Stan's Book Dump: Winter 2018

What am I doing!?

Here's what's up - although I'm convinced no one still reads this blog, and although I do all my book-loggin' over at Goodreads these days, I still can't help but chuck a bunch of quick takes here, all sloppy-written and rambling and not trying to impress anybody, just talking about how and when and why I even acquired some of these books, and what inspired me to read them. Got it? Cool. Here we go - it's everything I read through March.

Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta

Opened the year with Tom Perrotta's newest. Now, I like Perrotta, but everything I've read of his seems to fall into "good, not great" territory. They're generally decent stories that gently satirize or lampoon our modern American society, and in particular the ways adults can act like children (never more so than in Little Children) but nothing has really blown me away as a cutting or thrilling or sweeping read. (The Leftovers made for an excellent TV show, but the book on which it was based was so much smaller and less ambitious in its scope.) Sadly, Mrs. Fletcher felt like the emptiest and weakest and most by-the-numbers offering from Perrotta that I've read to date. It's about a single middle-aged woman, sad and lonely after her only son leaves for college, using the Internet to make new connections and find new hobbies and mostly just watch porn. It's also about that son, overwhelmed and out of his element and hopelessly un-woke at college in 2017, perhaps also just seeking human connection. I dunno, it just didn't really resonate with me in a meaningful way beyond "going away to college is hard, being an empty nester means sexually awakening." God, can I relate to that cover, though.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

My grandparents winter in Florida every year, and apparently all they do there is read. (And why not?) So every year they go down there with, or otherwise acquire, dozens of books. And one thing that happens every few years when I visit them is that my grandmother will tell me to go through their big pile of already-read books and see if there are any I want before she throws or gives them all away. It's a pretty low percentage of books that ends up getting pulled from the pile, but I always seem to come away with two or three free books I wouldn't have bought myself but would still be curious to read. This is one of those books. At any rate, I saw the HBO miniseries adaptation of Olive Kitteridge a few years back, starring Frances McDormand, and frankly there's no way at all I was ever going to be picturing anyone but Frances McDormand as I read the book. The book was fine! I think the miniseries was better, but that could just be the bias that comes with seeing it first.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

So, a thing I try to do whenever I travel somewhere new is read a book from or otherwise about the place I'm going. Bought this one before a trip to Monterey and Big Sur in September of 2016, finally got around to reading it in February of 2018. I'm a bit behind! At any rate, this is the third Steinbeck book I've read, and they all seem to blend together in that same Great Depression California way. I think this is my least favorite of his offerings so far, but that's got more to do with Of Mice and Men being an all time classic and The Pearl hitting me right in a very specific sweet spot. Someday I'll get around to his bigger fish like The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden but so far a hundred pages of Steinbeck every few years has been plenty for me, so, no rush I suppose.

The One-Eyed Man by Ron Currie

Ron Currie's absolutely one of my favorite authors of the last decade or so, a real modern-day Kurt Vonnegut, a guy who blends melancholy and absurdity and tragedy and the magnitude of the universe so brilliantly and wonderfully. I can't recommend his work enough - go ahead and jump blindly into Everything Matters! and you won't be disappointed. That said, I fear that The One-Eyed Man was his weakest effort to date. It's just messier and smaller than his previous books. Still plenty funny, but less touching, less tight. The silver lining here is that even a "bad" Ron Currie book is a pure delight to read, as far as I'm concerned; this was "merely" a four-out-of-five-star read.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

