Bucket’s Comments (group member since Feb 13, 2015)

Bucket’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

20.3 NYRB

The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes by Anonymous

Review: I'm not sure how much of a "must read before you die" book this really is, beyond its place in the historical literary canon. It’s mostly along the lines of other classics of its time. It's short and reads a bit like a summary - not much depth here. The action is a bit bawdy and its philosophical implications a bit overdrawn.

That said, the charm of the tone and progressive narrative style (A to Z, rather than episodic) are somewhat ahead of their time, especially the latter. And since it's short, it's worth the few hours it takes to read it.

+20 Task
+10 Canon
+10 Review

Task total = 40
Season total = 190

20.8 Short

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice Munro

Review: Munro is so good at diving deep in the small intricacies of a character's perspective - the tics and foibles that make them unique. At the same time she gives us the grand sweep of their life - the foundation, the key moments, the relationships, the aging, the ways that their mistakes and traits formed their life.

It's so incredibly realistic; she has an incredibly rich understanding on what is universal in all of us and how it changes and looks different in different lives.

I enjoyed all of the stories in this collection, but Nettles spoke to me very deeply. It's a beautiful story. I also really loved the titular story Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and the last story called The Bear Came Over the Mountain.

+20 Task
+10 Aged (1931-current. Alice Munro is currently 91)
+10 Review

Task total = 40
Season total = 150

10.2 Pronouns

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Review: There's a lot about this book that was lovely and charming. Elsa is a precocious and unique narrator and the story feels like magical realism (told through the eyes of an imaginative child) without actually being so. It was fun that there's a bit of mystery to the novel as we sort out the history of Elsa's family and neighbors along with her. I was also impressed with how fun and lighthearted the book feels, despite it's heavy topics of grief and bullying.

I did find Elsa's precociousness unrealistic. Were she 10 or 11, I'd be able to accept her character history, but she's not yet 8. Her narrative voice fits her age pretty well though, so I found her a bit jarring. The other characters were all uniquely drawn, even with so many of them, and I enjoyed them.

The ending is pretty simple and doesn't leave much to think about. It's overly optimistic, but it left me with good feelings and wasn't so tied up in a bow as to ring completely false. It fits with the magic of the story.

+10 Task (me, you)
+5 Combo (20.7 – 210k+ ratings)
+10 Review

Task total = 25
Season total = 110

10.7 Out of this World

Erewhon by Samuel Butler

Review: Part dystopian adventure, part satire, part philosophical treatise. Our hero travels the an uninhabited countryside, winding up in Erewhon (Nowhere). The key feature of Erewhon is that health issues, aging and ugliness are treated as criminal whereas moral failings/crimes are treated as illnesses to be pitied. If you have a headache, you hide it. If you have heart problems, you'll end up in prison. Meanwhile, if you embezzle money or have a dalliance with your neighbor's spouse, you see a "straightener" who might prescribe a boring diet and an occasional flogging.

The first half of the book focuses on our hero discovering and coming to understand this strange way of living. The second half gives over to philosophy in the eyes of Erewhonian thinkers (on eating animals, eating vegetables, reason and unreason, justice, the nature of time, the consciousness of machines) and bogged me down a bit.

Definitely thought-provoking!

+10 Task (Erewhon (more or less backwards of “nowhere”) is the fictional setting of 95%+ of the book)
+5 Combo (10.4 – 7 letters)
+10 Review
+10 Canon

Task total = 35
Season total = 85

10.5 Journey

I'll Push You: A Journey of 500 Miles, Two Best Friends, and One Wheelchair by Patrick Gray

Review: Not my usual reading fare, but it was short and led to a good book-club discussion. I enjoyed reading about Patrick and Justin's friendship, which really is a beautiful one. I also enjoyed their journey and the ways it impacted them. The body aches and pains, and the subtle shifts in thinking and values over the course of the journey reminded me quite a bit of my Appalachian Trail thru-hike experience.

The Christian focus didn't really interest me, and got heavier as the book went on. I also was irritated by the framing of their adolescent interest in the female body as terrible, destructive porn addiction. Not that I don't think one can be addicted to porn, but what they were describing wasn't addiction.

