The Shortcut Man

AUTHOR: P.G. Sturges

PUBLISHED: 2011

GENRE: Mystery

Dick Henry is a shortcut man. 

Say you’ve got a tenant who won’t pay the rent, but won’t move out.  His mother died (despite having died already), and he’s in bankruptcy (despite continually lugging in new electronic equipment), and he knows his rights, so he’s not going anywhere.  You call Dick Henry, and that tenant will be moved out by the next day.  Just make sure you’re not too squeamish about his tactics.  Come to think of it, just don’t ask about his tactics. 

Dick Henry’s other hobby is Lynette, his lover, who appears and disappears whenever she pleases.  Henry wants to end it but can’t walk away from the explosive chemistry they share.  But when Henry, Lynette, and a really big job get all mixed up together, that explosive chemistry threatens to turn deadly.*

This is the debut novel of P.G. Sturges, who is the son of playwright and screenwriter Preston Sturges, who, according to Wikipedia, elevated the genre of slapstick to another level, which makes me like him.  Sturges, Jr. is a strong writer and the story moves quickly, but once again I find myself asking the practical questions.  No one minds that this guy is going around town beating people up on a regular basis?  “He’s really good friends with the police department” is the explanation we get.  Really? The entire Los Angeles PD? (Go ahead, make your joke about the LAPD and beating people up now.)  He asks a lot of his few friends, including but not limited to having them lie, having them steal, and having them misuse a dead body.  But maybe I just need to relax and go with the flow. 

I read this entire book while in the back of our van on a recent trip to my in-laws’ house.  (My husband set up a nice little resting space for me, knowing that I would be far more likely to get out of bed at 4 a.m. if I could be assured there would be another bed in my near future.)  It was a very pleasant way to pass the time on what is normally a very long trip.  The next time we head down south, I just might have to take Sturges’s next novel.

LENGTH: 224 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: Sure.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: The fact that I read it in the back of a moving van**, and that I couldn’t really remember the ending 4 days later should probably speak to you about the depth of the story.  Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable read and a good debut.

*I think my next job should be writing promos for Crime TV television movies, given my penchant for summaries that could easily end in “DUM DUM DUM!”. 

**That’s a van that’s moving, not a van that hauls boxes from one house to the next.  But that’s neither here nor there.  Hey, I made a pun.  Moving?  Here nor there?  No?  Okay, never mind.

Little Bee

AUTHOR: Chris Cleave
PUBLISHED: 2008
GENRE: Fiction

The back cover of this book begs the reader not to reveal too much about this story, so I won't.  But it will be obvious to anyone who reads just a few pages of this book that there will not be a very happy ending. 

That doesn't mean it's not totally worth it.

Little Bee is a Nigerian refugee who has just been released from a British immigration center, where she has spent the last two years watching the walls.  The only connection she has to England is a driver's license bearing the name Andrew O'Rourke, who lives outside London.  How Little Bee came to London, her connection to Andrew and his wife Sarah, and the effect they will have on each other's lives folds out over time.  The slow reveal works perfectly as layer upon layer build into fully-formed characters. 

The first-person narration switches between Sarah and Little Bee.  Sometimes Little Bee addresses the reader directly, and sometimes she speaks as if she is explaining her story to the girls in her village.  These are the best parts of the story.  Little Bee's voice is natural and effortless.  Cleave's writing makes the poignant story all  the more beautiful.


LENGTH: 266 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Yes
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes.  It's beautifully written, and the back-and-forth between Little Bee and Sarah easily keeps your attention.

Before I Go to Sleep

AUTHOR: S. J. Watson

PUBLISHED: 2011

GENRE: Thriller/Mystery

Every night, when Christine goes to sleep, she forgets everything about herself.  EVERYTHING.  When she wakes up in the morning, the only thing she knows is that she is in bed with a strange man in a strange house with no idea how she got there.  Every morning, the strange man, who is really her husband, Ben, must coach her through her panic, reminding her – or to her, telling her for the first time – that she was in an accident that obliterated her memory.  She is able to remember what happens throughout the day, but once her eyes shut at night, whatever she knows is gone.  Completely reliant on Ben, she can only trust that what he is telling her is true.  But then she gets a call from a man claiming to be her doctor, who tells her of a journal she is keeping, a journal in which she has written, in big, bold letters, “DON’T TRUST BEN.”

Uh-oh.

Christine sets herself to finding out the truth about her accident, a task made extraordinarily difficult by the fact that she must write everything down, and each morning, must re-read what she is written every single day before.  If the journal is lost, or Dr. Nash does not call to remind her of it, she has no idea that it or her quest exist.  Slowly, she begins to regain what she believes to be memory but what others tell her are only mistaken delusions.  Soon enough, she knows she can only rely on herself to determine what is real and what isn’t.

