February: Short Month, Short Reviews

I know that I said back in the 1990s sometime that I wanted an engrossing career, but teaching is a jealous bastard. It wants every little scrap of me. When I go deep to read, ponder and write, it catches me and yanks me back up by my hair and exposes me to the mental equivalent of harsh florescent light and the cacophony of a construction site. It's the first day of the semester, and teaching has already covered the nap of my mind like a nest of prickly burrs. I'm not going gently into that good classroom, am I? Vacation, I will miss you like hell, mourning those shapeless hours in which day and night were when I damn well said they were.

Since I'm feeling too frenzied and distracted to write proper reviews, flirty little capsule looks at the ten I read for February will have to do for now.

1. Mother Love, Deadly Love - Anne McDonald Maier. This true-crime book is about the infamous case in 1991 of a Texas mother who was ready to kill in the name of cheerleading. The mom, Wanda Holloway, was obsessed with her daughter becoming a high school cheerleader, so she unsuccessfully attempted to put a hit out on the mother of one of her daughter's rivals. Crazy stuff. As with most true-crime books, the author tends to put too much of her own scornful opinion into the pages. A quick, fun read if you're in that special mood for equal parts of ludicrous and horrifying.

2. Book Lust To Go - Nancy Pearl. My bookish heroine and girl-crush kicks smartly into armchair traveling mode, recommending both fiction and nonfiction from all over the world.

3. The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton. I'll do a proper review of this 1913 novel later. For now, just know that this is my new favorite Wharton novel. It's like The Age of Innocence with the corset strings tied not quite so tightly. Highly recommended. Now go read it.

4. To Paris Never Again - Al Purdy. I'm going to write a proper review of the last collection of poems Al Purdy published during his lifetime. After being away from poetry for so long, I'm really developing an affection for it again, thanks to Al.

5. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen. I never get these things right, but here goes: I predict that Jonathan Franzen will win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year.

6. Your Right to be Beautiful - Tonya Zavasta. I can knock down the ageing process and kick it in the groin if I start eating a raw food diet comprised mostly of fruit and vegetables and generous daily helpings of seaweed. Apparently my love for caffeine, chocolate and the more-than-occasional French fry is what's making me look like I use a contour map for a pillow.

7. Adventures With The Buddha - Jeffrey Paine (ed.) Since at least the last part of the 19th century, Westerners have been travelling to Asia to seek peace and spiritual fulfillment and writing about it. This book is a sampling of those writings. I found the excerpts quite choppy, but still entertaining.

8. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton. This novel about New York Society in the 1870s shows the strong influence that Henry James had on Edith Wharton, but Wharton is supple where James is often not, and she never gets buried under a ponderous mass of prose. Her writing is powerful and there is so much going on under the surface that The Age of Innocence is now one of the novels that I will revisit over the years. I also watched the 1993 movie, or, I should say in this case, motion picture.

9. Carrie - Stephen King. This story of a misfit-turned-prom-queen-turned-avenger seems so literary. Weighing in at a trim 253 pages, here's none of the Dickensian bloat that plagues some of King's later books. I haven't read this one since it was first published, and gobsmacks me to realize that this was a first novel. Even readers who don't like horror or Stephen King should read Carrie and check out the 1976 Brian DePalma movie of the same name as well.

10. Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir - Graham Roumieu. Wow, I really went off the rails after the Wharton book. This delightfully, grubbily illustrated no-holds-barred memoir written in Biglish (Bigfoot English) is so much fun. Nasty, silly, profane, a gross-out fest, an encyclopedia of yuck -- I can't praise it highly enough.

Sigh. That was really fun, but work beckons, inflaming my sighness. I feel kind of like Merle Haggard: Is the best of the free life behind me now? Are the good times really over for good?

It's Raining Books, Hallelujah

This continues to be my lucky month. Last week, my co-worker Mike came back from Canada "with a shit-tonne of books". He immediately sent out an invitation to friends and neighbors to come over and grab the old books he'd culled from his shelves to make room for the new. Since Mike's collection (as well as his sub-collections) is fresh and winsome with beguiling whiffs of quirkiness, I headed over there with The Spawn, who came to visit for a few days.

Although culling is becoming more and more of an elusive concept for me to grasp, never let it be said that I don't help out my friends in their time of need. Here's what I brought back to the now dangerously bulging Bybee-ary:

1. Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese - Mike Nelson. Funny, funny guy. I already peeked into this 2000 collection and read his review of The Bridges of Madison County. It made me laugh in that embarrassing way that comes out all snortified.

