So, last week I picked up a book with reviews that said all the right things, and elements that were seemingly perfect. It was a novel about a bookseller, an older curmudgeonly widower who runs a shop but refuses to stock anything that doesn’t appeal to his tastes. By some twist of fate, a baby is left at the man’s store with a note from the mother asking him to look after her. Certainly this would be no great work of literature, but I was looking for easy and enjoyable. Then, despite all of these plot features that were initially so appealing, I found myself at first unimpressed, then disappointed, then simply wondering when it would end (all in under 300 pages).

The novel was The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. A.J. Fikry is stalled in his life. He’s a prickly character with unyielding opinions. The books he has read shape how he interprets the world, and as such he has a very strong view on what comprises quality literature. Early on in the novel, a plot twist leaves him with a tiny girl to look after. Their relationship and the changes that it forces from this otherwise intractable character becomes the primary focus of Zevin’s story.

The book is fairly short and the plot moves quickly throughout. However, my issue was ultimately that the story did not hold my interest. A little more than half way through the book, the story had its first could-be ending. But, the plot continued forward. I had seen the first exit though, and I saw several others follow. After each I grew more wary, and more ready to reach the true end. The story itself was pleasant and quaint enough, but from my perspective, not particularly memorable.

I’m such a bibliophile, and stories about books would typically be my cup of tea, but this one just wasn’t. It was fine - I didn’t dislike it - but if I could go back, I’d skip it.

I have always loved radio. Growing up, much to my family and carpool’s annoyance, I insisted on tuning in to hear Paul Harvey’s commentary in the morning and his “Rest of the Story” segment in the afternoon. I loved the intonations of his voice and the way that he brought the news and the lives of historical figures alive. These days not much has changed, I still can’t get enough of those magical storytellers out there (those who use their voices as well as those who employ their pens). Today, Paul Harvey’s no longer alive, but radio remains (standalone and in podcasts), albeit increasingly marginalized. What inspired Anthony Doerr’s latest novel was the realization that electromagnetic waves surround us all on a daily basis –carrying phone calls, text messages, photos, and as before, radio broadcasts.

All the Light We Cannot See was far and away my favorite book of 2014 thus far. At its core are two incredible characters: Marie-Laure, a blind French girl from Paris, and Werner, an orphan from Germany. These two are on opposing sides of the war, but become connected through the waves of radio.

The story begins before the war in Paris with a little girl, Marie-Laure, who has recently gone blind. She spends most of her time with her doting father, who serves as the locksmith for the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Her blindness at first leaves her isolated; but, her father carves a scale model of the city that she follows with her fingers, learning her way around and to beginning to trust her other senses to guide her.

Meanwhile, Werner and his sister Jutta are being raised in a German orphanage. Werner becomes obsessed with radios, and begins to teach himself engineering. Though he is destined for work in the mines given his social status, his intelligence and drive provide an alternate path. The tale continues through the war leading to the moment that these two, swept up in the tides of war, cross paths in St. Malo, France.

The elements of this story integrated quite a few personal interests of mine, including:

1. Having visited both Paris and St. Malo, and given that I have a trip to Germany planned for the summer, the settings were definitely of particular interest.

2. The book is definitely on the literary side. The writing is beautiful and the cast of characters both rich and unforgettable. That being said, the subject isn’t a particularly light one as you might imagine, and this certainly doesn’t read like a beach novel if that’s what you’re looking for.

3. I pretty much love any and all things, fiction and non, that take up the subject of WWII. Before I even began reading, I was utterly sold on the subject.

4. I love when the stories I’m reading incorporate references to other books. For example, a character that I kept thinking about while I was reading this novel was Alma Whittaker, Elizabeth Gilbert’s heroine from The Signature of All Things. Alma is an isolated child, much like Marie-Laure, who becomes obsessed with the mosses growing at her family home (not unlike Marie-Laure’s fascination with mollusks). I kept recalling Alma’s enthrallment with Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, as Marie-Laure read and reread Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Both Gilbert and Doerr’s novels made me want to run out and immediately begin these two classic works.

5. I hate sappy endings. I don’t like when everything works out perfectly and everyone lives happily ever after. It’s too unrealistic and I often feel like it cheapens the story. I like it when the story ends happily but not perfectly. I don’t want to give anything away, but I will say I was completely happy as I turned the last page.

This book is definitely not to be missed, I think there is some part that will appeal to any reader. It is on the long side, but the story is just so good that you’ll actually savor over the length (500+ pages), and if you’re anything like me, wish it had gone on further.

