Bookavore

Or at least two of Kensington’s new releases would have me believe.  But if they are to be believed, things get better as well.

31. Band Fags! by Frank Anthony Polito (Kensington, June 2008).

32. Thinking Straight by Robin Reardon (Kensington, May 2008).

I’m not quite sure how either of these are classified–they probably belong on the adult side of the store, but they have definite cross-over potential for mature teens.  Band Fags! came to the store because when I saw it in the catalog, I had to ask for a review copy based on the title alone.  And despite the fact that I was not actually alive for the period during which half of it occurs (1982-1988) I still found it hilarious.  The main character spends most of the book coming to terms with being gay, and his best friend figures it out a little sooner, but they both struggle to figure out what that means, and how their lives will be.  There are a lot of exclamation points in this book, but they are used just as effectively as Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (which is to say, they’re endearing!).

Thinking Straight is a little more depressing, because it’s about a teen who is sent to one of those Christian wash-away-the-gay camps.  It felt very realistic to me, although I have no experience in that area; probably because it gave me the creeps.  However, there’s an underground of sorts at the camp that helps narrator Taylor get through it.  One of the things that I liked about the book, despite not being a Christian myself, was that Taylor is not anti-Christian or hateful towards religion.  On the contrary, a lot of the book discusses reasons why Christianity might be wrong to persecute gay people (to the point where parts read as sermons of a sort).

But the curious thing about both books, and a positive thing, I think, is that while both teens are in uncomfortable situations, I didn’t find either depressing.  Brad, in Band Fags!, spends most of the book talking himself out of thinking he’s gay, which can be hard to read.  There’s also some intense scenes in both books, especially Thinking Straight, but I didn’t close either thinking, “Man, that poor kid is going to have an awful life.”  There’s this implicit acknowledgment that even though the world at large is still mean to gay people, things are getting better, and that more and more people are supportive.  Even at a conservative Christian summer program, there are people who aren’t anti-gay–the world must be changing, according to these authors.  Which it is, and I can only hope to the extent that is seen in these two books.  To that end, even though the writing is not always spectacular in either of them, I would recommend either on the basis of attitude and content.  Like I said earlier, they’d be great cross-over books for teens in general and especially gay teens who are working things out for themselves.  And I’d love to hear how those who went to high school in the 80s feel about Band Fags! (And, for that matter, how those who have been to gay-reformation camps feel about Thinking Straight.)

30. Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee by Pamela Druckerman (The Penguin Press, 2007).

Finished this at lunch the other day. This book is just completely fascinating. I read the hardcover because it passed my desk while looking a publisher returns, but it’s just come out in paperback. Basically, Druckerman looks at how infidelity is regarded in various countries and religions. She doesn’t draw any prescriptive conclusions, in the sense that she thinks that Americans should do things differently, as though it would be possible for us to do it differently anyway. But there are a lot of great lessons, such as:

“There’s something else that we could learn from pretty much any foreign country. The American idea that a husband and wife should reveal the entire contents of their brain to each other doesn’t exist anywhere else. Doing so probably removes a necessary mystery from marriage. It might be better to have some secrets, or at least pretend that you do” (277).

The fact is, we are pretty weird and prudish compared to a lot of the world. (Interestingly, it seems that the other country that comes close to our level of prudishness is–are you ready for this?–France.) Druckerman does a great job of skewering the American obsession with knowing every last detail about an affair, having to talk it out for years, the endless pain that results, etc. Which is not to say that affairs aren’t painful and disorienting, just that maybe our psychological-industrial complex way of dealing with them isn’t the most healthy.

The writing is great and engaging; Druckerman does a great job of being in the story without taking the focus off the material. She also looks at the differences between men and women cheating in each area, which is interesting, as well as how the consequences of infidelity are different in different contexts. Anyway, whether you’ve been the guilty party, the wronged party, or neither, this is a great light non-fiction read.

25. Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff (Ginee Seo/Simon, just out).  Coincidentally, I met a person who was just finishing this book on the same day that we talked at the store about whether to put this on the children’s bestseller wall (because it made the list, and which is squarely in the middle of the children’s section) or to shuffle it over to the grown-up side.  He kindly lent it to me and I read it that night.  And then gave thanks that we had put it in the adult section just after flipping through it.  I am probably one of the most liberal book-hander-outers in the country, and I still wouldn’t hand that to anyone under 16 at the youngest.  It is just non-stop graphic about drug use and the life that goes with that, for about 300 pages.  In that sense, it probably would make a great teaching tool, and I recognize that there are definitely teens that get involved with meth and heroin before 16; however, I just can’t imagine it on the same wall with Fancy Nancy.  As for the book itself, it is very well-written–and, in fact, reads as though it was written for a younger audience–but depressing, of course.  Having never been addicted to drugs, I found his continual relapses more and more aggravating as the book went on, which I felt bad about, but couldn’t help.  I am now kind of curious to read Beautiful Boy, the book that his father wrote, but I’m sort of at the end of my rope with memoir right now.

26. Thin by Lauren Greenfield (Chronicle, 2006).  And speaking of books that frustrated me because they were about compulsions I don’t understand!  We brought this in the store because a librarian for whom I’m doing a book fair next week asked me to bring it, and I’m glad we did.  It’s based on an award-winning documentary that Greenfield shot at the Renfrew Center, a well-known center for eating disorders.  The majority of girls and women she photographs are anorexic, although there are a few bulimics and overeaters as well.  The photography is absolutely breath-taking; very crisp and professional without being exploitative.  The stories are alongside. Both text and pictures are heartbreaking, as you’d expected, but again, also occasionally aggravating.  Like most women, I’ve dealt with the pressures that lead to disordered eating and even gone through a bit of it myself, but I can’t imagine the mindset that leads people to this level.  And, as with drug addiction, you begin to wonder if there’s anything that will work to help.  I would encourage anybody in education or healthcare to at least look through this book, or see the documentary (although, as a friend who I showed the book and I agreed, it’s not the sort of film you’d necessarily want to own).  I will also be trying to bring in her other books.

And now for something completely different.

27.  Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things by Lenore Loo, pictures by LeUyen Pham (Schwartz & Wade/RH, July 2008).  Read on the recommendation of the stellar children’s buyer for Bookazine, Heather Doss.  I wish this book was already out so I could hand it to the small army of boys who keep coming in and asking for the third Diary of a Wimpy Kid book!  I adored this book.  I loved the voice: not only is it funny and authentic, it reminded me a lot of many classic narrators for some reason, like Ramona.  I just had this feeling the whole time I was reading it that I was reading a classic.  It’s about a second-grader who is scared of everything, so much so that he can’t talk in school.  He tries to be a gentleman, but makes mistakes here and there, puts up with his little sister, tries to make friends, and even has to see a therapist at one point (which had me laughing).  In fact, the whole book had me laughing.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Might just start doing a weekly round-up.

19. Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock (Crown/RH, just came out).  I read this on the advice of the head buyer at my store, and good advice it was.  This is ostensibly a biography of John R. Brinkley, an incredible medical con man who changed the country in numerous ways.  The gross-out factor is that he basically made his name implanting goat testicles into random body parts to improve virility, although he added to his medical cons over time.  But in addition to that, he arguably introduced blues and country to much of the country, made the AMA more powerful by giving them a direct target, and most interestingly at this point in the election cycle, invented many of the annoying electoral tactics still in use today (while running for governor of Kansas, which he only lost through some creative ballot tampering).  Not definitively an evil genius, persay, but definitely a twisted one.  Brock’s writing is appropriate to his subject: a little over-blown and dramatic, but convincing and gripping.  Good for most people, I think, even those who prefer fiction, because this story is a good case of “you couldn’t write something this crazy.”

