The Monsters of Templeton – Lauren Groff

No particular reason for picking this one up – it was just on the shelf and I felt a little light on my library selections that week.

I enjoyed it (NY Times Review). Essentially, the story of a girl who moves back home after some disastrous life choices and tries to figure out the mystery of her paternity.

It had a few things going for it, for me. The girl was an archaeologist (although that barely factors in), the story was peppered with “photographs” of the characters (from the author’s personal collection) and I really liked some of the characters.

What I didn’t love was that while some of the characters were enjoyable, there were sudden changes in personality that I didn’t quite get – or backstory just didn’t add up. Also, and this is more due to my attention span than poor writing – but the author does one of those things, where there is this whole 2nd or 3rd story, told by another generation, sometimes in letters – that just loses me. I admit, I skimmed through entire chapters here. I probably missed something crucial or enjoyable, but I really hate having to entirely switch gears like that. So, I kind of cheated.

Devilish – Maureen Johnson

Okay, I love Maureen Johnson. Not only have I met her in real life (NAME DROP! she is friends with a friend – who this book is actually dedicated to!) but I just think she is a really fun YA writer.

Maureen describes Devilish:

At St. Teresa’s Preparatory School for Girls in Providence, Rhode Island, rebellious senior class genius Jane Jarvis is worried about her best friend Allison Concord. Ally is lovable, but a little clueless, and badly in need of Jane’s help. She needs to get a freshman “sister” at the school’s annual Big-Little celebration. When Ally blows it (rather literally), Jane knows that they are in for a rough few weeks.

She has no idea just how rough they will be.

Strange things start happening in Providence. Hail storms rip into the city. A strangely polite gourmet in a silver roadster turns up every time Jane turns around. A freshman guy from neighboring St. Sebastian’s starts to stalk her. A lanky, cupcake-loving sophomore transfer steps into their lives to save the day . . .

Then Ally begins to change. She looses the awkwardness that Jane has always known and loved and becomes the model of cool. Things don’t go as well for Jane, and she soon winds up facing the threat of expulsion and ruin.

But these are only the beginnings of much bigger problems. Jane’s life is about to get much worse. Ally claims that she sold her soul, and Jane throws herself on the line to get it back. But this battle is big. A crowd of strangers is about to descend on Providence, and they’re not there to go on a campus tour of Brown.

It’s Jane versus the demons, and nothing is what it seems. There will be perfume bottles, dogs, explosions, dancing, death, badly misused textbooks, ex-boyfriends, very long falls, unusual weaponry, and lots of sugary snacks before it’s all over.

Hey, you do what you have to do. Everyone knows high school is hell.

Not really sure what else to say. I love YA, sassy, brilliant heroines and “Glory” style demons (c’mon, you have to watch Buffy, right?). It was cute, it was well-written and it made me laugh and want a cupcake. Then again, most things make me want a cupcake.

The cutest part, was that this was a library book, and some kid wrote on the cover page “Maureen Roxs! Get her other books!” and (s)he listed them all out. It was cute! Note: Vandalizing library books = not cool.

The Gravedigger’s Daughter – Joyce Carol Oates

I may have read “Blonde” but I think this is the first Oates book I have read. I don’t want to say too much about it, because I am pretty sure that most of my readership is also in my book club, and this is this month’s pick. But, for posterity’s sake:

At the beginning of Oates’s 36th novel, Rebecca Schwart is mistaken by a seemingly harmless man for another woman, Hazel Jones, on a footpath in 1959 Chatauqua Falls, N.Y. Five hundred pages later, Rebecca will find out that the man who accosted her is a serial killer, and Oates will have exercised, in a manner very difficult to forget, two of her recurring themes: the provisionality of identity and the awful suddenness of male violence. There’s plenty of backstory, told in retrospect. Rebecca’s parents escape from the Nazis with their two sons in 1936; Rebecca is born in the boat crossing over. When Rebecca is 13, her father, Jacob, a sexton in Milburn, N.Y., kills her mother, Anna, and nearly kills Rebecca, before blowing his own head off. At the time of the footpath crossing, Rebecca is just weeks away from being beaten, almost to death, by her husband, Niles Tignor (a shady traveling beer salesman). She and son Niley flee; she takes the name of the woman for whom she has been recently mistaken and becomes Hazel Jones. Niley, a nine-year-old with a musical gift, becomes Zacharias, “a name from the bible,” Rebecca tells people. Rebecca’s Hazel navigates American norms as a waitress, salesperson and finally common-law wife of the heir of the Gallagher media fortune, a man in whom she never confides her past.

I didn’t love this. I found that it was almost a difficult story to follow, because Oates’ language and writing gets in the way of her own story. I think the same themes kept getting hit on, but never really clearly enough for me to feel moved or attached.  The story is told in three (or four?) parts, and I found that I really liked the first and last – but the entire middle (and really, meat) I couldn’t find myself emotionally invested.

Water Witches – Chris Bohjalian

I think this is the second or third book I have read by this author. The first one I read, I really really liked (Midwives). The second one (Before You Know Kindness), also with an environmental theme, I remember enjoying reading – but had to look up what it was about on BN.com.

I fear that this third one will fall into that same “oh yeah, that was okay” category.

In a moving, life-affirming novel suffused with ecological wisdom, a Vermont ski resort’s plans for expansion collide with environmentalists seeking to preserve a mountainous wildlife habitat and riverine ecosystem. Narrator Scott Winston, a transplanted New York City lawyer who represents the ski resort, switches allegiance after he and his nine-year-old daughter spot three mountain lions in an area targeted for clearing. Complicating matters is the envy that Scott’s pragmatic wife, Laura, a native Vermonter, feels toward her famed sister, Patience Avery, a dowser (water witch) who also opposes the ski resort and whose talent for locating underground springs, missing persons or lost objects with a divining rod figures prominently in the novel’s denouement. The struggle between the developers and their opponents culminates in an environmental board hearing that has all the dramatic excitement of a courtroom trial. With wit, insight and mordant irony, Bohjalian charts Scott’s metamorphosis from rationalistic materialist and skeptic to one who believes in higher powers and the interconnectedness of all life. In a refreshing twist, instead of offering a bucolic idyll, the author takes us through a Vermont beset by drought, a declining ski industry, unemployment and endangered ecosystems.

I don’t know about life-affirming or ecological wisdom, but it was a good book. It’s a little heavy-handed on the “there are two sides to every issue!” and “kids are amazing, innocent beings” but overall – nice. That’s really the best I could do – nice.

One thing I did enjoy about it, and this is the kind of stuff I will remember is the little glimpse into the world of “dowsing.” I knew very little about water-dowsing or this group of practicing diviners (divinators?) and probably won’t investigate further but I feel like I got a little glimpse into something, and somehow, knowing my life, this will probably come in handy one day during an inane conversation.

Revenge of the Spellmans – Lisa Lutz

I totally forgot to blog about this book. I think I read it last Wednesday or Thursday?

I love this series, and read the second in it almost exactly a year ago. To briefly recap, the premise of the story is that it’s the adventures of a family of private investigators. In this one, Rae is more grown up and it focuses more on Isabel and her figuring out if she wants to take over the family business, or leave altogether.

I really enjoyed it, because I love the characters and the writing – but I am a little worried that this series is running out of steam, a la Stephanie Plum. I think the ongoing love quandry has been resolved in this one, but if it isn’t, its going to peter out and get boring like Morelli and Ranger in the Plum series. And the little sister is written kind of oddly. She was always a strange character, but now we are supposed to believe she is seventeen – and now the weirdness just seems really irritating.

I don’t know if there is going to be a fourth in this series, and if there is – I would read it.  But I almost wish Lutz would end the story here, and start something else that I could fall in love with.

