Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl)

Paperback

So this is the book that is "brimming with just way too much description" that I mentioned a couple of weeks back.  I admit that I was impressed by some of the verbal pictures in the early chapters -- but since it turns out that the author refuses to allow anything to simply be itself, instead insisting on turning whatever into an adverbing adjective blahblah, the charm wore off but quick.  Oooh, ooh -- it was like being enchanted on a first date at the movies when you notice a single tear tracing down his face when the plucky dog finally dies...only to find out that he cries six times a day, sometimes just because someone cut him off in traffic (see what I did there?).

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were to be uncovered that Pessl has been keeping a spiral notebook for jotting down apt similes and metaphors since she was in sixth grade...and that cramming every single last one into her debut novel has been her dream since.  And don't even get me STARTED on all of the annotations -- tiresome, to say the least.

OK, to the story.  Smart girl with blowhard father starts hanging out with some asshole slutty friends and their pretentious film studies teacher and things get mysterious.  And convoluted.  And I just wanted it to END.  But there were still, perpetually, more than 200 pages left.

D+ 

Danny the Champion of the World (Roald Dahl)

Hardcover

Danny idolizes his father, his only parent -- and rightly so.  His father clearly adores Danny and enjoys his company.  There's a story before bed every night, days spent learning about Dad's business (auto shop), midnight feasts, and amazing crafts like kite making and fire lantern launches.

But Dad's also a poacher. It's totally OK, though!  The man who owns the land from which Dad poaches is a real jerk who once treated Danny like the help when Danny came out to wait on him at the service station.  So, you know, if a guy's a jerk, stealing from him's fine!  Plus all of the "cool" people in town poach from him too (or at least happily cover up poaching activity): the doctor, the reverend and his wife, and even the local cop.

I'm not sure why this book left a bad taste in my mouth.  It's lightweight and good-natured, and I definitely don't have a problem "sticking it to the man."  But there was just something unseemly about the blatant thumbs-up given to thievery.  It was as though, as long as you're affable, anything you do to an asshole should be excused and even celebrated.  I'm taking this way too seriously, I know.

But anyway, it was a quick read but not a particularly memorable one.

C

The Egypt Game (Zilpha Keatley Snyder)

Paperback

I picked this up off of a recommendation made for a young boy in The Borrower (coupla books down).  I've always enjoyed young adult books as they're usually entertaining and quick; this was no exception.

The story was almost written in shorthand.  A young girl is dumped on her grandma by her flighty mother.  She makes a new friend despite her guarded and abrasive attitude, starts a wildly imaginative secret game with a few friends, and is inconvenienced by the "play inside" rule instituted due to a child murder in the neighborhood.  These are big plotlines dealt with by way of a mention, exactly the way a child would deal with this type of stuff.  Each event is absorbed and life gets going again.

Because I'm also in the middle of a book that is brimming with just WAY TOO MUCH description, this was refreshing.  I agree with The Borrower's narrator: this is a perfect book for 10-12 year olds.  And it wasn't too bad for a woman in her 40s either.

B

The House at Sugar Beach (Helene Cooper)

Audiobook

"I did what I always did when something seismic happened that I couldn't deal with. I concentrated on the superficial." That's a quote from the book...but it can also serve as a thesis sentence. Cooper seems completely unaware that the banal details of her privileged life are uninteresting.

I didn't find her anecdote of "getting away with" singing rewritten words to Blessed Assurance during church congregational singing entertaining. I didn't care that her mother made her buy a book for her first boyfriend rather than the cologne she wanted to give him. If she could've painted her childish cluelessness as a thing of the past, something that stands in stark contrast to what the rest of the country was going through when she now looks back on it, that would've been much better. Instead, she seems, still, to find her isolated life the most interesting thing about Liberia in the '70s. The bigger story of revolution and bloodshed is related in boring historical fact lists.

I've heard Cooper interviewed and she said she researched the heck out of it... well anyone could've done that. The reason we look to memoirs is so that we get a "this is how those facts felt" view. Cooper doesn't seem to have felt much of anything during that time past crushes on boys and affection for her favorite linen shirt.

D
Non-fiction #1

The Borrower (Rebecca Makkai)

Hardcover

Perhaps the elements of the story could sound like "too much": Lucy's a privileged daughter of a prominent fixture in the Russian mob scene.  She's working as a children's department head librarian in a dot-on-the-map town out of a determination not to take anything from her parents.  Lucy's apartment is above the local live theater, run by the fun-loving and flamboyant local gay guy.  Her best friend is a co-worker in a wheelchair who's often mistaken for mentally-challenged.  And her star reader is just 10 years old and assumed by everyone to be homosexual -- especially by his insanely religious Stepfordy mother.

Somehow, it all just works and I was hooked less than a dozen pages in.  Although the set-up and the main thrust of the story (road trip/abduction with the librarian and the kid who's escaping a family who doesn't get him...so much so that they are sending him to a type of "pray out the gay" workshop for pre-teens) sounds ridiculous, it's absolutely lovely, funny, and, in a weird way, real.

A

Darkly Dreaming Dexter (Jeff Lindsay)

Paperback

I'm a fan of the series (well, except for this last season...I mean, what the heck?  Colin Hanks as a schizophrenic religious nut serial killer?  Ugh.  But I digress).  This book makes me marvel at the creative minds that could take this ridiculous mess and turn it into a compelling series.

I've been annoyed by Dexter's unnecessary voice-overs in the series, but they get downright insane in the book.  Also, everyone is good looking (Dexter most of all), character quirks are repeated ad nauseam (Angel is NEVER "Angel" but "Angel-no-relation" -- extra annoying as I never got that joke, even after a dozen repetitions), and the writing is about at the level of a high schooler who got decent grades in his creative writing course, but had to deal with notes in red from his teacher that said things like "watch the repetition!" and "make sure the reader doesn't have to completely suspend disbelief...there should be at least one relatable character as an 'in'!"
I couldn't wait to be done, so thank goodness it was a quick read.

D

Blindness (Jose Saramago)

Paperback

It took me a while to finish this book -- not because it wasn't compelling, because it certainly was -- because the writing style was very difficult to read. A four-page paragraph is the norm here and some went on for seven or eight pages, making finding a good stopping space difficult.  There's also no quotation marks so that a discussion between several people became a jumble of non-attributed comments.  There is a certain rightness to the style: the story is one of an epidemic blindness and robbing the reader of the visual cues on a printed page is a way to take a bit of his comfort away.  I was able, eventually, to accept the slight confusion.

In all, this is both terrifying and beautiful.  I believe that, just as this book suggests (along with The Road and so many others), society would break down immediately in the face of crisis; that the tendency toward criminality is just below the surface for many people; that failure to band together for the good of the many is what will undo humanity in the event of a widespread catastrophe.

This is definitely a thinker...but I admit that I'd prefer my thoughts to be elsewhere.  I need to find me a HAPPY book.

B+