Big Love for BIG MAGIC

Goodreads

If you're looking for a book that truly invigorates you into doing something with all those brilliant ideas swimming in your mind, Elizabeth Gilbert's latest brain-child is just the thing. Not quite a self-help book, BIG MAGIC hits and exposes the nerve what prevents people from creating, which--unsurprisingly--is fear. Creating is a big responsibility, and it's one that no one else but ourselves really beholds us to. As soon as it gets tough or scary, dropping and running away from the idea becomes a far more pleasant choice over grooming it into the book, or movie or small business we've dreamt of. Carrying the seed is a piece of cake--carrying the tree... not so much.

Gilbert believes that leaving an idea is not so simple, though. To her, ideas are invisible beings that float among our heads and collide into the cranium of a person they think will do something spectacular with them, almost as if they were people who spot us from the other side of the room and build up the courage to ask us out to dinner. Take a story someone told her about a jungle literally swallowing up abandoned construction equipment in the Amazon:

"... chills ran up my arms. the hairs on the back of my neck stood up for an instant, and I felt a little sick... I felt like  was falling in love, or had just hears alarming news, or was looking over a precipice at something beautiful and mesmerizing, but dangerous... this is what it feels like when an idea comes to you."

And, just as is common with romantic relationships, the opportunities for self-sabotage are plentiful--a million poisonous spines of self-doubt and fear that shut us down from the inside. Here are some reasons she lists for why we might cut ourselves at the knees in the face of something with big and magical potential:

You're afraid you'll be rejected, or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or--worst of all--ignored.
You're afraid somebody else did it better.
You're afraid everybody else did it better.
You're afraid you won't be taken seriously.
You're afraid you're too fat (I don't know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we're too fat, so let's just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure)
You're afraid you're too young to start.
You're afraid you're too old to start
Etc.
"Creative living," she says, "is a path for the brave."

And it is, but oddly enough, Gilbert also let's us off the hook by reassuring us that the world will not punish us so terribly if our ideas and projects are not the greatest things ever. The spotlight that shines on us shines brightest when we're operating it, so to say. In other words--no one is looking so critically at us as we think. Our motivation, rather than pleasing and impressing others, should be providing ourselves with the pleasure of creating something we genuinely enjoy.

Perhaps the most refreshing chapter in BIG MAGIC is the one in which Gilbert unabashedly admits she wrote the book for herself--not you or me. She wrote this because she "truly [enjoys] thinking about the subject of creativity." She goes so far to tell us not to create or take on a project to help other people--to martyrize creativity as a means to shoulder the the burdens of those who are meek and voiceless (gag). She uses a great line from Katharine Whitehorn to help explain why: "You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others."

Glibert is glad she might help someone but really, she's doing this for the sake of her own delight, first and foremost. Isn't that fucking great? How validating to hear a professional writer assure us that, as human beings, we can "appreciate the value of [our] own joy." This, I think, is the operative concept in eradicating any fear we have in the face of living creatively, for fear is not as complicated as it feels when compared to the expansive relief of happiness. Fear is painful and debilitating, but really, compared to the potential of inspiration and pleasure, it is punitive, and a sorry excuse for letting a great opportunity wander off. Just like a potential lover, an idea won't stick around forever while we get our shit together. Attention must be paid! And not out of fear or doubt. As Gilbert says, "We simply do not have time any more to think so small."

On sale 9/22/2015

Two Books That Will Change How You Think and Behave Forever

SO YOU'VE BEEN PUBLICLY SHAMED

Goodreads

I loved this book before I picked it up. The cover is brilliant in its quiet complexity and neon smears, and the title makes it sound like a self-help book for villains. And, delightfully, it kind of is. Only, Ronson isn't only trying to sell this to the bad guys wallowing in the mud. The book's message is also, if not, more so for everyone else. He's holding up a mirror to you, me, the millions of Twitter/Facebook users, and--at an arm's length away--himself. He is, after all, a self-proclaimed shamer. Though the title appears to address those who have fallen from grace (see Jonah Lehrer, Lindsay Stone, and Justine Sacco), what it might also say is, "So you've fallen in with the anonymous, millions-strong crowd of online commenters who make their jabs and carry on."

By interviewing those who have royally screwed up, and those who exposed and shamed them, Ronson reveals one of humanity's most wicked tendencies: frisson. But it's not just regular frisson, which is our desire to stare at a car-wreck on the side of the road. When it comes to shaming, and in the case of this book, publicly shaming,  we take this desire a step further. We're not only watching the car wreck; we're throwing stones at the people crawling out from beneath it.

Though Ronson isn't telling us to be more understanding and sympathetic, he is strongly suggesting it (and very convincingly at that). He doesn't come off as scolding, or reprimanding. He simply asks hard-to-ask questions and in so doing, takes away our privilege to remove ourselves from the public demise from a transgressor. He's not telling us to love transgressors or to stand between them and the stones. What he is telling us is that we can do whatever we want, but now, we can't do it without our own impunity. By sharing the stories of lives that have been ruined by public shaming, he leaves us with no choice but to dip our feet into their shoes.

In any case, there isn't a slow or benign moment in this book, and the last line is the best line--the hook-in-cheek phrase that drags our attention through our protective bubbles and toward the places we don't want to look, the margins where the results of our actions tend to rot.


THE PSYCHOPATH TEST

Goodreads

Read this and you'll question the sanity of everyone you know--including the author's and your own. You won't be able to help it. Ronson gives us actual symptoms in psychopathy throughout his journey through the madness industry, each one relatively plain in description. As I read them, I had to wonder, "Do I do that? I think I do that! A lot actually!" I have to admit, this was kind of horrifying to read, and I would have stopped had it not also made me starvingly curious. At points, Ronson tips the scales with his subjects, not once allowing his readers to make any easy decisions about criminal minds and psychotherapy as a practice. I found myself wishing everyone else had read it so I could say, "This book, right?? Are you not losing your mind?" I dare anyone to read past the first few chapters and try not to diagnose at least five other people in their lives as psychotic, or at least semi-psychotic.

