The New York Times Book Review Best of 2010: Non-Fiction

Continuing from my last post, here are the New York Times Book Review selection s for the best non-fiction books of 2010. 

Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet

by Jennifer Homans

While I can't say I'm a huge fan of ballet, I am a fan of the arts in general.  I mostly like the music that has been written for ballets but this could be a fascinating read. 

Cleopatra: A life

by Stacy Schiff

This also sounds interesting.  Biography is a genre I don't usually read, but I could always make an exception.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
By Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Here's a different kind of biography, one about a disease.  It sounds pretty comprehensive and it's a subject I don't know much about even though I have had family members who have had cancer.

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, ­Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes
By Stephen Sondheim.

I know he's really famous and talented, but I'm just not all that interested.  Can I just watch Sweeney Todd again instead?

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson.

Here's another book whose subject I know nothing about.  Could be informative.

The New York Times Book Review Best of 2010: Fiction

Every year around this time, I look forward to seeing what books were selected by the New York Times Book Review as the best of the year.  I've read several books in the past that made the list and enjoyed all of them.  A few examples are the novels A Mercy by Toni Morrison and Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl and the non-fiction books The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross and The Bounty by Caroline Alexander.  I'm not sying I completely agree with the opinions of the NYTBR panel, but it is a good source for finding books to read.  Here are my thoughs on this year's selections for fiction. 

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

This is the book that everyone was talking about this year.   I read the opening of Franzen's earlier book The Corrections and liked it.  I'm definitely curious about Freedom. 

The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie

I am not familiar with this author. 

Room by Emma Donoghue

The premise of this one is intriguing.  The story concerns a 5-year old boy and his mother who are trapped in a single room.  The story is narrated by the boy.  It's hard to imagine how an entire novel can be sustaiined by the narrative voice of a child but apparently it works. 

Selected Stories by William Trevor

Like the Beattie book, I am not familiar with this author. 

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I really enjoyed Egan's previous book The Keep so I'm looking forward to this one.  It has an unusual narrative technique; it seems like a collection of short stories but it is really part of one big story.  One of the stories is told through a Power Point presentation. 

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

I’ve always been a sucker for time travel stories, whether it’s movies like Back to the Future or the novels and stories of Connie Willis.  When I heard that Rebecca Stead’s Newberry Award winning children’s novel When You Reach Me dealt with time travel, I was curious. 

The book is set in late 1970s New York City.  Sixth-grader Miranda and her single mother live in a small apartment and dream of a better life.  Things start to look good when Miranda’s mom learns she will become a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid.  The preparations for the game show are the backdrop for the main story about Miranda and her friends. 

Miranda’s favorite book is the classic time travel story A Wrinkle in Time.  She reads it over and over and soon finds herself involved in what might be time travel.  One day, Miranda receives a mysterious note that tells her, “I am coming to save your friend’s life and also my own.”   In order to do this, Miranda needs to do certain things to assist the writer.  As proof, the writer provides information about the future that no one could possibly know. 

Despite the fantastic element of the novel,  the real point is how Miranda deals with the relationships she has with several fellow sixth graders.  There are misunderstandings that eventually are resolved.  And of course, we also find out who wrote the notes. 

The novel is well paced and plotted and the writing is simple, but not simplistic.  As an adult reader, I found the characters well drawn, both the children and adults.  For Christian readers, there’s nothing too offensive except for a sub-plot about the boyfriend of Miranda’s mother who wants to move in before he gets married.  The positive messages in the novel are rather simple, mostly the benefits of close friendships with members of the same and opposite sex.  There is an element of self-sacrifice that is important to the story, but surprisingly is not given much discussion, or at least as much as it deserves. 

A Mercy book review

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

OK, I was going to try and write book reviews as soon as I finished a book but that hasn’t happened. Oh well, what do you do? I finished this book a few weeks ago, so hopefully I get the details right.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a “literary” novel so I decided to look for something that both fit that description and was short. I don’t have as much time to read these days, so I didn’t want to get into something really long even though I love long books that you can really get into if they’re well written.

I had seen many good reviews of A Mercy and my library had a copy available so I checked it out. I’ve never read anything by Toni Morrison. If I have my facts straight, she’s the only living American writer to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her latest book is set in North America in the late 17th century before slavery became an institution. In this colonial time, both white and black persons could become slaves or indentured servants. Morrison explores themes of racism and bigotry, not just towards blacks, but towards women and Native Americans. There’s nothing new here about those themes, but it is extremely well written. The basic plot is about a Dutch man who runs a farm in colonial America and acquires a sixteen year old black girl as a slave when her mother offers to give her daughter up rather than be taken herself. The girl lives on the farm with the man’s European mail-order bride, a Native American woman and some indentured hired hands. What happens to the girl forms the crux of the story, which is told through various points-of-view and not in a straight-forward linear fashion.

