The Dharma Bums

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac 187 pp.

This is the Kerouac book I wish I'd read in college. While On the Road did nothing for me, Dharma Bums captured my attention. This is another autobiographical novel where Kerouac chronicles part of his life in the 1950s. Most of the action takes place in California with Raymond Smith (Kerouac) and his friend, Japhy Ryder (based on poet, Gary Snyder) who teaches him about Buddhism. Part of the lessons involve a mountain climbing expedition during which Ray really begins to understand what Japhy is teaching. Others prominent in the Beat movement are mentioned under aliases including Allan Ginsberg as Alvah Goldbook who reads his poem "Wail". Ray reaches real understanding of the Buddhist concepts on a visit home with his family before heading back to California. There is a lot of depth to be found there.

Anarchy and Old Dogs

Anarchy and Old Dogs by Colin Cotterill  272 pp.

This is the fourth book in the Dr. Siri Paiboun. The latest arrival at the morgue is a blind man who was run down by a truck. While trying to discover the man's identity, a cryptic coded message is discovered. Upon deciphering the message, with the help of an old friend, Siri sets out to prevent an overthrow of the government from within its own ranks with another good friend, Civilai. His devoted morgue assistant Nurse Dtui goes undercover and returns with unexpected news. At the urging for Nurse Dtui, Dr. Siri makes multiple visits to the transvestite fortune teller, Auntie Bpoo, who provides comic relief. In spite of the serious nature of the events, this series packs lots of humor into its pages.   

Murder in time

Murder in time / Julie McElwain 510 pgs.

I was suckered into reading this because Overdrive featured it in their "Big Read" recommendation box.  I should have known better just by looking at the cover.  I'm not one who enjoys romance or time travel very much and I can overlook a lot of gaping plot holes if the story is good.  Unfortunately, this one just isn't very good.  Kendra Donovan is a brilliant AND beautiful F.B.I. agent who is a rising star.  She participates in a raid that goes bad and almost dies.  She rehabs and can't focus on anything but revenge.  As she plots the demise of the person she deems responsible, she stumbles into a wormhole and is transported back to 1815.  Needless to say, she doesn't fit in there particularly well but manages to stumble onto a series of murders she decides is the work of a serial killer. Even though she is a hardcore and solitary agent in her "real" life, now, in the past wearing 1815 garb, she falls for a guy who falls equally hard for her.  Intersperse a bunch of killing and you pretty much have the story.  The plot holes are enormous even if you are ok with time travel, etc. The fact that Kendra does not alter her way of speaking or vocabulary at all is incomprehensible.  She, of course, is also a outlier to the way women behave in 1815 which results in a few "Well I never" comments instead of being totally ostracized is also a tad hard to believe.  Although she is a brilliant and tough F.B.I. agent, she is often unprepared for obvious results of her interrogations, etc. (and who, pray tell would EVER allow themselves to be questioned by her in 1815?).  Maybe I'm just cranky but I should have gone with my early instincts and stopped reading this early on when I realized this story is NOT for me.

Detroit Hustle

Detroit Hustle: a memoir of love, life, & home / Amy Haimerl 269 pgs.

Amy Haimerl and her husband couldn't afford Brooklyn so they bought a "fixer-upper" in Detroit.  And by fixing it up, I mean something fairly close to a gut rehab.  The house had no utilities when they purchased it because everything had pretty much been ripped out of it.

I was hoping this book would be as good as the other recent Detroit stories including "Once in a a great city" and "Detroit: an American autopsy." This book, however, spends more time talking about the authors upbringing, her relationship with her husband, and how she doesn't want to be a "gentrifier" but realizes that she can't help but be.  I didn't get a lot of valuable insights, even about the rehabbing of the house.  Amy and her husband seemed to contract every aspect of the rehab including painting so no great stories of the struggles of being handy.  Overall, if you want to read something about Detroit, find a different title.  If you want a millennial memoir, maybe this is for you.

The Girls

The Girls by Emma Cline, 355 pages

In this excellent debut novel, Cline tells a fictionalized version of the Manson Family from the point of view of a young girl who becomes enamored with the cult, particularly with the other girls in it. Our narrator, Evie, is an awkward 15-year-old who is doesn't seem to fit in with the wealthy community where she lives in rural California. When she sees a few ragged girls shoplifting toilet paper and digging food out of a dumpster, her curiosity gets the better of her. Pretty soon she's tagging along with them out to a commune, and becomes infatuated with Suzanne, the leader of the titular girls. (I find it interesting that despite her descriptions of cult leader Russell's charms, Evie doesn't seem to care about him much; her magnet is Suzanne.)

This book has been getting a lot of buzz, and it's easy to see why. Evie is an excellent vessel in which to tell this story, as we watch her innocence fade while simultaneously watching the veil being lifted from her eyes. Cline's characters are compelling, and the story is wonderfully told. I'm excited to see what Cline comes up with next.