In lieu of causing us to suspect we and everyone around us might be a secret murderer, Ronson also does a good job in humanizing those who have actually been deemed psychotic. He takes away our lazy privilege of making up our mind about people and shrugging off their existence. Whether or not he intended it, he has pieced together a kind of narrative that reads like a house of mirrors: simple, yet beguiling in its many directions. The sides from which to see the people in this book are more numerous than you'd think. The close-up encounters with ruthless, violent and charming psychotics more than just dangerous--they're complex. They are the objects of an entire industry of medical and psychiatric research. It's a world that I've given little thought to, and one that I'm now very intrigued by.

On a personal level, Psychopath Test, has an introspective effect. Since it will no doubt cause you to worry that you yourself are psychotic, your attention will be brought inward, to a point of reflection. By seeing these extremes in psychological behavior, we have a backdrop we can compare our own behavior against. I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that a book on the madness industry would cause its readers to consider the nuances of their own minds. Ronson deserves credit for the obvious things: excellent writing, brave journalism, and relieving self-deprecation, but his crowning achievement is instilling in his readers a curiosity they didn't know they had.

You Will No Longer Avoid Short Stories After This

You'd think with how impatient we all are, short stories would be more successful. Why I had only learned of this collection by discovering it in a store, is a surprise to me. Well, I guess with a cover like this, you'd have to be the least curious person on the planet to not pick it up and give it a spin. What repels me from short stories is the lack of epic proportion, I've decided. As readers, we gravitate toward the book that offers the largest story with the biggest bang and the most satisfying pay-off that can be absorbed in the quickest amount of time. Short stories don't promise much of any of those--or so my bratty, coddled perspective had thought. I bought this for the cover, but trust me, the content underneath is just as compelling; each story a jolt to the mind and heart.

Within the first story, McCracken propels you through multiple narratives that graze and miss each other like a loose knot. With expert subtlety, she amps the tension and the terror, putting us in a position that we don't want to be in, but have no choice but to continue reading regardless. The story's end relieves the tension, but not without feeling like you've just pulled your finger from a live outlet.

McCracken gives us both closure, and opportunities to draw our own understandings. She sets us up for a read that is simultaneously challenging and just plain fun. Not for a moment did I feel uninterested in the myriad characters and their ruthless circumstances. Her insight into the human mind shifts its expertise from parent, to child, to sibling, to rival. Each story feels more intimate and devastating than the last--a constant, pleasurable pull between one extreme and the other. She does exactly what any author should do, which is to make us fear and love the world unconditionally.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake: Essays for the Young New Yorker, and Everyone Else

What makes this book worthy of our time as readers is an unabashed will to write about what we think no one else wants to hear about. Anyone who ever hated her job, lived near or with another human being, or has ever, even only once, used the phrase "intensive purposes," will love Sloane Crosley. The stuff we blab on about (read: complain about) over coffee is written here with a sense of humor and understanding that, if she were to actually tell you about it at brunch, you wouldn't feign interest, or raise your eyebrows in false surprise; the interest and alarm would be down right genuine.

Crosley digs into her experience as a human among humans in one of the most humanly busy cities on Earth, hitting all the corners and sides of what it is to be alive. That sounds endearing and lofty, but rest assured, she's anything but. Her frank and honest approach to her essays will make you seek out those locales where people can read without impunity, like the subway, or an abandoned warehouse. She writes in a way that is neither dumb, nor high-brow, yet her high level of brain and heart is unquestionable. Take the essay about her one night stand for example:

In the middle of the story, she explains that her suitor lived very close to her. A lesser writer would say just that: "I hooked up with a guy who lives in the same building as me. Crazy, right?"

Wrong! That's not crazy, It's boring! To spare us such tedium, Crosley puts it this way:

"He lived two apartments down from me. In fact, our apartments faced out to the same courtyard, and if we wanted to communicate through tin cans and string, we could have."

I have to hand it to Crosley for successfully calling on the childish game of telephone to illustrate the awkward concomitant tension after a one-night stand with someone you could very well see everyday. Her technique is original, intelligent, and comes from the heart. What many of us find too tangled and emotionally messy to explain, she presents with classy self-deprecation and a firm grip on what it means to keep it real.

This book is a success. I wasn't half way through by the time I considered Crosley a rockstar, and someone whose presence would turn me into a giggling pre-teen if I ever had the pleasure of being in it (this is me winking, dear Universe).

I Feel Bad About My Neck: Why haven't you read this yet?

Seriously, why not? This is my first Ephron book I've ever picked up and I could kick myself for not enjoying it sooner.

My dad actually recommended this collection of essays to me when I was in college. This is important because my dad doesn't read. As I've mentioned in my modest little bio on the side, he finds it "laborious." So, for that matter, does my boyfriend, my brother, my cousin, my cousin's boyfriend, several close friends, my cat and pretty much every teenager spark-noting Grapes of Wrath. My boyfriend put it plainly in a discussion about his favorite books. "Mmeeehhhh," he said, "books are long." I was unamused at first, but that's just it. Books really are long. In the pentagon of entertainment: movies, TV shows, songs, plays, and books, books take the longest to finish. Movies and plays can be knocked out in a few hours. Whole albums can be listened to in even less time. A novel or memoir requires long-distance focus, which is not common--and for the gosh damn record, is not the fault of Kids Today. I'm tired of Kids Today being pinioned as an army of jackasses who can't focus long enough to get past five whole pages without so much as a doodle in between. People have always purchased more books than they've read, and started more books than they've finished. Human nature dictates a struggle with long-distance. Well, my marathon fearing friends, fear no more.

 I Feel Bad About My Neck is immediately funny, consistently insightful, and evokes a range emotions from amused, curious, bereft and ultimately, satisfied. What's more, you'll finish it in less than a day. Seriously, it took me eight hours total, and I've been tested for A.D.D. twice. Ephron's one of those authors we've all heard of, and have no reason to believe her books won't be worth our time, yet we droll out, "Yeah, sure, I'll get to it." Well, get to it, damnit.

As the almighty New York Times said, "Nora Ephron can write about anything better than anyone can write about anything." There are whole fractions of me that believe this. The woman writes about her neck. Her neck! How can that possibly be interesting? She didn't get it slashed in a knife-fight, there's no snake tattoo coiled around it hissing the cursive name of a lover and for all we know, there aren't even any hickeys. Somehow, though, her neck is amazing--outstanding in its intricacies and nuances (I don't know what a nuance is, but what the hell). She may not write about anything better than anyone can write about anything, but I'm sure that no one has surmised the neck like one, Nora Ephron.

