Currently viewing the tag: "friday reads"
(Sorry for the Saturday post! You may have to get used to it what with all the fussy baby action around these parts.)
I’d never heard of J. G. Ballard until recently. Somewhere along the way I stumbled upon Running Wild as a suggested book. (My best recollection is it had something to do with the fact that I’d just watched The White Ribbon, which deals with similar themes, though in a VERY different setting.) The synopsis of Running Wild was rather brutal and unusual, which piqued my interest, of course. A small, gated community’s adult residents are all dead and the children have all disappeared. One cannot help but feel one’s ears perk up a bit, can one?
That was my introduction to Ballard (the G stands for Graham, so obviously he’s great) and I only found out later that he was one of the leading science-fiction writers of the 20th century. I don’t know that he’s considered “typical” in sci-fi these days. His work focuses much less on technology than societal changes and attitudes that lead to the creation of unrest and barbarity. He certainly has a bleak view of the human condition, but it’s certainly an interesting one.
I’m not sure if it’s just me or if Ballard has flown mostly under the radar in the US. He’s best known for two books that have been made into movies. Empire of the Sun, which is different from most of his other works and is an autobiographical novel of his time growing up in Japan, and Crash.
(Tangent: I’ll be honest. I tried to read Crash in anticipation of this review. I knew it was made into a David Cronenberg film, which means it’s pretty messed up. And I knew it had something to do with taking a grotesque pleasure in car crashes. But I was NOT ready for it. I put it down after two chapters, which is not something I do lightly. (Unless the book is bad.) This wasn’t bad. It was… graphic. And not in a violent way. Let’s just say that the numbers of synonyms for bodily fluids and genitalia was extensive, just in the first few pages. Phew. And there wasn’t anything to lighten it up. I gave Mr. Ballard a salute and set down the book. It took guts to write and I’m curious about where it was going, I just didn’t quite have the stomach for it.)
Anyway. Luckily for us, W. W. Norton is releasing several of his books in the US for the first time over the next few months. Including Kingdom Come, The Drought and High Rise.
Image via Goodreads
I couldn’t read them all (without getting rather depressed about the state of the world) but I did have a go at High Rise. It is definitely Ballardian. The tone is detached. The story is increasingly chaotic and violent. The world is both real and unreal.
Written in the 1970′s, it takes place in a high rise apartment building that has its own self-contained society. (These days we call this a mixed-use development.) With a school, a pool and a shopping mall, there’s little need for anyone to leave except to go to work. Everyone’s lives are lived on top of one another and the elevator is the lifeline to the outside world.
As is often the case, this building has its residents divided by income level, with the lower levels having families, the middle level having single professionals and the top levels inhabited by the upper crust. Everything seems okay on the surface, but the class resentment that lingers below the calm exterior lurks. All it takes to set it off is a power outage.
As the building starts to experience a variety of technical glitches and failures, the residents turn against each other. Soon it isn’t just every man for himself, there are tribes and clans. Floors work together. Elevators are hijacked. Stairs are blocked. Stores are abandoned.
The novel follows three of the building’s residents as chaos ensues. Wilder fancies himself a documentary filmmaker who wants to capture high rise life on camera. He lives on the lower floors with his wife and two children. Laing is a doctor who lives alone and keeps mostly to himself, though he keeps an eye on his sister whose family lives on the lower floors. And there is Royal, the architect of the building who lives in the penthouse.
Laing serves as the story’s everyman for the most part, while Wilder and Royal engage in a battle for the building and those inside. Not that Laing is a simple person or an uninvolved party.
The thing I’ll say for this novel, and for much of Ballard’s work, from what I understand, is that he is exploring themes more than he’s examining a legitimate plot. Suspension of disbelief is a requirement. In High Rise one could easily toss the book aside and say, “I don’t believe that not one of these people would call the police.” As things turn violent, the residents of the building seem determined to keep their strange world contained, even as they head to and from work each day. Even as the building fills with trash and debris. They don’t leave. They don’t get help. And while this is unbelievable, it’s also essential for things to work as Ballard intends. This isn’t realism, it’s an examination of man’s capacity for evil. You have to accept that.
