Practical Jean by Trevor Cole – Book Review

Oct 182011

Practical Jean by Trevor Cole
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of Harper Collins

Her mother’s death hit Jean Vale Horemarsh hard. Really hard. It isn’t so much that Jean misses her mother. On the contrary, Marjorie was always fairly terrible to Jean, or at least not very nurturing and maternal. No, the hard part for Jean about her mother’s death is just how painful and degrading and difficult it was, no human being should have to go through that. It would have been so much better had Jean thought to spare her mother the pain and simply ended things early. Ah, well, it is too late now for Marjorie, but Jean and her acquaintances are aging rapidly these days, and just maybe she can spare her friends the same fate that consumed her mother. Ending their lives in a moment of happiness, before they become sick and infirm; what could be more practical?

Practical Jean is a fascinatingly dark look at aging and the bonds of friendship. What is our obligation to the ones we love? What if those friends don’t have quite the same expectations of your friendship? Jean is an oddly sympathetic character. Clearly something in her snapped at her mother’s death for her to want to provide her friends with a moment of ultimate happiness and then kill them, but the way Cole develops Jean’s character and the story, she seems almost – but not quite – logical. One thing that Cole does really well in Practical Jean is give Jean’s friends enough depth to make them life-like, without making the reader truly attach to them so that the plotting of their deaths makes Jean seem monstrous.

There is a bit of a slow start to Practical Jean, before Jean decides the best thing she could possibly do would be to kill all of her friends when the story just sort of meanders. Once she gets going, though the reader cannot help but turn the pages with morbid curiosity. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, via Netgalley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche – Book Review

May 102011

How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche
Published by Harper Books, an imprint of Harper Collins

The game is up and I’m in a pickle. Perhaps I’m just being cold-blooded, but there will be no reprieve. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

I imagine you would be hard pressed to find anyone who denies the influence of Shakespeare on the modern world. Or, in the case of those anti-Stratfordians, the work that is generally attributed to Shakespeare, regardless of who actually wrote it.To begin with, he coined some 1700 words, many of which are still used today. Stephen Marche’s thesis, though, is somewhat more than a nebulous claim of general influence. He asserts that Shakespeare actually changed, well, everything. Everything from sex to racial relations to teenagers. Marche even sees Obama’s victory – and the continuing opposition to him – as being heavily influenced by Shakespearean tropes:

The fact that 18 percent of Americans still believe that Obama is Muslim, the continuing power of the birther movement despite the clear-cut evidence that he was born in America, testify to Othello‘s power as a prepared narrative. For many Americans, Obama remains a noble Moor in the mold that Shakespeare cast. – p. 21

Except I’m pretty sure that isn’t the case. I would say pure and simple racism, with a bit of overwhelming political ideology, and a heavy helping of propaganda. I really don’t buy the whole ‘inspired by Shakespeare’ thing in this case, and on page 21 of 200, that isn’t a particularly good sign. Generally Marche didn’t seem to be quite as out in left field as that, but he did have a tendency to (vastly) overstate his case. For example:

Shakespeare has improved your sex life. If you’ve had sex without shame, sex for pleasure, for fun, for any other reason than procreation within marriage – Shakespeare, more than any other single figure, is responsible for the climate of permissiveness that made it possible. -p. 39-40

Because, you know, nobody ever had sex for pleasure before Shakespeare. I’m surprised the human race even made it to the 17th century.

Not to say that How Shakespeare Changed Everything was completely without value. Certainly there were many interesting facts about Shakespeare, his work and how aspects of our modern world match up. Certainly there are have been many homages to Shakespeare in the 400 odd years since he was writing, and many of these homages have shaped our everyday lives. To grant him complete agency over sex or Lincoln’s assassination, simply because his words and creations have been co-opted by others, seems a bit unwarranted.

Interesting if you are looking for evidence of how Shakespeare continues to be important in the world (and that is right up my alley), but don’t pick it up if hyperbole annoys you.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear – Book Review

Apr 142011

A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear
Published by Harper Books, an imprint of Harper Collins

My reviews of the first seven books in the series: Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather, Pardonable Lies, Messenger of Truth, An Incomplete Revenge, Among the Mad, The Mapping of Love and Death.

It is the summer of 1932, and Maisie has entered a new phase of her professional life, working her first case for the British Secret Service undercover as a professor at a small private college in Cambridge.

Please pardon me while I cry for a minute about the fact that now, after having read the first eight books in three months, I have to actually wait for more Maisie Dobbs books. I mean, for goodness sake, I couldn’t even wait until after the discussion of The Mapping of Love and Death in order to read this one, I started it almost immediately after finishing that book.