20. Trophy Kid: or How I Was Adopted by the Rich and Famous by Steve Atinsky (Delacorte/RH, August 2008).  Hm.  I definitely liked this, even though I found it all a bit pat.  It’s the story of a kid who is adopted by a celebrity couple after receiving media attention as a war orphan, 10 years after the adoption.  He and a ghostwriter start work on a autobiography meant to fit into the family’s general feel-good story, but Joe has other plans, as your average slighted 13-yo boy will do.  It’s well-done satire, which I appreciate, especially because it’s rare for a younger audience.  But I feel it was just too short.  I have nothing against short books, but this book really could have used more development in several places that would have improved the story and characters.  (Also, if there’s still time and anybody at Delacorte is reading, PLEASE re-think the cover, which is way too cutesy for the contents.)

21. The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts by Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby (Viking/Penguin, May 2008).  This book was profoundly depressing, but good.  So depressing that I walked around in a funk for a few hours after I finished it and couldn’t figure out why I was so upset, and then realized it was because of the book.  Interestingly, this is an oral biography; that is, it’s almost entirely made up of interview snippets that cut in and out of each other, all from different friends and family over the course of Farley’s life.  This works especially well for the chronicling of a life that 1. was made famous by TV, which is all about the snippet, and 2. not everybody agrees on.  It’s sad not just because of the inevitable ending, but also because I wasn’t aware how well he had been doing up to that point.  I would definitely recommend it, but not if you have anything else to get done the day you start it.

22. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor, May 2008). Even though I have a few small quibbles with this book, overall I loved it enough that I will probably read it with my YA book group some time over the summer.  A great fast-paced tale about a smart 17-yo hacker who gets serious about taking down the Department of Homeland Security after a terrorist scare turns San Francisco into a police state and puts him in jail briefly.  Teachers and librarians: this book will definitely appeal to reluctant readers, no matter how much I loathe that phrase.  On the one hand, I found the constant interludes to explain finer points of technology and hacking a bit much (and felt they were out of voice), but on the other hand, they were so interesting that I didn’t care too much.  A great book for discussion and a great book for waking up smart but apathetic minds.  I often judge YA fiction by how much I wish I could be friends with the characters and hang out in their world, and by that standard, the book rules.  O, one last kudos: very well done sex scenes, for YA and in general (although though they do put the book squarely in “mature teens” range).

23. Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino, translated by Rebecca Copeland (Vintage/RH, PB February 2008).   I really loved this novel and found it hard to put down, even though I was reading it while battling through a nasty cold and all the fatigue that came with that.  I’m not sure summing up the plot is the best idea.  I hate to say it’s Rashomon-like, especially as it’s Japanese, but it really is.  As several other reviewers have noted, Kirino captured the nastier side of women’s cruelty to women, especially that of teens, very very well.  I also found it to be a great representation of the current uncomfortable position of the average Japanese woman, without being the cloying voyeuristic “now-ain’t-that-AWFUL!” tone I tend to see in books about women in Eastern cultures.  Kirino is clearly a great writer, but I think Copeland also deserves credit for a great translation.  Of all the blurbs on the book, this is the one I like best, and the one that convinced me to pick up the book: “Kirino helps us aficionados of crime fiction imagine the kind of novels James M. Cain might have written if he had been a Japanese feminist” (Maureen Corrigan).

Alright, I saved the best for last.

24. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely (Harper, out last week).  I read this article last week, and then had to find the book it came from, and I was more than pleasantly surprised by it.  There is NOBODY who can’t learn something from this book.  If I ran a business, I would make everybody who worked for me read it.  Teachers, spouses, car owners, doctors–okay, let me be more clear.  If you eat on a regular basis, and occasionally wonder about why you want certain things to eat and not others, then this book has something for you.  The structure of the book is such that you can read a chapter at a time and put the book down, but I guarantee you won’t want to.  Ariely’s writing is incredibly charming and readable, so that his conclusions (all well-backed by research, by the way) are simultaneously obvious and earth-shattering.  But the book goes beyond being interesting; at the end of every chapter, he offers realistic ways in which his findings are applicable to the reader’s everyday life.  In other words, it’s not just incredibly cool, it’s helpful on a grander scale.  It’s the kind of book I wish Oprah would pick so that we could have a national conversation about some of the things he brings up (especially how easily people will bend their morality to be dishonest when cash substitutes, rather than cash, are being used, as well as the difference between a decision made in a cold state and one made in a hot state).  Just go read it already, for heaven’s sake.