Still not convinced? Maybe the author himself can sell you on it:

A few years back, I was at dinner with a friend's family.  His mom and I were discussing books and she mentioned the book was reading, Chris Cleave's Incendiary, remarking that though she was enjoying the book, she had had a rather embarrassing encounter because of it. She had been listening to the audiobook while running errands and had pulled into a drive through just as the book hit an explicit scene. As the window rolled down, the drive through worker's eyes widened, and her face reddened as she fumbled to pay and leave as quickly as possible. I had laughed as she told the story, but in truth, had never had a book moment like that. Until now...

About a month back I was reading an article by Bookish that had a spring books preview. There was a contest where you could enter to win one, and I was really hoping that I would get Emma Donoghue's new book. Two weeks later, I had an advanced reading copy in hand (Thank you Bookish!!). I was thrilled. The book is set to be published in a couple weeks, on April 1. 

I have mentioned before how much I enjoyed Emma Donoghue's previous best seller, Room. For those who don't know, this is a story of a woman who is held captive by her kidnapper. The book is told from the perspective of her five year old son, whom she has with her captor.  This is admittedly the only novel by Donoghue that I've read, though she has published a number. Nonetheless, when I received the book, I was so excited to read it (and showed off my advanced copy to far too many people, few of whom actually understood my excitement).

Frog Music, which is set in 1870s San Francisco in the midst of an incredibly warm summer and a smallpox epidemic, takes up the story of a real historical figures.  Jenny Bonnet, a fast-talking, pants wearing frog hunter befriends Blanche Beunon, a French burlesque dancer and prostitute. Beunon flees her maque Arthur, her pimp and boyfriend, and his friend Ernest, unwittingly leaving behind her infant son P'tit. Without money and without her son, Blanche follows Jenny outside of the city to plot her next move. Trouble follows, though, and through the window one night, Jenny is shot and killed. The story follows Blanche's quest to discover her friend's murderer.

Having recently finished and loved Kate Manning's My Notorious Life, which follows a strong, law-breaking woman in late 19th century New York City, I was taken quickly with the historical aspects and cursory descriptions of Jenny. The novel has a bit of French sprinkled throughout, which I enjoyed (gives me a chance to practice a little!). I do have a better picture of 1876 San Francisco - the ravaging impact of smallpox, the racial tension with Chinese immigrants, and the Gold Rush sentimentality. The novel, as the title suggests, has a musical orientation, and includes the lyrics from many songs of the period.

However, despite all of my excitement, even as I first sat down to read, I was unable to really get into the story. Part of the issue was, I didn't really like any of the characters. Also, the book started to get explicit. Blanche is a woman who loves sex and has quite a few rough encounters that are fairly hard-core. As I sat getting my haircut last weekend, I kept worrying that the hairdresser would see over my shoulder some of these graphic passages - I was just embarrassed by and uncomfortable with some of the content and these scenes had a distancing effect on Blanche. 

At the end of the book was an interview with the author in which Donoghue remarks,

I have trouble with plots in which very few characters are good or appealing (Breaking Bad, for instance, yes, I know, it's blasphemy to dislike that show, but I do). In part because Blanche is seemingly intentionally dislikable and given that the novel was rife with explicit sex scenes, my distaste started to add up early and quickly. Additionally, the plot kept moving back and forth in time, over the few weeks preceding and following the murder, which I found a bit frustrating and confusing. The book had extremely long chapters, only 8 in about 400 pages, which I generally dislike. Finally, the pace of the plot was fine, but the story itself just wasn't all that engaging. All and all, I just didn't like it. The book took me about 2 weeks to read, mostly because I just didn't really care what happened next.  

So, my recommendation? Skip it.

Last week, Newsweek published an article speculating about the true identity of the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. As I read through the expose, I stopped several times to ponder a few sentences that were just so in line with the fiction novel I had just picked up. For some reason or another, I missed that unit in high school when everyone seems to have read Slaughterhouse Five. A few weeks ago, I decided to I wanted to try out a Kurt Vonnegut novel, and at the recommendation of a few, I started with Cat’s Cradle.

The book was published in 1963 and since then, likely millions of things have been written about it. My aim in adding to this already rich, and potentially saturated, body of responses is not to add anything new and earthshattering. I am not going to attempt to prove that Vonnegut is the greatest writer that ever lived or why you should stop everything and read his oeuvre. There are plenty out there who have already written such things. As for me, I’m not sure I’m swayed by any of them. My intention is instead to simply encourage you to try something new, to pick up a book that you might think is outside of your comfort zone.

