Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? By Roz Chast

228 pages

I’ve always been a fan of Roz Chast’s cartoons in the New Yorker, but this memoir gave me a much deeper appreciation of her work. In Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Roz Chast gives an honest account (often brutally so) of her experience caring for her aging parents. Her descriptions in words and pictures of her parents’ Brooklyn apartment are so vivid that at times I almost felt claustrophobic. Like many of their generation, the Chasts grew up with nothing and felt the need to keep everything through the years. I especially liked the drawing of a decades-old oven mitt of her mother’s that had been patched with fabric from a decades-old dress of Roz’s. On a more serious note, Roz talks in-depth about her relationship with her mother, which ever since childhood was more fraught than her easy relationship with her dad. She describes her mother’s stubbornness and angry outbursts (which her mom called “a blast from Chast”) and how a favorite line of her mother’s when she was growing up was “I’m your mother, not your friend.” Towards the end Roz wonders what it might have been like if her mom could have tried to be both, but realizes that it’s too late in their relationship for that. A handful of photographs throughout the book serve as a nice reminder that these are real people, not just caricatures (not to mention the adorable photos of a stoic, young Roz), as do the touching poems written by Roz’s eloquent mother. Don’t let the fact that Roz Chast keeps her parents’ ashes in her closet fool you; this beautiful portrait of the aging and dying of two amazing people does more to honor her parents than a fancy urn on the mantelpiece ever could.

Haunted

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, 411 pages

Palahniuk is the author of Fight Club, which was wonderful - so I had pretty high expectations for Haunted. The story begins with 17 people going to who-knows-where for a 3 month writers' retreat to write "the next great American novel." They have all the necessities: food, clothing, water, electricity - but are not allowed to leave once they are there. This is where the fun begins. As each writer believes they need to upstage the others with the story of who they are - and what happens to them during the retreat, they start to sabotage their living quarters and each other. 

The chapters are set up in a way that keeps the story rolling: a poem about one of the writers, part of the main narrative, and a story told by one of the writers. The one thing that I did not enjoy was the ending. While the stories were great within the book and I loved hearing about the various writers and how they ended up at the retreat, the ending left me hanging and didn't seem to fit with rest of the book.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, but for the characters and their stories...not for the overall plot. Fair warning: people have been known to faint while reading/hearing "Guts" (a story told by one of the writers at the retreat).

Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
390 Pages

Krista read this book and really liked it.  Set in London, England the increase of ghostly phenomena has spawn an industry of ghost hunters.  Since younger people are the only ones sensitive enough to see and hear the ghosts, they form the backboards of these businesses to remove hauntings from residences. 

I thought the book was okay and might be willing to read the second book to see if the series gets stronger, but I thought it was nowhere near Stroud's Bartimaeus series which was a young adult series book popular with teens and adults.

The Children Act

The Children Act by Ian McEwan
221 Pages

Fiona Maye's marriage is falling apart as her husband declares he wants to have an affair in order to experience some passion in his life.  She is a High Court judge who presides over cases in the family court.   When she is called to judge over a case of a 17 year old Jehovah's witness who is trying to avoid medical treatment that would save his life it stirs up dormant emotions in Fiona. 


 Everyone tends to gush over anything Ian McEwan writes but I have to say this book left me cold with an obvious ending.

Yesterday's Kin

Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress
189 Pages


This short novella tells the story of Geneticist Marianne Jenner and how she is summoned by Aliens that have landed in New York. The aliens had arrived several months earlier but no one knew why.  It is later explained that the planet will move through a virus cloud that could kill everyone on Earth and the aliens are interested in helping. 
There is only 10 months to prevent a disaster.

 A so so story.  Not highly recommended.

The After House

The After House by Michael Phillip Cash   212 pages

The cover of this book of this book is awesome. A churning sea, an empty boat, and an old house with a light glowing from an upper window.  Looks like the creepy, scary kind of book that I like.

Remy Galway and her ten-year-old daughter, Olivia, have just moved into a three-hundred-year-old house in Cold Harbor Springs on Long Island. Remy is trying to rebuild her and Olivia’s lives after a failed marriage. She’s making a go of it as a yoga instructor.

The old house is charming, but old houses have their problems. Remy had been told that the house a once belonged to a whaling captain and his family. The reader knows this is true because Cash starts the novel with the Captain and his crew chasing one of the largest whales he was ever seen.  The novel alternates between the two stories---Captain Eli Gasper and Remy and Olivia. It’s easy to follow and well delineated.

