CATCH ME IF YOU CAN by Frank Abagnale

I grabbed this as part of a mixup at the library. A patron had requested Catch Me If You Can, the book, came in to pick it up, and it turned out he wanted the movie. I'm a fan of con men stories, so I grabbed the book. I know I have seen the movie but I remember nothing about it outside of the great saxophone part in the theme song.

Having read the book, it's no wonder I don't remember the movie. I don't know how exactly you make a movie out of this without taking a lot of liberties. Abagnale was a con man but not a very interesting one. He was handsome, apparently looked a lot older than he actually was, and was able to dupe people, largely by producing fake documents. Most of his cons involved flying for free and writing bad checks with an occasional getting to play grown up here and there.

Writing bad checks and making fake checks was his primary con. Get rid of that and you have a guy who pretended to be a pilot so that he could travel for free ("deadheading"), taking advantage of airlines perks for flight personnel. Once he got busted for that, he pretended to have gone to law school to land a job as an attorney. He eventually passed the bar and practiced law briefly which says more about the profession, I think, than Abagnale. He also pretended to be a doctor but worked off hours and let residents handle any actual medical work.

He eventually got caught and spent some time in prison in a few countries. When he finally was turned over to the U.S., he negotiated a lighter sentence in exchange for helping government agencies fight against the same practices he had done.

I just couldn't appreciate his cleverness if there was any. Abagnale is very egotistical in the book. He repeatedly talks about how he would never hurt individuals, even as he often did. I didn't find him interesting at all. As I said, I don't remember enough about the movie to say anything about it but don't recommend the book at all.

--Jon

THE SISTERS BROTHERS by Patrick DeWitt

The Sisters Brothers was a fun twist on your typical Western. The brothers Sisters, Charlie and Eli, are hired guns. They work for a fellow known as The Commodore and The Commodore has asked them to go to California to track down and kill a man by the name of Hermann Kermit Warm.

The book is narrated by Eli, the younger brother, and the more thoughtful of the pair. Eli is overweight and sometimes seems like he may be viewed as the lesser intellect of the brothers. Eli is clearly the conscience of the twain and wants nothing more than to return home to his mother and open up a hardware store. Charlie, though, wants to be rich and powerful. He dreams of one day supplanting The Commodore. He also enjoys killing because he's mighty good at it (and drinking).

As the duo make their trek towards Sacramento where they are to meet an associate who is watching Warm, they have numerous encounters with an interesting cast of characters. The reactions to these encounters, especially those of Eli, are what make the book so good.

Perhaps some of what makes Eli seem a little light on the intellect side is the writing style of the book. It is very simple. DeWitt finds a good balance between making Eli seem uneducated (and hired guns during the Gold Rush Era aren't going to have degrees from St. Olaf's College) but doesn't try and over do it and make him a caricature. But his apparent lack of intellect may also be due to a bit of naivete. At one point he falls for an innkeeper, giving her a good deal of money and dreaming of one day returning to her and making her his wife. Meanwhile, Charlie took the easy route and paid her for sex along with his bath.

Upon finding the associate and Warm, the brothers are faced with a conflict that involves them going against The Commodore which results in a bit of an unexpected ending.

The contrast between the two brothers is nice even if they are a little too polar opposite for my liking. The story being told exclusively by Eli also makes things a little too limited. I liked how pretty much every scenario the brothers face results in some sort of moral and ethical analysis. Deep thinking by hired killers....whoda thunk it?

It was a really fun book and one I recommend but it falls just short of the top echelon of books for the year.

--Jon

TIMBUKTU by Paul Auster

I had somehow almost made it through the year without even thinking about reading something by Paul Auster and then a patron returned Timbuktu.

Timbuktu is told from the perspective of a dog, Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones lives with Willy, a down on his luck man who spends most of his time homeless. Willy has suffered from a terrible cough that is only worsening and the two make their way to Baltimore in an effort to find an old English teacher of Willy's.

Willy knows his life will be ending soon and tries to prepare Mr. Bones for his departure. He calls the afterlife Timbuktu. Mr. Bones is worried about whether or not he'll get to see Willy again in Timbuktu.

Willy passes on and Mr. Bones is left to fend for himself. He strikes up a friendship with an Asian boy but has to leave him once school starts. Mr. Bones is then adopted by a family in Virginia where he spends the rest of his days until he is reunited with Willy.

Typical solid effort by Auster. The story being told from the dog's point of view is really interesting, especially dealing with things like the afterlife. Never mind the idea of smells, the vet, getting fixed, and a host of other concepts. Definitely a fun book and far less bizarre than most of Auster's works.

--Jon

IN THE KING'S ARMS by Sonia Taitz

One of my favorite places to read about reading and small presses is The Next Best Book Blog. Lori, who runs the blog, had a contest in October to give away copies of In the King's Arms. A condition of winning was to take part in a book discussion on Goodreads involving the author. I entered, won, and read it.

I really didn't like it. Every time I picked it up, I found myself groaning within a few paragraphs. The story is about an American girl, the daughter of Holocaust survivors (and when I noticed a new novel in our small press collection also was about a Holocaust survivor, I commented to a co-worker that there seems to be more novels about Holocaust survivors than there were Holocaust survivors), who goes to Oxford for graduate school, and I don't mean Ole Miss. She falls in love with a shallow, good-looking guy who happens to be the brother of a friend of hers. The family of the brothers are anti-Semitic, apparently for no other reason than as a plot device. The heroine gets impregnated, the lover flees, they find themselves back together for some reason. The end.

It's supposed to be a tale about love conquering all but it was just so bad. The dialogue is brutal. The heroine is fanatical about being the daughter of Holocaust survivors and the injustices done to her parents, but her Judaism seems to be important to her simply as a point of contention, just as the anti-Semitism by the boyfriend's parents lacks grounding in anything. The characters are downright insipid. They're empty husks whose sole purpose is spouting the awful dialogue.

Part of the reason I wanted to win a copy of the book was to put it in the small press collection. The publisher, McWitty, is new on the scene, having only put out five books of which this is one. They didn't help matters. The covers of the book (it's paperback) mysteriously curled. I've never had that happen to a book before. There were a couple of typos I noticed and several spots in the dialogue where it was difficult to determine whether they were typos or the character was supposed to be stammering and it just wasn't printed in a clear fashion.

Something I found strange, too, is the author wrote this book 25 years ago. In the discussion I asked why she waited so long to try and find a publisher and I also wondered whether she had made any changes when she submitted it to McWitty. The answers were she knew the publisher was the right fit for the book and no.

