Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell  530 pp.

I have to admit I almost quit this book early on. I had a lot of trouble getting into the story/ies. I'm glad I stuck with it since it is unlike anything else I've ever read. My first introduction to David Mitchell's work was Black Swan Green. This novel is nothing like that one. There are six different stories in six different periods of history including a dystopian future. The stories appear disconnected but a theme eventually emerges as the reader passes through time, first forward, then backward to an ending that takes place in the past where the book began. During the temporal journeys we travel from Polynesia to Europe, California, England, the Far East, Hawaii and back again. The main characters include a government clerk, a composer, a journalist, a publisher, a clone/slave/revolutionary, and a Pacific islander. These diverse characters face conflicts and dangers fitting their place and time. And then there is the birthmark that some of the characters share.... If you can stick with it this one is well worth the time. P.S. I haven't seen the movie.

Annihilation

Annihilation / Jeff Vandermeer 195 pgs.

This book is the scientific journal of a biologist who is a member of the 12th expedition into Area X.  No one really knows what has happened to the 11 previous expeditions.  This group of four, the biologist, a psychologist, a surveyor and an anthropologist are highly trained for the mission and sent with specific instructions.  Once they arrive, it becomes obvious very quickly that the mission instructions were incomplete and that they have been lied to by the authorities.  Things go south pretty quickly as they discover and investigate a tunnel that is really more like an underground tower.  The members of the mission quickly start disappearing, dying and turning on each other.

As we read, we discover that the biologist volunteered for the mission because her husband was on an earlier crew.  He returned to her in bodily form but was a changed man who remembered nothing of the mission and soon died of a rare cancer.  This mission is now their connection.

This book is kind of creepy and out of my normal zone. For that reason I enjoyed the exposure to it but doubt it will go far in the 2015 tournament of books.

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Urban Origins of American Judaism / Deborah Dash Moore 185 pp.

A solid and readable treatment of the intersection of religious and urban life for Jews through the course of American history from the colonial period through the present day.  A good many accompanying photos enrich the text.  Not exciting, but a worthy overview.

Adam

Adam / Ariel Schrag 302 pgs.

Adam Freedman is a skinny, immature student who is doing his best to fail in his California HS. He has a few friends but is not confident about where he fits in since he is a bit of a misfit.  In an attempt to change is outlook, he decides to visit his older sister in NYC for the summer.  He finds himself there in the middle of demonstrations for gay marriage and transgender rights.  His sister is a bit of a militant lesbian and thus most of her friends are in the same mindset. Adam is just looking for his first sexual experience.  Somehow get mistaken for being transgender, an error that he rides like a wave while participating in a delightful subculture of underground clubs, L Word parties and a beautiful red-head who is interested in him as a girl in transition. Is any of this a problem? Not unless you really think about it which Adam does occasionally and gets sick to his stomach. This book is so funny and so much fun to read.  I loved the mistaken identity aspect and the look into a different milieu. If you are only going to read one book this year focused on transgender transitions, make it this one.

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7 grams of lead

7 grams of lead / Keith Thomson 446 pages.

This action packed thriller is hard to put down.  There is a suspicious murder and blogger/journalist Russ Thornton comments on events and brings attention to himself. Now the perpetrator wants to know what Russ knows. There starts an amazing story of spying, action, murder and intrigue.  Russ is pretty tough and smart but can he figure out who is behind all of the activity?  He discovers a listening device implanted in his head and has to find another to figure out who is responsible.  Lucky for him, the first person he finds with matching hardware is beautiful, rich and unattached.  I'll let you guess about how their relationship evolves.

Gotta say the high tech tools, relate able narrator, and extreme action are a real winning combination. Kudos to Thomson for another great book.

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Novel Interiors

Novel Interiors by Lisa Borgnes Giramonti, 288 pages

Ever read one of those classic novels and think, "Wow, I really want to live in that place!"? Novel Interiors is an interior design book showing how some of the classics might inspire actual homes. Like a lot of interior design books, a lot of the looks are undoubtedly cost-prohibitive for anyone not named Gatsby, but unlike many design books I've seen, several of these look lived-in. (But not schlubby.) Giramonti separates the book into six sections, allowing us to feel inspired, in turn, by Jane Austen and the Brontes, Edith Wharton and Henry James,Thomas Hardy and Willa Cather, Somerset Maugham and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf and Isak Dinesen, and Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust. The images are beautiful, the designs are naturally full of books, and not ALL of them seem out of the realm of possibility. It's worth a gander.

Seconds

Seconds: Story and art by  Bryan Lee O'Malley 321 pages

Meet Katie, a young talented head chef and founder of a restaurant called Seconds. With dreams and aspirations opening a bigger and better restaurant, like many of us, life give us a curve ball: plans for Katie's new restaurant are at halt, her ex-boyfriend back in town, and there's the current affair she had with the current head chef, which ended due to a waitress getting physically hurt while they wasn't around.

