"The Crown" by Robert Lacey

My sweet husband gave this book to me for Christmas after we binge-watched all three seasons of the Netflix series. He intended for me to take my time reading it in brief bursts, but instead I ended up binge-reading it. I'd been afraid it might be a bit dry, but it was quite engaging instead. I learned a few interesting tidbits ("Porchey" owned Highclere, where Downton Abbey was filmed! Helena Bonham Carter's grandmother was a politician who was friends with Winston Churchill!) and enjoyed it as I went.

My expectation of the book was a separation of fact and fiction (or at least a statement of fact that would allow me to do my own separation from the fiction in the show). I did often wonder as we watched the show: how much of this is real and how much is made up? The book helped me wade through some of that, but I still haven't come away with very specific knowledge about how much was reality; I just assume the broad strokes are historical and the details are imagined.

I hear they're planning seven more seasons of the show (and, as this book is marked Volume 1, each season will likely have its own Official Companion). Honestly, I only watched the entirety of season three out of a sense of duty and completism; it was partly the change of cast and partly the themes of the season, but I found every character much less sympathetic and much less interesting than they had seemed in the previous seasons. I suppose I'll probably watch future seasons as well, but only with a vague curiosity rather than any sort of real absorption.

"Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age" by Sherry Turkle

 I came across this book in Modern General in Santa Fe, where I have found (in all two of my visits there) a very small but eclectic and thoughtfully chosen selection of books for sale. I was immediately drawn to this one in hopes that it would be a sort of guidebook or manual on becoming a great conversationalist. It turned out not to be that, but I enjoyed reading it anyway.

The basic premise of the book is that the rise of the smartphone has resulted in the decline of true human interaction. Turkle is kind and realistic in saying that we don't have to give up our phones completely, but she makes it clear that we need to use them more deliberately, and sometimes we need to take a break.

Turkle details what we can learn from conversation (of which the most important and oft-mentioned benefit is empathy) and what we learn from social media (lessons which, while not necessarily apocalyptic, are not especially enviable or helpful). Introspection and discussion allow you to measure your choices against a personal standard; social media drives you to gauge your worth by what your "followers" think of you, and whether you have what they have.

Some clear guidelines are suggested by the book: no phones at meals, pay attention to the people who are present instead of to your phone (because where you put your attention is how you show what you value), and be aware of good and bad phone habits and train yourself towards the good; make social media a jumping-off point for deeper conversations rather than allowing the contact to remain superficial. Turkle also discourages referring to one's connection with one's phone as an "addiction," which makes people feel helpless, as if they are facing something against which resistance is futile. Instead, we need to consciously and intentionally resist phone use for periods of productivity.

An interesting point raised in the book: the author recommends that we don't interrupt conversations to do online searches for information, even when we're searching for information directly related to the conversation. We think we are enriching the discussion, but it is perceived as turning away from the person you are conversing with.

I'm not sure how much I will actually change as a result of reading this book, although it has certainly made me more aware of my smartphone habits. The only problem is, it has also made me more aware of everyone else's smartphone habits . . .

"The Den" by Abi Maxwell

This was another good one! It's one of those books that tells two stories from different times, linked only by their setting. The Den of story one is the old stone foundation of a ruined house where the main character from story two used to live.

Story one is about two sisters, one twelve and one fifteen, and it's kind of a suspenseful coming-of-age story. They've heard the legends about the family who used to live in The Den--and how on one bitterly cold day, all five of them disappeared and were replaced by five coyotes. Each story has its own mysteries.

I'm glad I picked this book up despite its terrible title font. I don't feel like the cover photo really matches the story; it makes it look like a ghost story (which was a draw for me), though it turned out it wasn't one. The synopsis intrigued me, and my random dip into the book revealed writing that did not suck, so it met my qualifications.

Shout out to Half Price Books, where I bought The Den. I've been to two of their Dallas locations and they're great. Bursting to the seams with treasures . . . that are half price!!

"The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" by Stuart Turton

 I enjoyed reading this book. It's like a really messy puzzle. I'm not sure all the pieces actually fit (they probably do, but it would be far too much effort to confirm this) but it was lots of fun to put it together.

This is a murder mystery with a magical twist. The main character wakes up with no memory other than the name Anna. He's a guest at Blackheath, a large English manor past its prime, and finds he has eight days--actually the same day eight times--to solve a murder that won't look like a murder.

It's not really a book that makes you think about anything beyond the plot, but that's fine. The plot is complex enough that there really isn't time for deep contemplation. And strangely enough, I was able to get my bearings every time I picked it up, which enhanced my reading experience. In fact, I didn't want the book to end--not because it was one of those I wanted to keep reading forever, but because it fit into my life so well and there's no guarantee my next book will . . .

"The Versions of Us" by Laura Barnett

This is a heartbreak story, and a life story, and a love story. It's about Jim Taylor and Eva Edelstein and the three different routes their lives might have taken from the day they met onward.

