Epistolary Overload

 “Amazing thing fiction. Tells you more, sometimes, about the writer than the writer can tell you about himself.” Truth.

25.12 The Monsters of Templeton

I love epistolary writing. Love it. When I was in fifth grade, I wrote a story made of letters and placed them in envelopes just like my favorite book, Griffin and Sabine. I was heartbroken to learn my mother had given my copies of those books away. They were fascinating to me. So creative and so powerful. They started my fascination with alternate narration devices.  While teaching, I loved discussing point of view, and how it changes the way a story is told. I also love the use of letters, journals, books with in books, pictures - I love it all!  But man, as much as I love it, there was just too much of it going on here.

The alternating points of view, articles, journals, letters. All the family members, the crazy mom, the sick friend, the affair and pregnancy, the two guys, the crazy ex-girlfriend, daddy drama, the monster. I feel like the town and its legends would have been enough because all families have ghosts and stories and crazy people, but all of the extraneous stuff was exhausting in the end. And it wasn’t needed. To be fair, this is a first book and the idea and writing are good, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it all. She has good reason to love everything she created, she did a wonderful job, but she shouldn’t have included it all.  I feel like this could have been pared down to a really crisp and fun look at a genealogical search without the unnecessary drama. Alas, it wasn’t and I think it suffered in a way that made it unbelievable and less satisfying.

Can You Outrun the Past?

“Sometimes we do bad things without knowing the reason.” Truth.

24.12 Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

The description of this book reads:

“In the 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas Jones were boyhood pals in a small town in rural Mississippi. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry was the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, black single mother. But then Larry took a girl to a drive-in movie and she was never seen or heard from again. He never confessed . . . and was never charged.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry lives a solitary, shunned existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has become the town constable. And now another girl has disappeared, forcing two men who once called each other “friend"” to confront a past they’ve buried for decades.”

Sounds like a pretty standard mystery, right? Well, you figure out the various mysteries easily as they unfold, and you are meant to.  It gives you time to focus on Larry and Silas and their experiences.

They couldn’t be more different, but every bit of their existence is linked to the other. They barely know each other, but they have each shaped the others current circumstances without even knowing how much. It is fascinating to read as all of the connections unwind, even though it is not done in a shocking way like I was expecting. 

But man, it is a terribly sad book. Achingly so. It was hard to read for the recognition of the unfairness of life. It made me really sad.  It is a really well written book that took me up and carried me along.  It reminds you of those things you learned as a kid and will always remember in that way, like the way I sing the Halloween song every time I write the word. The assumptions we hold about people and places and never let go of even though new realities are at the forefront.  We are always so much who we were as children.  Even though we grow up and become someone else, that other person is never far behind. 

He Ain't Heavy...

"Remember this: your problems will never be solved by moving backwards." Truth.

23.12 The Shield

In the interest of full disclosure, my brother is the author of this book. In other news, he is a fucking writer!  I felt extreme pride reading the words that he has worked so hard on, but my pride soared above and beyond when I realized he had succeeded in creating an alternate history that is not only viable, but is interesting and outrageously fun to read about.

The Shield are a group of elite bodyguards meant to protect the few men who now lead a world based on peaceful co-existence. A world meant to be free of violence but educated enough to know the impossibility of that ideal. The Shield are trained to find threats and dispose of them. An unidentified alien ship is heading towards Europa and the Prime Minister heads out to great it.  Safe to say, The Shields are put to work! It’s like Jack Reecher in space people!

Growing up, Peter was in to karate, flying, and war strategy games. He created his own game with all sorts of weapon cards and a huge playing board. He played a flight simulator game on our old Mac at least a million times (I can still hear the f-ing music!) He has been in to this stuff his whole life and I recognized all of that knowledge in his writing. This is a new world with a totally different military, weapons, and ships. There are military outposts, space ships, fighter planes, flight suits, body armor, guns, and all sorts of other gadgets; all described in detail, and in a bit of a nerdy way (but in a wonderfully nerdy and enthusiastic way!) This is not new science fiction terrain, but every time I made an assumption about where the plot was headed, I was wrong.  Also, he manages to describe a whole new world, its history and functionality, while maintaining a taught and compulsively readable action story. I had a hard time putting it down at night, and dreamt of alien invaders once I did.

