A Reliable Booklog
Happy New Year, all! It's 2011 now, but of course I am still drowning in business from 2010. Can I catch up by the end of January? Place your bets now!
71. Funny Boy, Shyam Selvadurai - Queer coming-of-age story, sensitively written but unfortunately rather like every other queer coming-of-age story I have read (which may be an above-average amount). The other point of interest here is the setting: Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka at an especially tumultuous point in that country’s history. The glimpses into what was going on from a political and historical perspective were often of more interest to me, but unfortunately part of the point was that the protagonist was too young fully comprehend it all. This was a perfectly decent book, but I found it fairly flat, and it never rose above decent for me.
72. Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis - Another empty novel about emptiness, oh joy! I read this because friends were always like, “You’ve never read Bret Easton Ellis? Whaaaaat?” But now I have and we never have to talk about it again. Yay.
73. A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick - This is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Not just one of the worst this month or this year-one of the worst ever, full stop. This degree of badness is made worse by the fact that the book is a huge bestseller, both at my store and nationally. Of course.
A Reliable Wife performs an unholy act of matrimony between two things that, in my opinion, should never so much as cross paths, let alone wed: a plot of soap opera-level ridiculousness and pure, pretentious literary self-seriousness. I can take the two separately, under the right circumstances, but together, they are insufferable. Catherine Land, a hooker with (supposedly) a heart of ice, responds to sad-sack widower Ralph Truitt’s newspaper advertisement for “a reliable wife,” intending to win Truitt’s trust and then murder him for his money. But they fall in love! But there are complications! Such drama! But all portrayed in a simultaneously florid, yet austere manner-this is a literary novel, doncha know.
Goolrick writes early 20th century Wisconsin as if every single inhabitant of that state was contractually obligated to die tragically young or go tragically mad-which would rather surprise my maternal grandmother’s family, as they were living there at the time. (Five siblings. All survived to adulthood, despite a real life encounter with quicksand, which is rather more interesting than anything that happens in this novel.) He also seems to have taken a page out of Frank “Whores! Whores! Whores!” Miller’s playbook, as that’s what every female character in this book is, either literally or by implication. And then there’s Goolrick’s actual prose. Dear lord, such deathless prose!
He looked ravaged. He looked pure. He shone like a saint. He stood in a red paisley silk dressing gown, the front barely closed. He obviously wore nothing underneath, and he obviously didn't care. (page 138)
It’s like this all the way through. Goolrick has found his own reliable bride in repetition, and feels the need to show her off constantly.
He was safety. He was security. He was more passionate and kind than she had imagined he would be and she felt, somehow, that she was losing her footing, losing her way in the dark room under his hot hands. She must not forget. She fought against forgetfulness. She fought the desire to take his hand and kiss the palm, to skim his flesh with her tongue. (page 110)
And that’s not even touching upon Goolrick’s love affair with choruses: little repeated phrases that I’m sure are meant to seem profound, but in Goolrick’s clumsy hands, merely have an effect comparable to rapping one’s head against a hard object until one is concussed. Such things happened. THUNK. Such things happened. THUNK. Such things happened. THUNK...and blissful unconsciousness!
Dude. I have read Kurt Vonnegut, and you, sir, are no Kurt Vonnegut. You’re not even Chuck Palahniuk. Give it up.
I know it’s pointless to get mad at a book, but this type of book makes me freakin’ furious. I don’t know whether Goolrick was sincere or cynical in his artistic ambitions, but the success of a piece of poorly-written, sexist, manipulative crap like this is gutting. It’s depressing to me as a writer, and discouraging to me as a bookseller and reader: as someone who would like to try to remain open-minded and sensitive to other people’s tastes. Sorry, though. If you come into my store and tell me that you liked this book, my opinion of you and your reading habits drops immediately. Which makes my job easier in a way-I know I can fob almost anything off on you, and it will be better than this-but it’s sad, because I certainly won’t be working to find you something wonderful, tailored to your particular tastes. This is not a proud thing for me to admit, but the fact of the matter is, it’s hard to put in the effort to produce for someone the most perfect piece of haute cuisine when they’ve told me they love McDonald’s.
We all have our McDonald’s moments, and that’s fine; but Michelin is never going to give McDonald’s a star, and that’s what bestseller status does to a book like this. I read it because everyone was reading it, and now it’s forced me to confront the fact that most people are idiots with bad taste. Thanks for making me into a snob, book.
