Cat-Trampled Reviews

Etc./Yes, I'm Still Breathing

2009-06-01T12:40:00.007-05:00

Just a quick note to my faithful 2 or 3 readers.

Haven't abandoned the blog, just got sick and then had recurring back problems and the usual insomnia, but through some righteous prescriptions am feeling much better.

In the meantime, I finally bought a computer--although I still don't have internet access at home quite yet--and racked up a lot of reading, so I have a lot of catching up to do--

Cats are fine, although Zelda managed to get herself locked in the bathroom (I'm assuming wind from the open window blew the door shut) Saturday night. I woke up two or three hours into her entrapment, and she'd managed to both shit and vomit on the floor, as well as tear apart a bag of recycling I had hanging from the doorknob.

yeah, what a dearheart.

I'll be back at my post soon.

etc./Kindle 2=Evil

2009-02-18T11:47:00.007-06:00

I'm being wooed.

I hear it now, calling to me, and it knows my real name. Big fat (okay, no, slim 10.2 ounces) evil bastard.

Now holds 1500 books. Better graphics. Better techie things I don't understand. Downloads instant gratification--hear the review on NPR, a couple of minutes later: book--like having a literary crack dealer on retainer. The extra space I'd have in the real world, the trees I'd save!

But, with cover and 2 year service plan, an utterly ridiculous 450 or so bucks. Absurd!

Amazon is trying to corner the market and thus pressure publishers to reduce their pricing on ebooks. And, as much as I love the big A, Jeff Bezos is starting to look a wee bit too smug for my taste.

truly, I know I don't need it, I really do.

I mean, I don't even have an iPod, and I love music. I have a pay-as-you go emergency cell phone that does nothing but make calls.

But, I will get approximately $525 back as a tax refund. It knows this as well.

Melissa has suggested that I tell myself all these negatives . . . and then buy it anyway.

She, and Mr. Evil Kindle Numeral both know me all too well.

La, la, la! I can't hear you, you evil bastard device! la, la, la

Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him - Danielle Ganek

2009-02-11T17:35:00.001-06:00

This is probably a cut above most "chick-lit" (a term I hate, because it was originally coined as one of empowerment, and has been co-opted for a great deal of bad writing that rivals Modern Career Romances, (see childhood reading) as far as I can tell) -- I actually almost picked it up in hardcover, but wound up passing until the paperback, which pleases me.

Set in the New York art world, the title refers to a gigantic painting of a young girl creating her own painting, which becomes the centerpiece of an exhibit by a barely known artist, her uncle, who is mowed down in front of the gallery by a cab hours before the opening.

Yes, it's a comic novel.

There is a clever, wry, perhaps even smart novel struggling to emerge out of whatever this one is--I didn't hate it, but I found the narrator, Mia, just a little too self-consciously naive. She has worked in the gallery for a number of years while trying to become a painter herself, but much of what she announces is transparently foreshadowing. As soon as she declares she will not fall for the photographer who is hanging around, and who must not really like her, yeah, well, of course she will, and of course he does, and it will all turn out just fine in the end, as all chick-lit must.

Which is not to say there aren't some very good moments, not the least of which are the entire description of the Lulu painting itself, the snobby, mysterious gallery owner, all the players who converge to fight over the ownership of Lulu, including the now adult niece herself (the friendship that grows between Mia and Lulu is wonderfully drawn) and the obvious inside knowledge the author has of the milieu.

So, sort of fun, definitely attentive to detail, particularly of the ridiculously over-the-top habits of the art world, and a nod to how art can shape and transform our life.

But, no masterpiece. Yeah, I did just say it.

Etc./ Movie/The Station Agent

2009-02-11T11:03:00.008-06:00

In the section of Tea I read this morning on the train, the lead character ordered a cafe con leche, which made a wonderful movie pop into my head.

It's a simple story of friendship and loneliness: beautifully written and acted. It stars Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, it's about a guy born as a dwarf whose only friend dies and how he makes his way in the world afterwards.

Okay, so I'll admit that I avoided it for a long time because I thought it would be all icky heartstrings, but after I rented the DVD, I had to buy it. I watch it every once in a while, when I need to remember that just because my life sucks at that moment, it doesn't always, and even I should hold out hope in my dusty, crusty heart.

