Blah, Blah, Blah, Books

And then there were three.

Saturday was book club and due to moving plans and feverish foreheads, our band of five had dwindled down to three literary pals and one cookie-loving four-year-old. I’ve been meaning to do a retrospective of the year’s book club selections for a while now; I’m going to do a version of that today. These are the titles we’ve read, roughly in order from my least favorite to my choice of bestest-bookclub-book ever.

To start: the one book I completely missed was AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaimon. I skipped this one because I knew that I could not make the book club meeting--but to be honest, with any of the others I probably would have read them anyway, meeting or no meeting. I just couldn't make myself excited about this one. I did go out and buy it. But it made me kind of uncomfortable to step into the science fiction section of the Borders.

The fact is, I am rarely one to get into anything resembling science fiction, crime fiction, historical romance, dragon stories, or any other books that are published exclusively in the pocket-size editions. My tastes are specific and tend to be a bit narrow: I like contemporary fiction by writers with some edge of cynicism or wariness about the world. I tend to like books that don’t make you feel very happy. I like Philip Roth. I like John Irving. I like Michael Chabon. I like Zadie Smith. I like Jhumpa Lahari. But I need to branch out.

That’s why I am in a book club. It encourages me to read books that I would not have otherwise chosen (and to drink wine and eat cheese and chat and gossip and debate with four lovely ladies on a regular basis).

Unless I get snooty and skip it. Anyhow, back to the task at hand.

And remember—these are quick-shot impressions of these books--often months and months after I actually read them. But it is what has stayed with me over time.

GHOSTS by John Banville
Simply put: this book was boring. The text was dense but with little payoff. Blah, blah, blah prison. Blah, blah, blah island. Very little actually happened so we spent a lot of time examining the mental landscapes of the characters, and after page upon page of re-visiting, they just weren’t interesting enough to hold my attention.

AHAB’S WIFE by Sena Jeter Naslund
The story was all over the place and the writing was a bit too frilly and adorned for me. One highlight of the book is the continued snicker HPMelon and I get from exclaiming “Let friends increase!” and “It’s okay that you slept with your dwarf sister, because I ate people”. See-you gotta read the book to understand that! Now maybe you want to? That said I did enjoy the history that came with the story, which painted a vivid picture of pre-civil war America. And cannibalism. And anal rape. Right? Who knew.

RATS: OBSERVATIONS ON THE HISTORY AND HABITAT OF THE CITY’S MOST UNWANTED INHABITANTS by Robert Sullivan
This has been out only non-fiction book of the bunch. It was engaging, though I think I had a different experience than the other bc members. I loved the extensive footnotes while the others found them tiresome. It was in the footnotes where a lot of the more obscure NY city history was elaborated on, and since I am fascinated by the history of NYC, I would eat it up in any form. The actual task that Sullivan set out for himself—to examine and analyze a particular alley and the rat hierarchy that existed there—felt a little bit forced. Like he’d put it in his proposal and then had to write about it, even though there weren’t any huge revelations that came out of it. That said, there are a lot of great tidbits about the rodents themselves and the city they lord over here.

TERRORISM by John Updike
This was our latest book. It’s an easy read, extremely digestible and for the most part it kept me hooked. I read it when I had several different stimuli teaching me all about Islam (this book included) which felt both synchronistic and a bit overwhelming. I did sense at times that the book couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a pulpy kind of action/crime/political story or a more serious examination of character and faith. There is some beautiful, sparkling passages of writing and then there are sections that feel undercooked and contrived. Worthwhile, not flawless.

Okay, bored yet? I’m going to take a break here and do the remaining seven books tomorrow. The rest of the list are all books I would recommend without caveat. They too have their strengths and weaknesses, but they were all magnificent examples of writing within their respective genres. So stay tuned for that.

Right now I’m looking up our next selection on Amazon.com: The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolano. I’m excited about it. And I read THE GOLDEN COMPASS this weekend and loved it. This was surprising to me as I’ve always been that person to say “I don’t have enough time in my life to read the books I really feel I should read before I leave this planet, so I will not spend that time reading children’s books” which basically translated to: “I don’t want to read HARRY POTTER and nothing you can say will make me want to.” But THE GOLDEN COMPASS was so exquisite and complex in its examination of life and relationships and growing up, against a backdrop of fabulous action and imagery and magic, that I was hooked for several days. And, ummm, crying at several points. It is a dark and beautiful book and I was so jazzed to follow along with a female heroine.