THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID

Like most really good memoirs, Bill Bryson’s engaging and funny portrait of his childhood in 1950s Iowa is not a straightforward “this happened to me and then this happened” narrative, but rather an homage to a particular place and time, suffused with personal anecdotes. Its blend of charming nostalgia and broad comic exaggeration reminded me vaguely of Calvin Trillin and kept me happy during a series of grinding commutes. I particularly liked the audiobook because it was read by the author—not always a great idea, but it works well for memoirs, and Bryson is an entertaining reader with an intriguing mid-Atlantic accent (he’s lived in England for so long that he sounds perfectly British sometimes, but then at other times you can hear the Des Moines boy underneath).

CLEAVING

In general, I’m Team Julie Powell. I loved The Julie/Julia Project (the first food blog I ever read!) and its subsequent book and film adaptations (Meryl Streep was TOTALLY ROBBED of her deserved Oscar, by the way). When I started seeing scathing reviews of her second book, I chalked it up to (a) the Powell-hating backlash that seemed to sweep the Internet in the wake of her fame; and (b) the fact that those who knew Powell only from her portrayal by miscast sweetheart Amy Adams were having trouble reconciling their cute Hollywood image of her with the gritty reality of the book’s subject matter—Powell’s extramarital affair and her apprenticeship in butchery (when informed of Powell’s real-life infidelity in an interview, Adams famously rejoined, “Well, my Julie would never do that”). I was fully prepared not to like Cleaving: A Story of Meat, Marriage, and Obsession as much as its predecessor, but I still wanted to read it—and, frankly, all the accusations of juicy oversharing lobbed its way only made me more curious, so I was pleased when my friend M gave me a copy for Christmas.

Unfortunately, while the book wasn’t quite the train wreck many reviewers made it out to be, I thoroughly disliked it. Some reviewers wrote as though the situation (Powell has passionate on-again-off-again affair with emotionally unavailable but sexually exciting man, yet wants to remain married; her husband knows, sees other women, but ultimately stays) were inherently revolting, but I thought it might have made an interesting and worthwhile memoir—if tackled, say, twenty years after the fact. As written, however, it completely lacks perspective, resulting in a tone-deaf narrative voice that vacillates between naked pleas for the reader’s sympathy (which I had a hard time mustering, not least because the lover Powell is so obsessed with seems like a pretentious asshole) and brutal self-flagellation. I kept feeling that Powell wants to simultaneously defend and punish herself—she offers the reader a stark portrait of her misery as though it’s supposed to stand in for the regret and repentance she claims to feel, but at the same time she’s obviously wallowing in her own sense of degradation (not coincidentally, she’s a self-described masochist). She confuses frankness and bravado with honesty. It’s not that her confessions are so raw or embarrassing, although at times they are; it’s that they seem painfully disingenuous, making the whole book feel both tedious and pointless. I could go on, but NPR’s Linda Holmes nails my feelings in her much more articulate review. Let me just say that we both agree on our least favorite moment of the book.

I had figured that at least I’d enjoy the food themes, but the butchery topic felt wedged in, mainly serving as an extended (and ultimately tiresome) metaphor for Powell’s own emotional state (bloody, earthy, sensuous, violent, etc.). And unfortunately, although Powell does her best to sexy them up with purple prose, it turns out that play-by-play descriptions of creating various cuts of meat are…rather tedious, in an “insert tab A into slot B” way.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend Cleaving, but it hasn’t necessarily put me off Powell for good. I was sad to see how quickly critics dogpiled on it, gleefully labeling it a disgusting, humiliating fiasco (Booklist went with “graphic, even gross,” which I think is unfairly over the top)—and by the way, I didn’t find the book as shockingly explicit as some salacious accounts suggested; awkward, yes, but hardly X-rated. For me, the off-puttingness was emotional, not physical, and my overwhelming reaction was frustration, not hatred or anger. I do hope that Powell is able to come back from this and find a topic she can write about more successfully. And I still think that Cleaving, with its double, opposed meanings, is a brilliant book title.

THE SELECTED WORKS OF T.S. SPIVET

Editor A gave me this beautiful Reif Larsen novel for Christmas. Never have I read a book that reminded me more of a Wes Anderson film—or, more accurately, I liked it for some of the same reasons I like Wes Anderson movies: it’s delightfully, obsessively detailed; it takes place in a surreal, hyperintelligent, slightly old-fashioned/timeless reality; the main character is a sheltered, socially awkward, emotionally immature, unbelievably precocious child genius; and the plot requires some suspension of disbelief.