I really wish that someone had opted to make some changes with the book. I feel that the quality of the book, both the content and the physical manifestation of the book itself, doesn't help promote small presses.

Others have rated the book on Goodreads and given it decent marks. I couldn't get into it. On the other hand, Ms. Taitz was very entertaining and engaging. She realizes that her writing isn't for everybody and is cool about that. She has a wonderful optimism about herself and her writing that I appreciated a lot.

Nice author, but the book wasn't for me.

--Jon

FANTASTIC WOMEN by Rob Spillman (ed.)

Fantastic Women is a collection of short stories edited by Rob Spillman and published by Tin House Press. There are eighteen stories, each written by a different female author and each being quite odd.

I've mentioned recently how the short story has been growing on me and how I've been learning to appreciate them more. This book was a mixed bag for me. Some of the stories were done very well. Some I thought did not make use of the short story mode adequately, being too abrupt. Some of the stories I just didn't like.

The stories are presented in alphabetical order by author and the first one was the one I enjoyed most. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was by Aimee Bender, my second favorite female author. Her story, all of six pages long and titled Americca, involves a ghost who leaves gifts for the narrator's family.

Then came four stories I didn't like, followed by a bizarre "story" by Lydia Davis called Five Fictions from the Middle of the Night which seem to be ideas for stories. Each is one or two paragraphs in length. By this time I was starting to weary of the book but then Rikki Ducornet, author of Netsuke, revived my interest with a dandy of a story called The Dickmare. It is also very short (six pages) and was about the relationship of a couple of oysters.

After a couple of odd, well-written stories that I didn't particularly like, Miranda July put forth an awful one. I have never understood Miranda July's appeal. I don't get her as an actress. I don't get her as a filmmaker. I don't get her as an artist. I don't get her as a writer. I didn't get her story Oranges. I don't understand why people are gushing about her new project, It Chooses You other than it's Miranda July. Ooh, ah, ooh. If Mike Caldwell or Jenny Hohensee did this, no one would care. If I ranked all eighteen stories in this book, July's would be 18th, even behind Davis' lame effort.

The last half of the book is strong. Kelly Link writes the longest of the stories, Light, which is a strange sci-fi feeling piece. I will definitely look for more by her to read. Plus, she and her husband operate Small Beer Press, a well-regarded indy publishing house.

Three other writers in the latter half of the book - Lydia Millet, Gina Oschner and Karen Russell - also wrote stories so good and so well done that I'll be looking for more to read by them. Millet had a collection of short stories that was a finalist for the Pulitzer. Karen Russell has written two novels that have received a lot of attention. A former volunteer at the library had read both and thought they were mediocre and so I held off on them. No longer.

I liked this book as a sampler of authors. I found some unfamiliar names that I'd like to explore further. I reaffirmed my likings and of Ms. Bender and Ms. Ducornet and my dislike of Ms. July. And I read some folks I'll probably never read again. All in all a solid book and one I'd recommend, despite it's unevenness.

--Jon

SWITCH by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

About six weeks ago I came across a video by a nutritionist, Dr. John Berardi, where he talked about the differences in knowing what to do and doing the right thing. He was inspired by change psychology and discussed some really simple things people can do to lose weight. The first thing was to eat slowly. I have always been a very fast eater and I've known that that is a problem with my eating habits. I once tried eating with chopsticks as a way for me to slow down my eating and instead I just got really good at eating quickly with chopsticks.

Nonetheless, after watching the video, I really tried to focus on slowing down my eating and being aware of my actual hunger levels. I'll eat because there's something tasty around, even if I'm not hungry. This is especially true at my parents where they always seem to have delicious junk food that I don't normally buy.

The result has been a loss of almost ten pounds. I haven't really been paying attention to the numbers, just to what I'm eating, when I'm eating it, and how fast I'm eating. So that's been going well.

Dr. Berardi recommended some books on change psychology, one of which was this book, Switch by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. They also wrote Made to Stick which I seem to recall reading but was either unimpressed with it or I actually didn't read it (I'm 75/25 sure it's the former).

I really liked Switch. Although it related more to businesses, there is some individual application to be found. The essence of the book is that changes rely on three things which they label The Elephant, The Rider and The Path.

The Elephant is your emotional side. It's the part that craves the junk food or the Coach purse or says that we've always done it this way so we'll keep doing it this way. The Rider is the rational side of you. It wants the healthy body to live longer. It wants to innovate. It sees the long-term picture.

The Heaths use the two terms because the rational side is in charge of the emotional side, as best as a person riding an elephant can be. It's hard. One of the reasons why it's hard is that there is often little concern about external influences or The Path. Say I crave food. My mind is trying to control my belly but my belly wants to be satiated. How can I change my path? Maybe not visiting my parents would be an example. Or for most people, staying away from buffets. I go to buffets and I always joke that I have yet to see a supermodel at one of them. Coincidence? Or, a scientifically proven example, use a smaller plate at meal time. With a small plate, you don't put as much food on it and you tend to eat less.

Fooling with the path is also good because it lets your Rider use its wits to affect the Elephant with its own emotions. The Heaths use an example of getting a business to change their habits in filing expense reports by appealing to workers on an emotional level to make things easier for the well-liked HR person.

There are a lot of good tips, many of them common sense, like shrinking the change. Instead of focusing on losing fifty pounds, focus on losing five. Then once you hit that, go for five more. Etcetera.

Despite my examples, the book has very little to do with individual change. It is definitely a book geared to businesses and one I think should be essential reading for any business. It is a lot of case studies and not a whole lot of "how-to". If you're feeling the need to change something on a personal level, though, you could do a lot worse than this book.

--Jon

THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT by Joseph Monninger

I had concerns about reading Joseph Monninger's The World As We Know It. His book A Barn in New England is one of my all-time favorite books and one of my most read books. It is one of those few that I will go back and re-read. I really doubted Monninger could write two books that I thought were awesome. Plus, The World... is a novel while A Barn... is non-fiction. I had a degree of skepticism.

I shouldn't have. It was really good. The World... is about two brothers living in the little town of Warren, New Hampshire (where Monninger lives). The story begins with the two brothers in their early teens. It is winter and they are trying to ice skate up a river to Canada. They round a bend and find a young girl and her dog have fallen through the ice. The two rescue her and the girl, who is the youngest brothers age, and the younger brother fall in love.

The book goes on and details the very idyllic life of the trio and their families. The girl, Sarah, has recently moved to Warren because her father won the lottery and they were looking to "get away from it all". The brothers, Ed and Allard (Allard being the youngest), have dreamed of starting their own film company, making nature documentaries. Sarah helps them and the three grow up in a wilderness filled with love for nature, their families and each other.