Watson’s story is very compelling and, despite the nature of Christine’s injury, not repetitive.  The story does become so convoluted at times that what’s happening in the journal, what isn’t, and what’s simply daydreams become hard to separate.  Also difficult to believe is that day in and day out, her husband and her doctor are willing to re-explain every detail to her.  When Christine reunites with an old friend, that friend is willing to spill a half-story and then let Christine wander off, alone and lost.  At home, Ben allows Christine to wake up every day, terrified and lost, in a very intimate situation with someone she does not know at all, which seems unnecessarily cruel.  He lines the bathroom mirror with pictures of their life together, but Christine finds them only after she has panicked and fled from him in terror.  In the end, it makes sense (and that’s all I can say about that), but until then, it’s a little frustrating and forced. 

Also forced are the journal sections of the story, which takes up quite a bit of the narrative.   In the journal, Christine recreates entire conversations, word for word, and hours of action, all while hiding from her husband in the bathroom before dinner and in the office at night.  For someone with a memory problem, that’s pretty impressive.  I have no such issues and can’t remember conversations 10 minutes after I’ve had them. 

Before I Go to Sleep is unsuccessful in that it varies wildly between Christine’s utter dependence (Ben must tell her the story every day) and complete independence (she goes for trips to hospitals and to see friends, and writes pages and pages in her journal, without him ever knowing).  Despite this, it is a compelling story, and one worth reading.  Some people will probably see the ending coming, but there are enough twists and turns to keep even a skeptic going.

LENGTH: 368 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: Very.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes, although it does require a bit of suspension of disbelief. 

Past Perfect

AUTHOR: Susan Isaacs

PUBLISHED: 2007

GENRE: Thriller

This is the first of my attempts to find an author I haven’t read but that has a large bibliography and try that author out.  Susan Isaacs is apparently pretty big in her genre, so I picked the title that was also a verb tense and read away.

Katie Schottland is lead writer for a CSI-esque procedural show that’s panned by the critics but popular with the masses.  She’s living a quiet and well-to-do life with her husband and ten-year-old when an old friend from the past calls, claiming she’s got information of natural importance.  You see, Katie used to work for the CIA.  And this caller knows why Katie was unceremoniously thrown out on her behind 15 years ago.  BUM-BUM-BUM!

Except Katie wasn’t a secret agent, she rewrote reports.  And she only worked for the CIA for a year.  And her connection to anything of any interest is so tenuous, she might have well worked at the local corporate park.  Also, for someone who supposedly dealt with state secrets, she’s extraordinarily jumpy.  It’s like a really, really, really mild episode of Burn Notice.

The web Isaacs has to weave to draw Katie into danger is far-fetched and thin.  She tries to make up for it with ridiculous amounts of detail and silly situations.  In one instance, Isaacs devotes multiple paragraphs to Katie feeling woozy and disoriented during a meeting with a possible bad guy.  And what’s that?  The bad guy didn’t drink the water!  And Katie did!  She’s been poisoned!  Except not.  She has heat stroke. (After 45 minutes.  Even I don’t get heat stroke that quickly.) 

It’s a lot of pseudo-excitement for not a lot of payoff.  Issacs’ writing style is fun, and her dialogue is snappy, so I’d try something else by her.  But I’ve got a lot else to read before then.

PAGES: 337 pages.  And it probably could have been about 100 pages shorter.

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Yes.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT: I wouldn't completely disregard Isaacs, but skip this one.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

AUTHOR: David Simon

PUBLISHED: 1991

GENRE: True Crime

Before The Wire, there was Homicide: Life on the Street.

Unlike The Wire, for which author-turned-television producer David Simon was given free rein on HBO, Homicide premiered in 1994 on a hostile NBC, whose executives offered little support and even less patience for the fledgling show.  For the entirety of its seven-year run, Homicide battled executive interference and viewer indifference, even as the critics screamed that it was the best show on television.  NBC’s discomfort was largely due to the unrelenting realism of the show, the likes of which had not been seen before on network television.  Homicide presented a Baltimore that was dark, ugly, violent.  Children shot children without remorse, murderers went unpunished because of a flawed legal system, and detectives dealt with it all by cracking jokes over the bodies of the dead.  But Homicide could never be accused of exaggerating the situation.  Not when its premise – a good portion of its story lines, in fact – was taken straight from the truth: Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.*

The idea was simple: Simon, then a newspaper reporter, would trail the Baltimore City Police Department’s Homicide Unit for a year.  1988 would see 234 murders in Baltimore, many of which would go unsolved and unpublished.  Over 500 more would be committed in the two years it took to write the book.  Simon’s story is a chronicle of the victims, of the guilty, and most of all of the detectives, all desperately trying to do their jobs and keep their sanity.  Simon strips his pages of all pretension, leaving only the unvarnished facts for the reader. 