Olivia feels the presence of Eli’s spirit first. Remy doesn’t want to believe in anything she can’t see. Eli is ticked that two new people have moved into his home and goes about making a mess. The mess looks like vandalism to Remy. The he manages to set the place on fire and break a few windows.

Hugh, the mayor, get involved. Cold Springs Harbor is a small town; he takes an interest in the people who live there. However, Hugh harbors more than a superficial interest in Remy.

As they struggle through the mess, the reader also gets to see what Eli is doing and thinking. He hates that new people now inhabit his home. He liked it better when Pat lived there---no television, no Internet, no comings and goings of other people.

What isn’t clear right away is the presence of two other spirits. It took a while, but I think surmised that they were Eli’s angel guardians and watched over him while he was bound to earth.

This book was labeled as horror, but it doesn’t really fit that genre. It reminded me more of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, without the romance between the Remy and Eli.

Still, I give it 4 out of 5 stars. I would have given it five if the two other ghosts were more clearly defined.

 

The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of Mr. Punch

The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of Mr. Punch by Neil Gaiman, art by Dave McKean, 112 pages

When our unnamed narrator was a young boy, he visited his grandparents and met a mysterious Punch and Judy puppeteer at his grandfather's arcade. This simple story is masterfully told through Gaiman's easy, conversational style and through McKean's haunting artwork. As much a fan I am of Gaiman's, it's McKean's mix of drawing, photography, and sculpture imagery that makes this volume so breathtaking. Originally released in 1994, this 20th-anniversary edition also offers a few extras regarding the graphic novel, a short film based on it, and some additional artwork that was created for a companion CD-ROM (that, as far as I can tell, never came to be).

This book is beautifully constructed, and should be on any list of must-read graphic novels.

The Paper Magician

The Paper Magician by Charlie Holmberg, 214 pages

Ceony Twill is a brand new magician's apprentice, training to become a Folder, a magician who uses origami (though that word is never used in the book) to channel her magic. She has just started her apprenticeship with Magician Emery Thane when Thane is attacked, his still-beating heart stolen from his body by a dark magic practitioner, leaving Ceony to use her wits, and what little Folding she has learned, to try to save her mentor.

The premise of this book is promising, and it seems that there could be a lot to this world Holmberg has created, in which different magicians use different materials (glass, rubber, plastic, metal, etc.) to create magic. However, The Paper Magician is as flimsy as its namesake material. The world, so rich with potential, is never really developed by Holmberg, nor are the characters, which are littered with glimpses of rich back-stories that are never fully fleshed out. There are also a lot of technical issues that are never really sorted out (much like it's no use taking a knife to a gunfight, taking paper to a fight against someone using liquid and cutting implements seems foolhardy at best), which make suspending disbelief somewhat problematic.

Despite that, the world is ripe for development, and I'm tempted to pick up the sequel to this, just to see if a second volume allows Holmberg to sort out some of the issues presented here. Those who enjoy origami and magic might give it a shot, if they're so inclined.

American Saint

American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton by Joan Barthel, 216 pages

 

In reading American Saint, St Louis-based journalist Joan Barthel's biography of St Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first native-born US citizen to be canonized, two things become clear.  One is that St Elizabeth was a woman of remarkable strength and sanctity.  The other is that Barthel doesn't much care for the Catholic Church.  Unfortunately the latter tends to obscure the former.

 

St Elizabeth was born into a prominent New York family in the 18th century.  After years of happy, though hardly carefree, marriage and five children, her husband died during a trip to Italy.  Though a pious Episcopalian involved in numerous charitable works, the widow found herself drawn increasingly to the Catholic Church.  Despite deep anti-Catholic prejudice on the part of New York society and her own family, she formally converted in 1805.  Moving to Maryland, she founded the first order of active women religious in the United States (the Sisters of Charity of St Joseph), and, more importantly, laid the foundation of the Catholic parochial school system.  In the tradition of great Catholic women like Sts Birgitta, Frances of Rome, Jane Frances de Chantal, and Louise de Marillac, she overcame every obstacle with faith, every tragedy with hope, every hatred with love.

 

Barthel's entire approach in telling this story is anachronistic.  An odd digression on the meaning of "God's will" in St Elizabeth's writings uses definitions from a book by an obscure twentieth century Evangelical pastor - for that matter, 20th century heterodox Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin has more books in the bibliography than 17th century bishop St Francis de Sales, who had a substantial impact on St Elizabeth's spirituality, while Dom Scupoli's Spiritual Combat, which St Elizabeth ordered read every day at tea, is not included, though a book by Gandhi is.  The book is full of smug chronological snobbery - if "the past is a foreign country", this book is a rude tourist who will not cease complaining about anything that isn't like it is back home.  Subtly but persistently, St Elizabeth's iron faith is recast as vague sentimental spirituality, her supernatural hope left orphaned, her love heralded as repressed resentment of the patriarchal oppressor.

