"Weather" by Jenny Offill

Here's a book that I feel sure would only improve if it were sipped slowly . . . yet I couldn't help but gulp it down.

Weather is the story of librarian and amateur therapist Lizzie, who lives in an unnamed city which I assume to be New York. I use the word "story" loosely; it's really more of a slice of life, though I wouldn't refer to it as completely plotless. It's a brief book, and perfect for a reader with a short attention span as it's basically a series of clipped, loosely-connected paragraphs. A quick glance back through the book doesn't fully confirm this impression, but it's almost as if each little paragraph could stand on its own as a nanobook.

Lizzie has a small family (a husband and young son) and is "enmeshed" with her recovering-addict brother (which I suppose is the new way to say "codependent"). She is also hyper-focused on the eventual effects of climate change (hence the book's title), though she expends far more mental energy on how she will deal with its eventuality than on the possibility of effecting any sort of change to prevent or slow global warming.

Maybe it's difficult to gather this from what I've written so far, but I really enjoyed reading this book. Not in the way that I loved Once Upon a River; the two experiences were entirely different. But this is one of the rare books I would like to read again sometime, especially now that I know what to expect. Because, unlike a plot-driven book that is all the better for its unknown twists and turns, I feel like a second read would make it easier to focus on the writing and the ideas rather than wondering what might happen.

"Once Upon a River" by Diane Setterfield

I LOVED THIS BOOK.

From the very first page I was drawn in by the storyteller's voice. It felt like a tale told aloud--maybe a fairy tale, maybe something even better. And, lucky for me, the rest of the book upheld the promise of its beginnings. 

I came within two pages of the end of this book last Thursday and could not bear to finish it. Because if I finished it, then there wouldn't be anything left of it to read. Not only that, but the unfortunate odds are that the next book I choose to read will not compare in the slightest.

Why can't all books be as enthralling as this one?

This book was not absolutely flawless; in my opinion, the climactic scene (with Robin and Robert Armstrong and the newly-revealed villain) becomes something of an info dump. All necessary info, to be sure, which I eagerly lapped up. But even as I read I wished for a little more show and a little less tell. A minor quibble, however.

This is a story that begins in the Swan at Radcot, an inn on the upper Thames. On the night of the winter solstice, the drinking and storytelling is interrupted by the arrival of an injured man carrying a drowned child. Who is the man and who does the child belong to? Before long, those in the inn have a new story to tell, and many more questions.

I read the last two pages just a moment ago. What had vaguely threatened to be a slightly mundane denouement turned out to be perfectly lovely after all, and was completed by the most perfect final paragraph possible.

And now it's time to choose a new book. I already feel sorry for it.

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie

This book has always kind of seemed like a mild joke to me. It's the sort of thing that is firmly rooted in pop culture, something that everyone has heard of but no one has actually read, nor does anyone really believe it can teach what it claims to teach, so no one takes it seriously. It's really only invoked when someone privately suggests to a third party that their hard-to-deal-with colleague ought to read it.

I wish I could remember what it was that inspired me to give it a try. I vaguely think maybe it was the idea that it might be useful in my job. I feel very confident and skilled in the "work" part of my job, but the "people" part of my job doesn't always go so smoothly because, well, you know what people are like.

Now that I've read it, I believe a more proper title would be How to Fake Friendship and Manipulate People. It is quite plausible that the principles of this book are a recipe for success in business, but I'm not looking to become a glad-handing good old boy who is busy giving and receiving back-scratchings. My work isn't such that becoming that type of personality would be very helpful. I mean, it might help a very little bit? But it wouldn't be worth the energy, discomfort and awkwardness of a full transition.

However, that's not to say the book is useless and I learned nothing from it. I will say, though, that I came across a tiny little mini version of this book (after I already owned and had started reading the full version)--at the time, and still, I wished I'd gotten that teeny tiny book instead. I think the mini-version would be just as effective in delivering the book's message to me.

Speaking of delivering the book's message, each chapter has a one-sentence summary, and I will list them for you here.

