Readathon Spring 2013

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Melody Wilson

This is one of my favorite weekends of the year–Spring Readathon! I’ve got a stack of books that I hope to finish today and tomorrow. Unfortunately, I have work-work to do, but I should still get some serious reading-work done too.

Here’s what’s on the menu:

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (already started)
Look at Me by Jennifer Egan (already started)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
The New Republic by Lionel Shriver
Habana Libre by Tim Wendel

I’ll be updating this post as I read, so tune in throughout the weekend to follow my progress! And leave a comment below with a link to your blog or social network updates if you’re participating, too.

1:30 pm, Saturday

I’m about 2/3 of the way through Wild. It’s going well so far, although I’ve heard it falters and loses some speed around where I am. But Strayed is a talented, confident writer.

A bird just flew up to my window and peered in, flicking his head back and forth nervously. Kizmet ignored him.

8:17 pm, Saturday

I’m still trucking–or should I say trekking?–through Wild. The end is in sight; I’m pretty sure I’ll finish it tonight after dinner.

I was interrupted earlier by a flash of white outside the front window. A beautiful pale dog stood at my front door, only skittering away when Tinker barked at him. I went into a neighbor’s yard, where the dog was trying to squeeze back through the hole in the fence he must have escaped from. I was able to get a leash on him, and I took him over to the house with the broken fence. The woman, who was pet-sitting for her neighbor, hadn’t realized he had escaped, and was very grateful that we brought him back.

Good deed for the day: done! Now back to reading.

3:05 pm, Sunday

I finished Wild! Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Wow, Melody. I thought you were a reader, and here you are slacking off on Readathon, the most hallowed reading holiday of the year. All you’ve done is finish a book you’d already started before this weekend!”

You’re right, dear reader, in that my literary eyes are always too big for my overcommitted stomach, and I have not finished nearly as many books as I’d hoped. But I have not been sitting idly by! Oh, no, I’ve been very busy. “Busy how?” you ask skeptically. I’m glad you asked.

A Partial List of Things I Did While Reading Wild

Ate half a box of salt water taffy
Took Tinker on two long walks in the woods
Contemplated backpacking the Appalachian Trail
Added The Dream of a Common Language to my wish list
Added A Walk in the Woods to my wish list
Found A Walk in the Woods already on my bookshelf
Mowed half the lawn
Wondered why the Astapori wouldn’t just steal all of Dany’s dragons, instead of trading their entire army for one
Pledged to journal more, or at least blog more
Sat on my couch a lot
Decided to memorize more poetry, just in case I find myself alone in the woods for three months
Added The Ten Thousand Things to my wish list
Weeded half the garden
Pondered why I leave things half-done
Vowed to finish what I start
Finished the box of salt water taffy

Plympton Cashes In on Tradition

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Melody Wilson

I’ve been keeping an eye on a new publishing company, Plympton, and I thought I’d share what they’re doing. (Note: This is not paid content; I’m genuinely interested in their innovative work.)

I recently met Jennifer 8. Lee at a journalism conference. Lee is a reporter who launched Plympton, a digital publisher of serial fiction, with co-founder Yael Goldstein Love. In predicting publishing’s future, Lee and Love have looked to the past and drawn inspiration from serialized authors such as Dickens, Flaubert and Conrad.

Plympton is taking advantage of the rise in tablet and e-readers to release serial fiction. The e-installments of each book will be released biweekly or monthly, ranging from 7,000 to 25,000 words per issue. The founders hope to launch the careers of new writers and to expand the networks of already influential authors by offering solid editorial assistance and tapping into new reading technology such as tablets and e-readers.

Online serialization of stories are not new; Byliner, the Atavist, and Longform, to name a few, have made names for themselves publishing nonfiction and fiction stories of varying length. Plympton plans to focus exclusively upon publishing fiction. When I asked Lee, a well-known nonfiction writer, why she’s focusing on fiction, she said simply, “That’s where the money’s at.”

And she may be right; their month-long Kickstarter campaign raised nearly double the amount they had planned. It didn’t hurt that Plympton’s first three titles were featured prominently in Amazon’s most recent Kindle event, when CEO Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle Serials program.

This is an interesting business story, but more than that, it’s a compelling literary story. Publishers have scrambled for years to find a financially sound model for digital books, but Lee and Love may have found a simple solution that speaks both to the past and the future of fiction.

