Non-fiction: Travel essay

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

I’m not even going to tell you how long it took me to read this book. It’s embarrassing. Even more so because I have no good reason for the delay - the book was perfectly good, it was just sheer laziness on my part. I can’t even blame the onset of new television because I was reading this book long before then.

So. In Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz decides to follow Captain Cook around the globe. Which is interesting enough, but really I think I had a problem with Horwitz’ writing. It seemed a little too journalistic to me, as though he was reporting rather than regaling. It makes sense, though, seeing as he’s a Pulitzer-winning reporter, that he would be more comfortable in reporter-mode. But it’s not what I was hoping for - I prefer my travel narratives more in the style of Bill Bryson, much more personal and personable. Tony’s own experiences seemed rather dry because they were just reported, a style which worked much better when he was relating Captain Cook’s actual experiences (which were very exciting and, more than once, I was glad when he turned back to the historical narrative line).

I’ll tell you a secret. I actually only bought Blue Latitudes because I really wanted A Voyage Long and Strange but wasn’t ready to pay hardcover prices not knowing if I’d like the writer. And, despite my above complaints about Horwitz, I think I’ll likely end up going back for A Voyage Long and Strange (though I can’t exactly put my finger on why I’m willing to give him a second chance).

My rating: B

 

Non-fiction

Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World’s Best-Loved Books by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy

The title pretty much says it all, I think. This book was recommended on one of the Publisher’s Weekly blogs and since I’m always up for a book about books, I picked it up. And though it wasn’t great, it was certainly interesting enough and a fairly quick read, helped along by it’s very short chapters - easy to pick up and put back down again.

The authors cover some familiar territory - Austen, the Brontes, Mary Shelley, J.K. Rowling,…even Dan Brown (though I’d be extraordinarily reluctant to place him in such company) - and some less familiar (at least to me) Nabokov, Frederick Forsyth, Ian Fleming, Darwin, and the Encyclopedia Britannica. I think my one complaint is that I felt like some of the stories were more about the author than about a particular book - not that it’s not interesting to read about authors, but some of the stories felt like a bit of a stretch connecting the interesting story about the author’s life with the writing of any one book. It would have been fine to just be reading quick, condensed biographies, but that’s not what the books says it’s about and I wish that the focus had been kept on the stories behind the books, rather than a brief overview of an author’s life.

And I actually found myself wishing they’d written longer stories about some of the authors - usually the ones I knew nothing about. The book is quite short as it is and I definitely wouldn’t have begrudged them quite a few more pages if it meant having slightly more in-depth information.

My rating: B-

 

Non-fiction

Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew by Brian Hicks

So after finishing Artemis Fowl, I decided that I wanted to read a ghost story. Though not a real ghost story, Ghost Ship definitely satisfied my craving for something spooky. It tells the story (and history) of perhaps the most famous ghost ship, the Mary Celeste. Found adrift a few hundred miles off the coast of Portugal by the Dei Gratia, what made it stand out was that there was no good explanation for what had happened.

Hicks explains that shipping tragedies were not uncommon. When it was first reported in the shipping news, it was just two lines long and listed among five other ships that had been lost. Even ghost ships were not that rare at all - in the same year that the Mary Celeste was abandoned, there would be dozens of other ghost ships discovered adrift in the Atlantic. What made the Mary Celeste so special was that no one could come up with an explanation.

The sailors on the Dei Gratia decided to split their crew and sail the Mary Celeste back to Gibraltar with them where they would claim the salvage reward. It was during their hearing that it gradually came out that, not only did know one know what had happened, no one could come up with a good guess as to what had happened.

Bad weather? Although the Atlantic is known for having the harsher weather and rougher seas, there was no damage to the Mary Celeste that would result in an experienced crew abandoning it in a lifeboat on the open waters. Also, all the hatches were wide open - not the best choice in stormy weather, of course. The sailors’ wet weather gear was all still hanging in their bunks and nothing in the way of supplies or provisions seemed to have been taken nor did it seem they had left in a hurry.

Mutiny or piracy? The captain, Benjamin Briggs, had a reputation as a good one, not the kind to inspire mutiny and ultimately, there was still no reason for the crew to have abandoned ship once they’d committed mutiny and the very fact that there was still a ship to discover (and again, nothing had been taken or even rifled through) seems to dispell the pirate theory.

Despite the fact that there is not much of the story to tell, Hicks turns the tale of the Mary Celeste into a riveting book. The first half of it is taken up with telling of the Mary Celeste’s past (she was originally named the Amazon) and that of her ill-fated captain, Benjamin Briggs and his family (all but one were seafarers and of those, I think only one managed to not die at sea). The slowest section is concerned with the trial of the Dei Gratia’s crew, but it needed to be there to coax out all the finer details and, I think, much of the information we have regarding the Mary Celeste comes from the trial’s transcripts. Then Hicks moves on to theories (including one about disappearing islands due to an underground river running below the Sahara - very cool if it’s true), hoaxes, and a brief (and slightly misplaced) foray into a discussion of the Bermuda Triangle (which is often blamed for the Mary Celeste’s disappearance, despite the fact that she was nowhere near it at the time).

