Hilary's Book Blog

Jonathan and I both read and very much enjoyed the brilliantly funny Bab, A Sub-Deb; I enjoy classic mysteries; and I’d heard this one referred to enough that I figured it must be pretty good. Well, it was OK, but alas had none of the humor of Bab. I much prefer my mysteries leavened with witty dialogue, so I was disappointed by the straight-forwardness of this one, which didn’t have enough twistiness to hold my interest all the way through. C today, although it probably would have rated higher earlier in the genre’s development.

I’m a total sucker for the Freakanomics/Malcom Gladwell genre anyway, but this book blew my socks off. It’s not very long and it’s full of the genre’s best features: counter-intuitive research results, sticky anecdotes, a breezy style. But two ideas that I’d heard before were described in such a way that they became striking insights for me: the extent to which I am irrationally loss-averse, and the power of the conflict between the altruistic and pleasure centers in explaining the striking arguments in Punished By Rewards. Knowing about my loss-aversion makes me wonder how to fix it. Coincidentally, I just read something that recommended taking a longer view in investing to avoid loss-aversion-driven selling low. But my problem tends to be more of a buy-and-hold-no-matter-what reaction (more generally than investing). As for the altruism/pleasure center conflicts, it could be very helpful in library and other non-profit PR in which I have input; ask for your supporters’ help because it will make them feel good, not because they’ll get anything out of it. Since we don’t have any budget for PBS-type incentives, we haven’t often diverged from that principle anyway, but it seems broadly useful. A great book and a quick read – A.

Argh… I know it’s not a realistic goal to blog every book I read, but the problem is when I start to just keep a list I think “oh, that one I want to write about…” But then when I want to look back & see what I read, it’s not there. So I’m going to try something new: when I’m done with one book, I can’t start another until I list it. Hah, we’ll see how long that lasts.

Anyway, I’ve set my timer and I will enter as many books as I can recall or document that I read within the past few months:

• Georgette Heyer, Lady of Quality (1972) – B+, an old favorite
• John Lloyd & John Mitchinson, The Book of General Ignorance (2007) – B, lots of fun to read (from the QI folks) but dubious research
• Garth Nix, Sabriel (1995) – A-, wow! a new fantasy I actually love! Must read the rest of them.
• Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation (2007) – D, started & then skimmed most before the library copy expired on my Nook; more of a business book than I realized

Having loved Julie and Julia, I was disappointed that this memoir/sequel was almost universally trashed in reviews. We didn’t get it at the library and I had no specific plans to read it. But then I saw Julie Powell speak in Scranton and she was wonderful – wry, funny, articulate, and revealing more of the edginess of the original blog (ie, nothing like the Amy Adams character in the movie). So this was one of the first ebooks I checked out of the Free Library of Philadelphia collection to read on my new Nook.

Powell’s writing is compelling, and Cleaving is an excellent book – people hate it because she’s honest about her adultery (and as she said at the lecture, “everyone loves Eric,” her saintly husband). I can’t say I enjoyed being dragged so realistically through her obsessive misery–despite being a vegetarian for almost 30 years, I actually enjoyed the story of her learning to be a butcher far more. (It was fascinating to read about the divisions between muscles and the skill required to find them with a knife.) But it did make me think about monogamy. I know there are people who are happily polyamorous, but their experiences don’t seem to get recorded much; one mostly hears about the painful experiences of those who are torn between two people. Too many choices make people unhappy, and since the majority can’t happily co-exist with more than one person, it’s a huge advantage of monogamy to focus on loving and committing to just one person. The longer Julie keeps her connection to “D” alive, the more unhappy she is, the more insane her behavior becomes, and the more she hurts Eric. If only she had refused him when he first came back into her life, she would have avoided the trauma which makes up most of this book. I couldn’t help wanting to shake her as she moons over D, ends up stalking him, and alienates her friends. Choosing one person channels that energy. I found the supposedly-correct wording of an Ursula Le Guin quote I love and which this reminds me of: “Love doesn’t sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all of the time, made new.” No source, alas – I will find it again one of these days.

