An Aside: The Lacuna in photos

And now for a pictoral trip through Barbara Kingsolver's new novel, The Lacuna. One of the reasons I'd picked the book up is because I'd had such a great time in Mexico City - it's really an amazing town and undeserving of its negative reputation!

We saw this cleansing ceremony taking place on a Sunday morning behind the Cathedral. At the beginning of the book, Harrison's mother drags him along with her as she visits a shaman in the jungle and Kingsolver's description reminded me of the one we'd seen:

The next photo shows the entry to the Casa Azul (no photos allowed inside the house). This was the house that Frida Kahlo grew up in and one of the houses that she and Diego lived in. We never made it to the house in San Angel or Anahuacalli, the weird Aztec temple-house that Harrison mentions in The Lacuna. We were in Mexico City just after Dia de los Muertos and there was a large table set up outside with mementos to Frida and Diego, like this one:

We also went to Leon Trotsky's house, which is only a few blocks from the Casa Azul. The house has such a cloud of sadness hanging over it...I really do think Trotsky has the most tragic story of the 20th century. The first photo is of Trotsky's study where he was murdered by ice pick in 1940. The second photo is of Trotsky's office, where someone like Harrison Shepherd would have worked:

We tried to go see the Rivera murals at the Palacio Nacional but for whatever reason, it was closed that day. So instead, we later went to the Palacio de Bellas Artes and saw some of the other Rivera murals, including Man at the Crossroads, mentioned in The Lacuna. This is the mural that Rivera recreated in 1934 after the Rockefellers tore down the commissioned original in New York City because they didn't like its themes. In the first photo, you can see Lenin between the wings on the right. In the second photo, the man with the white hair is Trotsky.

And then last but not least, a photo of Teotihuacan. In the background you can see the Temple of the Sun. In the book, Frida takes Harrison here to visit her archaeologist friend. During his picnic lunch on the riverbank with Frida, Harrison finds an Aztec figurine of a man.

#2: The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

This was my first Barbara Kingsolver book and I liked The Lacuna well enough, but didn't love it. Still, I'm interested in reading more of her work because she conjures some amazing images with her prose - it's just that in this one, I didn't find the protagonist captivating enough.

The Lacuna centers around Harrison Shepherd, a gay writer who grows up with dual identities as a Mexican and an American. The book begins in his childhood, when his vain mother uproots him to follow her lover to Isla Pixol, Mexico. Harrison feels isolated on the tiny island but soon discovers the joys of snorkeling - and an opening in the coral, the titular lacuna, that leads to an archaeological ruin in a cenote. After a brief stint at a military boarding school in the States, he returns to Mexico and reconnects with artist Diego Rivera, whom he'd formerly mixed plaster for. In the most interesting part of the book, Harrison's fictional life becomes entwined with the real lives around him, those of Rivera, his wife Frida Kahlo, and their friend Leon Trotsky. But after things go horribly wrong, Harrison returns to the United States and settles in Asheville, North Carolina, where he becomes a famous writer...until McCarthy enters history. Harrison struggles with this until the end of the novel, when Kingsolver returns to the beginnings of the book with a poignant weaving together of the original pieces. The ending was incredible, although the images were perhaps a little overexplained (for readers who wouldn't get it?).

The book is 400-plus pages so it has a number of themes running through it, but I'd say it's primarily about the search for home and identity...and yet, Harrison Shepherd never finds his. He's a shadow figure when he's supposed to be the star of his own life; he never really comes to term with being gay, being an artist, or even being an American and/or a Mexican. Even though he becomes successful in his own right, it's like he never grows out of the feeling that he's just a servant or assistant. Harrison is completely defined by the people around him - and so is the book. Thus, The Lacuna is interesting when the people around him are interesting - his mother and her affairs, Leon Trotsky (who has perhaps the 20th-century's saddest story). But then when his companions, like Violet Brown, are meek or situations, like with Bulls-Eye, are implied, the book's momentum really slowed.

But still, it's a worthy read. Most interesting, I thought, were the parallels Kingsolver drew (intentionally, I think) between McCarthy's Communist witchhunts in the 1950s and the political landscape of today. Harrison Shepherd is ostracized because it's deemed that he's not American enough and those scenes really reminded me of the "un-American" rhetoric used in the last election by the Republic party, and specifically Sarah Palin.

As I mentioned up top, I found Kingsolver to be an incredible writer. I only wish someday I can conjure up half the wondrous images she does. Perhaps my favorite passage, from page 18:

“The hacienda had heavy doors and thick walls that stayed cool all day, and windows that let in the sound of the sea all night: hush, hush, like a heartbeat. He would grow thin as bones here, and when the books were all finished, he would starve. But no, now he would not. The notebook from the tobacco stand was the beginning of hope: a prisoner’s plan for escape. Its empty pages would be the book of everything, miraculous and unending like the sea at night, a heartbeat that never stops.”

Last but not least, I went to Mexico City in 2008 and visited a good number of the places mentioned in the book. Click here for the next post, featuring a small gallery of photos .

#1: Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson and Relin

On the bright side, I'm pleased to announce - after 2009's dismal list - that I've already finished a book this year! (Yes, I realize this is nothing much to brag about, but I'm just coming off the heels of blogging about my failures.) But, on the shadier side of the street, I'm sad to say that I didn't love Three Cups of Tea. I liked the idea of it but I just didn't think the book lived up to its promise or intentions - much like the similarly themed A Mighty Heart.

For those who have escaped its all-encompassing hold on the bestseller list (I had to go to a second bookstore to buy it before Christmas; the first was totally sold out), Three Cups of Tea is the story of mountaineer Greg Mortenson. After a failed effort to climb K2, he stumbles off the mountain, loses his way, and ends up in a random Pakistani village called Korphe. The people there take him in and get him back on his feet and Mortenson decides he wants to do something for them, to repay their kindness. So he builds them a bridge and a school and the effort sets him on a new life path, building schools for other impoverished villages throughout the country.