As in the best of ghost stories, there are no answers to be had here, but when Hicks finally presents his solution in the last pages of the book, it is elegant and chilling in its simplicity.

My rating: A- (and the minus is only because he name-drops Clive Cussler into an awkward epilogue)

 

Non-fiction

A Piano in the Pyrenees by Tony Hawks (not to be confused with Tony Hawk - big difference)

Pay attention, Steve and Sloane, this is how to write a book and be likable. Here is an example of someone who is patently not like me (he’s a middle-aged British man, I’m a twenty-something American girl; he can afford a house in London and a house in the Pyrenees, I rent a studio apartment in the midwest) and yet I like him. He seems like a good bloke.

So basically this time around, Tony decides to buy a house in the French Pyrenees and then build a pool. It doesn’t sound like very much, but this book (and his others) is really carried by his voice. Tony tends to just be swept along by events and, luckily enough, things always seem to turn out for the best. Despite the humor of the book and his narration, his affection for his new friends and neighbors (and his old friends, too) is clear which I think helps make it easy to cheer for him despite the fact that I can in no way relate to his experiences.

I don’t care if Mitchell and Webb made fun of him (and Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace), I still like him.

If you’re intrigued at all, I would recommend starting with Round Ireland With a Fridge which is my favorite of the bunch, but Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure is great fun as is Danny Wallace’s Yes Man. They’ll definitely give you the travel bug (at least Tony and Dave’s books will) and they’re all great fun.

My rating: B+

 

Non-fiction: Essays

I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

Frankly, I’m just glad I’ve finished another book. This one suffered from a similar problem as Candyfreak, I’m afraid. Crosley’s voice reminded me very much of Sarah Vowell’s, but I just couldn’t bring myself to like her. I don’t know if she’s just too hip for her own good or maybe the fact that I suspect she’s not as much like me as she’d like me to think, but whatever it is, I think there’s definitely a hint of smugness about her voice that bothered me. Not enough to make me put the book down, but sort of like having a small pebble in your shoe - you can live with it, but it feels so much better once you’ve gotten rid of it.

I sort of felt like her essays didn’t really have a point to any of them. Quite a few of them had that ‘My point, let me show you it’ feeling towards the end of them. The sudden slowing of the pace, the more introspective thoughts, the serious twist at the end of an anecdotal (but still not really funny) story. And yet I don’t really feel like she had anything to tell me. I don’t think I took anything away with me and, maybe I’m just not as intelligent as I like to think I am, I don’t think she showed us anything honest about herself. Maybe she thought she did - certainly many of the essays ended on sort of - not really poignant but I can’t think of the right word, so think of poignant as though it were used by Fenimore Cooper (holla, Twainies!) - notes that I think were supposed to be giving us glimpses into her crazy-but-aren’t-we-all-in-our-own-way psyche. And they just didn’t feel sincere. They felt like the hipster version of what she thought she should be sharing with us.

Also, for a book shelved in the humor section, it was not all that funny (as Publisher’s Weekly also led me to believe it would be). I was expecting laugh-outloud funny, but what I got was, again, much more in the Sarah Vowell vein (though not as likable). Also, I think one of the blurbs on the back of the book put me off a bit. Someone called A.M. Homes (I also think she’s too hip for her own good because I don’t know any of the names on the back of the book - well, Jonathan Lethem’s, but his is on the front of the book) compares her to a postmodern Mary Tyler Moore, but I don’t think that’s what he (she?) means. I think A.M. Homes meant to compare Crosley to a postmodern Mary Richards. That’s a comparison I can see (although, again, still not as likable), but Mary Tyler Moore? Not so much.

I was about to type that, although I wasn’t thrilled with this, Crosley’s first book, I would give her a second chance, but now that I think about it, I’m not so sure I would. It might all come down to her blurbs. We’ll see.

My rating: C-

 

Non-fiction

Candyfreak by Steve Almond

I have finally broken my 3-month reading drought! Let there be rejoicing! But…it was only an okay book. Let there be…party hats and maybe a noisemaker.

Okay. Two chapters in I decided that his premise was all very well and good, but I just didn’t really like him. I managed to overcome my initial distaste for the author and there were parts of the book that I liked very much. I liked his visits to the various candy factories (his descriptions of the candies really made me wish I could have chocolate…like reeeealllllyyyy wish I could have chocolate) and the musings on nostalgia and what it means to be a small business in this era of global domination by giant retailers.

But mostly I didn’t like him. Mostly for two reasons, one of which is not really his fault, he’s just the straw that broke my back, so to speak and the other one is something of a surprise, actually. And I’ll start with that one.