She writes well about other non-assuming things. For instance, the phonebook:

"I miss the telephone book... I miss what it stood for. Self-sufficiency. Democracy. The belief that you could find what you were looking for in a place that everyone in the world had access to."

Ask a crowded room what they think represents democracy, and you'll hear not an utterance about the phonebook. Especially not now, since phonebooks are scary and foreign next to our amazing little phones you can yell someone's name at to make a call.

Anyway.

Ephron, a writer I very much wish was still among us (not that I would meet her, nor know what to do if I met her), left us all a fantastic book you'll finish in what feels like one sitting, compared to the fat novels and bios resting on the coffee table. I zipped right through it and it takes me a whole morning and better part of the afternoon to get through the side of a cereal box.

Chances are, someone has recommended this to you, and you have not read it, like me until now. Instead, we reached for the flashier cover, or the more popular fantasy kick. Having finally read it, I can assure you, we were missing out.

I'll Give You The Sun: The next Fault In Our Stars?

I don't say that lightly. You remember reading John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, right? You probably finished it thinking, oh God, what now? You despaired, wondering how anything else was going to even come close to that good. I was there, friends. I know those feels. Of course, we found other books and enjoyed them like the soul comfort-food they are. Maybe we happened upon one that grabbed us by the collar just as fiercely as TFIOS, and instantly told our friends, neighbors, and bank tellers, "YOU MUST READ THIS." Or, perhaps nothing so wondrous has fallen into your hands; you're still browsing your personal library and the shelves of indies, guessing at which of the myriad covers contains the next story you won't ever want to finish.

Well, get the gosh-damn ready, because this is it.

Jandy Nelson's second novel, I'll Give You the Sun is so consistently good, you'll be plowing through it well past midnight. One might call it a "realistic" novel, which is to say that no one's going to magic school, or leading a resistance against a dictator. Without the flashy back-drop of evil-doing, this one's about love, loss, beauty, creating beauty, the vitality of art, and the courage of owning your own life. We've got two heroes, twins Noah and Jude. They are raised in a nuclear home with two parents: A stoic father and whimsical mother. Together, they provide opposing backdrops against which the kids develop, abandon and rediscover their creative potential among other qualities that blossom in hazardous fashions in that ever-loved coming of age period of life.

The characters are as captivating as real, breathing people. Each one is composed to feel immediately familiar despite their stranger-ness--the kind of people you lay your eyes on for the first time and know right away they'll be with you for life.

Noah is a wonderful, scattered boy. Nelson's imagination flows from her to him like a bloodline. His lines contain small bombs of wild thinking, describing the world around him as if covering the black and white pages with a mess of color and gashed lines. The text hits your head in the way some paintings hit your ears.

Jude blooms later than her brother, artistically speaking. The trope of the sibling-in-shadow takes on an interesting dynamic here, as Nelson places Jude's story three years into the future from Noah's. It's as if her story literally follows in the wake of her more gifted twin. The temporal jumps between chapters are crafted excellently, leaving us unconfused, yet just clueless enough as the two siblings appear throughout each other's narratives. The stark difference between the Jude in Noah's stories and the Jude in her own stirs curiosity the way a tragic accident sells papers. At thirteen, Jude is a thrill-seeking, surfer babe with hair so long "everyone in Northern California has to worry about getting tangled up in it." Three years later, it's gone, and her surfer friends have been replaced by a ghost--a couple actually. As if she anticipated her readers' incessant need to know what the hell happened to her, she teases us with more and more info as the chapters progress. You won't be disappointed with the delivery.

With this book, we see through the eyes of two deeply gifted and troubled artists. Except, rather than bore us with the ineffective, emo, look-at-me-don't-look-at-me tortured soul, we get Noah, who turns his sister's hair into snakes, a boy's face into pure electricity, and a calm home into the center of a hurricane. Jude's art is un-discovered throughout most of it. Despite significant resistance, she evolves into a voracious sculptor, able to chip at the edges of rocks to reveal the petrified life-form within. Both she and her brother follow treacherous paths in and out of each other's lives in an attempt to bear witness to the merciless, yet gorgeous reality of their lives. A search for truth that delivers pain and understanding in perfect tempo.

That's what Give you Sun is really about: the tedium of truth. The weaving, temporally jumping narratives stretch over 370 pages to explain how reality has far more than two sides, which proves an incredible obstacle for Noah and Jude, since there are only two of them. Truth becomes multi-faceted and its sides multiply so fast you'd have to start numbering them backwards.

I can't help but see the hopefulness in such an overwhelming number. For lack of a better reason, it promises that our curiosity and appetite for exploration of unknown things will always be satiated, since the sides of what's really there will be countless. Nelson's shape-shifting, and dazzling narrative explodes forward with imagination, spinning humor, beauty and mental bedlam in its wake--a cosmic stew concomitant to a life filled with indulgence, whim and the dripping desire to connect with those who send thunder through your chest.

Grasshopper Jungle: What the Hell Did I Just Read?

You'll finish this book with the same look on your face you'd have if your parents told you they're trying to get pregnant with the neighbors. Though it's fiction, Andrew Smith's latest novel edges into a realm of outrageousness you have to pause and digest, before compulsively turning to the next chapter. 

The story follows 16-year-old Austin, a teen boy with a handful of issues that are common enough:

- distant from parents

- bullied by idiots

- easily aroused--like, everything sets him off.

And some not-so-common issues:

- In love with his best friends, Shan (girl) and Robbie (boy).

- Obsessed with recording his own history and that of his ancestors

- Inadvertently unleashes army of man-eating insects that only want to eat and have sex with everything.

