Tag: book review

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July book reviews: Marlena, Sarah, and other girls with drama

Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

The Sarah Book by Scott McClannahan (Tyrant Books, 2017)

“Perhaps we love what we never know most of all.”
*
This novel is a crazy ride — a mostly true story about Scott and his relationship (and the end thereof) with one Sarah — starting off with his alcoholism and her bulimia and related chaotic antics — like living for days in a Walmart parking lot and destroying a computer with a ten pound sledge. It’s so messy and honest — I seriously couldn’t put this one down. I got it via The TNB book club, which I strongly encourage you to join.

Marlena by Julie Buntin (Henry Holt, 2017)

“I love this wildness. I crave it. So why, when something in me asks if it’s worth ruining my life over, do I hear No?”
*
Marlena has a thrilling wild car ride of a beginning that got me hooked right away. This novel follows the dangerous friendship between two teen girls — through a year of drugs, desire, and recklessness that leaves them ineradicably changed. It made me think a lot about what the defining moments or friendships of my own formative years were — and honestly I can’t pinpoint any one thing definitively — which I guess is how life is, all the cause and effect less obvious, more muddied, the loose ends still loose and irreconcilable. I picked this book up on Belletrist‘s recommendation —

The Blue Hour by Laura Pritchett (Counterpoint, 2017)

“When do we get the crazy notion that our life has a predictable trajectory? That it’s not just one crazy winding story?”
*
If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to live in a small mountain community, Laura’s The Blue Hour is the novel to read. The interconnected stories follow the lives of these neighbors — through their quiet longings and secret affairs and small hopes — to paint a richly textured, kaleidoscopic view of what it means to live and love. A lovely introspective book.

Big Lonesome by Jim Ruland (Gorsky Press, 2015)

“Their desire to know was a substitute for another kind of longing.”
*
I don’t know how to even start describing this story collection by my friend Jim, best known in the L.A. area for his reading series Vermin on the Mount. The stories are so varied: Hard drinking, sensitive men given the job of killing animals in a zoo before the German army takes over their city. A portrayal of Popeye’s character from the perspective of his abandoned love child. A spurned lover spending his days spying on his ex by hiding in her closet. The stories really capture the bewildering experience of being in this beautiful, violent, unpredictable world.

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy (Random House, 2017)

“Daring to think that the rules do not apply is the mark of a visionary. It’s also a symptom of narcissism.”
*
Ariel’s memoir was somewhat different from what I’d expected — but I did enjoy going through the unexpected twists and turns of life with her — and liked how she described this sense of untetheredness and uncertainty I especially love the way Ariel Levy describes the ambition of the 90s — the sleek ferociousness of it, the unabashed self-interest, the eagerness to redefine how best to live — the last of which I suppose is a constant throughout history.

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Young-Ha Kim (in English translation from Harcourt, 2007)

“C imagined the green liquid going down her throat and spreading throughout her body. He could see her body turning green, the kiwi juice seeping into her capillaries.”
*
Aren’t those the perfect lines to read right before drinking a green smoothie? I picked out this book on a whim from the library shelf and was really sucked in by this moody Korean novel — about two brothers in love with the same listless woman — who hires a suicide whisperer of sorts to help her end her life. It’s a strange, disquieting, yet oddly peaceful story.

She by Michelle Latiolais (W.W. Norton, 2017)

“You have to be able to be a little delusional to live, it seems to me, to be a little devil-may-care.”
*
Michelle’s story mostly follows a runaway teen girl through her first day in LA who tries to survive in Santa Monica by offering to do random little errands for rich people. Her story is intercut with chapters featuring other colorful LA characters, from a cake decoration artist to a volunteer at the LA Times Festival of Books. There was a part of me that wanted the stories to interconnect more, but I enjoyed the kaleidoscopic view of LA. It made me want to revisit all my old haunts in a state of nostalgia —

Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (Dutton, 1999)

“I could not explain it, but I felt something was to change soon. I just did not know how.”
*
I had an odd sense of deja vu reading this novel because the setup is so similar to Hemingway’s Girl, which I read recently. Both are stories told from the perspective of a maid who works for a famous male artist — in this case Vermeer — with whom she develops quiet confidences and acts as inspiration for his art while also having her own coming of age experiences. Girl With a Pearl Earring preceded Hemingway’s Girl — so I wonder if the latter’s author used the former as a model…. In any case, I did enjoy immersing myself in the richly painted details of this novel, which focuses more on the proscribed lives of the servants and working class than the upper class Vermeer family.