So, I should have started with this, the premise of his book is that he loves candy. No, seriously. He loves it. And prides himself on having eaten a piece of candy every day of his life (I’m not going to be pedantic and start arguing with him over that, I’m going to be the bigger person and let it go). So he decides to visit small, independent candy factories that produce regional treats (as opposed to the Big Three: Mars, Hershey, and…one other one, I suppose, Nestle?). And I know it’s sort of a memoir/travelogue/foodie talk/cultural observations sort of book, but all of a sudden he launches into a full-on Bush rant. Now I am as fond of Bush ranting as the next person, but for some reason, this one really bothered me. Maybe it was because it seemed so unsubtle, although one of the main themes is the problem of the giant corporations monopolizing the market and the evil of capitalism (or something like that, whatever) or maybe it was because I was in the middle of a nostalgic reminiscence, picturing these candies being made in copper kettles and chocolate flowing down, enrobing the sweet caramel or nougat or whatever and that was rudely interrupted by a subject about which I don’t like to think most of the time (Does that make me a bad person? It’s just so depressing!) because one person CAN’T change the world (There. I said it. I’d say it again if I had to.) and Homer Simpson is probably right - democracy doesn’t work (That ought to get me on some no-fly lists, huh?) - but it annoyed me to have to read about politics in the middle of my sweet daydream.

Or maybe I was extra-grumpy because I was daydreaming about something I can’t have, I don’t know. But still.

And the other. I am TIRED of people describing the midwest as being populated by sad, fat, uneducated, dead-eyed, ignorant people towing long lines of screaming, fast-food-fed, badly-behaved, fat, uneducated, dead-eyed, ignorant children. I live in the midwest and I’m almost positive that we are not all fat, uneducated, dead-eyed, or ignorant. And I don’t know any children, but if I did, I’m sure they wouldn’t always be screaming and badly-behaved (or the other stuff, but I don’t feel like typing it out all again). This shows up time and time again - Bill Bryson does it, Will Storr does it, Steve Almond does it, I think Dave Gorman does it, even the lovely Eddie Izzard does it! Maybe, Eddie, the reason the midwest doesn’t ‘get’ you is because you don’t COME to the midwest. You come to Chicago (which, uh, hate to break it to you, IS IN THE MIDWEST!) and then everybody between there and California who loves you has to drive to Chicago to see you! (I don’t know why I’ve turned on poor Eddie all of a sudden - he’s really not meant to be the target of my ire here.)

Back to Steve, the target of my ire. For the most part, the candy part, I really liked this book, but I sort of felt like he felt like he had to be more socially relevant or something instead of just writing about the nostalgia of candy and what it’s like to be a candyfreak (although, that said, if I see the word ‘freak’ one more time…) or just to have such an overwhelming obsession/love for anything, which would have been a much gentler, softer, chewier, gooeyer…sorry, I seem to have gone off the track there.

So read it if you want to, don’t if you don’t. But if you do read it and you’re not allergic to chocolate (which, by the way, Steve, does not make me a boring person), I think you should probably empty your house of all chocolate products beforehand, otherwise you WILL end up eating them all, probably in one sitting.

My rating: B-

 

Non-fiction

At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman

So the last book review was long because it made me think things. The one before that was long because I hated it. This one is long because I love Anne Fadiman and not just because she spells her name the same as me (the correct way).

She writes essays that are interesting, funny, thoughtful, and just absolutely perfect. She may not be as ‘deep’ as Annie Dillard, but I think she’s more accessible and is often saying more than she seems to be, despite her fairly light-hearted (or at least not actively depressing) subjects.

As I’ve said before, I adore Ex-Libris, her book of, well, book-based essays and I knew I liked her writing, but I still wasn’t sure what to expect with a book of non-book-based essays.

I needn’t have worried.

Her subjects range from coffee to Charles Lamb to letter-writing to butterfly-collecting and everywhere in between. Her writing is that effortlessly clever voice, full of sparkling wit. To note:

Describing a letter from Charles Lamb to Samuel Taylor Coleridge which contains an account of the former’s most recent bout of insanity:

‘All we know of the episode is that Lamb was indisputably irrational…and that the experience was not altogether unpleasant…. The self-mocking levity was characteristic, as was the bizarrely incongruous postscript: “My civic and poetic compliments to Southey if in Bristol. Why, he is a very leviathan of the Bards!–the smallest minnow, I!” Went mad. Oh, by the way, my best to Robert. (page 32)

Totally laughed outloud. This next one is sort of convoluted to explain, so I’ll just let the quote speak for itself.

‘(The essential Coleridge-and-Wordsworth scene: A soiree at the Lambs’. Coleridge sits at one end of the dinner table, quoting Wordsworth. Wordsworth sits at the other end, quoting Wordsworth.)’ (page 97)

Oh, Wordsworth.