Fundamental techniques in dealing with people:
1. Don't criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
In other words, Always Try to Be a Nice Person On the Outside Even When You're Actually a Nasty Person on the Inside.

Six ways to make people like you:
1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
6. Make the other person feel important--and do it sincerely.
To me, this section applies more to small talk with acquaintances than to any deep meaningful relationships.

How to win people to your way of thinking:
1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately [by asking them questions they will agree to]
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.
I think this section might be most useful for a person who works in sales. Some of these principles don't feel appropriate for personal relationships, or for business relationships not related to sales. On the other hand . . . one of my favorite principles of this section is #1. No matter how strongly you may disagree with someone, in polite society it most often makes sense to drop the subject rather than bull-headedly argue your point. It pays to recognize when winning an argument is actually a loss in other ways.

Be a leader: how to change people without giving offense or arousing resentment:
1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise."
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
As a supervisor in my day job, this section is the one that could have been the most helpful to me. It's probably the area I need the most help in. I obviously have not always avoided giving offense or arousing resentment (this may or may not have happened as recently as Thursday, and I may or may not still be seeing passive-aggressive Facebook posts about it). But even after reading this section I still don't know what I could have done differently after I had stated expectations clearly, but those expectations were pointedly ignored, requiring me to firmly address the issue. Sigh. At least I think I learned one thing from this section, and that is number five. Maybe I'm right and I know I'm right, and maybe I know someone is telling me a big fat lie in order to make themselves seem less wrong, and maybe I can just let them get away with the big fat lie when it will make no difference to call them on it but it may make all the difference in the world to them to save face with it.

In summary: This book is geared towards the business world, not personal life, and I'm not sure how much I gained from it. Maybe I didn't learn its lessons well enough. Or maybe I just didn't want to incorporate them the way you'd need to do in order to see a difference. Maybe I will dip back into this book from time to time and see if any of the principles take root after a while? But if you are thinking of getting this book, I say go for the mini version, and then only if you're looking to work on your business relationships rather than personal ones.

"While You Sleep" by Stephanie Merritt

Ugh.

That's all I really want to say about this book. Unfortunately I can't allow myself to leave it at that, because later (when my literary amnesia takes over) I'll find myself trying to remember the story, and wondering what was so bad about it.

The story is about Zoe Adams, who is taking a step back from her marriage by temporarily renting an old house in Scotland. Of course as soon as she arrives she begins to get the idea that the house is haunted. Unexplainable things happen, blah blah blah, she almost drowns a few times, but is she going crazy or are there ghosts or is it the real people who are scary? Yeah, that old conundrum.

It wasn't really so terrible. If it had been truly awful I would have had a field day tearing it to shreds for all nine of my readers. (Hi, readers!) I would say the story was interesting enough to power me through it. I like ghost stories; this one didn't feel truly creepy to me, but at least it wasn't too laughable or dull. But I did find it predictable (though I'll never know if it was actually predictable or if the mention of an unreliable narrator on the back cover was too big a clue). And I found the hypersexualization (blamed on a house!) a bit false and awkward. In all, I never lost myself in this book and it didn't give me the chills.

Oh well. Moving on . . .

"Machines Like Me" by Ian McEwan

This book is extremely well-written and compelling, which is no surprise coming from Ian McEwan. I bought it at the lovely Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Santa Fe last November (you know, back before it was socially irresponsible to travel) which was just as much a bookstore heaven as I remembered from my first visit.

Machines Like Me is the story of neighbors-turned-lovers Charlie and Miranda, living in an alternate England of the 1980s where technology had already far surpassed that of today, due in part to the aid of Alan Turing who had not died in 1954. Charlie purchases an Adam--basically a robot who can pass as human--out of curiosity more than anything else, and the book revolves around the impact this decision has.

As I look back on this book, for some reason my main thoughts are focused on one question: did each character get what he or she deserved? Not that I feel like they should or should not have; not that I feel like that was the book's main focus; but because, with these characters and their circumstances, that is an interesting and complex question and I'm not sure of the answer.

