Wow! Ozeki

I didn't know much about A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki, before I opened the book, other than that it is a nominated for the 2013 National Book Critic's Circle Award.  And wow!  It was such an inventive, readable, heartbreaking, intelligent, funny novel.  The story links together the lives and voices of a 16-year old girl named Nao who lives in Tokyo, after moving to Japan after her father loses a good tech job in Sunnyvale, CA, with Ruth, a writer in Canada.  Picked on mercilessly in school and dealing with her overworked mother and suicidal father, Nao takes to journaling to express herself, and to try and tell the story of her 104-year old great grandmother Jiko, a Buddhist zun.  Nao's diary is found on the shore by Ruth, a writer living on an island in British Columbia after the Japanese tsunami in 2011.  I found myself more considerably more interested in the parts of the novel told by Nao's perspective, but overall, this was like nothing I've read before.  Refreshing - read it!

Rags and Riches

There are many Doctorow books that I really enjoyed (my most favorite being World's Fair), and while Ragtime was filled with interesting characters and sub-plots, it felt overly peopled and without focus.  Doctorow employs an interesting technique of including both real people (Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, etc.), with fictional characters.  While he captures the excitement of New York City in the early 1900s before WWI and focuses on ideas and events critical to that era in American history, there was no one story line that truly engaged me. 

Deep in Detroit

LeDuff, a native Detroiter, blends personal history and journalism in Detroit: An American Autopsy.  With grit and unflinching detail, LeDuff highlights Detroit's challenges and characters, and gives us a glimpse of day to day life in what used to be one of America's most prosperous cities.  While this book won't give you all of the historical background, its more personal and storied approach to portraying life in this city is highly effective and readable.  One can only hope that over time, this city ravaged by unemployment, a failed school system, over 70,000 abandoned buildings, and political corruption can rise from its ashes. 

A New Nigerian Voice

Chinelo Okparanta's debut, Happiness, Like Water, focuses mainly on African women navigating intimate relationships and hard choices.  Raised in Nigeria and an immigrant to the U.S. (with an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, no less), Okparanta is a fresh, strong voice in fiction.  These stories are simply and deftly constructed.  I look forward to a novel from Okparanta!

Capote Captures it All

Truman Capote is one of my favorite writers of all time, and his book The Dogs Bark:  Public People and Private Places, demonstrates his wit, sense of humor, and incredibly astute eye for detail.  He writes about many different people (Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Isak Dinesen, etc.) and places (New Orleans, Brooklyn, Russia, Japan, etc.).  Some of my favorite quotes:

From New Orleans:  Miss Y. does not believe in the world beyond N.O. ; at times her insularity results, as it did today, in rather chilling remarks.  I had mentioned a recent trip to New York, whereupon she, arching an eyebrow, replied gently, "Oh?  And how are things in country?"

From New York:  Could it be that the transition from innocence to wisdom happens in that moment when we discover not all the world loves us?

From Brooklyn:  I wanted to blow her up.  She's a stinking pig; she and Cook have it fixed up between them never to give me any chocolate sauce so she can gobble it all her big fat self.

From A Ride Through Spain:  In our compartment, the dark , dusty mother sat just as we had left her.  She had not seen fit to join the party.  She gave me a long, glittering look.  "Bandidos," she said, with a surly, unnecessary vigor.  

From Self Portrait:  Not long ago my doctor suggested that I adopt a hobby other than wine-tasting and fornication.  He asked if I could think of anything.  "Yes, murder."  He laughed, we both did, except I wasn't laughing.  Poor man, little did he know what a painful and perfect demise I'd planned for him when, after eight days abed with something closely resembling black cholera, he still refused to pay me a house call. 

And I truly loved Capote's account of a raven with clipped wings who he comes to care for,  named Lola. 

On the run in NC

I read Wiley Cash's second novel this dark road to mercy, in two sittings.  Told from three different perspectives, it is a tale with momentum and build up.  Set in North Carolina, the novel centers around 12 year-old Esther Quillby and her younger sister, who both are in foster care given the death of their mother from an overdose and their absent father, Wade.  Wade shows up in the middle of the night and whisks the girls away.  Two other men are on his trail - the first, Brady Weller, the girls' court appointed guardian, and the second, Robert Pruitt, an acquaintance of Wade's nursing an old vendetta.  This is a quick read but once I finished, the story didn't linger in my mind.  I did not enjoy this nearly as much as Cash's first novel, a land more kind than home, which I found to be more memorable and atmospheric. 

The Reason I Jump

The Reason I Jump is written by a thirteen year old Japanese boy with autism, and includes his frank and thoughtful answers to questions about people along the autism spectrum.  It was one of the most interesting accounts of autism I have read.  Here are some highlights from Naoki Higashida's responses:

"Every single time I'm talked down to, I end up feeling utterly miserable - as if I'm being given zero chance of a decent future."  
"The truth is, we'd love to be with other people.  But because things never, ever go right, we end up getting used to being alone, without even noticing this is happening."
""We can put up with our own hardships okay, but the though that our lives are the source of other people's unhappiness, that's plain unbearable."  