I can't help but see the humor in the latter. Smith's 7-foot-tall mantises are really just exaggerations of the teenager, a creature whose penchant for clearing out a food pantry is rivaled only by locusts, and whose sex drive is rivaled only by caged hamsters. Teenage years are a formative mess in which erections and metabolisms are at full-speed, and keeping up with those two championing gems is physical growth. Teenagers are what happen when you throw something reactive into a petri dish of unstable chemicals. In that light, Smith's monsters are the perfect metaphor. They hatch from the bodies of human hosts, start out small, grow feet over-night, and continue an existence of eating, fucking and sometimes, eating and fucking (if you know how to do this easily, let me know immediately). That right there's the over-arching metaphor to life in this book, and it works well. For all it's grotesque delight, however, that's the easy way of describing Grasshopper Jungle.

At its heart (yeah I said it) the book is about adolescence and the trifling honesty found even in young people who hardly know the world around them. Austin, our leading teen, connects his arousals, his memories, and his streaming consciousness. With a voracity that matches the mantis-soldiers' appetite, he records everything in a journal, weaving the present with heartbreaking stories of his ancestors--men and women who tried hard to live happily and were met with both joy and devastation. His compulsion to record life--to put paintings on his cave wall, as he puts it--makes history itself more appealing, and maybe even a little sexier than I remember it being in high school. 

Austin is a complex boy whose intelligence is crafted with honesty and precision. He unabashedly reveals romantic feelings for two close friends of different genders, and as if under oath, informs us of whenever something makes him think about sex, which is damn near everything. Don't be deterred by that--what he has to say about what he sees is far from the gutter. Sex is not a consistently attractive event in this explosively weird narrative, giving the idea of sex a dynamic shape. This is especially so when Austin and Robbie are trapped in a mysterious room filled with jars of odd objects--the sort you find in a sci-fi horror show--and a pack of bullies breaks in, forcing our two heroes/best friends/potential lovers beneath the shelter of a desk.

As the two boys hide, the bully pack, lead by alpha ass-hat, Grant, observe a dismembered penis in a jar of liquid. Sex swiftly goes from teenage dream (hey, Katie Perry) to Frankensteinian freak-show. The shift is used as an opportunity for Austin to lament about the life of this boy, who not too long ago, kicked the crap out of him and Robbie for being "queer." In one line, Austin sums up every bully known to man: 

"I desperately wished they'd stop talking about the penis in the jar, but Grant and his friends were like lonely parakeets in front of a mirror."

A lesser writer would not be able to capture the sad and repulsive nature of mean people so easy. If Smith can do anything, it's pack a lot of substance into a small amount of words. He doesn't leave much room for boredom, or for cheap tricks. Smart, funny, delightfully grotesque, and with an ending that will make you go What in holy hell just happened? I recommend it right away.

A YA Book Without Apocalypse: Yes, It's Possible, And Yes, It's Good

Goodreads

If this book were a graph chart, and the y axis measured levels of excitement, the x measuring page number, the line traveling along the x axis would flutter near the bottom until around the 200th page. Then it shoots up. Morals come crashing down on young Philip's teenage brain and the sense of clarity he gains is as satisfying to him as it will be to you, the reader.

As for the beginning, I was hoping to laugh more. Klauss is a writer for College Humor, and several endorsements on the cover sell the book's comedy. Personally, I felt that for all the promises other authors made about it being funny, it fell short. It shouldn't take over 150 pages to start chuckling when humor is what you're essentially promised.

However, the comments are not all off base; Klauss does an excellent job with charging the hero, Phillip, with asking questions that we all need to ask ourselves, our kin, and our mentors if we want to survive. Philip's story is not about the world physically ending; it's about what an end means to us, and thinking, loving, hating and guessing human beings. Bits of clarity sparkle in the beginning and middle, and by the end, like I said, understanding comes crashing down like a bucket of sun. I don't like to even give a shadow of a spoiler, but it's worth mentioning the device of how the story develops, because after 300 pages, you'll be glad you didn't put it down.

This book is a good read for teens, adults, atheists and christians, and well, everybody you wouldn't normally find in a room together. There isn't any strong alliance with one particular audience. Regardless of their various faiths and temperaments, the characters are people first, and believers second. Don't get impatient if the characters don't reveal the juiciest parts of their personalities. Like meeting people in real life, Klauss asks us to be patient in getting to know them. 

The cover design, which Klauss himself admits is attractive, looks like the story reads. Much of it is raw and vibrant--but like one color, it sometimes begs for something a little more. Then, as if he anticipated that desire from wherever he was typing out Philip's coming of age, it explodes with well-tailored chaos.

The Book Thief: Far Better Than Nazi Germany

There are some stories that read like an old soul reminiscing with a moat of eager listeners, and there are others that read like a hushed and urgent whisper, coming from a friend who is practically spilling over with secrets. The Book Thief is both.

Death narrates and he (yes, he), has stories to tell and an appreciation for spoilers. He's not giving us cliffhangers to keep us fiending for the next page. For Death, who is trapped to the tedious burden of gathering souls, the big events (characters' deaths, for one) aren't enough. He spoils several of them halfway through, and with hardly an apology. Rather than keep us tilting on the edge of our seats, he wants us to appreciate the nuances and details of the characters' lives in full appreciation before they're gone. "I don't have much interest in mystery," he says, "Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me."Markus Zusak creates a narrator that wants us to savor the meal, rather than scoff it down.

By knowing which characters will not survive by the last page, we focus harder on them. Their actions, smirks and words sit a little more beautifully in our minds, now that we are agonizingly aware of their mortality. Doesn't chocolate taste better when you know there isn't any more in the box? By spoiling a few major events, Death implores us to enjoy what we can before it's too late. And still, even with this cushion of knowing the future, you will not cry any less when Death reaches in and grabs their souls. He doesn't rob us of the opportunity to be shocked and overwhelmed. The experience simply, and effectively, moves us with something more profound than an assassination or otherwise eventful plot-twist.

