TWIB-II 36
Jun. 15th, 2008 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanI read six books this week, but here are the four that were in English.
1) Why the Wind Blows - Matthys Levy
Don't be fooled by its size: Why the Wind Blows packs more information and entertainment into its 192 pages than do many larger, similar offerings written for popular audiences.
The book is an introduction into how wind and other weather patterns help create life on earth as we know it. But instead of penning just another dry science text, Levy has stumbled upon the neat idea of using historical anecdotes to explain and illustrate the science behind the topics he's discussing. Magellan's voyage illustrates oceanic currents, the race to climb the Matterhorn, glacial formation; and Hurricane Katrina, the deleterious effects of global warming, for instance.
Levy's text walks the fine line between being overly technical and overly simplistic with grace, and although I, as an adult, thoroughly enjoyed the read, I imagine this book would also be well suited to grade- and middle-schoolers as well. (My only caveat is that some of the illustrations seem only tangentially related to the text where they appear, but adults will probably catch the gist anyway and younger readers will appreciate their being there regardless.)
End verdict: Why the Wind Blows is well worth the read for anyone interested in climate change and if you've read An Inconvenient Truth, you'll probably appreciate this book for the deeper insight it can give readers on weather in general.
2) Songs for the Missing - Stewart O'Nan
This is one of the most powerfully written books I've read in quite some time. Put simply, it's the story of a Midwestern family dealing with the aftermath when its oldest daughter disappears into thin air one sunny summer afternoon.
O'Nan is a terrifically gifted writer who knows how to craft a beautiful sentence. But better yet, he is one of all too few authors who still trust their readers to understand what is going on in the minds and hearts of the characters without being spoonfed the significance of every thought, action, and element of the story. If you're looking for a missing persons drama fit for Lifetime: Television for Women, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a touchy-feely "exploration" of grief and healing, ala novels featured by Oprah's Book Club, look elsewhere. But if you're looking for one of the most subtle, true-to-life examinations of human beings reacting to, and trying to hold it together in, the face of terrible tragedy, this is the novel for you.
O'Nan also earns major points for the unerring realism of his narrative. Not every character reconciles with those around him or her...just as in real life. Not every family comes together in the face of adversity and solves all of its problems...just as in real life. Not everyone gets stronger and moves on. Not everyone falls apart, decimated by grief. And not every mystery is solved satisfactory...indeed, O'Nan's genius may just lie in the fact that he realises that the true drama in a missing persons case lies not in the police procedures or the sordid history of the missing girl, or the suspects' twisted kinks and fetishes: these are the plot foci of lazy authors. Songs for the Missing avoids these easy-way-outs in favor of a narrative that has the power to truly hurt through its believability and familiarity to our own everyday worlds.
Finally, as someone who's spent my entire life in the area in which O'Nan has set his story, I can say he captures the feel of the lake, the interstates, and the small Midwestern town perfectly.
I'm going to stop here because this review is really not doing the book justice. So you should go read the book instead.
3) The Books of Magic: Summonings - John Ney Rieber
Be careful! The original Books of Magic was a four-part miniseries plugging various DC Comics universes and penned by Neil Gaiman, who passed the title on to Rieber. But alas, the big heads at Vertigo made the perplexing decision to start numbering the collections from Reiber's first book, causing me to erroneously pass over the "first" volume (but second book) in the series for this one--the "second" volume, but third book.
Thus, although I was originally going to say that Rieber seemed like a so-so writer: good ideas but no sense of continuity or flow, I will now amend my review to say he is probably a very good writer, but I will have to reserve further comment until I can get my hands on the preceding volume.
4) The Spirit of the Place - Samuel Shem
Don't believe the hype: The Spirit of the Place is a thoroughly mediocre book. Supposedly a "deeply moving and profoundly intelligent exploration of the complexities and rewards of family, profession and place," according to one of the blurbs on the back of my ARC, I found it instead to be a clichéd, hamfisted, and amateurish attempt at meaningful fiction in which the author appears to believe that more words=better storytelling and in which any reader who's previously picked up ten books in her lifetime will spot every single plot "twist" coming a mile away.
For all its 330-odd pages of bloat, the characters never become more than words on a page: one can spot the villains, the bad love interest, the good love interest, indeed, the ending, within the first ten pages. The ridiculous premise (shrewish Jewish mother forces errant son to return to the hometown he loathed by stipulating in her will that he stay there for 378 days in order to receive his inheritance) rankles, as does the clumsily-handled magical realism (which is never consistently deployed), the equally clumsy "jokes" (Everything in this shitty town breaks when we need it! That's our shitty town, haha!), which are meant to be endearing but are really just as tedious as they are unfunny, and the utter lack of any chemistry between the main character and his two love interests (which results in some amazingly unerotic love scenes, and further highlights how undeveloped and shallow the protagonist is).
Or, to sum it up, when after 305 pages an author still feels he must add long expository passages explaining how the main character has grown and why other lead characters acted as they did, the only thing it indicates is that said author needs to go back and rework the previous 305 pages so that the story actually reflects these elements.
The Spirit of the Place isn't all bad, however; there are a few nicely-done sentences every dozen pages or so, the digressions into quirks of New England history were entertaining, and Shem has written a very moving death scene (at seven pages in length, the only memorable and moving part of the novel). Unfortunately, these little pleasures don't justify the time needed to read the book. Give this one a miss.
And I've now read 66 books in 2008, or eleven a month. If you want to check out some other LT reviewers, try here.