But it’s not all literary essays. There are discussions of the mail, past and present. Did you know that the London post used to be delivered nearly every hour? I always wondered how people in Jane Austen invited people over for tea on the spur of the moment. Also, apparently, people used to write ‘Haste, haste, haste, for lyfe, for lyfe, haste!’ to have it delivered faster. I doubt it would work nowadays, but I’m sorely tempted to try it…

She also writes an essay on coffee that is so persuasive I’m finding myself wishing I could have a cup! Do you know how much coffee Balzac used to drink? Forty cups a day! And then he started making it stronger and stronger until eventually he just began eating the coffee grounds. Amazing! And disgusting, but mostly amazing! And how romantic does this sound:

‘London had a coffee house for everyone (as long as you were male). If you were a gambler, you went to White’s. If you were a physician, you went to Garraway’s or Child’s. If you were a businessman, you went to Lloyd’s which later evolved into the great insurance house. If you were a scientist you went to the Grecian, where Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, and Hans Sloane once staged a public dissection of a dolphin that had been caught in the Thames. If you were a journalist, you went to Button’s …. And if you were a man of letters, you–along with Pope, Pepys, and Dryden–went to Will’s, where you could join a debate on whether Milton should have written Paradise Lost in rhymed couplets instead of blank verse.’ (pages 187-188)

How awesome is that?! I wish we had some sort of forum like that now - how often have you ever seen a dolphin dissection at a Starbuck’s? That’s what I thought. I mean, I guess now the sort of coffeehouse is the Internet where you don’t need any sort of permission to say what you think about whatever you think (nor do you necessarily need to have any proof to back up what you think - although, from the sound of it, I expect those coffeehouses probably would have at least questioned you on it). Which is sort of sad, just like the death of letter-writing at the hand of e-mail (which she also discusses).

But back to the matter at hand. She also loves the Arctic (and lends one essay to the discussion of Vilhjalmur Stefansson) and the outdoors (the book ends on a more poignant note with a brief description of a trip down the Green River which I will leave for you to read) which becomes obvious by the slowing of the pace and the warmth of her voice, despite the chilly subject matter.

In an essay describing the effects of being a night owl, she describes a night spent watching Halley’s Comet on the Tasman Glacier in New Zealand:

‘After crunching a mile or so across the clean hard snow, which had been unpleasantly slushy in the afternoon sun, we stopped on a narrow col with a thousand-foot dropoff on either side. And there it was: a small white cornucopia above the northern horizon, not solid, but delicately stippled, as if produced by a heavenly dot-matrix printer. We spread our sleeping bags on the snow and crawled inside. The vantage point was dizzying. It was impossible to tell whether the comet was above us or we were above the comet; we were all falling through space, missing the stars by inches.’ (page 66)

My rating: A

 

Non-fiction

For the Time Being by Annie Dillard

I picked this one up from the library based on Janis’ recommendation and her call for somebody to discuss it with on GoodReads. Well, Janis, knowing she’s a favorite of yours, I read it and, though I’m not entirely sure I’m actually smart enough to discuss it, here are my thoughts!

The first thing I noticed about Dillard’s writing, at least in this particular book (not having read any of her other work, I don’t know what she usually sounds like), was that her style - by which I mean the way the book was put together - reminded me a lot of David Markson’s, for lack of a better word, anecdotal novels. (On a sidenote, if you’ve never read a David Markson book, I highly suggest them - Vanishing Point, Reader’s Block, and This Is Not a Novel are the anecdotal ones, I think Wittgenstein’s Mistress is a more traditional one in terms of format, if not content…) She has four or five disparate topics that she continually circles around, including clouds, numbers, birth, and China. At first they seem to not have any connections, but slowly, it becomes clear that she is drawing faint lines between them and it’s up to the reader to discern them.

I like books like that, but they can be exhausting and it doesn’t help that Dillard lingers on topics such as death, deformities, and religion. But I made it through and, although I’m sure I didn’t get her complete message (or even necessarily the correct one), here are some thoughts this book made me think (well, really one big thought, but it’s broken into two related thoughts):

Like I said, deformities and birth defects are some of the topics to which she continually returns. So are paleontology and the evolution of our ancestors. Things that may be considered deformities now may eventually become the norm, right? Eventually, there will be a deformity that is useful and it will become the standard and people who are born without whatever it is (gills, x-ray vision, a few more arms) will be considered to have a disability. I suppose it’s a fairly obvious thought, but there you go.

And that reminded me of a trip to the Field Museum in Chicago a while ago. It must have been an exhibit on evolution and one of the cases had a diagram of the evolution of the horse, similar to this one which I found here:

Now apparently rough estimates of human existence are at, what, anywhere from 2-4 million years? If I’m off by a couple million, it won’t really matter. My point is that, if we were horses, we would still be this horse:

It’ll be around 16 million years before we’re at the next evolutionary stop. That’s a lot of evolving we’ve got left to do.

