Goodreads Review: The Robber Bride

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yep, another Margaret Atwood book that is essentially literary perfection. She is an absolute wordsmith, and I especially enjoyed seeing themes in this work from the '90s that are echoed later in her MaddAddam series. The four main characters in this book seem to embody characteristics tied to interrelated themes of food and consumption, spirituality, history of civilization, and destruction. I am just completely enamored by Atwood's entire oeuvre, and found this to be a compelling, fast-paced book about women who are strong and feminist in very different ways.

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2018 Goodreads Reading Challenge

In 2017, I read 18 books. This doesn't seem like much to me, but then I think about all the proposals, manuscripts, journal articles, and monographs I read for work, and then I feel better.

In 2018, my goal is to read harder and finish 24 books.

Here are the first books I am looking forward to reading in 2018!

Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride

Paul Beatty's The Sellout

Alexander Chee's The Queen of the Night

Gayl Jones's Corregidora

Jaroslav Kalfar's The Spaceman of Bohemia

Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian

Nnedi Okorafor's The Binti Trilogy

And, ReadosaurusText is now on Goodreads!

my read shelf:

Punctuated Post: Anita Shreve's The Weight of Water

Read Anita Shreve they said. You'll like her, they said.

The Weight of Water takes place off the coast of Maine. So, when I traveled to Maine to a dear friend's graduation, I thought this book was a fitting pick! I love to read a book while being in the book's setting.

In a way, this was the perfect type of book to read during the hustle and bustle of travel: light and easy to dip in and out of while boarding flights and such. It has two narrative threads, one contemporary and one pertaining to a mystery from 1853. In the contemporary thread, a woman who is a photographer on a job at the island learns of gruesome murder. We also learn about the circumstances of another women, an immigrant to the area in the 1850s. An undercurrent of both narrative threads is the whodunit of the nineteenth century murder, partially as the contemporary woman finds archived letters written by the immigrant. I think the book could have been more enticing if the murderer didn't seem so obvious early in the book. While I am glad I gave an Anita Shreve book a chance, I am not sure that another is in my future soon.

Shreve, Anita. The Weight of Water. Back Bay Books, 1997.

Punctuated Post: Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven

It is not often the case that you embark on reading a best-selling book award finalist and have no idea what the novel is about. I lucked out, both in a sense that each page and plot twist was a surprise, and then in the sense that the book is premised on an epidemic. I am fascinated with epidemiology. In sixth grade, I used to read the goriest passages from Richard Preston's The Hot Zone. In college, my first major was microbiology because I wanted to become a virologist, but math is not my strong suit, so I get my epidemiological fix through books. My interest isn't even merely quite about the power of a small virus that can tear through civilization, it is about the post-apocalyptic humanity (or lack thereof) that comes with it, in books like Parasites Like Us by Adam Johnson, Blindness by Jose Saramago, Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam series, and now Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

I finished this book two years ago--exactly two years to the date I started drafting this post (oops!)--and with the benefit of hindsight I can still say that I really enjoyed this book and have recommended it on many occasions.

Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven. New York: Vintage Books, 2014.

Edward P. Jones's The Known World

Happy Black History Month! When I started The Known World by Edward P. Jones last month, it was coincidental that I would be finishing it this month, but how appropriate that I'd be reading such a wonderfully powerful novel of African American historical fiction during a time we especially dedicate to the celebration of black history, and at a time when the president-elect has insulted and attempted to undermine the great civil rights hero, John Lewis, and seems to think Frederick Douglass is alive doing an "amazing job." Meanwhile, the vice president honored black history month by praising the work of a white man. Lest we ever forget the power of books, John Lewis's memoir and graphic novel trilogy sold out on Amazon when news spread about Trump's attack on the now politician. It is so important for people to engage with stories and histories that provide insight on the continuing inequalities in our government, society, and world.

The Known World among just a few other
books my TBR pile.

The Known World is set in the antebellum South as the US nears its Civil War. The plot is compelling because it complicates the history of the slaveholding south by telling the story of a freed slave, Henry, who then becomes a slaveholder. The book illuminates the varied reactions to this reality: disappointed parents who were former slaves themselves; a proud former-master who facilitates the purchase of Henry's new slaves; poor men in the community who resent that a black man has slaves while they do not. All these relationships illuminate the system that on the one hand views black people as property, but on the other hand has so engrained the idea of slavery that it can be legal for anyone to own slaves and to continue to reinforce the system.