I think the book could have ended there and it would have been wonderful...it's really interesting how Mortenson navigated his personal demons, virtual bankruptcy, and Pakistan's unique ins-and-outs to successfully build a bunch of schools and make a difference. But Three Cups of Tea just sort of went on and on. After the first couple of schools, it was the same story over and over again, but without the drama, since he'd pretty much already conquered it.

But more than anything, by the end of the book, I felt like I was reading a public-relations manifesto...and I started to distrust it. The format of the book is incredibly strange - is it an autobiography? a biography? a really long magazine profile? On the surface, Three Cups of Tea is presented as an autobiography, written by Mortenson with help from journalist David Oliver Relin. But it's not, not really, because it's not written in the first person, with Mortenson's voice -- rather, it's written like a magazine article, in third person with scene-setting and interviews and quotes. Which is an interesting way to go, and I quite liked the format, until I started to realize that Three Cups of Tea lacks one basic tenet of journalism: objectivity.

Mortenson is presented almost as a god -- and granted, he seems like a genuinely good person -- but in the last 100 pages or so, Relin starts using these ridiculously fawning quotes, which struck me as overkill. Mortenson's actions stand for themselves, and it seemed a little over-the-top to have people like Mary Bono and Parade's editor-in-chief falling all over themselves to call him a "real American hero." Added to that, I think the book glossed over the difficult parts - at one point, some of the board members leave Mortenson's Central Asia Institute because they don't agree with his management style, and the whole thing only gets two paragraphs. I felt like everyone was afraid to let Mortenson be real on the page. Which just seems weird -- can't he still be a good person and still have some flaws?

Anyway...I'm onto book #2 now, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. So far, so good...

2010 Books

So here we are, in 2010 with a clean slate. I can do better this year, seriously. Last year, I made a list of the books I'd like to tackle, but in the end, my reading choices mostly took me to other places. Still, I'd like to start 2010 with a few ideas...

So at the top of my list this year, we have: Wolf Hall, Waiter Rant, The Children's Book, Cast Member Confidential (about working at Disney), Shakespeare's Henry VIII, The Constant Gardener, The Subtle Knife (because there seems to be no movie forthcoming), Persuasion, Outliers, Ovid's Metamorphosis, Villette, The Lacuna, and Three Cups of Tea (which, success, I've already finished). That's nowhere near 30 books, but still a good list to start with.

On another note, I'm starting to see that there are a good number of people who read far more books a year than I do. Stephen King, in his Entertainment Weekly column, said that he read 100 BOOKS last year. How is that possible? Does the man do anything but read and write? All I can say is: wow. Oh, and we both really admire Revolutionary Road.

Then, yesterday, on Goodreads, I came across a little blurb for book challenges. I always thought 30 books a year was impressive, but silly me. One group plans to read 144 BOOKS this year. That's 12 a month. Wow. I glanced through a couple of profiles and some people have opted to go the romance/mystery route - and I suppose I could also handle 144 if I stuck to quick reads like Sue Grafton and Robert B. Parker (whom I love, don't get me wrong). But one entrant has already read Wolf Hall, in addition to four other books. Again, wow. Another Goodreads group plans to go for just a measly 50. Slackers. :)

2009 Tally - It's an F+

I'm embarrassed for two reasons: I only read 23 books in 2009 (the lowest tally since 2005's 22 books) and it's taken me 13 days of the new year to get around to blogging about it. Pathetic!

I have no idea what happened and no excuses to offer. Alas. Better luck next year?

#23: The White Queen, Phillippa Gregory

The White Queen was great, and is perhaps my favorite Philippa Gregory book of the three I've now read. While I enjoyed The Other Boleyn Girl, I think it was titillating more than anything, like a Harlequin romance with real people. This one, though, seemed a little more grounded in events (and be warned, SPOILERS AHEAD).

The story focuses on Elizabeth Grey (née Woodville), who secretly married King Edward IV, even though she was a Lancastrian and he a Yorkist. Edward manages to bring a decent amount of peace to the realm, after keeping the Lancastrian king Henry VI away from the throne and fighting off the surrounding rebellions, but nothing lasts forever...and the book ends with (historically) two young princes locked up in the Tower of London, where they mysteriously vanish, their fate still unknown today. There's actually so much intrigue in this time period that I'm kind of surprised that this saga isn't nearly as popular as the Tudors. (Especially since these people are totally entwined with the Tudors - Elizabeth and Edward's daughter is Henry VIII's mother. This is the true beginning to that story.)

Which brings me to my only real criticism - I think Gregory ended The White Queen too early. Elizabeth's mother practices witchcraft and teaches her daughter some tricks - and at the end of the book, as Elizabeth and her children are taking sanctuary in Westminister Abbey, she and her eldest daughter put a curse on the person responsible for the (presumed) murder of her sons, that the murderer's son should die, and then his grandson, and his line end. The idea is that they'll watch and see what happens to the people around them, and by the curse, figure it out. King Richard III, a potential pepetrator, warns her about cursing people - that basically, once unleashed, you can't stop it, and you never know how it may come back to you (a sentiment echoed by her mother earlier on in the book).

Knowing how the history lesson ends, I was anticipating a bittersweet ending to this book - but The White Queen doesn't take it all the way there, and to its detriment, I think. Because in the book, Richard III's son dies and the implication, sort of, is that he is the murderer, though he has the least motive (which Gregory later says in the Author's Note). The likeliest historical perpetrators are the Tudors, the future Henry VII and his uncle Jasper, who have everything to gain by offing co-claimants. And I really thought that's where the book was going since Henry VII's line dies out within two generations (and both firstborn sons die before age 20) AND in the end, Elizabeth should regret cursing this man's progeny, since she's effectively just cursed her daughter, who ends up marrying him. She's desperate to regain the throne for her family, whom she sees as the rightful heirs, and she (fictionally) kills them off. It's satisfying and it sucks. (Though perhaps Gregory is saving it for the next book? The Author's Note says this is the first in a series about the Plantagenets...though I can't imagine Richard III and Henry VII duking it out can make an entire book.)