I took notes on this book from the beginning: not because it contained profound thoughts that I wanted to remember, but because Sam read it before I did, and he warned me that it could be tricky keeping the three different versions straight. (He was right. And this is by no means evidence that either of us is remotely stupid.) However, after a while (and with my notes to refer to) it became somewhat easier to keep the threads untangled. Though I still found I frequently had to stop reading and look at the top of the page and remind myself of the current story.

As the years went by, it got to a point where there were just too many marriages, too many deaths, too many affairs, too many children. Though I was able to keep the right ones matched up with the right stories, it was all just too much. My last note reads "P 181: I am getting bored, and it's only halfway over," if that tells you anything. And it was too depressing! Not in the sob-inducing cathartic way, but in the mildly annoying way. One or another of the characters was always mucking everything up, making choices that prevented Jim and Eva from being together, and I kind of reached a point where I figured, you know what? Maybe they're not meant to be together. Rooting for them felt like too much effort.

Remember, though, reading love stories is generally not my thing. Obviously this book was not the one to change my mind.

"Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami

Notice the location of the photo? 

I can sum up this book in one quote: "I never get bored when I'm with you. All kinds of off-the-wall things happen, but that much I can say for sure--being with you's never boring."

This was my first Murakami book, which for some reason I expected to be a difficult slog, but it was nothing of the sort. As Sam says, reading Murakami is like eating candy--easy and enjoyable. There's always something happening to keep your interest.

This is the story of the toughest fifteen-year-old in the world who runs away from home and ends up working in a small library. It's also the story of a simple-minded man who can talk to cats. And there's a cameo by Johnny Walker, and Colonel Sanders, and women who may or may not be the mother or sister of the runaway. It's on the bizarre side, but in a good way.

I think between Sam's take and my experience I have come to the conclusion that reading Murakami can be as difficult as you make it. I probably should have thought about this book more deeply than I did; I'm sure there are all kinds of layers I could have peeled back, because it's full of metaphors and symbolism. But it's not a reading requirement, and I was on vacation, so I took the easy route.

Sam (who has read at least three of them) thinks it's really only necessary to read one Murakami book. Agree or disagree?

"Imposture" by Benjamin Markovits

I broke my rule and read two more books before I blogged about this one and now I'm struggling to think what I might have said about it when it was fresh on my mind. I know that I enjoyed reading this book, with its old-fashioned writing and good story, but if there was anything profound on my mind after reading it, it's gone now.

This is a story about Doctor John Polidori, who was a personal physician to Lord Byron for about three years, and who wrote the short work of fiction The Vampyre as a result of the same challenge that produced Frankenstein. I liked it and you should read it.

Man, short blog post.

"Juliet, Naked" by Nick Hornby

I came to this book with low-ish expectations. I've never read a book by Nick Hornby (though I'm pretty sure I've watched at least two movie adaptations of his work) and I guess I expected the written equivalent of a rom-com. I thought it might be more witty and less sappy than your typical Nicholas Sparks book, but would probably be comparable to something by Marc Levy. I didn't think I would hate it, but I didn't think I would be impressed by it.

It's kind of a weird feeling for a book to match my expectations. I've come to books with high expectations and ended up disappointed; I've come to books with moderate expectations and been either more impressed or more let down than I thought possible; I've come to books with low or no expectations and found them to be among my favorites. But it seems pretty unusual for me to assume a book will be a certain way, and then find out I'm right.

To be fair, this book didn't explicitly match my preconceived notions in its entirety. There were points where it rose above, but equal points where it dropped below, so on average it was just what I had assumed it would be.

Juliet, Naked is about Duncan and Annie, an almost-middle-aged couple living a boring old life in a boring old seaside town in England. The main focus of Duncan's spare time is Tucker Crowe, a once (semi-?) famous American musician who suddenly and mysteriously left the public eye in June 1986 and hadn't been heard from since. Duncan considers himself a "Crowologist" who has listened to and dissected every recorded version of every song Crowe ever sang, and who also scours the Internet for any possible scrap of information about Crowe's life. And Annie is just awakening to the fact that their childless and unchanging existence seems to have wasted the last fifteen years of her life.

The book rose slightly above my expectations about a third of the way through, as the complexities of the characters' personalities were slowly revealed (Duncan wasn't just dull, Annie wasn't just bored and lost). The book dipped into disappointing territory when Tucker showed up in London and the story seemed to founder. And the most promising premise (an English girl writes a review of an American artist and posts it online; the American artist reads the review and writes an e-mail to the English girl, sparking a correspondence) ultimately fell a bit flat, as one would have to be unbelievably lucky for something like that to work out well and have a miraculously happy ending. Overall, though, it was a fun book, if not something I would re-read.

"Asymmetry" by Lisa Halliday

I really enjoyed reading this perfect little book. It's so well-written, seeming genuine and immediate without any of the boring bits that are inevitable in real life.

The book is written with two main parts. The first part is about Alice Dodge, a young editor in New York City who forms an unexpected relationship with a famous old writer. It felt so authentic that I couldn't help but wonder if it were a bit autobiographical (not the entire thing, but a lot of the minutiae). But then the next part was about an Iraqui-American who is detained at Heathrow, which felt just as amazingly authentic. I knew, based on the tiny bio about the author, that it couldn't be autobiographical, but it was so real that it seemed like the narrator must have told this story to the author and she just wrote it down. So (assuming this wasn't the case) I was, in a word, impressed.