Finally, Patrick and Justin just aren't really writers and everything felt a little clunky and melodramatic. I bet their speaking gigs are more succinct and effective.

+10 Task (two friends travel the El Camino)
+10 Combo (10.2 – you, 10.4 - 10 letters/11 characters)
+10 Review

Task total = 30
Season total = 50

10.4 Twelve

Horse by Geraldine Brooks

Review: Geraldine Brooks never really disappoints me, but I do think this is her best yet. She adds a layer of modern characters here that allows her to talk about race in a contemporary way while also telling her deeply researched historical fiction. I think this was a super smart idea because in the past I've noticed that she gives her historical characters modern ideas. She avoided that this time by channeling those modern ideas through her modern characters and allowing them room to comment on the past.

The structure and order of the narrative is really well done and allows for tension and cliffhangers without needless rambling.

Brooks' writing is ever-so-slightly not flawless. I could always tell when something big (and usually tragic) was about to happen because she'd suddenly be describing something seemingly mundane in great sensory detail.

I also found her modern characters (especially Jess) a little bit flat. It didn't bother me much though as Jarret (and Lexington) were the real focus and the modern characters were tools of a sort (see paragraph #1 of this review).

Overall, I continue to love Geraldine Brooks. Can't wait to see what she does next.

+10 Task (5 letters)
+10 Review

Task total = 20
Season total = 20

20.10 Birthday

The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous

Review: This is the kind of thing you read for the experience more than the story -- at least, that's why I read it. The sheer amount of intellectual and physical work (of hundreds of people, over centuries, still not done) to make this window into 4000 years ago possible is draw enough for me. I'm fascinated by the puzzles of putting together pieces of ancient tablets, and translating from an ancient language, and dealing with bad copies, version control, etc., from a time before those things were even things people thought about.

The story itself is more interesting than I expected too. It lacks the superlative hero-ness of more recent (still hundreds of years old - ha!) heroic epics. Gilgamesh is not undefeatable or infallible, he doesn't slay hundreds of enemies and/or monsters. In the end, he fails in much of what he sets out to accomplish. And THAT was interesting.

+20 Task (1800 B.C.)
+10 Review
+25 Oldies (1800 B.C.)
+10 LiT (from the Akkadian dialect/Standard Babylonian)

Task total = 65
Season total = 905

20.9 ABCs

A Fantasy of Dr. Ox by Jules Verne

Review: This is a short, easy read. True to Verne, it features an overconfident man with science smarts and money who is doing something in the name of, in this case, science - no matter who gets exploited or harmed in the process.

I found it a bit silly though. The other Verne books I've read (Around the World in 80 Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth) have been, while not exactly realistic in their speculation or technology, at least placing that technology within a real world context (the world of the 19th century, anyway). But in this case, the world of the novel is not real - the people of Quiquendone are not normal to start. They do everything slowly, without intensity, and are almost frozen. This makes for a major difference when the oxygen experiments of Dr. Ox give them speed and intensity.

But, I don't get the point. Because humans in reality do things with speed and intensity a lot of the time. So the book sets up a strange reality and uses "science" to get us to actual reality. Why? It's not illuminating, or interesting. It isn't really even funny or charming. So... why?

+20 Task (JV)
+5 Combo (10.3 – J for Jules)
+10 Review
+10 Oldies (1872)
+10 LiT (from the French)

Task total = 55
Season total = 840

10.2 Octoberfest

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

Review: A beautiful experimental novel that a month ago or a month from now might have been/be a five-star read. Unfortunately for Trust Exercise, I also just read How to be both by Ali Smith and I don't think I can justify giving this the same rating as that.

Both are novels interrupted - two-thirds told and then another perspective ("Karen") abruptly breaks in and takes over from "Sarah - the author. Trust Exercise is really quite good in the first two-thirds. But the interruption that happens really serves to undermine the first two-thirds rather than add to or illuminate it. As a reader, I quickly found myself questioning things from the first part of the book, rolling them around in my mind, trying to get at the truth based on clues from Karen. This was a little bit fun and a nice jolt out of passive novel-reading.

