34 posts tagged “books”
Well --- I’d been procrastinating on talking about one of my favorite part of my vacation Down The Shore which was getting in a lot of reading. I’d been procrastinating because I’d hoped that Vox would have a ready fix for that book-loading breakdown that happened last month. Anyway, before they got too stale in my head, here they are:
“Lost on Planet China” by J Maarten Troost. It’s been no secret here that I loved his first book “The Sex Lives of Cannibals” – really one of the funniest books that I’ve read in a long time. In his follow-up (“Getting Stoned With Savages”), Troost’s befuddlement of South Pacific culture seemed a little stale. So, in this adventure, Troost – leaving the safe confines of suburban Sacramento (where is wife is currently employed) ventures for a months-long trip to China. He's a savvy Western traveler encountering the daunting size, pollution, crowds and cultural collisions of this emerging 21st century nation. For fans of “Sex Lives” Troost returns to top form – from the crowded cities, to the interior, to Tibet, Troost provides a vivid description of the highs and lows (more lows than highs to be truthful) of his travel with a wry and occasionally scathing honesty. 9 out of 10.
“The Likeness” by Tana French. I had read French’s first novel (“In The Woods”) and enjoyed it. The mystery was good, creepy and kept you guessing. The characters were well-drawn and compelling, though not always likeable. In addition, everything doesn’t tie up cleanly – a real-world touch that I appreciated. In “The Likeness” French uses that to her advantage, picking up a few months after the aftermath of that story. She again uses the first-person POV to drive the story, but switches main characters, moving from Det. Rob Ryan to Det. Cassie Maddox. If anything, French has done a better job of creating a world and characters that the reader can really dive into. The mystery – the death of a grad student with some secrets to hide – kept me guessing with a number of clues and feints. The only quibble that I had with the story is that like in “In The Woods”, French relies on an unlikely coincidence (established early) to add dramatic tension and mystery. In the first book, it worked very well – in this one, it required a bit more suspension of disbelief than I'd like – and that’s about the only thing that niggled at me while I read it. 8 out of 10.
“Duma Key” by Stephen King. I mean, what’s a trip to the beach without a good pulpy horror story? Especially one set at the beach!! When I first picked it up, I thought – oh, regular-size King story. Well, they must have used some thin pages, because this puppy clocked in at >900 pp. This was King’s first creepy-things-happen-in-a-locale story that didn’t take place in Maine. I believe it was written during his recuperation from the man-versus-vehicle accident that almost took his life several years ago. Perhaps not surprisingly, the main character is a successful man that has life-threatening accident and is sent to Florida to recuperate, where he finds that he (and the things around him) are a little different. When I started, I was annoyed by the standard King inclusions of People With Funny Names Who Know Too Much, and the habit of Unnecessary Capitalization and unusual vernacular to make things unique. And then a funny thing happened, I was totally engrossed in the story and the characters. King even produced a few scenes that got me choked up, believe it or not. The resolution is fairly standard King-fare and I kept thinking, “How will this look in the movie?” Still for a beach-read, it was good stuff and kept me wondering a little bit about just what WAS out there in the water… 7.5 out of 10.
“The Suspect” by LR Wright. This small book was an Edgar Award winner back in the 80s. I always find it funny to read stories where the protagonists don’t have computers or cell phones. It does make for easier dramatic tension in some ways when answers aren’t always immediately at your fingertips. This story, set in a sleepy little island on the west coast of Canada, isn’t so much a whodunit (the murder starts the book and you know exactly who kills whom and with what), but whydunit, because the violence of the act seems so counter to the persons involved. And after the mammoth “Duma Key”, a concise (200 pp), thoughtful character study was welcome. The weirdest thing though was that the font of the book was Tahoma (or something like it) and I found it really strange to read. Maybe I need my serifs. 8 out of 10.
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d determined that I’d been drawn into somewhat of an obscure niche in recent readings. Well, I think I found another one. The new one happens to be Mysteries In Which The Protagonist Is a Domesticated Animal.
Earlier this year, I listened to the audiobook of “Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story” by Leonie Swann. I take it the original was written in German. In this story, a flock of Irish sheep in the little town of Glennkill find that their shepherd has been killed. With Miss Maple “the cleverest sheep in all of Glennkill”* leading the investigation, the flock stumbles upon the dark goings-on in the presumably peaceful little dorf. The tale pretty humorous and pokes a lot of fun at human society. I thought the mystery sort of fizzled a bit towards the end, but the characters are endearing enough to carry it through.
*and possibly the world.
And just the other week, I finished “Dog On It” by Spencer Quinn --- apparently, the first in the Chet and Bernie Mystery Series. Chet is a mixed-breed dog that assists his private eye owner in solving crimes in the greater Phoenix area. The story is told completely from Chet’s perspective – which is sort of interesting because there’s a lot of the mystery that happens “off-camera”. Chet is the epitome of the loyal side-kick and this book is a hoot for anyone that muses “I wonder what that dog is thinking…”. This book doesn’t really have the satirical elements that “Three Bags Full” does, though Chet's observations of the quirks of human behavior are pretty funny. The mystery is pretty light and it’s fairly easy to put white hats and black hats on characters as they appear. And I don’t think it’s a big giveaway that the bad guy has a cat.