The book ends with a brief (if slightly tangential) return to the first story, and I wondered if it would tie in to the second story, but (unless I missed something) it didn't. So I am left feeling a little bit baffled and a little bit stupid as I try to understand why these two stories are bound together. I suppose it could be as simple as the fact that the author wrote two perfect gems which, alone, were too short to publish successfully, but that solution is a little bit disappointing. The stories do explore similar themes (made obvious by the book's title), and I want to believe that the author intended to link the two stories from the start, but I find myself wishing there had been more of an overlap between the plots or characters or even just the locations. I wouldn't want it to be too blatant, or forced, but . . . I guess I was just left craving a bit of symmetry.

"Swimming Lessons" by Claire Fuller

Good book, great writing (and cool cover!) but . . . are you one of those people who can really invest in a book, finding a character you identify with (even if they're nothing like you) so that you almost become a part of the story as you read? Imagine this, and imagine that the main character's husband reminds you of your own husband, and their love reminds you of your love, and then imagine that the main character finds her husband with another woman. Imagine that, and you will know what my reading experience was like.

Setting the odd literary devastation aside, this book was cleverly written, intertwining the early days of love (starting in 1976) with the days when it was too late (1992) and present day when lost love (and their children) are putting together the memories of the past.

I think now I will be on the lookout for Our Endless Numbered Days.

"A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother" by Rachel Cusk

This book is just as well-written and honest as Cusk's other books, but for some reason I didn't feel compelled to read it. I finally did finish it, but I'm pretty sure it was weeks between the time that I first picked it up and the time that I finally finished reading (and it's a tiny little book, so I didn't spend much time on it in between).

This book should not be read by the childless. Those who want to remain childless probably wouldn't be interested; those who plan to have children in the future would probably either be scared into the want-to-remain-childless camp, or would blow it off as hysterical over-exaggeration.

It's been a minute since I was a first-time mother, but the book still resonated with me. I distinctly remember the confusion and loneliness and lack of confidence that Cusk describes. What is more difficult for me to remember--or determine--is whether those feelings were more a function of being new to motherhood, or of lacking a supportive partner. My experience with my youngest child (and a supportive partner) was completely different. (In a good way, obvs.)

"Surfacing" by Margaret Atwood

I definitely picked up this book based solely on the author's name. There are a handful of writers whose books I would probably give a shot even if the cover were ugly or the premise sounded boring or the blurb rubbed me the wrong way, and Margaret Atwood is one of them. I associate a kind of "you can't go wrong, or even if you do, you don't go very wrong" with her. (Now I am daydreaming about a blog post listing all the other authors in that category.) (Now I am taking a break from blogging and actually writing a list of all the other authors in that category.)

Moving on . . . Atwood did not disappoint with Surfacing. (Good thing! One unworthy book is enough to knock you off The List.) It started with the same sort of otherworldly struggle to find my feet (where am I? who are these people? what is going on??) that I remember from The Handmaid's Tale. Even as the pieces began to fit together, the story retained a sense of mystery and suspense.

Surfacing was first published in 1972. The unnamed narrator is a young Canadian woman traveling back to the remote island where she grew up. She's in the company of Joe, her sort-of boyfriend, and Anna & David, a not-especially-happily-married couple who are kind of friends of theirs. Narrator's father seems to have disappeared from the island and she vaguely wants to figure out what has happened to him, and David and Joe are tagging along to film an arty mishmash of random vignettes.

The narrator, numb and empty and detached (though none of these are recent developments), is definitely what one might call unreliable. Events from her past slowly bubble up . . . and then later reemerge as something somewhat different. By the end I'm not sure I could say with any certainty what did and didn't happen. (I mean, I think I know, but maybe I'm just a trusting fool.) While on one hand I had the sense that attitudes in the book (which is just slightly older than I am) are old-fashioned and somewhat dated, on the other hand it's still a good read that stands the test of time and has the ability to make a reader think.

"Bitter Orange" by Claire Fuller

I loved everything about this book, inside and out, with its beautiful cover and its intriguing story. It was strange and mysterious and suspenseful and enticing and I didn't want it to end but I raced to finish it anyway.

Bitter Orange tells the story of Frances Jellico, a self-taught surveyor of garden architecture who has been hired to catalogue the grounds of a decaying English manor over the summer of 1969. No longer young, she's at loose ends after the death of her invalid mother who she'd spent most of her adult life caring for. Her arrival at Lyntons introduces her to Cara and Peter, who are there to catalogue the house's interior, and Frances--who has never really experienced true friendship--is drawn into what, at first, seems to be their warm and welcoming circle . . . but, of course, it turns out to be more of a triangle. And it's all just deliciously complex and tense and ominous.

