
Translated by Asa Yoneda
I checked the latest book by Japanese author Hiromi Kawakami after reading the New York Times review a couple weeks ago. The review ticked most of my boxes: It's translated from a foreign language and combines literary fiction techniques with a science fiction story. Under the Eye takes the form of a connected series of short-stories about a horrifying far-future scenario where the human population of the Earth has collapsed, leaving the remnants grasping for a means of survival. For the first fifty pages or so, the reader has no perspective on the situation, and it makes for a strange reading experience. For example, the first story is about a girl who lives near a clone factory where humans are made from the remnants of animals, leaving each human with a small bone embedded inside of them which resembles the animal from which they are constructed.
About a third of the way through the book Kawakami fills us in: Earth is populated by clones, sentient AI and different groups of humans, watched over by two formerly human, now cloned scientists who have designed this plan to ensure human survival by promoting isolation in an attempt to press fast-forward on evolution and come up with a kind of human that can survive and repopulate the Earth. It is weird, wild stuff, with a time-scale of thousands, even tens of thousands of years. I really enjoyed Under the Eye and recommend it heartily to the literary fiction/science fiction cross-over crowd.
Published 9/23/24
Audiobook Review
Outlive (2023)
by Peter Attia
I'm not a big self-help guy but I'm always on the hunt for non-fiction Audiobooks and someone on my rec-league soccer team mentioned she was listening to this book. I'm not a crazy bio-hacker nor obsessed with living forever but I do think it's useful to keep up on new developments in the world of health, exercise and nutrition, which is what this book is all about. Attia IS very much one of these maniac bio hackers/ people who is obsesses with living forever. He makes a living doing it- talking often about his practice where he advises healthy people how to stay that way. There were frequent times in Outlive where Attia sounds literally insane, including the penultimate chapter on Mental Health where he recounts his pandemic era menty b that wound up with him having to do rehab for his feelings (that is not a joke.) He is very much the kind of guy who spends twenty pages talking about how he is past forty when he realized getting enough sleep was important.
There is some irony in the increased importance of sleep to mental and physical health considering it is the medical profession itself that sets the professional standard for maniac sleep deprivation. You can't talk to a doctor for five minutes without them referencing it even if they are decades past that part of their professional life.
My take-aways from this book mostly reinforced what I've already learned in recent years. First and most important lesson is that you need to do different kind of exercises- cardio, strength training and balance/stability work- it's this last category that was new to me. It involves lots of supervised gym training- which seems like kinda bad advice, "Don't do this unless you can afford a personal trainer to closely instruct you" doesn't seem particularly actionable. The idea is that it isn't enough to just build up your muscles, you also need to maintain and improve flexibility, balance and stability, since part of growing older involves losing these attributes.
His nutritional advice also fell into the category of largely familiar but well developed arguments and explanations. Sugar, of course, is public enemy number one these days and specifically the kind of "free sugar" or added sugar you find in soft drinks. Heavily processed foods have largely replaced fat/cholesterol as enemy number two. Attia goes to great lengths to defend dietary fat and cholesterol and gives frequent shout-outs to the meat-heavy keto approach based on his personal history. He links together diet and exercise by arguing that the important thing about consuming carbs and sugar is that you exercise to use that energy up. If you don't exercise, you can't eat those things, basically.
He develops a diet-agnostic approach to nutrition- it's not what specifically you eat but how much of it you eat of it, and what you do with the energy you take in. That's one reason weight training is so important for long-term health- it's an easier sink for those calories than going for an hour and a half run every time you have a steak dinner. Attia, for example, says he works out four times a week- just strength training. He recommends "rucking"- which is walking with a full backpack on, over running for cardio.
I can see why this book was a hit.