But, Trust Exercise makes no space for deeper truth here. There's no "and," no "both." No recognition of Sarah's reasons for how she wrote, and little recognition that she called her book fiction because it is. Not that these things are denied, but more that the whole focus is finding out the truth/who is right - which we do in the end. But this transition to mystery, to finding clues and kernels, wasn't really satisfying to me.

+10 Task (United States)
+10 Review

Task total = 20
Season total = 785

20.9 ABCs

How to Be Both by Ali Smith

Review: I've had a sense for a while (too long, I've waited!) that I would really like Ali Smith. Here I am, then, officially saying that I love her. This book grabbed me from the start and was basically tickling my brain from start to finish. I love that many current writers (particularly women) are quietly dispensing with the need for structure and form, without feeling like they need to be smug or self-aggrandizing about it. Smith switches perspectives two-thirds of the way through without concern or fanfare, and proceeds to play with time and place so beautifully that the abandoned first two-thirds of the novel never actually feels abandoned.

I love that she took the fictional story of modern teenage girl grieving her mom's death and an obscure but real 15th century artist and ran with it - dropping the "both, and" dualities of moral quandary, gender, art, class, color, first loves and grief on both characters. It's not neatly packaged. It's messy with interconnections and mirror images and symbols everywhere. It's beautiful.

+20 Task (AS)
+10 Review

Task total = 30
Season total = 765

20.3 Jemisin

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Review: This was a really outrageously good book, with an unnamed main character who I'm obsessed with. Partially because a little like me: very smart, a bit naive to what is popular or 'in the ether' as a kid, and frequently adopted by the more ambitious, flamboyant and interesting people around her, yearns to be seen for her uniqueness but struggles to see her own value. And partially because she learns and grows throughout the novel in such a real way. There are fits are starts. There is growth that comes with age, with mistakes, with triumphs, and with luck. At the end of the novel, she seems just on the cusp of starting to live her life.

Zadie Smith expertly places all this glorious characterization within a deep and complex understanding of class, culture, gender and race interplay, not only in 1980s and 90s England, but internationally, and into the 21st century.

+20 Task (The unnamed MC is half Black, half white)
+10 Review

Task total = 30
Season total = 735

20.3 Vonnegut

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Review: A pretty impressive undertaking, with intense themes, a wide scope, a complicated non-linear timeline, and many characters of different types and backgrounds. It's the best anti-war book I've read, probably ever. Not preachy or melodramatic, even though so many characters die.

The descriptions are really detailed, especially in the scenes at the POW camp. This was a bit of a challenge to read (lots of festering ulcers, starvation, horrific diarrhea, amputation of gangrenous limbs, etc.) but added heft and realism to a narrative that was already overwhelming in emotional intensity.

I was really intrigued by the way that while the war and the tragedies the Australians faced take up most of the narrative, the love story between Dorrigo and Amy still suffuses everything. It's the center of Dorrigo's life, it molds his life in ways that even the horrors of war can't touch. The war breaks his body, mind, faith in humanity. But his love for Amy breaks his soul - it's the affair more than the war that leaves him a living ghost.

+20 Task (There are many references to its antiwar themes, here’s one: https://www.betterreading.com.au/book...)
+5 Combo (10.2 – Australia)
+10 Review

Task total = 35
Season total = 705

10.1 TBR

Maurice by E.M. Forster

Review: What a wonderful novel! The socio-cultural milieu feels like other novels I've read set in the decades just before World War 1, but it's very clear why this wasn't published until much later. Forster's makes a hero of someone who could never have been a hero at the time. And gives him a happy ending too!

What's most interesting to me though is that it's still a novel written during the 1910s - it's of and for that time. So even though it's a novel ahead of its time, there's no historical fiction problem: that sense of modern ideas and perspectives overlaid on the past. Instead it rings true of the time and the novelty is that Forster was bold enough to say it, to write it down, to tell a story of a gay man finding happiness and still being gay. It's a story literature and culture had mostly pretended did not and could not exist.