Not only that, but the bookstore where I bought Bitter Orange falls in the category of Best Bookstores Ever. If you are ever in Santa Fe, NM, you have to check out Collected Works on the corner of Galisteo and W Water Street, because I think it may be magical. It's a cozy little nook with a little coffee bar, and it gave me the sense that it is fully curated (unlike the big box stores that will sell anything and everything made of paper). It gets extra points because we were there in the wintertime and they had a warm fire roaring in their fireplace, and we could see snow flurries drifting past the windows . . .

"The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness" by Mark Rowlands

This is a book written by a philosophy professor about the period in his life when he owned a full-blood wolf as a pet. It goes deeper than memoir, however; Rowlands explores many varied lines of thought related to his experiences with Brenin.

My mom picked this book up at the FOL bookstore in Los Alamos, read it, and passed it on to me. Normally I don't take book recommendations from my mom very seriously, but she didn't say she loved it and didn't push me strongly to read it (which means she didn't push me away from it), and the themes immediately made me think of a friend of mine--I thought I ought to read it to see if that friend might like it.

Reading the book confirmed my hunch. As I read, I alternated between marveling that my friend might have written exactly what I was reading and wondering at the fact that my friend hadn't already read or heard of this book. Well, it's on its way to her now . . . I hope she loves it.

I wish I had something interesting to say about my experience with the book but they don't call me the Literary Amnesiac for nothing. I enjoyed thinking through Rowlands' philosophical meanderings as I read, but unfortunately I didn't retain anything.

"The Maker of Swans" by Paraic O'Donnell

I spent a lot of time reading this book. I spent even more time not reading it.

We didn't get off to a good start, this book and I. By page six I had decided the writing was too florid for my taste. As time dragged on, I finally figured out my biggest problem with the book was that I disliked one of the main characters, Crowe. It wasn't necessarily the type of dislike reserved for true villains who deserve it, which can actually be satisfying and maybe even exhilarating; it was more like an irritated annoyance rooted in disbelief that made me want to sigh and lie in bed with my face turned to the wall. Crowe just did not seem like a real person and it grated on my nerves every time he showed up. I have a feeling he was meant to be larger than life, but instead he was like a badly animated cardboard cutout trying to come across as a swashbuckling pirate. (Except that there are no pirates in this book.)

I feel like maybe I settled in by the middle of the book (quite possibly because the detested Crowe didn't appear as often) but by the end it was back to its old ways. By which, of course, I mean that Crowe was back, and had not become any more interesting or realistic in his absence.

I actually didn't hate this book as much as I may have made it sound. It has elements of mystery and magical realism that I usually enjoy, and I was mildly intrigued by the story. But I obviously didn't love it. Maybe that was my fault? I can't help but wonder if I could have invested more focus and thought and found it more engaging. But . . . I didn't. And I'm not going to bother trying again.

I really like the cover, though.

"Gracious: A Practical Primer on Charm, Tact, and Unsinkable Strength" by Kelly Williams Brown

So of course after reading Adulting, when I saw that the same author had written a book on how to be gracious, I had to read it too. Because (if you hadn't noticed) I'm not exactly a bastion of tact. And in recent years I've begun to feel as if maybe I should be.

I had fun reading this book, but sadly, I failed to come away with a Plan for How to Be a Better Person. I feel like it's mostly about how to be gracious in situations where I don't often find myself (like social media--this blog doesn't count!--or entertaining guests in my home. Although reading this kind of made me want to entertain guests in my home but I'm just waiting for that little flame to burn out.)

Despite not finding a concrete system in this book, there certainly is an underlying theme of "be more thoughtful and polite," and Sam and I are trying to incorporate that into our lives. Sometimes all that amounts to is us wondering "how could I be more gracious in this situation?" and not finding a way. But it's a start.

"Cozy Minimalist Home: More Style, Less Stuff" by Myquillen Smith

Here's yet another book that suckered me into purchasing it during that fateful pre-Valentie's-Day trip to Target. It was the title that got me: Who doesn't want their home to be cozy? Who isn't intrigued (and maybe a little bit scared) by the concept of minimalism? Who wouldn't want to have a stylish home with less stuff instead of more? Well, not me. (Yes, I don't not want those things.) So I bought the book. (Never mind the the fact that this means I added yet another thing to my home.)

I should have paid more attention to the photos when I was deciding whether to buy the book. There's nothing inherently wrong with the denim chair and uniquely-textured blanket on the front cover, though they're not quite my style . . . but I should have known that if this was the flagship photo, it wouldn't get better from there. And I did notice something inside the book before I bought it, which is definitely not my decorating style and can be summed up in one word: antlers. But I ignored these warnings and bought it anyway.

This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy reading the book in a cozy, albeit minimal, way. I even made it to Chapter 6 before I really started to worry. But on page 111, when the author suggested I start moving furniture around to the accompaniment of banjo music, I lost all faith. I was only halfway through the book. I *did* manage to finish the entire thing, but it definitely isn't a keeper and won't go down in the annals of fame as one of Kathy's Favorite Decorating Books (The Inspired Room, I'm looking at you . . . with sappy loving doe eyes).