It’s not the only way forward, but it seems to be one viable path. I’m very interested to see how Plympton does in the next few months.

Top Ten Books About India

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Melody Wilson

I recently returned from a two-week trip to India. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to write a few articles about my time there, but suffice to say it is a rich, complex, and utterly beautiful country.

I’m nearly done with Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, a truly incredible work of nonfiction, but I’m already jonesing for more. Here are the top ten books–fiction and nonfiction–that I’d like to read about India.

10. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

9. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge’s cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are often on his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. Kiran Desai’s brilliant novel, published to huge acclaim, is a story of joy and despair. Her characters face numerous choices that majestically illuminate the consequences of colonialism as it collides with the modern world.

8. The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph
Ousep Chacko, journalist and failed novelist, prides himself on being “the last of the real men.” This includes waking neighbors upon returning late from the pub. His wife Mariamma stretches their money, raises their two boys, and, in her spare time, gleefully fantasizes about Ousep dying. One day, their seemingly happy seventeen-year-old son Unni—an obsessed comic-book artist—falls from the balcony, leaving them to wonder whether it was an accident. The Illicit Happiness of Other People—a smart, wry, and poignant novel—teases you with its mystery, philosophy, and unlikely love story.

7. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us an insider’s view of this stunning metropolis. He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs; following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse; opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood; and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks.

6. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
Britain’s three-hundred-year relationship with the Indian subcontinent produced much fiction of interest but only one indisputable masterpiece: E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, published in 1924, at the height of the Indian independence movement. Centering on an ambiguous incident between a young Englishwoman of uncertain stability and an Indian doctor eager to know his conquerors better, Forster’s book explores, with unexampled profundity, both the historical chasm between races and the eternal one between individuals struggling to ease their isolation and make sense of their humanity.

5. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation—and a startling, provocative debut.

4. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth’s novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find — through love or through exacting maternal appraisal — a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.

3. The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar
As university students in late 1970s Bombay, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta were inseparable. Spirited and unconventional, they challenged authority and fought for a better world. But over the past thirty years, the quartet has drifted apart. Then comes devastating news: Armaiti, who moved to America, is gravely ill and wants to see the old friends she left behind. The World We Found is a dazzling masterwork from the remarkable Thrity Umrigar, offering an unforgettable portrait of modern India while it explores the enduring bonds of friendship and the power of love to change lives.

2. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
These eight stories by beloved and bestselling author Jhumpa Lahiri take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life. Here they enter the worlds of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. Rich with the signature gifts that have established Jhumpa Lahiri as one of our most essential writers, Unaccustomed Earth exquisitely renders the most intricate workings of the heart and mind.

1. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s debut novel is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.

Other titles I’d like to read (if I magically find myself with more time):

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
A Free Man by Aman Sethi

Have you read any of these? Are there any good books about India I’m missing?

I receive a very small commission when you purchase the book through the above links. Thank you for helping to support my site–and my book addiction!

Nonfiction Book Group at One More Page

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Melody Wilson

I’m excited to announce that I am now the leader of the Nonfiction Book Group at Arlington’s One More Page Books & More, one of my favorite places in the world. We’ll meet on the second Monday of every month, beginning tomorrow at 7 pm.

My first selection is Boomerang: Travels in the Third World by Michael Lewis. I know this is late notice, but I would love to see supporters of my blog attend the group. Even if you haven’t read the book–I’ll bring you up to speed!
Here’s more info on Boomerang:

Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a piñata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.

Michael Lewis’s investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish foreigners. But when he turns a merciless eye on California and Washington, DC, we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humor, and we understand the reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations.

I hope you can join me tomorrow or in future months. We’ve got some great books planned!

“This Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Melody Wilson

Title: This Boy’s Life
Author: Tobias Wolff
ISBN: 9780802136688
Pages: 304
Release date: 1989
Publisher: Grove Press
Genre: Memoir
Format: Paperback
Source: Personal collection (memoir class)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Toby Wolff is used to running–driving from Florida to Utah to Seattle to escape his mother’s boyfriend; moving to Concrete, WA, with his stepfather; dreaming of high school in Paris, France. But when he stops to face himself, he finds only scattered shadows of an identity.