Which leads me to why this isn't a typical story about Nazi Germany, or World War II. Yes, the Nazis and the war play major roles in how these characters cross each other's paths, but they're the stage and the set, not the players. The players weave the real story, which is one of innocence lost, and making irrevocable choices. When you lose innocence, that means you've become aware; you've realized that you have the power to make a decision. Eve, for instance, lost her innocence when she was faced with the decision to either eat the apple from the tree of knowledge or remain in paradise. Liesel, the book thief, is faced with similar decisions, and more often than not, she takes the contraband despite the risk of punishment. Her loss of innocence didn't come from sex, like the phrase unfortunately implies. Innocence is nothing more than ignorance. Is it coincidence that Eve was tempted at the Tree of Knowledge? Liesel has no interest in innocence, so she takes the apples (sometimes literally, and sometimes in bulk) when they present themselves. That's what this book is about: losing innocence so that survival becomes more than waking up; it turns into a challenge to come back from sleep with a sharper mind, a fiercer ability to love, and a taste for trouble. this is why Death describes her as a "perpetual survivor," an "expert at being left behind,"which is why he tells her story. Of the heaps of souls he's encountered and carried, she is among a handful that are worth not only remembering, but also sharing. It's as if Markus Zusak himself is telling us to grab the apples, if only for Death, an immortal whose soul-bearing burden is lifted by the delight of our own mischief.

Salvage The Bones: Failed Poet Twists the Grotesquerie Of Life Into A Thing Of Beauty

Goodreads

In her own words, Jesmyn Ward is a "failed poet." At face value, this statement sounds like another lofty, author-y quip that makes many of us roll our eyes. After reading Salvage though, you understand. Ward is an extremely talented wordsmith. She's the kind of writer that was supposed to be a poet, but somehow tripped and fell into prose. This is mostly a good thing.

Early on, we're treated to lines like this: "Seeing him broke the cocoon of my rib cage, and my heart unfurled to fly," (5). It's brief, beautiful, and for a moment, we drift away from a novel into what could be the start, climax, or ending to a really good poem. We know, however, that we are not in a poem; we are reading fiction. At times, the elaborate images can ware on you as you trudge through a narrative that practically bruises the pages with motherless survival and ever impending storms. There's no questioning the skill in her "poetry," but within the prose, it seems out of place at times, like an extra spoon at a table setting. Don't be dissuaded though: the dramatic imagery certainly makes a home for itself in the subjects of the story--the current and imminent hurricanes overhead of a desperate family.

The impending "storms" are both literal and figurative, the former being none other than Ms. Katrina. The figurative spin around young pregnancy, dog-fighting, and a motherless girl in a family of men. You don't get any story about Katrina without lines that turn your stomach, and force your eyes open to the grotesqueries of life. Namely, childbirth. Perhaps the most vivid passage is when our young hero, Esch, describes the birth of her younger brother and subsequent death of her mother:

"I can see her, chin to chest, straining to push Junior out, and Junior snagging on her insides, grabbing hold of what he caught on to try and stay inside her, but instead he pulled it out with him when he was born" (4).

Consider this line a gift. Now, you can say that being a mom is the hardest job with conviction, rather than an obligation to tinkle kindly in polite society.

From the beginning, Ward treats us to a savage image of survival, and a heart rendering image of relief (page 5),  setting the tone for a bloody, messy, and--miraculously--hopeful narrative of a young girl trying to stay alive.

Tampa: The Most Wicked Thing On Your Shelf

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This is going to chill you a bit before you even get halfway through. You probably won't look down your own street the same way for a little while. Celeste Price is a 8th grade teacher and pedophile. Her appetite for 14-year-old boys is insatiable and her ability to hide her secret is borderline sociopathic. Not unlike hearing a broadcast of a school teacher who slept with a student in your neighborhood, Tampa will hang on your shoulder when you peer down your street, lined with otherwise unassuming households. You'll be sure to remind yourself that not only can you be unsure of what's taking place within those homes, you can also not be sure what kinds of thoughts and desires are spinning behind the eyes of your neighbors. Suddenly everyone has an invisible finger dipped in some kind of wickedness, and the really jarring part is that mixed in with the fear of potential secrets, you've got a budding curiosity.

I don't mean to make you paranoid. I want to make it clear that fear is no decent cage to lock yourself in--because really, it isn't a cage; it's a box. The only path outside of it is a hole just big enough to suck oxygen through, yet too small to peer out of. And you don't want that, do you? You would rather read about a murderer than protect your innocence from a frightening character. You read things like Tampa, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. You're probably trying like hell to catch up on Breaking Bad. This is because you know that wicked people make for good stories. When a good brain, like Oscar Wilde's, Fay Weldon's and Vince Gilligan's are put to the task of making that story into something we can sink our teeth and claws into, we get exactly what we want out of these villains, or rather, these anti-heroes. The reward is an exposure of wickedness that is so unabashed and honest that you can't help but revel in the quality of the work. The evilness in the character is not chaotic or randomly dangerous; it's deliberate, unwavering, and chillingly human. It's what Alissa Nutting has tapped into with this book.

Nutting writes like a psychologist who's been around forever. Celeste Price's observations of the people around her are so fluid and bright that you constantly find yourself at war with your distaste for her criminal activity. Since I mentioned cages earlier, I'll use an excerpt where Celeste contemplates the captivity of souls within the bodies of middle aged women while she's trying to spy on a student from her car:

Their silhouettes eclipsed my binocular view and I looked up to watch them saunter off, elbows out, rowing through the air like impotent wings. Were there souls left inside these women? It seemed doubtful. The soul had always struck me as being a tricky thing to keep with the body: an easily bored aristocrat with the means to leave whenever it wished. What temptations, what vistas were their lives of folding socks and online diet-plan message boards offering? The goosey (sic) flesh of their limbs was not in rhythm. What facile cages for a spirit hell-bent on sneaking out, the bodies of these women.

How wrong, or misguided is she? Is this the unusually bright, albeit superficial mind of a teenager, trapped in the body of an educated 27 year-old? Either way, what goes on in Celeste's head is not fit for polite society... obviously. We have to admit, however, that these thoughts are not reserved for women parked outside teenagers' houses with a pair of binoculars. For as long as women have been women, the societal gaze upon their bodies has been relentless, and often brutal. Nutting allows us to explore these observations as if Celeste is a vehicle for what we openly agree is wrong, but privately consider anyway.