So I will finish this post with a list of reasons this book was not for me:

1. Not my style. (Oh, did I mention that already?) I'm all for cozy! And I like the idea of minimalism, if it can be cozy as well. But I did not care for the design suggestions pictured in the book.
2. The method is TOO HARD. I hate moving, I hate chaos, I hate scrapping everything and starting over at the very beginning. Myquillen Smith asked me to do everything I hate. I just want to make small changes and add little touches in my home, not move in all over again (even if it's just one room at a time).
3. I didn't come away with any good ideas for my own home. I'm sure this is mostly due to my unwillingness to follow the method. But also due to my unwillingness to decorate with antlers. 

Hey, do you want this book? Let me know and I will send it to you. Not that I've particularly made it sound like something you've gotta have. But I took my chances with it, and now you can too. Who knows, maybe you'll find it's your thing. Do you like antlers? 

"The Woman in the Window" by A.J. Finn

I remember seeing this book piled up in Target and Walmart when it first came out and thinking how uninterested I was: it just seemed like a very obvious copycat publication - the next Gone Girl on the Train, blah blah blah. Now, I loved Gone Girl when I first read it, and was gripped by The Girl on the Train, so I'm not quite sure why I was so dismissive about this one. But it turns out that my instinct was correct.

The Woman in the Window is a fairly generic piece of fiction, much less interesting than the life story of its author, which is what lured me into reading it in the first place. A.J. Finn's real name is Daniel Mallory. He was recently the subject of a very long and entertaining, if slightly horrifying, New Yorker exposé by Ian Parker. Mallory, who is a huge Patricia Highsmith fan and had supposedly written a doctorate (that 'supposedly' is a key, recurring word, where Mallory is concerned) on homoeroticism in Highsmith's novels, was, apparently, a bit of a Talented Mr Ripley himself: a pathological liar who invented whole tragedies for himself and his family as a way of furthering his career, or perhaps because he was mentally ill (his version). Suddenly, The Woman in the Window seemed a lot more intriguing. So I bought it...

But I did not devour it. It turns out that a novel written by an amoral sociopath is a lot less interesting than a novel about an amoral sociopath. Or, at least, a lot less interesting than Patricia Highsmith's novels about amoral sociopaths. Because everything that I love about Highsmith's novels - the psychological depth, the dark wit, the subversiveness - is missing here. Mallory is not a bad writer, exactly - there is at least one beautiful sentence in this novel, though I can't remember now what it was - but I had the feeling throughout this book that he was very deliberately pandering to the lowest common denominator. Indeed, everything about this book is almost soul-crushingly cynical, from its author-penned advance praise to its massive international success.

Let's start with the prose. Very short sentences, very short paragraphs, very short chapters. Lots of dialogue. Active verbs, verbing actively. Hyperbolic imagery. It's quite striking to start with, and then you realise: the whole thing is written this way. It's like a tabloid newspaper version of a novel. It's like reading 400 pages of capped-up, italicised text: the intention is clearly to be as VIVID and INTENSE as possible, but the actual effect is cliched and wearying.

Then the plot: 'contrived' does not even cover it. 'Formulaic'? Yeah, that too. I liked the references to Hitchcock movies, up to a point, but the problem was that The Woman in the Window never rose beyond the level of pastiche. The characters were all paper-thin, except for the narrator, who was too obviously designed to make the reader like/feel sorry for her, after initially mistrusting/disliking her.

Most damningly, I just wasn't hooked on the story in the way I was with Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train. True, I didn't guess whodunnit. But then, I didn't try to guess. Because I didn't care. The fact that this slight, 'page-turning thriller' took me several weeks to get through probably tells you all you need to know about it. If, by some miracle, you're not one of the millions of poor suckers who has already bought and read it...

'No Time to Spare' by Ursula K. Le Guin

The subtitle to this collection of essays (originally published as blogs, between 2010 and 2016) is 'Thinking About What Matters'. Ursula K. Le Guin is primarily known as a science-fiction and fantasy writer, with a huge body of work, and she died last year. I had never gotten around to reading anything she'd done before (mainly, I think, because I was put off by the old-fashioned formality of some of her titles - The Tombs of Atuan, The Lathe of Heaven - and by my impression, possibly false, that she was on the worthy, serious end of the SF spectrum, rather than the weird, dark, ironic end where my personal fave Philip K. Dick resided), but when I saw this book in a really cool store in Santa Fe, I was immediately drawn to it.

Partly it was that subtitle, partly the fact that she had just died and that these essays were among her last publications: I've always felt that what a writer produces in their final years, assuming they haven't lost any of their mental verve, is likely to be their most honest work, because by then it's too late for ambitions, pretentions, masks. But mostly it was this paragraph, printed on the back of the book, that hooked me: "I am free, but my time is not. My time is fully and vitally occupied with sleep, with daydreaming, with doing business and writing friends and family on email, with reading, with writing poetry, with writing prose, with thinking, with forgetting, with embroidering, with cooking and eating a meal and cleaning up the kitchen, with construing Virgil, with meeting friends, with talking with my husband... None of this is spare time. I can't spare it... I am going to be eighty-one next week. I have no time to spare.'

