Book Review: Popular

June 28, 2011 3 Comments

Title: Popular
Author: Alissa Gross
Format: Trade Paper
Publisher: Flux
Pub Date: May 2011
Read: Jun 2011
Source: Barnes & Noble @ 86th and Lex
Why: Jennifer R Hubbard discussed this book in one of her blog posts, how it seems like one thing at first but turns out completely different. I was definitely intrigued, so much so that I went out and bought it the next day and read it that night.
Fulfills Challenge? Yes (2).
Notes: I actually wanted to borrow this book from the library but alas, it was not meant to be! None of the NYPL libraries carry it. The closest library to me that carried it is in Brooklyn, near my dentist, which is on a different library system. NYC has 3 library systems: New York Public Library which covers the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, Brooklyn Public Library, and Queens Borough Public Library. The latter two date back to before those two boroughs were integrated under NYC. Why they haven’t attempted to integrate all the libraries is beyond me, but hey! just throwing that out there for anyone who wants to move here. Anyway, so I couldn’t borrow it without hauling ass to Brooklyn AND getting a BPL library card. I tried the next best thing: indie bookstores. None of the usual suspects carried it either. But B&N at 86th and Lex had it. So I went for it. You see? I totally try to support my indies but if I gotta have something now, I GOTTA HAVE IT NOW. Oh the age of instant gratification.

Review/Thoughts:
I am going to echo Cari from Cari’s Book Blog and state up front that this is a damn hard review to do. This is definitely one of those books where almost anything you say has the potential to ruin the plot.

The story revolves around a clique of girls who all have their own secrets and agendas. With high school coming to a close, all four of them want to pull away from the main girl, Hamilton, who has the biggest secret of them all.

Grosso explores clique dynamics well, capturing its many different facets through each girl. What’s interesting is how similar clique dynamics are to other things you might not initially think to associate with them.

I did guess Hamilton’s secret but only about 20 pages before it’s revealed. I don’t expect many people to guess because quite frankly, Grosso pulls it off so well and I’m very familiar with the topic, which gave me a slight edge. But you should have seen me when things started to click. My guess hinged at first on a single word. I was all like wait, what’s that? and then I thought…wait what if? no it can’t be…can it? But wait why did… ok wait, slow your roll Nicole, there’s an easy way to support or disprove your theory And then I go back and I searched for something specific and upon finding or not finding it (I won’t say which) I thought, HOLY CRAP, I could be right. OMG IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW OMG OMG. But wait what if it’s not that? OMG I THINK IT IS. My brain process, for your entertainment. I don’t know if there’s anything more exciting than being able to pick up on the clues an author leaves you and go back and see how she pulled it off. Any good mystery should be able to leave you with this feeling — even if you don’t guess it, you should always be able to spot the clues in hindsight. If you can’t I feel the author hasn’t done her job.

I did wonder a bit at one character’s investment, whose motives still seemed unclear to me even at the end, but it wasn’t something that took away from the novel. Mostly I kept thinking maybe we were going to find out something else about this person, but we didn’t. In some ways, I feel she could have her own story. What would things look like from her point of view?

I would recommend this to people who like books which keep them guessing and who can appreciate a novel that can take a well-traveled storyline and turn it completely on its head.

Final Verdict:

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Book Review: Reading Women

June 8, 2011 3 Comments

Title: Reading Women
Author: Stephanie Staal
Format: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Public Affairs
Pub Date: Feb 2011
Read: Mar 2011
Purchased: St. Mark’s Bookshop
Why: I can has feminism? No really, this seemed to bring together two of my great loves: feminism and reading. As soon as I heard about the book, I couldn’t pass it up.
Fulfills Mini-Challenge? Yes (2)
Notes: I have never actually taken a Feminism 101 course. I took several women’s studies classes in college, none of them foundational courses, so I’ve actually missed quite a lot of the major texts.

Review/Thoughts:
YES. I am finally getting to this review that I started months ago. Many apologies for the months-long delay. I don’t really know what happened. Thankfully I’m a lot more timely with my reviews now.

I have to say this book actually inspired me. I now have an itching desire to go back to school and study the great works of feminist literature in a classroom setting. As mentioned above, I never took a foundational course in Feminist Theory, so I’m a bit out of the loop with some of the major texts of feminism. This was a nice…primer, so to speak. I’ll probably just settle for reading the texts on my own.