I also celebrated Black History Month with Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Miguel Barnet's Biography of a Runaway Slave. Next I'll be digging into Daina Ramey Berry's hot-off-the-press The Price for their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave in the Building of a Nation from Beacon Press. Don't limit reading about black history to this month--these stories and histories are crucial every day.


Barnet, Miguel. Biography of a Runaway Slave: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. Trans. W. Nick Hill.
     Evanston: Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2016.
Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Boston: Beacon Pres, 2003.
Jones, Edward P. The Known World. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

My Top Book Pick of 2016: Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad

Hasta la vista, 2016

There were a lot of things not to like about 2016. A lot. But there was also some good interspersed among the gut-wrenching disappointments. Some of my favorite things about 2016 included my discovery of the book app Litsy (where you can find me @ReadosaurusText), Teen Vogue emerging as a serious source of political news and commentary, and it was an incredible year for the visibility and popularity of African American nonfiction and fiction. Ibram X. Kendi won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Heather Ann Thompson's Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy was a finalist for the same award and has earned oodles of other accolades. On the fiction side, we saw the Collected Poems: 1974-2004 of Rita Dove, the latest Walter Mosley, and of course Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad.

I realize that picking The Underground Railroad as my favorite book of 2016 is not especially groundbreaking--as a best-selling, award-winning, Oprah's Book Club title, it is not much of a revelation to declare this book as good and worth reading. This book is truly special, though. The Underground Railroad follows the motivations and experiences of a young enslaved woman named Cora. As she undertakes a personal journey, so does the reader, and that journey is at once difficult to read and impossible to draw away from. I read this book months ago, and Cora still says with me, the way you think back to a person you met briefly but who had a deep impact on you. The book's mix of accessible while artistic prose and a history-inspired plot influenced by the genre of magical realism leaves nothing to be desired. The book adds to the exceptional body of literature (both fictional and nonfictional) that provides a lens into the legacy of slavery. Whitehead paints vibrant pictures of the historical realities of slavery, inequity, and the quest for freedom. Some parts of the narrative are alarmingly relevant almost 200 years later. In one passage describing the policing of slaves, Whitehead writes: "The patroller required no reason to stop a person apart from color. . . . Rogue blacks who did not surrender could be shot." Sound a little familiar to how black bodies are still policed? The book's narrator goes into more detail about the systems that constantly worked to enforce the system of enslavement:

Slaves caught off the plantation need passes, unless they wanted a licking and a visit to the country jail. Free blacks carried proof of manumission or risked being conveyed into the clutches of slavery; sometimes they were smuggledto the auction block anyway. (p. 153)

Is it any wonder that such egregious racial inequalities exist today when persistent systems of violence and suppression were unilaterally sanctioned?  

Reading this book was a plethora of experiences. There was the experience of pure appreciation of the book's prose and plot. There was a huge emotional component of experiencing this book, as we follow the hardships and brutality that Cora and her collaborators endure. What also added to my experience of reading this book was a small but exciting interaction with the author on Twitter. I don't expect famous people to respond to every cray cray fan, but given how easy social networking makes it to engage with people who are legitimately engaging with literature, I really appreciated that Colson Whitehead liked one of my tweets about his book.

Exhibit A: Colson Whitehead like my Tweet!

We don't know what is in store for 2017 of course, but make sure that The Underground Railroad is in store for yourself if you have not yet read it. It is imperative that we all keep reading books that challenge our emotions and conceptions, because literature that challenges us remains one of the surest ways to expand our humanity, compassion, and knowledge. 

Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. New York: Doubleday, 2016.

Wendy Gamber's The Notorious Mrs. Clem

Hollywood: make this book into a movie right now! Wendy Gamber's The Notorious Mrs. Clem: Murder and Money in the Gilded Age has all the trappings of an Oscar-worthy period piece: murder, intrigue, fashion, epic court battles, a cameo from future U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, and at the heart of it all is sex (okay, maybe more like questions of gender) and money. 