I loved the ordinariness of that list, but also the urgency and vitality behind it. I am forty-eight, which feels simultaneously old and much younger than eighty-one, but I could really relate to the feeling in that paragraph, and I bought and read the book as if - in the image employed by Karen Joy Fowler, in her enjoyable introduction to this book - I was a seeker, and Le Guin a sage in a mountain cave.

So did I find out the meaning of life? Yes and no. I loved her writing about the concrete pleasures of life - a cat purring in your lap, a soft-boiled egg eaten from the shell - and her advice to embrace the age you are, rather than constantly wishing yourself younger. I also liked all the writing about writing. But as the book went on, it seemed to become more of a soapbox or a collection of journalistic odds and ends: Ursula raving about some opera she'd been to, Ursula making fun of vegetarians, Ursula on insincerity in modern politics. Some of it I agreed with, some of it less so, but either way it just seemed less important and real than the more personal, supposedly trivial stuff.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this book and am glad I read it. And I am going to overcome my squeamishness about her titles and try reading some of her fiction now...

"Adulting: How to Become a Grown-Up in 535 Easy(ish) Steps" by Kelly Williams Brown

Just finished reading another acquisition from my recent foray into the book section at Target. I initially picked this one up for Bookworm Child, who--though several years away from Required Adulting--is definitely wanting to add to her adult-like responsibilities while maybe not having all the necessary knowledge and maturity. (I can't do much about the maturity, but I figured this book could be a start for the knowledge.)

But I secretly harbor an intense inner fear that I'm completely overlooking some very, very important aspect of passing as an adult (I'm not sure "adulting" comes naturally to me, and I am sure that I was raised by parents who could be mistaken for cyborgs, which makes it likely that I am unaware of some things that are instinctive for humans). Plus, I read a little bit of it, and it was funny. So I read the whole thing before passing it on.

I am now relieved and reassured to know that I am not missing any essential ingredients. I enjoyed the book (which continued to be funny all the way through) and must admit that I didn't find any impressive takeaways, but if I'd read this a few decades ago I'm SURE I would have. So now, I am not only passing this book along to Bookworm Child, but I am also sending another copy directly to her older brother, who just paid his first month's rent on his very first apartment TODAY.

(And if Sam were not an angel in the form of a home chef, I would be buying a few of the cookbooks recommended in Chapter 3, Cooking. I made a list of them on my phone just in case. I also took pictures of the recipes for roasted chicken and homemade soup for future reference!) 

"Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul" by Nikita Gill

I took a leisurely stroll through the book section at Target this past weekend and was quite surprised at the amount of poetry I saw for sale there. I don't naturally gravitate towards poetry, but neither do I automatically scorn it, and anyone who knows me probably knows why this book caught my eye; it often doesn't take much more than a mention of fairytales and nicely-designed cover art.

Taking a cue from Gregory Maguire, Gill tells fairy tales from new perspectives. Maybe princesses don't always need saving. Maybe they like the dragon who guards them from the handsome prince. Maybe they are the dragon.

This book is full of empowerment and strong women and the keen observation that there is often a little villain in the hero, and a hero in the villain. I enjoyed reading it, but I think it's more suited to my twelve-year-old who would appreciate the solidarity and understanding it represents. She needs a book that celebrates her strength instead of denying its existence.

"Transit" by Rachel Cusk

I was just as impressed by Transit as I was by Outline, if slightly less surprised (because this time I knew to expect excellence). The two books are really similar but somehow also very different . . . kind of like two peas in a pod but one pea is valuable and the other is a pearl.

Transit, like Outline, is mostly told in conversation (though these conversations are somewhat more monologue-like than I remember those in Outline). I had the exact same feeling about some of these conversations, too: do people really open themselves up like this to just anyone? And are people really so well-spoken and intelligent that they can just spew all these deep thoughts in such a cohesive and fluent manner? Where are these people?

One thing I noticed and appreciated (and didn't remember from Outline) was the detailed character studies. I'm not sure whether to admire Cusk's imaginative and astute character development, or whether to assume she didn't actually make anything up and is a keen observer (and possibly a pariah for writing so honestly about her friends and acquaintances).

I found it funny, after how much I loved the book and after reading all the glowing reviews printed on its first few pages, to turn to the inside of the back cover of my used copy to find this:

I obviously was not bored by this book and find it hard to imagine how any reader could have been. However . . . there is an unsatisfying element in the way that nothing seems to be resolved. It's a true slice of life, and every interaction is cut off--not in a glaring or inelegant way, but in retrospect it's obvious that the rest of the story is still in the cake this book was cut from.

I want more! I know I won't find resolution for these conversations, but lucky for me there's another pea in the pod. I have Kudos waiting in the wings.

"Normal People" by Sally Rooney

I'm just . . . so annoyed by these people.

I really wanted that line to be my full blog post but I'm going to have to say more. Sam really liked this book and has been eagerly waiting for me to finish reading so we can discuss it. Maybe I should have waited to post until after we've talked about the book? Or maybe I'll come back later and edit to add more? But right now I'm almost angry about how both Connell and Marianne could so passively destroy their relationship and their happiness, time after time.