Not to be missed!

Book Lust - Nancy Pearl

2009-02-10T17:45:00.008-06:00

Basically a list, this is a clever little book from a librarian whom I've often heard on NPR, highlighting what she terms as books that flew under the radar.

I've read a lot of what she mentions, and strongly disagree with some of them (see American Pastoral) but what I love is her directing me to out-of-print and/or favor books and authors I've never even heard of before. Through half.com, I've tracked down a few--The Girls From the Five Great Valleys, by Elizabeth Savage, a novel from the late '70's, set in 1934 in one of my favorite places in the entire world: Missoula, Montana; a couple by Hamilton Basso, who was an editor at The New Yorker for many years--before my time, admittedly, but totally unknown to me.

Pearl has a second volume, which I have yet to dip into.

Highly recommended for its sheer eclecticity--there is something here for every taste.

The Book Borrower - Alice Mattison

2009-01-19T17:17:00.014-06:00

Alice Mattison has clearly been publishing for a while--she has something like five novels and four story collections out, but she didn't cross my radar until last year sometime, with In Case We're Separated, a collection of linked stories about a family during the Holocaust. I will freely admit that I'm suspicious of such collections, because I always think: what, too lazy to shape it into a novel? I admit to owning that book, but not having read it yet.

Anyway, on some ridiculous date like 12/20, Melissa and I went to the State Street Borders in the bitter cold, ostensibly because we had 40% off coupons, and I had $5 in Borders Bucks to spend, but not only is that really a 29.5% coupon, given Chicago's sales tax rate (now highest in the country), the line actually snaked around several aisles of books (I wandered through the fiction section in stupid mode, thinking why the hell are all these people just standing in my way?) By the time Melissa found me after not finding the cookbook she wanted, I had three books in my hands, but we agreed it was pointless. We went to Marshall Fields (okay, okay Macy's) and had better success: Estee Lauder perfume gift sets on sale for me and a cashmere scarf for her mom at something like 60% off. A cab home instead of the el made it a perfect outing.

My point (yeah, I do have one somewhere) is that one of the books I picked up was another Alice Mattison--Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn--which sounded good enough to track down on Amazon, along with a couple of others.

The Book Borrower is the first I grabbed from the stack near the front door on my way out one morning (I do most of my reading on the el--I have a 40-45 minute ride each way, but I always get a seat, so it's a fairly comfortable one, although the sardines do pack in after me). It's an odd little novel, I would say, but I did enjoy it. (note: on the back cover of the paperback edition I have, the plot description is actually incorrect, which was really weird). Two young mothers meet in a park, one hands the other a book: The Trolley Girl, which she immediately begins reading, as do we. The book within the book is the story of a trolley strike in a small city in Massachusetts in the early '20's, written by the sister of a woman instrumental in the anarchist movement backing the strike. We read this story in fits and starts, while the friendship between the two women grows, progressing in segments roughly ten years apart. The punctuation in the real-time, story-time is a little idiosyncratic (no quotation marks, for instance) but otherwise it's all pretty low-key. There are births, deaths, frustrations, grief, and an odd acquaintance with an elderly sculptor who turns out to have a very strong connection to the whole story.

I can't be more in-depth, I don't think, without revealing too much, but I will say that it explores the inexplicable nature of friendship: how we meet, why we connect, why we stay connected, and perhaps the peculiarity of women's friendships in particular.

I'm very interested in reading Mattison's other books, even the dreaded connected stories, heh. One of her short story collections, which I found on half.com, is called Men Giving Money: Women Yelling, a title I find worth the price of admission alone!

Resolution - Denise Mina

2009-01-13T17:11:00.012-06:00

I don't generally read thrillers/suspense/mysteries.

Except when I do, heh.