"The Clockmaker's Daughter" by Kate Morton

Did you know that Sam only gave me one book for Christmas because he noticed it was taking me so long to get through all the other books he had gifted to me on previous birthdays and Christmases? I feel like I'm being punished. But it's good incentive to prioritize the books he has given to me. I think this one was from my last birthday.

The Clockmaker's Daughter is very much in the same vein as the other Kate Morton books I've read: great story, secrets and mysteries, blending of past and present, multiple viewpoints, and generally fun to read. It's not unique enough to be mind-blowing, but I enjoyed reading it.

It's the story of a special house situated in a bend in the upper Thames, told by a number of characters with ties to the house. At the beginning I thought the narration would come from only two perspectives: that of Birdie, who was in the house when tragedy struck in 1862, and that of Elodie, an archivist who comes across the sketchbook of the house's former owner, Edward Radcliffe. But the farther in I got, the more narrators chimed in, each with their own secrets to reveal.

"Topics of Conversation" by Miranda Popkey

We spent this past week out of town, and I only brought two books with me. When Sam noticed that I was already almost finished with New Boy, he suggested we might want to find a bookstore so I didn't run out of reading material before we got home. (Just one of the many reasons he's so sweet and I love him! And he was right, because by the time we returned home I ended up finishing the two books I'd packed plus the one I'm going to tell you about.)

I chose this book at Writers Block Bookstore in Winter Park, Florida (which is a fun little shop to browse in, if you're ever in the area). I loved the pretty aqua color of the spine, and the title caught my eye (seems this is the third book I've read recently with "conversation" in the title!) and inside the dust jacket the writing is compared to Rachel Cusk's. The book passed my dip test (actually I didn't open to a random section this time; I just read the first few paragraphs and was satisfied). And it's a lovely compact size, perfect for travel.

Topics of Conversation feels a little like a book of short stories (in a good way), each chapter strong enough to stand alone, but also firmly linked by sharing the same narrator throughout. It's a series of vignettes, each focusing on a brief period in the narrator's life, with a very autobiographical feel (though I have no idea how much is fact--if any!--and how much is fiction).

I love the natural way Popkey writes conversations. I can imagine the characters actually speaking exactly like that, with the pauses and digressions and stream-of-consciousness jumps. This book definitely reminded me of Outline and Transit by Rachel Cusk, and also of Lisa Halliday (Asymmetry).

Weirdly (I mention this because of the cover art) I don't recall a single part of this book taking place in a swimming pool.

"New Boy" by Tracy Chevalier

This was another Half Price Books find. I have enjoyed a number of other books by Tracy Chevalier; she's one of a small handful of authors I am automatically drawn to as they consistently write high-quality books.

New Boy is part of a series by various authors, each book based on a work by Shakespeare--this one a retelling of Othello, with the twist that the main characters are children on the playground of an elementary school in 1970s suburban Washington, DC.

I was unfortunately not familiar with the plot of Othello, beyond the knowledge that the title character was a lone black man surrounded by white characters. In New Boy, Osei (Othello) has just moved to the area. On his first day of school, he befriends Dee (Desdemona) and they quickly become enamored of one another. But Ian (Iago), playground bully and puppet master, sets out to destroy their happiness by planting and carefully tending seeds of jealousy until they sprout and grow, monstrous and destructive.

I found as I read that I wished I knew the story of Othello better, although New Boy can certainly stand on its own. There were also parts of the book where I wished the conversations seemed more natural (usually during a cacophony of voices on the playground) and I figured those sections might have been based on Shakespeare's chorus. These minor detriments aside, I enjoyed the read.

It did cross my mind, though, to wonder if retellings such as these are necessary. Do they add anything to the original work? Or do they have a value all their own? My personal opinion (after reading the plot summary of Othello on wikipedia) is that New Boy seems more relatable and realistic to me. It's definitely more similar to the life I have lived, and the smaller-scale tragedies seem like something that could happen any day.