Once again, Winspear manages to keep her series remarkably fresh without it seeming contrived. Teaching at a small college is vastly different from anything that she has done before, but at the same time it seems completely natural for her. The most interesting part of the case, however, was how much it foreshadowed what was to come in the lead up to World War II.

Another fabulous entry into the Maisie Dobbs series! If you haven’t started this series yet, what are you waiting for?

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher via NetGalley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon – Book Review

Mar 152011

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Published by Harper Books, an imprint of Harper Collins

Always a strong and opinionated young woman, Kamila Sidiqi is not entirely sure what to do with herself once the Taliban overruns her home city of Kabul. She can no longer go to school, or indeed go outside with any freedom whatsoever. To make matters worse, Kamila’s older brother and father must flee to avoid being conscripted or punished by the Taliban and Kamila’s mother leaves with her father, leaving her five youngest children – nearly all in their teens – at home alone rather than risk their lives on a dangerous trip. As the oldest of the children left behind, Kamila is determined to do whatever it takes to care for her siblings, but to ensure that they are materially comfortable, she needs to find a way to make money, not an easy task since the Taliban will generally not let women work outside the home, or go anywhere without a male relative as an escort. Kamila is a resourceful young girl, however, and it is not long before she comes up with a plan: she and her sisters will become seamstresses, taught by their accomplished older sister who is married, but still lives in Kabul. All of the girls will work together to create the dresses, and Kamila will sell them to tailor shops in the market place. Clothing is, after all, one of the few items which people are still in Kabul.

I love portraits of people, particularly women, around the world, particularly when they show the strength of the human spirit through adversity. Looking at “The Dressmaker of Khair Khana” in that light, it was a fascinating book; Kamila and her sisters were incredibly brave and resourceful, finding a way to not only maintain their own household, but to provide work for numerous local girls and women as well.

Unfortunately, Lemmon’s writing and storytelling failed to captivate me. Everything seemed very flat. The danger inherent in their lives was stated, but never felt particularly urgent, nor was the political situation explored with much complexity, which disappointed me. The writing was very straightforward, but to the point where it, too, seemed to lack complexity.

“The Dressmaker of Khair Khana” failed to challenge me and, as such, I cannot recommend it wholeheartedly for adults, although people with particular interest in the lives of women in the Muslim world may find interesting. I do, however, think that this would be an inspiring and completely appropriate book for younger teens who wish to explore the realities of people in war-torn areas of the world.

Buy this book from:
Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.*
Amazon.*

Source: Publisher, via Net Galley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

She Wolves by Helen Castor – Book Review

Mar 092011

She Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor
Published by Harper Books, an imprint of Harper Collins

When people think about English queens, the two Queen Elizabeths come to mind, perhaps Mary Tudor and Victoria. The one thing all of these women had in common is that they reigned in their own right, not as mere extensions of their husbands’ power. As the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I is perhaps the epitome of the reigning queen of England, and certainly the first woman to rule so successfully under her own power, without the insinuation that she was being ruled by a husband, as was true of her older half sister, Mary Tudor. Although the Tudors women – Jane Grey, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth Tudor – were the first to rule officially, they were not the first women to exercise great power over England.

Helen Castor’s She Wolves explores indepth the lives and rules of four women whose stories could and may have provided the framework – cautionary and otherwise – that allowed Elizabeth’s great success as a woman and a ruler.

This Virgin Queen could do much. She was seductive Venus as well as chaste Diana. She was both a king and a queen, a man’s heart in a woman’s breast. What Knox had denounced as her “monstrous regiment” had given England the golden age of Gloriana. – p. 460

Jane Grey and Mary Tudor’s reigns were also mentioned more briefly, but it was the women who rules without the formal investiture of power that form the basis of this work.

Castor focuses primarily on Matilda, Lady of England, her daughter-in-law Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, and Margaret of Anjou. Eleanor is probably the most famous of these women, being ruler of the duchy of Aquitaine in her own right, and essentially ruling for her son Richard I during his crusade and later his captivity on the Continent. She is perhaps the most interesting case study as well, as her life is a fabulous example of the different responses to strong women depending on their role in life. Demonized when fomenting rebellion among her sons against her controlling husband, she was later celebrated when acting on her absent son’s behalf. At the same time Eleanor’s chapter was perhaps the weakest; her husband and sons were such oversized characters that their actions overshadowed her for much of the section devoted to her.