Published 9/16/24
Brotherless Night (2023)
by V. V. Ganeshananthan
Read by Nirmala Rajasingam
Brotherless Night is another great book coming out of the post-Tamil War Tamil diaspora. There's been a small flood of Sri Lankan authored books hitting the international market, typically by making it onto the Booker Longlist. I heard about Brotherless Night after it won the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction- I couldn't resist a prize winner about the Tamil War in Sri Lanka, which I think will prove to be one of the key current events from that period in world history- it lasted 26 years from 1983 to 2009, and Ganeshananthan's narrator and protagonist, Sashikala Kulenthiren is there to take us through it from the perspective of a young woman from a well-off Tamil family (one daughter, four brothers) who is destined to become a doctor.
There is nothing magical realist, post-modern or metafictional about Ganeshananthan's approach- which is so straight forward it often reads like a biography memoir vs. a novel. Sashi is a bright, engaged young woman living in a momentous time, but hers is the only perspective we get from the book. There's no secondary plot or skipping around in time- the reader gets Sashi's experience, having her normal life disrupted, losing all but her youngest brother to the liberation movement and then witnessing the horrors o the tamil's themselves, who were as ruthless to their own internal rivals and dissidents as the Sri Lankan government, the Indian Peacekeepers, who end up sowing more misery with their ill-considered troop deployment and of course the Sri Lankan government, which really seems befuddled more than anything else by a rebellion in a part of the country that was so thoroughly comprised of this one, rebellious ethnic group that middle ground became impossible to find.
Ganeshananthan moonlights as a field medic at a Tamil jungle hospital and witnesses all manner of catastrophe before getting involved in an effort to document the atrocities committed on all sides. This puts her in a rough spot with the Tamils, but her service as a field medic and sister of 3 Tiger brothers earns her a ticket to the United States, from where she witnesses the end of the war. It is QUITE a journey- 100x more vital than ANY American author. She's not particularly accomplished as a prose stylist but the story is so powerful it doesn't matter.
It was also a fantastic audiobook because of the accents involved- all of which would be impossible for me to do in my head. Fully recommend the Audiobook edition- 20 hours long.
Published 9/17/24
Audiobook Review
Creation Lake (2024)
by Rachel Kushner
I've been looking forward to Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner's new novel since I finished her last novel, The Mars Room, back in 2017. Kushner is exactly the type of author I'm looking for: A woman who doesn't write about women who are wives and moms. Rather, her protagonists are women on the fringes of society, i.e. interesting subjects, and her books sparkle with life. In Flamethrowers, the subject was biker gangs. In The Mars Room, it was a woman doing life for murder. Here the narrator and protagonist is "Sadie Smith"(a nom de spy), an American woman with a graduate degree in literature (or something like that) who has eschewed a life of academic stiving for work as, first, an undercover informant for the FBI (we call them "CI's" or confidential informant, in the biz) and then as a spy-for-hire.
Creation Lake takes place during one of her gigs- an assignment to infiltrate a commune of rural eco-radicals who are "led" by Bruno Lacombe, a mysterious intellectual who lives in a cave. Sadie is an interesting lady: She's smart and funny and ruthlessly immoral. In quiet moments during the activities of this book, she reflects wryly on the case that got her booted out of the FBI CI program (she set up a young man and his older mentor in an eco-terrorism bust, only to see them both acquitted at trial on the grounds of entrapment). She also enjoys reading the lengthy email missives from Bruno to his followers which have a distinctly Knaussgardian flair.
Equally at the center of Creation Lake is the French region of Guyenne- which is in the south-west of the country, with a rich tradition of Neanderthal cave artwork and rural despair. Through the medium of Bruno's emails, Smith learns about the Cagot, a poorly understood caste of outcasts from the region. Her contemplation of Bruno's emails and her own trips around the area in pursuit of her goal elevate Guyenne to supporting character status.
If this wasn't a Rachel Kushner novel, I would have been waiting for Sadie to develop a conscience but that doesn't happen. Rather, Smith becomes determined to see the plan out and we are invited to watch the proceedings unfold. Creation Lake isn't a spy novel exactly, but it does provide those pleasures in addition to introducing a character who could possibly establish some kind of IP franchise. I checked out the Audiobook because it was read by the author, and I thought she did a great job. Creation Lake deserves the Booker shortlist and it could possibly win that award.