Anyway...my only other (minor) criticism is that Gregory doesn't label the kings (for example, Edward is just called Edward, not Edward IV), and it took me awhile to orient them historically. Which brings me to names - did the English only have like four names available to them? Everyone in this book is named Edward, Richard, Henry, or Elizabeth. Confusion!

#22: In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson

It took me forever to read this book. I started it in May, read about 70 pages, barely picked it up all summer, and then finished it right before Thanksgiving. So it might surprise you to know that I quite liked In a Sunburned Country. There's no plot to speak of - Bill Bryson comments on his various travels around Australia - but the book was lighthearted and funny.

Which came as a huge relief. I'd tried to read The Lost Continent a couple of years ago, but put it down about 100 pages in - the "humor" came in making fun of small-town America, with mean little observations masquerading as wit. Not cool, Bryson, not cool.

So In a Sunburned Country was a nice surprise. My goal was to read the travelogue before going to Australia, but alas, I read the bulk of it after returning. Which I actually think made the book more enjoyable - I barely went anywhere that Bryson went, but at the same time, I knew what he was talking about. Sadly, at this point, I can barely remember anything I learned from the book (it was chock full of tidbits) but I can say this: Australia rocks! Which has nothing to do with the book, but still...

#21: Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger

Eh, another book I didn't love. The Time Traveler's Wife is one of my top 5 favorite books ever, so I really wanted to fall in love with this one too. But it just didn't grab me. Niffenegger is a truly talented writer, and so full of original ideas, but I didn't feel like Her Fearful Symmetry came together convincingly. (And according to Entertainment Weekly, she received a $5 million advance for this book. $5 million, yowza!)

First off, I'm generally not into twin books. With the exception of Sweet Valley High, it seems like twins are always portrayed in literature as freaks...like in The 13th Tale, Flowers in the Attic, and even, if I remember correctly, The Shining. I'm not a twin so it's not a personal thing, but I dislike the use over and over again of twins as strange little beings with co-dependent love/hate relationships. (Clearly that last sentence doesn't apply to The Shining - but those little freaky kid ghosts that the boy sees are twins, right?)

With that off my chest...Her Fearful Symmetry is about two sets of twins, Elspeth and Edie, and Edie's daughters, Julia and Valentina. When Elspeth dies of cancer, she leaves her apartment - across from Highgate Cemetery in London - and a good wad of cash to the younger, American twins, with the stipulation that they live in the flat for a year before they can sell it. Their parents are also not allowed to enter the apartment. Julia and Valentina are both inseperable but also fighting for their own identities, which ends up creating a lot of conflict. Valentina, the meeker twin, ends up getting involved with Robert, who lives downstairs and was Elspeth's longtime companion. Which Elspeth doesn't like - she's come back as a ghost who's trapped in the apartment with the girls. And off it goes...

The thing is, while the story is interesting in its retelling, I felt as though the events in Her Fearful Symmetry happened at a distance, like we were held apart from it. You saw the characters but you didn’t know really them. And while I think it's a valid style choice, and I'm guessing one made to make the plot turns a surprise, I didn't connect with Julia or Valentina or any of the rest of them.

Maybe it was a style choice, but I felt that Niffenegger broke an essential style rule, that of "show, don't tell." I think we were often told about the characters' personality traits, instead of seeing them on display – and so it was not always believable. Elspeth is probably the best example: For 300 pages, she’s a friendly ghost figure who never expresses any sort of meanness. Then one day, Robert says she’s manipulative: “Elspeth isn’t nice. Even when she was alive she wasn’t very – she was witty and beautiful and fantastically original in – certain ways, but now that she’s dead she seems to have lost some essential quality – compassion, or empathy, some human thing – I don’t think you should trust her, Valentina.” (p.303) I read that passage and I was like, what? As it turns out, Elspeth is manipulative but I don’t think one sentence here and there can create a believable shift when the previous 300 pages have shown otherwise. The same thing happens with Valentina – she's the Mouse throughout the book and then all of a sudden she does something so ridiculously absurd and bold. I just don’t think her characterization backed it up.

At the end, I found Her Fearful Symmetry to be kinda vague. Like, what happened with Julia and Martin on that last night? There’s an implication, but… And who was Elspeth, really? Was she devious and she allowed the mist to disperse – or was she really not able to fix it? The text is unclear and I found that to be annoying. Again, it's a style choice, but I've never liked having to guess at the unanswered questions.

Still, Niffenegger is so good at evoking beauty in the midst of pain, which I think is the true strength of The Time Traveler's Wife. My favorite passage in this book, Her Fearful Symmetry, comes on page 50: “As each night passed he found it more difficult to evoke Marijke precisely. He panicked and pinned up dozens of photographs of her all over the flat. Somehow this only made things worse. His actual memories began to be replaced by the images; his wife, a whole human being, was turning into a collection of dyes on small white rectangles of paper. Even the photographs were not as intensely colourful as they had once been, he could see that. Washing them didn’t help. Marijke was bleaching out of his memory. The harder he tried to keep her the faster she seemed to vanish.”

I also find her to be so ridiculously creative. In both books, she's come up with original plots, which I think is a hard feat these days. Probably my favorite scene in Her Fearful Symmetry is Martin's dream about sitting on the Tube and realizing the women across from him are squirrels. How awesome is that?

#20: Julie and Julia, Julie Powell

Julie and Julia is another book that I liked fine enough, but didn't love. I suppose I feel sort of ambivalent about it, as I don't care to spend much time blogging about it. The writing is good - the kind of good where you don't notice the writing - but I just never got sucked into the story. (As always, I was curious to see what Amazon reviewers thought - more people hated it than loved it, and wow, the haters really hated it.)

Perhaps it was partly because I don't cook and I knew almost nothing about Julia Child. (The only thing I knew, actually, besides the fact that she was a cook, was that she served in the OSS. I didn't know the name of her famous cookbook, which I'm sure Julie Powell would find ridiculous. And actually, I realized that when I "think" of Julia Child, I somehow see her as Dr. Ruth. Go figure.) So I wasn't locked into the concept. On top of that, I'm a notoriously picky eater so I couldn't identify with cooking hardships, like boiling lobsters alive. (Hell, I don't think I'd touch a single recipe in that book.) So, in short, loving Julie and Julia for the cooking was out.