In the last year and a half or so, I've plugged into various series: first, Meg Gardiner's Evan Delaney set (I believe there are currently five, and she's not done)--championed by Stephen King in his column in Entertainment Weekly, because although she is an American now living in England, she was unpublished here. I ordered them from a great bookstore in Houston, Murder By The Book, the only place who was then selling them in the States. Anyway, they're smart, funny, violent and proceed at a breathtaking pace.* I read them all in about 8 days and wound up literally a bit woozy from the experience. (yes, certain writing friends sneered at my interest, and I say, well, to be direct, screw them--get over yourself!) Gardiner has since started another series, with Jo Beckett, and I liked that one as well (The Dirty Secrets Club)--they're all available now, and it's probably best to read Evan Delaney in order.

A neighbor told me about Maisie Dobbs, by Jaqueline Winspear. Either the fifth or sixth in this series comes out next month. I can't really explain why I like these books so much, because they are a little prim and proper for my taste, and there was a bit too convenient development in the last one, and yet I found myself crying at the end (and I'm fairly heartless, generally speaking). Anyway, Maisie starts off as a "psychological investigator" in the late '20's, in London, with a fairly unbelievable backstory, but I helplessly love them. She is sent into service at 13 (under-parlormaid, or something) but is caught reading books from the family's library in the middle of the night. The lady of the house sends her to school, which is interrupted by World War I--Maisie becomes a battlefield nurse and falls in love with a doctor way above her class, but by the time she launches her business, she is alone, reserved and uses meditation and other Eastern practices to discover the truth in her cases. The books progress slowly in time, but by the last one, there were foreshadowings of Fascism and the approaching second world war. I do wish Maisie will be allowed some fun soon. Like, to be perfectly blunt, maybe getting laid, as it's somewhat unclear how virginal she is.

A book called In The Woods, by Tana French, remained on the edge of my consciousness for many months--I think Amazon kept recommending it, but I persistently avoided it, honestly for a very odd reason: I had it linked in my mind to the Stephen Sondheim musical, Into the Woods. Yeah, made no sense at all. I finally broke down after the online book group gave the sequel high marks.

In The Woods is great: moody, evocative (some of the best scenes of friendship I've ever read) and while dark, certainly satisfying. The narrator is a cop who as a young boy went out to play with two friends, a boy and a girl. He is found tied to a tree, blood in his shoes, with amnesia, his friends never to be found. Twenty years later, he's a cop with the disturbingly similar case of a murdered 12-year-old girl on his hands. Only his partner and a couple of other people know his history, and he makes many mistakes, but is wholly human and touchingly vulnerable. Some may find the ending not neat enough, but it didn't bother me. The sequel is about his partner, Cassie, but French has said she is not quite done with Rob, so that's a good promise for the future.

Anyway, through In The Woods, which takes place in Dublin, I found out about Denise Mina. She's written 8 or 9 books by now--the first three are a trilogy set in Glasgow: Garnethill, Exile and Resolution. I read the first two in quick succession last spring, then found myself needing to take a break. Maureen O'Donnell, the crime-solver, is, to put it simply: a mess. From a highly dysfunctional family, an alcoholic mother, an abusive, absent father, sisters in denial of it all, and a lovely brother who just happens to be a drug dealer. In the first chapter Maureen goes out drinking with a friend to memorialize her breakup with a (married) psychologist she met while in treatment for recovered memories of sexual abuse. Waking horribly hungover (not an uncommon state for her as the books progress) Maureen finds her erstwhile lover dead in her living room, his neck slit.

I know, it all sounds pretty grim. And it is. But also at times hilarious and wise, and gritty and complex. Although Maureen does discover the murderer by the end of the first book, she has many trials to follow.

My friend Melissa picked these up on my recommendation, and she read Resolution ahead of me. I asked, "Well, was it good, or are you happy to be done with Maureen?" "Both," she said, with a sigh, and I have to agree. I'm not sorry to let this one go, but I enjoyed the ride. There is one event at the end of Resolution which kind of disappointed me (I didn't find it quite earned) but that is a minor quibble. Also, the first two books take place during the winter, and it's difficult to think of a more depressing place than Glasgow in the cold.

Until the heat wave in Resolution.

Enjoy--Maureen's trip to London on the night bus in Exile is unforgettable.

*Evan is a legal investigator (in theory, she does research, essentially) with a lovely boyfriend, a lawyer, who was paralyzed in a suspicious car crash some 18 months or so before the series opens. He, her family, her history as an Air Force brat, and her job all come into play as things go bad and get worse.