This is a review I wrote for NAIBA.  It took an insane amount of time, because book reviews are nearly impossible for me.  It was a good exercise in humility, though, because I like to complain about how nonsensical the NYT Book Review can be; reviews seem to devolve in record time to recollections of the review writer that are barely related to the subject at hand, or an editorial for the opposite position of the book under review, or just flat-out rambling.  But having to write a longer book review–as opposed to the 2-3 sentence ones that I do here, or brief staff picks–gives me more respect for how hard it is.  (Although, on the other hand, they are the paper of record, whereas I am just a lowly bookseller, so maybe I shouldn’t cut them any slack.)

Anyway, here is the review.

Mudbound, Hillary Jordan (Algonquin, March 2008)

It’s hard to pick a word that captures Mudbound, but I think the word that
comes closest is heft. Everything about the novel is hefty. The issues:
violent racism, incest, concentration camps. The setting: weather-ravaged
Mississippi stewing in the first signs of racial revolt. But it’s not
heavy, it’s hefty-just enough weight to be aware of it, but not so much
that you, or for that matter Jordan, can’t carry it until the end.

Perhaps the thing I most savored about Mudbound was the evocative
voices–not just of the individual characters, but also the quiet presence
of the author behind them, weaving them together. Each chapter is in a
different character’s voice, with six in all. Even as the action picks
up, with the viewpoints switching more and more quickly, the voices are so
consistent that I felt I could reach out and touch them. As Henry wanted
a farm, as Laura fell in love with Jamie, as Ronsel remembered Europe, I
did too. Most interestingly, you don’t just see the characters as they
see themselves, but also as all the other characters do, which gives them
a nice dimensionality. What Laura thinks she’s hiding–and I thought she
was hiding too–is plain as day to Florence and Henry. This changed her,
over the course of a few chapters, from a shrewd adultress to a foolish
girl to a cruel wife, until in my mind she settled somewhere amongst all
of those.

I picked up the book in the first place because Barbara Kingsolver blurbed
it, as the book won her 2006 Bellwether Prize, which she founded to
recognize “literature of social responsibility.” This is actually a great
phrase to describe Mudbound. Where some “socially responsible literature”
is self-conscious, and almost timid, Mudbound is bold. And bold is what
is needed to confront the nasty truth of racism and its consequences in
1940s Mississippi. In Mudbound, Jordan creates a a fictional world that
is somehow more real than nonfiction could have been, with the characters
settling into your brain and reminding you of their world and its
problems. Jordan’s book is a masterpiece of social responsibility not just
because of its subject matter, but also because it is so well-written that
the subject matter gets into your head and stays there.

As with most accomplished novels, it is very hard to sum up precisely why
Mudbound is so good. If you love literary fiction, or social
responsibility, or other such things, then of course you will love
Mudbound, because you are the primary audience. But even if you have a
slight distaste for literary fiction, as I do, you will love it too. It’s
a treat to read a book as masterfully crafted as this, but the
craftsmanship is just gravy compared to the meaty and satisfying character
development and story.

Well, I disappeared!  Oops.  I have been too busy to blog (new apt, new kitty, etc etc) but of course, a bookavore is NEVER too busy to read.  So!  The books I’ve been keeping myself sane with.  I am limiting myself to one-sentence reviews, though I will cheat with semicolons and em dashes.  These are in no particular order, not even the order I read them in.

8. Last Dance at the Frosty Queen, Richard Uhlig (Random House/Knopf, 2007).  I’ve been holding onto the ARC for months because I just knew it would be great, and it was; King Dork set in 1988 Kansas.

9.  Gossip of the Starlings, Nina de Gramont (Algonquin, June 2008).  Subtle but underwhelming; I think I am just not the audience (in the least because I am still a little over-full of books about precocious children, due to a binge late last year).

10.  Undone, Brooke Taylor (Walker, August 2008).  Little things about this book bugged me, and I hope some of them will be changed in the final edition, but overall I really liked it, and there were several scenes that really struck me.

