book report #9

*Love With a Chance of Drowning (Torre DeRoche) - a fun and entertaining memoir about a woman who overcame her fear of water (hence the title) and embarked on a three-year sailing adventure from LA to Australia and beyond. I'm not normally a fan of memoirs but I am a fan of boats and love stories, and the humorous and familiar tone DeRoche took to tell her story kept me engaged instead of at arm's length. While I doubt I'll sell all my possessions to live full-time on an 18-foot boat, this book almost made me want to take sailing lessons and definitely made me want to jump on the next flight to French Polynesia.

*Undermajordomo Minor (Patrick DeWitt) - this one was strange and not in a good way. I never quite figured out if it was a fairy tale, allegory, magical realism, or some other type of literally genre I never learned about in college. Amazon reviews call it "delightful, wacky, quirky, and charming" but I just thought it was weird. Not my cup of tea.

*Wild By Nature (Sarah Marquis) - honestly, this book eventually pissed me off so much that I stopped reading it about 75 pages from the end. It started off with promise - independent female explorer sets off to walk the length of entire countries - Mongolia, China, Thailand - on her way to Australia. After some obvious setbacks (weather, equipment failure, more weather, a tooth extraction) her trek totaled nearly three years in time, and this book is her memoir about the walk. But at no point did she ever say why she was obsessively walking. Was she running from something? To something? To discover something? To learn something? And even though she had helpers and fixers throughout her journey (she was given a contact person in each country and boxes of supplies at each stopping point) she never justified how she could simply take three years out of her life to walk. I guess it was a sponsored trip? Even if it was, she wrote with such a jarringly jib tone throughout (oops! almost died again lol) that it was entirely off-putting. I had high hopes for this one and it sadly did not come through.

*A Book of Silence (Sara Maitland) - I've obviously had female-adventurer memoirs on the brain this year, and this one was interesting and informative, if not a little too heavy on the dry research. Regardless, it was an interesting concept - a post-marriage woman in her 50's goes in search of silence - but what is it, exactly? And what does prolonged silence do to a person? I most enjoyed when Maitland got personal and reflected on her own silent discoveries as opposed to the more scholarly sections, but even so, this book got me thinking about my own auditory experiences, including but not limited to the ironic fact that I read the majority of this book on the subway, a notably loud method of transport that leaves little room for silent introspection.

*The Nest (Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney) - an all-around wonderful novel. A smart, funny, and captivating story that was a welcome blend of epic family saga and modern relevance. The characters were beautifully flawed but entirely relatable and the plot was so enticing that I actually woke up early one morning to finish reading it before heading out for the day. I'd been in a bizarre literary rut for the past few months (see above) and this was the perfect story to get me back into the reading game.

*We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Karen Joy Fowler) - part mystery (but not really), part anthropological study (but not really), part memoir (but not really) and part tell-all (but not really), this beautifully bizarre work of fiction is narrated by a woman who was raised alongside a chimpanzee back when these kinds of things were still kosher in the scientific world. Needless to say, her upbringing screwed her up in all kinds of ways, and even though I tend to stray from the "I had a terrible childhood" kind of stories, this one was just enticing enough to keep me reading and get me thinking about what exactly determines the difference between humans and animals.

book report #8

*The Story of a New Name (Elena Ferrante) I was hooked by book no. 1, and now with this second Neapolitan Novel, I have become fully addicted to all things Ferrante. It's a little like the first-year psychology student discovering that he has all the issues he's studying, but I found so much of myself, my teenage years, and my current feelings toward life-long friendships in this book that it was almost as if I was reading my parallel universe. I'm at the mercy of the Queens Public Library to decide when I get to read the third book, but if it takes much longer I may just buy the series myself.

*Among the Ten Thousand Things (Julia Pierpont) a slightly disjointed narrative that annoyed me at first, but then I got used to it. I can't say I ever got fully onboard with this book, but the storyline was interesting, if not the tiniest bit tired (husband cheats on wife, their entire family derails). A quick read that does well on airplanes and subways.

*I Will Teach You To Be Rich (Ramit Sethi) I haven't proselytized a book in quite some time, but I cannot shut up about this book. Seriously, ask my friends. I've talked about the financial lessons I gained in this wonderfully comprehensive and plainly stated how-to book over dinner with friends, in bed with my fiancee, to my parents around the breakfast table, on the subway, at work, and even while driving a golf cart in Hawaii - because it's just that good and easy to understand. By breaking down money management to its' most elementary terms and practices, Sethi makes having and keeping money entirely possible. I read this book off a suggestion of a fellow blogger and wish I'd read it five years ago. But there is NO time like the present to get started on making smart financial decisions that will benefit you for the rest of your life.

