What I'm Reading: 'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again' by David Foster Wallace

I've been in the mood for DFW lately, probably because of the soon-to-be-release biopic about him, along with my desire to finish War and Peace so I can finally tackle another giant book, Infinite Jest. I'm not one of those DFW fans though, who is going to berate you for not liking his writing -- I actually find that completely understandable and I am not always in the mood for it. But I really love his non-fiction and I aspire to love his fiction, so this has been a nice retreat from what has otherwise been a very fiction-heavy summer. 

The Bookhive List: 'The Sun Also Rises' by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway will always have a place in my heart for his Michigan connections -- for an anniversary my husband planned a Hemingway-themed road trip to Petoskey that was pretty awesome and only reinforced everything I already loved about the man. If you want to actually read his writing about northern Michigan, check out the Nick Adams stories, but my personal favorite have nothing to do with Michigan and everything to do with fishing, bulls, drinking, and wasting time in Europe. The Sun Also Rises is about...young adults who drink and fish and waste time in Europe...I don't know that it requires more explanation than that. They watch some bull fights. Some people have love affairs. I think espadrilles are worn. If that isn't enough of an incentive then I'm not sure why you read this blog?

 

What I'm Reading: 'Modern Love' by Aziz Ansari

I expected to love this book as much as I already love Aziz Ansari -- I've watched every episode of 'Parks and Rec' multiple times and I've seen all his stand-up specials. But this just hasn't done anything for me. Maybe it's because I'm married and didn't have much of a dating life before I got married, so in many ways the entire concept of the book is antithetical to my lifestyle? Frankly, it just wasn't what I expected -- at all. It doesn't come across as a humor book written by a talented comedian, which is something we've all come to know and love in the past few years (see: Mindy Kaling, Judy Greer, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, etc, etc etc). Ansari works with another writer/researcher and the first chapter is a long list of research notes, as if he actually set out to write about modern love as a sociological concept. There are many charts and graphs and so forth, and not that many jokes. It's not a terrible book, or even a bad book -- it's just a confusing and maybe slightly disappointing book.

The Bookhive List: Joan Didion

Normally the Bookhive List posts are about specific books that I love, but I refuse to choose a Joan Didion book I like best. They are all good and they are all short, so you really have no excuse for not reading all of it. But I suppose if you must limit yourself, please read A Year of Magical Thinking, Play it as it Lays, and The White Album. If you, like me, are already a major Joan Didion fan, you should check out this new biography of her, coming this month.

Also, for more of the same, go here. And here.

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

A Rare Follow-Up to What I'm Reading: 'A Visit From the Goon Squad'

What can I say? This book really grew on me even though initially I didn't see what all the fuss was about. The further along I read, the more it became obvious that it was not necessarily focused on the characters introduced in the beginning, about whom I was totally ambivalent, so it managed to keep me interested. The final chapter takes place in the not-so-distant future, which was totally unexpected and incredibly funny/disturbing.  I still wonder about the awards and critical-acclaim thrown at this novel, but it is undeniably great.

What I'm Reading: 'In the Unlikely Event' by Judy Blume

When I first heard that Judy Blume was finally publishing a new novel for adults, I was very, very enthusiastic (see: Summer Sisters). When I found out it was a novel based on the true story of two plane crashing in Elizabeth, New Jersey within a few weeks of each other, I was less enthused. I fly in plenty of airplanes and it definitely seemed like it would have decidedly less sex, so it was not the sort of natural follow-up to Summer Sisters I was hoping for.

That said, I'm really digging it anyway. It is structured very similarly to Summer Sisters in that an adult character is reflecting on their own childhood and adolescence, which allows Judy Blume to really do what she does best, which is write from an adolescent perspective. Unlike her previous novels though, In the Unlikely Event brings together multiple perspectives from a ton of different characters, some of whom die off pretty quickly (spoiler alert -- they're on the plane), which gives a very textured account of the events, even though there are moments that feel really thin as a result; example, a marriage proposal that occurs "off-stage." The narration is still very grounded in a primary narrator, Mirri Ammerman, who is a ninth-grader at the time of the crash, and our adult entry-point into the story, as she revisits her hometown for the anniversary of the crashes.