So you can make up your own minds, I’ll leave you with one last taste-the cold, crinkly, leftover fries, pushed to the side of my plate. Here is Our Heroine, experiencing with such subtlety her Grand Revelation:
Then Catherine watched the angel rise into the dark night sky, his arms empty. Alice lay unredeemed, as inert as an abandoned doll. Catherine knew it was too late; there was an abandonment of hope. Her sister couldn't be saved.
And she knew she couldn't kill Ralph Truitt. She knew she couldn't bring harm to one living soul. Not anymore. (page 179)
Such things happened, apparently!
74. Prime Baby, Gene Luen Yang - Cute little graphic novel about complicated sibling relationships, and about aliens. (Obviously.) A light snack in comparison to the rich feast of the author’s American Born Chinese, but it’s a good way to whet the appetite until the next meal comes along.
75. Liar, Justine Larbalestier - This came to me as a gift, highly recommended; due to that, and to the cover controversy that surrounded the book, I very much wanted to like it. I can’t honestly-a bit of a loaded word in the context of this novel-say that I did. I admired a lot of the things I felt Larbalestier was trying to accomplish: genre-bending; featuring a protagonist of color in a YA novel; discussing the nature of truth; casually depicting bisexuality; simply doing something different. But as a novel, this book fell short for me.
In the acknowledgments, Labalestier writes, “This book was written using Scrivener, a brilliant and indispensable piece of writing software...which allowed me to write Liar as if it were a jigsaw puzzle.” That pretty much sums up my main issue with the book: it was not only written like a puzzle, it reads like one-like a game, like something you are meant to figure out. It’s all form and mere scraps of content, from which the reader is meant to assemble the true shape of the narrative, and-perhaps more significantly-of the protagonist’s character. Which is all very clever, but not, to me, particularly enjoyable-or particularly weighty, either.
I wish my reaction could have been different, but this is how I felt, no lie.
76. How Did You Get This Number, Sloane Crosley - The theme of these reviews, you may have gathered by now, is “Trin doesn’t learn.” This is a prime example. I read Crosley’s previous essay collection, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, and found it very meh. Here is 2008!Trin on the subject:
“Crosley is a perfectly decent writer, but her experiences are just so everyday that reading this collection, I found myself puzzled as to why I was encountering it in book form as opposed to on someone’s LJ or something. So she had a bad boss! She went to camp! She has a funny name! She had an unpleasant moving experience one time! So what? If Crosley were able to draw some particular insight from these experiences, that would be one thing, but she doesn’t. Nor is she uniquely, fall-off-the-couch funny-just sort of quietly amusing.”
So, you know: nothing scarring there, but also nothing to suggest I should pick up Crosley’s next book.
However, it got sent to me in the mail. For free. And it had a picture of a funny bear on the cover! Apparently that is enough to get me to read something. Somehow I doubt any of you are surprised.
So read it I did. And if possible, I felt even more meh than I did the first time around. Crosley just isn’t very funny, and her essays also aren’t terribly focused. Half the time I’m not even sure what they’re supposed to be about-which, were I in tears from laughter every other sentence, wouldn’t matter, but as previous mentioned, I’m not. This is a collection of essays that is neither funny nor deep. It’s just...there.
And yet, I have to accept some culpability this time. As everyone (excepting George W. Bush) knows, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
So here I am: slightly shamed, and down about two hours of my time. The bear picture is funny, though. We used it in our display of bear covers, as kindly Vanna’d by my coworker Geo:
There’s something to be proud of, at least!
77. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin - Fantasy novel, notable for its protagonist being an awesome woman of color, but even more so for its fantastic world-building. This is no Ye Olde Medieval Kingdom, Tolkientown-it is a real, vibrant, original universe. It’s definitely a place that I would like to explore further.
78. Hapworth 16, 1924 - Salinger’s famously un(re)published Glass family novella. (An excellent account of this great publishing disaster, recounted by the publisher, can be found here.) It has a tendency to suddenly reappear on, then disappear from, the internet; I myself got a copy in the most delightful black-market fashion. Having struck up a conversation with a customer about Salinger, who had recently died and who I was rather publicly mourning with a (pleasantly profitable) front counter display, we rolled around to the subject of this story, and the customer’s voice dropped, his manner turning clandestine. He admitted that he had a copy, typed out for him by some kind soul from the original New Yorker publication; would I like to read it? Would I! It was, less than a week later, slipped to me under plain manilla covers, and I took it home feeling like some of the original readers of Lady Chatterley’s Lover or of, you know. Porn.