"The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson

I've been familiar with Jackson's short story, "The Lottery," for decades, as it was a staple in school curriculum while I was growing up, but I don't think I've read anything else of hers before now. I watched the 1999 movie adaptation of THoHH when it came out in the theater and was not motivated to read the source material (or was I even aware at the time that it had started as a book?). But recently Bookworm Child convinced me to watch the new TV series on Netflix (which was actually pretty good, apart from the last episode, as it was was way too sweet and neat and . . . heartwarming?? and completely out of tone with the rest of the series) and my Netflix experience made me curious about the book.

So I bought the book as a Christmas gift for Bookworm Child . . . so that I could read it myself. (Because isn't that always the reason we give books to family members? That seems to be why my husband gave me such a great stack of books last month, anyway! Not that I mind; I completely understand. But I digress.) I found it a good story that went by quickly, though I think it was more about madness than haunting. And, as you probably already know, the book couldn't be more different from the Netflix series (apart from a few characters with the same names, and the creepy house). The 1999 movie was much more similar to the book, but even that (or what I remember of it) had its deviations.

In the book, Dr Montague has rented a house with a reputation for being haunted; he wants to gather data on any phenomena that can be observed, and gain renown for the paper he will write about the experience. He has hired free spirit Theodora and shy mousy Eleanor to help, and Luke (nephew of the house's owner) is along as a chaperone of sorts. Over a week that seems to last for years, the four record some odd incidents, but more questions are raised than are answered.

I'd say my biggest criticism of the book was the lack of character development. The four main characters (who'd only just met) would all sit around together and entertain one another with silly fantasies; it would have made complete sense for one (or maybe two) of the characters to have this affectation, but I couldn't suspend disbelief enough to allow all four main characters make a habit of this. It made them seem too similar to each other, as if they didn't have their own voices. And then the characters who did have their own voices (Mrs Montague, Mrs Dudley, Arthur) were unfortunately one-dimensional.

But, you know what, I satisfied my curiosity and enjoyed my time reading. So who am I to complain?

"Convenience Store Woman" by Sayaka Murata

The first words out of my mouth as I closed this book and laid it down were, "That was weird."

Convenience Store Woman tells the story of Keiko Furukura, who is 36 years old and has worked part-time in the same Tokyo convenience store for half her life. Her friends and family can't understand why she has never married or had children--has never even had a romantic relationship--or why she hasn't made an attempt to have an actual career. She hides behind little white lies to make others feel better (she vaguely mentions that she has a medical condition that makes her frail, so she is unable to handle more serious employment), but the truth is that her very existence revolves around the convenience store. It's the only thing in her life that she finds meaningful. She doesn't understand the way the minds and lives of most people work, and no one would understand if they knew what really goes on in Keiko's mind and life. She closely observes others and mimics their words and mannerisms so she can pass as one of them, but this only serves to mask the true extent of her other-ness.

I don't really know whether to take this book at face value or whether to look for hidden meaning. At face value, Keiko is probably autistic and no one around her understands or accepts this. Everyone in her life wants her to be more like them so that she can be happy and fulfilled; they don't understand that when she is at work in the convenience store she is happy and fulfilled. The ending is at once happy and sad . . . Keiko is happy, but in a way that seems sadly limited to anyone else. But maybe the story is actually saying something more? It definitely gets into some deeper ideas, voiced by Shiraha but understood and shared by Keiko, about the expectations of society.

I enjoyed reading this book (despite the overabundance of annoying cliches in its dialogue) but I'm ultimately uncertain about what I think of it. As I neared the end, my husband asked me if the book was funny. I thought about that for several long moments before I could answer. I slowly said, "It's quirky . . . I guess it's funny in a weird way . . . or maybe it's just weird?"

"How to Stop Time" by Matt Haig

Kathy and I were in Books-a-Million, looking through the Fiction section. She asked me to show her the book I was holding; I had already picked this one out and I held it up to her, feeling pretty pleased with myself. 'Oh yeah, I looked at that,' she said. 'But you didn't want to read it?' I asked. 'I read a couple of sentences at random and decided the writing wasn't good enough,' she explained. I frowned. I, too, had read a couple of sentences at random (or maybe it was the book's opening sentences?) and decided the writing seemed fine. I could have taken the warning and read a few more sentences, but I was feeling stubborn: I liked the idea of the plot - man ages at one-fifteenth the speed of everyone else, meaning that he could live for nearly 1,000 years - and I hadn't seen much else in the store that interested me, so I bought the book.

I should have listened to Kathy.

I am particularly drawn to mostly realistic novels that mess with time or natural laws or the realms of possibility in some way. 'Life After Life' by Kate Atkinson is maybe the best example of this, or 'The Time Traveller's Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger. But this novel, sadly, was not in that class. In fact, it was pretty bad - the characters glib, the plot predictable, the writing all cute and contrived - and I had to force myself to keep reading it every night. Maybe it will spark into life, I kept hoping. Instead of which, the narrator met Shakespeare. Ten pages of eye-rolling and excruciating dialogue later, I gave up.

