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February 10
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Maria
gave
 
to:
Her Last Death (Hardcover)
by Susanna Sonnenberg
bookshelves:
filling-the-walls-of-my-house
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my rating:
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read in February, 2008
Maria said:
"Ranks up there with the best writing about the kind of parents who are impossibly ill-suited-to-be-parents. This definitely stands with The Liar's Club, The Glass Castle, This Boy's Life, and any other book in that vein. I enjoyed all of those, trem...more
Ranks up there with the best writing about the kind of parents who are impossibly ill-suited-to-be-parents. This definitely stands with The Liar's Club, The Glass Castle, This Boy's Life, and any other book in that vein. I enjoyed all of those, tremendously, and I enjoyed this just as much. Susanna Sonnenberg is blistering on all levels - toward herself, toward the world she grows up in and learns to live in, toward her completely off the rails mother. Blistering in a good way, I clarify. She's pretty damn honest. Reading the book, I found myself thinking, over and over, would I have been this brave? Sonnenberg has balls. I wish I knew her - I think she'd be exactly the kind of person I'd like to sit down and have a no-bullshit conversation with. I'm talking about the way she reveals her own fears, confusion, and mistakes just as clearly as she reveals those of her mother. This is a terrific book - I was riveted, wondering which of the characters were going to crash and burn, and all of them do, at one point or another. I could go on about the plot - but the writing is really what makes the plot sing. Without a wonderful writer behind this story, it would feel like (sadly) just another story of woe. This despite the fact that it's a unique one. There just happen to be a lot of stories of crazy parents out there, both anecdotal, and published. Sonnenberg really is a writer, though, and she takes us through this story with strong, clear prose, and without malice. I finished it in a marathon read - because I couldn't bear to stop reading....less
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October 31
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Maria
gave
to:
The Braindead Megaphone (Paperback)
by George Saunders
bookshelves:
filling-the-walls-of-my-house
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my rating:
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read in October, 2007
Maria said:
"George Saunders = American Genius. Funny, twisted, huge heart. I love the article about Dubai in this book, and also the one about the US/Mexican border. Saunders goes at journalistic topics with a unique voice: half-idiot (the kind of idiot most ...more
George Saunders = American Genius. Funny, twisted, huge heart. I love the article about Dubai in this book, and also the one about the US/Mexican border. Saunders goes at journalistic topics with a unique voice: half-idiot (the kind of idiot most of us bear inside ourselves and never admit to) and half-pure insight. The border article is full of laughs as Saunders hangs out with a militia-ish patriot group patrolling a small section of border in the middle of the night, with very mediocre results. He has an ability to pluck out the threads of commonality in the human experience, while also pulling out the threads of what makes these people so afraid of an insecure border (and/or so galvanized by the power they are wielding by sitting there fully armed). Also loved the article about the Tibetan boy who has been meditating for almost a year without food - in this, Saunders gets into the mysterious unknown, sense of humor and sarcasm intact, and finds himself changed by the end of the story. I think his short pieces for the New Yorker are great too, but in this book, the longer form narrative and fact-based pieces really stood out. I did crack up at the piece from the POV of a dog, begging his owner not to screw on the kitchen floor to Purple Rain anymore, though. Hilarious. ...less
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Maria
gave
to:
The Air We Breathe: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Andrea Barrett
bookshelves:
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my rating:
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read in October, 2007
Maria said:
"I love Andrea Barrett - her stories are the ones I often find lurking in back corners of my brain, with indeterminate heritage. As in, I often think that the historic narratives she's invented are in fact dreams I've had, or stories I've heard about ...more
I love Andrea Barrett - her stories are the ones I often find lurking in back corners of my brain, with indeterminate heritage. As in, I often think that the historic narratives she's invented are in fact dreams I've had, or stories I've heard about my ancestors. Servants of the Map did this to me especially. I think I can attribute this to Barrett's grace. She writes about science in such a way that I think I understand it, and because it seems so organic to me, I think it came from somewhere other than a book. Not so, as it happens, but her writing is so clear that sometimes I feel, even as I'm reading it, that she is channeling my own thoughts. Mind you, the thoughts Barrett has are not thoughts I'd be getting to on my own. No wonder she won a MacArthur Fellowship. I love her writing about science and it's implications on the human heart. This is a wonderful and enlightening book about a tuberculosis sanatorium and the patients within it, taking place during WWI. I learned a lot about care, and about the disease itself, but I also learned a lot about the careful drawing of the kind of characters who are acting in ways that are thoroughly destructive, and blind to reality. As the narrative deals with the tangled rationales of Miles and Naomi, who are both in love with people who do not love them, there is a wonderful birds-eye quality to the narration, which enables you to see both the inner workings and confusions of these characters, while also seeing all the implications of their self-deception. The voice of the book is in an interesting collective we - with no one patient as narrator, and this added to it as well - I love the sense of inclusion this gives the reader. Beautiful as always. ...less
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October 17
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Maria
gave
to:
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England (Hardcover)
by Brock Clarke
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my rating:
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read in September, 2007
Maria said:
"This has gotten a lot of press, but I wasn't in love with it. Good writing, for sure, and innovative conceptually, but I found myself never with the protagonist, and I wanted to be. He is at once innocent and completely culpable, at least in terms o...more
This has gotten a lot of press, but I wasn't in love with it. Good writing, for sure, and innovative conceptually, but I found myself never with the protagonist, and I wanted to be. He is at once innocent and completely culpable, at least in terms of his own assessment of himself, and this makes for an odd narrative point of view. The narrator spends a lot of time judging himself, and sometimes it feels like sitting in on someone's therapy, someone you actually didn't want to know this well. This isn't a failing - I felt similarly when reading the Miranda July book, actually. A little creeped out. In this case, though, I felt the creepiness wasn't wholly justified by the actual circumstances of the plot. The sequence of arsons felt forced, and the conclusion seemed suspect - I won't give it away, but the person who actually set the fires is someone I have no feeling about one way or the other - the character comes in very late in the narrative. I like the initial concept of the book, though - someone sets fire to a bunch of famous writer's homes in New England, and the wrong guy is blamed. Very catchy. I just wanted to feel more for everyone involved. ...less
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Maria
gave
to:
Tree of Smoke: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Denis Johnson
bookshelves:
so-good-they-live-on-my-desk
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my rating:
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read in October, 2007
Maria said:
"I carried this around with me for about three weeks, working my way through it, and I still know I'm going to have to go at it again. It's that amazing on a cellular level. On an overall level, same deal. It's devastating. Already Dead is one of my f...more
I carried this around with me for about three weeks, working my way through it, and I still know I'm going to have to go at it again. It's that amazing on a cellular level. On an overall level, same deal. It's devastating. Already Dead is one of my favorite books, but it's much harder to get into - it took me about a hundred pages of hallucinogenic prose, and finally I just let it take me. This is much more linear, only took about 60 pages, though it bounces between characters who have only tangential relation to one another in some cases. I'm sure some people will be disappointed in some aspects of this novel - it reads, in places, like a thriller, and yet does not pay off like one. It pays off with mystery, lost hope, and a bite of redemption. It pays off like life, but sets up like a thriller, basically, and that is a bit hard to wrap around. Lots of Conrad-ish-ness in here, and certainly some Graham Greene, both favorites of mine, and some large characters, who are totally spectacular. Johnson has always had a capacity to break a beautiful moment (and piece of writing) out in the middle of torture, and it's here too. It reads like poetry, and revolves around its core, the CIA agent in the center of the story (sort of, anyway) with a kind of wild grace I haven't seen in other writers. Massive achievement - I would love to write a book like this one, but I have no idea how he did it. It works on a deep level, and sometimes it works when it has no right to work. Wow. Stunning. ...less
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September 22
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Maria
is currently reading:
The Savage Detectives: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Roberto Bolaño
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Maria
gave
to:
So Long, See You Tomorrow (Panther)
by William Maxwell
bookshelves:
so-good-they-live-on-my-desk
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in September, 2007
Maria said:
"I don't know how I'd never read this before. It's particularly silly, because I've read possibly three entire books about William Maxwell, and certainly plenty of his New Yorker stuff, just in the way one reads randomly bits of things over the years,...more
I don't know how I'd never read this before. It's particularly silly, because I've read possibly three entire books about William Maxwell, and certainly plenty of his New Yorker stuff, just in the way one reads randomly bits of things over the years, and they accrue, and one day, you realize, Hello, I haven't read any books by this writer that EVERYONE ADORES. Maxwell was an incredible person by all accounts - I read MY MENTOR, the Alec Wilkinson book about him, as well as a straight bio, and another anthology book written by a variety of his friends about him, after he passed away. The events of his life were less incredible than the way he lived his life = at some point, in a crisis of loneliness, he decided to change his life by loving everyone, not by waiting for them to love him. It's one thing to think that - entirely another to actually do it. It seems as though he managed to do it, and as a result, he changed people's lives right and left. The thing that put me onto him to begin with, was an essay published in Tin House about Maxwell as an old man, and a much younger writer's friendship with him. It was one of those pieces of writing that made you think, "I have to change my life. I have to be better." Not to mention the fact that, at least in my head, Maxwell is my writer-grandfather. He reminds me of my real grandfather, whom I miss.
And so - onto the book. SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW, is a ridiculously lovely piece of writing. It's a novella, dealing with the events and effects of a small-town love-triangle murder on the narrator, a young boy when the murder takes place, and on his friend, a boy who happens to be the son of the murderer. It's hard to break it down, though - this is a book that works not on the strength of its plot, but on the profound empathy it dispenses for everything within its covers. There is a justly celebrated section encompassing the point of view of a farm dog whose boy has moved into town, and who is left to the new owners of the farm. It will make you sob. You will likely not make it through this book without crying, and again, it's not the plot, but the soul. The book has a heart. Everyone should read it. And now, I'm back to reading the rest of Maxwell, cause clearly, I've been missing out. ...less
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