Hit the 100 Book Marks This Month

Yes, I hit 100 books read in 2018 this month. That might explain why I am so far behind in my work. But two of this month's tally--The Overstory and The Great Believers--were so good I don't even care that I now have clients who think me totally unreliable.

Best Books I Read This Month

Mr. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell. Mr. Bridge is the companion to Connell's Mrs. Bridge, this time getting the interior view from the husband. Like Mrs. Bridge, the book is told in short vignettes that don't seem to create an overarching narrative and yet convey a life.  As constricted in pre-World War II Kansas City as his wife, Mr. Bridge at first seems pitiable (joy is for the "simple-minded") but progresses to despicable because of his narrow-mindedness and racism. I had much more empathy for Mrs. Bridge--perhaps because I naturally prefer the emotional lives of women or perhaps because she seemed to be a good person trapped in her circumstances while he is a less good person creating those circumstances. Despite my lack of sympathy for the protagonist, Mr. Bridge is still worth reading to see the male perspective on the same context and some of the same events described in the earlier book.

A Full Life: Reflections at 90, by Jimmy Carter. This memoir covers a lot of details about President Carter's life that I had not previously known. Most notable to me was how he journeyed from making decisions for his family without even telling Rosalyn to viewing her as a full partner. I also didn't realize he wrote poetry, which he intersperses with his memories--I don't think it's the greatest poetry, but it does convey the understanding that this is a man of many parts. I occasionally felt the author was a little self-righteous, but I also think he deserves to be.

The Circle, by Dave Eggers. The memoir that made everyone else love Dave Eggers made me dislike him, but he's gradually convinced me he's an admirably imaginative writer. The Circle is a cautionary tale about how a big social media company might essentially take over the world. Mae Holland needs a job, and when her friend helps her get on at Internet giant The Circle, she's thrilled, not only with the salary and benefits but the numerous social activities. The longer she stays, though, the more The Circle demands that her life be lived in public, with scary consequences.

The Overstory, by Richard Powers. Richard Powers is a genius. He weaves science into each of his novels but does it so beautifully that even the somewhat science-phobic can enjoy the narrative and appreciate what we are learning. While some may find The Overstory a bit heavy-handed in its environmentalism, I could not put it down. In the initial section, titled "Roots," Powers introduces several (mostly young) people who will reappear throughout the book, often meeting and interacting with each other. Each has some special relationship to trees--one was saved by a tree when falling out of a helicopter, one is the last remaining member of an Iowa farm family that recorded the life span of one of the last American chestnuts in the country, one is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant who put his hopes in a mulberry he planted in his back yard, one is a little girl with a speech impediment who loves trees more than people . . . although there are even more of these characters, they all become fully realized people. As we proceed through the layers of the forest/sections of the books, their lives intersect in an effort to save the California redwoods, and we care deeply about the forest and the people. For me, The Overstory rivals The Time of Our Singing as a Powers masterpiece. This author deserves the kudos so often heaped upon Jonathan Franzen!

The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai. The Great Believers is told in two linked narratives. In the mid-1980s Yale and his friends are dealing with the frightening new epidemic killing gay men and the effect of HIV/AIDS on relationships of all kinds. At the same time, Yale is trying to acquire a collection of artwork from an elderly aunt of his friends Nico and Fiona (the book opens at Nico's funeral, so he is mostly a specter throughout the book). In 2015, Fiona is in Europe trying to find her estranged daughter Claire; Fiona stays with Richard, a photographer friend from the old days in Chicago, who is getting ready for a major solo exhibition featuring many photos and videos of their crowd in the 1980s. Makkai fills the book with wonderful characters and subplots too numerous to mention, but all the plots cause the reader to think about love, family, relationships, art, and cause-and-effect. She also made me see what it must have been like to be a gay man when AIDS was a death sentence in a way I never had before. Highly recommended.

Uncommon Type, by Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks may not be Alice Munro or Raymond Carver, but I found the actor's short stories enjoyable. Some characters reappear in several stories; my favorite series was "Our Town Today with Hank Fiset," which featured the ebullient Hank Fiset fulminating about aspects of life in his small town and, in one case, why it is superior to New York. In one story, a man cracks under the pressure of bowling several perfect games in a row while in another an injured veteran talks to a former comrade every Christmas Eve. Hanks gives us some insights into his world--one story features a minor actor on a press junket in Europe--as well as some good doses of humor. In a tip of the hat to his love of old typewriters, each story contains a reference to a machine in his collection.

Also Read

Two Nights, by Kathy Reichs. This is the first Reichs book I've read that wasn't a Temperance Brennan book. It features Sunday Night (and her brother, thus two Nights), a reclusive, scarred heroine who gets drawn from her haven to search for a missing girl. Okay, but not super. I enjoyed most the time she spent searching in Chicago because so many of the restaurants and locations were familiar to me (I know, how provincial).

A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penney. Another Inspector Gamache mystery, this one seemed to revisit themes that I'd had enough of in earlier works in the series. Not exciting.

The Last Mrs. Parrish, by Liv Constantine. A young woman plots to insinuate herself into a wealthy family and steal the husband. There are twists, but ugh, just ugh.

Kudos, by Rachel Cusk. This is the third of Cusk's Outline trilogy, and I think I was just tired of her style of narrating through the stories of people the protagonist Faye, a novelist. There's some humor and some insight into the work of creating, but overall I'm glad the trilogy is finished.

A Gathering of Secrets, by Linda Castillo. Another mediocre Kate Burkholder mystery.

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, by Ross Gay. A collection of poetry with some lovely imagery, especially about nature but it occasoinally lapses into the graphic (a bird poops in the poet's mouth--seriously?).

Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward. Ward writes beautifully (although perhaps occasionally a little too fond of simile/metaphor), but I cannot love her work, which I am sure is totally about me and not her. JoJo, the hero of Sing, Unburied, Sing, is a biracial 13-year-old whose white father is in prison and whose African American mother is a mostly absent drug addict who enjoys hitting the children. He must take care of his toddler sister, under the loving eye of his grandfather; his grandmother is dying of cancer. When his mother decides to take the children and her best friend to pick up his father from jail, the road trip can only bring trouble. A couple of dead people who can't or won't move on make their presence known to some family members. I feel shallow saying this, but the book is so depressing I found it nearly unbearable.

Are You Sleeping? by Kathleen Barber. I just finished this psychological thriller a few days ago and have already forgotten what it was about. Nuf said.

Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I will never be a Sherlock Holmes person. Sorry.

Arcadia, by Lauren Groff. I had to renew this book about a boy nicknamed Bit being raised in a commune in upstate New York twice--and I was still finishing it the night before the third due date. The commune is plagued with the problems I would expect--inadequate housing, inadequate food, and a "leader" who makes actually running the community difficult. Somehow I just was not compelled by life in the commune--or what happened to Bit and his family once things fell apart at the commune and they took off for a more mainstream life.

Favorite Passages

This section of a poem by Ross Gay in Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is describing shame:

stitched together like a quilt
with all its just legible
patterning which could be a thing
heavy and warm
to be buried in
or instead might be helped up
to the light
where we see the threads
barely holding
so human and frail
so beautiful and sad and small
from this remove.


You have given me a thing I could never have imagined, before I knew you. It's like I had the word "book," and you put one in my hands. I had the word "game," and you taught me how to play. I had the word "life," and then you came along and said, "Oh! You mean this."

But people have no idea of what time is. They think it's a line, spinning out from three seconds behind them, then vanishing just as fast into the three seconds of fog just ahead. They can't see that time is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died.

Richard Powers, The Overstory