Ballard’s detached tone may take a little getting used to, but the disconnect between the tone and the story is also a big part of what makes his books work.
And they do work. I dare you to read the first sentence of High Rise and not feel compelled to keep reading.
Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the three previous months.
See what I mean about that detached tone? I read that sentence and laughed aloud. I love the dog bit, just slipped in there all innocently.
If you like dark, dystopian reads you’ll find something of interest in Ballard. He’s unlike anything I’ve ever read and I’m glad to see his books be more widely available in the US.
Thanks to Edelweiss and W. W. Norton for an advanced e-galley of High Rise for this review. High Rise, Kingdom Come and The Drought were released in the United States on March 5.
Related Posts:
Yes, I missed my Friday Reads post. This baby stuff is a lot of work. Fortunately I’m still getting a lot of reading done. Not all of it has been as stellar as my last streak, but I did want to pop in quickly to tell you one thing.
Image via Goodreads
Read this book.
I guess I can say a little more, but mostly I want to say that this is the best book I’ve read in a long time and it’s definitely up for my Best of the Year list (even though it was published in 2011) and it’s simply amazing in ways that I can’t really describe.
You may remember Ann Patchett if you read Bel Canto, which is also amazing in ways I can’t really describe.
State of Wonder is about a doctor who works for a pharmaceutical company who finds herself in the Amazon searching for answers after her colleague dies there as part of work with a research team. I know it sounds lame. I put this book off for months because the summary sounded lame. And because I didn’t particularly feel like reading a book set in the Amazon. (I am not much for exotic locales in literature.)
But I was totally wrong. I apologize immensely to Ms. Patchett. And I am trying to make up for it by telling you to read it. It is the kind of book whose goodness you can’t explain to people. You just have to say, “Just read it.”
The reading part shouldn’t be any trouble. I was transfixed from the very beginning. And the end was as gasp-worthy as any mystery I’ve read.
Oh, and also, there is a scene with a giant Anaconda. So yeah.
Just read it, okay?
Next week I will try to be on time.
Related Posts:
I didn’t expect to get much reading done after the baby was born. But it turns out that my kindle and late night feedings go together hand in hand. I’m whizzing through books at light speed.
I’ve been lucky enough to go through a bunch of highly entertaining fast reads that are perfect to keep me interested even when I’m bleary-eyed. So if you’re enduring your own late nights or if you’re just looking for an exciting book to cruise through on a plane or over the weekend I’ve got a couple of good choices for you.
Image from Goodreads
The Expats by Chris Pavone is a spy novel, which isn’t exactly my thing but the book came highly recommended so I had to take a look. Kate Moore has a husband, Dexter, and two little boys who don’t know that she works for the CIA. When Kate’s husband gets a lucrative job in Luxembourg, Kate decides it’s time to leave the Agency and put her secrets behind her.
Once they arrive in Europe, Kate finds that her new life is going to take a lot of adjusting. Not only is she now an American among foreigners, she’s a stay-at-home mom taking her kids to school and doing laundry. It’s probably not surprising that Kate starts to see intrigue everywhere she looks.
Her husband’s new job, which he tells her is in IT security for banks, has him working long hours and leaving town frequently and suddenly. He seems withdrawn and secretive. Then there are their new friends, Julia and Bill, who are just a little too good to be true.
Kate uses her skills to start her own investigation into her husband and friends, while she also ponders her past as a field agent and her future as a mother.
With plenty of action and intrigue, The Expats is a book you’ll stay awake longer at night to read just a few more chapters. Still, that’s usually not enough for me to go hook, line and sinker for a book. Plot is great and important, but character makes a story. In that sense, The Expats is above the pack. Kate’s conundrum on her past as a spy and her present as a mother is full of the kind of questions moms ask themselves every day. There’s a lot to consider here on family and balance and ambition along with the spy shenanigans.