Truth is, I can't wait to get my mitts on the next part.  You would think my being family would get me somewhere, but noooooo...  Ever the little sister.  A very proud little sister.

Two Sides

“We are the choices that we make.” Truth.
 

22.12 The Ask and The Answer

***Spoiler alert!***  I will not spoil this book, but if you have not read the first book there are spoilers ahead!

Book two in the Chaos Walking trilogy starts literally at the end of the previous book.  Its first words are, “The End.”  That book was an adventure story but this is a war story and it is much more violent!  So much so, that my previous delight at having found a book worthy of recommending to young males has fizzled.  In fact, I felt very uncomfortable reading much of this book.  It remind me of the recent trend in movie ratings; when movies like The King’s Speech are rated R for repeating the F-word six times, and a movie like Hanna, where literally everyone dies, is rated PG-13.  What is wrong with us?

Anyway, back to the story… There are two sides to every story, and in this book we are told the story through two points of view.  We hear Todd’s side and we hear Violet’s side.  I thought the shifts were handled well but I found myself missing Todd as his story is now the secondary one.   There are two sides fighting in a war, The Ask and The Answer.  Both sides think they are right and both sides are wrong.  So, while violent, there are some truths conveyed about war and fighting that are important to tell.  Nothing is simple and nothing can be planned out entirely.

Writing wise, Todd’s singular dialect is getting on my nerves. I believe it is supposed to portray his lack of education, and the misspelling are fine when he speaks but I hate it being used in his thoughts. It doesn’t really make sense, they are mostly tion words, i.e.: direkshuns for directions or injeckshuns or injections (and cuz which drives me crazy!), but he uses many other words that are far more advanced.  Even though his thoughts play a different role specific to the plot of the book, since they are sometimes heard, the odd spellings take you totally out of the story.  I wish the author would only use the phonetic misspellings in conversation.

The ending of the book was a complete shock to me, and I look forward to reading the third book and finishing the story, I just wish I was as excited about the second book as I was about the first.

A New Kind of Lady

“It’s amazing what you can see when you just sit quietly and look.” Truth.

21.12 The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

This is a very mild, sweet, and surprisingly poignant story of a girl discovering a changing world, her place in it, and whether or not she wants to fight for something more. Calpurnia is eleven years old, and the only girl among six brothers living in Texas during the last months of 1899.  A new century is coming and she is at the age where she is still left alone enough that she can discover things for herself, but old enough to recognize the signs that she is being molded into something else.  What she discovers is an interest in nature and science; things that also fascinate her reclusive Grandfather.  This shared interest helps them to get to know one another while Calpurnia also recognizes her brothers growing older and how her parents relate to one another.  

There are no huge plot developments or twists, but I think that there is a bit of a tomboy in ever girl and Calpurnia is nothing if not good.  She simply is who she is and she recognizes that in a short time things which are larger than her, mostly her mother’s and societies expectations, are going to start pressuring her into becoming something she may not want to be. I think any girl, young or old, can identify with how Calpurnia feels, and hope that she ends up with everything she deserves in the end, even if they may not be what a lady should do.

Like I said, there are no big surprises or plot twists; there are some questions left unanswered as we only glimpse her life over six months.  In the end, this is a really lovely book.

Make It Stop

“…she wonders if what she believes to be a love for the written word is really just a fetish for stationary.” Truth.

20.12 One Day

Dex and Em, Em and Dex.  I would like to punch you both in the face.  I am sure your love story is familiar to everyone, because we all remember the worst about ourselves and dwell on it, but that is why it was impossible to root for you.  You were meant to have a one-night stand when you were 20 and now you are 40 and have put a massive amount of unrealistic expectation on one another.  

Dex, you are a drunk, a mean drunk.  And you take on women to try to complete something in you that can’t be fixed.  Em, you are whiney and a push over.  You are mean to all of the men in your life because they are not Dex.  In fact, you ruin everything in the hopes of being with Dex.  How did that work out for ya?

We see you both once a year, and yet not much happens to either one of you.  Neither gets better or worse, neither becomes a worthy companion for the other.  Neither of you are characters I care about or have hopes for.  I know that the Truth in life is that we take those around us for granted and put off adventures and dreams for another day, but I am thinking that reading about you was supposed to inspire me to not do that in my own life and it just didn’t.