It reads quickly and pleasurably, despite its grim subject-matter, and if you liked Summer Sisters, I think you'll still find a lot to appreciate with it.

The Bookhive List: 'The Tiger's Wife' by Tea Obrecht

Yet another recommendation that stems from my book club (thanks ladies!), and one of the first contemporary novels I had read after a very long exile into classics-ville that started in college. This book got me excited about contemporary literary fiction again, a habit I've managed to keep up with. Now that I think of it though, this was such a sensation when it was published, in part because of Tea Obrecht's incredibly young age, so where is the next big Tea Obrecht novel?! I wouldn't blame her for being incredibly intimidated by the potential for a sophomore slump, because her debut novel was truly excellent and demonstrated total maturity. I'm also surprised there's been no talk of adapting this into a film; granted, it would have to be simultaneously dark and whimsical and surreal, but I can just imagine a great Julie Taymor version of The Tiger's Wife.

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

Self-Help Round-Up, Part 1

I occasionally indulge in reading self-help books, especially the really meaningless, trashy ones that appear in places like GOOP. Normally that's not the kind of thing I would include in the blog, which is generally focused on higher-brow stuff (I'm -so-fan-cay), but my beloved sister asked me to summarize a recently-read self-help book to save her the trouble of reading it and satiate her curiosity, which led to a long phone conversation about all the popular and trashy self-help books I've read recently. So for the curious and the genuinely interested, here is a round-up (if you're here for the literary fiction, see you tomorrow): 

French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano; This was amusing enough, but certainly don't read it if you actually need to diet, because in that sense it is useless and full of completely trivial and arbitrary advice like, "Don't weigh yourself -- you should judge your ideal size by how you feel." Also, this veers a bit into the erratic, starvation-as-cleanse territory with this disgusting leek soup you consume for 48 hours, which sounds more like an eating disorder to me. The positive take-away was an emphasis on treating yo'self in small doses and making meals more ritualistic and slower, a lesson I've tried to apply at work, where I've starting keeping real dishes and silverware, as well as all my favorite condiments on-hand.

Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman; This was utterly amusing and ludicrous. Whatever Pamela Druckerman has learned about parenting from the French really can't be applied in America, where women don't get maternity leave, where there is no universal day care, and where healthcare is generally privatized and expensive. If you're going to move to France, then by all means, read this book, but otherwise I think you'll find it pretty depressing. It also really flies in the face of attachment parenting, which seems to be the thing among yuppie parents I know, so it's not very relevant. I should probably mention I don't have kids, so my authority is suspect on this one.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua; Another parenting book I'm not qualified to comment on, but all the same: Amy Chua is truly, deeply crazy, and this book is the proof. It makes me very angry that she is probably rich because of this delusional piece of psycho-babble garbage. Here's the gist -- be really mean and strict and hard on your children and berate them at every turn; insist on raising them in America and then use every opportunity to point out to them how terrible American children are; and finally, emasculate your husband as much as possible and question his parenting skills constantly. Then, get into an enormous fight with your daughter in Moscow on a family vacation (who vacations in Moscow?!) and watch your 10-year old run away from you, screaming and in tears, in a foreign country.  Then write a book about it, as if this is the platonic ideal of mother-daughter relations. Side note -- her daughter goes to Harvard and is super-smart and seems well-adjusted but STILL: not worth it.

What I'm Reading: 'A Visit From the Goon Squad' by Jennifer Egan

I am very, very late to the party on this one, but I'm finally reading the book that every person on Earth has already read. The reason it took me so long to finally read it is the same reason I'm not really digging it now -- I just don't like books about music. Sorry world. I've enjoyed a few musical memoirs but most books that incorporate music in some major way are really focused on references to specific songs or artists which rarely land for me. Maybe if someone bases an entire novel around 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill' I could get on board, but I've really struggled with references to Gen X punk bands. Blech.