Like Kim of Sophisticated Dorkiness, I doubt I was the target age group for this book, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and I think it has a lot to offer in the way of analysis and introduction. Staal does a great job of incorporating her personal opinions about each text with classroom discussions and tying both back into her own life, then (as a 19 yr old college student at Barnard) and now (as a married mother, auditing classes at Barnard). She presents some of the challenges she’s faced as an adult that she wasn’t expecting when she was a college student, ready to take over the world, so to speak. That is certainly understandable, and never more obvious when Staal states,

Everyone asked my husband when he planned to go back to the office; only a few people asked me. Raising a child is vital work, but apparently it is still women’s work.

How does one balance one’s ideals and desire to work with raising a child? Staal is lucky in that there is another source of income (many households are single parent households), but I’m not unsympathetic toward her dilemma since I’ve seen the onslaught of complaints against those who choose to go back to work after having children — that complaint is never launched at men. The idea of a parent being there when the child comes home is all well and good except that the expectations always seems to fall on the mother. The more things change, the more things stay the same apparently, and Staal shows us some of that in her book.

The book isn’t perfect. It would be interesting to read a bit more about the intersection of feminism and ethnicity/race as it pertains to Staal’s own heritage (as far as I can tell Staal herself is at least part Asian American), but I can also understand that she might not have been able to tie her own heritage back to the actual works studied in her classes. Also, I haven’t read her other memoir about her parents’ breakup, so I don’t know much about her upbringing beyond what she talks about in this book, but it’s quite possible that her heritage did not dominate her upbringing in the same way that my own didn’t (what I mean is I’m Hispanic, Puerto Rican to be specific, but the reality is, I wasn’t brought up on a whole lot of Puerto Rican traditions, I know very little about the history, it wasn’t until I was older that I started to eat more Hispanic foods, I don’t listen to much Spanish music, I learned Spanish in a classroom not in my household (and I’ve lost most of it), etc. so sometimes I don’t feel “Hispanic enough” or even fully qualified to talk about Hispanic issues). So yes, back to Staal, while it would have been nice to include a bit about this, there might also be legitimate reasons why she chose not to, and I respect that. And I’d still recommend the book.

Final Verdict:

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Book Review: The Ancient Guide to Modern Life

June 7, 2011 2 Comments

Title: The Ancient Guide to Modern Life
Author: Natalie Haynes
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Overlook Press
Pub Date: May 2011
Read: Jun 2011
Source: NYPL – Mid-Manhattan branch
Why: at BEA, Kate Gales of Overlook Press recommended it to me but I didn’t snatch it up fast enough. When I came back, someone had already gotten it, WOMP WOMP!
Fulfills Challenge? Yes (2)
Notes: I’ve always been fascinated by Ancient Greece though I haven’t always acted on that interest. I say I want to read more Greek plays, then I don’t. I say I want to read more mythology books…then I don’t, etc. So this was my first foray into “making good” on that non-existent promise to learn more about Ancient Greece.

Review/Thoughts:
“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

Ancient history? Pish posh! Natalie Haynes reminds us why studying the classics is still important. Her writing is straightforward but never “dumbed down” making The Ancient Guide to Modern Life an excellent introduction for those wanting to learn more but who either don’t know where to start or find some other texts too heavy. Dividing the history of Greek and Roman civilization into eight manageable sections (democracy, money, philosophy, entertainment, etc), Haynes presents us with a nice overview of life in ancient times. Each section could easily be turned into an entirely separate book, but Haynes provides enough information for understanding without overwhelming the reader. The point is to instruct and spark one’s interest, not drown the reader with so much information that they’re deterred, and Haynes strikes a perfect balance between informative and accessible. Along the way she debunks myths and falsehoods and contextualizes policies and behavior without condemning or excusing them. She’s also funny to boot. One of my favorite lines came early in the book when describing how most people probably feel when they first hear the abbreviated story of the Trojan Horse,

No wonder the Trojans had lost the war. They were idiots. ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ didn’t really cover it. ‘Beware of Trojans, they’re too stupid to live’ was closer to the mark

Of course she then goes on to explain the full story of why the Trojans accepted this gift, showing that they weren’t so stupid after all, merely outsmarted by thorough and clever Greeks.

I also really enjoyed this little anecdote about where the term “lick into shape” comes from,

The Romans believed that a newborn bear wasn’t yet bear-shaped, but a furry blob which needed some work. The mother bear licked her cub, not to clean it, but to turn it from protean bear-matter into the shape of a small bear.

All in all I really enjoyed this book and glad it was brought to my attention. Some sections for me were more interesting than others because of my own personal preferences (e.g. I’ve always been more fascinated by the Greeks than Romans), but Haynes does an excellent job with all of it. And at the back of the book, Haynes provides a short list of good places to continue if you want to learn more. For me, this has definitely re-sparked my interest in some of the Greek plays I still haven’t read The Oresteia, Medea, Electra, Andromache, Hecabe, Hippolytus, etc. Perhaps I’ll do some kind of Greek reading challenge in 2012.

