Collected Miscellany

Speaking of In the Mail, I thought I would bring this series up-to-date somewhat with a catch up post. So here are some interesting titles that came my way that I haven’t managed to read yet but for which I still hold out hope.

Memorial by Bruce Wagner

New York Magazine:

Memorial is an infinitely detailed, completely engrossing picture of modern America, and Wagner is a kind of genius—but it’s not a fully human world. One senses, as Wagner yanks his characters around on their tracks or crushes them beneath his cruel wheels, a certain authorial sadism. Often—this is possibly a trait he shares with his city—he’s cruelest to the weakest. Watching them suffer can be almost unbearable, but Wagner doesn’t turn away. In the end, Wagner tweaks his karmic system (the Hindu and Buddhist themes Wagner has explored in previous books are developed further here) to give everyone what he or she deserves.

San Francisco Chronicle:

Which is to say that this is a typical Bruce Wagner novel, and therefore it’s unlikely to greatly alter anyone’s opinion of his work. By now he’s a genre unto himself, and all of his conventions are at play: adrenalized, hyper-referential prose; ridiculous narrative coincidences, as much jokes on their own implausibility as storytelling crutches; long rants about the hideous cultural state of America, most of them unprintable here; characters who are jangled heaps of neurosis and rant; inklings of Buddhist detachment undercut by sneers at professional Buddhists with “West Side affluence”; lawsuits, lifestyles of the rich and famous and lavishly dropped names, in this case, celebrity architects; and savagely knowing dissections of high-end excess, perhaps best summarized by the “special black toilet paper from Spain” gracing one private jet’s restroom. “Memorial” is sometimes exhausting, often riotously funny and never embarrassed by the breadth of its rage.

Continue reading →

For those of you who aren’t paying attention to the calendar today is Friday the 13th! Oooh, scary. Not coincidentally this is also the release date for the final book in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. The End is the thirteenth, and final, book in the popular children’s series. So there is a bunch of symbolism and whatnot involved here. Here is the NYT:

“The End” is indeed the end of what the author calls “170 chapters of misery” as well as a marketing extravaganza by HarperCollins, which is releasing 2.5 million copies, its record for a children’s book. Young readers are looking to the book, which takes place on a forgotten island, to resolve at long last a set of complicated mysteries, chief among them the identity of Beatrice, to whom each book is dedicated, and the relationship between Beatrice and Lemony Snicket himself. These and other weighty matters are obsessively debated on the numerous unofficial Lemony Snicket Web sites and blogs that have sprung up since the series’s inception, most notably 667 Dark Avenue (at asoue.proboards11.com), named for the sinister high-rent apartment building in the sixth book, “The Ersatz Elevator.”

I will confess that this is one children’s book phenomenon that I have not joined. I read the first book and found it rather blah. If you are dying for information or more marketing please visit the website.

*Bonus points if you get the title reference without the aid of Google.

Continue reading →

One of the many things that seemed to get lost in my dark night of blogging the last few months of distractions and less content was the In the Mail feature.. This involved my posting links and comments about books that I have received, wait for it, In. The. Mail. I am not sure how useful readers find this, but it serves a very useful purpose to me. A couple actually: it makes people aware of what books are out there; it rewards publishers for sending me books; and it makes me feel less guilty about not being able to read all of the interesting books that come my way. So forthwith below please find some books that have found their way to my door.

Four Walls by Vangelis Hatziyannidis

Publishers Weekly:

Themes of isolation and imprisonment dominate Hatziyannidis’s enjoyable and peculiar debut novel. Set in a remote village on one of the Greek islands, the novel centers on Rodakis, a 25-year-old “essentially unemployed” and “irascible” loner who takes in Vaya, a woman on the run who carries a suspicious amount of luggage with her, at the urging of the village priest. Vaya and Rodakis slowly learn to trust one another, and Rodakis learns that Vaya has been hiding her infant daughter, Rosa, in one of her trunks. The three form an odd family, although, refreshingly, Rodakis and Vaya do not immediately develop a romantic relationship. While the early chapters are weakened by the stilted translation and a series of confusing flashbacks and flash forwards, Hatziyannidis’s narrative hits its stride once Vaya encourages Rodakis to take up his dead father’s bee-keeping business. Their recipe for honey draws unwanted attention from across the island and abroad, shattering their cloistered lives; everyone, it seems, wants the recipe, though none as badly as a group of monks who kidnap Rodakis and imprison him in a cave for years. It’s a credit to Hatziyannidis that he pulls off a plausibly happy ending.

