Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

This novel got a lot of good press and won some awards, including the 2007 PEN/Hemingway Award. It’s the story of a group of people who work together in a Chicago advertising agency. The agency is in decline; one by one the copywriters and graphic designers are being laid off as the clients disappear and the work dries up. Meanwhile, the remaining staff gather in one another’s offices to commiserate, gossip, drink coffee, and in some cases plan their escapes. A great deal of the book consists of these glib conversations that take place in one cubicle or another. Like at a real job, sometimes these conversations are clever but a lot of the time they are trite, and Ferris doesn’t really favor one sort over the other. Hence we endure endless discussions about Marcia’s new hair style, and whether or not Larry is going to leave his wife for Amber.

Reviewers rave about how Ferris captures the ennui and the cynicism that characterize modern office life, and he does. But if you already work in an office where ennui and cynicism are the norm, do you really want to read about it for fun, too? It’s not like their ennui and cynicism are any different from anyone else’s, which is what the critics seemed to like, but which I thought made for dull reading. Occasionally Ferris introduces some level of pathos or action that moves the story to another level, like when Janine feels compelled to mourn her murdered daughter by spending her lunch hour in the plastic ball pit at McDonalds, or when Tom decides to take his tragicomic revenge for being laid off. But these moments are too infrequent to counteract the endless boring debates about who should get the chair of the most recently departed employee. Yes, I realize that the pointlessness is the point. But does all this really add up to one of the best books of 2007?

(Book 2, 2011)

Game of Thrones on HBO

HBO is producing a dramatization of the first book in George R. R. Martin's four-volume (and as yet unfinished) fantasy series known as A Song of Ice and Fire. I read the first three volumes of this series before I had my blog. The fourth book, A Feast for Crows, was one of the first books I wrote about when I started blogging. So it's been a long time since I read A Game of Thrones: almost ten years. The question is, do I reread it before I watch the series, or not? The books feature a cast of thousands and they have about a million different plot strands. Is HBO going to try to stick closely to the original story or will it simplify things? Will I like the series more or less if it doesn't match the book? I am encouraged by the fact that one of the the producers and writers for the series is David Benioff, whose novel City of Thieves was one of my favorites of 2008.

If you haven't read this series I highly recommend it, even for readers who don't normally do fantasy. Martin is very sparing in his use of traditional fantasy elements. Mostly it's just an alternate reality story of medieval knights and kings and political machinations, and the magical elements are kept to a very bare minimum. Benioff has famously described the series as "The Sopranos in Middle Earth," and that's pretty accurate. It features strong memorable characters (both male and female), action, romance, and a surprising amount of humor, though it also contains some gruesome violence.

I am not generally a rereader. My TBR stack is too high to spend time on things I've already read. Should I make an exception in this case?

Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar

Sometimes people ask me how I choose books. I usually answer something like “Oh, I have a lot of writers whose work I like, so just keeping up with their new books can fill my time.” Or, I’ll tell them that I regularly read the newspaper book review pages and make my choices based on that advice. But the sad truth is, sometimes I read a book because it’s been left on the breakfast table by someone else and I pick it up to read while I eat my oatmeal.* That’s how I began Students for a Democratic Society by Harvey Pekar, my first (and probably my only) foray into the graphic format. My son checked this out of the library when he was home from college on winter break and he left it there one morning.**

Did I like it? To my surprise, I liked a lot of it, though after a while I couldn’t stick with it. I discovered something that maybe graphic format readers already know: that when you read these kinds of books, the story’s facts come from the prose, but the emotions come from the illustrations. Because I am so oriented toward print instead of illustration I found myself just reading the prose and skipping the pictures and feeling like the stories were too flat. When I realized what I was doing I went back and looked at the pictures more closely and picked up more of the nuance. Still, it seemed like a lot of work and eventually I gave up.

Students for a Democratic Society is a graphic history of this group from its origins in the labor movement of the late 1950’s up through its disintegration in the early 1970’s. The book mostly consists of a series of reminiscences by and about members of the SDS. It’s certainly not a complete history of the SDS, nor does it claim to be. But it held my interest long enough to provide me with a good introduction to the format, and it inspired me to learn more about Harvey Pekar, who died a few months ago.