But really, it all, er, boils down to this: I just didn't connect with Powell. (Which is sort of funny because we have a lot in common, like our home state and alma mater and rabid affection for Civilization.) We clearly don't have the same sense of humor, so I didn't find most of the jokes funny. But more than anything, I felt like Powell skipped the hard stuff. The narrative was pretty jumpy and I often felt that she ended scenarios before discussing the fall-out or the resulting emotions. As a result, I had a hard time feeling her situation and empathizing with her, which I think is essential in a memoir like this. More than once, I was surprised by an emotional revelation - like when she and her husband were going through a rough patch - because she would mention it for a sentence or two and then not delve into it again for another 50 pages.

There are two other, similar books that I sprang to mind as I read Julie and Julia: A.J. Jacobs' The Know-It-All and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love - and they're both, hilariously, mentioned in some form in the credits. I have to say, I far preferred these other two memoirs. The Know-It-All was just awesomely funny (and, for those who don't know, about a guy's quest to read the encyclopedia from A to Z). But to the earlier point, with Eat, Pray, Love, I totally respected that Gilbert put all her emotions - good, bad, and ugly - out there on the table. She was neurotic, yes, but I totally understood what she was doing and why. But as much as I loved that book, there are legions of smart women who hated it, for that very same reason - so in closing, I'll just say, perhaps Julie and Julia is for them?

Next up: Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. With not so many weeks until the New Year, I am trying to read quick in order to reach the blessed 30!

#19: Skinny Bitch, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

My best advice? RUN FROM THIS BOOK. My friend recommended this book to me - she said I would never look at food the same way again. And that may be true, but Skinny Bitch is, at its core, filled with untrustworthy information written by two women who are not qualified to be prescribing such advice.

At its most basic, Skinny Bitch is deceitful. This is a book promoting a vegan diet and while I have no personal problem with that, I wasn't interested in reading a manifesto on the subject. Veganism is not mentioned anywhere on the front cover or the back cover blurb. The authors (and perhaps marketing people) have done this purposely, in order to ambush the reader – thinking, and probably rightly so, that a book on veganism is not going to sell as well as one that’s billed as “a no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to quit eating crap and start looking fabulous!” It’s kind of amazing then that Freedman and Barnouin manage to take everyone else – the FDA, the USDA, the dairy people, the beef people, Johnson & Johnson – to task for being sneaky in order to sell a product when it's exactly what they've done here.

Despite the fact that Skinny Bitch directly says that doctors are underqualified (p. 60), neither of these women are qualified to be dispensing what is essentially medical advice. Let me say it again: THEY ARE NOT QUALIFIED. Rory Freedman is billed as a former model's agent and a self-taught know-it-all. Kim Barnouin, a former model, holds an MS in Holistic Nutrition that she earned online from the Clayton College of Natural Health. According to the New York Times, she did most of her research online - don't worry, I will get to the problems with that.

The biggest flaw in this book is that the authors don’t acknowledge that there are different schools of thought, that people can have differing but still valid opinions, and that there are data sets to support just about everything. Everyone else, in the writers' unqualified opinion, is wrong – every other scientist, dietician, everyone. (Unless of course, they agree with them.) Their book is like listening to Sarah Palin speak – it’s just so hateful and doesn’t recognize that anyone else’s expertise/opinion can be equally valid. To Sarah Palin, you’re “un-American” if you don’t agree with her. And to these women, disagreement makes you a “fucking moron” or a “selfish whore.” I don’t even understand why these words are acceptable. It’s not tough love, it's abuse, and as the writers themselves say, “There is nothing uglier than a pretty woman who’s nasty.”

I am not a qualified medical professional, but some of Skinny Bitch's conclusions rang false to me. Since I don't want to go on here forever, I'll leave it at that. HOWEVER, I did work as a magazine fact-checker for a number of years, and I feel absolutely qualified to discuss the authenticity of one's sources. At the back of the book, Skinny Bitch lists a number of sources - some are from nutrition books, but the majority are from websites and online articles. The thing is, newspaper articles are not considered a primary sources and neither is the Internet - and that's because neither outlet is fact-checked. I am astounded that the majority of this book was written and then published based on such flimsy sources.

I took a look at 10 of the links provided (out of perhaps 30). Three of them no longer exist. One was a newspaper in India and another was what looked like a reputable newsmagazine. Truthaboutsplenda.com used research to back up its claims, but is funded by the Sugar Association, which represents the (conflicting) interests of the American sugarcane farmer. One had an advisory board with doctors, but was ultimately there to sell products; another's mission was aiding the spiritual evolution of the human race and unveiling conspiracy theories. Holisticmed.com, used multiple times, does not list an author (so you don't know who's writing this information) and says clearly on page one that the information is not intended as medical advice. And lastly, the last website had a well-known, if self-styled author, who was the center of controversy in 2002 after other vegans accused him of making false claims and distorting the (already bad) truth. They also relied quite a bit on information from PETA, which is a respectable but biased organization. In short, none of these are valid sources and would not pass muster at any major magazine. They could all be starting points, sure, but from the citations, it doesn't appear that the writers followed them up to find more concrete facts.

There's nothing wrong with veganism and I'm sure it has a good amount of science to support it. I just hope that anyone considering such a radical dietary change will find out about the pros and cons by reading a book written by legitimate experts.

#18: The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown

I'd probably have to give The Lost Symbol - the biggest book release of the year - 2.5 stars. It wasn't awful, but it's also no match for The Da Vinci Code or my personal favorite, Angels & Demons. Simply put, it just wasn't as enthralling as the other two - there was never a point where I felt absolutely compelled to keep reading.

So, The Lost Symbol is the third Robert Langdon novel, with our hero being lured to the Capitol under false pretenses. When he gets there, he finds out he's not there to give a speech; instead, greeted by his friend's severed hand, he learns that he must uncover the Mason's long-buried Lost Word to appease a lone madman. Over the course of the night, Langdon teams up with the victim's sister, Katherine, and runs all over D.C. trying to solve the mystery and avoid the CIA.