The Unseen World by Liz Moore (W.W. Norton 2016)

“Humans are not incredibly creative as a species; their questions tend to become repetitive.”
*
A smart girl loves her smart dad — who’s working on a computer that can converse like a human. Then the dad gets Alzheimer’s — and the girl starts to discover her dad may not be who she thought he was. The last chapter of this novel is written from the computer’s point of view, which I thought was a cool touch. I picked up Liz Moore’s novel for the L.A. Girly Book Club —

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June book reviews: Mostly New York stories

Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson (FSG, 1949)

“They want attention and praise and sometimes they’ll do almost anything.”
*
Fuck I love Shirley Jackson. I love the creepy ways she reveals the cruel violent minds of children especially — a boy excited by the thought of strangling then chopping up his little sister to bits, two sibling filled with glee at the prospect of killing the family dog with a collar of nails. There’s also a story about a woman who goes on vacation to NYC — and slowly starts freaking out at the random violence of the city until she’s immobilized by anxious panic attacks. Obviously, this was the perfect read before flying to NYC on book tour!

Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams (Vintage, 1988)

“Years pass as moments do. And the moments of the past are stones behind her, over which she stumbles forward.”
*
I love Joy William’s writing: spare, exact, disturbing. Liberty and Willie are drifters, breaking into strangers’ vacation homes and living in them a while — but Willie is turning stranger and stranger, spouting weird philosophies and disappearing for days at a time. There’s the disconnectedness of vacation communities, the intimate revelations of total strangers, and sudden, brutal acts of violence. Fantastic summer reading.

You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero (Viking, 2017)

“People are to money what a French fry is to ketchup: They’re just the conduits.”
*
Jen Sincero’s latest book is inspiring and motivating. I actually picked up Jen’s first book, You Are a Badass, a few years ago because she and I have the same agent. She has made him a lot more money than I have so far but that will change now that I’ve read this book and am putting it into action!

Washington Square by Henry James (Harper and Brothers, 1880)

“She watched herself as she would have watched another person, and wondered what she would do.”
*
The way Henry James finely sketches his characters really carried me through this novel about a plain but rich girl who falls in love with a cute guy — who ditches her once it’s clear the girl’s father would disinherit her should she marry him. Spoiler: The girl then snubs her father as well as all other men who express an interest in her, living out her days alone with her aunt. In a way it could be read as a feminist novel — or a cautionary tale against the impulse to withdraw / reject people after a painful event….

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (Scribner 2009)

“For each day, she thought, she needed a whole other day to contemplate what had happened….”
*
Set post WWII, Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis, a young Irish girl from a tiny town who is made to leave everything behind and move to Brooklyn for a job at a department store. In many ways Eillis’s life — while with hardships — is a charmed one, with kind friends and strangers often going out of their ways to help her out, with one happy opportunity after another coming her way. I would guess not all immigrants to the US in that time had things go so smoothly. Incidentally I got to hear Colm speak at a Live Talks LA event a few weeks ago, which inspired me to pick up this work.

Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro (Knopf, 2017)

“The city still feels like mine…. Wherever I go–in every neighborhood–I catch younger versions of myself disappearing around corners.”
*
Dani wrote this about revisiting New York in this latest memoir — a fragmentary and often touching mediation on the way marriage shapes you and your partner. Even for a memoir, there was a lot more navel-gazing in this book than I’d expected — Dani spends a lot of time worrying out her Google search results and Instagram feed — but I enjoyed its many poignant, intimate moments.

Hemingway’s Girl by Erika Robuck (Berkeley, 2012)

“The blue of the sky and the water were almost the same, and the breeze blew the fresh saltwater smell over her.”
*
Hemingway’s Girl came in The Book Drop, and is about a young girl who starts working as a maid for Earnest Hemingway and his second wife Pauline when they’re living in the Key West. There’s lovely ocean scenes, race and class conflicts, and a lot of sexual tension.

The Gaffer by Celeste Gainey (Red Hen, 2015)

“The house fills with my ringing. / You rise to answer.”
*
I got to read with Celeste in Philly earlier this month, which is when I picked up this slim volume. Her poems are about light and filmmaking and love and self-discovery — and Los Angeles, where Celeste lived for a while —

After the Dam by Amy Hassinger (Red Hen, 2016)

“It seemed that they were running down the knife edge of time, both surrounded by and creating the pulsing, tremulous unfolding of it, striving to touch it, hold it, taste it even as it passed into memory.”
*
I got to read with Amy Hassinger earlier this month in Brooklyn! Her novel is about a young mother who suddenly runs away from her husband to visit her grandma at her childhood home. There, the mother reconnects with a long-ago ex, questions her marriage, and gets involved in an emotional dispute over family land….