American Pastoral - Philip Roth

2009-01-13T00:05:00.005-06:00

I just want to get this one out of the way.

What a stinking, foul, morass of a book. Which won the Pulitzer. I do not understand.

First, let me say that I have a bit of a negative history around Roth. I read Portnoy's Complaint when I was maybe fourteen, which, by any measure, was too young. I barely remember it, only that I didn't care much about whatever the hell he was going on about. Later I read his first book, and saw a movie made of it, starring the ever-irritating Dick Benjamin. Didn't help my opinion of Philip Roth, and many years later, when in a critical reading class for writers (as opposed to a Lit-Crit class) Portnoy was brought up, I remarked that I knew I'd read it when I was too young, yet also that I didn't care much for it. The teacher smugly said, "Well, that's because you didn't grow up with a penis," whereupon I got up and walked out.

So, I've never tried to even read Roth much. (Kinda the way I operate around Joyce Carol Oates, and yeah, yeah, I know she has a lot of fans--I just don't get her, sorry). A couple of months ago, American Pastoral was picked as one of the monthly reads on an online reading group I drop by on occasion. A friend, Candy, whom I met through that group and who happened to move to Chicago (and we then became "real" friends, ha), participated in the rather heated discussion that followed. Eventually she asked if I would read the book, and I admit, I was somewhat intrigued by the storyline she described.

The first 115 pages were excruciating. I'm normally a fairly fast reader--maybe 50 pages an hour. It took me at least a month to plow through this stupid-ass "framing device" where Roth lets his fictional counterpart, a novelist named Zuckerman (he's used him in a half-dozen books so far) yak on and on about the neighborhood he grew up in New Jersey, his 40th (or so) high school reunion, and the legendary guy a few years older than he, Swede. There are many digressions, a lot about prostate cancer, and an unbelievable (and I mean that) diatribe from Swede's younger brother, who buttonholes Zuckerman, apparently on the dance floor at the reunion (yeah, not a smidge of place, here) and hectors him, page after unparagraphed page, about how Swede died a broken man, all because of his bitch of a daughter.

Zuckerman then assures us, dear readers, that he knows nothing of what really happened with Swede's daughter, but he will proceed to tell us what he imagines. Exit, stage left.

Meanwhile, I kept breaking off to read other books. Finally, towards the end of this first section, I became somewhat engaged. I'll spare you the all the convoluted plot points, but briefly, Swede's daughter is presumed to have bombed the small general store/post office in their New Jersey town, circa 1968, when she is 16, in protest against the Vietnam war. Presumed because she disappears directly after the event. Swede, portrayed throughout as a golden American hero, particularly having achieved some sort of ultimate makeover by marrying a true all-American girl: Miss New Jersey 1949, and it goes without saying, she's not Jewish. Their daughter, Merry, is sensitive from the beginning, screaming for months as an infant, obsessed with the Vietnamese Buddhist monks she sees self-immolating on television, gentle with animals. Clearly smart and talented, her biggest flaw is a massive stutter, for which there seems to be no relief money can buy. Anyway, after her disappearance, Swede is consumed by guilt, wondering if Merry was permanently damaged by a moment when she was 11, when he gave in to her request, "Kith me the way you do mmmmuther."

What I've described is actually a fairly coherent linear description of the plot, but the book doesn't actually reveal itself that way. Instead there are countless self-indulgent digressions--nearing the "big" scene that concludes the book (sort of) Roth lays down the following sentence: "There were six other guests at the dinner party." Twenty-five pages later--that bears repeating: twenty-five pages later, he finally gets back to the dinner, after describing in excruciating detail the life of an architect who will attend the party, and naturally, be revealed to be screwing Swede's wife.

Allow me to digress: some of these sidelines are not without interest: eight or so pages on the 1949 Miss America pageant; an extended how-it's-done on making leather gloves; Swede's defense of his glove factory with his African-American forewoman during the Newark riots in 1967; but ultimately, I just felt as if Roth's attitude is that he can write whatever the hell he wants because he's the lauded Writer, and god forbid anyone should suggest an edit (it reminds me of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys, in which a former star writer has become middle-aged and forgotten, and a student gently suggests that in his now legendary unpublished work, he may not want "to include the genealogy of every single horse" in the barn) of his full-on-display misogyny.