That will be all.
1) Why the Wind Blows - Matthys Levy
Don't be fooled by its size: Why the Wind Blows packs more information and entertainment into its 192 pages than do many larger, similar offerings written for popular audiences.
The book is an introduction into how wind and other weather patterns help create life on earth as we know it. But instead of penning just another dry science text, Levy has stumbled upon the neat idea of using historical anecdotes to explain and illustrate the science behind the topics he's discussing. Magellan's voyage illustrates oceanic currents, the race to climb the Matterhorn, glacial formation; and Hurricane Katrina, the deleterious effects of global warming, for instance.
Levy's text walks the fine line between being overly technical and overly simplistic with grace, and although I, as an adult, thoroughly enjoyed the read, I imagine this book would also be well suited to grade- and middle-schoolers as well. (My only caveat is that some of the illustrations seem only tangentially related to the text where they appear, but adults will probably catch the gist anyway and younger readers will appreciate their being there regardless.)
End verdict: Why the Wind Blows is well worth the read for anyone interested in climate change and if you've read An Inconvenient Truth, you'll probably appreciate this book for the deeper insight it can give readers on weather in general.
2) Songs for the Missing - Stewart O'Nan
This is one of the most powerfully written books I've read in quite some time. Put simply, it's the story of a Midwestern family dealing with the aftermath when its oldest daughter disappears into thin air one sunny summer afternoon.
O'Nan is a terrifically gifted writer who knows how to craft a beautiful sentence. But better yet, he is one of all too few authors who still trust their readers to understand what is going on in the minds and hearts of the characters without being spoonfed the significance of every thought, action, and element of the story. If you're looking for a missing persons drama fit for Lifetime: Television for Women, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a touchy-feely "exploration" of grief and healing, ala novels featured by Oprah's Book Club, look elsewhere. But if you're looking for one of the most subtle, true-to-life examinations of human beings reacting to, and trying to hold it together in, the face of terrible tragedy, this is the novel for you.
O'Nan also earns major points for the unerring realism of his narrative. Not every character reconciles with those around him or her...just as in real life. Not every family comes together in the face of adversity and solves all of its problems...just as in real life. Not everyone gets stronger and moves on. Not everyone falls apart, decimated by grief. And not every mystery is solved satisfactory...indeed, O'Nan's genius may just lie in the fact that he realises that the true drama in a missing persons case lies not in the police procedures or the sordid history of the missing girl, or the suspects' twisted kinks and fetishes: these are the plot foci of lazy authors. Songs for the Missing avoids these easy-way-outs in favor of a narrative that has the power to truly hurt through its believability and familiarity to our own everyday worlds.
Finally, as someone who's spent my entire life in the area in which O'Nan has set his story, I can say he captures the feel of the lake, the interstates, and the small Midwestern town perfectly.
I'm going to stop here because this review is really not doing the book justice. So you should go read the book instead.
3) The Books of Magic: Summonings - John Ney Rieber
Be careful! The original Books of Magic was a four-part miniseries plugging various DC Comics universes and penned by Neil Gaiman, who passed the title on to Rieber. But alas, the big heads at Vertigo made the perplexing decision to start numbering the collections from Reiber's first book, causing me to erroneously pass over the "first" volume (but second book) in the series for this one--the "second" volume, but third book.
Thus, although I was originally going to say that Rieber seemed like a so-so writer: good ideas but no sense of continuity or flow, I will now amend my review to say he is probably a very good writer, but I will have to reserve further comment until I can get my hands on the preceding volume.
4) The Spirit of the Place - Samuel Shem
Don't believe the hype: The Spirit of the Place is a thoroughly mediocre book. Supposedly a "deeply moving and profoundly intelligent exploration of the complexities and rewards of family, profession and place," according to one of the blurbs on the back of my ARC, I found it instead to be a clichéd, hamfisted, and amateurish attempt at meaningful fiction in which the author appears to believe that more words=better storytelling and in which any reader who's previously picked up ten books in her lifetime will spot every single plot "twist" coming a mile away.
For all its 330-odd pages of bloat, the characters never become more than words on a page: one can spot the villains, the bad love interest, the good love interest, indeed, the ending, within the first ten pages. The ridiculous premise (shrewish Jewish mother forces errant son to return to the hometown he loathed by stipulating in her will that he stay there for 378 days in order to receive his inheritance) rankles, as does the clumsily-handled magical realism (which is never consistently deployed), the equally clumsy "jokes" (Everything in this shitty town breaks when we need it! That's our shitty town, haha!), which are meant to be endearing but are really just as tedious as they are unfunny, and the utter lack of any chemistry between the main character and his two love interests (which results in some amazingly unerotic love scenes, and further highlights how undeveloped and shallow the protagonist is).
Or, to sum it up, when after 305 pages an author still feels he must add long expository passages explaining how the main character has grown and why other lead characters acted as they did, the only thing it indicates is that said author needs to go back and rework the previous 305 pages so that the story actually reflects these elements.
The Spirit of the Place isn't all bad, however; there are a few nicely-done sentences every dozen pages or so, the digressions into quirks of New England history were entertaining, and Shem has written a very moving death scene (at seven pages in length, the only memorable and moving part of the novel). Unfortunately, these little pleasures don't justify the time needed to read the book. Give this one a miss.
And I've now read 66 books in 2008, or eleven a month. If you want to check out some other LT reviewers, try here.
That will be all.