The secret history of Wonder Woman

The secret history of Wonder Woman / Jill Lepore 416 pgs.

Suffrage, women's rights, feminism and Wonder Woman are all featured in this book about the creator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marsden.  Marsden was an interesting character with a family life that deserves to be chronicled in a book.  Marsden was highly educated but had problems holding a steady job.  His number one occupation often seemed to be self promotion.  He developed an early version of a lie detector test but in addition to monitoring some physical phenomenon, it required Marsden to interpret answers from the subject.  He was a psychologist and a lawyer, a professor and a writer...none of which supported his family.  He was a smart man who was supported financially and emotionally by the women in his life, I found the story very interesting.

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Mess

Mess: one man's struggle to clean up his house and his act / Barry Yourgrau 276 pgs.

Always willing to judge a book by its cover, this one really spoke to me. The piles of newspapers making up the word "Mess" reminds me of the challenges I read about in Stuff: compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee.  This book, however, is better because it is a first person account of a very challenging living arrangement that prevented the author from having things fixed in his apartment and threatened his romantic relationship one day when his girlfriend stopped by and he wouldn't let her in his abode.  I could relate to almost all of the reasons the author kept the things that he did and have a lot of empathy for his situation.

This book is funny, endearing, and very readable.

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The Diviners

The Diviners by Libba Bray, 578 pages

Evie O'Neill is a thoroughly modern girl - bobbed hair, flapper style, and a desire to have nothing but fun. When her ability to hold objects and divine the owner's secrets from them gets her in trouble in her hometown of Zenith, Ohio, her parents send her to stay in New York with her uncle until things quiet down. But trading in the Midwest for the skyscrapers of fabulous, fashionable New York is hardly a punishment for Evie, even if she is stuck working with her uncle Will and his staid assistant Jericho in the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. Soon she's zipping around town, hanging out with Ziegfeld dancer Theta and her best pal Henry, figuring out how to get her friend Mabel into Jericho's arms, and avoiding that wretched sneak thief Sam Lloyd at all costs. Meanwhile, Memphis Campbell, a Harlem numbers runner with aspirations of being a poet, keeps dreaming about a tall figure standing at a crossroads and an eye with a lightning bolt under it, which is thoroughly disconcerting. And a killer with a penchant for the occult is stalking the streets of New York, making Evie, Jericho, Will, and Sam race against time to stop him.

This was a re-read for me in preparation for the sequel, but I still enjoyed it. Bray is building a very lush world that is grounded in the history of the 20s but with the added element of the supernatural, and it's a great melding. One thing I appreciate more and more each time I've read this book is that the killer gets creepier and creepier, and the overarching mystery put into motion gets more and more intriguing. Libba Bray is one of my favorite authors, and while I've only just started on Lair of Dreams, I'm looking forward to what she comes up with next.

Luka and the Fire of Life

Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie  240 pp.

After seeing the horrendous treatment of the animals of the "Great Rings of Fire" circus, young Luka Khalifa curses the circus owner. The curse causes the destruction of the circus. A month later Luka's father falls into a coma as a result of a curse placed by the owner of the destroyed circus. Luka heads off on a quest to retrieve the "Fire of Life" which is the only way to save his father's life. Accompanying Luka on his journey are a dog named Bear and a bear named Dog, two of the escaped circus animals. They are led by Nobodaddy, a hologram-ish representation of Luka's father who gains more substance as his father grows closer to death. Along the way they join up with a variety of magical beings who assist him in his quest against sinister rats, old Aztec gods, deities of extinct civilizations, and others. Rushdie includes elements of mythology, video games, and pop culture throughout the story at random moments. At one point there is a brief reference the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Who and his Tardis appearing, vanishing, and reappearing, Doc Brown from "Back to the Future," and the dwarves from Time Bandits dropping from the sky all along the River of Time. This was closely followed by the Eddies in the river, specifically known as Nelson, Duane, and Fisher. These and other random bits of humor pop up in the story but you have to be paying close attention to catch them. Somehow this mashup of fantasy, mythology, magical realism, and heroic quest all works to make a fascinating, if sometimes confusing story. It was written as a children's book but I know of few children who would really "get" it.

Red Queen

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, 383 pages

Mare's world isn't just stratified by the haves and have nots, but by the color of blood. If you have silver blood, then you have all the wealth, prosperity, and power in world - both the power to rule, but also physical power in the form of a special ability. But if your blood is red, then your life is not much more than a fight to survive. Mare is a Red. Her three older brothers have all been sent to the frontlines of Norta's never-ending war, and unless a miracle happens, she will likely be next. After a series of unfortunate events, she finds herself where she thought she would never be - with a job, working for the Silvers attending the Queenstrial. As the favored silver daughters demonstrate their abilities for the king and queen, hoping to be picked for betrothal to Cal, the crown prince, an accident happens, and Mare finds herself plummeting to an early death by electrified shield. Except she doesn't die. It's determined that she is something new and different and scary for the silvers in power - a Red with silver abilities, specifically the ability to manipulate and use electricity. And so she is thrust into the world of the silvers, hiding in plain sight, so to speak, as the betrothed of the younger prince, Maven. But when she's contacted by the Red Guard, a group of guerrilla fighters determined to take down the system oppressing them, she decides to work for them and help them further their cause. But trust in a world of secrets, lies, and machinations is a fragile thing to maintain.