Anyway, that was all quite fun. But what of the story itself?
Seriously. I need help with this. I love the Glass family stories so much (as this bit of gushing illustrates), but making this tale fit with the rest of the canon makes my head hurt. My anonymous benefactor felt similarly, when we met up again (beneath a picturesque bridge, or in a shadowy parking garage, perhaps) to discuss the work. The story takes the form of a letter home from camp by a seven-year-old Seymour Glass; the letter however comes to us introduced by Seymour’s brother Buddy, and like much of what we know of Seymour, one must wonder how much of it is authentic and how much shaped by Buddy’s hand. In this particular case, one is inclined to believe that the whole thing is fabricated, as the letter seems impossibly-and even creepily-precocious for someone of Seymour’s purported age. But if that is the case, what is Buddy trying to convey, what ghost is he trying to exorcise by portraying his brother and his family in this way? Without a doubt, Hapworth 16, 1924 is by far the most mysterious and bizarre of the often mysterious and bizarre Glass family tales, and it casts an odd light on the rest of the canon.
“Data! Data! Data!” she cried. “I can’t make bricks without clay.” Which I suppose is my way of saying: it’s been almost a year already! Where’s this vast store of Salinger’s unpublished work that was supposed to appear following his death? Stop tormenting me from beyond the grave, J.D. It’s just petty.
79. Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime, Mizuki Nomura - “Because it’s there.” Inspiring words when used by George Mallory describing his reasons for attempting to climb Mount Everest; less so when used to explain why I read this book. Basically: I’d finished the other book I had with me; I was facing a long bus ride home from work; and we’d just cleaned out all the ARCs except for this one, which had arrived that very day. And hey, it was a Japanese fantasy; there could be far worse book/reader matches.
And better ones. This was about as silly as you’d imagine. I liked the idea of the book demon-an ordinary-seeming high school girl who actually subsists off books-and the bits of literary meta were fun. But the actual plot, which involved a mystery and past generations of students and suicide and other weirdness, was pretty dull; I have forgotten most of it. Still, it got me through that bus ride. Mallory had less luck with Everest, as I recall.
80. The Literary Conference, Cesar Aira - The Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster of literary fiction; reading it is rather “like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.” I need to go lie down now.
Total Reviews: 80/229
That was a tough batch to get through! Wish me luck, you guys!
71. Funny Boy, Shyam Selvadurai - Queer coming-of-age story, sensitively written but unfortunately rather like every other queer coming-of-age story I have read (which may be an above-average amount). The other point of interest here is the setting: Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka at an especially tumultuous point in that country’s history. The glimpses into what was going on from a political and historical perspective were often of more interest to me, but unfortunately part of the point was that the protagonist was too young fully comprehend it all. This was a perfectly decent book, but I found it fairly flat, and it never rose above decent for me.
72. Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis - Another empty novel about emptiness, oh joy! I read this because friends were always like, “You’ve never read Bret Easton Ellis? Whaaaaat?” But now I have and we never have to talk about it again. Yay.
73. A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick - This is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Not just one of the worst this month or this year-one of the worst ever, full stop. This degree of badness is made worse by the fact that the book is a huge bestseller, both at my store and nationally. Of course.
A Reliable Wife performs an unholy act of matrimony between two things that, in my opinion, should never so much as cross paths, let alone wed: a plot of soap opera-level ridiculousness and pure, pretentious literary self-seriousness. I can take the two separately, under the right circumstances, but together, they are insufferable. Catherine Land, a hooker with (supposedly) a heart of ice, responds to sad-sack widower Ralph Truitt’s newspaper advertisement for “a reliable wife,” intending to win Truitt’s trust and then murder him for his money. But they fall in love! But there are complications! Such drama! But all portrayed in a simultaneously florid, yet austere manner-this is a literary novel, doncha know.
Goolrick writes early 20th century Wisconsin as if every single inhabitant of that state was contractually obligated to die tragically young or go tragically mad-which would rather surprise my maternal grandmother’s family, as they were living there at the time. (Five siblings. All survived to adulthood, despite a real life encounter with quicksand, which is rather more interesting than anything that happens in this novel.) He also seems to have taken a page out of Frank “Whores! Whores! Whores!” Miller’s playbook, as that’s what every female character in this book is, either literally or by implication. And then there’s Goolrick’s actual prose. Dear lord, such deathless prose!