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One book review in The Rumpus

Michelle Ross Theres so much they haven't told you

Michelle Ross Theres so much they haven't told youCan science be sexy? Yes, in stories by Michelle Ross! I wrote a review of her new short story collection, There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You, for The Rumpus.

Here’s a little excerpt:

In the first story of this collection, a girl learns the shocking truth that the world is made of atoms, that “when you get right down to it, it’s all just studs and holes.” Later on the school bus a boy whispers seductively into the girl’s hair: “Man, what else don’t you know?”

Read the rest at The Rumpus!

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April book reviews: Childhood romances and other adventures

Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here by Angela Palm (Graywolf, 2016)

“I was well acquainted with the sensation of exterior isolation and interior energy, of the power in that juxtaposition.”
*
A girl grows up in a poor rural Indiana town, in love with the sweet boy next door — who ends up killing two people while strung out on heroin and gets sentenced to life in prison. Two kids, a childhood romance, two divergent paths, a lifetime of desire, unanswered questions, longing — This memoir gave me all the feels! I’m so honored to have gotten the chance to read with Angela Palm at Book Soup earlier this month!

Michelle Ross Theres so much they haven't told you

There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You by Michelle Ross (Moon City, 2017)

“There is a part of me that knows I probably won’t feel so good about this in the morning, but for now I’m spinning with desire. It’s like I’m all tentacles, a giant squid. Give me, give me, give me.”
*
My full review of Michelle Ross’s short story collection is now up at The Rumpus! Enjoy —

The Neighborhod by Kelly Magee (Gold Wake, 2016)

“Sometimes the girl did things without questioning why she was doing them, even though she knew the thing she was doing was exactly the kind of thing she should question.”
*
Kelly’s book is full of modern myths and fairy tales and surreal events in quiet neighborhoods and small philosophical moments. It was so fun reading with her at Village Books in Bellingham — Thanks to all who came to the event!

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)

“Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home.”
*
This gigantic tome is mostly words of wisdom from inspiring people Tim has interviewed on his podcast. The above quote comes from Coach Sommer — and it reminds me to just write every day, without worrying about the end result or what will happen with the writing —

The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes (Knopf, 2016)

“In this book, the focus is specifically on the role of sugar in our diet…. It implies that populations or individuals can be at the very least reasonably healthy living on carbohydrate-rich diets, even grain-rich diets, as long as they consume relatively little sugar.”
*
I’m glad Gary Taubes has gone from advocating low-carb to just low-sugar in his latest book! I personally need moderate healthy carbs to feel good, have energy, support adrenals & hormones — but refined / processed sugar is something else. The Case Against Sugar is still a bit extreme, making the case that sugar’s a big factor behind not just diabetes and obesity but also dementia, cancer, and other slow developing diseases…. In any case, it’s a pretty motivating book if you’re trying to cut down on the white stuff —

Adventures in Property Management by Chelsea Werner-Jatzke (Sibling Rivalry, 2017)

“The building began to reek of us and the pheromones drove the dogs wild.”
*
I got to read with Chelsea at Stories in Echo Park earlier — Thanks to everyone who came! — then read Chelsea’s chapbook of stories: It’s a moody yet hilarious narrative about the manager and inhabitants of a building whose owners are distant and unresponsive — leading to apocalyptic consequences!
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Assisted Living by Gary Lutz (Future Tense, 2017)

“I’ll let my life live me.”
*
Gary Lutz’s slim chapbook is poetic and wry, with four stories focused mostly on the aftermath of divorce. It’s short enough to read over an acai bowl!

Power Made Us Swoon by Brynn Saito (Red Hen, 2016)

“We are the hours. The hours are us.”
*
Brynn’s poems feature a witty woman warrior — and touch everything from the legacy of Japanese internment camps to the lulling power of television. I read with Brynn at Diesel Oakland earlier this month, along with the author of the next book —

Birds of Paradise Lost by Andrew Lam (Red Hen, 2013)

“But everyone’s ruled by some kind of desire.”
*
Andrew Lam’s stories center around Vietnamese immigrants in the Bay Area — sad stories of suffering, cultural conflict, and small moments of connection.

Dietland by Sarai Walker (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015)

“I spent my days tiptoeing around food, the way one might tiptoe into a baby’s room while it’s sleeping.”
*
I picked this one up for The Edison Book Club. This novel’s about an obese girl called Plum who’s dieting and planning on a gastric bypass — who meets a mysterious group of women waging war against the diet industry. It’s painful to see Plum’s futile dieting efforts, which goes in a clear starve-binge starve-binge cycle — You want to shake her and say, girl, you can’t lose weight by starving yourself! While I was glad to see a book written from the perspective of an empowered large woman, this book’s unrelentingly negative portrayal of basically all men really troubled me, among other issues with character and plot.