Raised on a Montana ranch by a cowboy father and a scientist mother, with a dramatic teenage sister and a beloved younger brother who recently died in a tragic accident, Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet is a 12-year-old cartographer so artistically gifted that he wins a prestigious fellowship from the Smithsonian (the givers of the award have no idea he’s a child, of course) and decides to run away from home and ride the rails across the country to Washington, D.C. to accept it. Adventure and self-discovery, of course, ensue. T.S. is a charming narrator, and nearly every page of the book is illustrated with all his maps, charts, and illustrations. While the story wandered a bit, weakened toward the end, and ended too abruptly for me, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m always a sucker for a coming-of-age story, and I especially loved that the book is such a celebration of bookishness—with its extra-large hardcover size and complex marginalia, this is not something you could listen to as an audiobook or, I imagine, enjoy on an e-reader. Definitely a keeper. Thanks, Editor A!

A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING

I read Notes From a Small Island years ago and was underwhelmed, but since people kept telling me how much they love Bill Bryson, he fit my audiobook criteria: Am curious enough to check it out, but don’t want to actually want to spend precious reading time on it. My library only offered a few Bryson books on CD, so I chose this one semi-blindly. And I’m so glad I did, because I loved it. As usual with science, my comprehension of the nitty-gritty mechanics faded in and out, but I understood enough to be both riveted and awed. Bryson not only provides a useful survey of every major scientific discipline (physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, meteorology, geology, and more) but also gossipy, hilarious glimpses of the personalities behind them. I used to edit biographies of scientists at my last job, so I’d already developed a taste for the history of science, particularly trivia about the oddities of its geniuses (Babbage and his hatred of street musicians! Newton and his wacky eye-poking experiment!), and Bryson provided a whole feast. Listening to this book on my commute, I came home every day bursting with new “Did you know…?” tales with which to regale A and anyone else who would listen. (Did you know that nearly all of Marie Curie’s belongings, from her research notes to her cookbooks, are still so radioactive that they have to be stored in lead boxes and handled wearing protective gear? Did you know that the unfortunate man who invented leaded gasoline also invented CFCs, and was killed by yet another of his inventions?) Sure, it may have given me some serious new apocalyptic scenarios to worry about (I’m already scared of earthquakes and global warming, but I had never thought about the likelihood of a meteor slamming into the Earth or the eruption of the gigantic volcano under Yellowstone National Park, both of which extinction-level events Bryson details with a little too much gusto), but overall this was an incredibly enlightening and entertaining book that I recommend to absolutely everyone.

A note on the audiobook factor: Even though it brightened up my commutes immeasurably, I almost would rather have read this book than listened to it. There were a lot of complex ideas to absorb, and it’s hard to really focus on statistics when you’re navigating traffic tangles. Also, Bryson’s train of thought seemed to keep wandering, which initially frustrated me until I peeked at a copy of the book at the library and realized that a lot of what sounded like digressions were actually footnotes, which the narrator simply read in line with the text—proving that sometimes, having the actual page in front of you can be extremely helpful. On the plus side, mad props to the narrator for navigating all the insanely difficult pronunciations (including phrases in a host of languages, the names of hundreds of different scientists, and highly technical scientific terminology) with ease in a pleasant British accent. I do think I’d like to buy a copy of the book so I can read it “for real” sometime.

CODEX

After liking The Magicians, I checked out Lev Grossman’s first novel, excited that it promised to be a literary mystery about searching for a lost book, complete with a bit of romance between scholars, a la Possession. I love suspenseful research scenes and hot library action! (I realize that sounds sarcastic, but it’s not. Judge me if you must.)

