So... 2014. Not as many books as I might have hoped considering law school is over, but I did read War and Peace, so that's gotta count for at least +8, am I right?
21 books, 9,068 pages. Average rating was 3.2, which is pretty high for me! I may have set a personal record of books I thought actually merited a 4 or 5 rating this year. (Unfortunately a couple duds dragged the rating averages down.)
The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides. 406 pages. 4
This book gets middling reviews from most of its readers, but I really loved it. I enjoyed Middlesex quite a bit, and the premise of this one spoke to me, so I was ready to give Eugenides some more bedside table time. In the early 1980s, the three corners of a love triangle graduate from Brown (go Brown!) and proceed to try to grow up. They are too smart for their respective life choices and probably terrible for each other, as lovers or otherwise. They are as impressionable as they are smart, and they each try to interpret and apply to their own lives a couple intriguing themes. First up, the marriage plot at the heart of classic English literature. Second, the ludicrous question-everything mindset of mid-eighties academia (the semiotics class depiction is AMAZING). And, of course, the role of old fashioned God in new-fashioned life.
They were all very familiar characters to me. Madeleine, the bibliophile with her privileged background who never quite catches onto the mess she’s part of. Mitchell, the would-be scholar who is probably using his obsession for girls out of his league as a defense mechanism and is definitely using religion as such. Leonard, who is the first depiction of bipolarism in literature that I’ve ever really bought.
Like Middlesex, it didn’t have the resolution I was hoping for. It didn’t delve into any one character and make them reanalyze themselves or their choices or the greater plot that they are part of. But I bought it and I cared about them and it made me think.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (book 3), Arthur Conan Doyle. 339 pages. 3
Some good ones (Speckled Band) and some duds (Identity.) All in all, fun to listen to during a road trip.
Sherlock Holmes, the Sign of Four, Arthur Conan Doyle. 129 pages. 2
Meh. Fun to watch Sherlock shoot cocaine because he’s bored and Watson try to cheer him up with a nice freaky mystery. The mystery itself was just alright.
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie. 561 pages. 5
Several years ago, this was on the coffee table in a motel that mom and I stayed at in Taos, and I read the first 4 or 5 pages while we were waiting to check in. Two Indian actors fall out of the sky after a commercial airliner is blown up by terrorists. Between the explosion and landing, they turn into an angel and a devil. That was as far as I got before finding my motel room and going out for Mexican food, and I’m glad it took me a couple years to pick it up again.
This book is intense. It is longer than it seems, and there is very little to tie together the myriad of plots and characters, many of which don’t overlap at all in time or space. Or realities. I am a fan of that literary taste – blending myth and fiction and even a little bit of straight up history – but this one was really hard. By way of reference, I think I blew through One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I compare to this one only for narrative style, in about four days. This one took me more than three months. The guy is a master writer obviously, and I could have read any one scene stand-alone and still really enjoyed and gotten a lot out of the book. (The city of sand is oh-my-god-amazing.) I don’t have great character retention though, so I wound up doing a lot of re-reading to try to get more out of it.
Bottom line is it is a pretty masterful classic, and it deserves recognition outside of the controversy Rushdie decided to take on by writing a heretical text in the age of radical Islam. Nous sommes tous Charlie.
The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides. 249 pages. 4
The story of the five doomed Lisbon sisters as told by the neighborhood boys who never got over them. It carries a “cult classic” status symbol for what ultimately is a strange suburban mythology. The girls are the center of the story, but it’s told from the perspective of boys with binoculars aimed at bedroom windows. The feminine mystery wrapped in pubescent tragedy wrapped in Eugenides’s prose.
“Chucking her under the chin, he said, ‘What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets.’
And it was then Cecilia gave orally what was to be her only form of suicide note, and a useless one at that, because she was going to live: ‘Obviously, Doctor,’ she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.’”
World War Z, Max Brooks. 342 pages. 5
In a year where I read War and Peace, I’m a little bit ashamed to give a zombie book a five. I’m doing it anyway.
Humanity has recently squeaked away from extinction – the zombie apocalypse came and it very nearly took us out. Sometime later, people who played roles in pivotal points in the outbreak and epidemic – and ultimately in the combination of science and combat that saved the species – give interviews.
Each voice is believable. Each situation is believable. This is especially amazing considering the breadth of the stories. This is a collective narrative history of a global reaction to disaster. How would a blind Buddhist gardener respond to the zombie apocalypse? How about the downed pilot who is relying on survival skills and pirate radio to get out of a swamp without losing her mind? (Or her brains amirite??) How about the medical community tasked with coming up with an epidemiological response in rural China? How would American military tactics respond to an enemy that is inherently incapable of tactics? How would reality TV evolve?
The language is easy and accessible. Each interview is a really engaging short story. Ultimately, it is a really quick read, which was its principal downside as far as I was concerned. I really enjoyed it. (This is the one Brendan and I spent so much time geeking out over.)