And within this passage, this matter-of-fact consideration of the "soul" and of these women, is desperation, which might explain deviancy, if only in part. In order to keep her soul intact and within her body, she must avoid the monotonous life she sees many women living out in her neighborhood. She is afraid that others might observe her body and being as Nature's failed attempt to make something beautiful enough to be worth the lustful attention of those she desires. There is weakness in her cold assessment of these women, and weakness is a very natural thing. In the eyes of those women, Celeste is a gorgeous specimen either at subject to their envy, or indifference. Those who did get to know her, truly--those wise to her secret desires--would likely cut their descriptive powers down to one simple word, "monster." Where is the enlightenment, or dare I say it, fun in that?

Looking through eyes of the villain is a rare opportunity we get as readers, or even as movie goers and video game players for that matter. We are always with the good guy, the hero. We're with Harry Potter, and Superman on the side of righteousness and virtue; the side of nobility in the face of death and cruelty. This is all good--in life we want to bring harm to no one and be kind to all, ideally. However, as consumers of entertainment, we limit ourselves to a very cushioned experience as readers. We fool ourselves into thinking there are immoral books that, if read, will contaminate our minds and our desires. We are afraid of being won over by Celeste Price, and then possibly becoming her.

This is an unfounded fear. No book is going to singlehandedly make you into a sex offender. If you somehow become a sex offender after reading this, I guarantee no sensible judge is going to let you go and throw her behind bars. You'll be changed after this book, like with any good book, but you won't be unrecognizable from your old self. I give Nutting a lot of credit for her writing, but she's not a witch; she's an author. A really good one who just doesn't have the face of someone who wants you to sleep with the members of One Direction (see book jacket for image).

4 out of 5 stars.

What The Family Needed: A Family Of Heroes You Won't Believe Aren't Real

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I'm all in for this one.

Before we even meet the family, they've cracked. A mother and her two children are already moving away to a sister’s house in paradisiac suburbia. Instantly, we realize this book’s universe did not begin on page one. Readers will find themselves bursting with curiosity, and eager to get to the next page already. We don’t even see the mother, Ruth, pile her children into her blue hatchback, and leave her husband looking down (or not looking at all) at them as they take off. By they time they arrive at her sister's "peaceful" home, we’ve only been racing along the blue hatchback for the last sliver of that fateful car ride. In less than two pages, we’re informed of this pre-existing universe. A lesser writer would have taken longer.

Speaking of temporality and our collective need to hurry the hell up and enjoy ourselves, Steven Amsterdam wastes no ink. The first chapter follows Giordana, who acquires the ability to render herself invisible. The source of the power isn’t revealed. Giordana has her suspicions of the source, and where they lie create the potential for a delightful unfolding later on in the story. An economically wise decision, which successfully keeps our curiosity as readers on a steady tap.

Delightful might be the wrong term, considering the amount of contained dysfunction amidst our heroes. And I say heroes because we are treated to the perspectives of every main character—all seven—over different periods of time, separated by decades. Amsterdam seems to understand the reader’s intrinsic taste for gossip and drama with the way this book is structured. The characters that barely speak, or don’t even make an appearance in one chapter, are cracked wide open in their respective chapters. The gift of perspective he treats us to is truly a privilege.

Not only that, but Amsterdam’s talents for description and clarity are unrivaled. The revelation of each superpower is not a saccharine, operatic ascension to the super-hero’s pedestal. With humility, and simplicity he guides his characters through these sudden developments that are so believable, it’s nearly breathtaking. Take Giordana’s disappearing:

From the veranda, she could see that the street was still. A few cars sat in driveways and not even a breeze through the evenly spaced trees. Giordana went back inside to make a quick round of the house without the house knowing. She lessened herself. Looked down: no legs, no arms. Ace, She trusted her senses to know she was not just a floating head. Proprioception, the feeling of your body in space. What was it called when your body was there but not there? She took the stairs with her hands up, as if it was a balancing act.

Giordana is not placed in—brace for irony—an invisible realm reserved for beings with super ability. There isn’t a spot reserved for her on Olympus from where she can observe weaker beings. She’s hardly even made into the quintessential, and exhausted portrait of the girl who’s "not like other girls." Her human curiosity and lack of assurance in the face of new power are very much there. In this regard, Amsterdam's approach to a girl feeling empowered by her invisibility is as refreshing as it is enticing.

What won’t surprise you is the link between the characters' humanity and their super-ness. The powers reflect their desires and their flaws, which are the main ingredients to personality. And although the connections between super power and personality is a method old as time, Amsterdam doesn’t lose steam and neither will you as you read. Each hero is illustrated brilliantly; they each, within the space of a single chapter, read as more than figments of Amsterdam's remarkable imagination. This comes from a kind of story-telling that is unabashedly honest, and composed with dedication to each word.

As I stood reading a borrowed copy of this book, I decided I needed my own before I got to page five. When I eventually arrived at it's ending, I went right back to page one.

5 out of 5 stars.

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time: A New Kind Of Hero We Need To Know.

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At the risk of sounding ignorant (okay, of admitting ignorance), I feel as though I've gained ten times as more insight into Asperger's Syndrome than I had before I read this. I don't know whether Haddon did ten months of research, or ten years, or ten days, but I believe him--as if he, the author, is unable to lie just like Christopher John Francis Boone, the story's hero. The subject of truth makes plenty cameos, but they are not all are as simple as a question and an honest-to-God answer (especially since Christopher is steadfastly atheist).

This is how Haddon captivates you: as you follow his story, you realize that the hard lines and angles of Christopher's mind are not as solid as he, Christopher, initially promises. He simply tells us that he cannot tell lies, as if the wiring of his brain doesn't permit it. Yet, as we follow the narrative, we learn that his staggering ability to tell the truth matches his penchant for half-truths, white lies and even deception.

Christopher's deception is borne of a passionate desire to write a book about the murder of a neighbor's dog. The presence of passion in the heart of someone who is all brain, so to speak, makes you root for him, especially when his dishonesty is crafted so closely to the margins of his own logical mandate of telling the truth. Here is a boy with social skills so lacking he barks at those who come near, yet he shares the same lofty ambition with every person who ever took a writing class.

 of beguiling truth bring a largely unfamiliar kind of mind and the more typical mind together, separated by difference that seems only as thick as a mirror. Things so dissonant as math and literature seem not like the antitheses to each other but rather like distant relatives, the kind you meet awkwardly and then suddenly feel you've known forever.