Part of the problem, I think, is that The Lost Symbol doesn't stand on its own - its format is VERY similar to The Da Vinci Code and towards the end, there's some thematic overlap with Angels & Demons. It didn't totally feel like its own book, although I think he made a smart choice in this one by not attempting to deliver the secrets of the Masons. In The Da Vinci Code, he comes up with an answer for the modern location of the Holy Grail, which requires a large suspension of disbelief; here, instead, he manages to wrap up the book without having to make something up, to the book's benefit. (It's the same sort of choice that Junot Diaz makes in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, with the Mongoose's secret message.)

I also think, perhaps, that for me, the Freemasons are just not as compelling as the history of Christianity or science versus faith at the Vatican. I don't really know anything about the Masons or the conspiracy theories surrounding them, so I didn't really have any preconceived notions to be stripped of.

In the end, I did learn something about the Masons (and feel like there are some places in D.C. that I'd like to re-see). But more than anything, I learned - or rather, remembered - that wow, it's really easy to manipulate people. Obviously this is a work of fiction but I was struck time and time again by how the villian managed to fairly believable gain entrance to places simply by acting with confidence.

People generally give Dan Brown shit, but I like him. I don't think he's setting out to write great literature - his purpose seems to be to write a good thriller. And I think he accomplishes that for the most part here. It's not The Da Vinci Code, but that's probably an unrealistic standard to hold him too. (And hey, Dan, if you're feeling somewhat down about the mushy reviews, have a listen to Elizabeth Gilbert talk about the expectations that come with blockbuster success.) So I totally have to give Dan Brown props for poking fun of himself:

On page 355, he writes, “In a flash, Langdon understood the meaning of Galloway’s last request. Tell Peter this: The Masonic Pyramid has always kept her secret…sincerely. The words had seemed strange at the time, but now Langdon understood that Dean Galloway was sending Peter a code. Ironically, this same code had been a plot twist in a mediocre thriller Langdon had read years ago.”

The name of that mediocre thriller? Digital Fortress, Dan Brown's first book.

#17: My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult

Ugg, I seriously hated this book. And interestingly, the friend who gave it to me loved it. Although I have no idea why. (Spoilers ahead, by the way)

The idea is interesting: A family conceives a baby that will be, with the help of science, a perfect genetic match for their dying daughter, Kate. But as a young teenager, Anna is tired of being noticed only when her body parts are needed and decides to sue for medical emancipation. But My Sister's Keeper just didn't captivate me. The characters were pretty one-dimensional, with the rebellious son, hero father, and callous lawyer; the mother was so awful that it was hard to see her point of view. With the trial, the novel could have had a lot of tension, but it just kind of plodded along. Partially it was the language - my friend liked its reliance on dialogue, but I felt that Picoult relied too much on allusion and metaphor to make "grand" points that weren't terribly insightful. So I was already disliking the book...and then I got to the end. Oh, the end.

What I really, truly hated about this book was the enormous cop-out ending. I felt like Picoult chose this subject - genetically engineered children, medical rights - to be controversial, which of course would stir up interest in the book upon publication. But then, there's nothing to back it up - Picoult doesn't take a stand and she doesn't offer any sort of meditation on the subject.

In the Readers Club Guide at the back of the book, Picoult says of the ending, "...this isn't an easy book, and you know from the first page that there are no easy answers." But I really felt that she took the easy road. At the end, Kate is at death's door. She needs the kidney that her sister doesn't want to donate, but she probably isn't going to make it, regardless - enough so that her doctor is actually against transplant. Even though Anna wins her case and gets to make her own decisions, she will presumably still be at the mercy of her mother's wishes for her to donate. It's not that Anna's not going to do it; it's more that, at the end, she's won the right to make her own choice. And here we are, at the big question: Should Anna feel obligated to save the sister she loves, even if it may not work and be bad for her own long-term health? The real crux of My Sister's Keeper is how can you balance the equally deserving but opposing needs of two children that you desperately love.

Guess what the answer is? That's right; there is no answer. Instead, Anna is killed in a car wreck immediately following the conclusion of the trial. Her kidney is given to her sister who, miraculously, recovers from leukemia and goes on to live a healthy life. Seriously? It annoyed me that Picoult never tried to answer the hard questions - I don't think there was a perfect ending that would have satisfied all readers, but I think she should have tried for something. But it really bugged me that she purposely chose a controversial topic and never did anything with it. (And no surprise, rebellious brother gets fixed and the scummy lawyer - who ran from his high school girlfriend over a seizure disorder, again, seriously? - gets the girl back anyway.)

Do yourself the favor of staying away from My Sister's Keeper. You will thank me, really.

#16: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

I ended up picking this book up by chance. I was traveling and had finished the two books I brought with me - The Sex Lives of Cannibals and Air Babylon - and wanted to trade them in for something else. But I just couldn't find anything decent, until I discovered The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in a spirituality focused used-book store in a small beach town. I only picked it up, actually, because a guy at Borders had just told me it was one of the best books he'd recently read. The point is, I hadn't intended to read it, but it came into my life anyway.

For the most part, I liked it, although not enough to read the next book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, in the trilogy. On the one hand, I was pretty into the book until the last 100 pages or so, and couldn't wait to dive back into it; on the other hand, I was absolutely shocked by the sexual violence in the book, which the jacket doesn't mention.

The book seems to be about disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who's both trying to solve the mystery of what happened to 16-year-old Harriet Vanger in 1966 and get revenge on industralist Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. But I think the book, on a deeper level, is really about violence perpetrated against women. (Each section starts with some kind of statistic, after all.) And it's fine as a topic, but I wish I'd known beforehand that that's what the book is really about, because I'm not sure I would have picked it.