+10 Task (#3 on my TBR, waiting since 4/7/2009)
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (1971)

Task total = 25
Season total = 670

10.3 9, 10, 11

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

Review: I should have read this back when it came out in 2014 because it's already quite dated. Climate change has moved fast, plus this book has no knowledge of Trump, COVID-19, Ukraine and other factors that make it certainly seem falsely hopeful at the end.

The beginning of the book was basically a survey of the current (2014) climate change landscape, and I almost decided to stop reading in favor of something published more recently. I probably should have, but the next few chapters delved into the history of climate change movements and energy industry developments and that was still relevant information. By the end I was wishing again I'd stopped, but I was so close to finishing that I went ahead and did so.

The tone feels a bit Pollyanna-ish, even though it's very much justified. Somehow, the author never manages to build clear bridges between contemporary reality and our possible futures (either bleak and barbaric, or hopeful and humanist). Perhaps it's the lack of a clear depiction of what either of those futures look like. Instead we hear about threads of each (no fish anymore, or universal basic income that makes resisting dirty energy jobs possible) but these threads are occasional and don't build on each other or hang together. It's something about the writing style (it whips around from anecdote to place to topic without clear intention, yet still manages to be a little too dry). The result is no clear path or vision here, just alarm bells. In 2014, maybe that was for the best - but reading this now, I'm ready for solutions.

+10 Task (K for Klein)
+5 Combo (10.2 – United States)
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo (576 pages)

Task total = 30
Season total = 645

20.9 ABCs

The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist by Emile Habiby

Review: Habiby compares Saeed to Candide (right in the middle of the novel, too). He also reminded me of Don Quixote if Don Quixote was foolishly timid instead of foolishly brave. The style reminded me a bit of Kafka, but less dark. Maybe more like Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.

Although Saeed's predicament, while unfair, is also partially of his own doing. He could have fled Israel, or he could have fought back like his son. Neither is easy or safe, but both would leave him his humanity, his spine. Instead, he's spineless - flowing like water to the path of least resistance because it means survival (at all other costs). He loses everything, except his life.

That makes it sound like a serious or dramatic book, but the tone is one of farce and humor. Saeed is clueless and has no filter. He is timid and scared and also immediately says or does whatever comes into his head.

This is a unique look at what it was mid-19th-century to be a Muslim in Israel. It's also an interesting experiment with tone and characterization. A quick read too - well worth the time.

+20 Task (EH)
+5 Combo (20.5 – https://www.hipstamp.com/listing/isra...)
+10 Review
+10 LiT (from the Arabic)
+5 Oldies (1974)

Task total = 50
Season total = 615

20.9 ABCs
The End of Everything by Katie Mack

Review: This is a book on astrophysics for regular people, and it's extremely readable. I loved the focus on the end of the universe as an intriguing, high-stakes jumping off point for someone like me who has interest but no expertise in astronomy and physics. The author's tone is full of humor, an obvious love of her field, and an understanding of how to write for "regular people" without condescension or pretension.

I kept reminding myself that even though Mack describes astrophysical theories in visual and metaphorical terms, she and her colleagues discern these things in mathematical formulas and models. I very much appreciated the translation to descriptive words.

Even so, I can't say I understood it all. But it was enjoyable reading.

+20 Task (KM)
+10 Combo (10.2 – U.S.; 10.3 – K for Katie)
+10 Review

Task total = 40
Season total = 565

10.3 9, 10, 11

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

Review: This was just okay. It covers similar territory (VERY similar in the second half) to The Grapes of Wrath, but from the perspective of women.

The first half is better - very visual, clear relationships between characters, and a focus on characterization and where motives come from.

The second half lacks that careful writing and characterization. Plus the ending is overwrought, almost to the point of melodrama. Her characters get both too lucky and too unlucky. It felt like she wanted them to experience all aspects of this fascinating history that she was learning about, but that's not really how life works. It felt off that her characters were active players in every important moment and nuance.