The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri

This was suggested for our office Book Club, and came highly recommended by my friend Jill, but didn’t make the Book Club cut. That never stopped me from reading something!

Originally a novella published in The New Yorker and later expanded to a full length novel. The book explores many of the same emotional and cultural themes as Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. Moving between events in Calcutta, Boston, and New York City, the novel examines the nuances involved with being caught between two conflicting cultures with their highly distinct religious, social, and ideological differences.

I know this is disappointing to poor Carolann who agrees that my reviews have been somewhat lackluster lately, but I don’t feel like I have a lot to say about this book. I thought it beautiful, and I felt a little like I was reading a classic. The language and imagery all pretty – but I don’t know if the story will stick with me, or if I have any burning desire to see the movie (apparently, that was just released?) I would like to learn more about some Indian or Bengali customs, but that’s really the only thing that I took from this.

Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman

Since I enjoyed American Gods so much, I put another Gaiman book on the list (and yes, I am following @neilhimself on Twitter).

I liked this one. Not loved it, but liked it. I think he has a very, very specific writing style, that if you aren’t really in the mood for it, can be annoying.

The synopsis from BN.com

Neil Gaiman, the genius behind “The Sandman” graphic novels — which Norman Mailer called “a comic strip for intellectuals” — delves into novel-length fiction with Neverwhere, a wild and mesmerizing story set in a bizarre and chilling underground London. Neverwhere begins innocently enough: It’s the story of Richard Mayhew, a plain man with a good heart. Unhappy in love and in life, Richard is thrust into a dark and evil world when he stops to help a young girl he finds bleeding in the street. Now Richard has much more than work and girlfriend dilemmas on his mind — now he’s wanted by two very evil, powerful, and nasty mercenaries who like to think that they are, in fact, rather gentlemanly.

I think I just have read a lot of dystopian, homeless, otherworld type books – so this kind of lost it’s “wow” factor for me. And speaking of otherworld, I did this weekend-long LARP-type thing a year or so ago, called … Otherworld. And it was awesome and all that jazz, but it’s funny because the more popular sci-fi/fantasy writers I read, the more and more I see references to certain characters in nerd events in my past.  In a way, it’s cool because I can “see” the characters very clearly in my mind’s eye.

Mistress Shakespeare – Karen Harper

I saw this book at Barnes and Noble’s, then put it on my library list (because I am cheap, and support my local libraries!) and have kind of been “saving” it when I was in the mood for something good to read. It was! It was everything I wanted.

From Publishers Weekly
On November 27, 1582, the Worcester archives show a grant for a marriage license for one Anne Whateley and her groom, Wm Shaxpere. Yet several days later, William Shakespeare married a pregnant Anne Hathaway. Harper’s slack latest takes this mystery as its subject, imagining Anne Whateley as Shakespeare’s only true love. Friends from childhood driven apart by their families’ antipathy, Will and Anne rediscover each other as they come of age, and the young lovers plan to wed in spite of their families’ disapproval. When Will is forced into marriage with Anne Hathaway, Anne Whateley flees to London and throws herself into her family’s business, but the two reunite when Will arrives in London, and Anne becomes his tireless promoter. The novel’s chief pleasures derive from the easy intersection of Shakespeare’s work, the history of Elizabethan England and the life that the author imagines Shakespeare might have had. …

Of course I loved this! It has everything I am into. Alternative retellings, a female perspective on history, an account of the Plague, and “answers” to some of the Shakespearean mysteries, like why he left his wife his “second-best bed” in the famous will. I also loved the while history was white-washed a bit, the disgustingness and smells of a big city like London were described frequently. Beautifully written and indulged the romantic, goofy Shakespeare loving side of me.

The Love Wife – Gish Jen

This is the one of the 5 books that I brought with me on my cruise. It ended up being the only book I managed to read. I wanted something that had some meat to it (as in, no “chick lit”) but that wouldn’t make me think too much. I am a simple girl. This book fit the bill. I read Jen’s first book “Mona in the Promised Land” years ago, and barely remember the plot, but remember liking it.