I coasted right through this one in a couple of days and loved every second of it. Even if you’re not a big spy novel person, I bet you’d like this one.
***
Image from Goodreads
When you’re up much of the night with a baby who won’t sleep you can get through a book in one day without much trouble. And that’s what happened with me and Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson. In terms of pacing and speed I read this book faster than I’ve read anything since I devoured Room in one afternoon last year.
The concept is similar to the movie Memento. Christine wakes up every morning with no memory of the last 20 years of her life. Every day her husband must remind her who she is and of their life together. It’s a static and unchanging existence until Christine begins meeting with a doctor who encourages her to keep a journal.
Through her journal, Christine begins to build her own past day by day. And as she keeps track of her experiences she starts to find that there are inconsistencies in what her husband tells her about herself and her life. Her husband, Ben, is kind and devoted. There seems to be no reason that he would lie to her after staying with her for so long despite her amnesia.
Each day she tries to dig deeper into her own identity, able to trust only herself and the record she keeps of each day.
The book moves at a quick clip and it uses the journal concept very well. When it was time for me to take my turn napping while Eric took the baby I was a little sad to put down my book for a while. Sometimes you really want a book you can breeze through and enjoy, and this one fit the bill for me. A good, satisfying thriller.
Thanks to Edelweiss and Random House for giving me access to an advanced e-copy of The Expats. It will be released on March 6. Before I Go to Sleep is published by Harper and available in bookstores everywhere.
Related Posts:
I couldn’t just do one review this week. I’ve been plowing through books like nobody’s business and they’ve been going pretty well. I do have a couple new releases here, but many of them are books I just got at the library for whatever reason.
image from Goodreads
The Darlings by Cristina Alger is a page-turner with an unusual premise. It’s Thanksgiving. A hedge fund manager has just killed himself. By Monday his ponzi scheme will be front page news. In those few days, the book follows the Darling family, Manhattan socialites led by patriarch Carter Darling who runs an investment firm that worked closely with the tainted hedge fund. Heads will roll… and as the days pass the Darling family takes stock and tries to save their skins.
The most vulnerable of them is Paul, married to Carter’s daughter Merrill, who only recently started working for the family business. As he starts to put together what’s happening he doesn’t know whether he can trust his father-in-law or his ex-girlfriend at the SEC. Paul has to decide whether to save himself or be loyal to a family that he’s never felt he quite fits in with.
It’s a quick read, and particularly enjoyable if you like novels with a peek into high society, complete with charity balls and life in the Hamptons. There are lots and lots of characters (it can get a little confusing) and the novel switches between points of view quite often. But it ends up tying everyone together in a satisfying way. The ticking clock works well, with everyone waiting for the news cycle to start back up after the holiday weekend. As someone who tends to stick more to classic mysteries and not so much to thrillers involving high finance or other such things, I felt perfectly comfortable in this book. Alger does a good job taking you for the ride.
Image from Goodreads
Perhaps one of my favorite books so far this year is The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. I heard lots of good buzz about this one at the end of 2011 and put it on my library hold list. To me this book feels like the equivalent of a good movie from the 30′s or 40′s. Snappy dialogue, fantastic characters, nights out on the town. But it’s much more than that. It’s 1938 and Katey Kontent has worked her way up from her Russian immigrant family on Brighton Beach to a secretary at a legal firm in Manhattan. She works her way up even higher when she and Evey, a girl from her boarding house, meet Tinker Gray one New Year’s Eve. He’s every inch the upper class playboy and the three of them become fast friends.
What follows over the course of the next few years is something I will not spoil for you, but Katey’s social journey among the young and wealthy Manhattanites isn’t a romp, nor is it a melodrama, but it’s a story that constantly keeps you on your toes. Katey is immensely likable and she has all the verve and wit of His Girl Friday. This is a book that feels like fluff because it’s so often fun and buoyant, but the writing is top notch which makes it much more than fun.