To confess my own ignorance, I knew very little about Vonnegut before starting this book. I knew he was writing in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I was aware that his books were satirical, supposedly funny, and had elements of science fiction. I’d heard his works quoted, often without realizing where the attribution belonged. Beyond that, well, I didn’t know much more.

Cat’s Cradle is narrated by a character who calls himself Jonah. He is working on a book about what important Americans had been doing on August 6, 1945, the day the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. His research leads him to Dr. Felix Hoenikker, an absent-minded and anti-social physicist, who had helped to develop the bomb. The narrator reaches out to Hoenikker’s children, and so begins the chase down the rabbit hole. Later, Jonah travels to the island of San Lorenzo with two of Hoenikker’s three children in search of the third. Here, the reader learns of the island’s distinct culture and religion as Jonah chases down a mysterious and menacing substance, ice-nine, which Hoenikker had left to his children upon his death.

As you might imagine, the novel engages with a variety of topics, including science, religion, and politics.  And it sounds a little crazy right? The longer the summary the wackier the novel would probably sound. So, why read it? Or why pick up any book that’s just a little bit intimidating? While I might have passively taken in the words of the Newsweek article, I instead had Vonnegut’s words and characters as a reference and a guide for interpretation.

Whether or not Newsweek’s expose proves correct and Dorian Nakamoto, the Japanese American man identified as Bitcoin’s inventor, turns out to be the creator of this new-age digital currency or not, Leah McGrath Goodman’s article is fastened in my memory. When Nakamoto’s daughter was interviewed, she remarked, "I could see my dad doing something brilliant and not accepting the greater effect of it." This quote immediately reminded me of the observations that Felix Hoenikker’s children make about him in Cat’s Cradle.

Additionally, when Nakamoto’s colleague is questioned about taking up work with someone who wanted to remain anonymous, he replied, "I am a geek…I don't care if the idea came from a good person or an evil person. Ideas stand on their own." We see this sentiment quite clearly in Hoenikker’s lab, with the various scientists working on inventions without much or any forethought about the ultimate use and political ramifications of the science. They instead are entranced within their own ideas. Hoenikker hardly seems to react to the effects of the bombing at Hiroshima and the fact that his mind had helped to develop the weapon that had caused so much destruction. Instead, he engages in a game of cat’s cradle with his son, seemingly oblivious to the historical relevance that the day would have.

No matter how dense or bizarre or daunting a book might seem, I really do believe that we grow and learn from what we read. Even if you pick up that novel and only understand one sentence, I think the exercise is worthwhile. I can’t say that I loved this book, I thought it was enjoyable, but it didn’t make me want to run out and read everything Vonnegut ever wrote. But, it gave me a framework for understanding an event that I might have otherwise passed over.

I finished up The Luminaries this past weekend.  As I mentioned, Eleanor Catton has spoken of two modes of reading this book: the scholarly mode and the plot mode. I felt a little disappointed with myself after finishing because somewhere about the middle of the book the plot took off, and I stopped taking breaks at scholarly outcroppings. I ceased attempting to discern what each of the planetary and astrological movements would mean in terms of the plot and just read the book. 

One of the interesting themes for me was the concept of the fortunate man. Those who find fortune through prospecting at that time often simply happened upon it. The concept of immutability and destiny are threaded throughout the novel. Catton ties fortune to astrology and then weaves a story from it. 

I was reading an article this week that was published in the atlantic, which actually hit upon some of the same topics. The article, "Your Zodiac Sign, Your Health," speaks to trends in birth dates and the onset of certain diseases. A sentence at the beginning in particular was striking, especially having just finished this book, "the immutability of one’s nativity may be why so many are drawn to astrology." Certainly part of our interest is the fixed nature of astrology. Another part is that each of us has a birthday that categorizes us under one of the 12 astrological symbols. Though about three quarters of Americans do not believes in astrology, I think each of us still feels some tie to it. There remains some scraps of truth in the ancient system that still apply to our modern lives. 

For example, this article discusses seasonality and disease, asserting that those born in the winter are more prone to mental instability - depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disease, for example. Traditional astrology might assert a causal link between the moon and insanity. But, the article's author points out that the moon is most dominant in the winter, when more hours are spent in darkness. This is the aspect of astrology that becomes so interesting to all of us, the intersection of mythology and truth. And that is what is so appealing about Catton's novel - you get a little bit of everything.