I think George Saunders is immensely talented. The very structure of this novel, his first, is unlike anything I've ever read. But I can't say for certain that I loved this book. The concept is almost hauntingly beautiful. Here's some real history. Abraham Lincoln, in the early stages of the Civil War, lost his son Willie to a sudden illness. Willie's body was temporarily interred at a crypt in Washington before being transported to a final resting place in Illinois. A distraught, grieving Lincoln entered the crypt late at night on multiple occasions to hold his boy's body. Saunders was so moved by that image - the idea of a sitting President holding his dead son on multiple occasions - that he concocted this surreal story, in which Willie Lincoln and dozens of other departed souls in the crypt are all hanging out in this weird plane of an afterlife - the "bardo" - unaware that they have died but unable to move on. Stuck in limbo, as it were. And when Abe Lincoln arrives to cradle Willie's body, the rest of the souls are absolutely awe-struck, because no one ever touches their bodies anymore, holds them, hugs them, and so on. It's beautiful stuff, really. My big reservation here is that the format of the book, which lends itself so well to the disorienting nature of, you know, other planes of existence, makes for a rather confusing read where it's often not apparent who's talking or what's actually being said. Now, Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally have purchased the right to adapt this thing into a movie, which should be extremely interesting for better or worse, and which will definitely be something I keep my eye on.

Veins by Drew

That's Drew as in @drewtoothpaste, webcomic author and solid Twitter follow. Here's a short little something that he published in 2011 and that I've had my eye on for at least a few years. It's... dark! It's really something. It's a tragicomedy about a very dumb and socially inept man who's loathed by everyone around him, including his parents, except for himself. That's about the gist of it. Someone on Goodreads compared the whole thing to an anti-Forrest Gump of sorts - a tale in which a terribly stupid man doesn't get rewarded in life for being a blissful idiot, but relentlessly punished instead. There's a chance that this was an absolutely genius piece of writing, an anti-novel, a total trolljob of a story, but at least on its surface it's just a depressing story about an utterly unremarkable character.

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

Had pretty high hopes for this one after reading and mostly loving the works of Albert Camus over the last few years. Turns out Sartre isn't nearly the novelist Camus was, which is a damn shame. The whole gist of this one seems to be that the narrator is experiencing a noteworthy and escalating sense of "existential dread," back in the 1930s before that term - perhaps even that concept? - existed. But what it boils down to is a weird philosophy in which basically only nouns have meaning and adjectives do not; the "essence" of some tangible "thing" obfuscates its existence, I guess. Like, a necktie is a necktie, but when a necktie is purple it ceases to be a necktie because it's purple. And that'll make you nauseous, maybe? I dunno, it's very possible I whiffed on truly understanding something deeper about this one, but I don't really think that's the case.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Here's a solid piece of magical realism in which the historical underground railroad of the antebellum South is, in fact, a true and literal underground railroad, shuffling runaway slaves northward toward freedom. The book pulls no punches depicting the horrible inhumanities of chattel slavery, where life is nasty, brutal, and short. I thought it was an excellent but harrowing read, reminiscent of The Odyssey, a determined young woman's quest to make it "home" (to freedom) while everyone who joins or otherwise assists her ends up worse off for it. It's a book that feels equally painful and necessary. Definitely worth a read.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Really enjoyed this. I'd never heard of Celeste Ng before Little Fires Everywhere popped up all over assorted "Best of 2017" lists, which is sort of surprising since her debut novel Everything I Never Told You seems to be even more beloved. Anyway, this one was a delight, mixing themes of class and motherhood and privacy in delightful ways. Felt a lot like a Tom Perrotta book (see above!) but better. I'd like to get to Everything I Never Told You soon, but the backlog is just so full as it is. Someday!

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

So I saw the very, very different movie first, which undoubtedly affected my experience reading this short novel. I definitely prefered the movie, but still, what a treat this was. So eerie and ethereal. Truly a unique reading experience - and still unique after seeing the movie. I had been meaning to get around to the Southern Reach trilogy for a few years, and I'm glad a film adaptation finally gave me the push I needed to do so. For what it's worth, and in case you're wondering, the film only adapts this, the first book in the trilogy; I have no idea what's in store in the next two books, but also, honestly, I'm not so sure I care as much. Oh well!

That's all! That's all for now. Hoping to keep up this book pace all year - ten in three months, wow, good for me! - or at least I'm hoping to be back with a few more in a few months. Bye!