The Bookhive List: 'The Woman Upstairs' by Clare Messud

I loved this book the first time I read it, and I absorbed it over the course of a week of travel to Oregon, which was immensely satisfying. I became even more of a champion for The Woman Upstairs when I found out the rest of my book club members were indifferent to it at best, and some of them even disliked it. Messud's feat of writing a feminist novel about contemporary art is truly impressive, because that sounds like an utterly impossible task, and she pulls it off very elegantly. The whole novel reads like a slow-burning thriller, and it gave me the most delicious sense of dread the entire time, and yet it is so undeniably a piece of exquisite literary fiction. 

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

What I'm Reading: 'Speedboat' by Renata Adler

Adler is very much having a 'moment' thanks in large part to a recently published collection of her non-fiction, which I am desperate to own. I had never read anything of hers prior to picking up her very unconventional novel Speeboat, but now I'm addicted to her writing, which reminds me of Joan Didion, goddess.

I never would have predicted this, but Speedboat has turned out to be an excellent summer read, for several reasons: I always associate anything about gritty 1970s New York with summer (see also, The Flamethrowers), and the novel is written in distinct chunks of several paragraphs at a time, making it any easy novel to slip in and out of, so it doesn't require any extreme level of commitment or concentration, which I find helpful for beach or poolside reading, which is usually fraught with distractions. I got through the bulk of it on the shores of Lake Michigan, and finished the rest in a hammock at a campsite, so now it's inextricably linked to my summer vacation, which I love.

The Bookhive List: 'The Bluest Eye' by Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye was the first novel of Toni Morrison's I read (it was also the first novel she published), and it is still my favorite (although Sula gave it some serious competition).  I read it for a high school English class, and I raced through it in one day. Then I went back and read it again, this time underlining and making notes, which was time-consuming because I had multiple notes on each page. As short of a novel as it is, each page has some revelation of prose and rhetoric, and it is still one of the best examples of language I've ever read -- it is not a novel that gets hung up in its own plot or context or narrative structure -- it comes across as simply words on a page, and those words just happen to be yielded in a very complex and powerful way. It demonstrates a complete mastery of writing that no one can compete with.

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

What I'm Reading: 'Missoula' by Jon Krakauer

When I initially heard about this book, I had every intention of reading it and got a copy as quickly as possible. After reading the first few chapters, however, I set it aside and had a very hard time finding the proper motivation to finish it. This is not intended as bragging, but I've read a lot about rape on college campuses, so I wondered what new information I could possibly glean from a whole book on the subject, especially one that spends a LOT of its word count on very specific cases. However, it was due back at the library so I gave it a second look, and like all Jon Krakauer books, it read very, very quickly and before I knew it I was finished and glad I had put the time into it. Not everyone's cup of tea, to be certain, but it is thoroughly-researched and gets into many of the nuances of both criminal trials and disciplinary hearings of rape cases. Kirsten Gillibrand is also a fan.

The Bookhive List: 'The Orphan Master's Son' by Adam Johnson

There aren't many contemporary novels that make the cut for the Bookhive List, but The Orphan Master's Son really knocked me off my feet. Apparently the Pulitzer committee had the same reaction, but if you didn't read it when it made a splash in 2013, please take the time to read it now. There is no better fictionalized account of North Korean culture and the meticulously-researched context provides a really rich backdrop for an otherwise incredible narrative. And if you really love it, check out some of of Johnson's short stories, which I haven't gotten around to yet, but which I've heard are really, really terrific (and highly recommended for fans of George Saunders).