2. Race Matters - Cornel West. I've heard a lot about this book and also read a couple of excerpts from it over the years.

3. Gang Leader for a Day - Sudhir Venkatesh. What began as a graduate school project turned into several years of friendship with a gang leader and an inside view of gritty life on the street.

4. How Right You Are, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse. My first Wodehouse book. Yes, that's a tear of joy.

5. Meridian - Alice Walker. I've only read her short stories and The Color Purple, so I'm eager to check out her early novels.

6. Music for Chameleons - Truman Capote. Except for In Cold Blood, I've never read any Capote. This looks like a nice mix of fiction and non-fiction in one volume.

7. King Solomon's Mines - H. Rider Haggard. Ever since reading The Lost City of Z, I've wanted to read some Rider Haggard.

8. Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir - Graham Roumieu. I thought this was a children's picture book at first, so I grabbed it for the Children's Lit class I'll be teaching in now less than a week (eeeee!). Ooops. Here's an excerpt from near the front of the book: Stink Yes, everyone know Bigfoot smell like shit. Please make effort not to point out every time you see Bigfoot. Thank you. Oh well. Still looks like fun, and there's a bonus I just discovered: I was hoping that since Mike is Canadian and Roumieu looks like a French name, that Graham Roumieu was Canadian. Yes, he is! Yay, another one for the Canadian Book Challenge! Maple Leaf me!!!

9. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark. A nice Penguin copy with a still from the movie on the cover.

10. Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham. I already have a copy, but I love the Bantam Classic cover.

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11. Love Me: A Novel - Garrison Keillor. Not sure about this one, but Mike, that silver-tongued so-and-so, glibly persuaded me to take it. I have a big culture gap concerning Lake Wobegon and Keillor, but he's from Minnesota, my new favorite state, so yah, you betcha, gotta give it a go.

Good thing I brought The Spawn along. I only meant for him to experience Mike's collection firsthand (he was mesmerized by the graphic novel subcollection), but he proved to be effective as my beast of burden. After that, he rested up and went to Suwon the next day to meet a former exchange student from his alma mater for lunch. Somehow, they drifted into a bookstore. That's my boy. He came back a few hours later with a copy of The Mist by Stephen King for himself and a copy of Carrie for me! That's my boy!

People Go Away But Their Books Stay

People are moving out of my apartment complex in droves this month. Happens every year. It's the expat way. People get that anywhere but here feeling and go in search of their 'real life' which is either beckoning them seductively from a new and mysterious locale or standing on a back porch in their own native country screeching imperatives. People start packing, then they get that other feeling: Damn. Books are heavy. Enter Bybee, with a tear in one eye and a gleam of anticipation in the other. Thanks to my wanderlusty compatriots, I've picked up about 30 books in as many days. Here's my haul from last night:

1. The Pythons Autobiography By The Pythons. All about Monty Python. 359 pages of photos and fun. A must for fans. The best kind of coffee table book. Heavy as hell because of that slick paper, so this won't be going with me on the subway.

2. The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King. Dan K., the previous owner of most of these books, had a lot of King. I was looking for Carrie, but any King is good. There's a lot I haven't read yet.

3. Catch Me If You Can - Frank Abagnale. I liked the movie.

4. Hearts in Atlantis - Stephen King. King takes on Vietnam. Hmm...

5. Insomnia - Stephen King. I've been wanting to read this.

6. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert. Maybe time for a reread.

7. Myths and Legends of India. Looks like fun.

8. Aquariums of Pyeongyang: Ten Years in the North Korea Gulag - Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot. Sandra loaned me her copy of this one. I haven't gotten around to it yet, so I can get her copy back to her and keep this one on the TBR.

9. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski. Same thing, except change Sandra to Jill.

10. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene. I really need to read some GG. It's one of my literary gaps.

11. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. About three or four years ago, every single blog was Jane! Jane! Jane! Now that everyone's moved on to the Brontes or Edith Wharton, I can assert my contrarian streak and enjoy Austen's greatest hit again. I like that I found the Oxford edition. All those explanatory notes in the back are great, geeky fun.

12. My War at Home - Masuda Sultan. The author's parents immigrated from Afghanistan to the United States when she was five. At seventeen, they married her off to a doctor. After three years, she was able to get a divorce, which was almost unheard-of. This memoir is about that as well as an examination of being a Muslim in America and her trips back to Afghanistan. The style is really engaging. I'm looking forward to reading this and loaning it to my friends.