In September 1868, a grisly murder took place in Indianapolis. A young couple was found mercilessly shot on the banks of White River at a point known as Cold Spring. As investigations of the deaths progressed, an unlikely suspect came under scrutiny: Nancy Clem, who was regarded by many as a respectable middle class wife of an upstanding local grocer. Upon closer inspection, Clem emerged as much more than a traditional nineteenth century housewife. She, in fact, was exposed as a talented and convincing con women who had widespread lending and borrowing scams throughout the city that involved an array of men and women in Indianapolis society, including the murdered couple found at Cold Spring. Her under-the-table financial connections to the couple is what lead to her arrest, as well as the arrest of one her business partners.

The Notorious Mrs. Clem is a fascinating true crime set on the stage of the Gilded Age (post-Civil War). Historian Wendy Gamber has left no archival stone unturned--newspapers, court records, city plans. You name it, and Gamber has utilized it to paint the fullest picture possible of the social, industrial, and urban landscape of Indianapolis in the 1860s and leading up to the turn of the century. The real thread of the story is the saga of court cases as Mrs. Clem is tried and retried due to mistrials and appeals. But what seems to be on trial is not Mrs. Clem's guilt for murder, it is whether or not she is a good woman and wife. The prosecution and defense developed opposing arguments, but they both equally centered on how wifeliness and womanly virtue is connected to money and business dealings. Gamber puts it best:

          Competing interpretations of the political economy of marriage were central to the   

          narratives constructed by her prosecution and defense. They echoed a cultural 

          conversation that took place in many arenas--in feminist demands; in statehouses, 

          as legislators contemplated revised married women's property acts and earning    

          laws; in courts, as judges considered women's claims; and in myriad negotiations 

          between husbands and wives. (p. 244)    

Facts of the murder were at play in the trial; however, opening statements, witnesses, and closing statements had a running theme of whether Mrs. Clem's financial acumen (she was financially self-sufficient as a widow prior to marrying the upstanding grocer) was brazen or praiseworthy.

It is not every day that a book steeped in such careful research and archival work can also achieve the level of page-turner, but this is one of those marvelous cases. Nancy Clem, of course, if not the only women whose trial was sensationalized and called into question factors outside of mere guilt or innocence. From Lizzy Borden to Jodi Arias, the media continues to create a spectacle of women murderers, calling on trite tropes of femininity, purity, and sanity that are often present in the very trial records themselves. A book like The Notorious Mrs. Clem contributes to a genealogy of society's unfortunate preoccupations with gender stereotypes and how they are reliably institutionalized through the legal system. It is also a compelling story that will leave you wondering about Mrs. Clem and her mysterious business dealings. 

Gamber, Wendy. The Notorious Mrs. Clem: Murder and Money in the Gilded Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2016. 

BookExpo America 2016

I had the opportunity to attend BookExpo America, and while I have been to various book events before, none were as big as BEA, and certainly none as commercial. The 2016 Expo took place May 11 to 13 at McCormick Place, Chicago. I went on the last day of the Expo and could not have been more pleased about the fantastic books and ARCs I picked up! It was a smorgasbord of book totes, engaging discussions with book industry folks, and bookish swag (like artistic literary postcards from Obvious State).

One of my favorite takeaways from the meeting was a journal. I do not journal (despite best attempts), but this is a notebook that I just could not resist: it is a novel journal. The lined journal pages actually contain all the lines from classical literary favorites. Available from Thunder Bay Press's Canterbury Classics imprint, these journals are a clever concept and also struck me as well made, with covers soft to the touch. I picked up the Great Expectations journal.

I was also quite excited to learn about a relatively new book app from the same folks that founded the Out of Print clothing company. Their app is called Litsy, and I think think their tagline sums it up best: "Where books make friends." While I've only been using Litsy for the last 2 days since I first learned about the app, it is a bit like if Twitter and Instagram had an adorable little bookish social networking baby. Find me on Litsy with the username @ReadosaurusText, and learn more about Litsy from their engaged Twitter feed @getlitsy.