Published 9/24/24
Held (2023)
by Anne Michaels
Held by Canadian poetess/novelist Anne Michaels is the fifth of the six Booker shortlisted novels I've read this year. The last, Stone Yard Devotional, is not out in the USA yet. I listened the live announcement of the shortlist this year on YouTube and one of the things the presenting Judge said is that REREADABILITY is an important characteristic of the Booker Prize since all of the Judges read all of the longlisted and shortlisted titles more than once in the course of the Judging period. They start out with something over 100 books, which I have to believe they divide up, but after that the rereading begins. I thought that was interesting because I almost NEVER reread books, and indeed, those books I've read more than once are basically books I'm OBSESSED with.
There are different ways to consider re-reading. The first, is the passion for the book angle. The second would be that the book is too complicated to be understood the first time, which also is congruent with the modernist-influenced prose favored by people "in the business" (i.e. English professors, graduate students) of literature. So when I tell you that I would need to read this book again, like, immediately, to really get what was going on- take it as a compliment. I can tell you it takes place in several time periods, that the characters are related, that most of it takes place in England in the early 20th century, though several chapters take place in France during World War I.
Maybe that means Held is the winner- because it is the most difficult and therefore the most obviously re-readable book? We will find out!
Published 9/25/24
Headshot (2024)
by Rita Bullwinkel
Headshot, by American author Rita Bullwinkle was the most surprising Booker Longlist title this year. It was also our last book club pick- a decision that was made before the Booker announcement so...kudos to my book club. Headshot takes place over a single weekend at a boxing gym in Reno, location of the women's under-18 national tournament. Each chapter is a different bout- four fights in the first round, then the semi-finals and the final. Each bout is told from the perspective of each fighter with Bullwinkle moving forward and backwards in time to tell us where the individual boxers have come from and where they are going.
It's audacious technique and even more impressive because Headshot is only 224 pages long. Author Bulwinkel has history with McSweeney's, and the combination of subject matter and technique reminded me of other offerings from McSweeney's affiliated writers.
Published 10/3/24
Audiobook Review
Horror Movie (2024)
by Paul G. Tremblay
I'm not a big genre fiction guy but I dip my toes in fantasy, horror and crime/detective fiction and read quite a bit of science fiction. My usual rule for fantasy/horror/crime/detective fiction is that I'll read it if it gets a stand alone (vs. round-up) review in the New York Times book section. Regardless of the content of the book or the tenor of the review, any genre title that gets a stand alone review means that it is well above the standard quality for whatever genre, and that it may, in fact, exceed genre standards to the point where it qualifies as literary fiction.
Such was the case with Horror Movie, the latest from Paul G. Tremblay, one of a handful of horror authors who maintain contact with the literary fiction establishment. The New York Times review for Horror Movie- written by a horror-industry stalwart, was sparkling, to the point where I checked out the Audiobook from the library. Alas, I did not enjoy my listening experience, largely for the same issues I have with most horror books. These can be expressed as follows:
1. Every horror novel wants the reader to care about whether SOMEONE lives or dies, and I never ever do, not for one moment, care what happens to any character in any horror novel. In my mind, a real horror story is a novel about the struggles of an unwed, poorly educated teen mom who gives birth in the rural south in the mid 20th century.
2. Every horror novel is built around a ridiculous concept- that the world is filled with malevolent things- human or other, who are absolutely obsessed with murdering/ruining the lives of living humans, specifically the characters in this book. This is the opposite of my lived experience, which suggests that the supernatural is largely a delusion caused by different kinds of mental illness and that the wider world does not care what happens to a specific person, no matter what they have going on in their life.
3. I don't enjoy being scared.
Although I was never in danger of being scared by the Horror Movie audiobook, the other two issues were front and center, since the plot: About the revival of an ill-fated cult horror film shot by a bunch of college-age students in the Northeast, hits points 1 and 2 right in the bullseye despite the metafictional attempts by the author to spice up the timeline of the book. Simply put, who gives a shit whether these people live or die, or how they go about it. Not me.