+10 Task (K for Kristin)
+5 Combo (10.2 – U.S.)
+10 Review

Task total = 25
Season total = 525

20.9 ABCs

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

Review: This is a very character-driven narrative, told entirely in the unpolished voice of Lorelei Lee (colloquialisms, misspellings, malaprops, bad grammar, etc). Loos does a great job of walking the line between taking Lorelei too seriously and making her a complete joke. As a reader, I could laugh and shake my head, but also empathize with Lorelei.

I also really appreciated Dorothy and her willingness to say what she thinks, social conventions be damned. Lorelei's reactions to things Dorothy says are some of the best parts. Like this bit:

“So when I got through telling Dorothy what I thought up, Dorothy looked at me and looked at me and she really said she thought my brains were a miracle. I mean she said my brains reminded her of a radio because you listen to it for days and days and you get discouradged and just when you are getting ready to smash it, something comes out that is a masterpiece.”

Still, I didn't really love this reading experience. Partially times have changed, but the joke of it also got a bit old after a while, and the final chapter felt rushed and like desperation to bring things to a close.

+20 Task (AL)
+10 Combo (10.2 – U.S.; 20.2 debut novel)
+10 Review
+10 Oldies (pub’d 1925)

Task total = 50
Season total = 500

10.5 Autumn Colors

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

Review: Carson uses mythology (Geryon and the tenth labor of Herakles) reimagined as romance as her jumping off point. This leads to a beautifully sad story about surviving trauma, surviving the tragedy of young love, and what it is like to always feel different and apart from everyone else.

The poetic style makes it easy to move between myth, abstract idea, and scene. It also makes every word and image valuable.

Some "quotes"

(and my thoughts on them):

“Not touching
but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh.”

(I love how this brings together the way that passion can leave you in awe, but also wounded and lonely. The line between loved and scorched can be thin.)

“you know how apart people are in time together and apart at the same time”

(the repetition of 'apart' and 'time' let the mind play with what this line really means)

“Like the terrestrial crust of the earth
which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul
is a miracle of mutual pressures.”

(strength and resilience are in unlikely places - in our ability to bend and crumble)

+10 Task (red)
+15 Combo (10.2 – Canada; 20.9 – AC; 20.109 – pub’d 1998)
+10 Review

Task total = 35
Season total = 450

20.10 Birthday

Caín by José Saramago

Review: I probably should have read a little more Saramago before diving into this, his swansong, but I've read two others (Blindness, The Elephant's Journey) so I do already have a sense of his unique style.

I wanted to like this more than I did. It's creative and often funny, right from the start. The first sentence:

"When the lord, also known as god, realised that adam and eve, although perfect in every outward aspect, could not utter a word or make even the most primitive of sounds, he must have felt annoyed with himself, for there was no one else in the garden of eden whom he could blame for this grave oversight . . ."

But the rest of the book is more of the same - poking fun at the Old Testament in ways that are often very funny or had me nodding my head, but without anything really new or intriguing. Cain is our focus, and he wanders through time experiencing Old Testament highlights and questioning god at every turn.

God and cain have conversations like this one several times:

"But I though the workings of the world depended entirely on your will, lord, Yes, I've been using my will rather too much, as have others in my name, that's why there is so much discontent, people turning their backs on me, some even denying my existence, Punish them, They're beyond my jurisdiction, out of my control, the life of a god isn't as easy as you all think, a god cannot, as people imagine, simply say I want, I can and I command, and he can't always get what he wants straight away, but has to go round in circles first..."

In the end we're left with the idea that either god doesn't exist or, if he does, he's somewhere between a tyrant and a dimwit and much weaker than we think. And, story-wise, humanity dies out right there in the old testament.

There were sparks of an idea of god as two-faced that were occasionally picked up and abandoned (fate is another name for god, "No one is just one person...", "satan is just another instrument of the lord, the one who does the dirty work to which god prefers not to put his name."). I wish Saramago had explored something like this a bit more, rather than just repeatedly rolling his eyes at the absurdity of it all before shrugging and moving on.

+20 Task (pub’d 2009)
+15 Combo (10.3 – Jose; 20.5 – https://colnect.com/en/stamps/stamp/7... 20.9 – JS)
+10 Review
+10 LiT (from the Portuguese)

Task total = 55
Season total = 415