 

St Elizabeth's last deathbed instruction to her spiritual daughters was, "Be children of the Church."  Barthel urges those same women to move "beyond the Church, even beyond Christ."  There is something willfully perverse in using the life of St Elizabeth to attack the faith she loved.  St Elizabeth Ann Seton's sanctity is far more interesting than Joan Barthel's bitterness.

Detroit City is the Place to be

Detroit City is The Place to be : the Afterlife of an American Metropolis
by Mark Binelli 318 pages
A socioeconomic study of life during and after when the bottom fell out of America's worst city. A majority of the book talks about the ruins of this once thriving metropolis. The Brush Park area alone is one of the most depressing urban sprawls in America. Over 70 Victorian and modernist mansions boarded up
and stripped of their copper and bronze by scrappers. Some new age residents have taken a risk and bought these mansions for rehab, hoping to revitalize this
ruined neighborhood. The people daring enough to do this are few and far between though. If you web search "Brush Park Detroit" you will see for yourself these beautiful buildings that have fallen into disrepair. Politics take up a good part of this book as well. Chronicling the rise and eventual fall of sleaze ball mayors like Coleman Young and Kwame Kilpatrick. Who are/were some of the worst people on this planet today. The book was great, well written with comical analogies. The author however,seemed a bit pretentious, and it seems that he is arrogant and a little bit of a  hipster. He did write a pretty good book though, so I'll cut him some slack.
    

Detroit: A Biography

Detroit : A Biography  by Scott Martelle 288 pages
A short but detailed history of America's "joke" city. Depressing but very well written. A good portion of the book catalogs the rise of the city from French and British fort to mega industrial city by the 1920s. With the second half focusing on the downfall  of assembly line productions, white flight in the 1960s and the string of corrupt and terrible mayors. You could go on and on as to why Detroit collapsed so fast, and never come up with a definitive answer. You would need to be allowed three reasons in your explanation. I loved this book, as urban decay has always been a fascinating subject to me. I would recommend this to anyone who reads non fiction. Or anybody who just wants to know why Detroit is so maligned now.   
 

Rasputin: A Short Life

Rasputin: A Short Life, by Frances Welch 201 pages
A fairly short yet detailed biography of the "Mad Monk" who brought down a 400
year old dynasty. Most of the subject matter detailed is of his sexual exploits from his teenage years to his untimely death at age 47. There are countless books written on this polarizing figure, and his interactions with the Romanov family.
I enjoyed this book, it was a quick read, yet very informative for being only two hundred pages, other biographies of the man extend well past 800 pages.  If you like history, give it a shot. 

Iron Gray Sea

Iron Gray Sea by Taylor Anderson, 421 pages

 

This is the seventh book in Anderson's "Destoyermen" Series. This series takes place during World War 2 and involves ships that, by means of super typhoons, have been magically transported into a parallel earth where humans are not the dominant species. There seems to be two dominant non-human species that occur throughout the series. On is the Grik and the other are the Lemurians. The Grik are large reptilian like creatures that kind of look like bigger komodo dragons and walk on two legs. The Lemurians are more of a cross between lemurs and cats with some humanish features.

 The series itself focuses on the struggle that is going on between these two species and the influence that the transported people bring. Iron Gray Sea, like every book in the series is very engaging and presents a very likeable cast. It is very fast paced and plot focused. If you like military novels that have you hanging on every word and rushing to get the next novel then the “Destroyermen” series is for you!

Be Your Own Career Coach

Be Your Own Career Coach by Rus Slater, 206 pages

Just getting started in the workforce and not sure how to get the career you want? Have you spent a long time in a career and are now wondering how to get out of the rut you seem to be stuck in? In Be Your Own Career Coach, Slater offers advice on figuring out how to get what you want out of your career, no matter where you are in your career.

Yes, this review sounds a bit like a late-night infomercial, but I'd argue that this is entirely the right tone to strike when discussing this title. While this is a business book in that it focuses on career development, it's also something of a self-help book that raises plenty of questions about what you, the reader, want out of your career, and life in general. It can be an easy, quick read, or you can do as Slater suggests and write down answers to all of the questions he poses as you read, making this a much more time-intensive, soul-searching read. And while it may not slice or dice, it does offer plenty of appeal to anyone with a job...or anyone who wants one. It's certainly worth at least a skim, though you may find yourself doing a bit more introspection as you go along.