Published 10/15/24
Audiobook Review
The Third Realm (2024)
by Karl Ove Knausgaard
We are now three books into Karl Ove Knausgaard's "The Morning Star" series, which combines his trademark close examination of the minutiae of everyday life and everyday thoughts with some kind of a supernatural thriller plot that revolves around a mysterious "new star" which appears in the sky over contemporary Norway and somehow stops all deaths. Three books in and the general public is still unaware of the phenomenon. To slow things down even further, Knausgaard uses the third volume to introduce an almost entirely new cast of characters, including a naive Norwegian teen and her nefarious black-metal boyfriend. In fact, it is Norwegian black metal that takes an astonishing front-of-house position in this volume, as a Norwegian detective seeks to solve the gruesomely mysterious slaying of three members of a lesser Norwegian black metal band at the hands of forces unknown.
There is also a neurologist who is called in to investigate brain activity in people who were thought to be brain dead, Tove a manic-depressive housewife and painter and Gaute, a teacher and husband to previously described character Katrina (a clergywoman with the church of Norway.) Still no idea how long this series will continue- could be endless?
Published 10/22/24
Annihilation (2024)
by Michel Houellebecq
It's hard to be a fan of Michel Houellebecq in the United States- he's despised by the literary establishment, and the type of Americans who would be his fans typically aren't big fans of translated French literary fiction. Thus, to read about Houellebecq in English language periodicals is to be subject to an endless stream of disdain with occasional concessions to his wit or powers of anticipation. I wasn't surprised that the New York Times review for Annihilation, which is reportedly Houellebecq's last novel book?) struck this exact tone- using the cover of an opening about how an average American reader of literary fiction might become increasingly sympathetic to Houellebecq as additional drinks are consumed over the course of the evening.
Regrettably I agree with Dwight Garner's assessment, that this is far from Houellebecq's best work and it, in fact, frequently grim and nearly impossible to read. The major theme here is end of life care and the issues surrounding euthanasia, interspersed with a strange and half abandoned techno-thriller angle and Houellbecq's typically fraught musings about relations between the sexes. The inclusion of the techno thriller stuff gave me hope for at least some kind of mass market ambition, and it is impossible to know what to make of the fact that the plot line is abandoned two thirds of the way through the book. Houellebecq's characters are, as always, hugely unlikable, that is nothing new, but there is a real lack of both wit and fun, which if you are going to put up with the rest of it, are what makes Houellebecq such a good read.
Published 10/23/24
Audiobook Review
The Empusium (2024)
by Olga Tokarczuk
Like many English readers, I hadn't heard of Polish author and Nobel Prize Winner Olga Tokarczuk until the release of Flights in 2018- a translation from the original Polish which was published in 2007. Since then I've kept up with her new English language releases- like many I found the similarities between Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, published in 2019(in English and 2008 in Polish), and Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh (published in 2020). No one ever got to the bottom of it! I also read The Books of Jacob- which I thought was really great but had zero and I mean zero, commercial appeal.
The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story arrived late last month and I quickly got the Audiobook(!) version out of the library of the Libby app. At 11 hours it was much shorter than The Books of Jacob and more in line with the standard length of a newly published novel. Like every book I've read of hers except for Flights, The Empusium is going to appeal to a limited audience, fans of cheeky, feminist historical fiction with genre elements, provided here by the promise of a "horror story" in the title. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the horror is ever lurking and rarely front in center. Instead, the reader/listener is treated to lengthy dialogues between the residents of a turn of the 20th century sanitarium which I believe is located in the Czech alps- or what would be a mountainous region of the Czech Republic today or maybe Austria.
I've actually learned a fair amount about sanitariums over the years from history and literary fiction- they played a prominent role in the settling of southern California vis a vis the dry client being ideal for sufferers of tuberculosis. There's also the more contemporary understanding of the sanitarium as a predecessor/forerunner of the modern mental hospital/place to stash well-off people who are incapable of maintaining themselves in society- LGBT people, for example. This sanitarium in this book makes use both of the tuberculosis model and the developing "science" of psychiatry- which- you don't have to be a Scientologist to point out issues with psychiatry.