11. The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff (Hyperion, 2008).  I picked this up because of all the buzz around it, and the buzz was what drove me through the first few slow-ish chapters, and thank God it did, because I loved this book, both as a well-crafted novel, but also for the boundary-pushing of its structure.

12.  Madness: A Bipolar Life, Marya Hornbacher (Houghton Mifflin, April 2008).  I still don’t know how I feel about this one, and I’ve had a couple of weeks to think about it; I especially had trouble believing that a person could have so many clear memories from very early childhood AND through mental illness and alcoholism, but then on the other hand, books like this remind me just how different everybody’s brains are, so who am I to judge.

13. Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives, Jim Sheeler (Penguin, May 2008).  This important book made me cry; it primarily follows Major Steve Beck, a Marine who has the unenviable duty of informing families in person that they’ve lost a child/spouse, as well as some of the families he informs through their grief.  I’m going to write a second sentence here, because it needs to be written: Major Steve Beck is a remarkable and admirable man.  This book is for pro-war and anti-war people, and it can help, even in a small way, close the gap between Americans whose every day is affected by war, and the bulk of us, who can go days without thinking about it.

14. Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone, Beth Lisick (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2008).  Bookslut opposed this book on principle (sick of all the year-long experiment books, a sentiment with which I agree more every day), but I read it anyway, and I liked it a fair bit, although I’m not sure I can sell it in hardcover.

15. Geek Magnet, Kieran Scott (Penguin, May 2008).  Solid light YA that even manages to have an *issue* at the heart of it without being annoying, but again, not sure about hardcover sales.

16. The Little Prisoner: How a Childhood Was Stolen and a Trust Betrayed, Jane Elliott (Harper, August 2008).   I’m not sure what about this childhood-abuse memoir was scarier: the abuse or the almost calm tone with which it is recounted; either way I wish I hadn’t chosen to read this before bed.

17. An Absolute Scandal, Penny Vincenzi (Doubleday/Random House, June 2008).  Oooo, how I love books about scandals that have multiple family dramas, especially when they’re British–this book hits every mark you expect and want it to, and in that sense is extremely satisfying up to the very end.  This would be a great beach read.

18. A Prisoner of Birth, Jeffrey Archer (St. Martin’s, March 2008).  Continuing in the British plot-driven novel theme, this is probably the best of his I’ve read since I picked up As the Crow Flies at the age of 13 when baby-sitting–again with a book that satisfies because it makes clear promises and follows through.  I don’t know why I find this more palatable in British novels.  Probably because British legal scenes are so much more dignified than American ones.

I think there may be a few more books rattling around the place that need writing up, and I will be posting a through review of Mudbound in the next few days.

6. Sweethearts, Sara Zarr (Little, Brown, April 2008).  I am finding it very hard to sum this book up into a word or even a phrase.  It’s not really like anything I’ve read before.  It is very quiet.  I think the thing I like best about it is that it is the right balance of plot and storytelling, if that makes sense.  In other words, there is a clear plot, which is well-paced and so on.  But it’s also set in a world that has more going on that just the plot, which is a hard trick to pull off.  I felt engrossed in the plot, and a huge part of that is that the book was so much more than its plot.  The basic plot, since I’ve just used the word a couple dozen times, is that the main character Jenna’s life goes out of whack when her childhood best friend returns–mainly because she is now popular, skinny, and adored, whereas when she and Cameron were friends she was outcast, fat, and picked on.  She has a weird connection with him, which is made especially strong due to a traumatic event, and when he returns she can’t hide who she feels she really is any longer.  I would recommend this to people who like YA and want to read something different than the “girl lands in wacky situation X and with help of wacky friends and even some support from lame-o weirdy parents overcomes and learns lesson Y” stuff that is all over the place.

7. The Appeal, John Grisham (Doubleday, 2008).  Grisham’s latest.  This book was exactly what I thought it would be in every way, except that: 1. Grisham is more liberal than I would have thought and 2. he doesn’t go for the cheap happy ending, which pleasantly surprised me.