Unfortunately, Codex kind of…sucked? The book stuff kept me reading, but there was no payoff. The characters were flat and unlikable, the situations unconvincing, the pacing slow, the plot aimless. My particular beef was that the narrator was supposed to be this hotshot workaholic investment guy (and it suddenly occurs to me that having a character who does nothing but work is a pretty convenient way to explain the fact that he has no personality or believable life whatsoever) who abruptly blows off his job to become obsessed with this book mystery (as well as with a tedious online role-playing game that turns out to be barely tied to the plot). Now, for my money, if you’re going to have a character completely change his personality (a personality we have to take the author’s word for, because we have no evidence it really exists) and spend the entire book saying things along the lines of “he had never acted like this before” or “he had no idea why he was doing this, but he just couldn’t stop himself,” the only plausible explanation is probably going to be mystical. I guess because Grossman handled the supernatural so well in The Magicians, I assumed there might be an otherworldly element to the power of the quest for the codex to upend the narrator’s life. When this turned out not to be the case, the plot felt crushingly mundane to me. Once the questions of whether the codex would be found and what it would say were resolved, I found I didn’t care about the answers. As you can probably tell, the book really frustrated me; it had potential, but the plotting and character development felt so lazy. I actually wish I had skipped this one.

THE LEXICOGRAPHER’S DILEMMA

The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of “Proper” English, From Shakespeare to South Park, by Jack Lynch: Carpool J gave this to me for Christmas, and he hadn’t read it; he just picked it off a shelf because it looked like something I would like. I was suspicious, but luckily, he was right. This look at the ongoing battle between prescriptivists (those who want to enforce “correct” language use) and descriptivists (those who simply want to analyze how language is actually used) recapped some stuff I dimly recalled from my college linguistics course, but threw in some new stuff and was entertainingly written enough to keep me engrossed. My main takeaways were: (1) The publisher must have come up with the subtitle, because Shakespeare is only mentioned in passing and South Park is used as a one-paragraph example. Sadly, Dryden, Swift, Johnson, and Webster, who play starring roles in the book, are less marketable. (2) People have been complaining about the decline of the language since we’ve had a language to complain about, and a lot of the bugaboos that used to drive them up the wall are now ordinary practices you wouldn’t bat an eyelash at. As someone whose job it is to be a critical reader and who tends to facepalm at least once per day over some horrific typo or grammatical error I’ve spotted, it is helpful to be reminded of this. The idea of “proper” English is a fairly recent invention, and the prescriptivists are fighting a losing battle, so I should probably relax a little. This is why I find reading history so comforting: you realize that people have always been certain that civilization is on the verge of collapse, and yet civilization keeps right on truckin’. (3) As much as I hate to admit it, the descriptivists generally have the right idea. Like me, Lynch has prescriptivist sympathies, but comes down logically on the descriptivist side. After all, language changes, whether we like it or not. However, it’s worth remembering that even if there isn’t one correct way to speak English, there are appropriate styles for specific contexts and occasions—most notably, formal written English—and knowing the rules of those styles is worthwhile. Because people are always going to judge you by how you use language. And let’s face it: I am one of those people.

REMAKE

Having read all the major Connie Willis novels, I’m slowly picking away at the various short stories and novellas that remain. My library didn’t have this one, but I wanted to get my hands on it because it’s about movies, so it was part of my Christmas Amazon gift-card haul. If I’d read a library copy first, I might not have felt the need to buy it, but even though it wasn’t her best work, it was still a fun and fast read. Set in a future where computers have replaced live movie production (old films are endlessly re-edited with different stars, dead actors are mashed together into remakes, and controlled substances such as alcohol are deleted entirely), Remake was a timely read, considering I’d just seen Avatar a few weeks before. Sometimes the futuristicness felt a little stale and belabored (the slang got dense and showoffy), the characters were a bit flat, and even though it was short I grew impatient with the plot (lots of scenes of the narrator doing drugs/getting drunk and editing films). But I loved the basic concept and all the detailed, well-researched references to classic films. It made me want to binge on old movies. And I think now that I know not to expect a huge payoff, it might make an enjoyable reread in a couple of years.