So personally, I quite enjoyed it but it's another work of literary fiction which will have little, if any appeal to people who aren't already interested in fiction about turn of the century European sanitarium culture. Those showing up for the horror story will be left wanting.
Published 10/29/24
Father of Lies (1998)
by Brian Evenson
The first Brian Evenson book I read was Immobility, his 2013 novel about a human-less post-apocalyptic scenario. That was back in 2021. Since then I've kept track of him- he's one of the few horror/sci-fi genre writers who commonly attracts attention from the literary fiction mainstream, which is enough for me. Recently(2016 anyway), many books from his backlist were put back into print by Coffee House press, and Father of Lies (along with everything else he ever published) popped up on the Libby library app.
Father of Lies is an early work, a relatively straight-forward work of religio-horror about a psychopathic leader of a Mormon-like church (Evenson is from Utah and was raised Mormon). In 2024, it sounds like a particularly sadistic retelling of the Catholic Priests vs. Young Boys saga of the past decades. Unlike the Catholic Church, Mormons are still in full on refuse to acknowledge/cover-up mode, which perhaps accounts for the fact that the church which is depicted is only Mormon-like.
The horror is nothing you wouldn't read about in a newspaper story about Catholic priests abusing young boys- although he does murder one young parishioner after she confesses to being pregnant by her older brother. This murder triggers a cascade of events which include a physical manifestation of Satan and lots of back and forth between him and his ever-supportive Church elders. Events spiral when the mothers of three young church-members all come forward claiming that their young male children are victims of the protagonists vile abuse, and much of the horror comes from the support he continues to claim from the Church hierarchy who really stand by him all the way through the book.
Published 10/21/24
Playground (2024)
by Richard Powers
I like Richard Powers but I don't love him. In many ways he's one of the last old white men if American fiction- he's managed to avoid irrelevance by winning major literary prizes and writing fiction that is broadly appealing to the biggest possible audience for literary fiction while changing things up enough to avoid charges that he is repeating himself or running out of new ideas. One hallmark of Powers' fiction is his repeated ability to introduce non-fiction subjects into his prose: Ecology, AI or, in Playground, the wonders of the oceans. The weaving together of science and literary fiction is the essence of Powers and his appeal. For me, his books are hit and miss. Yes, I enjoyed The Overstory, but only read it after it won the Pulitzer Prize because "Richard Powers writes about trees" didn't sound interesting. Afterward, I didn't regret reading it but I never think about it, talk about it or recommend it to anyone.
Similarly, I wasn't annoyed or uncomfortable reading Playground but nor was I ever compelled or emotionally triggered by the characters or the story. Playground isn't a book I'll revisit and I really do doubt it's going to win a major literary award. It got weeded out at the shortlist stage by the Booker Prize this year, which makes sense to me.
Published 10/30/24
Audiobook Review
William (2024)
by Mason Coile
William is an AI centered horror novel and I checked out the Audiobook after the New York Times gave it a great review last month. The mere fact that the Times gave that many column inches to a work of genre fiction that was published under a pseudonym, no less (Mason Coile is the "open pseudonym" of award-winning Canadian author Andrew Pyper.) The set up is that a pregnant tech billionaire and her agoraphobic husband are living in their state of the art "smart home" in the Seattle area. Henry, the protagonist, is an engineer who spends his days working on "William" a spooky ai powered android that has no legs and a fearsome hatred of Henry and all of humanity. The reader knows things are not going to go well and indeed they do not, with events starting to pile up after Lily, his wife, invites to work friends over for a rare dinner.
Although William clocked in at under four hours, Coile manages to intersperse the gory horror scenes with philosophical musings and a very big twist at the end. It's worth a listen for the Halloween season!