Once they reach college age, Ed goes out west for college and meets up with a noted nature cinematographer and begins working for him. Allard goes to school and gets an internship with Ken Burns. Sarah pursues journalism at an Ivy League school. Even being apart from one another can't break apart the bonds of the trio. Sarah and Allard decide to get married.

By this time I'm more than halfway through this book. I'm really enjoying it but I'm bothered by a few things. First, the absolute perfection of these folks' lives. It's like they grew up in the Garden of Eden, pre-apple. Even the spat Sarah and Allard get into is resolved quite quickly and painlessly. Which leads to the second point that bothers me. Uh, Mr. Monninger....novels are supposed to have conflicts. And choosing which Ivy League school a character goes to is not a conflict (why doesn't anyone ever send their characters to St. Olaf College? Some smart college PR person needs to pay filmmakers or authors to insert their liberal arts school into their work. I'm tired of fictional characters going to Yale and Harvard and Stanford. I digress.).

It takes a long time - just after the point when I started wondering where it was and yes, more than halfway through the book - but Monninger gets his conflict in with a doozy. Everything is shaken up. The marriage does not go off. Tragedy strikes. Allard vanishes. Sarah finds another. But then it all works out in the end. Love conquers all.

I did enjoy the book. Monninger is a great writer, especially when it comes to writing about the outdoors. I was reminded a lot of another great nature writer, David James Duncan, as I read it. But Monninger also does a nice job with character development and dialogue. The story is what prevents me from regarding this book more so. It's a little trite and sappy. The conflict takes way too long to appear and given how long it takes to get there, it doesn't leave a lot of time for the resolution. Also, the lives of the characters are just way too perfect. Ken Burns? Ivy League schools? Lottery winners? Oh, and Sarah just happens to work for National Geographic upon graduation. Not the Frog Blog or the Montpelier Times or something. Just one of the premiere magazines in existence. Why not?

I can understand wanting to provide contrast for when the conflict occurs but a great life is fine for that. You don't need perfect. So that rubbed me the wrong way. Still, Monninger's writing is wonderful. It has a masculine feel to it but he yanks on your emotions, too. It's like coming across a group of flannel-clad lumberjacks crying. Not easy to do, I don't think.

So check it out. I think you'll like it.

--Jon

HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE by Charles Yu

I'm often torn when it comes to meta-fiction. Is it clever or is it gimmicky? I think it can be a fine line and Charles Yu's How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is right on that line.

The main character in Yu's book is fictional Charles Yu. He's a time machine repairman and is a lonely fellow. As a child, his father was passionate about time travel and he recruited young Charles to help him in his pursuit of a working time machine. One day his father disappears and story Yu longs to find his father and learn why (and where or when) he vanished.

Story Yu suffers from a general ennui. He puts his time machine in a sort of neutral, keeping himself from moving through time except for the occasional call to help others with their machines. His only companions are his female computer system, Tammy, and a non-existent but existent dog named Ed.

When Yu is called in to have his own machine serviced, he is stunned to discover his future self appear. Despite having been trained to run from one's future self, Yu instead draws a gun and shoots his future self then escapes in his time machine into the future. He discovers that his future self has left him a book that he will write in the future called How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. As he reads the book, he sets out to write it knowing, however, that he will eventually go back in time and be killed by himself.

See what I mean? Clever or gimmicky? I think it's clever in that usually when you have a story about time travel, the future person goes back to change the past. It's sort of novel to have the present change the future while the future is on it's way back to the present.

While in this loop, he discovers a little more about his father and seems to be making headway right about the time he goes back to the point where he shoots himself.

Despite the meta-fiction aspect, it's a nice story about father-son relationships with a special guest appearance by one L. Skywalker. Well, of course, you may say. Is there a more notable science fictional father-son relationship than Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker? Well, it turns out the L. Skywalker is Linus Skywalker, Luke's son, who has really had a tough time coping with his father's fame. Funny little twist but really the only external reference to science fiction.

There's quirks like that. The number 31 plays an important part although I don't know why. Yu's time machine model is a TM-31 and he travels through Minor Universe 31. The book How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (the one I read, or the one Yu wrote or both?) has 31 chapters. Nice number, 31, but I must have missed the significance.

Then there's all the book references to itself. He mentions something happening on a page in the book which is the same page that it appears on in the book you're reading. Stuff like that.

It's a cute book. Very brief. I'd put it at like a 55/45 clever/gimmicky split which makes it enough to recommend.

--Jon

HORSE, FLOWER, BIRD by Kate Bernheimer

Here’s a collection of strange very short stories that may be fantastic images of dreams, delirium, madness, or hallucinations.  It’s hard to know what to think about them.  They are bizarre.

One story starts with a musician who met his wife at a wedding, where he was playing.  But the story is about the sister of the bride and groom.  No connection between the musician and the sister that I can see.

The last story, “Whitework,” seems to be a fairy tale within the delirium of a sick woman, who may be insane.  But her prognosis is good.  “You have the key to the Library,“ the doctor says.  “Only be careful what you read.“    Anyone can follow his advice.  This may be one book you should be careful of.

-Sue

DEAD BOYS by Richard Lange

Another Goodreads recommendation I enjoyed. Dead Boys, a collection of short stories by Richard Lange, was a fantastic read. I'm finding myself getting into short stories more after a lifetime of not really understanding or appreciating them (outside of those by T.C. Boyle). I have two other collections of short stories signed out from the library right now. And speaking of Boyle, Lange thanks him in the acknowledgments. I had to think that was a pretty good sign.

All of the twelve stories take place in Los Angeles and focus on men, all who are facing demons of some sort or another. There's a house painter who has been robbing banks on the side with some buddies in an effort to save enough money to move his family out of their seedy neighborhood. In another story, the main character discovers he has an ex-con half-brother when the brother comes and visits the narrator and his wife. The visit exposes the narrator's insecurities about his job and marriage. Another story involves a guy on a bender largely because he believes he is haunted by the ghost of his ex-wife.

Lange is an excellent writer. I love some of the phrases he uses in his stories. The stories were all really good. There weren't any clunkers and while there was a lot of similarity in the stories, they weren't formulaic by any means. His characters have a hard reality about them, different from say, Donald Ray Pollock's characters which are just creepy and far-fetched.

My only problem was that they were short stories. Nothing stood out about any of them individually. None of them made a lasting impression. It's not because they weren't any good - they were fantastic. There just was not enough there for me to look back and say, "Wow, that story about x was just awesome". The similarities of the stories don't help in that regard either.