Of these four long stories, the first and third were King-I-don’t-like (straight horror), and the second and fourth were good examples of King-I-do-like. Interestingly, both the Dos (“Big Driver,” “A Good Marriage”) have female protagonists, and the Don’t have male. I think one of the characteristics of horror is that the “happiest” ending is basically good luck (at best aided by the courage or skill of the participants) and often temporary, and as the title indicates, a happy ending is not a given in horror. One of King’s skills is tapping into/implicitly criticizing a particular kind of American misogyny, and he doesn’t leave his female protagonists in the true dark. His male protagonists fall into two camps, the straight-up good guys (with flaws of course) like Stu Redman in The Stand and Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone, and the half-bad guys like the central characters of the other two stories (“1922” and “Fair Extension”). They don’t get the happy endings. If my theory holds, you’d be able to tell pretty quickly what the tone of the ending is going to be.

The last story, “A Good Marriage,” was inspired by Paula Rader (wife of Dennis Rader), but for me it brought to mind the more recent Russell Williams case. I don’t entirely buy King’s depiction of how great the husband is before his horrible secret is revealed (surely some of his attitude towards other women would have leaked out), but it has a truly satisfying ending. I’m glad I stuck through the tin-eared approximation of period-speak in the opening “1922” to get to the end.

A mediocre historical novel with local interest–it’s set partially in French Azilum. I skipped large chunks of it but didn’t ditch it outright, although I almost wish I had. The thrill of seeing local place names doesn’t hold up very long, but the concept of the French aristocracy ending up in the back of beyond of the Endless Mountains is fascinating.

Picked up as a library discard – I really wanted to like it because the doll story is a favorite genre of mine (Racketty-Packetty House, Hitty, etc.), and the illustrations by Brian Selznick are terrific. Alas, it’s weirdly slow and ultimately unsatisfactory. If I could put my finger on exactly why I have a feeling it would help me with my own writing. The characterization is just OK, but with a better plot and better pacing I don’t think that would be crucial. Maybe it’s a kind of telling-not-showing–getting caught by the cat or seen by a human and going into “Doll State” don’t feel very momentous, and we hear a lot about hours spent looking for the McGuffin (Aunt Sarah, a doll missing for 45 years) without getting a sense of how that time was spent. Then the actual finding and rescue happen promptly and smoothly. Is it partly that everything is too fleshed out, compared for example to the Narnia books and their economy of words? Maybe especially with children’s books the author needs to leave most of it to the imagination. The one great touch is the contrast between the old-fashioned dolls and their new neighbors, the Funcrafts–again mostly due to Selznick’s depictions.

Of course I heard all about this when it came out, and I’m not sure why I finally checked it out now, but I actually enjoyed it more having forgotten many of the details since the events. It brought back many of those WTF moments–remember McCain suspending his campaign to fix the economic crisis?–with a lot of sausage-making detail.

I was looking for classic can’t-put-’em-down stuff that I hadn’t read yet, and found this on some list of “best thrillers.” I did enjoy it quite a bit, but man is it weird. Trevanian was apparently quite a character and it’s reflected in his highly-opinionated asides which trash just about everyone (see this list). Having read this months ago and just posting now, I went Googling for some of the more outrageous quotes, and found both the list above and this excellent review.

I’ve been curious about this play since enjoying Robert Benchley’s ongoing reviews/feud with it during its endless Broadway run. It’s good’n’corny–sentimental, predictable, full of stereotypes (plot is Abraham Levy marries Rose Mary Murphy, families disapprove until the first grandchild)–but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Jonathan just told me Bridget Loves Bernie was based on it!

Priceless lines from the Wikipedia article:

Abie’s Irish Rose [Benchley] described variously as “Something Awful”, “Just about as low as good clean fun can get”, “Showing that the Jews and the Irish crack equally old jokes”, “The comic spirit of 1876”, “People laugh at this every night, which explains why democracy can never be a success” and finally “Will the Marines never come?” Lorenz Hart … wrote these lines for “Manhattan”: “Our future babies we’ll take to Abie’s Irish Rose — I hope they’ll live to see it close.”