*The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende) it took me a REALLY long time to get into this book. It's not a nice story - set in pre-revolutionary Chile, the men are mean, the women are persecuted, the rapes are rampant, and there was such a graphic abortion scene that I had to skim over a few pages. However, once we met the mother of this multi-generational saga, the harshness of the characters' lives eased up (slightly) and things got good. Above everything else, it's a beautiful tale of love, life, and revolution in an era and country I know so little about. Also, it counts as the second of ten translated works I'm hoping to read this year.

*The Vacationers (Emma Straub) A light, quick, and breezy read (which I really appreciated after the heaviness of the aforementioned Allende), but nonetheless surprisingly poignant and delicately written. The setting (a two-week vacation in Mallorca) didn't hurt either, nor did the dime-store descriptions of the sexy Spanish tutor. The perfect beach book.

*A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara) Devastating, depressing, and over 800 pages long, yet somehow also easy to read and impossible to put down. By the last 100 pages, I was crying so hard that I could barely read the words on the page, and this book was ultimately the catalyst for not one, but two evenings of actual weeping. This was my pick for my book club (I know, good job, Mar) and everyone who finished the book had equal-if-not-worse visceral reactions to any one of the horribly violent and sadistic rape scenes. One member had such bad nightmares that she threw in the towel at page 400 and didn't even finish the book. So it it worth a read? Well, the ensuing discussion at book club was one of the longest and deepest we've ever had - so many themes and questions emerged from the reading that we couldn't stop talking about it. If you're looking for a meaty but upsetting tome to sink your teeth into, this book is for you. Just be warned that it is not a nice story.

book report #7

*Bangkok 8 (John Burdett) - I was all set to love what I thought would be an action-packed mystery thriller, but was honestly a bit disappointed when it turned out to be a fairly exhaustive look into Thailand's rampant prostitution and drug trade pampered with transcendental Buddhism, meditation, and some surprising sexism. It took me a long time to get into this book - but once I realized what it was (a very real look into the darker side of Thailand) and what it wasn't (a noir detective novel) I grew to appreciate it. It did not, however, have me booking my next flight to Bangkok.

*The Clasp (Sloane Crosley) - I'm a huge fan of Crosley's essays and short narratives, and I was really excited when this novel showed up as "available" on my library queue. And while I think it was missing a bit of the sardonic and witty observational humor that so beautifully peppers her essays, it was nevertheless an entertaining and interesting story about three friends who reconnect over unusual circumstances. It bordered on wacky caper at times, and I honestly think she should have taken that energy even further. I appreciate that Crosley wanted to stick to a more serious coming-of-age narrative in which al the characters made significant emotional shifts by the end of the story, but sometimes a book about a treasure map should just be a book about a treasure map.

*Big Magic (Elizabeth Gilbert) - a quick and easy read that's best suited to those who need a creative boost. Gilbert imparts a lot of wisdom and instruction to those looking for inspiration and guidance in honing their craft, and even though most of what she says isn't going to change one's life, it's still interesting to read another take on the creative process, especially from someone with such a wide and varied career as Gilbert's.

*Swamplandia (Karen Russell) - a fantastical and haunting hero's journey through the murky swamps of Florida. I was surprisingly enchanted by this book - I don't normally love stories about tortured childhoods and terrible fathers, but there was something so beautifully innocent and painful about the Bigtree family's descent into hell and their struggle for redemption that I spent more than a few nights staying up too late just to read another chapter.

*Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott) - I clearly needed some creative inspiration towards the end of last year, as I read this, Big Magic, and Ann Patchett's This is the Story of a Happy Marriage nearly back-to-back. All three should be required reading for anyone who aspires to write even one good sentence, but Lamott's book leads the class. I found myself referring to passages in conversations with other creative minds before I even finished the book, and have applied many of Lamott's suggestions to both my writing and overall daily life since reading it.

*My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante) - a vintage Italian soap opera spread across four books (this is the first of the series) that is sweeping, heartbreaking, addictive, and uncomfortably relatable. Set amidst the dingy and rough neighborhoods of post-war Naples, the characters in this world are cruel and closed, but that's exactly what makes the reader want to dig even further into this terrible yet all-too real world of Ferrante's. I was "assigned" this book via my book club, but was really excited to read it, as it's been on my list for quite some time AND it counts as one of my ten foreign/translated works that I'm attempting to read this year. The downside? Each of the four novels are hundreds of pages long and I'm now in a committed relationship to read them all. If you need me, I'll be over here reading quietly for the next three months.