I definitely liked it. In another year, I could see this book cracking my top ten. Once again, though, I have to put in the next tier down.

--Jon

BAD MARIE by Marcy Dermansky

You to have love a writer who can get you rooting for her "protagonist", a woman who just got out of prison after serving a sentence for accessory to murder. The same woman who is now trying to steal the husband of her lifelong best friend. That's not an easy task but Marcy Dermansky pulls it off in her novel, Bad Marie.

Marie works as a nanny for her friend. The friend, Ellen, gave her the job to help Marie get back on her feet. Marie fell in love with Ellen's husband, the French novelist Benoit Doniel, whose book Marie read and re-read then re-read a few gazillion more times while she was in the pokey. Marie also falls in love with Ellen and Benoit's toddler, Caitlin.

The first line of this book is right up there with Don Winslow's Savages. "Sometimes, Marie got a little drunk at work". The story begins with Marie and Caitlin in the bathtub, Marie falling asleep from a little too much booze. Benoit and Ellen return home to find the pair naked and that is enough to get Benoit interested as Marie is a tall, voluptuous babe. Marie also is supposedly a dead ringer for Benoit's sister, who killed herself years before.

Marie convinces Benoit to take Caitlin and the three of them flee to France. On the plane ride over, Benoit encounters an old flame of his and he dumps Marie for her. Marie takes Caitlin on the lam and travels throughout France before fleeing to Mexico.

The thing about this book is that while there are lots of proclamations of love, the only people anyone in this book truly loves are themselves. They love how other people make them feel but really, there isn't a whole lot of caring going on. Benoit is fickle enough to switch from his wife to Marie to his ex in less than 24 hours. Ellen is more concerned with Marie not getting Benoit than she is about her own relationship with Benoit and Caitlin is an afterthought to both parents. Marie is looking to fill holes in her life brought about by an uncaring mother. And when the truth about Benoit's novel comes out, Marie is over Benoit almost as fast as Benoit was over her.

Needless to say, the characters of this book aren't traveling the moral high ground. Even so, like I said, you find yourself rooting for Marie. And the book moves. I couldn't put it down. I recommended it to JJ and she, too, could not put it down.

While I did find it gripping and a really enjoyable read, the ending was a bit abrupt and while I rooted for Marie, I don't know that I ever really liked her. As a result, I'm keeping it out of thetop tier of my recommendations but I definitely recommend it.

--Jon

Body Language

I mentioned last month how I've become enamored with Derren Brown. Well, I thought I would read some stuff on body language to see what I could learn. I read Janine Driver's You Say More Than You Think and Allan Pease's The Definitive Book of Body Language and watched a DVD called Secrets of Body Language. I also thumbed through Joe Navarro's What Every Body is Saying, which my son recommended as he read it a year or two ago, but it seemed to be the same content as the other materials. None of them were of much use. Pease's book and the DVD spent a good deal of time using retroactive looks at celebrities and politicians and pointing out poses/stances/actions that potentially indicated one thing or another.

Potentially is the key word here. You really have to have an understanding of an individual's "baseline" before you read anything into their body language. If you know someone regularly does A and then they do B, you probably know they're mad/lying/want to have sex with you/whatever. But if you don't know what A is and you try to interpret B, well good luck. Is that person fidgeting because they are lying or because they are nervous or because they downed a few Red Bulls? Who knows? The folks behind these materials seemed to think they know. Amazingly, with hindsight and body language analysis, they were able to tell that Richard Nixon was often times lying. Astounding.

Driver's book had the benefit of being a seven day program to learn about body language. There were exercises at the end of each chapter, several of which required a camera to videotape yourself so you could see how you look to others. Not exactly convenient. But the exercises promote observational skills which are always a good thing. If someone were looking to check out one of these items, Driver's book would be the one I'd recommend.

--Jon

NETSUKE by Rikki Ducornet

Wow. I had been really looking forward to Netsuke, another member of our small press collection at the library. Coffee House Press put this one out and also recently donated books to the small press collection. They do awesome stuff.

I had not read Rikki Ducornet that I was aware of but I knew she was a contributor to another of our small press books, Fantastic Women, that Tin House Books put out which I am reading right now.

Having read Ducornet....wow. This is probably the most artistic writing I've read since Vendela Vida's Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name. Let me explain what I mean by that. You have your great writers: T.C. Boyle and Michael Chabon, for example. They have a mastery of the language that is just amazing. They leave me running for the dictionary some times because they have such a vast vocabulary and can find the word they want every time. There's a sort of precision to it. If they were painters, they would be Rembrandt. Highly detailed, every shadow and edge of lighting just right. They are artists in their own way. But although I can appreciate Rembrandt's skill, I don't like his paintings. I like Chabon and Boyle. It's not a direct comparison, OK?

In terms of art, I love Impressionism. My favorite painter is Camille Pissarro. I like Impressionistic paintings for their lack of detail. There's still tons of skill involved, perhaps even more so than someone like Rembrandt in that the image and purpose of the painting have to come through but without making sure every detail is captured. And that is what Netsuke felt like to me.

It surprised me to feel that way because there is a lot crudity in Netsuke. The book is 120 odd pages of sex. The main character is an older psychiatrist, on his third marriage, who abuses his role as a therapist to have sex with his patients. He also has sex with women he encounters when he's out jogging. He has sex with his male patients. He has sex with patients who are confused about their own gender. He doesn't care. He cares about his wife, to an extent. He worries about how being discovered would pain her. Yet he drops clues all the time. He's not a very likable fellow.

It's a short novel and a very quick read. The chapters are a couple of pages long each. The writing is such that it's a one-sit read. Once you start you won't want to put it down.

However, unlike Boyle and Chabon, who are also great storytellers in addition to being wordsmiths, I thought Netsuke was lacking in substance. There's not a lot of plot. The characters aren't particularly developed. It has flaws. Still well worth reading and I'm looking forward to reading more by Duchornet.

--Jon

THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS by Eric Weiner

All right, Goodreads. Maybe you've got a good statistician up your sleeve after all. First The Dart League King and now The Geography of Bliss. Maybe you do have a little sense in your recommendations.

Of the plethora of recommendations that Goodreads gives, I opted for this one because I thought it was great that it was chosen for me because I read Eat, Pray, Love and The Sex Lives of Cannibals. I wouldn't have normally made that connection and am surprised that others read that pair of books to come up with this recommendation.

I guess it's not entirely surprising. All three books are travelogues. And the subtitle of Geography of Bliss - one grump's search for the happiest places in the world - does have a bit of similarity to Elizabeth Gilbert's quest. She may not have been a grump but she was looking for happiness.