Tobias Wolff uses imagery, symbolism, and place to great effect to tell the story of his turbulent boyhood. As a young boy growing up in the fifties, Toby yearns for a stable life and a happy family, and when he doesn’t find it, he sets out on a self-destructive path. Struggling with how to be a man—or how to be a boy—is a central theme in the book.

I love when place is a crucial part of a story, and for Wolff, geography is intricately related to identity. As he moves from Florida to Utah to Seattle to Concrete, WA (and contemplates Paris and the East Coast), his vision of himself changes. Each move is an opportunity to reinvent himself, to try on a new version of who he might be. Yet for all of his reimaginings and reinventions, Wolff remains the same person at his core: insecure and in search of acceptance (particularly from his male peers and father figures).

Each chapter is a story on its own, but they all contribute to the main arc of the book: Wolff’s journey to himself. Despite the somewhat disjointed nature of the anecdotes, which can feel strung together, Wolff manages to keep a tension about who he will become. Observations like “Because I did not know who I was, any image of myself, no matter how grotesque, had power over me” are a common refrain throughout the book.

He uses vivid images of his external environment to reflect his inner turmoil. At the beginning of the book, he sets the stage for the journey he and his mother embark upon, and the cycles of tension and relief that will follow them:

We left Sarasota in the dead of summer, right after my tenth birthday, and headed West under low flickering skies that turned black and exploded and cleared just long enough to leave the air gauzy with steam. (page 4)

The salmon his stepfather shows him in Seattle are symbolic of the slow emotional death Toby felt with the man:

They had come all the way from the ocean to spawn here, Dwight said, and then they would die. They were already dying. The change from salt to fresh water had turned their flesh rotten. Long strips of it hung off their bodies, waving in the current. (page 75)

Throughout his misadventures, Toby oscillates between feelings of overwhelming guilt and carefree indifference. His description of wanting to confess to a priest, but not understanding what he felt guilty for, resonated deeply with me:

I thought about what I wanted to confess, but I could not break my sense of being at fault down to its components. Trying to get a particular sin out of it felt like fishing a swamp, where you feel the tug of something that at first seems promising and then resistant and finally hopeless as you realize that you’ve snagged the bottom, that you have the whole planet on the other end of your line. (page 17)

This is an original and poetic way to describe how Toby feels the weight of the world—the whole planet—on his shoulders. He feels responsible for his mother’s happiness, but he is without a male role model who might show him the way. The closest he gets to a healthy male father figure are the priest to whom he was confessing, and Mr. Howard at the end of the book—who sets Toby on the bumpy path of manhood.

Until then, Toby feels disconnected from who he thinks he should be and the actions he takes. This is on display in the chapter when he steals the family car and it breaks down:

My footsteps were loud on the roadway. I heard them as if they came from somebody else. The movement of my legs began to feel foreign to me, and then the rest of my body, foreign and unconvincing, as if I were only pretending to be someone. I watched this body clomp along. I was outside it, watching it without belief. Its imitation of purpose seemed absurd and frightening. I did not know what it was, or what was watching it so anxiously, from so far away. (page 175)

He also offer excellent descriptions of other people and places, with an astonishing ability to recall detail—as when he describes the home of the man seducing his mother. Wolff easily encapsulates what a person is like—even as he struggles to define himself. This description of a fellow boarder in Seattle is one of my favorites for its simplicity and insight:

Kathy was young and plain and shy. She stayed in her room most of the time. When people addresses her she would look at them with a drowning expression, then softly ask them to repeat what they had said. (page 38)

Indeed, Wolff offers insight and wisdom throughout the book. It is an account of an irrepressible young boy, to be sure, but it is also the story of an older man looking back on his experiences and tracing the thread of his identity. Some of my favorite observations include:
• “Power can be enjoyed only when it is recognized and feared.” (page 25)
• “I recognized no obstacle to miraculous change but the incredulity of others. This was an idea that died hard, if it ever really died at all.” (page 89)
• “Whatever it is that makes closeness possible between people also puts them in the way of hard feelings if that closeness ends.” (page 217)

Ultimately, Wolff does begin to discover who he is, but the road is not easy. Is it ever?

Interested? Read it for yourself! Buy This Boy’s Life from an independent bookstore or Amazon (Kindle version is available).

Snow Day!