Homicide introduced the public to such words of wisdom as everyone lies (murderers because they have to, witnesses because they think they have to, and everyone else for the joy of it) and an innocent man twitches and sweats in the interrogation room while a guilty man sleeps.   It introduced us to the battle-scared veterans of the Homicide squad, who allowed themselves to be chronicled cracking jokes and acting extraordinarily politically incorrect over dead bodies, because when you work in a city where violence is an accepted experience, that's the way you survive.  It introduced us to the truth about a city dying before the world's eyes, and the valiant cops just trying to stop the bleeding.

Baltimore has done a lot to rebuild in the 20 years since the book came out.  But Homicide still stands as a potent reminder of what could be, and of what it took to hold it together. 

LENGTH: 626 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: No, despite being responsible for 2 of the most critically-acclaimed shows in television history.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT: Yes.  It's a fascinating look into what all residents of Baltimore went through during some very hard times.

*From the episode "The Documentary": a scene taken almost word-for-word from the book:

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage

AUTHOR: Paul Elie
PUBLISHED: 2003
GENRE: Religion/History

I have no idea what made me pick up this book at Barnes and Noble.  It might have been the 30% discount.  (I was working there at the time.)  After I bought it, it sat, then I lent it to my mom.  I had probably owned it for 2 years before I actually sat down and read it. 

I can't tell you what it was.  But once I actually started it, I couldn't put it down. 

The Life You Save May Be Your Own is 4 biographies in one: those of Thomas Merton, Trappist monk; Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement; Flannery O'Conner, literary prodigy and master of the art form of the southern grotesque; and Walker Perry, a doctor turned novelist.  Spread across the country and across the early twentieth century, the four never met.  They are unified, however, in their writing, in what Perry called a "predicament shared in common": the problem of how to express and build their faith through their art in the modern era.  Their works marry faith and art, Catholic tradition and American culture, to form a singular moment in literary history. 

Elie subtitles his book "An American Pilgrimage", a reference to that particularly American sense that we are all looking for something greater.  In describing Percy's early stories, Elie states that Percy felt, "the modern predicament makes pilgrimage impossible.  In the modern world... all experience is always secondhand, planned and described for one's consumption in advance... the modern person is doomed to an imitation of life."  His fellow authors often felt the same.  But what is more universally longed-for than the successful pilgrimage, an act that, at its heart, is a really just a search for meaning?  And what are we to do if that search is no longer an option?  All four writers would devote their lives and thousands of pages to answering these questions, each in their own unique ways.

These four authors lead fascinating lives, completely apart from the writings they left to the world.  O'Connor was a Catholic in the Protestant south, suffering from lupus.  Perry, forever trying to escape a family history of depression and suicide, gave up a medical career to write.  Morton left a life in New York for Kentucky and a Trappist Order that demanded silence and disconnect from the world.  Day devoted virtually her entire adult life to the poor and the hungry, carrying the Catholic Worker movement on her shoulders.  All except O'Connor were converts to the religion they would so embrace and that they would come to represent. 

"We have all know the great loneliness," Day wrote in her book of the same name.  But at the same time, it is this same universality - this same catholicism - that will save us: "the only solution," Day continued, "is love, and that love comes with community"; we must "practice the presence of God" by seeing God in each other.  It's hard not to be inspired. 

LENGTH: 472 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: No - not this book or its subjects
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT: This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're at all interested, give it a chance.

Compact with Devil (Or, as I first wrote, Compost with the Devil)

AUTHOR: Bethany Maines

PUBLISHED: 2011  

GENRE: Fiction

Some books make you think.  Some make you laugh.  Some make you wonder how you are unpublished while this (bleep) idiot got a (bleep) book contract from some (bleep) (bleep) agent and (bleeeeeeeep) –

(Cue the “we seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties” placard and some soft music.)

AHEM.

Excuse me.

What I meant to say was: the book was bad.  Very, very, very bad.  And yet I persevered through it, because it is my mission to protect you all from such horrors.  Go ahead, get a tissue and wipe the tears of gratitude away.  I’ll wait. 

I will admit: media specifically aimed at women is, in general, not my thing.  But I don’t hate all of it.  I’m a big Sex in the City fan.  I… well, that’s all I can think of right now.  My point is, I went into this with an open mind, honest to God.  But there was nothing redeemable about this thing.

Nikki Lanier works for Carrie Mae, a Mary Kay clone, with the exception being that Mary Kay doesn’t have a secret counter-terrorism unit.  That I know of.*  Her latest mission is to protect budding pop star Kit Masters from the Basque separatist who escaped from jail just to kill him.  But what happens (wait for it…) when she falls in love instead?

