Hey! It's April already. It seems like it's been such a long road since January, but we are just starting to delve into the depths of Spring. With all of that delving, comes my traveling through books post, March edition. Last month I read ten books. I took a lot of interesting trips.
1. The first trip I took was kind of icky. It was written by Alissa Nutting and was called, "Tampa". Not surprisingly, it took place in Tampa. It was about a junior high teacher who had affairs with her students. it was loosely based on an actual case that took place a few years ago. While it was warm to travel to Florida at the beginning of March, I came back from that book with a bad feeling in my gut. Which, I'm sure was the point.
2. I went for a WAY different trip. I went to Afghanistan from the 70's, through the beginning of this century with Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns". It was a heartbreaking work in so many ways, but it ended on a hopeful note.
3. Alexis Smith's "Marrow Island" was great escapism. It took place in a fictional Seattle area after a huge earthquake took place, ruining the island the main character lived on because its oil refinery that was compromised in the quake. It goes back and forth in time to the current time period where the main character's best childhood friend from the island contacts her, telling her that there is an environmental kind of cult of people living on the island and trying to clean it up with the help of fungus. There is all kinds of intrigue and studying the effects of pollution and climate change on our planet and I was really engrossed in this book. In other words, it was a good trip, man.
4.) The fourth book adventure I went on in March was "All That Man Is" by David Szalay. Although it took me to cool places in Europe, I wasn't all that impressed with what it showed me. Apparently, all that man is are just rich, white guys in Europe who are mostly selfish, self-absorbed, assh*les. It made me feel lucky that the men I surround myself with are much different than all that other men are, according to this book.
5.) "La Rose" by Louise Erdrich was my fifth vacation. As you've probably noticed, I love Louise Erdrich and read everything I can by her. This was an amazing book and won some literary awards. It took me to North Dakota on and around an Indian Reservation at the turn of this century. Another great thing about it, was that her pop culture references were all on point. You know how much it bothers me and takes me out of novels and movies when they aren't.
6.) "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time" by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin was recommended to me years ago by Stinky, who read it for school. It took me back to Afghanistan after Greg Mortenson failed to climb Mount Everest and got lost on his way down and wandered into an Afghani village where he had an epiphany to work to build schools, especially to educate girls. It's supposed to be non-fiction, and the premise is really great, but after the book was published and wildly successful, another book came out by a man who donated to the cause, where we found out that Greg Mortenson lied about a lot of what went on and that he took money that was supposed to be used to build schools and used it for himself and to promote his book. Mortenson claims that some of the fallacies were because the book was too long and they were trying to shorten it, so they had to play with sequence. But that doesn't explain why he out and out lied about seeing Mother Theresa when she died and a bunch of other things. I did some digging on all of this, because I'm a nerd and I wanted to understand. Mortenson claims he was innocent,but if he really was, why didn't he sue for slander and why did he get taken to court and lose? So, basically, what I came away from all of this is, Mortenson had a great idea and plan, he tended to be a megalomaniac and got caught up with the idea that he was some kind of untouchable savior and screwed up a lot of the great things he created. Yes, he did a lot of great work initially,but why do people always have to be so damn disappointing?
7.) My seventh book trip took me to Los Angeles, a road trip across the country, and eventually to China in 2008. "The Wangs vs. the World" by Jade Chang, was a pretty fun ride. It did annoy me initially. The people were all so awful, spoiled, shallow and unlikeable, but they grew and became better by the end.
8.) "The Spectator Bird" by Wallace Stegner was a quiet, contemplative novel written and taking place in 1976. It got me to Palo Alto, California and moved me to Denmark in the mid-fifties. It was about an aging literary agent who sees himself as a spectator in his own life. His wife asks him to read aloud from his journal from the trip they took to Denmark after their only son died in a surfing accident. I loved this novel, and savored the journey.
By the time I got to the last two books I read in March, it was warm enough that I could actually read/eat my lunch outside a couple of times. Yea!
9.) I forgot to bring my book to work one day, and since I didn't know what to do without one, I went to Prairie Lights to buy another. It turned out to be "Goodbye, Vitamin" by Rachel Khong. It was a shorter novel, and I know some people didn't like the way it read, but I was very entertained by it. It took place in a suburb of Los Angeles. The main character, Ruth has just been left by her fiance for another woman, and Ruth's mother asks her to move back home and help take care of her father, who has dementia. Ruth's dad was an alcoholic who cheated on her mother several times. Although this description doesn't sound like it, it was actually a sweet story of a woman trying to figure out adulthood, while dealing with her dad's dementia.
10.) The last book trip I went on in March was "An American Marriage" by Tayari Jones. It took me to Atlanta, NYC and Louisiana. I really liked the book at first, but after the incident occurred, I had issues with what my old fiction writing teacher in San Francisco used to call things "falling through the hole in the plot". They never once mentioned DNA evidence. The guy could have gotten off if they'd compared DNA. The rape happened the same night the the husband was accused of rape. Why didn't they even talk about the fact that they could or couldn't use DNA evidence? Also, at least every place I've heard of, most people don't do their whole sentences because prisons are so full. They didn't talk about his ability to get out early because of that either. They were just two things that took me out of the story. Also, the last part was hard to believe. The woman kept talking about love, but then flip flopping all the time. I get the guilt she felt, but you'd think she'd have felt that guilt while he was in prison and gone to visit him. Anywaaaaayyyy, this book clearly had me interested enough to look at lots of angles, and I do like things that make me think.
This turned into a very long post. Sorry about that. Here's hoping that the books you read this month engage you enough to look for the holes in the plot, piss you off, make you laugh, cry, and research the back stories.