Women are almost universally portrayed as gross, smelly, ("fecund"), sloppy drunk, ruined, aggressive, withholding, punishing, and meant to be fucked, controlled, pitied, and even, in one wholly unbelievable scene, when Swede discovers Merry (or not Merry) living in fundamentalist squalor, literally vomited on.

God only knows what his intent was. Theories offered in the reading group discussion included the theory that Merry is just "nuts" (which is ridiculous, at best) and that it all represents the failure of the American Dream and the American Family.

Couldn't care less. I just think it's bad writing wearing the damn Emperor's clothes.

yeah, highly recommended. Enjoy.

Can't help but get better from here.

Scamming For Books

2009-01-12T23:35:00.006-06:00

Right. Start a blog and don't post for five weeks. Good beginning.

So, the hollandaise are over, and I did have some quality time off. I read a lot, drank a bit (which I do rarely, so it was unusual, but fun) watched the 1995 BBC version of Pride & Prejudice (um, Colin Firth--no words) again, and generally was not terribly productive.

But I do have a few stories to tell. And books to talk about.

Let me confess: I have a completely unrealistic approach to books. I buy them.

My first book scam happened when I was about eight. In Miss Loeb's third-grade classroom, we received a couple of flyers for books--from Weekly Reader, I think, and some other place. I quickly found 10 or 12 books I wanted from one catalog, and something like 11 from the other. What to do?

At lunch I walked home, where my dad met me between his classes and I asked if I could place a book order. He readily agreed. That night I whipped out the other catalog and asked my mother if I could place a book order, to which she readily agreed.

When they compared notes, they asked, with apparent sincerity, "Did you just forget?." and . . . I readily agreed, with appropriate sheepishness. To their credit, they laughed indulgently, and my addiction took root.

My comeuppance, of course, turned out to be when both shipments arrived on the same day and I had to figure out how to carry 23 books (pre-backpack days, heh) three blocks.

I managed.

Some of that self-justification comes back when I happen to miss the door at work (I'm the office manager) and someone else winds up stacking five or six or maybe even eight Amazon packages next to my desk. Sometimes I even feel the need to explain: oh, I signed up for their rapid shipping program for one annual fee, and so they split orders and ship them from different locations.

yeah, as if anyone cares.

Now I also make sure to always have a sturdy bag on hand. Check out Envirosax.com--my new favorite, good for hauling all sorts of stuff.

oh, and it only cements my thought that it really wasn't much of a scam when I remember that the total for the two orders was something like $21. Yeah, okay, it was 1966, but still.

I can still remember the feeling of cracking open those wonderful paperbacks: Martha's Secret Wish, about a girl with a widowed mother who adopts a lively stray dachshund only to have his owner rediscover him at a street fair six months later. Yes, a happy ending for all followed. The Encyclopedia Brown series, about the smart and endearing boy detective. Two books (titles are lost to me now) about a girl named Katie John, who starts a war between the girls and boys in her class (something that would shortly happen in my own fifth grade) and who is viciously attacked in a "slam book" that circulates: her heart breaks when she sees a message from her buddy, a boy she'd spent long summer days with on all sorts of adventures, saying simply, "Whatever happened to Explorer Katie?" Again, I would soon see some really awful things written about me in just such a book.

It's not that I didn't use the library--I did. The Beany Malone books, about a motherless teenager from a large family living in Denver after World War II. (That entire series has been reissued and I'm seriously considering dropping 150 bucks for all 12 books). Classic Nancy Drew, in beat-up editions from the '40's, that my mother nabbed at a library sale. Madeline L'Engle's mysterious and troubling A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. For a while I even worked my way around Blackstone Library alphabetically, which is how I read a YA novel about the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, sparking a fascination with British history that continues. An unfortunate stretch of a truly terrible series from the '50's, I guess, called Modern Career Romances, with titles like Sondra, Surgical Nurse. Need I say that Sondra and her buds always got their man in the final chapter?