Castor’s writing was clear, her style extremely engaging. I would have liked more comprehensive notes on sources. Many are mentioned, but in the end notes, and without reference to which sections of the chapters they informed. I would have particularly liked to have seen the notes for the section on Margaret of Anjou, because it seems that Castor was blaming much of the War of the Roses on Margaret’s foreign political upbringing and the decisions she made because of it, and I am completely unsure whether or not that is a valid reading of the historical sources – although it is an interesting one. Overall, though, I appreciated going deeper into the lives of these women who were so foundational to the ability of later women to rule England. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound |Amazon*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman – Book Review

Mar 022011

The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman
Published by Avon A, an imprint of Harper Collins

Tess Monaghan is not one who can tolerate sitting on the sidelines for long. Unfortunately, that is precisely what she has to do, on bed rest during a complicated and unplanned pregnancy. Separated from her normal life of as a PI, Tess has nothing much more to do than sit and look at her window. Every day, at approximately the same time, she sees a woman in a green raincoat walking a dog in a matching raincoat. One day, while Tess is watching, she sees the dog come running out, dragging his leash behind him, with his owner nowhere to be seen. Tess is not one to shy away from a mystery, so the question of what happened to The Girl in the Green Raincoat.

Perhaps my favorite thing about The Girl in the Green Raincoat is that Tess acknowledges the similarities between this story and Rear Window. Lippman’s writing and plotting in this novella are superb. I enjoyed exploring the mysterious disappearance along with Tess. I think that her confinement put her more on par with the reader who in mysteries are at the mercy of the main character, much as Tess is at the mercy of those around her and whatever she can find on the internet.

I enjoyed this first look at Laura Lippman’s work. Recommended

Buy this book from:
Powells| Indiebound | Amazon*

Source: Publisher, via NetGalley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Genome by Matt Ridley – Audiobook Review

Feb 252011

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley, narrated by Simon Prebble
Published in audio by Harper Audio, published in print by Harper Perennial, imprints of Harper Collins

Synopsis:

Our genomes determine so much. Not only who we are, but our history as well. In Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley takes us through the history of ourselves. In order to make it more easily comprehensible, Ridley uses the extended metaphor of literature.

There are twenty-three chapters, called chromosomes,
Each chapter contains several thousand stories, called genes.
Each story is made up of paragraphs, called exons, which are interrupted by advertisements called introns.
Each paragraph is made up of words, called codons.
Each word is written in letters, called bases.

Ridley discusses everything from disease resistance, species evolution, the selfishness of genes, to eugenics and the determinism of genes.

Thoughts on the work:

I do not have the background to speak to the validity of Ridley’s science. His presentation, however, is top notch. He hits the balance precisely between meaty detail and neither condescending to nor overwhelming his audience. I particularly liked the way he organizes his content, into thematic chapters based on the 23 human chromosome pairs. The content itself was fascinating as well. Every minute it seemed I was learning something new and interesting about the genes that make us who we are.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Simon Prebble does a fantastic job, as always. Even with Ridley’s engaging style, the wrong narrator could have made Genome incredibly boring, but Prebble does the work to keep my attention constant.

Overall:

A fascinating book. If you’re worried about getting bogged down in the science, try the audio. Even if you barely passed high school biology you will understand enough to get the gist without becoming overwhelmed trying to parse every sentence.

Buy this book in audio:
Audible

Buy this book in print:
Powells | Indiebound | Amazon*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard – Book Review

Feb 242011

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard
Published by Ecco, an imprint of Harper Collins

On Halloween night, 16 year old Norah Lindell disappears. This disappearance colors the lives of the boys she left behind, her school mates, for years to come. Norah’s sister becomes suddenly tantalizing in the year following Norah’s disappearance, a product both of her own coming of age and of the boys’ fascination with all things Lindell. Even as the boys continue to grow into adulthood, they never stop thinking about Norah and what might have become of her. Of course, her fate might have been the tragic end of so many disappeared young women, violated and killed. But perhaps she left on purpose, and ended up creating a life out West. Then again, she might have traveled the world, ending up in the midst of the India in time for the bombings in Mumbai. The boys – and the reader – will never know, but that does not stop them from wondering, from imagining.

At well under 300 pages, The Fates Will Find Their Way is a slim volume that packs a huge punch. Pittard’s writing is not only lovely, but absolutely captivating. Interestingly, this is the second novel I read this year told in the first person plural (we, etc.). It is never completely clear in The Fates Will Find Their Way whether it is one boy speaking for the group, but I like to think that it is something akin to their collective memory. The boys were always more of a group than individuals, although individuals were often named. I never felt that I got a good handle on most of them as individuals, but as a group they had an amazingly strong identity that their weaker individual identities was not a stumbling block to enjoying the story.