Change of Title

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” -Stephen King. Truth.

So I hate the title Beasley’s Books.  Quite frankly, it is lazy. When I started this blog, it was on a lark and something that I knew I would talk myself out of doing if I didn’t just do it.  So now it is what it is.  But I hoped when I started that if I was responsible for reading and writing about it here then I would eventually feel like my reading and writing were improving.  Low and behold, I think that is the case. Now it feels like the blog needs a bit more respect from me, and a little less lazy.  

“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.” – W. Somerset Maugham.  Truth.

  “No two persons ever read the same book.” – Edmund Wilson. Truth.

I have always been a reader, but I feel like a much more proficient reader now; not only do I read faster, but I also read better.  I also feel like what I have to say about the books I read might actually count for something.  One of the most important things for me, when reading, is that I open myself up completely to the experience, and what I have found is that when I do I take in a lot of truths about the human experience.  We are all a lot more similar than we think, but we experience things differently, and all of those experiences are important.  When I taught English, my students would ask why I chose to teach literature (pronounced with a fake-uppity-British accent), and I would say it is because it is never the same thing twice.  I could have 160 students reading the same book and not one person would read it the same as another, even if they were reading the Cliffs Notes instead.  I loved that feeling; it was so spontaneous and unexpected.  I miss it.  I stopped teaching in June of 2005, but I didn’t know I wouldn’t be going back and that is something I have still not accepted even though I need to.

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something, a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things, that you’d thought special, particular to you.  And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead.  And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.” – The History Boys. Truth.

“One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?” – Alain de Botton. Truth.

After completing my Masters Degree, I got pregnant.  During my pregnancy I found that I literally couldn’t read.  For almost an entire year I did not read, and when I came back to it I read a bunch of fluff because I didn’t think I could handle much more.  I lost myself.  Slowly, I started to pick up some more challenging material, taking my mother’s rule of one piece of literature for every three pieces of trash very literally! Then in June 2010, I read Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives, followed in September by 2666, and I was back baby!  I wasn’t meant to love these books, but I did.  Every word. I loved them because they made me want to talk.  I wanted to explore them, and debate them, break the language apart and put it back together.  I wanted to talk to anyone and everyone about them, I was fired up; just thinking about it now gives me butterflies in my tummy.  I didn’t just want to talk about them, I NEEDED to and this is where I came to do it. I also loved that it was so clear to me that what Bolaño loved about literature was just this same thing I do; words are powerful and exciting, challenging and dangerous.  They literally move you, and so I made myself move.  I love my son dearly, but I am not a good mom if I am not sane, and reading has brought me back to me.  I am reading through the rest of Bolaño’s books slowly to make sure that I judge each on its own merits and not on the expectations created by the others.  His books brought me back to a world that I cherish and hope to never leave again.  I respect him for his passion and his talent, and I thank him for helping me find my way to my new Truth.

“Literature isn’t innocent.” – The Savage Detectives.  Truth.

“Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it's knowledge and questions.” - 2666.  Truth.

So with a new name, and a new focus, I continue to read and write and enjoy every minute of each.

Trust the Rooster

Clearly, I am new to this whole blogging thing, and I am sure that I am doing it all wrong, but it is fun to come here and write about what I read even if no one reads it.  Basically, it provides me with an odd form of adult talk.  Anyway, since I started writing the blog I also started reading others and that is how I discovered the Tournament of Books.  March Madness for nerds, folks!  It exists, it is awesome, and I can’t wait until next year.

Every year, nearing those Ides of March, I am subjected to "The Bracket."  My husband hands me a sheet of paper, tells me to fill it out, and then proceeds to get mad at me when I do better than him, even though my general strategy is to pick the superior mascot (thus, Ohio State never wins!) But now I have this Tournament, in which 16 books are pitted against one another and fight for the championship. 

Here are the deets of the 2012 event:

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• In December, 16 book titles were announced along with the names of 16 judges; a veritable who’s who of authors, bloggers, editors, and, this year, one Wil Wheaton. The books were then seeded into a bracket to be played out in March. Each judge selects a winner in one round, and then all select in the final round.

• There is also a “Zombie” round, in which two books knocked out in previous rounds are brought back by popular vote to rise again and take on the front runners in the second to last round.  This years zombies were The Sisters Brothers (which went on to win) and The Art of Fielding (which is sitting on my shelf).