But otherwise, the book is pretty well-written, although I think Larsson (in the form of Blomkvist) took a few unbelievable leaps in solving the mystery. The writing is a little stiff - though that may be about the translation - and, as a side note, has a surprising amount of techy details (like an exhausted list of Mac laptop specs) which I found amusing for some reason. I would argue that the last 100 pages - which resolve the Wennerstrom thread after the Harriet mystery has been solved - could have been eliminated, but that's personal preference.

So, all in all, I liked it but I didn't love it. :)

#15: Air Babylon, Imogen Edwards-Jones

Hmm, I'm kinda surprised at myself that I've read another one of these Babylon books. While I quite enjoyed Fashion Babylon, and learned a lot, I found Beach Babylon to be amusing but lacking plot. Sadly, Air Babylon seems to fall into the second category as well.

Having said that, I didn't expect much and the books aren't marketed as high literature. They're good for a quick, amusing read and I liked this book enough to pass it on to a friend.

My only issue, really, is with the plot...or lack of plot. Air Babylon is about a day in the life of a British airport supervisor (at Heathrow, as I recall). It's more or less supposed to be an ordinary day, except at the end of it, a couple of the employees - including the narrator - are flying to Dubai to celebrate a birthday. Also, the supervisor has a crush on one of the flight attendents who's going to be traveling with the group. That's kinda where the plot ends - the book is really constructed around the anecdotes, and everything happens to link the anecdotes together. And in order to use the most hilarious/awful/shocking stories she discovered over the course of her research, Edwards-Jones always makes the worst thing happen. It made the book feel predictable and repetitive because you knew every new scenario was going to involve a crisis and there was no surprise when it indeed arrived.

Oh, and for the first ten pages, I assumed the narrator was a woman, I think because the cover shows a flight attendant. So it was a big shock to find out it was a man, and have to rearrange all my mental images I'd come up with.

As a side note, I can't say whether or not the anecdotes are at all true. The friend that I gave the book to spent a summer working as a flight attendant, and didn't think they sounded too outrageous. So, interestingly, an Amazon reviewer feels pretty strongly that Air Babylon is insulting exaggerated. But who knows...

#14: The Sex Lives of Cannibals, J. Maarten Troost

I read this book about a month ago, mostly while stuck in an airport, and I'm a little fuzzy on the details...but I actually had the same thought the moment I finished the book. What actually happened? There's not a plot to speak of; the author moves to Tarawa, an atoll in the Republic of Kiribati, with his employed girlfriend and he mostly writes about the ridiculous culture shock he experienced. (And it is ridiculous - I was in Kiribati ten years ago, though for a far shorter period of time, and Troost is not exaggerating in the slightest.)

So yeah, I can't really tell you what happened - he swam, he fished, he made a journey by boat - but oddly enough, it's not really a criticism. I quite liked The Sex Lives of Cannibals - it was an easy read (thus, good for traveling) and totally light-hearted and amusing. So, two thumbs up. Heck, he gets a thumb just for the title.

#13: Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

I'm not totally sure if I liked Revolutionary Road. In a weird way, it reminds me of my feelings on Wuthering Heights: On one hand, I hated it because the characters were despicable, but on the other, there's no denying that the author knew what he/she was doing. So I guess my verdict on this one is interesting. It's an interesting, infuriating book and be warned, I am going to SPOIL, SPOIL, SPOIL ahead.

I have to give serious props to Yates, though; I think Revolutionary Road is one of the most well-crafted books I've ever read. The story is about Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple that lives out in the 'burbs on the titular street in the 1950s. They're out there doing what they think they're supposed to be doing - raising kids, mowing the lawn, being prosperous - but they feel unfulfilled. And the main reason for that is they feel they're extraordinary people, destined for great things, better things that the mindless routine that everyone else is participating in. Eventually April comes up with an intricate plan to move to Europe so that Frank can "find" himself and his calling, and they can live a life of culture in Paris. But for all his talk, it turns out that Frank's afraid - of change, of himself. He starts quietly sabotaging the plan until a gift arrives in his lap: April's pregnant. He pushes her and manipulates her until she agrees to stay on Revolutionary Road and stick with the status quo, but never realizes that he's pushed her too far until it's too late. And the book ends just as it started, as a hot depressing mess.

In looking at the Amazon reviews, some people blamed April for the Wheelers' problems, calling her stuck-up and pushy. More people saw them as equally responsible, both holding unrealistic and over-inflated visions of who they were. But as I read the book, I realized that we really have no idea who April is, because she doesn't get to represent herself until the very end of the book, 40 pages from the end, when she commits her terrible deed. She's always seen through the eyes of other people and even with dialogue, the episodes are recounted from the other person's point of view. She's literally the last character who gets to direct the scene from her point of view; even her children get a turn first. During scenes with Frank, April's generally seen as mean because he both hates her and is afraid of her; during Shep-the-neighbor's turn at the wheel, April comes across as haughty, but yet he's also frustrated by his fixation with her. Once I realized this, it really made me question what was real with April and what was being put upon her by her suitors.

For example, one of Frank's great fixations is how April may be incapable of love (because he can't accept that she just might not love him), and he's disturbed by something she once said to him. The quote from the book is: "'I love you when you're nice,' she'd told him once, before they were married, and it had made him furious.'" (p. 49) But the thing I realized is, we don't actually hear her say it. Frank says that she said it. And we know that Frank is both an embellisher and a liar. He's very good at transforming situations into stories that work for his personal narrative, and we see that throughout Revolutionary Road. The most obvious example comes during his lunch meeting with Bart Pollock. Frank works for the same company that his father did and he's particularly haunted by a city lunch he had as a kid with him and a man named Oat Fields. So when Pollock takes him out to lunch, he's reminded of it - and then he turns the story into something that he sees as better. "He couldn't be sure - there were several hotels of this size and kind in the neighborhood - but the possibility was strong enough to please his sense of ironic coincidence. 'Isn't that the damndest thing?' he would demand of April tonight. 'Exactly the same room Same potted palms, same little bowls of oyster crackers - Jesus, it was like something in a dream. I sat there feeling ten years old." (p. 206) As a result of incidents like this, I think you have to question what was actually said and what Frank has decided what April has said. And thus, start to wonder if April is really this person we've been lead to believe she is.

