I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, by Amy Sedaris (2006)
Fun book, fun pictures. Recipes look good, too.
The Guy Not Taken, by Jennifer Weiner (2006)
When computers are able to write fiction, this is the sort of book I will expect. The writing is competent, the plot is competent, the characters are competent. And the whole thing falls flat.
Any time a limp, tired word or image could be used, it was. Children are "scooped up," and they "shriek with delight." An old man smells like moth balls and cough drops. Two people "rattle around" in a big house.
The plots, too, fail to reach for anything fresh. A well-off suburban mother learns that someone with purple hair and leather cuffs can still be a valuable person in a loving, stable family. A woman who always wondered if another man was "the one" learns that she would prefer to be with her husband after all.
It's not that I like books that resort to stream-of-consciousness surreal imagery in an attempt to be creative, but I do like to read things that go beyond a high schooler's grasp of creative writing.
The Uses of Enchantment, by Heidi Julavits (2006)
A teenaged girl vanishes, and appears the next month claiming to have no memory of where she's been. She toys with her psychologist until no one knows if she's been abducted or not, or if she's lying or not, or what her real problem might be. Gradually we discover--in sections entitled "What Might Have Happened," and also in getting to know the same girl fourteen years later--what probably happened, but we're never allowed to be completely certain.
In fact, that was my main complaint: I've mentioned before that I like to have loose ends tied up and everything explained by an omniscient narrator at the end, and this book failed to give satisfaction. While certainly not as bad as it could have been (at one point I wondered if we were going to have a "there are many 'truths' and none more true than the others" ending), I didn't feel quiet in my mind about it. I still wondered about motivations, and about the length of time involved in the disappearance, and about what the girl's parents thought. I recommend the book anyway, because I thought the writing and the story were excellent, and because I don't think it actually leaves the reader hanging--it's just that I like things really, really, really thoroughly explained.
What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, by John L. Esposito (2002)
If you're like me, you have been thinking of Islam as a scary Middle Eastern religion. Here are the things that come to your mind when you hear the word: terrorists, suicide bombings, women covered up, beards that could use a good tidying--and also your own total lack of knowledge about whether any of these things even belong with Islam or if they're just false associations like when you used to confuse Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. For that level of ignorance, I recommend this book. The entire book is in Q&A format, so you aren't expected to read it beginning to end. Nevertheless, that's how I read it, because I don't have Qs per se, just a gaping black hole of no-As.
Since I am moderately familiar with the basics of Judaism and Christianity, I appreciated the way the author compared Islam to them. All religions are weird and mystical from the outside, and exposure to a few of them makes those few seem tamer than the others; it is helpful to be reminded that the Bible contains many examples of religious wars and of men marrying multiple wives, and that Christians are still split about whether women are allowed to speak in church. Every religious group contains members who use their faith as an excuse to indulge their violent natures, and the author helpfully reminds us that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have their own histories (past and present) of aggressive "believe or die" behavior.
I came away feeling that I now had a nice foundation layer of knowledge about Islam, and that something I'd thought was scary and unfamiliar was only unfamiliar.
The Cold Moon, by Jeffery Deaver (2006)
Excellent as usual. Bonus: Lincoln Rhymes may have found a worthy opponent, someone who is not defeated in this book and may reappear in a future book.
The Keep, by Jennifer Egan (2006)
If it hadn't been for a convincing review by someone whose opinion I value, I probably wouldn't have taken a chance on this book: a "chilling psychological landscape" involving "a childhood prank" with "devastating consequences," reenacted "with even more catastrophic results" does not sound like my bag of oats.
As I began the story, I had even more doubts: I don't generally like it when an author's narrator is not the same sex as the author, because it catches my attention (Did she-the-author feel weird writing as he-the-narrator about "f***ing" a woman?) and pulls me out of the story.
This book, however, has something going for it that overcomes many an obstacle, and that's a fresh writing style that surprised me and pleased me. Also, it's just a really great story, and I liked it very much.
The Handmaid and the Carpenter, by Elizabeth Berg (2006)
I consider Elizabeth Berg one of my favorite authors. I hated this book. It combines the worst of uplifted-eyes, stained-glass, shallow religious speculation, with the worst of lightweight, gaggy-dialogued, stupidly-written fiction.
To remind us that what we are reading happened in ancient times, the dialogue and text are full of formal Biblical sounds: "For what reason would I lie to one I so love?" and "Yet we know that the Messiah will come from such a descendent. One of your seven children might be the one we have so long awaited!" Far from putting the reader back in time, this style is distracting and annoying, and distances the reader from the story. Also, it's crappily done and made me want to hit somebody.
The story itself is well-known, but embellished to an extent that will antagonize people who believe in the significantly shorter Biblical version, and yet not entertain people who don't. This book is a waste of time, and not even an interesting one. Really, truly craptacular.
Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott (1994)
The challenge in writing a book on how to write is the same as the challenge in writing a book on how to act, or on how to paint, or on how to dance: anyone may attempt the skill, but some people are able to and some people are not, and those who are not able will not be made able by a book. This is a point I felt Anne Lamott understood well. Sometimes I read a "how to write" book by a writer, and as I'm reading I think, "She doesn't realize she has a born talent for it. She doesn't realize that her results are not reproducible by someone following these steps she lists. She thinks she is following a formula that anyone can follow." I did not have that reaction to this book. I felt the author had a firm grasp on the hard facts, and would not be the sort to tell a child the atrocious lie that he could do anything he dreamed. I myself dreamed of being a famous stage actress. I AM STILL WAITING.
I appreciated the way she wrote about writing as something worth doing for its own sake. She continually drew the emphasis away from publication and monetary success, and put the focus on writing as a hobby that enriches the writer's life even if it is never published and never earns a dime. I think this is true, and I don't think I've heard anyone say it before. Furthermore, I liked the way she applied this concept to people who want to write but are not good at it: she feels they should keep writing anyway, for the love of it. I agree, but I will caution that if these bad writers are accidentally published I will come down on their crappy novels like hell's fury.
There are the usual disparaging remarks about reviewers, of course. Evidently reviewers are meant to understand that the effort and emotion that go into writing a book exempt it from being evaluated for quality. Evidently reviewers are not themselves writers, and so they would not understand the writing process nor the emotional attachment to the result. Evidently reviewers don't know what it feels like to have their work responded to in a negative way. Pff.
The book's title refers to an anecdote: The author's brother, as a child, was working on an enormous report about birds that he was supposed to have been working on for months but had started on only the day before it was due. He was frozen by the size of the project, unable even to start on it because it was so huge and he had so little time to do it. His dad said to him, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird." The author stretches this to cover all writing projects that feel insurmountably large: break them into pieces, and just work on a small piece instead of trying to tackle it as one big solid unit. Good point.