Published 10/31/24
Audiobook Review
A Sunny Place for Shady People (2024)
by Mariana Enriquez
Translated by Megan McDowell
I straight up loved Our Share of Night, the multi-generational novel about a group of Satanists operating in the UK and Argentina. I'm by no means a fan of the horror genre, but Enriquez really nailed the cruelty of a fictional satanic cult and I still think about some of the scenes on a regular basis as an example of what good writing means to me- and just to think that this is a writer who has her words translated into English from Spanish. I've more or less decided that for books within the close Indo-European sphere: English, Spanish, French, German the idea of losing meaning/beauty in the translation from one closely related language to another is overblown except on a poetic level.
Going in I knew that this volume of short stories wouldn't match her novel, but I still enjoyed this collection. The title story, in particular, combines the elements of her style: A spooky, LA-based story about an Argentinian journalist who convinces her editor to let her travel to Los Angeles to do a story on the cultish group that has sprung up around the memory of Elisa Lam, a 21 year old Canadian student who died under extremely mysterious circumstances inside the Water Tower of the Cecil Hotel. While in Los Angeles, she is forced to confront the memory of her dead lover who lost himself to schizophrenia and heroin and reconnecting with a lesbian couple who live in the Hollywood hill. Most of the other stories are set either in Argentina or in an Argentina-like place and have similar but different combinations of spooks and personal issues. Mostly, though, this collection was just a reminder for me about how much I loved Our Share of Night. Published 11/8/24
Audiobook Review
The Last Days of New Paris (1998)
by China Miéville
I'm a big fan of science-fiction, less so of fantasy. Sure, when I was a lad I played by fair share of Dungeons and Dragons and read all the fantasy classics. As an adult I enjoyed the Game of Thrones television series, but beyond that, regular fantasy just seems so tedious with its magical creatures that recreate the cultural preoccupations of whichever author is behind the keyboard. I am, however, intrigued by the writers of the "New Weird" movement a genre that lands somewhere in between fantasy, science fiction and literary fiction.
Chief among these is English author China Miéville. The Last Days of New Paris is an alternate-history/fantasy novella about a group of surrealists resistance fighters battling Nazi's and otherworldly demons conjured up by a detonation of an "S-Bomb." The thin plot, which involves running around a ruined Paris and fighting Nazi's who are seeking to capture control of the free-ranging apparitions wandering around post-war Paris with the help of Demons they've conjured from hell, is also an opportunity for Miéville to write about the history of the surrealist movement and animate some of those characters.
I found it all pretty incoherent as an Audiobook, and I couldn't even make it through the Appendix, where Miéville pedantically explains all the surrealist references among his characters and his monsters- which often take their shape from the psyche of their surroundings(!?!). The thing about fantasy is that you always know where it's going to end up- there is going to be some kind of a quest and the protagonist either does the thing or fails heroically. It's like, people never sit down for a meal and a chat in fantasy novels.
Published 11/15/24
Audiobook Review
The Children of Men (1992)
by PD James
I love the movie version of this book- I've watched it several times over the years, and I finally got around to listening to the Audiobook of the original book by PD James. James made her name as a writer of detective fiction and it's one of three non-detective fiction books she published before her death in 2014. I believe there are multiple versions of the Audiobook- I would imagine one before the film and one after to capitalize on the revitalized interest. Whichever version I heard I didn't like the narrator, who had a stuffy, pedantic English accent (as befits the character in the book).
As one might expect, the book tells a related but different story than the film, which was obviously diversified in the hands of director Alfonso Cuaron. In the book, the harsh treatment of would-be immigrants is mentioned as a concern but not something encountered by the characters. In the film, the immigrants and their treatment are at the center of the plot. I found myself wondering about James and her motivation- my thought is that she was inspired by Margaret Atwood and A Handmaid's Tale, which was published in 1985, so it very well could have been in her mind when she first imagined The Children of Men. I don't see anything in her detective fiction that would have triggered this dark, dystopian tale of a childless future (and neither did the New York Times, both before and after the movie was released.)