Compact bears all the writing hallmarks of a teenage girl experiencing her first taste of creative writing freedom.  It is full of short action sentences and useless modifiers.  “She tried mightily to sleep but couldn’t.  She finally fell asleep. When she woke up, she shook her tingling arm.  She turned on the TV.”  Over and over and over.  Actually, the fight sequences could probably work quite well, if someone were trying to block it for a movie.  “Now, Nikki, you put your arm up.  Now hit him in the nose.  He is going to fall.  You step over him.”  Everyone chortles, or gasps, or reasons, and nobody just says anything.  Maines has apparently not heard of a little thing called a transition.  The book jumps from scene to scene and place to place, hoping that the movement will keep you from questioning, wait a minute, how did she start that motorcycle with no keys?

According to reviews, Compact is a spoof.  But it flies right past that station, ending up somewhere in between spoof and camp.  And everyone knows the first rule of camp: if you are going to do camp, you have to commit.  It’s zero or John Waters, people, and if you waver in your conviction you are just going to end up embarrassing yourself.   To end up halfway between the two, well, that’s just sad. 

She also seems to think that having her characters speak exactly as they would in real life, complete with background acknowledgements and such, is a good idea.  Look!  They talk just like you! Except she’s a spy!  Her running jokes – why doesn’t anybody say goodbye when they hang up the phone?  Haha! – are inane.  Maines obviously thinks she is being witty beyond belief, which is infuriating.  You’re supposed to let the reader decide what they think is funny or witty or good.

So.  Long story short (much as I wish this book had been): Compact with the Devil = BAD. 

LENGTH: 384 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Yes.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: NO.  Please do not encourage this type of behavior! 

*My sister-in-law Mae is a Mary Kay consultant, so I asked her if Mary Kay did indeed have a counter-terrorism unit.  She told me not that she knew of, but maybe she’d find out when she became a director.  And then these women in black suits knocked at the door and whisked her away.  Come to think of it, I haven’t heard from her since then…

Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States

AUTHOR: George R. Stewart

PUBLISHED: Originally published 1945; re-released in 1958

GENRE: History.  Come on, you know you were just waiting for me to review something like this.

So you’re driving through Pennsylvania, down the Old Philadelphia Pike, when a sign comes up:

Bird-in-Hand – Next Exit.

You can’t tell me you’re not going to turn to your traveling mate and ask, what in the hell is that all about.

Well, wonder no more.  It may not explain your other questions about those quirky Pennsylvanians – and there are so many – but “Names on the Land” will explain why a small town bears the name of half a proverbial saying.  (It was named after the local tavern, an apparently common tactic in early America.  Other taverns-cum-town names include White Horse, Broad Axe, and Bird-in-Hand’s more famous cousin, King of Prussia, home of the largest mall on the East Coast.) 

Names on the Land starts with the first settlers and moves across the county and across time to explain why we call our towns and counties what we do.  It’s long-range history at its best, and a striking reminder of just how many different cultures it took to build this country.  At 438 pages of small type, it’s a haul to get through.  But George Stewart’s prose runs much smoother than the subject matter would suggest.  It helps that the some of the stories he tells – like the one about how Oregon was named after Wisconsin – are so strange you can’t help but want to pass them on.*

This book is not going to show up on Amazon’s most popular lists.  The chapter entitled “Current Affairs” – a postscript to the first edition – deals with the years 1945 to 1958 and was written to include brand-new states Hawaii and Alaska.  But aside from Truth or Consequence, New Mexico, pretty much none of the names has changed, and the stories of how they came to be are just as interesting.  Even the everyday names are full of history, reminders of the growing pains this country experienced.  Shrewsbury is Shrewbury because it was founded by the English.  If it had been founded by the Scotch, it would have been Shrewburgh; the French, Shrewsbourg.  Staten Island has Arthur Kill Park not because Arthur Kill founded it, or because somebody died there (although it would explain the smell) but because it sat on a creek, and creek is kill in Dutch.  There’s a Wall Street in Lower Manhattan because there used to be a wall there, part of the defenses to ward off invading colonizers.  They seem like minor details – bury instead of burgh, underground creeks, long-crumbled walls – but they’re not.  Those details are why the states are shaped the way they are, and why we speak the way we do, and why we’ve made the choices that have shaped our history.  Those details help explain who we are.

Well, maybe not the Pennsylvanians.

LENGTH: 438 pages.  Of little print.  Sorry.

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: See original publishing date.  Does that answer your question?  (If it doesn’t: the answer is no.  A big, resounding no.)

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: If you are a fan of history, cartography, or linguistics, then you will love following the path of how these places were named.  If you’re not, don’t bother.  You’ll be glassy-eyed by page 10.

*This turn of name came courtesy of our Gallic forefathers.  The original French settlers recorded the Native American name for the land first as Mescousing, then Ouisonsing, which got Anglicized into Wisconsin.  A later French mapmaker misspelled it as Ouariconsint, with a nasty gap in the middle, so that it looked two places, Ouaricon and Sint, on the map.  Years later, someone else settling the Wild West remembered the name place as Ouaragon.  Yet another mapmaker, this one with a penchant for spices, heard oregano instead, just without the a at the end.  A voila, Wisconsin becomes Oregon.  See? Fascinating!