The Guardian:

With the death of his beekeeper father and welcome estrangement from his controlling sister, Rodakis enjoys a contented, if reclusive, life in his old family home on a Greek island – until he is asked by the local priest to take in a mysterious, distressed young woman. After a tentative beginning, he adopts the child she has smuggled with her, and she persuades him to resurrect his father’s honey-making business. Years of dedication lead the pair to concoct a secret formula, and the prized honey soon attracts not only the greed of the islanders, but also two benignly sinister individuals, who happen to hold the balance of power in the region – a rich landowner and an unscrupulous abbot. Yet Rodakis, despite extreme pressure, refuses to yield the contents of his treasured recipe to his inquisitors. Vangelis Hatziyannidis’ first novel delightfully blends the serious (if overemphasised) themes of imprisonment and solitude with humour, humility, horribly violent deaths, coincidences and miracles – all of which add up to a witty fable, satisfyingly replete with the essential ingredients of magic realism.

Continue reading →

One of the more difficult tasks a book reviewer has is to distinguish between the subjective and the objective; between what I like and what is good or bad. I don’t want to get into the whole is objectivity even possible or whether it is relevant to the arts. But it is an interesting debate.

What brought this to mind was my recent reading of The Geographer’s Library the first novel of writer – currently an online writer and editor for The Economist – Jon Fasman. In reading the book, and some of the reviews, it struck me that a reader’s particular taste and style preference would be critical in how they respond. Now, obviously this is a rather ubiquitous situation, right? A reader’s preferences always impact how they react. Yes and no. Certain unique styles or structure produce what might be called the risk reward component. A traditional story line or structure entails a lot less risk as most readers are familiar and comfortable with it. The more you deviate from convention the more risk you take of turning off readers. Maybe you bring in different readers, but there is still a risk involved.

Fasman, however, doesn’t take the convectional route. One part of the Geographer’s Library is in most aspects a conventional mystery. You have a mysterious death and a lead character that seeks to uncover the truth. The other part of the book describes, or catalogs, fifteen objects that were stolen from the titular library and how they are being brought together in the present – or near present.

How you react to these two different styles or approaches and their interaction will determine your response to the book. Below you will find some examples of how reviewers reacted and my own reaction as well.

Continue reading →

**I have been procrastinating about writing this book review for weeks. For some reason when it comes to non-fiction I have a hard time knowing what to say. I want to be detailed and tackle the issues involved but I just don’t seem to have enough time and energy to write that kind of review. It eventually dawned on me that this is a blog not the Claremont Review of Books. So below find a quick overview of the book and my reaction.**

If you are a conservative Republican who believes in limited government there should be a warning label on this book: May Cause Depression (should not be read just before an election). Of course if you have been paying attention, the fact that the GOP has lost its way on fiscal discipline is no surprise. But a detailed description of just how bad things have gotten, and just how quickly the party lost its courage, is less than encouraging to say the least. And that is a good description of Stephen Slivinski’s Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government.

Buck Wild basically has two components: a history of recent GOP attempts to cut or constrain government; and an argument for divided government as a way to slow down the growth of government. The first component is deeply researched and well written; and rather depressing. The second component is interesting and worth thinking about but ultimately not convincing in my mind.

Continue reading →

In honor of the Online Book Fair, I thought I would highlight some books that were brought to my attention by the fine folks at FSB. The truth is I probably wouldn’t have read any of the books below if they weren’t brought to my attention by FSB. This is what good publicists do, they help bring good books to readers.

-> The Husband by Dean Koontz:

The Husband is an exciting and entertaining thriller from a master of the genre. Koontz fans are sure to love this latest release while those reading him for the first time will be entertained and impressed.

-> Alibi by Joseph Kanon:

Part historical drama, part murder mystery, part spy thriller Alibi is a tense and gritty story set in an exotic time and place. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys suspense, tension, and intrigue with a little history and romance mixed in.

-> Rosa by Jonathan Rabb:

Call it what you will (historical fiction, police procedural, spy thriller, psychological drama) but in the end Rosa is just a good story with interesting characters and a unique setting. And in the end that is often all that matters.