• The winner of the 2012 tournament was The Sisters Brothers, and past winners include: Wolf Hall (which I loved!), A Mercy, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Road (which is devastating, but amazing), The Accidental, and Cloud Atlas (also, on my shelf). 

What I am saying here is that, while reading is a deeply personal thing, there are certain crowds you can hang with and not be disappointed, and this is my crowd for sure!  I can’t wait until next December when they announce the next contenders; I hope to read them before the tournament starts and fill out a bracket with all my nerdy enthusiasm!  Maybe I will make Chris fill one out too...

Now, back to my reading! As my favorite book of last year, Moondogs, also featured an amazing rooster, I took it as a sign and bought The Sisters Brothers the day it won the tourney (opting to find it in hardback since the paperback cover SUCKS!!!) And is it everything I thought and hoped it would be… Well, yes ma’am!

19.12

 

"Our blood is the same, we just use it differently." Truth.

The truth about family is that blood is powerful, blindingly powerful, and in many cases not blinding at all.  We see the truth of one another better than anyone and we let each other get away with it.  We tend to support each other without fail, but rarely do we trust each other wholly.

This is the truth for Eli, our narrator, as he works with his brother Charlie.  They are paid assassins, and very well known.  We watch them travel from Oregon City to San Fransisco to complete a job for the Commodore.  They are violent men, yet Eli is very sentimental.  He is very effected by what they do but he doesn't stop.  He wants to settle down, and love someone; he wants to be loved by someone.  But he doesn't stop.  This felt so human to me; to get bogged down by what you do and never having the strength to drag yourself out of it and start over.  I found myself liking Eli very much, even ignoring his violence and making excuses for it, as if he were family.  I do wish I had learned more about Charlie though.

A lot of reviews say this book is funny, but I think I a lot of that was overshadowed by sadness.  It is an easy, fast-paced read, that is a western through and through.  As Wil Wheaton put it during judging, "The Sisters Brothers made me feel like I was sitting in a movie house in Red Dead Redemption, watching an episode of Deadwood that was written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by the Coen Brothers."

Once Upon a Time...

Robin McKinley wrote an amazing book!

18.12 Deerskin

This is the first book I have read by McKinley, recommended and lent by a wonderful friend, but I see that she has made a bit of a career out of rewriting fairy tales while highlighting strong female heroines.  Hallelujah!  

The fact is that I love fairy tales, mostly because I glean a sense of comfort while reading them, but also because I dreamed of castles and princes as a girl.  I know the basic plot structure and so I know what I am in for.  In recent years, there has been a push towards retelling everything, and it makes me wonder where our creativity has gone, but I didn’t feel this way about Deerskin.  It felt like a whole new story.  To be fair, I am not very familiar with the story it is based on, Donkey skin by Charles Perrault, but something about it still felt new.  It is dark in many ways, as we all know most fairy tales were until Disney got their hands on them, but it is also very hopeful.   There are supernatural elements but they felt based in reality, as if they could have been hallucinations just as easily as fantasy.  It all felt very real yet very much remained a story and I think that is why it was so successful for me.  I will certainly be going back to discover more of her books.  

Coming away, I feel like Deerskin was everything I need a book to be: well-written, pure escapism, and the satisfaction of a story well told, with a message worth telling.

The Noise Inside My Head

17.12 The Knife of Never Letting Go

Memories of my past bang around in my head all day long. Some of it makes me happy, but mostly it makes me suffer, over and over. What would it be like if you could hear all of that along with all of everyone else's?  Noise, with a capital N; giving it its own being. Fitting that this book gave it that capital.

In New World, there are only men and all of them can hear every thought of every other man.  Crazy Town, right?  Right.  Things aren’t great there, to say the least, but this is Todd’s home.  Then one day he is told he has to run and leave it all behind, no reason given – Just Run!  This is a straight up adventure book and a book for boys!  Girls will like it too, but boys are so much harder to find things for that this makes me super excited to see.  It is a coming of age story, but also an unraveling mystery.  There are some great ethical discussions to come out of it and two more books in the trilogy that are already written.

The cliffhanger ending is a major whiplash but not enough to make me give up on book two, and as soon as possible!