Follow-up to last week’s question:
Do you keep all your unread books together, like books in a waiting room? Or are they scattered throughout your shelves, mingling like party-goers waiting for the host to come along?
I haven't done a BTT for a while, and this seemed like a pretty good one. To answer the question: my "to-read" books sit in a stack by my side of the bed, as does the book that I'm currently reading.
The to-be-read stack is often, but not necessarily in the order that they (I think) they'll be read. Because you know you can't have a small book on the bottom and big books on top --- that would be so so wrong.
Anyway -- I like my stack right now. I have a recent King book (Duma Key) that had gotten pretty good reviews. A new book on traveling in China by J Marten Troost who wrote one of the funniest books that I've read in a long time (though his follow-up was not quite as good). The new mystery by Tana French, which I got on the strength of her first novel that I liked very much.
Rounding out the stack is another non-fiction book (A Voyage Long and Strange) about the early colonization of North America by Europeans. I'm also anxious to read Zafon's "Shadow of the Wind" which was recommended by several folks here on vox.I also have a couple of other non-fiction books at the base. A collection of 50 essays -- one written for each state by a famous native, and a account of the design and installation of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel --- we're thinking of going to Italy and Greece next year.
More than half are non-fiction. Huh. That surprises me.
Sometimes I find that the books I read tend to cluster – for example, this time last year I found myself reading a bunch of post-apocalyptic fiction. Recently, I’ve been reading a few mystery-thrillers, and in particular what I would have to think of as the very narrow sub-genre of Murder Mysteries Involving Missing Children in Northern European Locales.
*My library seems to specialize in Scandinavian mysteries (this won a Swedish Mystery Writers' Award) and I’ve read a couple previously set in Sweden. This has been my favorite though.
One of my favorite books (and films) of recent years has been Tom Perrotta’s “Little Children” which follows the story of two bored stay-at-home parents, who shake their boredom by having an affair. In it, Perrotta skewers many suburban stereotypes ruthlessly.
In his most recent book, “The Abstinence Teacher”, Perrotta returns to suburbia and examines a small skirmish in the Culture War that erupts when:
a) a high-school sex-ed teacher mentions that “many people enjoy sex” to her charges, and
b) a community soccer coach leads his middle-school-age girls’ team in a moment of prayer after a game.
Before each of those examples I almost wrote “in a moment of weakness, a high school…”, or “without considering the consequences, a community soccer…”. And to me this is one of the points that Perrotta is trying to convey. We’ve created a society in which advocates of either the right or the left can fan the smallest comment or action into a firestorm.
I finished this book about the time Carrie Prejean (Miss California USA) made headlines by answering a question about gay-marriage in the Miss USA Pageant. In her answer, she stumbled through platitudes for a while and then in the end blurted out that she did not support same-sex marriage and that marriage should be between a man and a woman. As a result, she has been lionized by the right and disparaged by the left. The media feeding frenzy around her reminded me of this book (I mean, does the opinion of a 22-yo beauty pageant entrant really worth all this fuss?). And God forbid, we should have a respectful discourse.
As a book, I don’t think “The Abstinence Teacher” is as good as “Little Children”—the characters are a little too broadly drawn, but I have to think that this book is a great choice for book-clubs because it’s a situation that we can all readily insert ourselves into and consider what we’d do confronted by the same type of situations -- and what might happen to us if we blurted something out we actually believed in a moment of weakness.
Share a book that made you laugh.
This question is a re-do of one from a couple of years ago, but I know a lot of you weren't in the neighborhood back then, so I'll re-do my answer (also, because I don't read a lot of "funny" books, this one is still pretty high on the list...).
If you want a laugh read: The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J Maarten Troost.
The protagonist -- if this book can be said to have one -- is a disenchanted, serial academic type in his late 20s that doesn't seem to need or want to work for a living. As an adventure, he heads off to the south seas with his wife who has taken a job doing third-world aid. His ideas of an idyllic paradise complete with swaying palm trees and nymphesque micronesian women is quickly disabused. What follows is one of the funniest travelogues I've ever read -- his sheer incredulity that this world EXISTS in the same one with cell phones, cable tv, and modern transportation is hysterical.
Suggested by Barbara:
I saw that National Library week is coming up in April, and that led to some questions.
How often do you use your public library and how do you use it?
I’m glad this question came up, because in the last six months or so, I’ve had reawakening of the pleasures of using the library. I used to think that I had to buy every book and keep it – in the last year, I’ve been convinced that maybe – just maybe – it’s okay just to borrow books. So we started going back over the holidays and we end up going once or twice a month. One of the things I was really excited about was that our library also rents music CDs – how cool is that?
Kelly had a good meme this weekend and I thought I'd give it a shot.