I cannot understate how incredibly enthusiastic I am about the stack of new books I picked up to read! My first objective was to find the Europa Editions booth--they are one of my favorite publishers because they consistently publish high quality literary fiction from international authors. When I found Europa Editions, I was delighted to discover they were having a signing! In addition to getting a copy of Sergio Y. signed by author Alexandre Vidal Porto, I was also given a copy of Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth. Northwestern University Press had hot-off-the-press copies of The Fiftieth Anniversary Edition of Biography of a Runaway Slave. I picked up a copy of Redskins: Insult and Brand by C. Richard King from University of Nebraska Press. And yes, in the background of the picture, that is a t-shirt for University of Georgia Press's new book, Blood, Bone, and Marrow: A Biography of Harry Crews by Ted Geltner.

I received a number of advance review copies, which I am listing here along with their release dates. Stay tuned for posts about these books!



August 2016

Ulitskaya, Ludmila. The Kukotsky Enigma. Trans. Diana Nemec Ignashev. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

September 2016
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Here I Am. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Gray, Sarah. A Life Everlasting: The Extraordinary Gift of Thomas Ethan Gray. New York: HarperOne.
Mazzeo, Tilar J. Irena's Children: A True Story of Courage. New York: Gallery Books.

October 2016
Bennett, Britt. The Mothers. New York: Riverhead Books.
Günday, Hakan. More. Trans. Zeynep Beler. New York: Arcade Publishing.
Szalay, David. All That Man Is. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.
Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. New York: The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Punctuated Post: Amara Lakhous' Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet

Ever since I was introduced to Europa Editions, they have been my go-to publisher for international fiction, and especially translations of contemporary literature. My latest discovery from the publisher came at the Modern Language Association meeting in January. Penguin was there (they distribute for Europa Editions) selling paperback books for $3.00. Now, do not get me wrong, these books are worth every penny of the usual $15.00 to $18.00 they usually cost, but there is no way I could pass up a book deal that good, especially when I noticed the adorable cover of Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet by Amara Lakhous and translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein.

The book is truly charming. Lakhous, an award-winning author, manages to strike a smart balance between depth and humor--usually a tricky task. A lighthearted Italian novel about multiculturalism and a missing piglet, it is at once whimsical and prying as to the issues surrounding immigration, labor, and day-to-day life. Anyone who reads this will be able to see the obvious similarities to immigration debates in the United States along with the hypocrisies of xenophobia. I quite liked a book review from The Independent that both overviewed the plot and spoke to its literary contributions.

Lakhous, Amara. Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet. Trans. by Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions, 2014.

Reading Matters@IPRH Post: "Go Set a Watchwoman"

I'm very excited to have had the opportunity to contribute a post to the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities Reading Matters blog. The post, titled "Go Set a Watchwoman," gave me an opportunity to air my grievances with the popular media, whose preoccupation with Finch as a racist completely undermined the merits of Scout's actions and sacrificed the narrative of our heroine and led to a male-centric focus on the book.

(originally posted to Reading Matters@IPRH blog January 22, 2016)

Lee, Harper. Go Set a Watchman. New York: HarperCollins, 2015.

New Book: Sabine N. Meyer's We Are What We Drink: The Temperance Battle in Minnesota

A book about the battle over the bottle in the Twin Cities.
We Are What We Drink: The Temperance Battle in Minnesota
by Sabine N. Meyer
University of Illinois Press, 2015

Focusing on the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, Sabine Meyer's We Are What We Drink intertwines national, regional, and urban history during the Progressive era, along with the political motivations and legislative actions at the city and state level in Minnesota, to unravel the temperance movement’s relationship to and effect on identity constructions as well as social, ethnic, racial, religious and political elements.  Covering a 100-year period (1819-1919), the project shows the ways that we are what we drink by examining the formation of civic identities of the cities themselves, Irish and German immigrants, and women in the public sphere and how the groups' involvement in the temperance movement helped to shape their categories of identity and establish a civic role: German immigrants continued to support public drinking to uphold their heritage; Irish immigrants joined religious forces to condemn drinking and to embed themselves in their new homeland; and women sought to protect the domestic sphere by moving their fight into the public sphere. Meanwhile, each Twin City had opposite stances on temperance with St. Paul being liquor friendly and Minneapolis being a hotbed for the liquor reform movement.

Meyer draws on a vast range of primary source materials including newspaper and court archival records and situates her own work within relevant scholarship on temperance, civic identity, Minnesota history, Irish and German American ethnic identity, and construction of female identity in the public sphere. In doing so, Meyer provides a thorough overview about how the role of drink and the attempt to regulate drink in connection with a social movement influenced local, ethnic, and gender identity construction.