He looked ravaged. He looked pure. He shone like a saint. He stood in a red paisley silk dressing gown, the front barely closed. He obviously wore nothing underneath, and he obviously didn't care. (page 138)
It’s like this all the way through. Goolrick has found his own reliable bride in repetition, and feels the need to show her off constantly.
He was safety. He was security. He was more passionate and kind than she had imagined he would be and she felt, somehow, that she was losing her footing, losing her way in the dark room under his hot hands. She must not forget. She fought against forgetfulness. She fought the desire to take his hand and kiss the palm, to skim his flesh with her tongue. (page 110)
And that’s not even touching upon Goolrick’s love affair with choruses: little repeated phrases that I’m sure are meant to seem profound, but in Goolrick’s clumsy hands, merely have an effect comparable to rapping one’s head against a hard object until one is concussed. Such things happened. THUNK. Such things happened. THUNK. Such things happened. THUNK...and blissful unconsciousness!
Dude. I have read Kurt Vonnegut, and you, sir, are no Kurt Vonnegut. You’re not even Chuck Palahniuk. Give it up.
I know it’s pointless to get mad at a book, but this type of book makes me freakin’ furious. I don’t know whether Goolrick was sincere or cynical in his artistic ambitions, but the success of a piece of poorly-written, sexist, manipulative crap like this is gutting. It’s depressing to me as a writer, and discouraging to me as a bookseller and reader: as someone who would like to try to remain open-minded and sensitive to other people’s tastes. Sorry, though. If you come into my store and tell me that you liked this book, my opinion of you and your reading habits drops immediately. Which makes my job easier in a way-I know I can fob almost anything off on you, and it will be better than this-but it’s sad, because I certainly won’t be working to find you something wonderful, tailored to your particular tastes. This is not a proud thing for me to admit, but the fact of the matter is, it’s hard to put in the effort to produce for someone the most perfect piece of haute cuisine when they’ve told me they love McDonald’s.
We all have our McDonald’s moments, and that’s fine; but Michelin is never going to give McDonald’s a star, and that’s what bestseller status does to a book like this. I read it because everyone was reading it, and now it’s forced me to confront the fact that most people are idiots with bad taste. Thanks for making me into a snob, book.
So you can make up your own minds, I’ll leave you with one last taste-the cold, crinkly, leftover fries, pushed to the side of my plate. Here is Our Heroine, experiencing with such subtlety her Grand Revelation:
Then Catherine watched the angel rise into the dark night sky, his arms empty. Alice lay unredeemed, as inert as an abandoned doll. Catherine knew it was too late; there was an abandonment of hope. Her sister couldn't be saved.
And she knew she couldn't kill Ralph Truitt. She knew she couldn't bring harm to one living soul. Not anymore. (page 179)
Such things happened, apparently!
74. Prime Baby, Gene Luen Yang - Cute little graphic novel about complicated sibling relationships, and about aliens. (Obviously.) A light snack in comparison to the rich feast of the author’s American Born Chinese, but it’s a good way to whet the appetite until the next meal comes along.
75. Liar, Justine Larbalestier - This came to me as a gift, highly recommended; due to that, and to the cover controversy that surrounded the book, I very much wanted to like it. I can’t honestly-a bit of a loaded word in the context of this novel-say that I did. I admired a lot of the things I felt Larbalestier was trying to accomplish: genre-bending; featuring a protagonist of color in a YA novel; discussing the nature of truth; casually depicting bisexuality; simply doing something different. But as a novel, this book fell short for me.
In the acknowledgments, Labalestier writes, “This book was written using Scrivener, a brilliant and indispensable piece of writing software...which allowed me to write Liar as if it were a jigsaw puzzle.” That pretty much sums up my main issue with the book: it was not only written like a puzzle, it reads like one-like a game, like something you are meant to figure out. It’s all form and mere scraps of content, from which the reader is meant to assemble the true shape of the narrative, and-perhaps more significantly-of the protagonist’s character. Which is all very clever, but not, to me, particularly enjoyable-or particularly weighty, either.
I wish my reaction could have been different, but this is how I felt, no lie.
76. How Did You Get This Number, Sloane Crosley - The theme of these reviews, you may have gathered by now, is “Trin doesn’t learn.” This is a prime example. I read Crosley’s previous essay collection, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, and found it very meh. Here is 2008!Trin on the subject:
“Crosley is a perfectly decent writer, but her experiences are just so everyday that reading this collection, I found myself puzzled as to why I was encountering it in book form as opposed to on someone’s LJ or something. So she had a bad boss! She went to camp! She has a funny name! She had an unpleasant moving experience one time! So what? If Crosley were able to draw some particular insight from these experiences, that would be one thing, but she doesn’t. Nor is she uniquely, fall-off-the-couch funny-just sort of quietly amusing.”