Published 11/18/24
Audiobook Review
Absolution (2024)
by Jeff Vandermeer
Reading the latest Southern Reach book from Jeff Vandermeer is an exercise in self-inflicted pain. For those who aren't keep track, Annihilation and it's follow-ups were always referred to as the Southern Reach Trilogy up until this, the fourth book in the series, was published. The reach of Vandermeer's enterprise was expanded by the movie version by Alex Garland, which polarized audiences when it was released but has gone to enjoy a successful life in the stream-o-verse- I think I've watched parts of it on three or four different streaming platforms at this point.
So three books in what do we know about The Southern Reach- we know something is going on in there, that the something changes and transforms DNA- turning peaceful bunny rabbits into crab eating monsters and possessing the capacity to create human-like doppelgangers. We know that the investigation is being run by a shadowy government agency, or maybe even a shadowy government agency secretly ensconced within another, larger, shadowy government agency.
Beyond that I don't really know, and frankly, I'm kind of done caring after this, the latest episode which mostly tells the story of "Old Jim" a washed-up, alcoholic CIA agent obsessed with his missing daughter who is posted to Area X prior to the time period covered in Annihilation. There is also a portion told from the perspective of two different members of the all-male expedition that preceded the all female expedition of Annihilation. Like all the other books in the series, Vandermeer never makes anything explicit, leaving the reader to ponder what to make of it all. To be fair there were some heart stopping set pieces, like the aforementioned crab eating rabbits and a late scene where the Area tricks one of the male expedition members into eating the flesh of a dead comrade- which is, contrary to the rest of the series, described in such intimate detail that I had to turn the Audiobook off a couple times to keep myself from potentially throwing up in my vehicle.
Public 11/22/24
Audiobook Review
Harrow (2021)
by Joy Williams
I take some flack in my book group for reading prize winners but I stick with the approach because ANY literary prize is handed out by a bunch of people who take literary fiction seriously and are trying to make a point by awarding a specific prize to a specific book. Any work of literary fiction that can win a major or minor prize is worth taking note of, because the over-under on "number of people who think a random work of literary fiction is great" is roughly zero. I had checked out this very same Audiobook back in 2021 only to abandon it a couple hours through the eight hour listening length. I revisited it after coming across the information that it had won the Kirkus Prize for Fiction back when it was published. The prize itself only dates back to 2014 but it's done a decent job of picking relevant titles. James by Percival Everett is their pick this year, Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was last year. By those standards Harrow- a dystopian eco-thriller{?} and first novel by the well-known writer of short stories is a real left field pick.
What I remember from my first go-round in 2021 is that I had little idea what was going on- my number one indicator for gauging whether a book is "serious" literary fiction or not- lack of narrative guard-rails for the reader is the signal accomplishment of literary modernism. But 2024 me would think that the combination of literary fiction and dystopian sci fi would have been appealing to 2021 me, so I wanted to unravel the mystery. Second time through I had just as hard a time figuring out what was going on. Like, sitting here right now I can't describe the third part of the book in relation to the first two parts. Williams and her approach very much reminded me of the approach taken by George Saunders in his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo- also a literary prize winner. There, Saunders animated the graveyard with a polyphony of voices. Here, Williams similarly throws voices like a short-story writer getting paid by the idea. Her protagonist, Kristin, is a high-school/college age girl who is dismissed from her confusing boarding school situation after some kind of "final" collapse of civilization.
She wanders in search of her Mother, who was last seen on the shore of a lake in what feels like Upstate New York at some kind of wellness conference. When she arrives at her destination she doesn't find her mother but rather a run-down motel inhabited by a collection of elderly people who are each trying to commit a final act of terrorism against what is left of the world before they die, a quiet suicide now being somewhat de rigeur for Americans of a certain age. There is also a 10 year old boy named Jeffery who constantly recites legal doctrines as a coping mechanism ("Before this he needed an inhaler") and his alcoholic mother.