There were also a few things she said that I found interesting, for numerous reasons, which, seeing as this is my blog, I’m going to share with you.

‘We are only about 300 generations from 10,000 years ago.’ (p. 119)

Doesn’t seem so far away when you think about it like that, does it? There’s another interesting thing about this one which I’ll get to in a minute.

‘It is interesting, the debris in the air. A surprising portion of it is spider legs, and bits thereof. Spider legs are flimsy, Oxford writer David Bodanis says, because they are hollow. They lack muscles; compressed air moves them. Consequently, they snap off easily and go blowing about.’ (p. 123)

!!! Here I thought I had enough to worry about with all the spiders you swallow in your sleep and now I hear about this?! (I know, it’s not true, but it still manages to freak me out.)

But here’s where it starts to get confusing. When describing a woman who has just given birth, Dillard says:

‘She looks like the cartoon Road Runner who has just had a steam roller drive over it.’ (p. 39)

It seems innocuous enough, but can anyone tell me what’s wrong with that sentence? That’s right! The Road Runner never got run over by the steam roller, it was always poor old Wile E. Coyote who got run over by things. What are we to make if this inaccuracy? Is she setting us up for something? I’m not sure because, finally, she says:

‘We are civilized generation number 500 or so, counting from 10,000 years ago when we settled down.’ (p. 187)

Wait, what? Annie, unless I’m misunderstanding (which is indeed very possible), you just told us earlier that we are 300 generations from 10,000 years ago, not 500.

So. Did she plant these little inaccuracies so that by the end of the book, we’d come out doubting what we thought we’d realised while reading her book? It seems like something David Markson would do. Much of the book seems spent questioning things - why we’re here, why certain things happen, etc., so maybe Dillard’s trying to keep us on our toes, trying to keep us from settling in too comfortably into our beliefs when there’s always something new that might come along and shake them up if we’ll only let it…

Or maybe she just didn’t watch enough Saturday morning television as a child, I don’t know. Janis? Thoughts?

My rating: B+

(I would have given it a higher rating, but I don’t like things that make me feel less smart than I think I am and I found it a little depressing at times which was okay this time because I also stumbled across a new book of essays by Anne Fadiman of Ex Libris (review to follow soon!), which I would read after this to sort of cleanse my palate before falling asleep, so it balances out…)

 

Non-fiction

Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading by Maureen Corrigan

This book took me almost a month to finish. I’m not proud of that. Think of all the books I could have been reading while I’ve been reading this one. And do you want to know why it took me so long to read this book?

Because it pissed me off.

If you like this book or you like Maureen Corrigan or you like her NPR radio show (Oh, what’s that you say, Maureen? You have a radio show? Well, you should have said something!), then this review is not for you.

Because I did not like this book and I do not like Maureen Corrigan.

First of all, this book is misleading. Its subtitle is ‘Finding and Losing Myself in Books: NPR’s Fresh Air book critic on life as an obsessive reader.’ That title is too long, Maureen. Book titles should not have sub-subtitles, Maureen. And most importantly, Maureen, books with subtitles, especially books with sub-subtitles, SHOULD HAVE ACCURATE ONES!

I thought this would be a charming, lovely book, a sort of mix between Anne Fadiman’s wonderful Ex-Libris (if you haven’t read Ex Libris, stop reading this review right now and go read that book - don’t worry, I’ll understand) and the ubiquitous Book Lust series. I thought it would be a memoir told through the books she’d been reading at important, funny, poignant, whatever times of her life.

It was not.

It was a weird and unsatisfying mashup of the most boring (and not particularly insightful) literary criticism of books that seem unworthy of it (yes, there is such a thing!) and a very pretentious and condescending memoir. Half of the book is spent ‘dissecting’ hard-boiled detective fiction - fair enough, but I didn’t find what she had to say interesting in the least and it certainly didn’t make me say ‘Wow, really? I had no idea hard-boiled detective fiction could be so relevant; I must rush out and read some Dashiell Hammet now!’ (and she gives away the ending of a Lord Peter Wimsey novel which I might have wanted to read someday - lame!) - along with what she annoyingly terms Female Extreme-Adventure Tales (ugh, if I hear that phrase one more time, someone is getting a copy of Jane Eyre hurled at them) and a Catholic girls’ series about Beany Malone (you may have fond memories of it, Maureen, and it may evoke memories of your childhood, but that doesn’t mean it will stand up to literary criticism!) and the other half is spent telling us how smart she is (smarter than us and her ineffectual college students who she despairs of imparting any literary knowledge to - those hopeless, ignorant children who groan at her book choice - maybe you should re-evaluate your syllabus, Maureen - maybe they’re actually CRAP BOOKS!), how wonderful her family is, and how terrific her job is. (On a side note, that may qualify as the longest sentence I’ve ever written - I think my previous record was 54 words…)

We get it, Maureen, you really wanted to call your book Leave Me Alone, I’m Better Than You but your editor thought that would lessen its marketing appeal.

