Sunday, July 30, 2017

A Bit of a Mystery Binge

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know that I occasionally go on mystery-reading binges . . . and it's not usually rewarding, as this month once again proves. In fact, the month's reading was only redeemed by Al Franken's latest. Hoping for a better month in August!

Mysteries

Death Match, by Lincoln Child
Most Wanted, by Lisa Scottoline
Memory Man, by David Baldacci
Killer Look, by Linda Fairstein
Ill Will, by Dan Chaon
He Said/She Said, by Erin Kelly
Heartbreak Hotel, by Jonathan Kellerman
Late Show, by Michael Connolly

There's not one of these books I would actually recommend. Several were especially terrible or annoying but none are worth a synopsis.

Fiction

Upstate, by Kalisha Buckhanon
Men Without Women, by Haruki Murakami
Never Again So Close, by Claudia Serrano
The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

Upstate was an interesting book that I listened to because I couldn't find anything else I wanted on Overdrive. It's an epistolary novel featuring letters between two teenagers--Antonio, who is in jail, accused of killing his father, and his girlfriend Natasha, who believes he will be acquitted and their lives will return to normal. After Antonio's conviction, their lives diverge--Natasha goes to college and then to law school--but they continue writing to each other. Some of the letters are rather crude (remember, they're teenagers in love), but the emotion feels authentic and the ending is hopeful. The book is categorized as YA, but I would say it's only suitable for older teenagers. Not a great book, but I didn't kick myself for the time spent reading it (as I did with the mysteries!!).

Like the Hemingway work of the same name, Men Without Women is a collection of short stories. Murakami's men are not only without women--they seem to be without the ability to build connections. Given those characteristics, loneliness is a predominant theme in the collection. Some of the men reach out in strange ways--one befriends his late wife's last lover, while another tries to convince a friend to date the girl he likes. Characters disappear--a plastic surgeon essentially starves himself because he is lovesick, a bartender is told to leave town and does. In perhaps the most unusual story, Gregor Samsa (of Kafka's Metamorphosis) returns to human form in the midst of political upheaval in Prague. I certainly did not love this collection (it takes a lot for me to love a short story collection), but I found it engaging.

Never Again So Close was one of the free book options from Amazon Prime some months ago. It's the story of a young writer Antonia who gets involved with an older, more sophisticated and detached man named Vittorio. Her love causes her to put her own work on hold in a doomed attempt to build a long-lasting relationship with Vittorio. Their inevitably unhappy story is interspersed with excerpts from Antonia's book about a young girl with Down's syndrome and vignettes about Antonio baking. Although the author's writing (and the translation) is often lovely and poetic, overall the book fell flat--perhaps because I am jaded and wanted to yell at Antonia "Wise up!"

The Vegetarian was written more than a decade ago but was just released in English in 2016. It appeared on several "Best of 2016" lists; despite being perhaps the only Korean novel I have ever read, it wouldn't even appear on my "Best Korean Novels" list. It's the story of how people react when a woman decides to stop eating meat because of a dream; the book is narrated by her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister. It's bizarre and sometimes graphic and distasteful. The section narrated by her brother-in-law is most disturbing; he is an artist who becomes obsessed with painting the woman's body and then filming her having sex. If I were able to glean some meaning from the book, I would have liked it better, but I somehow missed the message, or the message was just not for me (the NYT reviewer called it a "death-affirming" book). So not recommended.

Nonfiction

Becoming Grandma, by Lesley Stahl
Giant of the Senate, by Al Franken

Lesley Stahl became a grandmother, loved it, and, as a journalist, decided to cover grandparenthood as a story. She recounts her own experiences and draws "lessons" from them, but also interviews many other grandparents and examines the research on grandparenting. To someone who also loves being a grandmother, the book is somewhat interesting but not terribly insightful.

For anyone who has wondered how and why Al Franken became so serious and unfunny after his election to the Senate--his staff made him do it! Most of Giant of the Senate focuses on his decision to run, the campaign and disputed election, and his service in the Senate--it's educational for us noninsiders and also funny. My favorite chapter is the one devoted to Ted Cruz, who Franken claims to like more than most of their Senate colleagues do--and Franken hates Cruz, for what seem to be good reasons: he's a narcissistic liar who is impossible to work with. Franken comes across as a really smart guy, who's also a good man (and funny). Recommended!

Pick of the Litter: Giant of the Senate, by Al Franken

Favorite Passages:

At one time I believed that love was a gift. Instead, you pay for everything, piece by piece.

Claudia Serrano, Never Again So Close

. . . if we don't start caring about whether people tell the truth or not, it's going to be literally impossible to restore anything approaching a reasonable political discourse. Politicians have always shaded the truth. But if you can say something that is provably false, and no one cares, then you can't have a real debate about anything.

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

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