But so far as anything happening in the book, there isn't a lot, just this girl Kristin talking to different people and those people relating their own stories before the focus goes back to Kristin. There were passages where I could hear the greatness but getting that wrapped up in the listening experience would cause me to lose my grasp of the over-arching narrative- which is a very rare event in my reading life. It really says something about the complexity of Harrow.
Published 12/16/24
Audiobook Review
My Name is Barbra (2023)
by Barbra Streisand
It is hard to do justice to the 48 hour long Audiobook of Barbra Streisand's autobiography. It is important for a prospective listener to know that the narrator is none other than Barbra Streisand herself AND that many of her recordings are used when they are mentioned in the reading. The listener learns many, many things about Streisand and I'm sure that is the case whether you are an ardent fan or someone who only knows her as a pop-culture reference point (me). Begin with her troubled relationship with her only surviving parent (her Dad died when she was a young child), her Mom. Streisand and her Mom do not have a great relationship which is a frequent theme early in the book and continues to be a surprisingly robust sense of ire all the way through to the end. Streisand delves heavily into her emotional relationship with Virginia Clinton, Bill Clinton's Mom, in the same chapter she is lambasting her own Mother for skipping her big Las Vegas anniversary show, Streisand is in her late 50's in this chapter.
Next is her status as an actress, not a singer and later as an actress/director/producer, not a singer. It's hard to overstate Streisand's lack of interest in her singing career despite it being her voice that leads her to nearly immediate fame as a teenager. Streisand is not a song writer, nor an arranger of music, so most of the stuff about her singing are details about her relationships with different writers, arrangers and producers. As a result, those looking for some insight about music career might leave disappointed. On the other hand, those interested in hearing about every damn details about every film she has ever made- get excited!
Published 12/19/24
Audiobook Review
Mobility (2023)
by Lydia Kiesling
I checked the Audiobook of Mobility, the 2023 novel by American author Lydia Kieling after seeing it described as "the perfect novel for the Baku climate summit" in the New York Times last month. I was intrigued at the idea that an American author, a woman, no less, had written a novel that was at least partially set in Baku- which sounded far more interesting than the usual: books written about women struggling to live in America, either dealing with abusive fathers, husbands or partners, struggling with issues surrounding family, career and child-birth. That is, in my experience, an accurate description of 90% of literary fiction written by American women. My literary travels through the United States via the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project have left me with a profound lack of interest in the issues surrounding raising children in the USA. Both in books in my experiences in real life it seems simply insane how OBSESSED "normal" parents are with every aspect of their child and its development, this despite the fact that basically every child is exactly the same (don't tell this to a parent!)
Mobility, on the other hand is picaresque with a young woman, Elizabeth (or "Bunny" as she is known as an adolescent). When we meet her she is a shy teen, the daughter of an American diplomat posted to Baku close to the end of the Soviet era. Mobility follows her life as a young and then middle aged adult, where she works her way up the ladder of a privately owned "Energy Services" company while trying to navigate adult relationships and her Mom, who kind of falls apart after a divorce from her diplomat father. It's not heavy lifting but it is nice to read about a female protagonist who has her act together.
Published 11/7/24
The Known World (2003)
by Edward P. Jones
Pulitzer Prize winner The Known World by Edward P. Jones was the highest ranked novel on the the recent Best Books of the 21st century book that I hadn't read(#4). I can't believe that editor Susan Straight didn't include it in her Virginia chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, perhaps because she picked one of Jones' other titles for the Washington DC chapter. Having now read The Known World, I found the exclusion baffling and I can't explain it except as an example of the firm one author/one book rule that seems to be operative within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project. Similarly, editor Straight left off Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, which is set in South Carolina and also seems to be a victim of the one author/one title.
Surely the one novel in American literature that covers the experience of African American slave OWNERS in the upper south is worth including in a project that shows the different experiences of Americans? Looking into Edward P. Jones and his legacy, I understand how I missed it the first time around- Jones has the lowest of low literary profiles and never wrote a second novel. Having read The Known World, I can understand why. If you totally nail such a huge subject and everyone agrees that you nailed it and it is the best book on the subject, why bother trying to top it?
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