Secondly, the literary criticism sections read like a poorly written college paper. Her writing suffers from Johnny Carson-syndrome (at least I think it was Johnny Carson, though it may be Jerry Lewis, now that I think about it) - on one of the Simpson’s commentaries, Conan O’Brien says that someone once told him that the best way to perform comedy was ‘to tell the audience what you are going to do, then do it, then tell them that it has been done.’ And she does. I think this is part of her superiority complex - we lowly readers wouldn’t understand what we were being told otherwise - but it really annoyed the hell out of me. Maybe in the higher levels of academia (Oh, really, Maureen, do you have a PhD? You do! Now how did I know that?), this is an acceptable practice, but it feels like pandering to me and I don’t have to like it.

And finally, there were so many instances where I was like ‘Oh, where’s a pencil when you need one?!’ so that I could underline a particularly condescending passage or sentence, but then I thought ‘When this book eventually ends up in a used bookstore, I don’t want someone to pick it up and think I was underlining insightful moments,’ so I didn’t. Thus my review here lacks actual hard evidence of her pretentiousness, but it’s impossible to miss if you end up flipping through it at the bookshop or library.

For example, near the beginning of her book, she casually drops an anecdote about how the nickname by which a particular author is now commonly referred to was bestowed upon him by her in one of her early review for the Village Voice. And it’s just thrown out there like something you’d say with a snooty chuckle at a cocktail party where you’re speaking just a little bit louder than you need to so that everyone in your vicinity hears your witty, sparkling bon mot and thinks ‘wow, that person is cool.’ Then she often stops for a moment and says that it’s very aggravating to read reviews or literary criticism where the tone of the writing becomes condescending toward the work itself (What the hell are you talking about, Maureen? You should worry more about the tone of your writing toward the reader!) and coyly remarks that she hopes she hasn’t fallen into that trap. You have, Maureen! You have! And finally, circling back to what I said earlier about her book choices for the courses she teaches, I am this close to being certain that she picked a great number of the books she talks about merely because no one’s ever heard of them which makes her look smart and cool. Now everybody does this - I do this with books and music - but at least I admit that I do it! And the books and music I like are actually good - Maureen is trying to convince us that these obscure books are obscure for no good reason when I would happily argue that there is more than likely a very good reason that no one else likes them.

I know it sounds like I’m being hard on her because her book ended up being not what I expected it to be, but I gave her a fair chance because who doesn’t like reading about books? But she just kept letting me down. And then she made me so mad that I just wanted to finish it so I could rip it apart here for you.

So does anyone out there listen to her radio show? If you’re a fan, I hope you didn’t make it this far and if you did, I hope we’re still friends. If you are a fan, you’ll have to let me know what it is you like about her and how she sounds on her show.

My rating: F-

ETA: Sorry that’s so long - I promise I won’t be offended if you don’t read it - but it feels so good to get that off my chest and out of my head. Now I shall move onto other, better books and soon My Blank Page will once again become a happy, rant-free place.

 

Nonfiction: Metaphysics?

Will Storr Vs. the Supernatural by Will Storr

I bought this book because it was written by a cute, British journalist.

Okay, even I am not quite that shallow. That was only part of the reason. I bought this book because I thought it was going to be something in the vein of Danny Wallace, Dave Gorman, and Bill Bryson when he was still writing travel books (I love you, Bill, but get back to the travelling!). It wasn’t, but this book managed to overcome the not-what-I-expected problem and I really enjoyed it.

That said. Do not read this book at night and not on your own and certainly not without the television or some lively audiobook on in the background (do I really have to tell you who I’m talking about here? Come on!). It’s not that his descriptions of his experiences were particularly evocative or anything - not that his descriptive talents should be ignored - but there’s just…something about them that reads like a good ghost story. I think it helps that, going into this experiment, his observation of people who are ghosthunters, demonologists, mediums, and the like, he admits that he is a fairly strong skeptic. That makes his experiences all the more, well, haunting, I think.

And that’s what I think I liked the best about this book. That he wavers. He starts out skeptical, starts to veer towards believing, and then back to skeptical before ending up…well, I don’t want to give away the ending, do I?

The people he writes about are very interesting and run the full range of former skeptics who still don’t quite believe what they are experiencing, obviously delusional people, full-on skeptics with an explanation for everything, and even a few fairly obvious charlatans. But, as Storr points out, all of these people believe what they are saying. Very intriguing.

The stories he tell are, for the most part, fairly spooky. Like Scooby Doo is before they figure out that it’s all just a big real estate scam. There’s one particularly disturbing and sad one at the very end which he leaves unresolved. Sort of like his whole experience.