Swamplandia!

AUTHOR: Karen Russell

PUBLISHED: 2011  

GENRE: Fiction

Question: when you have a storyline about a girl venturing into the Florida everglades with the Bird Man and her red alligator to save her sister from a ghostly fiancé, is it really necessary to have an entirely separate story line about their brother working at an amusement park?

Karen Russell apparently though so.

Swamplandia! is a run-down park and museum found in the Ten Thousand Islands off southwest Florida, where tourists come to watch children wrestle alligators and a beautiful woman swim amongst the beasts.  (Swamplandia! is always written with the exclamation point at the end.  It gets very old very fast.)  The park is run by the Bigtree family – famous alligator wrangler Hilola, her husband Sam (a.k.a. the Chief), and their kids, Kiwi, Osceola, and Ava.  When Hilola dies, the show dies with her, and the rest of the family splinters off in different directions, each trying to save the park and themselves. 

It’s a great idea for a story – the exoticness of alligator wresting, and the distinct separation of the family from society.  But Russell just pours so much detail into every waking moment that you just end up overwhelmed by it all.  When the detail starts repeating itself, it gets worse.  There is Just. So. Much. in this book.  Most annoying is the World of Darkness, the mainland park that’s a Six Flags from hell, almost literally – the entire thing is designed like a living Inferno, with where customers go swimming in the Lake of Fire and ride into the belly of the beast.  It’s a heavy-handed metaphor for something, but damned if I know what.  As a result, the whole thing is just ridiculous.

Back on the islands, Ava and Osceola, left alone by their father and brother, are drawn further and further into a world of either supernatural beings or their own imaginations. All that switching back and forth between ghosts in the glades and a grungy water park made for a very jarring read.  I forced my way through most of the book, and found myself scanning most of the second half instead of reading it.  I wanted to know how it turned out.  I just didn’t want to have to read the rest of it. 

LENGTH: 416 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Yes.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: I found it very unsatisfying, especially the tidy ending.  But it’s been getting high praise out the wazoo.  (Wazoo being a scientific term, of course.  “Wazoo, from the Latin wazootus. Noun.  The hindquarters of an animal.  Also known as the rump, backside, or ass.”  Straight from the OED, that is.*)

*It’s been a long day.  Can you tell it’s been a long day?  I’ll stop now.  

A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

AUTHOR: Ron Hansen
PUBLISHED: 2011
GENRE: Fiction

It's not easy to write a compelling story where the murder victim is dead by page 3, and the wife has confessed before the first chapter is over.  Lucky for Ron Hansen, he has some crazy characters to work with.

I picked up this book because I had read Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy, a haunting tale about a young, beautiful nun who displays signs of the stigmata.  I wasn't disappointed.  There is something different about Hansen's writing, an intangible something that leaves the reader just a little off-kilter.  I thought maybe it was the nature of Mariette  that spurred it - all that spiritualism - but A Wild Surge had it too.  There's a bluntness where one might expect poetry, countered by a gentleness and depth of character that is sometimes disquieting.

A Wild Surge is based on 1930s true story of Ruth Snyder, who convinced her lover, lingerie salesman Judd Gray, to kill her husband.  (I'm not giving anything away here.  It's pretty much all covered by chapter one.)  Ruth is equal parts victim and perpetrator, seductress and swooner.  Gray, miserable in his own marriage, is at first thrilled by the sinfulness of it all, but soon finds himself underwater.  Shook loose of his moorings, he can't say no to his lover's requests. 

Hansen makes the most of the news coverage and written accounts from the trial, as well as the defendents'  jailhouse memoirs (awesomely titled Doomed Ship and My Own True Story - So Help Me God!).  However, it's unlikely that most readers would know that Hansen was pulling from these outside sources, because he never steps outside the narrative and becomes a talking head.  He lets the story tell itself, and builds his characters is such a way that the facts are presented in a natural way.  It's a fascinating attempt to explain what was going through Snyder and Gray's heads, and the consequences their actions brought.

LENGTH: 256 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Not really
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes.  And then read Mariette in Ecstasy.  And then probably his other stuff, but I haven't gotten there yet. 

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

AUTHOR: Bill Bryson

PUBLISHED: 2006

GENRE: Non-Fiction/Memoir

For most people, the Appalachian Trail is an abstract thing.  At best, it evokes a romantic notion of a purer, cleaner America, on the move and enjoying our bounty.  At worst, people hear Appalachian and start having flashbacks to “Deliverance” and Ned Beatty squealing like a pig.  As for me, I can technically say I hiked the Appalachian Trail: about 10 feet of it, where it crossed onto the small trail at High Point State Park that I was walking on a family camping trip.  I can’t say that it meant anything to me at that time.  But after A Walk in the Woods, I feel like it should have.