So yeah, I really started to question whether April was actually as mean and withholding as she came across. (I doubt it.) And that feeling, more that anything, really made me see her as trapped. Frustratingly, depressingly trapped. I kinda knew that something drastic was coming at the end, because it seemed fairly obvious that she had to snap, and I have to admit, I really, really wanted her to poison him. Isn't that awful? But I seriously just wanted her to do him in and escape. Alas, it was not to be...

I can't end this though with talking about Frank, her horrible, manipulative little husband. He is truly awful because he was just obsessed with impressions, control, and his manhood (or, more correctly, how other people saw him as a man). He also uses the most deluded logic to make decisions, and there were moments in the book where I wanted to reach in and smack him. Like, for example, he takes a boring job at Knox Business Machines because he doesn't want to get sucked into an interesting job that he won't be able to leave when his life takes off. As a result, he spends years doing nothing at a job he hates. Huh? But the worst is his explanation near the beginning of the book of why he decided to marry his pregnant girlfriend, April. He doesn't actually want a baby but when she wants to get an abortion, his manhood feels threatened. So he manipulates her and guilts her into having it, because he simply can't bear the idea that she doesn't want to carry his seed. Which is what leads him to getting the job at Knox.

Frank is one of those people who is just all bullshit. Near the end of the book, when April wants to terminate her third pregnancy, he fashions himself to be a psychologist like Freud and tells her she has penis-envy. Of course, he knows zero about it but eventually convinces her that she needs to start seeing a psychiatrist because she has deep mental issues. And it's just so ridiculous because he manages to convince her that she's crazy - and she's not. Arguably, he is the one that's crazy. He doesn't want another baby; he just wants an excuse to stay in his comfy life and get out of going to Paris. Instead of being honest about his feelings, he concocts all this bullshit so he can still feel like the man. Okay, I need to breathe - can you tell that this book made me angry?

In the end - and this really is the end - people start to see beneath the veneer. John the crazy man realizes and confronts Frank about his cowardice in a painfully awkward social setting. In the last few pages, Shep realizes that Frank drove April to her demise because he was always playing a game. But I sort of had to wonder if it mattered, because April was still dead and Frank deposited his kids with relatives, allowing him to start playing the sad but worldly widower.

And the thing is, I think Yates intended all of these things. You're supposed to see Frank as this delusional idiot and I think you're supposed to see April as trapped in an image. In that respect, Revolutionary Road is genius. It just also happens to be as depressing as all hell.

#11 and #12: Something Borrowed and Something Blue, Emily Giffin

When I saw Something Borrowed and Something Blue on the "Buy 1, Get 1 Half Price" shelf at Borders a few weeks ago, I immediately snapped them up. I really enjoyed both of these books when I read them a few years ago. While they're firmly entrenched in the Chick Lit camp, Giffin skipped a lot of the standard cliches (as I recalled anyway).

Something Borrowed was just as good as I remembered. I think I read it in less than 36 hours, despite already knowing how it would end. The story is about two childhood best friends, Rachel and Darcy, who are now adults and living in New York City. Darcy's always had a charmed life and when the novel starts, she's engaged to a handsome banker named Dex. Rachel, on the other hand, is more of a hardworking wallflower. But, on the night of Rachel's 30th birthday, she gets drunk and sleeps with Dex and drama ensues. (I'm not giving anything away, by the way - this is all on the back cover of the book.) As a reader, you certainly like Rachel from the start and root for her, but I thought Giffin did a good job of giving Darcy some appealing qualities, so that she's not a one-dimensional villain. Giffin also does a good job of revealing the story layer by layer - it's not quite what it seems to be on page one and while it's not over-the-top, I don't think you can really guess what's going to happen, either.

Something Blue, on the other hand, isn't quite as good and I think that's because it relies too much on its predecessor. The second book is Darcy's story and what happens to her after she loses Dex (sorry, it's a spoiler, but it's on the back of this book's cover!). As established in Book One, Darcy is a selfish, self-absorbed girl who occasionally stuck up for her best friend. Those qualities work in Something Borrowed because Darcy's supposed to lose. But then, in Book Two, when she's the heroine you're supposed to care about, it doesn't quite work. And it takes her 210 pages to figure out that she's the most shallow person ever. I think you keep reading through Darcy's selfishness because you want to know what happens to Rachel and Dex, but is that really enough for a book to stand on its own? In contrast to Something Borrowed, Something Blue also has much more of a conventional Chick Lit ending - meaning that everthing gets tied up into neat little bows. It's not terribly cheesy for the genre but still makes it a fluffier book than the first.

On a final note, I noticed a continuity error between Books One and Two. In Something Borrowed, Darcy's father's name is Hugo Rhone, as seen on the wedding invitations (page 242). However, in Book Two, he apparently changed his name to Hugh (page 112). Oops!

Next up: I've started reading Water for Elephants. I'm not terribly captivated at this point (this point being Chapter Three) but since people seem to love it, I'm still keeping on. However, I might start reading Revolutionary Road as I've only got it out of the library until June 3.

Eat, Pray, Love the movie

So, yeah, they're turning the book into a movie starring Julia Roberts. Both parts of that sentence seem equally strange to me. Although I like Julia Roberts (especially in America's Sweethearts, call me a dork), I don't see her as Elizabeth Gilbert in the slightest. They just seem to have completely different vibes. (Although when I saw Gilbert at a reading, she said that she felt like she had no involvement in the movie whatsoever and felt like she had to let the work go and let it become the filmmaker's work...if I am remembering that correctly.) Buzz Sugar however recently reported that Richard Jenkins was recently cast as Richard from Texas, which seems absolutely appropriate.

But I also just don't see Eat, Pray, Love as a movie, as much as I love it. Because the thing is, nothing really happens. Yes, she travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia, but so much of the book happens in her head. It's about how she feels and what she's working out internally. And for God's sake, she spends most of her time in India in meditation - and frankly, I don't see more than five minutes of that on film being compelling.