In Eric Weiner's book, he starts off by going to the Netherlands to meet with a happiness researcher. This fellow has been collecting data on the happiness of people around the world and Weiner decides to use the fellow's database to explore what common traits these countries might have. He visits some of the happiest countries in the world as well as some on the bottom of the list for contrast purposes.

In the end, he finds that there aren't a lot of similarities and that every country also has it's downsides. If anything, Weiner realizes that happiness is largely relative and that there are a few things that bring happiness regardless of where you are in the world such as a network of friends and family.

That being said, I'm still a believer that place can at least enhance, if not provide, happiness. That's why A Barn in New England and City of Your Final Destination are such favorites of mine. Of the countries that Weiner visits, Iceland, Bhutan and the Netherlands all sounded appealing to me and I have been to the Netherlands and it did feel very much like some place I could call home.

As far as Weiner goes, I thought he was a riot. I laughed out loud several times just in the opening few pages. He has great turns of phrases. He finds the right balance of being a journalist and reporting about the places he's visiting but bringing himself in, usually in a self-deprecating sort of way, to keep it entertaining and not turn it into a documentary.

I loved it, can see myself re-reading it, and it will likely find it's way into my top ten of the year. Better than Eat, Pray, Love? Hard to say. Very different perspectives. Very different styles. I think in a head-to-head matchup, I would give the nod to Gilbert, though.

--Jon

KAROO by Steve Tesich

For all of the dark subject material I've been reading about as of late - suicides, drug use, depression, soccer (a non-library book not reviewed here) - you probably wouldn't expect the most depressing book I've read in a while to be about a script rewriter. Especially given that the cover of the book contains a page from the script of one of my all time favorite movies, the uplifting Breaking Away. Nonetheless, this book was one big book of defeatism.

Karoo was another book from the small press collection at the library, this one published by Open City Books. The author, Steve Tesich, actually did write the screenplay to Breaking Away as well as The World According to Garp. Karoo is far closer to the latter than the former.

Saul Karoo is a guy Hollywood execs hire to fix scripts. Saul doesn't think much of his work and feels that he does more harm than good to the scripts on which he works. Even though the revised movies may be lacking artistically, once he fixes a script, the revisions tend to have box office success.

Saul is going through an incredibly amicable divorce with his wife, so much so that the proceedings have been going on for years, with occasional dinners out together to iron out details. Saul has a son in his twenties that he and his wife adopted as a newborn. Makes good coin, has a family, well-respected in his field...what does Saul have to be unhappy about?

Everything. He avoids his son like the plague. He's gained a ton of weight and can't quite land the caliber of girl that he feels he should, especially when trying to show off for Hollywood execs. The dude has no self-respect and doesn't care much for others either. He's middle aged and definitely feeling the crisis coming from his sense of meaninglessness.

He finds meaning when he's brought in to rework a movie done by a legendary movie writer. Saul watches it, realizes it is an artistic masterpiece, and proceeds to deconstruct it into a romantic comedy. During the process, a waitress with a bit part in the original movie laughs on film and Saul recognizes it from a phone call over two decades before. It is the laugh of his son's biological mother, a woman Saul got to talk with on the phone after she delivered her baby which Saul and his wife then adopted.

Saul tracks her down, uses the cut footage of the film to make her the star of the revised script, and creates a new family of himself, his son, and his son's biological mother. He doesn't tell either of the other two the truth about their relationship, hoping to spring the news on them at the premiere of the movie.

Even though Saul has created this movie script life for himself, he still isn't happy. When things turn sour, the book goes even further downhill.

The book seriously put me into a funk for days. Tesich writes well and the book is long because it's almost entirely in Karoo's head. Every single thought process, it seems, is covered. It's more coherent than a simple stream of consciousness but there's a lot of noise surrounding the story's signal. It's just sad. At least I think so.

Reflecting on the book, I was reminded of the movie Oscar and Lucinda, a movie that I first watched when I was going through a tough time in my life and that I thought was the saddest movie I had ever seen. Years later I re-watched it and couldn't believe I had thought it was so sad. The second time through the movie I thought Ralph Fiennes overacted so much as to make the movie right near unwatchable. So I might be unduly influenced by my own recent thought processes when it comes to Karoo.

For all the gloom, though, it's still a good, well-written book. Once again, it's not a book for everybody but I think it is one that has enough merits to make it worth reading.

--Jon

DARKNESS VISIBLE by William Styron

I was browsing the new book shelf one night at work and saw a large biography about William Styron's daughter. I've heard of Styron before but had never read him and I knew that he had written a book about his depression. This book is often cited as being a good one for people without depression to read so that they may understand the illness better. As someone who suffered from depression in the past, I was interested in seeing at how well Styron was able to put depression into words so I requested the book, Darkness Visible.

Coming in at only 84 pages, it didn't take long to read. Styron reiterates a good deal, too, which means the book is probably longer than it needs to be. I thought Styron did a pretty good job of explaining his own feelings and symptoms, at least as best as he could well after his suffering. Of course, doing so while coping from depression is well nigh impossible.

The big problem with depression (as well as other illnesses, both mental and otherwise (see lupus)) is that the illness manifests itself differently in different individuals. If you look at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, you'll see that there are a checklist of possible symptoms. If so many are met, the patient probably suffers from depression. So one person might have 1,4,5 and 9. Someone else might have 2,3,4 and 5. Both are depressed. Totally different behaviors and symptoms.

It's because of this that treatment is still haphazard. Styron went through a number of pharmacological options, one which he believes made him more suicidal, until he found something that worked (good lord, I just read another book on drugs. I didn't even realize it). He talks about the importance of cognitive therapy, which is how I overcame my depression, and which surprised me as an option for him given the age of the book and when he dealt with depression.

Styron does a nice job. I did find it hard to believe at times that he had ever been depressed as he didn't seem to have a lot of self-esteem issues. The tone rubbed me the wrong way sometimes. It was a good read and one I definitely recommend for those who have a loved one suffering from depression and are having a hard time grasping the condition.

--Jon

THE GENTLEMEN'S HOUR by Don Winslow

 One of the best things about working at a library is when shipments of new books come in. It's like Christmas. We recently got a batch of books and it came as a surprise when Don Winslow's book The Gentlemen's Hour came in. The name Don Winslow might be familiar to you because it wasn't too long ago that I reviewed Savages. I was surprised he had a new book out already. Turns out he doesn't. This book was published in 2009 and then recently re-issued.