Naoki conveys the challenges of life with autism, but also conveys a sense for hope that with compassion, we can help people with autism and that those with autism can also help the rest of us understand how they think and move through the world. 

The Last Time I Read Richard

With Young Hearts Crying, I have now read all of Yates' books, which include novels and short stories.  They are all stellar and sharp, and I highly recommend Yates despite how depressing his work is.  Young Hearts Crying tells the story of a failed marriage between a young couple, Michael and Lucy, who struggle to find meaningful connections to each other, their friends, and their artistic passions.   My favorite Yates work is The Easter Parade, mainly because it shows off Yates' wit and humor which can often get lost in his other novels.  Yates perfectly captured a particular American epoch, and I see him as very important to our literary canon. 

A First Novel

I've heard a great deal about Anthony Marra's debut novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.  The novel spans the 1990s through 2004 and takes the reader to a wintry village in Chechnya.  Havaa, an eight year-old girl, is taken under the wing of a family friend named Akhmed after her father is abducted by Russian soldiers.  Akhmed takes Havaa to the local hospital where a woman named Sonja is the sole surgeon.  This is a very well written, heartbreaking novel that explores family and loyalty, tenderness and brutality.  Most interesting for me was the fact that Marra's novel exposed me to a topic and region that I knew very little about.   This was an eye opening read, and what I got most out of the novel was the eduction that it provided. 

Lee's New Direction

Chang-Rae Lee's fifth novel On Such a Full Sea, is a significant departure from his other works which all had a firm footing in realism.  On Such a Full Sea is set in a dystopian future in the United States, based in a city called B-Mor, and focuses on a young woman named Fan.  I was very intrigued by the beginning of the novel, but it lost my interest toward the end.  I have never been a fan of novels bordering on the sci-fi, as this one does.  Nonetheless, Lee's writing is well-crafted, and the oddness of the story drew me in, plus he explores major themes such as individualism versus the common good.  I would recommend starting with Lee's Native Speaker or Aloft, both of which I enjoyed immensely. 

2013 wrap up/2014 preview

The best 10 books I read in 2013 were:

1. My Antonia - Willa Cather 
2. The Grass Harp - Truman Capote 
3. America and Americans - John Steinbeck 
4. The Gift of Asher Lev - Chaim Potok
5. All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
6. World's Fair - E.L. Doctorow
7. How to Cook a Wolf - MFK Fisher
8. tiny beautiful things - Cheryl Strayed 
9. Rock Springs - Richard Ford
10. Serena - Ron Rash

Honorable mentions: Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Ordinary Grace - William Kent Krueger, A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor, Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry, The Collected Stories of Richard Yates, We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo, A Lost Lady - Willa Cather, O Pioneers! - Willa Cather

Most looking forward to reading in 2014:

1. On Such a Full Sea - Chang-rae Lee
2. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - Anthony Marra
3. These Were Hard Times - Tim Egan
4. Detroit - Charlie Leduff
5. The Other Side of the Tracks - Tony Cano
6. The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson
7. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
8. The People in the Trees - Hanya Yanagihara
9. Young Man With a Horn - Dorothy Baker
10. Happiness, Like Water - Chinelo Okparanta

First novel of 2014: Tartt-astic!

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt's third novel, is over 700 pages long.  I never once looked at the page number I was on, or flipped forward to see how many pages were left in a particular chapter, and that is one of the highest complements I can give, especially to such a behemoth book.  This is an engrossing, dizzying, rollicking, heartbreaking book.  I felt like I was along for the (roller coaster) ride of Theo Decker's life, as he comes to reconcile his mother's death and his isolation in the world.  This was a great novel!

Solnit's San Francisco

Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, is a beautiful "coffee table" book that represents San Francisco in a variety of unique and compelling ways, and includes beautiful maps of the city.  The maps tend to focus on two seemingly dichotomous ideas, such as "death and beauty" which pinpoints the 99 murders in San Francisco in 2008 juxtaposed with the location of the city's cypress trees.  Another map, "poison/palate" highlights many of the "foodie" artisan gourmet food locations such as the Straus Family Creamery and the Alemany Farmers Market along with "poison sites" such as the Mount Diablo mercury mine and the Port of Oakland.  Overall, this is a refreshing and intriguing representation of San Francisco, and highlights its infinite nature.  The best part of book is by far the maps themselves.  I didn't get that much from the narratives accompanying the maps (with some notable exceptions, such as the narrative that discusses the effect of the Great Migration on San Francisco) and the photos did nothing for me.  Solnit has a new book out called Unfathomable City, her take on New Orleans.  Solnit is fascinated by and seems to have a deep understanding of urban landscapes.