Batman: Year One, Frank Miller. 144 pages. 3
Present from Alec after my Batman-themed bachelorette party. The first year of the Dark Knight’s caped crusade. Much of it from Jim Gordon’s perspective. In point of fact, Jim Gordon is probably the protagonist. That’s cool. Watching Batman figure out the ropes of vigilanteism was also cool. Frank Miller is predictably dark.
American Short Story Masterpieces, Edited by Clarence C. Strowbridge. 256 pages. 3
Nathaniel Hawthorne to John Cheever to Edgar Allan Poe. Some stronger than others. Favorites for me were Faulkner’s “Dry September” and Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path.” Probably means I like depressing short stories.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie. 224 pages. 5
Having been so solidly taken with Satanic Verses, I figured why wait till next year for another Rushdie? Brian and I read this one out loud together. A champion storyteller has lost his skill, so he and his son embark on a quest to release the seas of story inspiration from their imprisonment.
Part political satire, part children's fantasy, with Rushdie's amazing word-play. It is delightful. I can’t come up with a better adjective.
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern. 387 pages. 2.5
A lifelong duel between two young magicians who happen to be in love with each other unfolds in the world of a magic circus. Everything cool about the book was in that sentence. The setting is thrilling, if fantastical is your cup of tea. The characters are interesting enough that you’re glad when they reappear – the contortionist who knows more than she’s letting on, the strange twins with their strange powers, etc. The duel plot is pretty flat. The love story is flatter. I’m not much one for fantasy, but even that aside, I wasn’t really taken with this book.
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Constance Garnett translation). 720 pages. 4
This was my third Dostoyevsky, and I’m kind of amazed it took me as long as it did to get to it. Myshkin is our naïve and delicate protagonist, recently returned to Russia from a sanatorium in Switzerland where he has been treated for debilitating epilepsy. The irrationality and calculating cruelty of 19th century Moscow high society do a quick number on the saintly Myshkin, and the story is not a happy one.
Epilepsy as a theme was interesting – how the invalid get a special pass in society, but only to a second class citizenship. Everybody assumes Myshkin is a simpleton and so is weirdly straightforward with him about their goings on. So while Myshkin actually has the clearest view of the gross underbelly of society, nobody ever believes him or takes him seriously.
Nastasya is by far the most interesting female character I have ever picked up in my tour of the Russian greats. Dostoyevsky doesn’t pull punches with love and sex and violence and mental instability on this one.
Book one is absolutely amazing. If it had ended there, I’d give it a 5. I got a little bored with the middle bits, and especially with Aglaya, the other lady in Myshkin’s love triangle. All in all, though, it was a fantastic read.
The Martian, Andy Weir. 369 pages. 4
This book was the most fun I had reading all year. Our protagonist, astronaut Mark Watney, is accidentally left behind during the first manned mission to Mars. In what is basically Robinson Crusoe in space, he has to try to survive until the next mission can come pick him up, and what we are reading is his journal.
The science is accessible, the plot is exciting, the voice is HILARIOUS. Watney was originally selected to the first Martian crew because of his skill set – he’s a mechanical engineer and a botanist, both of which come in very handy – and because NASA figured his sense of humor and general optimism would be good for a crew who has to spend a couple years together in tightly enclosed spaces. You never get tired of listening to him!
“I can't wait till I have grandchildren. “When I was younger, I had to walk to the rim of a crater. Uphill! In an EVA suit! On Mars, ya little shit! Ya hear me? Mars!””
Divergent, Veronica Roth. 487 pages. 1
Most years I read at least one sorta crap young adult novel, and this year it was the smash hit Divergent, recently turned into a blockbuster movie bla bla bla. I picked it up and finished it over the course of a plane flight. It’s crap with crap characters and a crap plot, but at least kids are reading now or something, and the female protagonist learns how to punch people and stuff.
Dune, Frank Herbert. 604 pages. 3
Would you believe I’d never read this? Weird, right?
The main character is probably the super hostile desert planet Arrakis, which Herbert clearly spent a LOT of time working on. He’s got the barbaric nomadic tribes with the theocratic infrastructures all the way up to the tech that allows science and spaceships to play key roles. Enter family Altreides. We spend two hundred pages learning about how they are going to be screwed before they get screwed. Then our protagonists run off into the desert to play Lawrence of Arabia to the barbarians. A few hundred pages of prophecy and religion meeting outerspace action adventures, then an anticlimactic finale before (I’ve been told) another eight books get published and the crazy meter goes to eleven.
I am not a big sci-fi fan, though I do like books that read more like mythology, so there’s that. Certain plot points seemed kind of rushed and halfhazard to me, and I got pretty tired of Herbert trying to convince us that no, seriously, this time Paul’s life is actually at risk, and it’s the most dangerous thing he’s ever done, and last chapter was just a dress rehearsal. Still, the desert planet descriptions were awesome, and I have worked “fear is the mind-killer” into my daily (or at least weekly) lexicon.