*Are you allowed to read during meals at your house? We are. Our kitchen table is usually heaped with books, magazines, and newspapers, and anyone may read during any meal except one that is officially designated as “family dinner,” for which we actually clear the junk off the table. Sometimes during breakfast there is no noise at all except for the crunching of cereal and the flipping of pages.

**College-age boys home on break leave their stuff everywhere. Everywhere.

(Book 1, 2011)

2010 Report

Regular readers of this blog know that I find “Best of the Year” type posts boring, so I’m going to be quick. Also, almost all the books I read this year were really good, but that’s because I don’t usually stick with a book that I don’t like. The reject pile next to my bed would really shock some of you.  But that said, a few titles that I read this year are worth mentioning as real standouts. In no particular order, they are:

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
The World to Come by Dara Horn
White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Property by Valerie Martin
The Glass Room by Simon Mawrer
When the Emperor was Divine
Hellhound on his Trail by Hampton Sides

As soon as I can I’ll put together a list of all the books I read in 2010 so I can link to it from my sidebar.

Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason

I’ve noticed that when it comes to mysteries, I am all about location, the more exotic the better. In the past year or so I’ve read mysteries that take place in India, Norway, the Shetland Islands, China, Ireland, Italy, and Saudi Arabia. And now with this most recent book, Iceland. Though I’ve been to Iceland before (in real life, too!), as this is the fifth book I’ve read about Reykjavik detective Erlandur. Like Arnaldur's earlier books, this is one dark and laconic. He doesn’t waste words or emotions and neither does Erlandur as he slowly and doggedly tries to get to the bottom of an apparent suicide that just doesn’t seem right to him.

Several scenes in this book are set at the Thingvellir National Park, one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been in my life, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates come together to form a rift valley. You can walk on the valley floor between the two plates, North America on your left side, Europe on your right. It’s also a Unesco World Heritage site, the original site of the Althing, the world’s oldest parliament, established in 930 CE. Of course none of this matters to Erlandur, who just spends a lot of time wondering how long it would take for someone to freeze to death in the icy waters of Lake Thingvallavatn (answer: not very long).

Above is a picture I took of the trail through the rift valley at Thingvellir. You can see more (and better) photos of this place on Flickr or by doing an image search in Google.

(Book 58, 2010)

The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton

Oh Rosy, where is your sharp edge? What happened to your astute observations, your subtle wit, your understated skewering of all things pompous? I loved your last book, Hearts and Minds but this one kind of left me cold.

The Tapestry of Love is about a middle-aged divorced British woman who buys an old house in southern France, fixes it up, starts her own successful decorating business, meets the handsome (and single) neighbor, etc. etc. A predictable plot, yes, but I had hoped that Thornton’s ever-so-slightly cynical voice could render it fresh and different. But alas, no, it’s a conventional plot rendered conventionally; Thornton’s humor and zing are gone and she just offers up the requisite scenes: the one with the sheep, the one with the priest, the one at the town market. It’s like someone took all the spice out of her writing. I’m so disappointed.

If you want a comfort read, something to take your mind off your bratty kids and your boring job, this might do the trick. It’s certainly not badly written or offensive. It’s just that I was expecting a bowl of chili and I felt like I got Campbell’s cream of tomato soup instead.

(Book 57, 2010)

Voice of America by E. C. Osondu

An editor at Harper sent me a review copy of this book. I’d never heard of Osondu, though the first story in this book, Waiting, won the 2009 Caine Prize, which is a literary prize for the best original short story by an African writer who is writing in English.

Waiting is a very moving story of young people living in a refugee camp, waiting for what? They wait for food, for clothing, for things to change, for a chance to go to America. Most stories in this book are set in Nigeria but a few are set in the U.S. I liked the Nigerian stories better, especially a story called Jimmy Carter’s Eyes, which is available online here.

What I found really interesting was the way Osondu explored the relationship between Africans and African Americans. Several stories (some set in the U.S., others in Nigeria) deal with the expectations that Africans have regarding African Americans, and vice versa. The cultural divide between these groups is huge, and Osondu exploits it for purposes both comic and tragic.

Osondu’s writing style is spare but not macho. He makes his observations with a minimum of fuss, so even a drama-filled story about a beachfront firing squad is an exercise in control. And while it is clearly not Osondu’s intention to remind his U.S. readers how good they have it, he achieves this nevertheless. I read Waiting from the comfort of my warm house, surrounded by my loving family, and was grateful for everything I had.

(Book 56, 2010)