Final Verdict:

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Book Review: True Grit

May 17, 2011 2 Comments

Title: True Grit
Author: Charles Portis
Format: Trade Paper
Publisher: Overlook Press
Pub Date: 1968; this edition: Oct 2010
Read: May 2011
Source: purchased at BookCourt
Why: I was curious about the movie, which I had wanted to see before the Oscars (and if I can help it I try to read the book before seeing the movie), but my attention was diverted elsewhere, and I just got around to it now.
Fulfills Challenge? Yes.
Notes: I’m really not into westerns, so I was REALLY wary going into this. Also, this is one of the few movie-tie-in covers I find tolerable…because I don’t have to look at the faces of the actors. Sadly, I cannot say the same about the blu-ray. [judging face ENGAGED]

Review/Thoughts
Move over Franny Glass, Mattie Ross is my new homegirl! Yes, it’s true — Mattie Ross completely made this story. Stubborn, shrewd, hilariously self-righteous and a smartass to boot, Mattie is really the one with true grit. Quite possibly the most determined character I’ve encountered since Scarlett O’Hara, the girl doesn’t takes shit from no one, and it never occurs to her that her age, sex, or stature might be a hindrance to what she wants to do. Her fierce determination and unwavering belief in herself (and her opinion) allow the reader to basically go along with just about every damn thing she says. I don’t think I even once questioned her. Compromise? Pssh, what the hell is that? Mattie Ross is paying you good sir, you’d better do what she says! Truthfully, I WISH I had as much gumption as this girl.

The story itself is surprisingly funny given the circumstances. Who knew a western about a 14 year old girl setting out to avenge her father’s death could be this much fun? But I’m told that is the Portis way.

For me the most satisfying moment came in the first half, when LaBeouf is beating poor Mattie’s legs with a switch in order to teach her a lesson, and Rooster cocks his gun and tells LaBeouf if he keeps on doing that he’s going to regret it. As it turns out, Donna Tartt also finds this to be the most satisfying moment, so I’m in good company (oh did you know this is her favorite book? I did…because I heart Donna Tartt).

My only criticism is that toward the end, the novel took on what I call a FFS (for fuck’s sake!) quality, i.e., everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, prompting me to say, oh for fuck’s sake! I also felt that Mattie was robbed of her moment, and for no clear reason I could discern other than to prolong the mess (interestingly enough, I never expected the moment to be given to her but when it was, I rejoiced, only to have it taken away…how dare you Charles Portis, how dare you!) But aside from that, I loved it.

Final Verdict:

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Book Review: The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

May 9, 2011 7 Comments

Title: The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine
Author: Alina Bronsky
Format: Trade Paper
Publisher: Europa Editions
Pub Date: April 2011
Read: April 2011 (completed a half hour into May, heh)
Purchased: freebie from Europa
Why: see above
Fulfills Challenge? yes (3)
Notes: International fiction (especially work set outside Western Europe) is sort of outside my comfort zone (as in, I don’t read very much of it, I don’t gravitate toward it). I’m glad the novel was sent to me because I probably wouldn’t have picked it up otherwise. This forced me to step outside my little bubble and read something I wouldn’t normally read.

Review/Thoughts:
What struck me immediately about The Hottest Dishes was the strength of the narrator’s voice. This is a book I was not expecting to like, a book I thought I would end up reading out of obligation, but as it turns out, I was hooked right from the start. This is one of the most compelling voices I’ve come across in fiction. The narrator, Rosa, is at once hilarious and infuriating, overbearing yet sympathetic, but above all, unreliable as a narrator. This is her reality, her version of the truth, that one comes to understand she truly believes. She’s not lying to deceive the readers; in her mind, this is the way things happened. Rosa harbors any number of self-delusions, many of which are unintentionally funny. In spite of her meddlesome ways, I do believe that Rosa does want the best for her family — it’s just that she believes she’s the only person who knows what’s best. Everyone else is an idiot in her eyes. And you know what? As someone who often slips into this mindset, I totally get her (I like to think I’m not overbearing per se as I don’t really care what people do with their lives, but if it’s something that affects me and my work, I definitely fall into the dammit do I have to do everything around here? category because I expect things a certain way). Love her or hate her (or more likely, something in between), you have to admit, she feels like a real person, her character is that well-drawn and distinct, and I’m definitely looking forward to reading Alina Bronsky’s other novel, Broken Glass Park.

Final Verdict:

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