This was quite a bit different from Savages in tone and content. Yes, there were still drugs involved (I know, shocking, right?). Yes, it was still fast-paced with short chapters. Still jumped around from character to character although the focus was really on one. This time, though, very few profanities. I enjoyed it and while Winslow isn't a creator of great literature, he writes entertaining stories. I definitely recommend him for those looking for lighter "beach reads".

Beach read is appropriate for The Gentlemen's Hour in that the book takes place on the coast of sunny San Diego. The main character, Boone Daniels, is a noted surfer and somewhat lackadaisical private investigator in his forties. He and his buddies are always up bright and early to surf and their group is known as the Dawn Patrol. His buddies all have Guy Ritchieesque ironic nicknames. The gigantic Samoan is known as High Tide because the waters rise when he gets in. There's Hang Twelve who has six toes on each foot. Johnny Bonzai is an Asian cop. There used to be a waitress named Sunny who surfed with them but then she turned pro. The waitress who replaced her came to be known as Not Sunny. Sort of goofy and charming all in one.

Boone has been dating this hot lawyer with violet eyes (have you ever met anyone with violet eyes? I haven't. Maybe it's a California thing) but his buddies think it won't last because of the socio-economic differences. You have to have a love interest, though. It's in the PI novel handbook, I think.

The Gentlemen's Hour is when the group of surfers after the Dawn Patrol surf. That group is composed of older wealthy guys; guys with nowhere else to be because the golf course isn't really them. One of the members of The Gentlemen's Hour hires Boone to follow the guy's wife to see if she is being unfaithful.

Meanwhile, one of the most popular surfers around gets killed outside a bar by a bunch of punk kids. Boone's girlfriend is hired to represent the one kid being charged with the murder and she enlists Boone's help to gather information. Boone's friends turn on him for this breach in surfing brotherhood.

The cases get all twisty and involved. There's drugs, including a Mexican cartel. There's a Naziesque skinhead organization, there's insurance fraud. There's a fellow who Boone got arrested years ago who has his Mutt and Jeff henchmen alternately rough Boone up and take care of him. It really gets out of hand and nonsensical at times.

It's exciting, though. I blew through the book. Didn't want to put it down. Winslow is a former PI and you sort of get a sense he is a former/current surfer and has gone through/is going through a mid-life crisis. What I mean is, the story has the details right. Maybe Winslow just does good research but the surfer lingo and PI methodologies seem really smooth and natural.

A fun read, definitely more accessible than Savages, with characters you can actually root for. The cockamamie plot twists take a bit away from it but it's not nutty enough to make it completely unbelievable.

--Jon

BUYOLOGY by Martin Lindstrom

Over the course of this past year, I've grown enamored with the magician Derren Brown. Not so much his magic as his work with the subconscious and subliminal messages. Check out some of his stuff on Youtube and you'll see what I mean.

I came across an article that mentioned Brown's work and that of the author of this book, Martin Lindstrom. Brown's books are hard to find in the United States but the library system had Buyology. Thought I'd give it a shot.

If subliminal messages work, Lindstrom needs to put some in his book because I really didn't care for it. Much of the book is self-congratulatory nonsense about a study he did using brain scans and tying it into advertising. If a section of the brain lit up when a subject viewed an advertisement, Lindstrom made the leap that the ad must have some connection to what that part of the brain normally does. For instance, a certain part of the brain is supposed to be in charge of cravings. In some of the subjects, that part of the brain lit up on viewing ads with a Marlboro red color. Therefore, Lindstrom concludes, the red in and of itself is enough of a stimulant to trigger the craving. Never mind that that part of the brain might be involved with a dozen other activities. Never mind that Marlboro is hardly even recognizable anymore because of the shutdown of tobacco advertising. If A, then B.

Lindstrom spends part of every chapter talking about how exciting his research is and then the remarkable finds. He hardly provides any details whatsoever about the studies. Given that this is to be some remarkable research, you'd sort of expect there to be a decent amount of citations, letting the reader know what has been done before in this area. At the very least, providing some sense that the results are scientifically valid. No such luck. While the book is chock full of citations, they're all websites, most to newspaper links, and the few that have any sort of connection to the scientific community are mainstream sites like Scientific American.

While I have an interest in the topic matter, I really didn't get a lot out of this book and hated Lindstrom's tone. I'm sure there must be other books out there on this subject and hopefully I'll come across them. I don't think this one is worth reading.

--Jon

THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern

At first I was looking forward to reading The Night Circus. The author, Erin Morgenstern, first conceived of the idea for this book when taking part in Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) back in 2004. When she was done writing it, though, she had a hard time finding anyone interested in it. Thirty literary agents rejected it before someone finally took it on. In the end she received a six figure advance for the book and the number thirty is now the number of foreign publishers that have agreed to publish the book as well.

But then the hype started. "The next Harry Potter!". Ugh. Seriously? I hate the next anything. Why can't thinks be appreciated on their own merits? Why must there always be comparisons? Saw one review call it the next Harry Potter with a Twilightesque forbidden love. Double ugh.

Add in the fact that I am oversaturating myself with books and I really didn't need to be reading this. Then we got it into the library and there weren't any holds on it....well, what the heck.

I liked it. The author blurb on the dustjacket cites Morganstern's love of fairy tales and that's what this feels like. Two magicians place a wager with one another on who can teach a student to do magic best. The one magician uses his daughter as his student, the other grabs a young man from an orphanage. And we're talking "real" magic here, not pick-a-card-sleight-of-hand hijinks. The field of competition is the Le Cirque des Reves, a mystical circus that is only open at night.

The two students, Celia and Marco, don't know initially that they are in competition with each other yet they know that they are in competition. They fall in love with one another before they realize that they should be vying against one another.

The chapters are very short and very dreamlike. Morganstern does a wonderful job creating a fairy tale atmosphere and she makes the reader long for the reality of the circus. If there was really a Night Circus, I would definitely go and perhaps even try and run off with it. Or at least become it's archivist and librarian.

Where Morganstern is lacking, though, is in plot and character development. The chapters jump back and forth through time which, in some places, creates a nice sense of tension, but in most just makes things confusing. A more linear timeline I think would have improved the story.

Celia and Marco's "love" for one another seems very superficial. The whole reason behind the battle between magicians is unclear, especially since the two teachers have fought this duel before. There is a subplot of a young lad falling for another circus performer and running off with the circus which leads to what I felt was as unsatisfyingly tidy ending.

Really, the whole time I read this, I was thinking "Young Adult" book. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I just felt the book lacked depth (as opposed to one of all-time favorite books, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell). It never felt like there was any sort of tension or conflict that would be resolved. You just had the sense that things would work out. Maybe it was the fairy tale aspect.