Lord, Teach Us to Pray

Lord, Teach Us to Pray by Paul Claudel, translated by Ruth Bethell, 95 pages

This is a collection of six meditations, each centered to a greater or lesser extent on a painting, whether by Titian, Rembrandt, Delacroix, or the author's daughter.  The painting serves either as an impetus to start the train of thought contained in the essay, or as an example of an insight the author wishes to convey.  Though often rambling, the insights are genuine and striking.  The lack of organization - there are 25 pages (in a 95 page book) of appendices containing additional material he did not have the opportunity to integrate into the main text - tends to conceal the gems, but the gems are valuable enough to be well worth digging for.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, 381 pages

In 1951, a poor black woman, Henrietta Lacks, died of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Without her knowledge, or the knowledge of her family, the doctor that was treating her took a sample from her tumor to create a cell culture, the first one to thrive ceaselessly. Since 1951, that cell culture has continued to grow, and is now one of the most widely used cell cultures used in medical and scientific research. The HeLa cells have been used for a wide variety of medical breakthroughs, including the polio vaccine and several cancer treatments. Skloot's book explores the immortal life of these cells, as well as the life of Henrietta's family as they attempt to discover whatever they can about Henrietta and her cells.

This book is incredibly well written, presenting scientific facts clearly and mixing them with historical accounts, interviews and conversations with the Lacks family, and some first-person accounts of Skloot's research process to create a compelling narrative. I particularly appreciated the portions of the book dedicated to Henrietta's family, especially her daughter Debra, who seemed to be the most interested in learning about her mother and making sure that the world knows just who Henrietta Lacks is. This was a great book, and will appeal to those who have an interest in medical research, history, and biographies.

An additional note: I listened to the downloadable audiobook of this, and the narrator was superb. Cassandra Campbell also did the narration for Orange is the New Black, which I've also listened to, and in both, characters of various races and economic situations were presented well; they were easily distinguishable, but nobody became a stereotype, which would have been an easy trap to fall into. I may have to seek out more of Campbell's narrations.

Habibi

Habibi by Craig Thomas, 655 pages

Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi is the tale of two child slaves bound to each other by chance, and by the love. Throughout the book we see the two as they grow together and as they grow apart. Together they struggle to make a place for themselves in a world that is fueled by fear, lust, and greed. 
Once again Craig Thomas delivers an absolutely gorgeous book. In addition to the richly detailed story Thompson includes gorgeous Arabic ornamental calligraphy making pages into their own beautiful pieces of art.

Slaves of Socorro

Slaves of Socorro by John Flanagan, 462 pages

John Flanagan's  Brotherband series which is a companion series to hi Ranger’s Apprentice series, This series is set in Skandia follows Hal and his crew of misfits on their adventures. The fourth book in this sees them off to protect the shores of Araluen, as part of their treaty with Araluen. Shortly after their arrival though Hal's old rival turned slaver Tursgard raids an Araluen village taking several villagers captive. Hal and his crew set off after them, accompanied by one of Araluen's finest Ranger.While this book could stand alone it is better if you have read the other three books in the series, as well as his other series. Flanagan's books have just the right amount of drama, action and humor. Anyone who enjoys adventure would probably enjoy either of the two series that he's written

Sincerity and Authenticity

Sincerity and Authenticity by Lionel Trilling, 158 pages

 

The death of God having severed Western man from his traditional understanding of himself as a being in some state of objective harmony or disharmony with the cosmos, there arose the Enlightenment ideal of authenticity, which posited modern man as a being in some state of subjective harmony or disharmony with himself.  In this series of lectures, Trilling traces the development of this ideal through the writings of Diderot, Austen, Conrad, and Freud.

 

Unfortunately, Trilling is unable to provide a clear exposition of authenticity, describing it only in the most oblique terms.  Perhaps this is necessary in tracing the evolution of the idea, but in the end, his nebulous concept of authenticity seems nothing more than an empty exertion of self-will against the external world.

Conquest: The Chronicles of the Invaders

Conquest: The Chronicles of the Invaders by John Connolly & Jennifer Ridyard
435 Pages


Earth has been conquered by an alien species  known as the Illyri.  While there is still resistance, the war has been lost.  Syl is the daughter of the Illyri leader overseeing Europe and she finds herself, along with her best friend Ali joining with resistance brothers Paul and Sam Kerr when a schism among the Illyri threatens the status quo.

Classified as science fiction, the book read more as young adult fiction. For fans of The Fifth Wave and I am Number Four.