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Melody Wilson

My first week back from India, and I’m greeted with the first real snowstorm of winter. At least I get to work from home and stay cozy!

“I Was Told There’d Be Cake” by Sloane Crosley

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Melody Wilson

Title: I Was Told There’d Be Cake
Author: Sloane Crosley
ISBN: 9781594483066
Pages: 240
Release date: April 1, 2008
Publisher: Riverhead
Genre: Nonfiction: essays
Format: Paperback
Source: Personal collection (memoir class)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Sloane Crosley didn’t grow up in a broken home, or a broken neighborhood. She wasn’t abused and didn’t abuse alcohol or drugs. She has two loving parents and one fun sister, and very few truly bad things seemed to have happened to her.

As a memoirist, she might have mourned her bad luck. Instead she turned lemonade into a gin shandy.

Crosley’s collection of essays, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, finds meaning and hilarity in the mundane. From recovering after painful breakups to memories of summer camp to being locked out of her apartment, Crosley brings wisdom and snark to what seems like a very average life.

In fact, her average life allows the reader easily to imagine herself in those situations—and to think of them with good humor and perhaps a new perspective. Everything about her seems relateable, and she has a consistent (and consistently uproarious) point of view. And this isn’t just her childhood diary splashed down on the page; she thinks carefully about scenes and experiences common to most people that will illustrate her points.

Crosley’s voice is strong, and it really carries the book, uniting an otherwise disparate collection. She uses humor at every turn to engage her audience—like when she discusses changing her name: “It’s like imagining myself with a penis. Sure, I’ve seen them used but I’m not quite sure what I would do with one.” Or, in an unrelated piece:

Unfortunately, after a certain age, it becomes difficult to share any news with your parents that begins with ‘I have something to tell you’ without sensing the hopeful expectation behind their voices: they want me to be a lesbian. That would explain so much for them…

The author is at her best when she lets her imagination run loose, as when she describes alternate histories for herself or her characters—as when she imagines what life would be like being from Europe or somewhere other than the suburbs:

These are places in which people are casually trilingual and everyone knows how to make good coffee and gourmet dinners at home without having to shop for specific ingredients. Everyone has hip European sneakers that effortlessly look like the exact pair you’ve been searching for your whole life. Everything is sweetened with honey and even the generic-brand Q-tips are aesthetically packaged. People die from old age or crimes of passion or because they fall off glaciers.

Or when her bridezilla friend announces she won’t keep her last name–and neither will her new husband:

I had a vision of Boris and Francine with no last names, falling off the grid somewhere in Idaho, living off the fat of the land, forgoing utensils and property tax and having a dog named Bark and a kid named Slipper Bubble.

When she comes back to reality, the truth is even more hilarious and unexpected: In the case of the last example, they’re both changing their last name to Universe.

Crosley is endlessly imaginative and a master of characterization. Yet she is disciplined, reining in her wild ideas before they trample over the narrative.
I like how she adds philosophical meaning to every story—themes that extend beyond the anecdotes she relates. Despite her snark, she’s wise and insightful, like when she wonders, “What am I asking when I ask for a [plastic] pony but to be taken for more unique than I probably am?”

It drives home the point that the quality of writing is what matters, not necessarily the experiences themselves. Sure, it’s great if you have a marvelous/crazy scene from your childhood, but Crosley teaches that you can find good material in anything if you think about it long enough.

Of course, the book may not be for everyone. I can identify with Crosley’s experiences, as an unmarried, college-educated, white, twenty-something woman myself–but I could see how being outside the target audience could be alienating. However, I enjoyed the book, and recommend it if you’re in the mood for something light and fun.

Quote of note: “I think husbands are like tattoos–you should wait until you come across something you want on your body for the rest of your life…”

Interested? Read it for yourself! Buy I Was Told There’d Be Cake from an independent bookstore or Amazon (Kindle version is available).

Top Ten NBCC Picks I Want to Read

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Melody Wilson

The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) recently announced its 2012 finalists for outstanding books. While there are a handful of titles I’ve been planning to read, there are also several books I’d never even heard of–which is surprisingly common with the NBCC annual picks.