SUMMER OF MY GERMAN SOLDIER/MORNING IS A LONG TIME COMING

I started a book club at work that will read only young-adult novels. I wanted to do this because (a) They’re short, and every other book club I’ve been in has ultimately fizzled out when people stop finishing the books; (b) They’re fun and interesting; and (c) There are a lot of YA novels, particularly from the 1970s and 80s, that I want to revisit or that I missed the first time around, and I figured the nostalgia journey would be more fun when shared by others. I picked Summer of My German Soldier, the book by Bette Greene about a Jewish girl who shelters a runaway German POW in 1940s Arkansas, because I knew there would be a lot of discussion fodder and because I hadn’t reread it since my original middle-school experience. But whoa, what a difference a few decades make! What I remembered about the book was its impressive, delicious sadness, sitting as it did at the junction of two major tropes that are like catnip to YA girls: WWII (for some reason every teen girl I knew went through a phase of being obsessed with the Holocaust) and Romeo-and-Julietesque star-crossed young lovers. I still think the period and setting are interesting—you don’t see a lot of books about Jews in the South in the 1940s, period—but the sweet romance I remember fetishizing as a kid? Is really a friendship between a man in his early twenties and a 12-year-old girl. Sure, Patty has a crush on Anton (a crush my young self apparently shared, to have built up their relationship in my memory), but his attitude toward her, save for one kiss at the end, is pretty much brotherly/mentorlike, and they don’t even share that many scenes together. Instead, this is mainly a book about Patty’s coming of age in less than ideal conditions (isolated in a bigoted small town with a physically abusive father and emotionally abusive mother). It was good, but startlingly different from what I remembered—I must have pretty much missed the point the first time around.

While looking for the book in the library catalog, I learned there was a sequel, Morning Is a Long Time Coming, about Patty traveling to Europe to look for Anton’s family after graduating from high school, so I checked that out too. It was interesting to see what happened to Patty and see her gain some independence and confidence, but all her hardships don’t necessarily make her a likable character, and ultimately her angst annoyed me. Our group had a great discussion about these books, I enjoyed revisiting SoMGS, and both of them were well written, but I didn’t find them lovable.

ZEITOUN

A beautiful, fantastic, riveting, occasionally harrowing nonfiction work about one Syrian-American man’s experience in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I know some people like to hate on Dave Eggers, but those people should give him another try, because I swear he just keeps getting better and better.

BETSY AND THE GREAT WORLD

To a reader of the first eight books in Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series, the start of this one is disorienting. Suddenly four years have passed since we last left our heroine, her sister Julia is married, Tacy is married and pregnant, the Ray family has moved from Deep Valley to Minneapolis, Betsy and Joe are estranged (Joe has won a scholarship to Harvard and Betsy is dating another man), and Betsy’s college experience has been less than successful—marred by a bout of appendicitis and a long convalescence in California, her customary lack of interest in math and science, and a hectic, frivolous social life. Luckily, she has still been writing, publishing some successful stories, and when she decides she wants to drop out of school, her father generously agrees to send her on an educational trip abroad instead. Even for my adult self, this rapid change in circumstances is enough to prompt a “Wha-?” or two (I kept wishing Lovelace hadn’t skipped the college years entirely, because how fun would it be to read about those madcap 1900s sorority adventures at the U?), so you can imagine what a shock it was to my younger mind; I think I only broached this book a few times despite being such a great fan of the preceding volumes.

So Betsy’s on board a ship headed for Europe in January 1914. Anyone who knows anything about twentieth-century history will greet that revelation with an “Uh-oh,” but as a kid I was mostly oblivious to the shadow that rapidly approaching war casts on the book. And there is much to distract from it: the amazing glamour of the transatlantic crossing (staterooms, steamer chairs, mid-morning bouillon, a handsome purser, the Captain’s Ball!); exotic stops in the Azores, the Madeira islands, Gibraltar, and Algiers; living in Munich; being courted by an Italian in Venice; sojourns in Paris and London. Betsy’s personal journey is equally impressive; she’s traveling basically independently (although she has enough contacts and chaperones, mainly family friends, to be proper and makes additional friends along the way), and overcomes homesickness, loneliness, language barriers, and cultural differences, as well as growing as a writer. But rereading it now, I realized that this book is first and foremost a bittersweet valediction for a way of traveling that no longer exists (the world seemed so much bigger then!) and a bygone golden age of Europe about to be shattered by two world wars. (You can’t help wondering what happened to all the friends Betsy made in Germany and the young men at her London boarding house who so eagerly enlist when war breaks out. The fact that Betsy is still in England when war is declared is particularly fascinating, as Lovelace describes the Americans scrambling to get back home with a foreboding urgency Betsy doesn’t fully comprehend.) Even to Lovelace’s 1952 readers, I’m guessing that Betsy’s adventures seemed adorably quaint, tinged with the glow of nostalgia. This book is unabashedly romantic, and not just because it ends with one of the sweetest reconciliations in literature, in the form of the following message: “BETSY. THE GREAT WAR IS ON BUT I HOPE OURS IS OVER. PLEASE COME HOME. JOE.” It should be no surprise that the next book is called Betsy’s Wedding.