Red Queen is a hard book for me to judge, and if the reviews on Goodreads are any indication, I'm not the only one. While reading it, I found myself greatly enjoying it, but when I wasn't reading it, it was largely forgettable. Part of the reason why probably has to do with the fact that it seems to mash together elements of several other popular YA series (Bardugo's Grisha trilogy and The Hunger Games for sure come to mind) with the more unique elements of the world Aveyard is creating. It has a weird almost love square at play between Mare and the other male main characters her age that was sometimes intriguing, but not enough to get me to root hard for anyone. I figured out the reveal at the end fairly early, but the twist took me surprisingly longer to figure out. It definitely benefits from Aveyard's skills as a scriptwriter. Despite the feeling of having read much of this before, she kept the plot moving perfectly, so it should adapt to the big screen without much of a challenge. So basically I enjoyed it, but there wasn't much there to make it a stand-out for me. Pick it up if you're a die-hard YA fan like me, but otherwise, you're not missing much.

Peggy Guggenheim: the Shock of the Modern / Francine Prose 211pp.

Like Einstein: His Space and Times, David: the Divided Heart, and others, this title is part of Yale's Jewish Lives series.  And what a life!  Peggy, niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim and born near the turn of the last century, devoted her life and wealth to collecting, promoting, and exhibiting some of the most important artists of the century: Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, and many others.  She rescued her large collection, one of the most important of the time, from the Nazis, thereby tilting the course of art history.  And although self-conscious about her physical appearance, she collected important men just as assiduously as artworks.  There were affairs with Samuel Beckett and Yves Tanguy, and I lost count of the marriages.  I am a long-time fan of Francine Prose, and she's painted a fascinating portrait of a strange, insecure, and daring woman.

Snuff

Snuff by Terry Pratchett  398 pp.

Sam Vines, the commander of the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork, has been coerced into taking a vacation by his wife, Lady Sybil. But policing is in his blood and it's not long before there is a dead body to investigate, even though Vines is out of his jurisdiction.This is just the thing to get him away from the balls and tea parties his wife drags him to, not to mention the restricted diet that has taken away his beloved bacon sandwiches. With the help of his loyal (and deadly) manservant and the local, if inept, constable Vines finds himself investigating the wholesale enslavement and genocide of Goblins and up against the locals in charge. This is a great combination: a of who-done-it and the bizarre and humorous society of Discworld. The audiobook was a great way to pass the time on a 550 mile road trip.

Lair of Dreams

Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray, 613 pages

A couple years ago, I described the first book in this series (The Diviners) as something akin to taking Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Scooby Gang and plopping them in the middle of New York City in the 1920s. After reading this second book, I'm sticking by that description but adding the phrase "more diverse" to the mix. Set in 1927, Lair of Dreams finds our Diviners in the middle of a mysterious sleeping sickness epidemic that has New York City baffled and ready to blame anyone, especially the immigrants whose neighborhoods seemed to be the source of the deadly disease. Enter Henry, a gay, piano-playing "dream walker" who enters into the dream world to find his long-lost love, Louis. While searching for Louis, he finds another dream walker, Ling Chan, a half-Chinese science geek who has the ability to speak to the dead through dreams. Together, Henry and Ling have to figure out how to stop the dreams that are killing New Yorkers left and right.

The first book in this series focused on different Diviners, namely flapper and object-reader Evie O'Neill, who certainly appears in this book, often soused on bootleg gin. Evie's sparkling ways were a highlight of the first book, and while her parts are certainly fun here (and she does know Henry, though she doesn't spend time with him), they're almost a distraction from the actual story of Henry and Ling. It almost feels like Bray wanted to write a totally different story without Evie and the other Diviners from the first book, but felt like she couldn't write one in the same world without connecting everyone in some way. Perhaps all this will come together later on in the series. I'll continue reading it because the setting and 1920s slang are so positutely cool, though this one pales in comparison to The Diviners.

Girl at war, by Sara Novic

Another well-written book to come out of the conflicts in the Balkans during the end of the last century.  Ana Juric’s family lives in Zagreb and their world is torn apart when Ana is ten years old.   As war draws closer, the family’s life is further complicated by the illness of Ana’s nine-month-old sister, Rahela.  When a chance opens up to take Rahela to Sarajevo and from there send her to America for treatment, they feel they must take it.  But on the way back home, the family is ambushed and Ana is the sole survivor.  The novel then shifts to Ana’s life in America and how she came to be there and living in the same household that welcomed her sister five years earlier.  Her difficulty in reconciling her losses in Croatia and what she had to do to survive there with the present day comfort of a stable existence is the core of the book.  316 pp.

A little life, by Hanya Yanagihara

Is anything but a little book at 720 dense pages and weighing in at 2.3 pounds.  In addition to the sheer bulk of the book, the emotional impact of the novel is hard to handle.   It follows the friendship of four men who meet in college through several decades – the time period, although contemporary, is not moored by references to current events that would allow the reader to place it exactly.  Similarly, although the reader comes to know all four men intimately, none of them are described in detail.  Even after a hundred or more pages, I was uncertain as to their ethnicity and appearance, which leaves one to concentrate more on their inner lives and their relationships.   But this vagueness does not mean that the characters are meant to be representative types, each is a fully drawn individual.  JB becomes a prominent visual artist; Malcolm, an architect; Willem, a sought-after actor; and Jude, the center of the book, a talented lawyer who ends up defending corporations.  The three others are protective of Jude, who walks with difficulty after what he describes as “an automobile accident.” He is reticent about other events in his early years and seems to have no family.  Jude’s story is slowly revealed in all its pain and horror.  His coping mechanism, injuring himself by cutting, becomes more and more understandable.  I found the book both hard to put down and difficult to continue reading.   Recommended with reservations – it is an upsetting novel.  720 pp.