Ultimately, it's the fairy tale aspect that made me like this book as a not young adult. The Night Circus was a wonderful literary escape that let me forget about bills and weeds and dirty floors and dream about a happily ever after.

--Jon

THE DART LEAGUE KING by Keith Lee Morris

I did it again! Another book involving drugs! At least this one was suicide-free. I'm making some progress.

Between JJ and the woman who runs The Next Best Book Blog, I became convinced I should sign up for Goodreads. I'm not entirely sure it's worthwhile but it doesn't take a whole lot of effort and it makes it easy to see all the books I've read over the years.

Goodreads also has a recommendation engine which looks to be as primitive and inaccurate as Amazon's. Before I became a librarian, I used to do statistical modeling for a living and it continues to baffle me how poorly some of these places do in predicting what their customers will like. But that's another story. Goodreads' recommendations at least have the benefit of not being confounded by miscellaneous items. Amazon, for example, takes into accounts purchases I might make as gifts for other people in terms of recommendations. This won't help me find something new to read.

Despite my complaints, Goodreads did have some recommendations that looked good. The Dart League King, published by Tin House Press, one of the small presses included in the new collection at the library (publishers of Fantastic Women, which I am definitely going to read), was one of them . An interesting looking book published by a small press? Sure, I'll check it out.

Good choice, Goodreads. The book has a nice ensemble cast of small-town misfits. It takes place in Garnet Lake, Idaho, where there is little to do. The "hero" of the story, Russell, is in his early twenties, works for a logging company where his lack of skills makes him a danger to others and a disappointment to himself. He lives for his dart league, which he started and has dominated until recently.

That's because Brice Halberstam has moved into town. Brice took over a local convenience store and was once a professional dart player. Brice has a couple of secrets, though. One, he's not really a convenience store owner. He's an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency officer. Two, he's married to a woman suffering from many maladies, most of which might be imagined, who has yet to make love to him even after decades of marriage.

Drugs? In Idaho? Well, yes. There's a good deal of marijuana coming in over the Canadian border (which I also read about in Border Songs. I AM beginning to think all novels involve drugs). Brice has discovered that main character number three, Vince Thompson, supplies drugs locally and is probably part of a larger cartel.

Vince is my favorite character. He deals drugs while at the same time is really concerned about the environment. The cartel would love for him to step up and increase his business but Vince is pretty happy right where he is, being a small-time guy and just making a living and saving up his money. Vince has a lot of anger issues, mostly due to his father, and he sets out to kill Russell who stopped buying drugs from Vince because he owes him too much money.

There has to be a love interest and that is Kelly. Kelly longs for something more than small-town Idaho. She has a child (Russell's) who everyone thinks belongs to another guy who long vanished from the area. She's interested in this intellectual guy, Tristan, who she went to high school with. She thinks Tristan might be her ticket out of Podunkville but Tristan has a dark secret of his own which he needs to share with someone and he has picked Kelly.

The entire book covers just one evening in town; the night of the biggest dart match of the year, where both the team and individual championships may be settled. But while the match is going on there are all these undercurrents going on - will Vince kill Russell? Will Brice arrest Vince? What's Kelly doing with that guy? Will she tell Russell the truth about her child? What's Tristan's secret? What's the deal with Brice's wife? For such a short period of time, there's a lot going on.

I enjoyed Morris's writing. It was fast-paced and he moves from character to character very nicely. Despite the flaws of everyone, my interest was kept in the characters. Russell is a bit of a doofus and my like of Vince is probably not universal. His paradoxical behavior is a bit unreal. As is Brice's marriage and Tristan's secret. Add that to an ending that can be viewed as filled with creepiness or redemption, and you get an entertaining yet flawed book.

For a Goodreads recommendation, though, I am quite happy.

--Jon

THE FINANCIAL AID HANDBOOK by Carol Stack and Ruth Vedvik

Hard to believe (at least it is to me) I have a son who is a senior in high school. Unlike his ol' pops who knew exactly what he wanted from a college (Had to be in Pittsburgh. That was my one criteria. Not surprisingly I transferred to a tiny school in North Carolina a year later.), he isn't sure where he wants to go or what he wants to study.

That's where The Financial Aid Handbook comes in. The authors, two former (current?) college admission counselors, think that with the cost of tuition nowadays and the fairly minimal differences in the quality of education once you get out of the top thirty schools or so (which are virtually all Ivy League and engineering schools), the college-bound student should be focused on getting their college education as cheaply as possible. Who wants to graduate college with six figures worth of debt?

The authors go into how to look at the differences between what schools say tuition is and what students tend to actually pay out of pocket. They liken it to when you buy a car. There's the manufacturer's recommended price versus what you actually pay once you get to the dealership.

So a situation like mine where your potential college attendee is unsure what he or she wants to be when they're all growns up can be a good thing. Find what schools might be willing to give financial assistance to your kid and select your colleges based on that criteria. Makes a lot of sense.

The book is supposed to be written for the student, primarily, with the parents as an after thought. The authors believe that they are "hip" in their writing style but I would be astounded if any kids actually enjoy reading this. My son thumbed through it. He's an avid reader, too, and was not captivated by the book in the least.

Given that the book has a very limited target audience, the authors don't hit their target audience well and that there is a lot of extraneous fluff to fill out what is really a small book, it's not exactly a book to sit down and read for fun. If you are a parent whose kid is uncertain about his or her college prospects, though, give it a look-see. It's worth it for you.

--Jon

GHOSTED by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

This is the first book that I have read of our new small press collection at the library. Written by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall and published by Soft Skull Press, Ghosted is about the life of Mason Dubisee, a semi-aspiring writer and an addict of almost every shape and sort. Alcohol, drugs, gambling. Mason finds himself in Toronto where his long-time friend, Chaz, now resides. Chaz is a successful drug dealer who sets Mason up with an apartment and a job, an arrangement that works really well for Chaz given Mason's predilection for drugs and gambling (and his lack of skill at the latter).

The job Mason has is working as a hot dog vendor with the brand name Dogfather. Mason befriends one of his customers, a man named Warren who is afraid of just about everything. Warren discovers that Mason is a decent writer and asks Mason to write Warren a love letter for this girl he longs for at the video store. Mason, always interested in making a buck, does so. Warren is found dead and the love poem is deemed to be Warren's suicide letter.

This provides Mason with inspiration. He'll start a little side business writing suicide notes for people who are looking for an exit a little more literary. The problem with Mason (and he only has this one problem) is that he wants to help people. He finds he wants to save people instead of helping them towards their self-inflicted deaths (but he still doesn't mind taking the money for their notes).