He manages to bring up lots of interesting points and makes ghosthunting about more than just seeking proof of an afterlife. So despite not being what I expected, I was pleasantly surprised.

My rating: B+

 

Non-fiction: Music

‘Einstein on the Beach’ from Music by Philip Glass by Philip Glass

Yes, I’ll admit it, even if it makes me pretentious. I like Philip Glass. There. I said it. I’d say it again if I had to. What kind of statement could be even more pretentious? I like, nay, love, a Philip Glass…opera. Yes! Einstein on the Beach! So wonderful. Full of repetition, solfege (solfege!), a libretto that barely makes sense, lines spoken across one another, and…dare I say it? A spaceship.

Awesome.

But even though I love Einstein on the Beach, I had absolutely no idea what it was all about. Luckily, Philip Glass himself was kind enough to explain it to a certain extent.

I haven’t read all of Music by Philip Glass. I figure it probably wouldn’t make as much sense or be as helpful to read about music with which I am not familiar. So this review is really just about the Einstein on the Beach chapter. It was really interesting. He talks all about the process of how he collaborated with, oh, what’s his name, Wilson, Robert Wilson and how they came up with their ideas. It’s really interesting. As far as I can tell, Einstein on the Beach isn’t really about Einstein so much as like a collage of things that are meant to remind you of Einstein and then think about him on your own time. Which means that this is one of those performances where the audience is just as important as the performers because without the audience, Einstein on the Beach has no meaning.

Cool, huh? I don’t think it’s a really new idea, nor was Glass the first to do it, but I still think it’s cool. Most of the text was written, if I understood correctly, by a fourteen-year-old boy with a developmental disability, which is why it has that borderline making sense feel to it. But it’s also beautifully poetic. I don’t know if it’s just the sounds of the words that he chose or the rhythms or what, but it’s amazing. The rest of the text was written by the soloists and has the same stream-of-consciousness feel to it.

He even went into a little bit of detail about how they learned it (one small passage each day and then that one plus a new one the next, and so on), how they generated publicity (word of mouth at fringe festivals), how they managed to get picked up by the Met, and how they didn’t make any money at all.

Although he talked a little bit about the score and provided two or three examples, I wish he could have gone into more detail. His music is fascinating, the way it repeats, repeats, repeats, and then suddenly you realise it’s ever-so-slightly different and definitely going somewhere. I need to get my hands on a score for this.

Also, and I will be adding points to my rating just for this, he has the best quote EVAR on the front cover. You know how authors get other authors or people who are well-known in the field they’re writing about to say something like ‘So-and-so’s take on this subject is revolutionary and mind-blowing; I wish I’d thought of it’ or ‘Anne is the next J.K. Rowling.’ That sort of thing? Well, here’s Phil’s:

Does that rock or what? OMG with the hilarity. Seriously, it still makes me laugh out loud to read it. Sometimes I just say it to myself and it makes me laugh.

Awesome.

My rating: B+ for lack of score, but A- for most awesome quote ever.

And because it’s so awesome, I’m going to give you a sample (it’s an opera, so it’s mega-expensive and it’s Philip Glass, so it’s not for everybody, so either check out this excerpt or head down to your local library and see if they can get a hold of it for you). So here’s my favorite part of Einstein on the Beach:

Philip Glass - Knee 5 from Einstein on the Beach

 

Non-Fiction

 

Persepolis and Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi

Okay, I realise that I’m probably the last person to finally read these books, but memoirs aren’t always my thing. But I’ve known about these books for quite a while and, as you’ll see, I seem to be going through a bit of a graphic novel (or in this case, memoir) phase, so I finally decided to check them out. It was well worth it. I don’t have a lot to say about them, mostly because I don’t feel like I know enough to say what I mean or what they deserve to have said about them. The first one left me with an oddly empty feeling, more because I really didn’t have any way to know how to feel at that point, and also a little bit scared because sometimes it seems like things like that aren’t as far away as we (or maybe just I) like to think they are…

But if you haven’t read them, you should.

My rating: A

On a lighter note…

Yarn Harlot by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Very fun. Probably only if you’re a knitter, otherwise half the time, I expect you’d just be confused. Pearl-McPhee has such a chatty voice - probably she’s honed it while writing her blog - that it just feels as if you’re talking to your best knitter friend. From attempts to store her stash without her family knowing quite how out-of-control it’s gotten (even I have not yet resorted to keeping it in my kitchen cabinets…not that I actually have kitchen cabinets, but you know) or tearing apart a car to find her favorite double-pointed needles, it’s all stuff that most knitters have either dealt with before…or at least come close.

The only thing I thought this book was missing was pictures. She often talks about interesting pieces that she’s knitted or is working on (wedding sweaters that mysteriously double in size during blocking, a lacy sheep shawl) or funny things that involve her knitting in some way (a mischievous squirrel desperately devoted to a fleece left out to dry) that I wish there’d been pictures of.