Here are the titles I’m most looking forward to reading:

10. The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande
When Reyna Grande’s father leaves his wife and three children behind in a village in Mexico to make the dangerous trek across the border to the United States, he promises he will soon return from “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) with enough money to build them a dream house where they can all live together. His promises become harder to believe as months turn into years, and their eventual reunion is rocky. In this extraordinary memoir, award-winning writer Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years, capturing all the confusion and contradictions of childhood, especially one spent torn between two parents and two countries.

9. Magnificence by Lydia Millet
This novel presents Susan Lindley, a woman adrift after her husband’s death and the dissolution of her family who embarks on a new phase in her life after inheriting her uncle’s sprawling mansion and its vast collection of taxidermy. In a setting both wondrous and absurd, Susan defends her legacy from freeloading relatives and explores the mansion’s unknown spaces. Funny and heartbreaking, Magnificence explores evolution and extinction, children and parenthood, loss and revelation.

8. Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt
In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddle of existence from the ancient world to modern times.

7. In the House of the Interpreter by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
In his second memoir, Kenyan novelist, poet, playwright, and literary critic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o recounts his childhood and coming of age in British-ruled Kenya in the 1950s, against the backdrop of the tumultuous Mau Mau Uprising for independence and Kenyan sovereignty. In the House of the Interpreter hauntingly describes the formative experiences of a young man who would become a world-class writer and, as a political dissident, a moral compass.

6. House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid
A crowning achievement in the career of revered journalist Anthony Shadid—who died while on assignment in Syria in February 2012—House of Stone tells the story of rebuilding Shadid’s ancestral home in Lebanon amid political strife.

5. The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon.

4. NW by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragi-comic new novel follows four Londoners as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end. Depicting the modern urban zone – familiar to town-dwellers everywhere – Zadie Smith’s NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.

3. Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon
Andrew Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so. All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original thinker, Far from the Tree explores themes of generosity, acceptance, and tolerance—all rooted in the insight that love can transcend every prejudice. This crucial and revelatory book expands our definition of what it is to be human.

2. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.

1. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
After a ferocious firefight in Iraq is captured by news crews, the soldiers involved are sent on a media-intensive nationwide Victory Tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. Now, on Thanksgiving Day, they find themselves slated to be part of the halftime show alongside Destiny’s Child. Over the course of this day, Specialist William “Billy” Lynn, a nineteen-year-old Texas native, will begin to understand difficult truths about himself, his country, his struggling family, and his brothers-in-arms—soldiers both dead and alive. In the final few hours before returning to Iraq, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision, and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.

Will you be reading any of these titles? Did any other NBCC picks stand out to you?

I receive a very small commission when you purchase the book through the above links. Thank you for helping to support my site–and my book addiction!

“Doomsday Book” by Connie Willis

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Jackson

Title: Doomsday Book
Author: Connie Willis
ISBN: 9780553562736
Pages: 592
Release date: August 1, 1993
Publisher: Spectra
Genre: Science fiction
Format: Paperback
Source: Personal collection
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Doomsday Book tells the story of young Kivrin, an undergraduate at Oxford, who wants to travel back in time. Such technology is typically forbidden to undergrads, and doubly so for the dangerous and uncharted fourteenth century. But she manages to finagle a trip and heads back to 1320 for the chance at some first-hand historical reporting. Back in 2054, things start falling apart as soon as Kivin is gone. An epidemic sweeps through Oxford, and the school falls under medical quarantine. It’s up to her advisor, Mr. Dunworthy, to make sure the machines are still running so Kivrin can get back.

But things are even worse for Kivrin. She is afflicted by the same disease that has crippled Oxford. And without any companions or medical support, she is at the mercy of the “contemps” to nurse her back to healthy. And while they seem fortunately (and inexplicably) immune to Kivrin’s ailment, the shadow of pestilence still hangs over the entire village.

This book is difficult to summarize without giving away key plot points which, while telegraphed pretty obviously by Willis, are nonetheless not certain until well into the story. But overall, the book has a great story to tell and it starts off with a bang. The middle third of the book is the weakest, although it is important thematically to set up the final act. When Kivrin and the villagers confront their own helplessness and fear in the face of things beyond anyone’s control, it is truly heart-wrenching. The best scene in the book is when Kivrin is telling a story to a fourteenth-century girl (Agnes) about a maiden who wanders into the woods:

“Once in a far land there was a maiden. She lived by a greater forest–”

“Her father said, ‘Go not into the woods.’ But she was wicked and did not listen,” Agnes said.