Image from Goodreads
There are always more Norwegian crime writers to discover, and I just read my first Anne Holt: 1222. It is a very large-scale locked-room mystery. After a train crash during a huge snowstorm, former detective Hanne Wilhelmsen and the other passengers are stuck in a hotel in the mountains to wait out the storm. The idea of a storm so heavy and horrific that it scares these hearty Norwegians was pretty scary to me on its own. (Thank heavens for our mild winter this year!)
Wilhelmsen is one of your misfit investigators. She’s in a wheelchair from a gunshot to the spine. She’s not particularly nice to anyone. She keeps to herself, though she has a watchful and suspicious eye on all her fellow passengers. This is, apparently, one of many Wilhelmsen novels and I have to say that I quite like her. (Though I like any investigator who doesn’t fit the classic profile of being either young and attractive or old and grizzled.)
As far as the mystery it works surprisingly well given that there are over 100 people in the hotel. There’s an appropriate number of suspects, each of whom stands out from the crowd. Still, the large number of people is a challenge and Wilhelmsen’s detachment from all but a few characters can make it hard to see what exactly is going on at any time.
Image from Goodreads
I sought out Sister by Rosamund Lupton because I heard good things and she has another novel due out soon so I wanted to see if I’d be interested. Bee comes home to London after the disappearance of her sister Tess. Bee is the responsible one and Tess is the artistic one, but the two have always been close. Upon arriving Bee starts to find out that there are many things her sister hasn’t told her. The police have a theory of the case, but Bee has another and as she fights to find out the truth she begins to alienate everyone who could help her.
Lupton is an excellent writer and I liked her prose and style very much. What kept it from being a completely successful book was the style used to tell the story. Going between letters and flashbacks, the device isn’t always successful. And, I’ll warn you, there are those who’ll find the ending a big cheat. So while there are some drawbacks, I found Lupton’s prose and characters really appealing and I’m anxious to see what she writes next.
Last, but certainly not least, is Castle by J. Robert Lennon. Like the last couple of books I’ve mentioned, I heard about this one on Twitter. Following publishers, editors and librarians has given me a great new source for recommendations. This has been out for a few years but I hadn’t heard of it before. And I was really excited as I read it. Why? Because it actually deserves perfectly to be in the genre of “psychological thriller.”
Image from Goodreads
So few thrillers are in any way psychological. Sure, you can bring in your FBI profilers, but that usually takes a back seat to the plot. In this book the plot is completely about the inner workings of one character’s mind. Eric Loesch moves back to his hometown and buys a large piece of land. We don’t know why he’s there. We don’t know much about him, but we know that he was once a military man and that there is some kind of scandal in his past. He doesn’t seem to enjoy people much. Most of what he does upon arriving is fixing the old house on his property and exploring the surrounding woods.
The first half of the book is not much more than following Eric’s thoughts as he goes through these tasks. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t oddly gripping. There are small hints here and there about what Eric is hiding from us and I couldn’t stop reading even when nothing seemed to be happening. With that said, the second half of the book is full of shocking revelations about Eric’s past and what he’s doing in the present. And let’s just say, there’s a lot of psychological scarring there that begins to become more and more apparent as we get to know Eric better.
It was interesting to have a narrator who kept his audience so at a distance, hiding so much about himself. And Lennon is great at walking this fine line where he reveals just enough little by little to keep you going. This is, very much, a man’s man of a novel. It’s tough and kind of gritty and I enjoyed every minute.
I sped through all these novels (many while I was reading Great Expectations) and it was a pretty successful run. For now I have a big pile of advance copies to get through and another stack of books waiting for me at the library. Should be a good month ahead!
Thanks to Penguin and Netgalley for the advanced e-galley of The Darlings. It will be released on February 16, 2012. The rest of the books I’ve reviewed are already available at bookstores everywhere.