Carnegie Wong, only son of successful immigrant Mama Wong, much to his mother’s horror, marries big, blonde, Caucasian Jane, known ever after, pejoratively, as Blondie. Carnegie has already adopted an Asian child of unknown origin–a factor in the story–when he meets Blondie and they adopt a Chinese girl. Lizzy and Wendy are eventually joined by a bio-baby boy, Bailey, who is “half-half” and disconcertingly blonde. The family is complete, Mama Wong dies, and along with her go all her prescriptive, preemptive, insulting remarks. Not quite. Her domineering hand reaches from the grave back to China and then to Carnegie and Blondie’s home, delivering Lan, an erstwhile “cousin” Mama has bequeathed to her son and his family. She is supposed to be a nanny, but Blondie believes that she has been sent to be a “love-wife” or concubine.

The entire family dynamic is changed almost instantly. Lan, a model of passive-aggression, immediately ingratiates herself to the girls. Blondie, a model of forebearance as she is berated by her eldest daughter, misunderstood by her husband and detested by Lan, tries to befriend Lan; a lesser person would have driven her from the house. Lan is so obvious that she becomes a self-parody. Blondie quits her job to spend more time with her family; Carnegie loses his, and the family is headed for implosion.

I liked it, but of course – I had a few nitpicks. It was told in that multiple-narrator style, which I keep claiming I don’t like, but apparently I do, if done well. This was. What I didn’t like is that some of the characters felt very real, and others? Totally flat. Carnegie’s voice just didn’t ring true to me, and I didn’t understand why “Blondie” fell in love or stayed in love with him in the first place. Which is a problem, since it’s essentially a book about a marriage. And “Lan” who is a central character just remained unlikable to me.  And the ending, while intentionally ambiguous, was annoyingly so. And sudden.

While I certainly don’t think you need to be Asian, Chinese or even have the immigrant experience as part of your family, I wonder if I would have enjoyed the book more if I could personally relate a little better.

Hero – Perry Moore

I don’t remember where I heard about this, but I remember thinking “I don’t read enough books about boy teenagers or gay kids. I should do read this.” And so I did.

The description that reeled me in:

Thom Creed is used to being on his own. Even as a high school basketball star, he has to keep his distance because of his father. Hal Creed had once been one of the greatest and most beloved superheroes of The League-until the Wilson Towers incident. After that Thom’s mother disappeared and his proud father became an outcast.

The last thing in the world Thom would ever want is to disappoint his father. So Thom keeps two secrets from him: First is that he’s gay. The second is that he has the power to heal people. Initially, Thom had trouble controlling his powers. But with trail and error he improves, until he gets so good that he catches the attention of the League and is asked to join. Even though he knows it would kill his dad, Thom can’t resist. When he joins the League, he meets a motley crew of other heroes, including tough-talking Scarlett, who has the power of fire from growing up near a nuclear power plant; Typhoid Larry, who makes everyone sick by touching them, but is actually a really sweet guy; and wise Ruth, who has the power to see the future. Together these unlikely heroes become friends and begin to uncover a plot to kill the superheroes. Along the way, Thom falls in love, and discovers the difficult truth about his parents’ past.

I started out digging the book. And then – it lost me. The plot and timeline was a little weird at the beginning,  but I was willing to go with it. And since I just saw “Watchmen”, I was into this idea of costumed superheroes and disgraced non-superpowery heroes and (spoiler!) twists where the good guy is the bad guy. I was digging it. But then there were too many names. Ultra boy? Golden boy? It was too much. And the invisible mom, and  … it lost me. And I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that this town was cool with random superheroes, and was big enough that they could lose 17k people in a freak supervillian incident, and still thrive –  but one gay kid threw them into a tizzy of homophobic rage? The world just wasn’t developed enough for me, I guess.

I did enjoy reading most of it, and would like to see more – but this one just didn’t do it for me.