Bill Bryson, a prolific writer with an easy, conversationalist style, had been living in England for years before moving back to New England.  When he discovers a small trail near his home, he begins to study the Appalachian Trail (or the AT) and its significance before coming to the unusual decision to walk it himself.  This is no small feat: the AT runs over 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine.  Walking it takes months, and less than 25% of people who start at one end make it all the way to the other.  Making it in one season means leaving when there’s still snow on the ground and forging ahead through whatever the next two seasons throw at you.  Everything you need goes on your back, and “bed” means a wooden platform you may or may not be sharing with other hikers (or bears, or rats, or ants).  It’s a feat for the fittest outdoorsmen.

Bryson is neither fit not an outdoorsman.  His hiking companion, Steven Katz – an old high school buddy he hasn’t seen in 25 years and who, Bryson states, shows up looking like “Orson Welles after a very bad night” – is even less equipped, and seems to be more avoiding something back home than looking for an adventure on the trail.  Logic should have dictated that they shake hands and part ways, but they don’t.  They start to hike.  And despite being the  Felix and Oscar of the AT – Bryson has to stop every few miles and wait for Katz to catch up, all the while hoping Katz hasn’t gotten frustrated and thrown something important into a gully – they make it work. 

Bryson’s greatest talent is his storytelling, and his anecdotes about those he and Katz meet along the way are hilarious, especially Mary Ellen, a short, frumpy woman who latches on to them for a few days and spends the entire time criticizing everything they do and honking to clear out her ears.  (They guiltily ditch her, only to discover she has been talking smack about them to the next group of hikers to pass through.)  Best of all are his stories of Katz himself; in particular, the story of the Laundromat, Bertha’s underwear, and Bertha’s husband.  It’s a little absurdity among the wilderness.

In amongst tales of the Trail, Bryson gives short histories of the American park system and the Trail, and of the changing attitude towards our public places.  It is probably not a surprise that these parks are woefully understaffed and underfunded.  Many of the support stations along the way are closed, and the towns that grew up next to trail breaks are either dying or have lost all connection to the trail.  But the trail remains, even as the history of all is forgotten. 

In the end, they only make it as far as Tennessee.  But “only as far as Tennessee” is still 500 miles of hard hiking in snow and rain and heat with 50 pounds on your back and blisters on your feet.   It’s 500 miles of wilderness, of forest and open space and quiet.  It’s 500 miles of the beauty and magnitude that so astounded the first European settlers, and that is so rapidly disappearing in a sea of construction and urbanization.  500 miles is an accomplishment to be applauded.  Bryson’s story will make you laugh and hopefully inspire you – if not to walk the Appalachian Trail, then at least to get outside and show some appreciation for the natural world around us. 

LENGTH: 397 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Oh, sure.  Hiker memoirs are all the rage.  NOT.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?:  For hikers and campers, this will be an inspiration.  For fans of a good story or a little history, it will be a fun time.  For people who think that any sleeping arrangement that doesn’t involve 500-thread count sheets is an act of sadism, it will be horrifying. 

Sleepwalk With Me: And Other Painfully True Stories

AUTHOR: Mike Birbiglia

PUBLISHED: 2011

GENRE: Memoir/Comedy

Who knew sleep disorders could be so funny?

Mike Birbiglia was eking out a living as a stand-up comic when he started sleep-walking - not just down the hall, but down the hall and on the furniture and, in one memorable case, out the window.  Everyone told him to go to the doctor.  He ate dinner instead. 

I first heard Birbiglia on the Moth Radio Hour.*  I liked his laid-back style of storytelling, so when I heard he had a book out, I downloaded it to my Kindle.  Comedic acts don’t always translate to the page, and I figured if it sucked, at least I hadn’t paid hard-cover price.  I’ve since read it twice. 

Sleepwalk With Me is the story of Birbiglia’s Massachusetts childhood and his struggles trying to make it as a comic.  Much like his comedy, his writing is conversationalist, a string of whatever random things come into his head rather than an obviously planned set.  (Yes, I know it’s not actually that random, but the good comic makes it seem that way.)  It’s basically a stand-up routine on paper, which sounds like it shouldn’t work, but does. 

Birbiglia’s humor is mostly self-effacing, although his parents appear frequently.  (The book opens with his father trying to teach a young Mike the family motto: don’t talk about it.  Obviously, Mike does not follow that advice.)  His siblings show up (including a surprising touching scene when he and his sister Gina bond over their love of bears), along with the talent scouts, club owners, and agents that float in and out of a comic’s life.

Birbiglia is eventually diagnosed as suffering from rapid eye movement behavior disorder.  Normal people basically become paralyzed when they fall asleep.  It’s what keeps you from acting out your dreams.  Birbiglia doesn’t.  So when he dreams of giant praying mantises on the ceiling or nuclear missiles coming in his direction, he reacts physically.  And then he wakes up, in a kung-fu pose on top of the TiVo, or in the middle of a Walla Walla street.  It’s a serious problem, but Birbiglia accepts it with the same, “hey, it’s cool, I guess” attitude he seems to bring to every problem.  It’s what makes his story so funny and so relatable at the same time, even in its strangest moments.