Like an actual sibling or relative, you will get fed up with Christopher, but not ever enough to abandon him. His honesty and careful effusiveness as a writer leaves you so little room to not understand the parts of him that are dark and profoundly human. A strong pinch of your happiness depends on his fate, especially when he discovers who really killed that dog. Christopher is curious, determined, scared, and far more like you than you expect.

If you haven't read this yet, do. Haddon gives us the pleasure of a gripping story, and a sense of clarity that turns Asperger's and autism on its heels to appear less like disability and more as a difference for us to put against the back drop of our own scattered minds.

4 out of 5 stars

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said the main character in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has autism. While that isn't necessarily false, the clarification must be made that Christopher has Asperger's Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Click here to learn what the difference is under "Characteristics."

The Fault In Our Stars: Refreshing, Heartbreaking, and Triumphantly Un-put-down-able

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We don't tend to love books whose main characters are terminal. We spend our days occupying ourselves with work and play to avoid the reality that since we are all aging, we are all dying. No one leaps at the chance to read the story of a girl with stage 4 thyroid cancer--too depressing. I'm telling you now to not let that determine your decision whether to pick this one up. As someone with his own fear complex regarding death and oblivion, I can say without a doubt that The Fault In Our Stars is the exception.

On the first page, Hazel, the protagonist, says "But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.)" From there on out, the tone is set. Hazel's statement sounds depressing at first, but really, she is giving us some very good news: since everything is a side effect of dying, and everything we do can be considered the matter that makes up our lives, then dying is evidence that we have lived, that we wear our existence in the form of cuts on our knees, white hair, and laugh lines branching from the outmost corners of our eyes. Dying means that you existed.

Granted, I don't think I've cried more from reading a book than when I read this. John Green makes it near impossible to not love Hazel and Augustus, the "gorgeous plot-twist" she meets at a cancer support group. Both characters are drawn with dry senses of humor, sharp wit and profound perspectives on what it means to be alive and fall in love. From what I gathered, it usually means accepting the fact that joys and tragedies are often concomitant of one another. When something builds up joy, that joy, by having simply been built, is at risk of being brought down by one of the myriad side effects of dying (or living).

If there were ever a call to action in Green's novel, it would be to let yourself do both. Live and love despite the ensuing tragedy of one day losing what you love or being lost from the world yourself. Tomorrow, after all, is guaranteed to no one. Cancer grows without an eye for the character or benevolence of its host, and cars with distracted drivers come out of nowhere. Which, I guess, is a dramatic way of saying, shit happens.

Here's a minor/major spoiler alert depending on how you read. It speaks loudly and clearly to the very idea of shit happening and it not being our fault.

If you're anything like the twelve-year-old school girl living in my brain, you'll love that Green references the title in the novel. It happens when Augustus writes to Hazel's favorite author for her in an attempt to get him explain the ending of her favorite book. They get a letter back from him, and he points out that the "Shakespearean complexity of [their] tragedy," stems from how ill Hazel is at this point and how not ill Augustus is, a microcosmic comparison of all the sick people in the world and all those that are healthy:

"Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is in the nature of our stars to cross and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves'... but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars."

The 'Fault,' capital F, in our stars is the simple metaphor of life's gargantuanly complex (spoiler: Green likes adverbs) and relentless nature. The biggest fault in us, and there definitely is one, is denying ourselves the indulgence of what we love. Regardless of the paths our stars make when they cross, though terrible they may be, refusing to take part is to refuse the prospect of happiness and all its side effects. For compassion, we sacrifice our contentedness, and then live with the eruptions of both joy and tragedy that wear on both our skin and our two hearts--the one physically beating in our chests and the figurative one that makes us beat on our chests.

As a playful Augustus puts it:

"... [even when] the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us."
"They will robot-laugh at our courageous folly... But something in their iron robot hearts will yearn to have lived and died as we did: on the hero's errand."

Green's novel is the exception to the sad-cancer-genre for this reason: it makes it absolutely clear that rewarding our survival with joy is, in fact, heroic.

5 out of 5 stars

Golden Boy: What happens when a prominent family tries to hide the fact that their son is both male and female? A story fit for tabloids.

The point of the irrevocable, and those who either walk past it willingly or are dragged by the betrayal of another, all make for a good story. In Golden Boy that line is crossed early on, though I won't say how exactly because that will ruin it. The rest of the novel shows the quiet, ebullient free-fall of intersex Max and his mother Karen; the fierce, and persistent war-cries of his ten-year old brother, Daniel, who wants (and deserves) to be taken seriously; and the unwavering acceptance of his father, Steve. You see, Max is special: an over-achieving, angelically good-looking star-athlete who is at once both male and female, and yet, neither as well. He is what we no longer in polite society call, a hermaphrodite.

You can't help but imagine Abigail Tarttelin thinking up the story: Pupils dilated with anticipation of the chaos that would ensue after giving two publicly prominent figures an intersex love-child. Yet, there is a tenderness to Tarttelin's writing. She is not a Pan, God of Mischief. She's more like the grown-up version of a child who likes to smash her toys and see how they come apart. Tarttelin, unlike a precocious brat surrounded by dismembered dinosaurs, knows how to put things back together and then some.

Secrets are revealed and the characters stretch desperately like rubber bands and snap back, often with understanding, and often with more questions than answers. The largest question being, is being normal really worth it? In exploring this idea, we come to understand the difference between behaving normally, and seeming normal to those looking in (which, in the Walkers' case, is the whole damn town). The definition of normal is turned and tossed like a raw pizza dough. You'll find that as Max learns more about his body (with the help of the underplayed Dr. Archie Verma) both the definition of normalcy and very value of mimicking those around him ebb and flow. Being normal may take more energy than he realizes, and giving up on that endeavor might really be the courageous effort of loving his whole self, the leap of acceptance he needs to survive.

If anything, this book is a lesson in reacting to the idea that something is "wrong" with you. With a remarkable wisdom, Tarttelin asks all the questions for us and answers them only so much as to leave room for our sense of wonder to still buzz in the margins. Like a true British novelist, she abides by the law that, like the dead, secrets will up like weeds in the garden, and when they do sprout, havoc will reek. That is, until someone throws tidiness to the wind and digs elbow deep to take care of it.

