Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen

We listened to this on a road trip to LA a few weeks ago. 3 1/2 hours (which is short for an audiobook), gripping wilderness survival story. Like many books in this category it made me want to up my wilderness survival game, and keep matches and water purification tablets in my purse at all times. Read by Peter Coyote. Great for 9 year old boys and 50 year old women alike. Recommend!

The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy

I read this review/profile of The Rules Do Not Apply in The New York Times and reserved it at the library right away. Memoirs are a guilty pleasure for me, and especially gossipy ones about someone my own age, living in places I've lived, struggling with problems I've struggled with myself. The self-focused preference most kids have for reading about kids their own age and gender has, I guess, never left me. So I read it, fast. I don't want to give away the details of the story but it was a juicy diary. But it felt somehow unfinished. Too much like reading someone's diary, not enough narrative motion, not enough about the characters, and maybe not enough gossip. I've loved other memoirs much more.

That said, I do love the cover and the Jennifer Reese signature pink & red color combo. And can we all agree that she looks quite a bit like Annie Parr from Roco Dance?

Mister Miracle, by Tom King

A great comic book miniseries about a lesser-known hero, Scott Free, AKA Mister Miracle, legendary escape artist. He was born son of the benevolent god Highfather on the planet New Genesis, but raised in the fiery slave pits of the planet Apokolips, ruled by the tyrant Darkseid. He comes from a group of characters called the New Gods. Knowing the mythology of these characters helps with the enjoyment of Mister Miracle, but the book works on many levels so it's not necessary. The best superhero stories use the otherworldly aspects of the characters, their powers and cosmic origins, in tandem with their very human vulnerabilities and problems. This book begins with Scott, now living on Earth, attempting suicide. He states it was an attempt to escape death, but we see that he's depressed and disassociated. He wasn't trying to escape death, he was trying to escape life. The art of the book is presented like an old television set, often being interrupted by static. The narration is that of an old mystery serial or golden age comic book. This all feels like a representation of Scott's disassociation with reality. Everything feels off, he keeps showing signs of some inexplicable unrest, not knowing what's wrong with his mind, something like what motivated his suicide. He says he can escape anything, as he proves in many cases, but he can't escape this disconnect. Until one day he realizes he can. And for reasons I can't spoil for you, he decides not to. Check it out.

The Ghosts of Belfast

I recently finished The Ghosts of Belfast, a first novel by Stuart Neville.  The story is set in Northern Ireland after the truce that brought relative peace following "the troubles."  The protagonist is Gerry Fegan, a former paramilitary hitman, recently released from 12 years in prison.  He is a broken man, a drunk who talks to himself and is generally considered to be insane.  In fact, he is tortured by guilt and is haunted by the ghosts of 12 of his victims who follow him, demanding that he atone by taking revenge on the men responsible for the orders that resulted in their deaths. And so he goes about more killing until the ghosts are finally satisfied.  The book is well written and gripping.  Bad as Fegan is, he emerges as a sympathetic figure here. The treatment of the ghosts is very effective:  they don't speak, but appeal to Fegan with gestures and expressions to identify the men they want killed. They have the moral force to make him act, and as each is avenged he drops out of the picture and no longer haunts Fegan.  This actually works, and it is very powerful.   

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House was a pioneer of the haunted house genre. It mainly follows Elanor Vance, a young woman looking for a new purpose in life after her mother's death, and her descent into madness. A paranormal researcher, Dr. John Montague,  invites Elanor and two others, Luke and Theodora, to come observe supernatural occurrences in Hill House. The book moves back and forth between the very methodical explanations by Montague, and Elanor's increasingly unsettled inner monologue. There are very few interactions between the house guests and any spirits. Instead, the house itself seems to do most of the work, whispering to Elanor, seducing her into fantasies of that new purpose she needs. These fantasies lead her into extending herself in unusual ways, trying to fulfill these fantasies. But after overstepping all of her personally held social boundaries (asking to move in with Theodora, and flirting with Luke) she ends feeling alienated by her comrades, as they become annoyed by her. What's so effective about this book's description Elanor's story is the way it carries us along her path to complete disillusionment. Somehow we are aware that she is crazy, yet we're fooled as well. Almost every mistake she makes feels honest, and every time she does something shocking, the other characters don't seem justified in being shocked. We see how unhappy she is before coming to the house, and so every hope the house feeds her is a false hope for us as well. We want her to be happy. Very good, easy, short read. Would benefit from a floor plan printed on a page, so the complex descriptions of the layout of the house could be a little more clear.

American Pastoral, by Phillip Roth

A book I have been working on for about 3 years. I finally got down to business and started over, finishing it via audio. The long history I've had with this book made me like it more than I would have if I had finished it on my first try instead of my third. Anyway, I thought it was great. The Swede is such an incredible character because he can be three totally different people depending on who's talking about him. In the beginning he's described as the hero of Weequahic, Newark, the shining symbol of American culture in a community made mostly of Jewish immigrants. Shortly after his death, his younger brother reveals him to be a weak, innocent man-child who never grew out of the American dream. Over the rest of the book, we see from his perspective that he's as strong as his town believed him to be, but completely unaware of what it's like to have life deny his dreams. Until his daughter, Merry, bombs a post office.

Aristotle's Way

Aristotle's Way by Edith Hall

Yesterday, I gushed to the senior Reese like a mad person about how much I loved this book. I listened to it and got many, many ideas about how to enhance my life. From how to approach friendship (you give a friend two chances to hurt you -- but never three), how to spend leisure time, the nature of the good life, how walking aids thinking. Amazing how Aristotle's ideas speak to us today.

The book itself is very easy to read. Not stupid, but definitely designed as self-help for people who might think they're too good for self-help. I'm not one of those people. I unashamedly love self help books. This was a good one.

I am wading to the end of The Bostonians.

In a House of Lies, by Ian Rankin

I read Ian Rankin's latest, "In A House of Lies." The story is very complicated and sometimes hard to follow.  But I don't read Rankin for the story.  I read him for the characters, and the regulars are all here: Rebus, Siobhan, Malcom and Cafferty.  They have come to be like good friends.  I did notice a tic in the writing that grated.  Over and over again, one character "watched [another character] nod."  Once I start noticing it I seem to see it everywhere.   

Some reading failures

Hi guys,

I am bogged down in the middle of Henry James' The Bostonians. I made a resolution to read or reread all of his work in 2019 and I was dashing along until I got to the middle of The Bostonians. I imagine no one is surprised. One of these weeks I'll wade out of this morass.

In my airbnb there are hundreds of books and one night, falling asleep over HJ, I picked up Out of Africa. It is wonderful. The movie eclipsed the book in my memory. That is a shame. The writing is sharp, perceptive, vivid, funny. I'm just worried I won't finish it before we leave. 

The 57 Bus, by Dashka Slater

I read this for the mother/daughter book club I belong to with my 13 year old Stella. It is the true story of a crime committed against a non-binary youth by a black male youth in the Berkeley/Oakland area of the San Francisco Bay Area. Good, but not great. It provided a useful education about terms (asexual, pan romantic, etc). It alternated between points of view, and I kept thinking at any moment it would veer off the rails and become very political, either about the hate crime, or the unjust juvenile justice system for black youths, but it pulled those punches and I liked it better for it.

The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez

I loved this book. It was ponderous, restrained and delicate, but I entered its world fully for the few days it took to read it and will never look at dogs, especially huge ones, quite the same way again.