"Ulysses" by James Joyce

I did it. I'm done with Ulysses. It's been a long, long journey. Hundreds of miles, uphill in the snow in the dead of night. And now that I'm at the end, I'm wondering . . . did I really go anywhere at all?

My journey with Ulysses was a winding one. I don't remember when I started reading it, but it was literally years ago. Nearly ten, I would guess. When I first started, about once a week I would pick it up and read a few pages. (Well, it was on my Kindle, so there was that annoying thing where I really didn't know how many pages I'd read since it measures percent read rather than showing page numbers.) After two months I'd read about 20% of it, which was maybe 100 pages.

One hundred pages and most of it made no sense to me. Every now and then a beautiful moment of clarity would break through, but that didn't happen anywhere near often enough. Half of me was thinking maybe I needed some kind of guidebook, and the other half of me was thinking . . . if I can't read a book on its own then what good is it?

And then my Kindle broke. I have a feeling one of my many children stepped on it. My fault, of course, for leaving it in a step-on-able place. This was my second broken Kindle, and (unlike the first time) my luck (and my warranty) had run out, and I decided not to replace it. Despite the free-ness of all books in the public domain, I think I'll just never love electronic reading the way I love real paper books--maybe that's another blog post for another time. For now, back to Ulysses.

Newly Kindle-less, I did not want to give up on Ulysses, so I decided to continue reading it using the Kindle app on my phone. But, curses! The app did not know where I had stopped reading, and neither did I. (I actually tried to find my place! But failed miserably. It all seemed like unfamiliar territory!) So I did the only thing there was to do, and started over again at the beginning.

I tried to be smarter about it this time. I tried to actually follow what I was reading, and I even took some notes which I will reproduce for you here:

1. Some guys who live in a tower by the Irish seaside eat breakfast.
2. They swim.
3. One of them (Stephen Dedalus) teaches schoolboys. He helps one of the more stupid ones with his sums, then talks with an older professor who hates Jews and who wants to make known a cure for hoof and mouth disease. 
4. A bunch of gobbledygook nonsense, then Dedalus visits his uncle, then more nonsense.
5. Did someone just pull a dead body from the sea? The possibility has been mentioned a few times before, but maybe now it's actually happening. I'm not sure, though.
6. Some lady is in bed. Someone is going to Patrick Dignam's funeral but first cooks a kidney and then takes a crap. He is Flower or Bloom. Leopold Bloom? He snitched a letter from the lady because she was hiding it from him.
7. Nope, he was hiding it from her. It was from his lover. He buys her a bar of soap and puts it in his pocket.
8. Several men take a carriage to the funeral. It's possible that Dignam was the body from #5.
9. "Far away a donkey brayed." Ha! Usually it's a dog barking in the distance.
10. Someone (Dedalus Bloom? Is that even a character's name or am I mixing two of them up?) takes out an ad in the paper.
11. A whole conversation at or about the newspaper just went right over my head.
12. Did I just read a bunch of pages in which a handful of men sat around in a pub and had a conversation that made no sense to me? I'm not quite sure.
13. Father Conmee leaves the pub (maybe?) and asks some boys to post a letter for him.
14. Now it's skipping around to all these people I've never heard of before. 
15. Some sort of Alice in Wonderland trial.
16. A woman speaks for pages and pages without once pausing. This must be a record for the longest sentence ever written. (Yep, it is. I checked.)
17. The end. 

I really have no idea whether I am pointing out the emperor's lack of clothing, or if I am just a plebeian swine, but I did not find this book worth reading. Though I'm not sure I can actually truly say I read it. Did I look at every single word in sequential order? Yes. Did it make sense to me? No. Am I glad I did it? Yes, but only because it was a challenge and I have accomplished what I set out to do.