13. First, They Killed My Father - Loung Ung. I borrowed this book from one of my coworkers back in 2005. Harrowing reading. I learned a lot about Cambodia and the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. Everyone should read this and also Wild Swans.

14. When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After The White House - Patricia O'Toole. TR had an eventful life. I'm sure his emeritius years were just as fascinating, or maybe more.

15. Confessions of an Econimic Hit Man - John Perkins. I'm not sure why I picked this up. The fever was upon me, no doubt.

16. His Excellency - Joseph J. Ellis. A biography of George Washington. His birthday's coming soon.

17. Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 - Stephen E. Ambrose. I didn't realize that some of this construction went on during the Civil War.

18. John Adams - David McCullough. I've been circling this one for a while. I want to read it then watch the miniseries starring one of my main crushes, Paul Giamatti.

19. Truman - David McCullough. OH MY GOD YES!!!!!! I'm so happy to find this biography! I started a library copy back in 1997 after visiting the Truman Library in Independence but didn't finish it before it was due. I've seen it in several bookstores here, but even patriotism couldn't induce me to overcome my laziness and tote the 1,117-pager home. Now it's mine and I will finish! Probably not a subway book, though. Of course, it's been so long since my last attempt, I'm going to have to start over.

Thanks so much to Faulkner Guy, Alex, Arlene, Amy and Dan. I'll miss you all like hell, but I've got your books here to comfort me.

Things Left Undone: The DNF Files

One of my goals is to have a whole year in which I finished every book I started. This is not the year. Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits by Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi, is my first DNF. We parted company at the 100-page mark.

Although I was brought up Protestant, I've had a fascination with the Roman Catholic church for almost as long as I can remember. I've also been intrigued by the Jesuits who are legendary for their work as missionaries and educators. My Catholic acquaintances over the years have assured me that Jesuits are the toughest and the most brilliant of all the orders. When I read that the pope issued an order to shut the society down in the 1700s, (an edict which lasted about 40 years) that seemed to add to their badass patina. When I found Passionate Uncertainty at my library, I was eager to learn more. That's not this book's job, however.


Passionate Uncertainty is a 2002 sociological study of the American Jesuits AKA The Society of Jesus and it is much dryer and more academic in tone than I had expected from the title. I was expecting a stronger narrative style and a more thorough rendering of the history of the order. Instead, it's more of an inquiry into why the number of Jesuits has been dropping with great velocity even before Vatican II (1962-65) and what (if anything) can be done to reverse the trend.

Many Jesuits -- those who have stayed in the monastic life and those who decided to leave -- are quoted in the book, but it is nearly anonymously (they are identified by age and sometimes by career if they no longer have the religious vocation) and the quotes are used to bolster the assertions of the authors. The reader doesn't get to know any particular person's whole story. These men are data, but that's the type of book it is. This isn't what I expected, but then again, I am not the intended audience.

TBR Try

I participated in the TBR Dare during the month of January. Knowing myself, I didn't think I'd be able to read my own shelves until the end of March. I was right.

Most of January went according to plan, but on January 24 I saw a copy of Loving Frank at Leigh's house and borrowed it, meaning to read it sometime in February. Back at my apartment, I only meant to read the first page, but somehow ended up polishing it off that evening. Then I lit into White Noise, which I had borrowed from Paul. At the BOOKLEAVES meeting, Jill handed me a copy of Parched, which I read in the waning moments of January 31.

To sum up, I read a total of 12 books in January. Three of those books were someone else's. Nine of them were from my TBR, so that's a 75% success rate if you look at it that way. I steadfastly TBR'ed until my downfall on the 24th, or 77% of the month. I know that I can succeed at this challenge. Just wait till next year.

January, 2011: Reading & Reviewing, Part 2

Winter's Bone - Daniel Woodrell. I've found a new author to love and admire. He was right there all along under my nose in my own home state! Winter's Bone is as bleak and spare as its title. In spirit, this novel is very close to True Grit. In a part of the Missouri Ozarks that most definitely would not remind readers of Branson, 16-year-old Ree Dolly's father has gone missing. He used the family's dilapidated old house as collateral for part of his bond, and if he doesn't turn up for his court date, Ree, her mentally fragile mother and two little brothers will lose their home. Ree sets out to find her father and meets with incredible opposition, even from her closest kin. The movie version of Winter's Bone is brilliant as well. Daniel Woodrell's style has been christened "country noir". It certainly fits. I'm looking forward to reading and enjoying more of his work, particularly Tomato Red and Woe To Live On.