I read lots of negative reviews on Amazon and the main reason most people seemed to dislike the novel is because they couldn’t follow it. Some even gave up after the first chapter. While I grant it’s not easy to follow, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I couldn’t understand the first chapter either but I assumed (correctly, I think) that the perplexity of the prose was deliberate and that things would eventually become clear, which they did. Thanks to the obscure writing style there were plenty of “a-ha” moments as elements of the plot were gradually revealed. Many scenes were vividly realized and would make for great movie scenes except that I can’t imagine anyone turning this into a movie. The pleasure in the novel is in the various elements of the plot coming together at different times and seen through the eyes of multiple characters. It wouldn’t work if the story were told in chronological order.

My only complaint is Morrison’s treatment of Christians. She rightly notes that there were differences between Protestants and Catholics at that time, especially since the Protestant Reformation was much closer to the time of this story than it is today, but neither group comes across well. Most of the Christian characters are unnamed and tend to be representative of the group as a whole, (“the Baptists” or “the Presbyterians“). These characters are bigoted and unkind to the main characters in the story. Still, that’s not a huge distraction and overall I really liked A Mercy. I’ll have to read Beloved, Ms. Morrison’s best known work, someday.

Book Review: Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians

Let’s see if this plot sounds familiar. A young boy being raised by people who aren’t his parents is told by someone he’s never met that he possesses extraordinary powers. The man takes the boy away from his home and shows him that there are others just like him with magical powers and that he has a destiny to defeat a powerful group of people who want to control the world. If you guessed Harry Potter, well you’d be right, but I’m talking about Brandon Sanderson’s book Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians, a hilarious send-up of the young-adult fantasy genre.

In this short but entertaining book, the reader is introduced to Alcatraz Smedry who receives a package in the mail on his thirteenth birthday. It’s from his supposedly dead parents who have given him…a bag of sand. Soon a man claiming to be his grandfather shows up and tells him that he has magical powers called Talents and that the world is actually controlled by evil librarians. Alcatraz also meets several of his hitherto unknown relatives who also have special abilities. Instead of what you might expect, Sanderson gives his characters rather unexpected abilities, including the ability to break things, the ability to always be late for everything and the ability to trip and fall down. These talents are put to clever uses as our heroes infiltrate the librarians’ headquarters…the downtown branch of the public library.

Interspersed with the humorous adventures of Alcatraz and his friends are Sanderson’s (through Alcatraz’s narration) funny comments on writing in general and fantasy novels in particular. I liked the part about how authors love it when people stay up too late reading their books because the authors keep ending chapters with cliffhangers. While this book isn’t as fully developed as the other novel I’ve read by him, Elantris, it’s not supposed to be since it’s aimed at younger readers. I had a great time with it and look forward to reading the second volume.

Two recent novels

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything. I have been reading lots of books but haven't taken the time to write anything down so here are a few reviews of some recent novels, both of which came out in 2006.

The Keep by Jennifer Egan is a psychological novel that tells two stories. The first, told in third person, follows two American cousins who are trying to convert a dilapidated European castle into a resort. One of the cousins still harbors feelings of guilt for performing a cruel prank on his older cousin when they were kids. The other story, told in first person, features a man in prison who is taking a creative writing course offered by the prison. He is writing a story about two American cousins converting an old castle into a resort. Of course, the two stories are linked somehow and part of the fun of The Keep is trying to figure out the connection. Is the prisoner simply making up a story and Egan is allowing the reader to follow along, or is this a true story, and if so, how does he know about it? The answer, when it is revealed, is both unexpected and rewarding.

There’s more to The Keep than just narrative trickery, though. The characters are all well-drawn and Egan gives the novel a creepy, gothic atmosphere with vivid descriptions of the decaying castle and a mysterious baroness who still lives there. One of the cousins becomes increasingly paranoid and the reader starts to wonder if he is slowly going insane. The novel climaxes with a claustrophobic set-piece in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath the castle. Egan offers insight into how feelings of guilt and fear can consume a person, and how people can display great courage in the face of great danger.