The story is really entertaining. Chaz, at least at the start, has his own sort of lingo ("are you flapjacking me") going which unfortunately vanishes as the novel goes on. Mason, despite being a ne'er-do-well who can't seem to get his act together, is extremely likeable as a main character. So much so that he drives you nuts with his bad choices. You want to reach into the book and strangle him when he sits down yet again to play cards with Chaz after doing drugs he bought from Chaz.

Then you have the other characters. The potential suicides are all really quirky characters. There's the drug counselor with her own set of odd characteristics. You also have Mason's love interest, a heroin addict in a wheelchair who has feeling in one side of her body but is paralyzed on that same side. The side she can control has no feeling.

So two-thirds of the way through this book, I'm loving it. Debating whether it might be able to top Eleven for best fiction I've read this year. I'm liking it that much. Then it careens into one of the darkest, most depraved things I've ever read in my life. It came completely out of nowhere and was really disturbing. At that point I was left wondering how I felt about the book. Up until this point the book was a really entertaining and unusual story. Suddenly there's this psychopath involved and the entertainment factor is lost. Then it becomes a bit of an action story. Can Mason save the day?

All the loose ends are tied up, some in a manner a little too forced for my looking and some a little too out there for my liking, but the story returns to it's previous charm. Chaz even gets some of his lingo back.

That left me with my review. The writing was spectacular. I didn't ever want to put the book down. The characters are great. Unlike, say, Savages, where the characters are involved in activities generally frowned upon by society, I liked these characters and were rooting for them. I didn't view Mason as a bad guy. I saw him as someone with problems who wasn't happy with his lot in life.

Speaking of which, the title comes from the idea that we have these goals and achievements we want for ourselves in life. We picture ourselves as a writer or an astronaut or a professor at Minot State. But life takes its crazy turns and we don't always reach our objectives. Nonetheless, these pictures of ourselves stay with us and are "ghosted", haunting the recesses of our mind, making us think of what might have been.

There are a number of scenes where we learn about Mason's past and I think that helps make him more sympathetic to the reader. The oddball nature of all the other characters give them appeal as well (with the exception of one). And the story, while it goes every which way, is captivating. Without a doubt, I will remember this book for a long time.

But then there's that crazy dark section. It's part of the reason I'll remember this book. It's disturbing. I don't know that I've ever winced from a story I was reading before (bad writing, yes, but not the story).

I think, much like Lemon Cake, this isn't going to be a book for everybody. I can see some people putting the book down when the story turns. But it's still an awesome book and will be one of my favorites from this year.

--Jon

NO LEASE ON LIFE by Lynne Tillman

In case you haven't noticed, the library has started a small press collection. One of those presses, Red Lemonade, publishes the works of Lynne Tillman. Her newest release, Someday This Will Be Funny, sounded like it might be good but I thought I'd give some of her earlier works a try instead. This may seem stupid since part of the Red Lemonade publishing model is making the books available online to be read. Here's Someday This Will Be Funny. But I hate reading things online. So I went the old-fashioned route and got a couple of books; No Lease on Life and Bookstore.

I thought I would really like the latter. It is a non-fiction account of Jeanette Watson and her seminal New York City bookstore, Books & Co. Tillman didn't really write it, though, so much as she compiled it. The book is mostly an oral history of Watson but after every couple of paragraphs of Watson talking, Tillman inserts comments from others involved in the story that mostly pertain to what Watson just said. It made for a very disjointed reading. Between the style and not really being able to get excited about Watson's challenges (her father was head of IBM and when she started her bookstore she asked him for money. Sure, if you put up $150,000, I will too. Guess she had been saving her allowance for a while), I gave up on it. As I said, it was more compiled than written and wasn't really giving me a sense of how Tillman writes.

I got a much better sense from No Lease on Life. The novel is a day in the life of Elizabeth Hall, a low-paid proofreader living in rent-control squalor in New York City. It begins late at night with her being unable to sleep because of noise and hooliganism going on outside in the streets below. Her boyfriend has no problem ignoring the noise every night and seems to accept their living conditions much more readily than she does which only contributes to her rage and anxiety.

Ultimately, that is what this book is - 179 pages of rage and anxiety. There are no chapters, per se. Instead, blocks of thoughts are broken up with jokes. No mention is made of who is telling them or why but you get the sense it's a way for Elizabeth to cope with the stress.

Once the morning comes, you find out more about the other people in the neighborhood and the problems Hall has had trying to get anyone to do anything about the living conditions, the most prevalent difficulty being junkies shooting up in the entryway to the building.

The ending comes with some relief for Elizabeth but it is a small victory. While not a real happy or satisfying ending, it is a somewhat realistic ending. It's not Richard Gere climbing up the fire escape to whisk her away in a limo.

The stress made the story difficult to want to read but Tillman's writing is really good and made it palatable. I think the lack of chapters and the shortness of the book aid in making it readable. I think if there were chapter breaks, I might be tempted not to come back to it. Because the story never really pauses, I found it hard to want to stop reading. Some of the jokes are entertaining, too.

After both of these, I will read more Tillman and may put Tillman's newest on the "to acquire" list for the small press collection. I recommend checking her out.

--Jon

ZAZEN by Vanessa Veselka

The setting is southern California.  The time is now, but events are off.  There seems to be a violent discontent within the population.  Bomb threats cause panic and shut down streets, stores, and restaurants.   Some bomb threats are followed by actual bombings.  Riots and racial killings seem to happen for no specific reason.  War against some unspecified adversary is threatening.

Della is right in the thick of things.  She calls in bomb threats.  And then some other group carries out the bombings.  She attends the funeral for the slain black boys and ends up in the riot.  And then she plans the bombing of a local Walmart on a back-to-school sale day.  She buys a one-way plane ticket to Hondorus so that she can get away to a better place.  But, at the same time, she worries about the innocent children who might be killed.

Della is clearly unhappy.  But it is not clear what exactly she is unhappy about or what can make her happier.  Her involvement with the bombings seems to have no purpose.  She seems adrift.  Perhaps Veselka states it best in the Acknowledgements:  “Della was afraid that the world was full of sadness and that everything beautiful just got hurt.”  I should have understood this by the second chapter.

Veselka’s writing does appeal.  Picture this:  “Britta turned into a blowfish and floated towards Astrid spiny and offended.”  And then a few paragraphs later:  “The blowfish, Britta, floated away from the sink.”  Great images.  It’s worth reading Zazen for the metaphors.

--Sue