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

June's Attempt at Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop was not a poet I was familiar with prior to this month, when I managed to read three distinct poetry collections. Although I went with a 'Complete Works of' poetry anthology, I read her work chronologically, as it was published, and because the individual volumes were relatively short, I was able to get through one published volume in a sitting, which was a good way to digest it. That said, it didn't thrill me in the way I expected -- I guess I thought that a twentieth-century woman poet would somehow be more meaningful to me than many of the others I've read, but that wasn't the case. I certainly enjoyed her writing but I expected her to quickly become my favorite, which wasn't the case. The one positive take-away though is that because I have a huge, complete volume of her work, I'll definitely keep reading her poetry, so maybe my response will evolve.

Big Fat Book: 'War and Peace' Week Unknown and Irrelevant

It makes me very, very sad that it is now July and I'm still reading this thing -- I can't even remember my original goal but I definitely didn't see this book stretching out for six months of 2015. That said, I know that when I finally finish it, I will have no regrets and will become incredibly smug about having finished it, regardless of how long it took me.  For some amazing reason, I had a lot of momentum with War and Peace this week, and managed to read 100 pages without consciously forcing myself to, which is especially noteworthy because I am in the midst of the most war-ish part, which includes many long descriptions of regiments and their positions and flanks and so forth. Napoleon's army is finally heading for Moscow, which means that all the characters are being forced back together, finally, and resolutions are in site.

I just hope the 100 page accomplishment doesn't make me lazy in the coming weeks, because it would be great to polish this thing off before August.

What I'm Reading: 'The Girl on the Train' by Paula Hawkins

This is a very buzzed-about, summer beach read type-book, which is not at all my usual jam, but it came with an enthusiastic endorsement from Linda Holmes on NPR's PCHH podcast and my friend (a fellow-PCHH addict), and both recommended the audio book, which is what I ended up with.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is the only or best way to imbibe the book, but I really enjoyed it, and if you are the audio book type, this is definitely for you.

It's lazy to compare it to Gone Girl but...you know...I write a new one of these every week so whatever. If you liked Gone Girl, then you will probably love The Girl on the Train, and it plays around with narrative structure and the idea of the unreliable narrator in much the same way -- which is where the audio book format factors in.  There are three women who narrate the story, and the audio book is performed by three different actresses (including Molly from Sherlock, whose voice is lovely), and so the three-voiced performance is really clever and enhances the whole experience. It's suspenseful and exciting and fun, all the things you want from a summer book.

The Bookhive List: 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov

There was no way this list was going to continue with a Nabokov reference, so here it is. I read Lolita in middle school, which is not normal. I remember distinctly checking out Kafka's Metamorphosis on the same day, so I was definitely in a weird phase. Either way, I read Lolita and really fell for the prose, which sparked a long era of Nabokov obsession in my life, which is thankfully at an end. I loved it so much that I lent it to a friend who rudely never returned it, so I bought a replacement, lent that to another friend, who never returned it, and thus, Lolita is also responsible for my strict no-lending policy.

I associate this novel so strongly with summers and vacations and it really is one of the best American road trip novels out there, so now is a good time to dig in if you haven't read it yet.

he Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books

What I'm Reading: 'H is For Hawk' by Helen Macdonald

This book has been so richly rewarding, and part of that is because I had to wait weeks for it from the library. As a close follower of the publishing industry, I absolutely love it when a book completely surprises its publisher with its success, especially if, as is the case with H is for Hawk, it unexpectedly sells out in indie bookstores across the UK and US. 

In so many ways, this book has delivered on the failed promise of Spinster, a book whose disappointment I've already documented. H is for Hawk is not "about" a woman's solitude -- it's a memoir about a daughter grieving for her recently-deceased father, and it's a natural history about falconry, and it's a literary history of writing about birds of prey, and each of these things is very elegantly linked. And yet, it is precisely about a woman's solitude, because Helen Macdonald is exploring each of these things alone and internally, and her domestic situation is not addressed and it feels only natural. This shouldn't be remarkable, but it is. I have such a crush on H is for Hawk and I'm looking forward to the end of the year when it inevitably wins lots of awards and gets put on lots of 'Best of' lists.