Fans of the TV show The Office will likely enjoy Max Barry’s hilarious satire Company. This sarcastic, funny and quite accurate portrait of the corporate world will make sense to anyone who has ever worked at any kind of job, but particularly to those of us who work for large corporations. The novel’s hero, often referred to only by his last name Jones, takes a job at Zephyr Holdings, located in a nondescript office building in Seattle. He joins the Training Sales department and it isn’t long before he notices that things aren’t quite normal at Zephyr. For one thing, the receptionist is a stunningly gorgeous woman who drives a sports car and never seems to be at her desk. For another, he realizes he doesn’t know what the company does. He soon uncovers a vast conspiracy which completely changes his perception of his job.

Barry is merciless in his send-up of the business world. Everyone from Senior Management to the catering staff is a target for satire. There were numerous laugh-out-loud moments and I often found myself thinking, “so I’m not the only one who notices things like that.” I enjoyed the jokes about ineffectual powerpoint presentations.

Book review: The Five Red Herrings

The Five Red Herrings

By Dorothy Sayers

Since I enjoy both mystery novels and works by modern Christian authors, I was curious about the fiction of Dorothy Sayers. She is well-known for her novels featuring the detective Lord Peter Wimsey. She also wrote Christian essays and plays as well as a translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. I picked up The Five Red Herrings at random, not knowing with which Sayers novel to begin. Depending on your point of view, I either made the wrong choice or a very good one. I made a wrong choice since I did not like the novel and found it extremely frustrating and difficult to read. But on the other hand, if this is her worst novel, things can only improve.

The plot involves a murder that takes place in a small town in Scotland in which many artists live and work. One of them, a man named Campbell, is not well liked and quickly turns up dead. Peter Wimsey happens to be staying in the area and comes to the conclusion that Campbell was murdered. Based on the evidence at the scene, one of the local artists committed the murder. Naturally, all of the suspects have a motive as well as an alibi so it’s up to Wimsey to discover the truth.

The biggest problem I had with the novel is Sayers’ choice of phonetically spelling out the heavy Scottish accents of many of the characters. This results in lots of apostrophes and makes reading the dialogue tiresome and difficult. Since the entire novel takes place in Scotland, nearly every chapter is filled with hard to read accents. Robert Louis Stevenson did something similar in Kidnapped, but that novel was a picnic to read compared to Herrings.

Another problem is the use of train timetables as a plot device. There are endless discussions of when this train leaves this town and arrives at the next and which character could have taken which train and how long it would take to get there. It’s all ridiculously confusing. The various stories told by the suspects are lengthy and confusing. Even the real story of how the murder was committed is long and too reliant on a very specific timetable of events thus making it implausible.

Finally, I don’t know how he is portrayed in the other novels, but Wmsey comes across as an arrogant, disagreeable know-it-all. I realize that many of the great fictional detectives, like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot are arrogant, but at least I like them. I’m not sure about Wimsey yet.

I read a few reviews on Amazon.com and noted that I’m not the only one who found the accents and timetables frustrating. Apparently, Sayers wrote better mysteries than this one and I won’t let my dislike of The Five Red Herrings discourage me from reading other Sayers’ works.

Book review: Reaper Man

Reaper Man

By Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett takes on the concept of what would happen if Death took a holiday and stopped taking dead people to wherever it is they go when they die. Since this is a Discworld novel, Death is personified as a robed, skeletal figure WHO ALWAYS SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS. The plot follows Windle Poons, an extremely old wizard who is ready to die and get on with the afterlife. When his appointed time comes (and every wizard knows exactly when he’s going to die) Death doesn’t show up and Windle discovers that in addition to still being dead, his mind is now more alert than ever and his body is stronger than it has been in decades. Still, it’s no picnic being dead and still hanging around so Windle decides to find out what has happened. Meanwhile, Death decides to see what it’s like being a human and takes on a job as a farmhand for a widow. (He’s very handy with a scythe during harvest time.) In addition, the wizards at Unseen University must deal with some very strange occurrences as a living city (more on that later) tries to take over the town of Ankh-Morpork.

Reaper Man contains the usual assortment of wacky characters, puns, and jokes one would expect in a Discworld novel. I liked the self-help group of the recently Undead and the wizards were funny too. Unfortunately, the book isn’t as hilarious as the last two Discworld novels I read, Guards Guards and Wyrd Sisters. The plot of a strange threat about to take over the Disc is too similar. Also, the explanation for why a city is somehow evolving and taking the form of snow globes and shopping carts is convoluted and murky. Similarly, the philosophical reasons behind how Death works and the idea of “life force” are too abstract to make much sense.

Overall, this is an average Pratchett novel. If you’ve never read one of his books, I recommend starting with Guards Guards. Reaper Man is best saved for later when you’re trying to complete your collection.