The Final Solution: A Story Of Detection

Michael Chabon

This was a short and melancholy book, sharp and precise and thoroughly enjoyable, about obscurity and aging, terrible things that can happen and things that help us cope. It felt quaint and formal, in a sense mimicking the age it was set it. There was a brief section that was jarring in the sudden clumsiness of the language – it is noticeable in a book this small – but otherwise, it was as good as Chabon always is.

my book, by me, jen: part ii

I have been writing by the seat of my pants. I’ve been fiddling with writerly things like point of view, structure, and awesomeness. I had some total blanking on what the fuck I was going to do next, after 25 pages, and then I had a Flash of Inspiration and I had my next bit of plot, and that was cool. Cool! I am enjoying writing this thing in a way I did not enjoy the first book I wrote, dragging it up out of the muck word by word, painfully and unhappily. I want to write this. It sits in my head, where I think about it. This feels good.

Coming Through Slaughter

Michael Ondaatje

This is a novel and it is also a detective story and a totally fictional all-true biography, and it is cinematic and poetic and dramatic and hard to understand and then completely illuminating. Another short book that feels completely compact, no words wasted. Pretty astonishing, and a whole lot of heartbreaking.

coming down slowly

Toasts and drinks bought and total patience with “Do you want to read the letter? Where they said they want me? Do you want to read it?” and congratulations and a bottle of champagne bought just for me, my god, and dinner out and more patience with my general overthemooness. I have the most excellent people in my life.

up, coming

I had that story I sent out everywhere, which has been rejected everyplace. Except, now, for here. Upcoming Fall issue, I think. I've been bursting into intermittent tears.

It is funny, the way I almost threw out the return envelope, when I saw how fast they got back to me.

Sprig Muslin

Georgette Heyer

I think I am working towards reading Heyer's entire catalog. Which is fine with me so far, because three books in, I am enjoying her immensely. You know, I keep running across links that refer to Heyer as a romance novelist, but I don't think that is true at all. Her books are nowhere near as one-dimensional and predictable as romances are.

These are light books with elements of romance, but Heyer's got a lot more depth and interest than calling her a romance novelist would suggest.

This was a little less satisfying than the first two, because the primary relationship slash conflict that kicks off the book was backburnered entirely too much for my taste, in favor of a madcap adventure plot that made me very much like the male half of the primary relationship, but which left all of the evolution of that relationship off the page, and the female half kind of an affable mystery.

There was also the startling and obnoxious cliché of the headstrong beautiful girl who needs a strong and caring man to take her in hand, and that left me sort of gaping, and yet, it was easy to dismiss it as of its time, a quaint relic.

That said, the characters were as engaging and well-drawn as ever, and Heyer is wonderful at creating distinct voices and and a whole lot of comedy. Hooray for the comedy.

Fitty Books

There’s this fifty books challenge going on, mentioned at the beginning of the year, where people were talking about how they were going to try and read 50 books over the course of a single year. And I thought about it, and thought “I can do that!” and I thought I’d sort of do it quietly.

Looking over the total count so far, it appears that I am silent but deadly. I’ve read 22 books in about 17 weeks. Or so? Something like that. That’s pretty neat. I should probably write them down (edited to add - see below! I'll be estimating round about when I read each, and posting with those datestamps).

You know, I’ve never kept count of the number of books I read in a year, but this speed feels about right, or even a little slow. And that is cool. Maybe I will, in fact, finish all the books I want to read before I die. Though I doubt it.

Tula Station

David Toscana, Patricia J. Duncan (Translator)
I think if I knew more about the political landscape of Mexico, I’d know more about this book, and understand it more deeply. But what little I know was not important in loving the story, which was complicated and cool -- three narratives and an overarching narrative frame, and a story about rewriting history, storytelling, personal responsibility, tragedy, selfishness, and how sad and not at all uplifting attempts at redemption can be.

This was a little slippery, with somewhat unlikable characters you liked – particularly the memoirist who makes up the bulk of the story, who you forgive for his faults and lies and untruths for being such an amazing author.

I don’t know if I kept expecting magical realism to creep in because that’s what Latin American literature always does, doesn’t it! Huh? or because Toscana is such a lyrical writer with a sense of the everyday strange and surreal. Maybe a little bit of both.

(Thanks to Beth, for evangelizing Toscana)

Rent Girl

Michelle Tea, illustrated by Laurenn McCubbin
This is kind of an illustrated novel, not quite a graphic one. There are points where the pictures take on a portion of the storytelling, but for the most part, the burden is on the text (which is occasionally really poorly edited). The story is about a lesbian chick who gets into hooking because her crazy girlfriend is a hooker, and how that fucks up her whole life – or was she fucked up to begin with? It's all so crazy. And angry.

The narrator’s got a lot of anger and self-deprecation, and the story is fascinating and seedy and terrible and hard to look away from – I stayed up late finishing it, because I couldn’t stop reading. It’s got a very beat generation kind of feel in the straightforward, outraged kind of language, and it’s got that same kind of sad self-absorption and shabby patheticness that the Beats also seem to have.

The pictures are very pretty.

Gilead

Marilynne Robinson
This is a slow and lovely book, very moving and powerful and deceptively quiet and imagistic, the way Housekeeping was, even though on the surface it is very unlike her first novel. It has a core of religion, faith and philosophy, self-doubt and beauty – and it was brilliant in the way it uncovered the main character both in his strength and weakness unexpectedly and subtly, around the outside edges of the narrator’s own self reflection.

I was worried at the way it would end, spent the book waiting for the inescapable ending with a sad kind of heaviness – you know from the first pages that this is a narrative written by a dying and terribly aged man, and that inevitability infuses the whole story. And the ending made me cry. That has not happened to me in a long time.

No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days

Chris Baty
Not much here in the way of addressing serious craft issues and the way to solve them, and that is what I liked about this. It is by the guy who organizes NaNoWriMo, the write a book in thirty days guy, and it is mostly about trusting that you can do something so big and crazy and who the fuck cares how it turns out – go. And while the message isn’t new, it was something I needed to hear, as the summer approaches and the book I need to have more or less finished at the end of it looms all nasty-like. Just go. That’s good advice, even for people who are not in Nikes.