Interestingly, a man is writing and directing the film, due out in 2011. It's Ryan Murphy, who I'd never heard of before but obviously should have, as he's the creator of Nip/Tuck, Glee, and the writer/director of Running with Scissors. (Funny enough, I haven't seen any of these, though I've heard good things about all.) I read a story recently that said he's still working on the EPL screenplay, though I can't seem to find it again on the Interwebs. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

#10: Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

So upon a second read, I can still say that I love this book. I don't understand why people hate it so vehemently but my theory is that it involves the ugliest of emotions, jealousy. People are jealous that Elizabeth Gilbert got paid to write what seems like an easy book about living in Italy, India, and Indonesia over a period of a year following a nasty divorce.

But yeah...writing a book, even about your own life, isn't easy. More than anything, I really admire Gilbert's willingness to be honest. Over the course of 334 pages, she's happy, depressed, selfish, giving, and self-absorbed, just to name a few characteristics, and she doesn't seem to skimp on any of it. She doesn't hide it and she doesn't sanitize it. And sure, there were some parts I found annoying - reading about anyone's spiritual enlightment always comes across as a little false - but it's all there, no holds barred. I feel like if she had toned down her emotions, then the haters would be griping about dishonesty, or something like that. I guess you can never please some people. :)

Having said that, upon this second read, I have been persuaded to investigate meditation. Spefically, Ketut Liyer's "sit and smile" meditation, which I didn't specifically recall from the go-around. I'm not sure I'm really the Hindu mantra type, but still could use some calm feeling in m life, and I liked the idea of a meditation where you just try to emanate positiveness. I'm not terriby good at it yet, but I guess you've got to start somewhere... Like Bali, perhaps? Yeah, still hoping to go because Eat, Pray, Love makes it just seem strange, convoluted, and fantastic.

#9: The Reader, Bernhard Schlink

I seriously disliked this book, but I'm not terribly surprised - I avoid Oprah's choices like the plague. But it was our book club selection this month, so I read The Reader anyway. It infuriated me so much that upon completion, I searched the Web for other people's reviews - I just couldn't believe that everyone else loved this book. (It turns out, they didn't - popular reviews on sites like Amazon and Good Reads are mixed.) Oh, and by the way, serious spoilers ahead.

In a nutshell, The Reader is a first-person narrative by a German man named Michael Berg. At age 15, he contracts hepatitis and when he falls ill on the street, he meets an older woman named Hanna. They begin an affair. In between the nookie, Michael reads to her (hence, the title of the book). But Hanna always remains mysterious and refuses to talk about her past. Eventually, Michael grows up and grows out of the affair, and it coincides with Hanna's sudden flight from the town. Less than ten years later, Michael discovers all of Hanna's secrets when, as a law student, he attends the trial of five women accused of being Nazi concentration camp guards. Michael figures out that Hanna can't read and because of it, she's accepted more blame than she's due; although Michael considers telling the judge, he chickens out in the end. Hanna is sentenced to prison for life. I won't ruin the rest of the book; these details are enough to talk about what I want to discuss.

Michael's conclusion at the end of the book is meant to represent the "truth," and that's mostly what I object to...this ridiculous, one-sided, bullshit "truth." I did read a couple of reviews that suggested that perhaps Schlink intends the reader to see Michael's own culpability but after thinking that over, I have to dismiss it. It's always hard to tell where the line between writer and narrator ends, but Michael never has a moment of clarity, not a second of doubt. He's still blaming Hanna on the last pages. And since this is sort of Schlink's fictionalized autobiography, it also makes me think that he's presenting here his own meditation and conclusion on the question of German guilt.

Basically, in trying to figure out how - as part of the first generation of post-war Germans - to see the Holocaust, Michael settles on blame. He blames everyone: the generation before his, his parents, Hanna. And he's ultimately unsatisfied because no one seems as sorry as he thinks they ought to be. He's so self-righteous - and mid-book, clearly enjoys playing the martyr - that he never sees how he's contributed to the situation.

At the trial, when the other defendents realize that Hanna's digging herself into a hole with her honesty, they gang up on her and turn her into the scapegoat. The book implies, I think, that Hanna fell into her role as a guard (because she was running away from a situation where she'd have to admit her illiteracy) whereas these other defendents are actually bad people at heart (because they're still acting rotten, trying to evade responsibility). The big moral question, supposedly, is how we deal with our kind feelings toward Hanna, who admittedly worked as a guard at Auschwitz. But why aren't we ever asked to judge Michael's actions? He vacillates for pages about whether or not to go to the judge with this inside information, and finally does, saying: "I did go to the presiding judge after all. I couldn't make myself visit Hanna. But neither could I endure doing nothing." There's such a self-congratulatory tone to the sentences. The only problem? He doesn't actually tell the judge about Hanna. He goes there, sure, but he does NOTHING, because he's afraid to rock the boat and jeopardize his own situation. And that makes him no different than the millions of Germans during World War II who did nothing in resistance because they were afraid of the potential consequences to themselves. You could say Michael's dilemma is minor in comparison, but he was never presented with the big question in his lifetime - this is his moral test and he fails. Actually, he fails it every time. And in the context of the trial, it actually does have some consequence - Hanna gets a life sentence and the other women, who deserved more, only get a few years. Michael helps them get away with murder, in all senses of the phrase.

Instead, Michael wallows in this pseudo-guilt, agonizing over whether he's a bad person because he loves a bad person. Seriously? It's just so overwrought and melodramatic. Which is sort of amazing in a book that uses almost no description. Rather, The Reader is a book filled with vague, contradictory prose that intends to ask these big questions, but kinda just meanders around them instead. Since I've already written an epic, I'll let someone else's review take over...I laughed out loud when I found it, since clearly she and I folded down the exact same pages with the intent of making the point. So, for more on The Reader's stilted prose, click here: http://www.caribousmom.com/2008/08/16/the-reader-book-review/

Anyway, moving on: I'm about halfway through my second trip through Eat, Pray, Love. I've been reading it with a more critical eye, just to try and see it through the haters' eyes, but what can I say, I still love it.