I am sure there are people in the world who love this book (though that number of people is probably quite a bit smaller than the number of people who merely *say* they love this book). I am sure there are people in the world who are smarter than I am, who were able to read this book and make sense of it. I am sure there are people in the world who have devoted their whole lives to reading Joyce's works, as the author himself apparently once demanded. I am not one of those people. I'm just the person who thinks . . . it took seven years to write this book???

This may be the only book that takes longer to read than it took to write. And I'm not sure whether that says more about the writer or the reader.

"Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng

It's been a long time since I read a good story! I started off really enjoying this one . . . and then suddenly on Friday evening I realized this book was making me grumpy. I no longer sympathized with a single character. Weirdly, the things that made the characters unsympathetic were exactly the things that made them realistic and complex, which I would normally love. Not this time, though. I left the book alone for a little while after this epiphany. But tonight (since obviously I would rather read than watch football) I relented and we made up.

Little Fires Everywhere is a story of families and of mother-child relationships and of restriction and freedom and honesty and secrets and art and change. The conventional Richardsons are the central family, in the sense that every thread comes back to them, but Pearl and her mother Mia are truly the the ones the book revolves around. The storyline is complicated enough that I feel daunted by the thought of summarizing it, but at least I can say that the lives of these two families become so entwined that, by the end of the book, few are unaffected. 

However, if that's all I say, I'll be disappointed when my literary amnesia takes over and I want to return to this post to refresh my memory on the plot. So I will add that Mia is a free-spirited and semi-nomadic photographer who has rented a house from small-town journalist Elena Richardson, mother to four Shaker Heights high-schoolers, each of whom forms their own unique bond with Mia or Pearl (or both).

I was surprised to realize after reading that the setting of Shaker Heights (which was almost like a character in the book) is a real live town in Ohio--where the author grew up! That little tidbit almost made the book feel like historical fiction.

"Cut Flower Garden" by Erin Benzakein

Here's a beautiful book that I spent a long time reading, just briefly dipping in on occasion. It's the sort of book that would look great on the coffee table and wouldn't even necessitate a cover-to-cover read, but that's not why I wanted it. I'd been hoping it would inspire me to grow more cutting flowers by filling me with the knowledge to be masterful at it. Instead, it filled me with the knowledge that I would need to do far more hard work than I am willing to do, and spend far more time than I have, in order to enhance the rooms of my house with home-grown blooms throughout the year (or even just throughout the summer). Especially considering that most of my yard is in shade, and the sunny parts are too far away from the reach of a convenient water hose. So I decided I would just have to be satisfied with living vicariously through this book.

Which was still quite satisfying! The photos are really gorgeous and it was a pleasure to read through this book.

"Salt Fat Acid Heat" by Samin Nosrat

I gave this book to Sam for Christmas and ended up reading it myself before he'd really even opened it. Yes, it's basically a cookbook . . .  I don't often read straight through cookbooks, but this one isn't just recipe after recipe. It's almost more of a cooking philosophy book (though it does include quite a few recipes as well--which, I must admit, I just skimmed over, figuring I would read them in greater detail if, at some point in the future, I decide to actually make any of the meals they describe).

I found this to be an interesting read (as cookbooks go) and I enjoyed the whimsical illustrations. However, I'm not sure how well it fits into our family. It's basically a learn-how-to-improvise-in-cooking book. Sam doesn't need it (he already makes up amazing meals) and I'm afraid I don't want it. I don't hate to cook, and I'm not absolutely terrible at it, but recipes are my security blanket. I neither can nor want to let go of them. I think theoretically I should be able to use the information in this book to make improvements on the recipes I follow . . . but I fear I'll just end up ruining a bunch of food instead.

Maybe if I actually learned the principles in this book well, it might help? As I read, I found myself wishing I'd taken notes, but by the time I'd realized that, it was too late. (I'd already missed too many note-taking opportunities and had no interest in starting over again.) BUT! Apparently there is a 4-part Netflix series based on this book! I'm planning to watch that, and hoping both that it will be like CliffsNotes (a quicker summary than rereading) and that it will help the main points to stick in my mind.