On the whole, I really enjoyed the book. It's very long, though, and for slower readers it would be a definitive undertaking. For those wanting to take the more intellectual path, I think you could easily spend two or three months reading and thinking about all the intricacies that Catton's writing presents. I think it would be very interesting to have read this in a class or book club, there are so many possibilities for different discussions and so many places to dig deeper. I would say maybe one day I'll come back and read it again, but given the length, that remains to be seen. Maybe we'll leave it to those interplanetary forces that govern The Luminaries. 

I'm having a tough time verbalizing my thoughts on The Lowland, which I realize is pretty unhelpful and fairly strange. I think it someone were to ask, my response might go a little like this:

I think it's easy to see from page one that this is beautiful writing and a novel saturated with symbolism.  As to whether or not I can say the read was enjoyable, well, there's where I get a bit stuck. Why? Though this novel is about familial relationships, it features characters that are hauntingly lonely and inhabiting a world in which happiness does not last.  So, I found myself sad and contemplative over the course of the read. Additionally, as mentioned, the book is stuffed to the brim with symbolism; though clearly the mark of a practiced and extremely talented writer, I was a bit distracted by it at times.

Lahiri's novel, like her other works, takes place in India and the United States. It tracks two brothers, who are extremely close, yet very distinct in terms of personality. Subhash is older, reasoned, and level-headed. Udayan is outgoing, emotional, and reactionary. The dichotomy is established early, though the two are inextricably linked. They are raised in a small town outside of Calcutta, in the lowland. The marshy setting has two ponds that depending on the weather may be distinct, or might flood and become one. The presence of water in the novel begins on page one, and is a prominent feature in nearly every chapter through the close.

In terms of setting a tone, Lahiri is a master. From the first page to the last,  there are themes that ebb and flow (water being one of the most prominent).  The craft that is displayed in the novel is certainly impressive from this perspective. The novel takes on a  water-ladden and heavy quality at certain points, and at others feels dry and emotionally  barren, hearkening back to the flooding and receding of the two ponds. Throughout the time I was reading it, I couldn't help but lapse into my old student mindset, as if trying to define what theme I would choose to write the paper, were I to have to compose one. And there would be plenty to choose from - water, unsteadiness, pairs, border / walls, liminal spaces, ghosts, memory, life / death, science vs. arts, to name a few. 

A few years ago, I had the chance to see Lahiri participate in a panel of writers. I found her quite dour, and though one speaking engagement does not even begin to point to the personality within, I did find the book similarly sullen. Hope is certainly not crushed and this novel is not overtly depressing. I did, however, find that the sense of gloom that often pervaded was at times relentless.  I do believe this quality is a common feature in Lahiri's oeuvre, but maybe I was just holding out hope for an ounce more light or a bit more concession in terms of general happiness in the novel. But, that's my mistake as a reader, because this is not the Lahiri world view, at least as determined by her works.

Excuse my coloring, I do this at times (helps my categorize novels like this one with a lot of symbolism - I also did this with Anna Karenina), but I added below a few snapshots from the book after I finished reading. I think they'll help to provide a good example of what the author does with language and how she sets up various scenes. I've included passages that are primarily water-oriented, though a few others are there as well. There may be a few spoilers as some pages are from later in the book, so if you're super plot-oriented, stick to the first two photos.

It's easy to understand how Lahiri was long and shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year and how she's won numerous literary awards. However, in terms of her reader base, I do wonder. I'm not sure that I can think of one of my friends at this moment that I would run to and say "You have to read this book!" That's not to say I wouldn't recommend it, I didn't like it, or I don't think that Lahiri's novels are universally appealing. What I mean to say is simply that I don't think this novel is for the mainstream audience - it's hard to recommend.  I do love her short stories though, but perhaps it's the smaller dose that makes it easier to say to someone, "hey, try this." I'd love to hear what you think thought!

And the prize goes to...Eleanor Catton! And guess what book just arrived today in the mail - The Luminaries. I can't wait to get started. 850 pages might take me a while so the review might be slow in the making, but I can't wait. I'm incredibly excited and impressed to see a 28 year old win such a prestigious prize.  In the meantime, I'm still reading The Lowland, and have a little less than half to go. I'll let you know this weekend. I'm a bit mixed thus far.