“She was wicked and did not listen,” Kivrin said. “She put on her cloak–”

“Her red cloak with a hood,” Agnes said. “And she went into the wood, even though her father told her not to.”

Even though her father told her not to. “I’ll be perfectly all right,” she had told Mr. Dunworthy. “I can take care of myself.”

“She should not have gone into the woods, should she?” Agnes said.

“She wanted to see what was there. She thought she would go just a little way,” Kivrin said.

“She should not have,” Agnes said, passing judgment. “I would not. The woods are dark.”

Without context, this story is just a story, with a rather obvious allegory attached. But within the book, this passage moved me to tears. Little Kivrin, full of misplaced confidence, had strolled into the past and learned just how vulnerable she and everyone around her really were.

The story is also rare in that for a book as well-researched, plotted and written, it nonetheless has some glaring flaws. Most specifically, Willis is good at developing her primary characters, but the secondary characters are just cardboard cutouts that have only one feature. One guy is a useless intellectual; everything he ever does in the book will be based on that. One woman is an insufferable harridan; expect her to be insufferable in every interaction she has with anyone throughout the story. And so on.

But this does not detract too much from the overall story, and most of these characters are virtually absent in the final third of the book anyway. This book provided me with a better understanding of the fourteenth century, and it was quite gripping to boot. This is top-notch science fiction, and worthy of the accolades (including Hugo and Nebula awards) it has received.

Interested? Read it for yourself! Buy Doomsday Book from an independent bookstore or Amazon (Kindle version is available).

I receive a very, very small commission when you purchase the book through the above links. Thank you for helping to support my site–and my book addiction!

“S.E.C.R.E.T.” by L. Marie Adeline

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Melody Wilson

Title: S.E.C.R.E.T.
Author: L. Marie Adeline
ISBN: 9780385346436
Pages: 288
Release date: February 5, 2013
Publisher: Broadway
Genre: Fiction (erotic)
Format: eBook (ARC)
Source: TLC Book Tours
Rating: 4 out of 5

It’s been a long time since Cassie Robichaud has felt desired. She was estranged from her alcoholic husband when he crashed his car and died five years ago, and they never really had a healthy relationship in the first place. Since then, her romantic life has sputtered and died.

So when Cassie spots two lovebirds at her waitressing job, it’s no wonder she feels pangs of envy. And when the woman leaves behind a little journal, can you blame Cassie for peeking?

Was I lonely? Yes, of course. But I was also slowly shutting down parts of myself, seemingly for good, like a large factory going dark, sector by sector. I was only thirty-five and I had never had really great, mind-blowing, liberating, luscious sex, the kind that notebook seemed to allude to. . . . At home, my body was a warm place for the cat to sleep on. How had this happened? How had this become my life?

Cassie’s curiosity leads her to discover a secret society, the mission of which is to satisfy the deepest fantasies of women like Cassie. (What luck!) S.E.C.R.E.T. aims to provide Safe, Erotic, Compelling, Romantic, Ecstatic, and Transformative experiences for the women who are selected to join. Cassie’s life, which had seemed so static, changes almost overnight, and she is set on an irreversible path to self-discovery and joy.

Talk about reading for pleasure!

I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Gray, but I have read a lot about it. This erotic story succeeds where Fifty seemed to fail: it chronicles the story of a woman who is empowered by sexual encounters with handsome, respectful men, showing sex scenes that are both titillating and safe.

The writing is decent, with a few well-worn cliches that pop up here and there:

Still listening to the conversation on the phone, he gave me a smile that only people born with charisma to burn know how to give. It literally changed the temperature in the room.

I’m admittedly new to erotica, and there was one ting that kept bothering me: I kept waiting for something bad to happen. Perhaps my tastes skew too dark, but usually in stories when it’s going well for the heroine, a dark stranger appears and destroys everything. Instead, a cheerful woman shows up and rebuilds everything. I couldn’t help feeling a sense of foreboding. When would the other shoe drop? When the plot does twist unexpectedly, then, it caught me off guard, which I always like–I love being surprised by a book!

Quote of Note: “[F]ear can’t be released without our permission. Since we ourselves generate it, only we can let it go.”

Interested? Read it for yourself! Purchase S.E.C.R.E.T. at your local bookstore or on Amazon (Kindle edition available).