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March book reviews: Art, life, and Los Angeles

Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz (Knopf, 1977)
*
“So the artists in Los Angeles just don’t have that burning eagerness people expect. And they’re just not serious.”
*
Eve Babitz’s book is a sort of ode to LA — a perfect read for a slow day wandering around the sunny city. Eve goes on many strange, fun adventures, from a trip to Bakersfield with a random grape farmer guy who likes her work to drunken threesomes to a blank weekend in Palm Springs. I loved this novel about LA and men and other loose, listless, lazy liaisons.

Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patty Yumi Cottrell (McSweeney’s, 2017)

“Like most normal people, my life force ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed.”
*
Patty’s novel is about a 30-something woman in NYC — who goes to her adoptive parent’s home in Milwaukee when her adoptive brother suddenly commits suicide. It’s sad and moving and also funny and wry — and reminds me a bit of another McSweeney’s novel I read earlier this year that also centers around a sibling’s suicide: All My Puny Sorrows. Patty’s hilarious in person too; go see her read on book tour!

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Knopf, 2016)

“Tell a lie long enough and it will turn to truth.”
*
This sweeping saga follows the two Ghanan sisters — separated across continents by colonial rule and slavery — through generations. I really admired the ambition of Yaa Gyasi’s novel — spanning indigenous Ghanan cultures, British colonialism, American slavery, coal mining, heroin addiction, dissertation writing. It’s amazing to think about how much the world has changed in just a handful of generations.

The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan (Penguin, 2016)
*
“And you know what happens when a bomb goes off? The truth about people comes out.”
*
Karan’s book tells the story of a bombing in Delhi — following both victims and perpetrators to examine the beliefs and motivations and history and religion and economic factors and life’s strange twists that result in radicalization and violence. The Association of Small Bombs really interconnected many different issues that often aren’t explored together in discussions about terrorism and violence. I really enjoyed the finely drawn psychology of the characters — it’s an important read for our complex times.

The Education of Margot Sanchez by Lilliam Rivera (Simon & Schuster, 2017)

“I spend my waking hours figuring out my future–what to wear, what to say, how to say it.”
*
Lilliam’s YA novel stars Margot, a teenager who ran up $600 on her papi’s credit card to buy cuter clothes — gotta invest in that fashion Instagram account! — then gets punished by being forced to work at the family supermarket in the Bronx. Margot struggles to fit in with the in crowd at a private school where she’s the only Latina. She’s caught between two worlds — of fashion, ambition, and cultural expectations. Lilliam and I read together at the latest Angels Flight Literary West salon!

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad (Penguin, 2016)

“Sometimes a pity will even bloom in my heart for that small, hunched, pedaling figure.”
*
The self-loathing and loneliness and resilience in this book is unrelenting — The protagonist Lizzie constantly evaluates and judges the appearance of the women around her — and of course turns those judgmental eyes most harshly on herself. Mona Awad’s book shows a world where women are in constant battle against their bodies, each lonely woman in a psychological cage of her own making, created by harsh self-judgement and cold evaluations of others. It’s a way of seeing the world that I’m intimately familiar with — and glad to have left behind. Overall, a touching, incisive read.

The Wangs vs. The World by Jade Chang (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)

“And what is any artist, really, but someone who doesn’t mind being an asshole?”
*
Jade’s novel follows a wealthy Bel-Air Chinese-American family — that suddenly goes broke in the financial crisis. One of the main characters in this novel is an avant-garde artist who’s sort of Koons / Murakami-esque in the ways she plays with commercialism and commodification of art. She was my favorite and most interesting character. I picked up this book when Jade read at Jillian Lauren‘s Story+Soul Salon —

Big City by Scot Sothern (Stalking Horse, 2017)

“Sometimes story books are like real people but more exciting and sometimes just being people is more exciting than storybooks.”
*
BigCity is a parody of a Western — starring a cute bear, a gunslinging amputee, a powerful female fighter, a filmmaker, and other colorful characters. It’s violent, bawdy, and imaginative — it’ll jar you out of your comfortable sense of reality.
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February Book Reviews: Whole new worlds

Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh (Penguin, 2017)

“Curious girls get what they deserve.”
*
If you haven’t read Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories yet, treat yourself to them now. No one writes self-loathing and disgust quite the curiously addictive way she does. One of the things I love about Ottessa’s writing is her precise, unsympathetic physical descriptions of people. I really admire her panache in taking on writing about people that are difficult to write about — the mentally challenged, the predatorial, the physically deformed — in an unsentimental, matter of fact way. This is my favorite short story collection probably since Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (Dial Press, 1956)

“Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be that bottomless, you know? — and they can be that shallow. And that dirty.”
*
Giovanni’s Room centers on two young guys that have a confusing affair in 1950s Paris. It’s about love and shame and desire and self-loathing — it reminds me of Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You, which I also loved. The book also has deep feminist underpinnings about female identity at that time — how much it’s defined in relation to men, how dependent it is on male acceptance and approval. I loved every page of this book and am looking forward to the discussion at The Edison Book Club March 1!