Related Posts:
I’m trying to shake things up a little bit this year with my reading goals. I want to squeeze in some solid classics. I want to continue to find interesting books to review. And I want to work on one of my weak spots: nonfiction. Really good narrative nonfiction is supremely satisfying, yet I find myself hesitant to do more than dip my toe in the water. So I’ve been taking recommendations lately and finding myself giving so many recommendations back that I realize I should really read more of this stuff.
So I’m going to hit some of my highlights, my favorite nonfiction. Be aware that I have a thing for crime nonfiction just like I have a thing for crime novels, so keep that in mind.
Memoir
image from Goodreads
There are two can’t-miss books that I can vouch for, as someone who’s spent plenty of time working with cops and jails. Blue Blood by Edward Conlon is a no-holds-barred man-on-the-beat account of a guy from a cop family who ends up becoming a cop himself. While Conlon was familiar with the life, it wasn’t one he’d ever planned for and he joined the NYPD only after getting a degree from Harvard and planning a different life. Conlon doesn’t pull punches and he doesn’t paint a pretty picture, but he will completely change your perspective on crime and law enforcement in a big city. He also happens to be an AMAZING writer and I was mesmerized by the book. (He has a new novel out and I’m so excited to read it.)
image from Goodreads
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover is a similar endeavor so it seems appropriate to put the two together. Conover is a journalist, but to better understand prison life he took a job for a year as a prison guard at Sing Sing. I read this while I worked in the Texas Prison System and found it rang very true. He has to get close to the guards and inmates to write his book but he also feels a need to distance himself so he can survive. I find most people know virtually nothing about life in prison and this is a great way to learn more.
Period Pieces
If you like your nonfiction to take you to another time and place, I have a couple of recommendations.
image from Goodreads
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale takes you back to a crime from Victorian England. To give you an idea of the scale of it, this was the Lindbergh baby before there was a Lindbergh baby. It was one of the first murders to gain wide-spread notoriety and be investigated by a Scotland Yard detective. (It is gruesome enough, it involves the murder of a 3-year-old boy in a house full of suspects.) Summerscale takes you through the facts themselves with all the intricacy of a good novel and charts the investigation and public fascination that followed. The legacy of the crime still lives on in our modern-day mysteries.
image from Goodreads
Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough was made into a dismally boring movie by Michael Mann and it’s a real shame because it’s a lively read. Not only does it cover some of the world’s most famous gangsters (John Dilinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, and Baby Face Nelson, to name a few) it follows the birth of the FBI as law enforcement struggled to chase the cons from state to state. The stories are mesmerizing, not just the crime sprees of the villains, but the ones of their trackers. When I read it I reflected that it serves as a good reminder of how law enforcement used to work: shoot first, ask questions later.
Vincent Bugliosi
image from Goodreads
When I talk nonfiction my first question is almost always, “Have you read Helter Skelter?” To me, it’s right up there with In Cold Blood as essential reading. But where Capote tried to retrace and figure out a seemingly meaningless crime, Bugliosi gives you actual insight gained through experience.
Bugliosi was the prosecutor in charge of the Manson family prosecutions. So he knows about as much as anyone could know. In the book he goes through the crimes themselves, the investigation and the trials that followed. It’s a big fat doorstop of a book, but I could not put it down. It’s rare to see someone with so much inside knowledge and who has a strong legal grasp of the issues involved.
image from Goodreads
I loved Helter Skelter so much that I sought to recreate the experience by reading another Bugliosi book, And the Sea Will Tell. This time, Bugliosi is on the side of the defense and the case is a strange one. On a tiny island in the Pacific, two couples and their boats come to shore to find their own little Paradise. It ends with one of them dead. Bugliosi retraces their interactions and the grudges that begin to arise and eventually lead to murder. This one also comes complete with a trial as Bugliosi defends an accused murderer. It’s not quite the thrill of Helter Skelter, but it’s still a stimulating read.
I’ve already put in some nonfiction this year. I read Columbine by Dave Cullen and found myself totally immersed in it. I’m hoping to add a few more over the year.
What’s your favorite nonfiction? What do you recommend??