There is so much to this little book that it is difficult to do it justice. Suffice it to say that I think you should read it. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound | Amazon*

Source: Publisher, via a trade show.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

I is an Other by James Geary – Book Review

Feb 152011

I is an Other by James Geary
Published by Harper, an imprint of Harper Collins

Generally I prefer to write my own synopses of the books I review here. I think that reading a different description than the one found on an online bookseller’s site, or on the jacket flap provides my readers with an additional window into the book, and I think the way someone summarizes a book can tell you a lot about said book. Some books, however, are somewhat beyond my powers of synopsis. That being the case, I will have to share with you part of the publisher’s description of I is an Other.

From President Obama’s political rhetoric to the housing bubble burst. James Geary proves in this fascinating and entertaining book that every aspect of our experience is molded by metaphor.

IMAG0096 picture When they say that every aspect of our experience is molded by metaphor they aren’t kidding. Geary covers everything from politics, to brain function and autism spectrum disorder, to the power of metaphor on our psyche. In the best of all worlds, I is an Other would be treated to an extensive scholarly discussion and review. There is a lot of meat there. I am a person who does not tend to take notes or mark passages when I read, but I marked passages in I is an Other like a crazy person. Unfortunately, I am still trying to wrap my head around the entirety of the information presented.

The scope of I is an Other is astounding, but Geary is somehow able to bring it together cohesively in slightly over 200 pages. Each chapter is predominantly self-contained on the chosen subject, although they are best written in sequence, as some prior knowledge is built upon from chapter to chapter. In addition to making a huge topic approachable, Geary also does an admirable job of making his content understandable. He goes into a degree of depth not only about metaphor, but about his different subjects as well, and the same person who is interested in metaphor may not be someone who would knowingly pick up a book on the market crash, or on brain science.

Still, Geary manages to put everything in comprehensible packages – primarily through metaphor, thereby proving the basic premise of the book in the first place. A degree of well-rounded intelligence and breadth of knowledge is assumed, however, as is a willingness to put on your thinking cap because, while Geary wants to make his subject readable, he is not particularly interested in dumbing it down. It isn’t required that you know what an active metaphor is, but you must at least think about it or look it up.

The idea that metaphor is so much more than language was positively revelatory for me, and I think this is a book that could fascinate many who are willing to put in the effort and not be intimidated by the initially cryptic title and cover. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound | Amazon*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Gospel of Anarchy by Justin Taylor – Book Review

Feb 102011

The Gospel of Anarchy by Justin Taylor
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of Harper Collins

Disillusioned with his empty and unfulfilling existence, David accidentally finds a new life while walking aimlessly late one night. When he finds an old friend, Thomas, digging through a dumpster to find uneaten sandwiches to take back to his anarchists’ collective, David returns with him, determined to find anything more meaningful than work at a call center and internet porn. At Fishgut, Thomas’s home, David finds himself becoming involved with two women, Katy and Liz, and the religious fervor which has grown up around a former housemate who has disappeared, and of which Katy is the champion.

In “The Gospel of Anarchy,” Justin Taylor has written a beautiful book about human weakness and our desire to connect and grow, our need for something bigger than ourselves. I am as surprised as anyone to call a book beautiful that has, in the beginning of the first chapter, an extensive scene regarding a character’s porn-viewing habits, but David’s pain and self-loathing is manifest in that scene, and his desire to change his life and his circumstances is incredibly moving. None of the characters are particularly likable, but they are written with such empathy and they are so indicative of the human spirit that they are impossible to ignore. Perhaps these characters have different vices than most of us, but they are no more flawed than we are and, like all of us, deeply long for physical and spiritual connection.

One thing that works very well in “The Gospel of Anarchy” is Taylor’s hodgepodge of styles. Within chapters the point of view changes from character to character, from first person for David to third person for the rest of the housemates. At one point, the tense even changes between past and present. Considering this entire book is about anarchists, however, this added to the veracity of the story being told and, surprisingly, managed not to be distracting.

Highly recommended, but definitely not for everyone. I love it as an exploration of the role of religion and human connection in our lives, but sensitive readers may be turned off by some of the language and sexuality.

Buy this book from:
Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.*
Amazon.*

Source: Publisher via NetGalley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Older Entries

Devourer of Books

Practical Jean by Trevor Cole – Book Review

How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche – Book Review

A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear – Book Review

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon – Book Review

She Wolves by Helen Castor – Book Review

The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman – Book Review

Genome by Matt Ridley – Audiobook Review

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard – Book Review

I is an Other by James Geary – Book Review

The Gospel of Anarchy by Justin Taylor – Book Review

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