A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain - Robert Olen Butler. In this 1993 Pulitzer fiction winner, Vietnamese immigrants to Louisiana speak about their experiences in the old world and the new. It seems very daring that Butler decided to tell these fifteen stories from the Vietnamese viewpoint, but he's delicate, sensitive and very knowledgeable about that culture, so it works beautifully.



The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins. Finally, a young adult series that I can truly love. The Hunger Games are a yearly occurence in a future dystopian North America, now called Panem and divided into twelve districts, ruled by a wealthy and corrupt Capitol. Two young adults, aged 12-18 are selected from each district as a "tribute" to fight to the death the young people selected from the other eleven districts. The last person left alive receives fame and riches. The whole bloody spectacle is broadcast as a reality show. As the novel begins, 12-year-old Primrose Everdeen has been selected as a tribute from District 12, one of the poorer regions of Panem. Her older sister, Katniss, a seasoned hunter and poacher, volunteers to take her place. Collins' pacing is excellent and she doesn't flinch from presenting the violent aspects. Although it is by no means a funny book, I couldn't repress a sickly smile at how her take on this most gruesome of reality shows is pitch-perfect and so similar to what we see on television all the time now. Now that I'm invested in Katniss as a character, I'd like to finish the trilogy (Catching Fire and Mockingjay), but I don't see how they can pack as much of a wallop as The Hunger Games.


White Noise - Don DeLillo. Douglas Coupland fans, come and see how your author was influenced by this 1985 novel. The writing is hilarious, but the story as a whole never worked for me. The characters are cartoonish, two-dimensional and it feels so unsatisfying. I'm almost sure that this was DeLillo's point, but it was hard going. I would enjoy this story so much more in another form -- a graphic novel or a movie, for example.


Veronica - Mary Gaitskill. I didn't feel engaged by the main character, Alison, a former model down on her luck and less so by her friend, Veronica, who died of AIDS. (Their story is told by the technique of continuous cross-cutting from the past to the present, so that wasn't a spoiler.) I've been an admirer of Gaitskill's writing since her first collection of short stories, Bad Behavior came out back in 1988. I was so caught up in her edginess that I didn't notice until this novel what a gift Gaitskill has for imagery. Parts of Veronica verge on poetry. Mary Gaitskill reminds me of Lorrie Moore, except imagine Lorrie on recreational drugs in a fuck-you-the-world-is-shit kind of mood.


Parched - Heather King. At the age of thirteen, Heather King drank her first beer and took a headlong dive into the bottle that lasted twenty years. She reviews her entire life and her early years seem unremarkable. Quotations from Psalms and the Gospel begin each chapter, so one can be sure that spirituality played an important part in her recovery. There are also shadowy references to Catholic writers and practices studded throughout the book, so I wasn't surprised to read in the biographical note that she attends a Catholic church in Los Angeles. King's writing is at its best when she's describing her horrific and often pathetic drunken behavior, and I was agog at her description of how she managed to successfully complete law school during her sharp downward spiral. Clearly, she's brilliant. There's a sequel to this book that I'm hoping to find. Parched reminded me of another very good alcoholic memoir by Caroline Knapp called Drinking: A Love Story.

January 2011: Reading & Reviewing, Part 1

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Books read in January: 12

Total number of pages: 3,768

The Best of Everything - Rona Jaffe. I read this for the Reading Madly challenge. Three young women -- Caroline, April and Gregg -- go to New York City to live, work and fall in love. The latter is usually with disastrous results, since most of the men in the novel are white-collar shits. Caroline, who works her way up in a publishing company, seems to be the model for secretary-turned-ad copywriter Peggy Olson in Mad Men. What struck me about this book is how well-written and nicely edited it is. Most of the chapters are on the short side and episodic, so you can parcel The Best of Everything out to yourself in delectable slices or gobble it down whole, like I did. I'd love to cap this one off with a viewing of the 1959 movie.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain. I made sure that my internal culture clock was moved back to 1840s Missouri before I started this novel because I didn't want to be distracted by the liberal use of the N-word. In spite of this preparation, I still had a few nasty optical speed bumps. (I should say shoals rather than speed bumps, since the setting is the Mississippi River.) Aside from that, it was a great read -- most of the time. I was surprised at how much Huck and Holden Caulfield sound alike, for Huck has a bit of a depressive streak. Books don't usually make me cry, but I have to admit that I had something in my eye when Jim related his memory about his little daughter, Elizabeth. Then there were those last chapters at Tom Sawyer's relatives' farm! Mr. Clemens, I love you to bits, but what the hell? No spoilers, but I wanted to take Aunt Sally's thimble and crack it upside your gorgeous white head. Chapter The Last has some trouble spots as well, but it fits the previous action much better and restores to the ending that wonderful feeling of the river. I'll be scratching my head about that one part for a long time, though. Next summer, I'm planning a trip to Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain grew up. I've never been there. People tell me that it's a huge tourist trap, but a tourist trap connected to literature suits me right down to the ground.