The Unconsoled, Kazuo Ishiguro. 535 pages. 2
A renowned pianist finds himself in a city he can’t quite name preparing for a concert he can’t quite remember agreeing to perform and interacting with a number of people he can’t quite recognize. Everyone he encounters expects something from him but are a little too polite to straight up ask him, and he can never quite get right what he is expected to do. The “plot,” such as it is, is generally described as “dreamlike.” Understatement. This book is the best depiction of the rationalizing that a brain mid-dream undergoes. That said, I spent the whole time trying to make sense out of it, and ultimately getting frustrated.
It is undeniably well-written, just not my taste. I really wanted to like it, but picking it up always felt like a chore.
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner. 569 pages. 4
A retired professor, crippled by a bone disease that leaves him wheelchair-bound and abandoned by his wife, decides that the best use of his last years of life is to look to the past, writing the biography of his grandmother, “a Victorian gentlewoman in the far west.” The novel itself alternates between the 1890’s and the 1970’s, between the life of grandmother and grandson. It hits all the big points of love and betrayal and How the West was Won and generational gaps in interpretations of morality.
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, Vendela Vida. 226 pages. 2
On the day of her father’s funeral, our heroine Clarissa discovers that the man was not, in fact, her father. She ditches her life and leaves for Lapland to figure things out.
The book is easy, and the characters are interesting enough. Clarissa gets a lot wrong and hurts a lot of people. Writing that kind of a protagonist is gutsy.
Still, nothing else ever came together. The dialogue was very stilted. At some point I decided that Vida had two or three really clear interactions set up in her mind and was trying to just come up with enough of a plot to get Clarissa from one to the next. It felt workshoppy.
While I Was Gone, Sue Miller. 304 pages. 3
I guess my theme this year was people running away from their lives into their pasts. After an old housemate from her hippy days in Cambridge suddenly reappears in her life, our protagonist Jo starts to lose her grip on the present. The plot follows her through both time periods, the young and would-be free spirit living in a communal house in the 60s and the middle-aged veterinarian married to a pastor in suburbia twenty some years later. There’s a bit of a murder mystery in there, but that’s kind of not the point of the book and frankly I thought it cheapened the whole thing.
The interesting part was watching Jo become more and more of a complex character. She starts out intelligent and engaging and then becomes almost conniving as she considers the many versions of herself that she has played over the years. She’s got a proclivity to run away from her life, but it’s never totally clear what’s chasing her. She’s awfully self-aware for such a flawed character, and that alone kept me turning pages.
Blackout, Connie Willis. 512 pages. 1
This book is terrible. And at five hundred plus pages, it is too long to get away with it.
After the advent of time travel, “historians” as a profession stop reading and writing history and start visiting it. Our three heroes all travel back to World War II Britain to do some history sight-seeing: Mike poses as an American journalist writing a story about coastal preparation, Polly as a shop-girl in London during the blitz, and Merope as a maid/babysitter of hoodlum evacuee children.
For a five hundred plus page book, Willis never decided what she wanted to write about. Not character development, that’s for sure. The three are virtually indistinguishable, with no notable personalities or even backstories. Not World War II itself! Oh, the Battle of Britain is going on over her head? Let’s describe what a pain in the butt these kids are and totally ignore the firefight! Certainly not a “thrilling race against time,” as the back of the book will have you believe.
At the end of the day, Willis seems to have a weird literary fetish for almosts. The vast majority of these five hundred plus pages are spent describing the near misses the characters have in trying to get where they need to go. Seriously, it’s weird. For example, there are several chapters devoted to Polly’s going to the countryside to try to find Merope and barely missing her and also barely missing the people who know where she is and also barely missing trains. Several chapters are devoted to Mike’s trying to get where he needs to go and barely missing the bus and barely missing the guy with the car and barely missing the fleet of boats all of which would have worked.
Then you finish the book on a cliffhanger in the hopes that you’ll pick up the next five hundred f---ing plus page sequel to figure out if they ever make it back to the present. Screw you, Willis. Were you paid by the page or something? I’ll just read the Wikipedia article instead. Actually, I won’t because I really don’t care anymore.
This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz. 213 pages. 3
A series of stories about Dominican-Americans and love and loss and also a lot of sex. It’s no Oscar Wao, but the characters are pretty great.
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy. 1492 pages. (WHUT UP NOW). 3.5
How do you even write a review of a book like this?
I have been putting this one off a while because it’s such a behemoth of a novel, and I really expected it to be harder than it was. The war scenes are pretty exciting, and the soap opera peace scenes are pretty salacious. The big characters are all great. Andrei is basically the same character as Levin from Anna Karenina only with war to deal with, and I liked this iteration just as much. Natasha’s no Nastasya from The Idiot, but she’s a pretty complex and exciting little Russian literature heroine. And then there’s Pierre, who is such fun to watch grow into himself.
If there hadn’t been an epilogue, I’d give it a flat 4. As it was, there was. The epilogue had two parts. The first half was basically Tolstoy undoing everything interesting that made Natasha a character. The second was the author going on what I can only assume was an opium-induced philosophical trip. Seriously, you’re tootling along to the end of a truly remarkable story arc with death and love and societal upheaval and then WHAM here is an extra 140 pages of redundant, solipsistic, and inconclusive meanderings on freewill and power. No idea why.
That's all folks! See you next year.