Stiff

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, 303 pages

Think the usefulness of your body ends when you die? In this now-classic book, Roach examines all they ways in which human dead bodies can be useful, from teaching medical students anatomy and surgery techniques to helping forensic pathologists figure out how and when a person died to making our cars safer. While this book is certainly not for the squeamish (particularly the chapter in which Roach looks into reports of cannibalism *shudder*), it is informative and surprisingly funny. I listened to the audiobook, read by Shelley Frasier, whose wry narration perfectly captures the gallows humor of Roach's writing. I left this book feeling simultaneously better informed, grossed out, slightly guilty (for laughing so hard at a book about dead people), and even more deeply convinced of my decision to leave my body to science.

Disco for the Departed

Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill  247 pp.

This mystery is part of the Dr. Siri Paiboun series. Dr Siri is the national coroner of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. He is ordered to the mountains of Huaphan Province, where an arm is found sticking out of the concrete walk that was laid from the President’s former cave hideout to his new house beneath the cliffs.   Dr Siri identifies the corpse as a Cuban soldier who had supposedly been sent home which leads to allegations of ritual murder, a tragic love story, and an encounter with a huge number of spirits in the cave hall being prepared for a government celebration. A side plot involves the faithful morgue assistant, Geung, being taken by soldiers to a location hundreds of miles away on the orders of a party boss who dislikes the idea of a man with Down's Syndrome working for the national morgue. Geung is so worried about neglecting his duties he begins to walk home, suffering injuries and illness along the way before arriving back at the morgue seriously ill with a mosquito born disease. In spite of the serious subject matter, this book, and the rest of the series, is full of humor and the wonderful characters. 

Shrill

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West, 260 pages

Seattle-based blogger and comedy writer Lindy West is well-known for her penchant to speak up about injustices, particularly those related to women and fat people, and for her willingness to stare down her online trolls. If you go with that description, you might feel that a book by West would be argumentative, dismissive of those who disagree with her, and rude in it's own right...but you'd be wrong. What this memoir/collection of personal essays actually is is a series of funny, heartfelt, kind examinations of the kind of world where women who speak up are put down and "offered" rape and death threats online, as well as examinations of those online trolls and how we, as women, should respond to them.

And above all, it's inspiring to see how, while rape culture still exists and society still judges worth by dress size, the needle has moved in the years since West started her writing career. That's not to say that we can place all credit on West's shoulders, but she and women like her are the loud, well-spoken advocates women need. I appreciate West's candor in this book, particularly in her discussion of her abortion and in her examination of her past arguments; I also REALLY appreciate her abhorrence of euphemisms, which has always been a pet peeve of mine. All in all, an excellent book. As one of the blurbs on the back reads, "Required reading if you are a feminist. Recommended reading if you aren't." Couldn't have put it better myself.

Undermajordomo Minor

Undermajordomo Minor / Patrick DeWitt 317 pgs.

Lucy is a young man with a life going nowhere.  When the village priest finds him a position in a run-down castle far away, he takes it.  On his trip, he becomes acquainted with a father/son duo of pick-pockets with a hearts of gold.  His position at the castle is under Mr. Olderglough, who works directly for the mad Baron.  There are so many interesting relationships between the characters in this book but my favorite is between Mr. Olderglough and Lucy.  At one point Lucy has taken to his bed in depression over his broken love life and Mr. Olderglough is trying to 1) cheer him up and 2) get him back to work when Lucy points out to him that he has never actually been paid.  The shock by Mr. Olderglough (who is the person responsible for paying Lucy) is priceless.  I listened to the audio version of this book and reader Simon Prebble does a wonderful job.  Sometimes dark and gothic but with great humor, a recommended read.

The nest, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Knowing that one may inherit a sum of money at a certain age can sap initiative from the heir.  Leonard Plumb, Sr. knew that, so he arranged for his four children, Leo Jr., Bea, Jack, and Melody, to have access to the small sum he intended to leave each only after the youngest reaches forty.  He figured they’d have had sufficient time to find their own paths by then and it might give each a modest nest egg to use as they saw fit or give them a retirement cushion.  He died soon after making this decision.  In the intervening years, smart management by his cousin George and a booming stock market inflated the amount far beyond what he had intended.  And, regrettably, most of his children have a real and desperate need for the cash they have come to call “the nest” as Melody’s 40^th birthday approaches.  A few months before her February birthday, however, Leo Jr., a handsome, charming, successful man of dubious ethics, is involved in a bad car accident and the young waitress he had lured into his sports car (while he was drunk and high) is seriously injured.  Much of the nest, at their mother’s direction, is funneled into Leo’s recovery and rehab as well as paying off the injured Matilda.  Leo’s wife strips the rest of his assets away in the subsequent acrimonious divorce.  But Leo vows to make good on the money somehow – can he?  I came to really care about the characters in this debut novel, with the exception of the slippery Leo, despite their many flaws.  I still wish poor Melody had had a proper birthday, however.  It reads like a summer vacation novel, but is surprisingly complex and thoughtful.  353 pp.