A lovely novel called Up A Road Slowly, about ten years in the life of young Julie, beginning when she goes to live with h/er Aunt Cordelia ["spinster" is implied, always] following her mother's death. She learns many lessons from many imperfect people: her brilliant but rigid aunt, her alcoholic uncle, who claims to be working on his "magnum opus" novel and will be until his liver betrays him. Many years later I actually lifted a copy of this book from my high school library (I prostrate myself in penance) and I've re-read it every ten years or so since.

Sometimes, I would say to my mother, "Do you have anything I can read?" and over time she put A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and Steinbeck's Travels With Charley in my hands. The first would shape much of my view of storytelling even to now, and the last would spark my love of all things Steinbeck as well as bloom a little thought: all the stories I made up in my own head, maybe if I wrote them down, I could be a writer like him and have all the time in the world to take long trips with my dog (well, cat).

So, yes, I own too many books. Probably more than I could read in my lifetime, although I'm not ready to admit it, yet. I will be purging a bunch of stuff within the next couple of months (I'm never going to read Margaret Drabble, and there are four or five among The Great Unread) and donate a lot of them (friends will get first grab) to a great project in Chicago: Open Books, a used bookstore opening this year, where all the profits will fund literacy projects.

Best of all, they do all the heavy lifting--I don't even have to supply the carry-alls.

NYT Notable Books

2008-12-01T18:08:00.003-06:00

I've got books in stacks around the apartment right now--also on shelves, under the bed (last time I moved, I found two books on organizing just there), in boxes in the front closet, which used to be my meditation space. An old boyfriend said years ago, "you know, with alcoholics, you find bottles all over the place: with you, it's books."

Okay, true, but who cares? I've had many conversations recently about The Amazon Kindle, and while I admit to being intrigued, and I'd save so much space, and what about trees . . . but no, not yet. I love the weight of a good book in my hands.

Anyway, in those stacks and stacks of books, there are 11 of the fiction/poetry books listed in the NYT 2008 Notable Books list (personally, I find that word, 'notable' a little suspicious--doesn't exactly translate as "good", I don't think). I've read one: My Revolutions, which is remarkable in a lot of ways, not the least of which is the author is in his early '30's, maybe, and the book's narrator is a minor radical from 1960's London. Thirty years later he's living under another identity, deluding himself that he's still important, and his memories of that time are quite evocative--apparently the activities of his group are based on an actual British operation from the time (not one I'd heard of before)--but there is one sequence where they get a bunch of discarded food from groceries and distribute it to the poor that is just amazing. Much of what they do is ill-conceived, as well as downright stupid, and there are the usual controlling people running the show, but it definitely felt like a worthwhile read.

There are some books from the list I'm excited about reading, but they've drifted down the piles: American Wife, which is Curtis Sittenfeld's imagining of a Laura Bush-like First Lady's life. I wasn't crazy about Sittenfeld's first book, Prep, which I wanted to love, and her second is part of the Great Unread, but every time I hear or read one of her reviews, she so exudes intelligence I'm always intrigued by what she herself is going to write next. The Road Home by Rose Tremain--I read a couple of hers a couple of years ago, and she's one of those authors for me that I know I will always acquire the minute I hear of another one--and truth is, I have absolutely no idea what this one is about yet!

There is one book on the list, Beautiful Children, by Charles Bock, that I've sworn to never read. It's about a child's disappearance and I think it deals in child porn, and well, no, I don't think I can. Not prudish, just no longer interested in some stuff. I wonder at my bias, because what if it's a great book? Some years back I trolled a bookstore with a friend, another writer, and when we compared notes, we found, in my case, that if the flap copy described a "comic novel", I immediately closed the book and put it back on the shelf. Susan's trigger was "love story"--both of which disqualified so many potentially wonderful experiences!

I also own a small but odd assortment from the NYT non-fiction list, and it makes me laugh at myself: The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer, about Bush and the uses of torture by his administration, Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein, about, as far as I'm concerned, my lifetime's original trip to the dark side, Pictures At A Revolution, by Mark Harris, because I'm still hopelessly dazzled by many forms of entertainment, and lastly, How Fiction Works, by James Wood (no, not the actor--that would be James Woods) because I continue to be convinced that the answer lies in some other book, not my own, ha.

yeah, so, that's where we begin.