LENGTH: 208 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: Not really.  Birbiglia appears frequently on This American Life and some other NPR programs, and pops up on HBO and Comedy Central once in a while, but is still not really known to the general public.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes.  Sleepwalk With Me is one of those rare creatures: a stand-up routine that translated into a good book.

*The Moth Radio Hour is real people telling true stories without notes.  It’s people just getting up on stage and telling 5-minute stories to an audience of strangers, and it’s awesome.  You can find the podcasts on iTunes, listen to the Moth Radio Hour on your local NPR station, or get information at www.themoth.org.  Listen to Birbiglia’s, then find Edgar Oliver and listen to his, and then listen to the rest of them.  It’ll be worth it.

Save as Draft

AUTHOR: Cavanaugh Lee
PUBLISHED: 2011
GENRE: Chick-Lit.  Oh Lordy, serious chick-lit.

Let me begin by saying, I picked up this book at the library at 5:44 this evening. It is now 7:59, and I am done with it.  And that's with breaks to walk the dog and unload the dishwasher.  So that should tell you something right off the bat.

Save as Draft is the story of a young woman trying to find love in the age of the internet.  The twist is, it's told totally in the form of emails, text messages, and Facebook updates.  That's it.  No running commentary.  No descriptions.  Just lots and lots of emails.  It was almost as if Lee knew her story just was not interesting enough, so she had to come up with some wacky format.  It almost works... for about 5 pages.  After that, it's just kitchy.  And even worse, a portion of the emails aren't even that interesting - "I'm looking at the menu now.  I think I'll have the salmon!"  Fascinating.  Next time, I'll just read through my inbox and save myself a trip.

The technique is so specific to now that it already feels dated.  I can practically see some reader 5 years from now picking up the book (well, downloading the book) and laughing about how obsessed we were with Facebook.  The cover art is the Apple logo, only it's a heart instead of an apple.  (I'm surprised Steve Jobs didn't sue the you-know-what out of her for that.)  The book just tries so hard to be cool and relevant.  It's the book equivalent of Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed.  It just wants you to LIKE IT. 

That being said, taken for what it is, it's not exactly bad.  It's really, really easy, and some of the emails are pretty funny, especially those between the main character's married friends.  And that's about all there is to say about Save as Draft. 

LENGTH: 317 pages of emails and texts and Facebook updates.  Even the acknowledgements.  That's dedication.
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Oh, it wants to be.  It wants to be so very much.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: I guess if you want total fluff that will bide you over for about an hour at the pool, it can't hurt.

Lost to the West: the Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization

AUTHOR: Lars Brownsworth

PUBLISHED: 2010

GENRE: History



In 2006, former high-school history teacher Lars Brownsworth created a podcast called 12 Byzantine Rulers.  Given its obscure subject matter, it was probably more a labor of love than a grab for fame or fortune.  But the podcast rocketed up the most popular list on iTunes, and suddenly Brownsworth had an agent, a publisher, and book contract.  Thus Lost to the West: the Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization was born. 



The Hagia Sophia, once the greatest church in Christiandom



In 7 years of undergraduate and graduate work in the field of history, I was offered not a single course that discussed the Byzantine Empire and its capital of Constantinople.  Why is it that when Rome falls in the 5^th century, Western civilization seems to skip ahead almost 5 centuries and a couple hundred miles north, to William the Conqueror and his 1066 invasion of England?  Why this seemingly deliberate refusal to acknowledge the Byzantines?  Most people blame Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which apparently had a serious anti-Byzantine edge.* This is a great crime, because the Byzantines were a fascinating group, and Constantinople is said to have inspired wonder in the greatest of kings and popes, from its palaces to its legendary walls. 

The story begins with Diocletian, who had the brilliant idea to take the unmanageable Roman Empire and halve it.  Brownsworth then skips through a thousand years of history by focusing on Constantinople’s 12 most important rulers, from her founder, Constantine I, to her last emperor, Constantine XI, last seen plunging into the battle on the walls of the city. (Constantine XI is also known as the Marble King, and is the center of a Camelot-esque fable that says he will one day return to rule Constantinople again.  I like to think he and King Arthur are hanging out together in the meantime.  Also, no, they are not all named Constantine.)

Brownsworth seems to be well aware of his limited audience and that if he wants to attract a larger following, he will have to work to keep the reader’s attention.  As a result, his writing has quickness and sense of suspense sometimes lacking in history books.  The story also serves as a reminder that the history we learned in school is not the only history out there.  It makes clear that our advanced culture wasn’t always so advanced, and that history is quite a bit dirtier than most would imagine.  Brownsworth deals with the good, the bad, and the ugly of it all.  Sometimes, it can almost seem like Constantinople is the innocent virgin and the rest of the world, the leering farmer, but that’s mostly because we have a hard time imagining that the great leaders of Europe would do such things.  Brownsworth’s history is clean and without dispute, and it needs to be told.