Related Posts:
Sometimes I think I would be a much happier reader if I’d never been in a courtroom and never read a police report. I began my obsession with crime fiction when I was only 12 or so and began devouring every Agatha Christie novel in my tiny library. (For a tiny library, they had a massive Christie selection.)
These days you see less Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple types. Instead you see cops and lawyers and cops and lawyers. It’s the way it goes. I have no problem with that. I’ve watched plenty of Law & Order marathons. While sitting around the last few weeks, I watched the entire first season of Murder One on Hulu. (I have also declared my love for Prime Suspect, which I still insist is one of the best cop shows ever even with only 13 episodes.)
But it’s one thing to watch a tv show, where the plot has to be condensed into a short time period. It’s another to read a book. And this is where I start to get picky.
Image from goodreads
Give me a book like Defending Jacob by William Landay and I have two immediate reactions: excitement and fear. I love legal thrillers but I find so many of them lackluster. (So how do I love them? I don’t really know. I love them… hypothetically.) Every now and then I find one that impresses me. I like Steve Martini most of the time. And I was a fan of Missing Witness, which came out a few years ago.
So I have to admit that Defending Jacob may have been at a slight disadvantage having me as a reviewer.
Let’s get to the story.
Andy Barber is a career ADA in a nice suburb. He has a wife and a teenage son. Everything’s pretty nice… until a high school student is killed. And Andy’s son is charged with the murder.
The ADA in him wants to get involved and solve the case, but he can’t be a part of the investigation. He also wants to defend his son, whom he believes is innocent. As Andy finds himself on the side of the accused instead of the accuser he struggles to decide how best to defend his son and clear his name. While Andy believes his son didn’t kill anyone, he is confronted by doubts and his own past, including a family secret he’s kept from everyone he loves.
There are certainly strong reminders of classic legal thriller Presumed Innocent by the daddy of legal thrillers, Scott Turow. Author Landay has certainly learned a thing or two from the master. Andy struggles with a host of legal and ethical issues. The plot is full of twists and turns.
So how does it measure up to a lawyer like me?
The courtroom scenes are excellent. The story is narrated in flashback through grand jury testimony and these scenes crackle with tension. Landay should be proud. He didn’t shortchange the courtroom scenes, he writes believable witness examinations, and the process all felt real. You can tell he knows what he’s writing about. (Unsurprisingly, Landay was an ADA himself before he turned to novels.)
Nevertheless I can’t give Defending Jacob a free pass. While the procedure is top notch, I found the characterization lacking. I tend to think that with decades of experience with the law, Andy is smart enough to know where to draw the line. But I often found his actions and responses unbelievable. He seemed to disregard everything he knew. I understand that when family is involved everyone can get a little crazy. As Andy is the 1st person narrator, I never felt convinced that his actions made sense.
I do seem to be in the minority. At least as far as the advance reviews go, Defending Jacob is picking up a lot of praise and buzz. I certainly can say I recommend it, it’s definitely a readable and well done legal thriller. (And, the ending does NOT disappoint, which is a big deal.) I’ve read enough books to know that my kind of quibble is one that’s personal and that many people won’t share.
So if you do enjoy a good courtroom thriller you should be on the lookout for Defending Jacob.
Thanks to Delacorte Press and Edelweiss for providing me with an advanced copy of Defending Jacob. And thanks to some lovely librarians on Twitter who recommended it. The novel will be released on Tuesday, January 31st.
Related Posts:
Find the Mess
My Life’s a Mess and That’s Okay
Jess is a procrastinator, a former working mom who is suddenly staying at home, a Dr-Dr's wife, a non-practicing lawyer, an Autism Mom, a devoted reader, a penny pincher, a coupon clipper, a new New England-er, a low-key agnostic, a nice girl, a top-notch speller, a hardcore blogger and a Twitter fiend.
The blog covers everything from coupon tips to Autism support to adorable toddler pictures to hilarious tales of my daily grind with the occasional review & giveaway thrown in for good measure.
My Networks