My rating: B+ (It would’ve been an A- if there’d been pictures…)

 

Non-fiction

Sound Bites by Alex Kapranos

I am in love. I wish I could describe food the way Alex Kapranos does.  Hell, I wish I could describe anything the way Kapranos does.

I think it was The Guardian  that asked Alex Kapranos, singer and guitarist for Franz Ferdinand to write a series of articles about the food he encountered while on tour. This book, Sound Bites, is the slim, but satisfying compilation of his articles. Holy cow, the man can describe. Some of the food sounds really good, some of it sounds repulsive, but all of it is described in delicate, evocative detail. Whether it’s a pastry in Soho (oh, my god, I practically drooled all over the page) or marrow bone (I…didn’t know what this was, but from his description, I’m pretty sure I wish I didn’t know now), the scene is meticulously set.

He definitely has a way with words that is…unexpected. I mean, I know songwriting is wordcraft, but still. This was a treat to read. And there are lots of little asides that add a really nice, intimate touch. Like he says he wears sunglasses, not too look cool, but because, since he can’t make eye contact with everybody in the audience, he’d rather not connect with just a few. Or something like that - trust me, he said it much more elegantly.

So who’s Alex Kapranos? Here he is (in the red and black-striped shirt), with the rest of the band:

Man, I wish he’d describe me. And, no, that’s not a euphemism… Okay, well, maybe it is, but I also wish he’d literally describe me.

My rating: A-

 

Non-Fiction

This is the cover artwork for the revised paperback:

This is the cover artwork for the hardback copy:

Isn’t it so much better? It has more of that random quality that I think this book needed. (I actually printed it out and taped it onto the cover of my paperback - I recommend you do the same.)

Chance Meetings by Rachel Cohen

I seem to be disappointed with a lot of books recently, books that, had my expectations not been either so high or of a certain take on the subject, I probably would have enjoyed greatly. Alas, this is another to fall into that category. From the title and the blurb on the back of the book, I sort of expected this book to be about how the lives of American authors and artists had unexpectedly intertwined with one another, how, say, one day John Cage accidently spilled coffee on the person next to him in the cafe and it turned out to be Marcel Duchamp or Mark Twain reached for the same book in the library as Ulysses S. Grant. Or something. But I expected their meetings to be much more…well, mystical, frankly. Orchestrated by Fate. Turns out, the relationships and friendships Cohen outlines in this book were rather more mundane. Many were either mutal admirers of one another or simply introduced by mutal acquaintances.

Now, once you accept that this book will not inspire exclamations of “And just think, if Henry James had not missed his bus that day, he never would have met Mathew Brady,” it’s a very interesting book. The authors and artists that Cohen covers range from Willa Cather and Sarah Orne Jewett to Norman Mailer and Gertrude Stein to Zora Neale Hurston and Merce Cunningham and it is interesting to see the effects they all had on one another. It was rather a, well not quite incestuous group, but there were many complex relationships among them all.

I will admit that, despite having an English degree, there were a couple of people with whom I was not familiar. I don’t know who William Dean Howells is, presumably mostly a reviewer and/or editor rather than a writer, but all I could think of was the millionaire from Gilligan’s Island. And I’m pretty sure that’s not who Cohen was writing about. Also, I did not know that Jewett was part of the American literature canon - I only knew her as the person whose books are usually on the shelf in the used bookstore where Jerome K. Jerome’s books should be. (Just so you know it usually skips from Henry James straight to Sarah Orne Jewett. Poor Jerome.) So it has become obvious that I still have a lot to learn about literature.

I think that the thing I enjoyed most was that it made these figures of the literati seem more human, made their fame and accomplishments seem, not more prosaic, but more attainable, but at the same time managed not to lessen their obvious genius.

My rating: B+

 

Non-fiction: Music

Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 by Simon Reynolds

I picked up this book after it got a glowing review in Q Magazine, which essentially serves as my music bible. I was in the middle of a book about the punk years and thought I’d skip ahead and learn a bit about postpunk. And am I glad I did! Rip It Up And Start Again is an amazingly in-depth history of the backgrounds and formation of different bands, their influences, and their ideas, covering the years 1978 to 1984 and bands on both sides of the pond.

This book will make you long for a time when indie, actual indie, labels had the power to change and mold the music industry, when music had a philosophy. It also emphasizes the romance of the time - disillusioned creative types with a passion to make themselves heard coming to New York or London and squatting in buildings until they got a gig. Quite a contrast to the privileged backgrounds of many of today’s artists (Strokes, I’m looking at you!).

I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of popular music, but be forewarned, it will probably make you run out to your nearest record store (preferably independantly-owned) and spend all your money filling in the holes in your record collection.

My rating: A

ETA: I just found out that there is at least one chapter missing from the American version - like on purpose, edited out - so now I’m going to have to track down the British version so I can see what I missed… Lame!