Lean In, Breathe Out

Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In:  Women, Work, and the Will to Lead encourages women to try to overcome both the external and internal barriers that prevent women from gaining power and taking advantage of (or better yet, envisioning and creating) leadership opportunities in the workplace.  I thought the most interesting parts of the books were the recent statistics and studies that Sandberg highlights about men and women in the workplace, rather than Sandberg's personal journey from her college days to her now being the COO of Facebook.  Having gone to an MBA program that focuses largely on women's leadership, and having read many books by feminists, I didn't find much of what Sandberg wrote to be new information, though it did confirm and mirror some of my own experiences in the workplace.  The dean of the Mills College MBA program wrote a response article entiled, "Women can move up if men 'lean in'" in which she states, "Sandberg's strategy for change confounds me" because she felt that Sandberg, "continues to place the onus for change on women" as opposed to encouraging men to "lean in" as advocates and allies of women so that they can advance to leadership positions.  I agree with Sands that it is equally, if not more important for men to read Sandberg's manifesto. 

From the Prairie to the City

Over the last year, the Willa Cather I have come to know and love is the Cather who writes of the Nebraska prairie.  Interestingly, some of her works that take place in different environments are my least favorites (I'm thinking of Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock, neither of which I even finished).  Uncle Valentine and Other Stories:  Willa Cather's Uncollected Short Fiction, 1915-1929, falls somewhere in between for me.  In these seven stories, Cather set her stories in the urban landscape (NYC and Pittsburgh).  While collectively it is a good read, I didn't find any of the stories to be stand outs or particularly memorable.  That said, My Antonia and Cather's books set in rural places are some of the best works of fiction that I have ever read!

The Point is the Point

One of my favorite places in this vast and varied world is Point Reyes National Seashore.  I feel alive and expansive in this land of serenity and beauty.  Curious to know more about this majestic place, so close to my house yet so far away, I purchased An Island in Time:  50 Years of Point Reyes National Seashore, by John Hart, which highlights some of the major issues that have defined Point Reyes over the last 50 years, such as dairy farming, the animals that inhabit Point Reyes, and its very creation.  This is somewhat of a "coffee table" book in that it has lots of glossy photos, but it also has a good deal of information as well.  I wasn't riveted by Hart's writing, but it did provide a good overview of Point Reyes and some of the controversies and debates about the land over the years.  I'm interested in pairing this with The Solemn Land, a much older work written by local Point Reyes historian Jack Mason. 

Texas Trilogy

With Cities of the Plain, McCarthy concluded his Border Trilogy.  In this third work, McCarthy brings together his two protagonists in the earlier works, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham.  John and Billy are in early adulthood as ranch hands in New Mexico in the 1950s.  It is interesting to learn their fates, but this was my least favorite of the three books in the trilogy.  Trying to read as many books as I can before the end of the year, thus the relatively short posts!

The Grass is Always Greener, with Capote

The Grass Harp is classic Capote - wit, quirky characters, tender moments amidst hilarious ones, and immensely fabulous storytelling.  I really don't think it gets much better than this!  Read it.  Period.

Detroit City

This summer, I plan to take a trip to Michigan, starting in Detroit.  I've heard so many things about this city - its violence, its 80,000 abandoned buildings, its lawlessness, its failed public schools, but also its possibility, rebirth, and redevelopment.  Is Detroit rising from the ashes once again?  I took to reading Mark Binelli's account of the city, entitled Detroit City is the Place to Be:  The Afterlife of an American Metropolis.  Binelli's ethnographic and journalistic focus makes for an interesting account, with lots of interviews of locals from various backgrounds.  His writing is punchy and smart, if a bit longwinded.  For example, he writes, "It's an almost classically structured tale of humble origins transcended by entrepreneurial moxie and much diligent toil, all eventually brought low by tragic flaws (hubris, greed, long-simmering prejudices come home to roost)."  The book included some staggering facts such as the fact that recently, Michigan had the highest unemployment rate of any State, and one study identified nearly half of all adults as functionally illiterate.  This book provides a great starting point for understanding some of the history of Detroit, its current challenges, and its future.

Almost to the end of my Yates era

 Now that I have finished A Good School, I'm just one book away from having read all of Richard Yates.  Yates' novels and short stories are never uplifting, but always intriguing.  A Good School focuses on one year at a New England all-male prep school just at the start of WWII.  Focusing largely on the relationships between the students, Yates captures the angst and awkwardness of teenage boys as they strive to fit in, make friends, discover their passions.  As expected, there are fist fights, love affairs, hazing, sports, friendship, rivalries, and a few heartbreaking moments of isolation and loneliness.  Yates also explores the relationships between the male professors and administrative staff and their wives or lovers.  This wasn't my favorite from Yates, as it wasn't as rich in exploring the intimacies of relationships as some of his other novels (such as Revolutionary Road or The Easter Parade, but I would still say that A Good School is a "good" read.