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews (McSweeney’s, 2015)

“I googled: can writing a novel kill you? And found nothing useful.”
*
This novel is about two sisters: a famous pianist and serial suicide attempter and her less famous and less suicidal writer sister. Despite the topic of suicide, the love and boisterous closeness in this funny, messy family was warm and sweet. Also, one of the sisters is often called Yo (short for Yolandi) by her sis — and I often call my own sis Yo (short for Yo-El)…. So basically this novel is about me, which is how I read most novels.

Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein (Picador, 2016)

“You can’t get rid of memories; you can only try to ignore them.”
*
If you love Black Mirror, Children of the New World is like a literary equivalent. Each story tells the tale of a different dystopian future — many having to do with the intersection of technology and memory — how false memories could be created by virtual worlds, how our experiences change if we can give others open access to our memories. Other stories portray life post ecological disaster — like a new ice age freezing up most of the US. It’s a chilling read — especially if you’ve just read Naomi Klein’s climate change book like I have.

Green Girl by Kate Zambreno (Harper Perennial, 2014)

“Sometimes she narrates her actions inside her head in third-person. Does that make her a writer or a woman?”
*
I picked up Green Girl on a whim at the AWP Conference. This novel is about a listless, dissolute, and slightly self-destructive American girl who’s moved to London to try and forget a guy who jilted her — but is still unhappy, working as a perfume sample girl at Horrids and getting wasted and hooking up with guys she doesn’t even like for reasons she can’t put a finger on. It captures a poignant mood — one between desire and becoming and disappearing specific to young adulthood.

Grace by Natashia Deon (Counterpoint, 2016)

“Money keeps you from paying for things with your life.”
*
I’d put off reading Grace for a few months because I feared its heavy topics (slavery, rape, etc) were more than I could handle when I was already despondent about current politics. The book stars 15-year-old Naomi, a slave in 1840s South, who escapes the plantation — to end up at a Georgia brothel. Some themes are resilience and hope in the face of oppression, fear, racism, and violence. But there’s also a lot of love in this book — and a happy ending — and, yes, frightening parallels to socioeconomic problems that still plague us today.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson (Random House, 2017)

“How was it possible to go through life so blind, so I afraid?”
*
I read this novel a while ago, but my long review went live on The Los Angeles Review of books this month. Read all my thoughts on this novel about spoiled Californian kids there: “To Be Young, Rich, and Screen-Addicted: Lindsey Lee Johnson’s The Most Dangerous Place on Earth.”

Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2016)

“The future made us older, but our wisdom was dubious.”
*
An ex indie band member turned bartender finds a time travel wormhole in his bedroom. That’s the premise for Every Anxious Wave, which I picked up because I met the author, Mo Daviau, who’s the writing coordinator at Vermont Studio Center where I did a residency earlier this year. If you love indie rock, wry love stories and time travel tales, Mo Daviau’s novel melds all three into a sweet, lighthearted read.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein (Simon & Schuster, 2014)

“I denied climate change for longer than I care to admit…. I continued to behave as if there was nothing wrong with the shiny card in my wallet attesting to my ‘elite’ frequent flyer status.”
*
There’s nothing quite like reading a well-researched and passionate tome about pending environmental disaster while sitting in a plane that’s spewing tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. I started Naomi Klein’s book while flying to DC for the AWP conference — and while the text would be worrying under any circumstances, I found it extra anxiety provoking considering what Trump’s done to the EPA.

Her overall argument is that if we’re going to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change, we must stop valuing GDP growth over everything else and instead “place value on those things that most of us cherish above all — a decent standard of living, a measure of future security, and our relationships with one another.” The odds are stacked against us though: International trade laws hobble local environmental efforts, many enviro nonprofits greenwash even oil companies (The Nature Conservancy in fact drills for oil in Galveston Bay! And has been for a decade a half!), no techy magic bullet solutions exist — and we as individuals are reluctant to pay serious attention to the issue of climate change. We’re in the midst of discussing this book at the Current Events Reading Group.
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