Hitch-22 - Christopher Hitchens. I had a little trouble keeping up with his discussions about various political situations in different countries, but I enjoyed reading his portraits of his mother and father, his friends, including Martin Amis, Edward Said, Susan Sontag and Salman Rushdie, his first trip to the United States, his eventually becoming a U.S. citizen and the relatively late-in-life bombshell discovery that his mother's family was Jewish. This is a solid, well-crafted memoir.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth - Jeff Kinney. There's so much I love about this series: 1. The graphic novel aspect 2. It looks like a kid's diary, right down to the laborious-looking printing and the lined paper. 3. Greg's mother's name is Susan. 4. Rodrick's band is called "Loaded Diaper", which they spell in Motley Crue fashion. 5. Manny, the littlest Heffley boy is drawn about as big as a flea. 6. That grubby middle school feeling is captured perfectly. 7. Greg's hapless friend Rowley, who is first afraid he'll "catch puberty" then is elated when he starts sporting a huge Cyclopsian zit on his forehead. 8. Greg is so often oblivious in that cusp-of-adolescence way. 9. Greg reminds me a little bit of Doug Funnie. I really miss that show. 10. There's always a potentially fun event that the adults manage to turn into a cluster, like the talent show in the first book and the "Lock-in" in this book.

Loving Frank - Nancy Horan. I shied away reading this book for a long time because I thought it had the reek of chick-lit on it. Then I resisted it anew after reading T.C. Boyle's The Women because it covered similar ground and I was sure it wouldn't be as creative or audacious as Boyle's book. After spotting a copy at my friend Leigh's apartment, I finally decided to go for it. There is a little bit of overlap, and the storytelling is much more straightforward, but it has its own way of grabbing the reader's attention. My impression about chick-lit was wrong. The focus of the book is on Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Frank Lloyd Wright's mistress. Her giddiness at the beginning of their affair was predictable and annoying, but there's a gradual sea-change and readers see an intelligent portrayal of a complex woman who has an enormous capacity for self-delusion and we can feel and sympathize with Mamah's sharp shocks as she slowly emerges from her cloud. If this novel is filmed, it will take a talented and subtle actress to pull this off. I nominate Molly Parker, who played Alma Garrett in Deadwood. Ultimately, I recommend that people read both Loving Frank and The Women, in that order -- you get kind of a Mobius strip effect as a bonus.

The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason. Although it's technically very well-written, I couldn't warm up to this novel about a piano tuner, Edgar Drake, who is mysteriously summoned to Burma in 1886 for the express purpose of tuning an Erard grand piano. The pacing is decidedly 19th century, which I admire Mason for pulling off, but the long journey to the mysterious Dr. Anthony Carroll seems to take forever and the book starts to feel like the Burma edition of Lonely Planet. Once Edgar and Dr. Carroll meet, there is some mystery about the man, but there's not as much tension as one would expect because it's all jumbled up with Edgar's rhapsodizing about what a paradise Dr. Carroll lives in and we're back to Lonely Planet. There's also a lovely and mysterious Burmese woman who smells like spices and speaks perfect English and touches Edgar's hand fairly often and gets him all feverish...or was that the malaria? Finally, Things Happen in about the last 20 pages, but it's all rushed and confusing. I struggled with this book for 6 weeks and felt as if my effort had not been repaid in kind. Even so, I feel a little guilty for not liking the book better, since a couple of people in BOOKLEAVES thought it was wonderful. If you liked the gauzy quality of The English Patient and the journey-into-the-jungle aspect of Heart of Darkness and your preferred reading is travelogues, then you'll enjoy The Piano Tuner.

6 reviews down, 6 to go.