At a time when Rome was in ruins, being invaded by mongrels and abandoned for Rivena, Constantinople was the richest and most advanced city in Europe.  While the Romans were struggling just to survive, the Byzantines were codifying state law and building the Hagia Sophia.  While the dark ages were descending on the rest of Europe, the Byzantines were preserving history and culture and the tenets of civilization, and for that they deserve a lot of respect and a little more attention. 

LENGTH: 352 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Most people couldn’t even tell you what the Byzantine Empire was, apart from that fact that Istanbul is Constantinople, baby.  But that’s nobody’s business but the Turks.**

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?:  It’s a good introduction to a subject that most people – myself included – know virtually nothing about.  Brownsworth intentionally hits only the major points and players but it’s still a pretty traditional history book.  For people who are vaguely interested but not thrilled about lugging the book around, it might be a good idea to check out the 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast (on iTunes or at http://12byzantinerulers.com).  The podcast contains virtually the same information as the book, with the added benefit of it being free.  In fact, the podcast might be the better of the two.  But don’t tell anybody I said that.

*I will fully admit that I have never read The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  I’m pretty sure no one actually has.  I do, however, listen to the Libravox reading of it when I can’t sleep.  Works like a charm.

**That’s a little They Might be Giants reference for you there.  You’re welcome.

"The Other Boleyn Girl"

AUTHOR: Philippa Gregory

PUBLISHED: 2004

GENRE: Historical Fiction

Among those that read her works, Philippa Gregory is the queen of British royal historical fiction.  (No pun intended.  Okay.  Pun intended a little bit.)  She has built an entire career out of mining the sordid and sinful history of England’s rulers.  The Other Boleyn Girl finally made her mainstream, when it was turned into an interesting but rushed movie staring Scarlet Johanssen as the title character, Mary Boleyn, and Natalie Portman as her more famous sister, Anne.  Much like Titantic, The Other Boleyn Girl is one of those stories where the outcome is well-known – even the most apathetic history student knows that Anne and her crown are swiftly parted.  So to make it interesting, Gregory had to change the point of view. 

Many of Gregory’s books use this method of narrating a famous event through the eyes of a lesser known participant.  In this case, the story of Anne Boleyn, the second of Henry VIII’s wives and the first to lose her head, is told through the eyes of her sister, Mary, who holds the distinction of being the original Boleyn girl to spend time in Henry’s bed, and of being the only Boleyn who knew when to walk away.  It is Mary who first catches the king’s eye, and it is Mary who had a royal, though illegitimate, boy.  (Or, in the parlance of the time, it is Henry who “gets a boy on her”, which is a strangely horrifying phrase.)  It is not until Mary goes into confinement to give birth that Anne is able begins her seduction.  Mary is swiftly replaced in Henry’s affections but not from courtly life, as she goes from mistress to the king to lady-in-waiting to the new queen.  From her new position, she had a front-row seat to her sister’s rise and fall. 

The easiest trap for Gregory to fall into is to let her more famous characters, like Anne and Henry, become one-sided.  Mary’s reticence to take part in her family’s machinations, her seemingly true love for Henry, her desire to get the hell away from court when things start going squirrelly – all serve as a bright contrast to Anne’s singular ambition.  Thankfully, it is a trap Gregory avoids.  Anne steals her sister’s lover away.  Their father sacrifices his daughters’ futures for his own wealth.  But they do it as full-boded characters with their own features and reasons.  It is for this reason that Mary’s proclamations to Henry that her sister is one half of her make sense, even after Anne has utterly betrayed her, humiliated her, and stolen her child.  Gregory may have switched the main focus, but she hasn’t forgotten her other characters in the process.

As with all historical fiction, there are questions as to accuracy, on both the micro and macro levels.  Recreating a private scene in a lady’s boudoir obviously takes some invention.  But with a story this old, even the most basic points – such as the birth order of the Boleyn children – can be uncertain.  Luckily, Gregory doesn’t let matters bog her, or the reader, down.  Her scenes are so smoothly painted that the reader becomes lost in the story, and whatever the History Channel might have to say about the subject ceases to matter.  All that matters is Mary and Anne.  You know the ax is coming, just like you know the ship is going to sink.  But it doesn’t stop you from reading. 

LENGTH: 672 pages, but they move quick.

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: Once Scarlet Johanssen and Natalie Portman are involved, you’re officially big time.  But Gregory’s books still carry some of that bodice-ripper, Fabio-covered shame that most historical fiction brings to its reader.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes.  But skip the movie.  This is one of those cases where film does not trump paper.