I tend to think you shouldn't review books if you haven't finished reading them, but I am making an exception for this one. Don't make the same mistake I did. Save yourself $25 and numerous wasted hours. It has a nice cover and a cool premise, but it's crap. Put it back on the shelf and walk away.

"Berlin" by Jason Lutes and "Belonging" by Nora Krug

I don't read many graphic novels, but I read an article that featured these two late last year and thought they sounded interesting. Both are about Germany and its Nazi past, although they deal with the subject in very different ways. And their artistic styles are completely different, as you can see from the respective covers.

On the whole, I preferred Berlin, particularly in artistic terms. It's a bold, sweeping, black-and-white portrait of the city in the early 1930s, when Germany was still a democratic state and its capital a hotbed of art, theatre, sexual experimentation and free expression. It follows the intersecting stories of a young female art student named Marthe Muller, who arrives there from Cologne, and an idealistic but increasingly world-weary journalist named Kurt Severing, among a cast of dozens of other characters. Both the main leads are intelligent, real-seeming and likeable, and the portrayal of the city itself is beautifully done.

But I did feel the book was a little swamped by all those other characters, many of them communists and Nazis, who felt less three-dimensional and who tended to blur together in my mind, not least because many of them looked too alike. Almost all of the women have short hair, for example, which makes them hard to distinguish, and too many of the working-class characters simply looked dirty or old beyond their years. Berlin is not ruined by these flaws - it's still a wonderful achievement - but I do think it might have worked better as a narrative if the author had kept a tighter focus on his central protagonists.

Belonging is actually a non-fiction book, a sort of memoir/investigation. Written by a young German woman who lives in the United States, it begins brilliantly: a chance meeting, soon after her move to New York, with an elderly Holocaust survivor, which leaves the author squirming and ashamed of her country's past. It then goes back in time to the end of the Second World War, with a couple of reproduced documents that I knew nothing about and that were fascinating and revelatory.

The first was an excerpt from a 1945 US War Department training film written by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr Seuss. 'The German people are NOT our friends,' writes the author of The Cat in the Hat. 'However sorry they may seem, they cannot come back into the civilized fold just by sticking out their hand and saying, "I am sorry". Don't clasp that hand! It's not the kind of a hand you can clasp in friendship. Trust none of them.'

The author, Nora Krug, grew up next to an American air base and there are personal recollections of the locals' relationship with the US soldiers. There is also a harrowing photograph of naked, skeletal corpses being paraded through a village street on the backs of horse-drawn carts, with the caption: 'In some towns, the Allied forced local farmers to drive the bodies of the dead through the streets on the way to the burial site, for everyone to see.' Something else I knew nothing about.

The book does not quite live up to this initial promise, however. Essentially, it is the story of the author's investigation of her own family's past: how much they did know about what was going on? How implicated were they in their country's guilt? As with all such real-life investigations, the story comes up against the limits of what can actually be found out, and the possibility of a slightly bathetic conclusion. I feel like Krug tries to dramatise some fairly undramatic material by over-emphasising her inherited guilt, her horror at the crimes of the past. And, while the scrapbook-esque style of the art works quite well with the historical material, I'm not mad about her actual drawings.

On the whole, although neither novel has put me off graphic novels as a genre, neither made me eager to plunge back into it right away either. I guess ultimately they're just like non-graphic novels: everything comes down to how good the story is and how well it's told. They do look very handsome on my shelves though.

"The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje

The English Patient was recently voted the Golden Man Booker Prize winner, theoretically making it the best novel of the past 50 years. It's certainly an interesting and beautifully written story, but I think it's too flawed to deserve that title. Ondaatje was a poet before he became a novelist, and it shows, both in a good and a bad sense. His prose is so lovely that it occasionally gave me little shivers of pleasure, but as a storyteller he is not that great.

That's not to say that there isn't a great story here - just that it's told in such an uneven, obscure way that the best parts of it are almost buried. I watched the movie version last night and I thought Anthony Mingarelli did much a better job than the author of identifying the emotional high points and weaving them into a satisfying narrative. 

Essentially this is a double love story: there is the tempestuous affair between Almasy and Katharine in the desert, and the gentler romance between Kip and Hana in the Italian villa. In the book, neither is given the focus it deserves but Kip and Hana's is certainly evoked in more detail. Which is weird because the adultery in the desert is obviously a much more dramatic subject. There are hints in the book of the outline of a great, heartbreaking tragedy, but for the most part Almasy and Katharine's story is skimmed over, told in a passive, cursory way, as little more than a backstory. 

Mingarelli, on the other hand, recognised that backstory as the epic, sweeping romance it really was and shifted it to the center of the narrative, inventing a host of strong scenes that are barely even hinted at in the book. He also gave Katharine a personality (in the book, she is a curiously blurred presence) and made Almasy thinner and better-looking. But that's Hollywood for you! At times, it's true, the movie veers into melodrama ('I always loved you,' says Katharine in a choked-up voice, before the orchestra swells), but on the whole I think that kind of overstatement is better-suited to this subject matter (World War Two, doomed love, the desert) than Ondaatje's oblique understatement.