Just as things takes a turn for the worst, she is visited by a the mysterious blond headed girl that give her one mushroom, and a notepad with a instructions of a do-it-yourself-do-over spell that follows:

1. Write your mistake 
2. Ingest one mushroom 
3. Go to sleep
4.  Wake anew. 

And just like that the cosmos is all fixed again, right? Til you find more mushrooms.

If you ever read, Scott Pilgrim Vs.The World (or seen the movie) and enjoy it, then you will like Seconds. It a fun. Dealing with young love, sarcastic humor, as well just the everyday of obstacles of....life 

Alice + Freda Forever

Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis by Alexis Coe, illustrations by Sally Klann, 223 pages

In 1892, Memphis was shaken by the murder of 17-year-old Freda Ward by her friend Alice Mitchell. The fact that a young woman (Alice was 19 at the time) could do something so horrible was, of course, scandalous, but the real shocker was the fact that Alice and Freda had been in love and intending to get married. Indeed, it was Freda's withdrawal from their engagement that sent Alice into a fit of despair so bad that she took her ex-fiancee's life. Alice's defense lawyers successfully used this same-sex love affair to get their client declared insane, avoiding a death sentence (though she spent the rest of her short life in an insane asylum).

This is a tragic tale that is definitely worth learning about. That said, Coe's writing could have used a bit more nuance and an evener hand. We don't learn much about Alice and Freda's lives before they met, at least beyond what's included in the trial transcripts. We're also bashed over the head with how shocking the insanity-because-she's-a-lesbian plea is, and we're repeatedly reminded that the "jury of peers" was 12 white men; while it's certainly unfortunate that these situations existed, anyone with a basic understanding of the context of the era would understand why both of these sad facts were considered acceptable at that time.

So yes, it's worth reading, if only to learn the story of Alice and Freda. But proceed with caution.

The Carnival at Bray

The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley, 235 pages
A 2015 Morris Award Finalist

It's 1993 and sixteen-year-old Maggie's life is being upended. Her mom, who has gone through a string of men ever since Maggie's dad left, has finally seemed to settle down. Now that they're married, Maggie's mom and new stepfather have decided to move her and her little sister Ronnie all the way from their Chicago two-flat to Bray, a small town on the Irish coastline where their new stepfather hails from. Bray features a rusty carnival, near-continual rain, and one of the oldest living inhabitants of Ireland, Dan Sean. What it doesn't feature is her beloved uncle Kevin. At 26, Kevin is a wannabe rock star and grunge music expert, who took Maggie to see the Smashing Pumpkins when their album Siamese Dream came out, and has a huge influence on her life. The relationship between Kevin and Maggie's mother (his older sister) is rocky, and becomes even rockier after a disastrous Christmas celebration in Bray. But Maggie's world is rocked when Kevin suddenly dies, and things explode even further when she finds a letter from him with two tickets to a Nirvana show in Rome. Taking along new boyfriend Eoin, she follows her beloved uncle's advice to ask for permission later and sets off on a pilgrimage of sorts in honor of Kevin.

Like The Scar Boys, this book has a pretty heavy musical influence. With a time setting of the early 90s, how could it not? And given that Maggie and Kevin's favorite band is Nirvana, it's hard to not see Kevin as a stand in for Kurt Cobain. That's probably intentional, but it doesn't necessarily detract from the story. Maggie's relationship with Kevin and her mom is complicated; in many ways, despite everyone thinking Kevin is a screw up, it's Maggie's mom who seems less like an adult, given her rocky romantic past. Jessie Ann Foley does an excellent job making Maggie seem real, striking the right balance between her need to find a place to belong and her desire to follow her heart, even if it means running away to Rome for a concert. It's a good story that will still resonate with the smart phone and social media teens of today, even if the musical references might go over their heads. And it's also great for anyone who might be feeling nostalgic for the 90s, or at least the music.

(Read as part of YALSA's Morris/Nonfiction Challenge.)

Men we reaped, by Jesmyn Ward

“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” —Harriet Tubman

 

Although this memoir was published a year before the recent events in Ferguson, it is an especially relevant read at this time.  Ward, whose searing Salvage the bones won the 2011 National Book Award, grew up in the poverty-stricken part of rural Mississippi which was the setting of her earlier novel.  A bright girl, she was befriended by her mother’s employer, a wealthy man for whom she cleaned, and attended private schools, often as one of the only African-Americans.  Her dual life as a good student in a white school and as a member of an extended black family, including those related by blood and those more by choice, is unflinchingly depicted.  Most of her circle are caught in cycles of poverty, drug use, and drinking for both enjoyment and to escape the reality of their dead-end lives.  Early pregnancy, absent fathers, and self-destructive behavior are the norm.  Told in reverse chronology, she relates the short lives of five of the boys she grew up with, including that of her younger brother. 272 pp.