(Side note: while reading this, I put together that "hermaphrodite" is the marriage of Hermes, and Aphrodite, two gods who I'm pretty sure banged and as a result, conceived a child called Hermaphroditos. Neat, huh?)

4 out of 5 stars

What Is the What: Great writing, slow plot, flickers of humor.

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Yes, what is the what? What kind of question is that? It's so baffling, I almost want to ask, how is that question? Furthermore, what grounds does caucasian Eggers have for writing about a black man in the middle of a Sudanese civil war? The title alone of Egger's most popular novel reads like a code. You'd have to be a rock to not at least want to flip through the pages to get a whiff of understanding.

After reading the whole damn thing, it turns out the question/title itself has less to do with the race and location of the protagonist, than it does with the fact that he has a choice: stay within Africa and face deadly conflict, or leave to an unknown. The What, it seems, is not only the concept of opportunity, but also abandonment of what is familiar. In the heat and tumult of conflict between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the citizens of Sudan and nearby countries are pitted with the choice of either remaining where they are, or fleeing to somewhere else--in many cases, remaining put means committing suicide. Arab mercenaries, a powerful and corrupt government, and the merciless heat and wildlife of Africa do not seem to spare those who decide not to run away.

Like most novels by Eggers, this story does not move quickly. I would love to read this in a class rather than read it on my own. The book is 535 pages of violence, history and personal narrative told to us by the part fictional, part autobiographical protagonist, Valentino Deng. The story of his escape from Africa is framed within the story of his adaptation to America. It's a heart-cleaving narrative in which Deng's loneliness and helplessness are palpable. 

You will want to step into the pages and help Deng with things non-immigrants have the privilege of doing with relative ease: seeking help from the police, getting medical attention, getting into school, getting a job, getting married, being noticed when something goes wrong. 

Much of the novel takes place on a long, perilous walk from Sudan all the way to Kakuma (which is fucking far). You witness starvation, thirst, death by lions, death by exhaustion, death by madness and death by simple submission. This alone will make any reader look up from the page and think, "Thank god I was born here in Blahblasville, CT." Egger's portrait of death in this story it worth reading, for the shear simplicity in how he explains the tremendous weight of losing someone when all there is left of hope is someone nearby who will shake you when you start to lose it:

"His eyes slowly closed and I ran to get our share of the animal. While I was gone, the life in William K fell away and his flesh returned to the earth.

It was easier to die now... I had assumed that dying always took place over those many hours in the dark. But William K had done something different. He only stopped walking, sat under a truee, closed his eyes, and was gone. I had returned with a finger's worth of meat to share with him and found his body already cold... I sat next to him for some time. In my hand his hand became warm again... I knew the vultures would be circling... I decided I would bury him, even if it meant that I would lose my place with the group... I no longer had any faith in our journey or in our guides... we would walk and die until all boys were gone" (217)

It's a lot of ink to get through, but simply by comparison, Eggers' invention and recording of this refugee's story gives us a lot of time to realize we have it pretty good.

It's not all sad, thankfully. It's not outright hilarious, but there is humor. As a boy, Valentino's father explains to him that they, the Dinka, are superior to the Arabs. This becomes interesting when the Deng family has several Arabs over for dinner. Valentino loses a small but potent bit of innocence when he thinks, "[My father] was sure that the Arabs knew they were inferior to the Dinka, but he knew it would not be polite to explain this to them at dinner" (63). It's not far from what we might find in a small suburb in Connecticut: The Jones's have the Carter family over for dinner, all the while, Ms. Jones smiles widely, knowing that Mr. Carter has a penchant for seducing the local swim instructor, and that Ms. Carter simply pretends to not smell the chlorine in his hair. Ms. Jones may blab to her other friends, and to the grocer, and the crossing guard if there's time, but at dinner, she's mum. Call her a superficial gossip, but never a bad host. Valentino's father reminds me of my fictional Ms. Jones in this way, and it's delightful. If you want to get through a book weighted down with genocide and children being eaten by lions, you have to look hard for the humor that wiggles between the lines, rather than wait for it to dance across the page. Noticing it when it's harder to see, I find, is more rewarding. 

However, I definitely needed more of it.

What Eggers does most obviously well is illustrate the odd consequences of freedom. Valentino struggles for his freedom throughout the entire novel, but whenever he achieves one level of it, he is burdened still with the responsibility of having to choose what to do with it. Being freed from any kind of prison, emotional or physical, leaves us with the responsibility to do well in it. Eggers creates a narrative that forces us to examine freedom as a blessing and as a demon howling its catch in our ear.

3 out of 5 stars

Bring Up The Bodies: For the smart reader with a taste for revenge and cruel intentions.

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Bring Up the Bodies is a story that reads like a ghost feels. The presence of what is not there, feels, in fact, very much there. The tensions of dying friends and family members, and of enemies plotting in the other corners of country, house and room all sit above each line. Hillary Mantel knew what she was doing when she chose such ghostly subjects; it feels as if the dead read over your shoulder as you follow Cromwell, Master Secretary to King Henry, through a fine-tuned tale of power, struggle and desperate revenge. Go into it knowing well that Anne Boleyn will literally lose her head among other things. Look for what she keeps intact and for what she lobs off the survivors before the axe drops on her neck.

This historical fiction is a hard read. You can't speed through it lest the dozens of characters blend into one faceless man whose coat tails continually whip out of sight (there is a lot of whipping out of sight). Thankfully, before the story begins, Mantel includes a cast of characters and text explaining their loyalties. Nevertheless (remember this word and it's cousin: however), the cast of characters will not be enough to grasp the twists and hidden meanings. Read and re-read. I was lucky enough to read a copy that has my former professor's notes in it. I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much without her circlings and notes in the margins.

Read along with a friend. It will be a good substitute for gossip; just as delicious and without the eventual consequence of an awkward brunch after your loose friend, Mary, finds out you blabbed about that mysterious rash she acquired from a man who really "felt a connection with her." 

Seriously though, if you pay attention and piece this story together, it'll grab you by the collar as if it were a ghost shocked back to life.

4 out of 5 stars