So, you know: nothing scarring there, but also nothing to suggest I should pick up Crosley’s next book.
However, it got sent to me in the mail. For free. And it had a picture of a funny bear on the cover! Apparently that is enough to get me to read something. Somehow I doubt any of you are surprised.
So read it I did. And if possible, I felt even more meh than I did the first time around. Crosley just isn’t very funny, and her essays also aren’t terribly focused. Half the time I’m not even sure what they’re supposed to be about-which, were I in tears from laughter every other sentence, wouldn’t matter, but as previous mentioned, I’m not. This is a collection of essays that is neither funny nor deep. It’s just...there.
And yet, I have to accept some culpability this time. As everyone (excepting George W. Bush) knows, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
So here I am: slightly shamed, and down about two hours of my time. The bear picture is funny, though. We used it in our display of bear covers, as kindly Vanna’d by my coworker Geo:
There’s something to be proud of, at least!
77. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin - Fantasy novel, notable for its protagonist being an awesome woman of color, but even more so for its fantastic world-building. This is no Ye Olde Medieval Kingdom, Tolkientown-it is a real, vibrant, original universe. It’s definitely a place that I would like to explore further.
78. Hapworth 16, 1924 - Salinger’s famously un(re)published Glass family novella. (An excellent account of this great publishing disaster, recounted by the publisher, can be found here.) It has a tendency to suddenly reappear on, then disappear from, the internet; I myself got a copy in the most delightful black-market fashion. Having struck up a conversation with a customer about Salinger, who had recently died and who I was rather publicly mourning with a (pleasantly profitable) front counter display, we rolled around to the subject of this story, and the customer’s voice dropped, his manner turning clandestine. He admitted that he had a copy, typed out for him by some kind soul from the original New Yorker publication; would I like to read it? Would I! It was, less than a week later, slipped to me under plain manilla covers, and I took it home feeling like some of the original readers of Lady Chatterley’s Lover or of, you know. Porn.
Anyway, that was all quite fun. But what of the story itself?
Seriously. I need help with this. I love the Glass family stories so much (as this bit of gushing illustrates), but making this tale fit with the rest of the canon makes my head hurt. My anonymous benefactor felt similarly, when we met up again (beneath a picturesque bridge, or in a shadowy parking garage, perhaps) to discuss the work. The story takes the form of a letter home from camp by a seven-year-old Seymour Glass; the letter however comes to us introduced by Seymour’s brother Buddy, and like much of what we know of Seymour, one must wonder how much of it is authentic and how much shaped by Buddy’s hand. In this particular case, one is inclined to believe that the whole thing is fabricated, as the letter seems impossibly-and even creepily-precocious for someone of Seymour’s purported age. But if that is the case, what is Buddy trying to convey, what ghost is he trying to exorcise by portraying his brother and his family in this way? Without a doubt, Hapworth 16, 1924 is by far the most mysterious and bizarre of the often mysterious and bizarre Glass family tales, and it casts an odd light on the rest of the canon.
“Data! Data! Data!” she cried. “I can’t make bricks without clay.” Which I suppose is my way of saying: it’s been almost a year already! Where’s this vast store of Salinger’s unpublished work that was supposed to appear following his death? Stop tormenting me from beyond the grave, J.D. It’s just petty.
79. Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime, Mizuki Nomura - “Because it’s there.” Inspiring words when used by George Mallory describing his reasons for attempting to climb Mount Everest; less so when used to explain why I read this book. Basically: I’d finished the other book I had with me; I was facing a long bus ride home from work; and we’d just cleaned out all the ARCs except for this one, which had arrived that very day. And hey, it was a Japanese fantasy; there could be far worse book/reader matches.
And better ones. This was about as silly as you’d imagine. I liked the idea of the book demon-an ordinary-seeming high school girl who actually subsists off books-and the bits of literary meta were fun. But the actual plot, which involved a mystery and past generations of students and suicide and other weirdness, was pretty dull; I have forgotten most of it. Still, it got me through that bus ride. Mallory had less luck with Everest, as I recall.
80. The Literary Conference, Cesar Aira - The Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster of literary fiction; reading it is rather “like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.” I need to go lie down now.
Total Reviews: 80/229
That was a tough batch to get through! Wish me luck, you guys!