This is one of the first books I acquired, and so I am especially pleased to see it out. If you think the cover is awesome, wait until you read what's on the inside!

#AAUP2015

The Association of American University Presses (AAUP) met in Denver, Colorado, June 18 to 21, 2015. I travel to several academic conferences each year for acquisitions purposes where organizations meet to network, exchange ideas, promote professional development, and to present ideas about their current findings; the AAUP meeting is not much different. At Denver #AAUP15, people in all aspects of university press (UP) publishing convened, from production and marketing, to journals and design, to business and acquisitions. Much like UPs attend scholarly conferences to exhibit books to their target audiences, vendors that provide services for publishers attend AAUP, exhibiting while AAUP members dipped in and out of panels and catch up with old friends.

The theme of this year's meeting was "Connect, Collaborate," and that is truly what attendees did. To give a sense, I connected with people from press departments at a similar stage in their career, acquisitions editors at all career levels, early career and first time AAUP members, and a cohort of people who are tapped into social networking and the ways we can harness the power of social media for scholarly publishing purposes across a spectrum. There were also some panels dedicated to exploring the possibility of the intersection of scholarly and social. A roundtable panel that I was a part of asked "Should Scholarly Be Social?" Our conclusion: yes. Yes, because our mission as university presses is to disseminate scholarship to the broadest possible audience, and a tweet, a blog post, and an Instagram are in service of this. Yes, because we have to look to our authors and scholars in the fields we publish and take cues from their practices (oh, and how marvelously you scholars are tweeting and engaging in various media). Yes, because we are at a disadvantage if we don't think openly about the newest technologies at our disposal. Another session at the conference, "Scholarship in 140 Characters? Using Social Media in Acquisitions," spoke about social media specifically from the acquisitions perspective. The conclusions here were the same: the opportunities that social networking creates for you to build relationships far outweighs any potential drawbacks to what you might not be able to predict someone might post/share/tweet.

While the conferences panels are structured and offer enriching insights, some of the most valuable opportunities at the meeting are the informal discussions that happen between panels, during breaks, or over drinks. I see this as crucially beneficial on two main fronts. The first is that these candid moments of telling personal stories can bring to light different processes among jobs or presses that can lead to more efficient operations, whether institutionally, departmentally, or individually. The second is that the connections we make within the organizations have potential to grow into friendships and exchanges that will help to shape the organization and the future of university press publishing. To have established relationships that facilitate open dialogue and multiple perspectives prevent the risk of one, monolithic idea of what UP publishing has to be, because this breeds mediocrity and stifles possibility. The collegiality, generosity, respect toward different practices, and general enthusiasm that pervaded the meeting certainly bodes well for an industry that is always being told it is in crisis.

Of course, this post only covers a smidgeon of what happened. No post could adequately itemize the diverse, dynamic, and multifaceted exchanges throughout keynotes, lunches, and panels. Fortunately, the association has some very dedicated Tweeters, so take a look through the #AAUP15 hashtag, whether you are in publishing and looking for more insight into UP publishing specifically, are a prospective author who wants more insight into the functioning of the UP world, or are someone at a UP who wasn't able to attend the conference this year. 

Mario Lopez: A Classic Writer of Our Time

I know that it was simply misshelved, but seeing Mario Lopez' Entre Nosotros mistakenly next to the classics/poetry sign amused me. Maybe it is a great literary work, but Mario Lopez will always be A.C. Slater to me.

I spotted this in a Salt Lake City airport bookstore before I boarded my plane. In looking more closely at this picture, I'm not quite sure I'd classify any of these books as classics, and I don't see any poetry.

Reading in the Wild: Provo, Utah, and Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones

Work travel recently took me to Provo, Utah, in the gorgeous Utah Valley. As a Phoenix native, I feel most at home when I'm near mountains, and the snow-covered peaks of the Utah Valley mountains made quite the impression on me. Though it was my first time visiting Utah, I felt right at home.

Book Counter, Pioneer Book, Provo, UT

When I'm traveling for work, it might go without saying that I don't have much in the way of free time, but I got to sneak in a couple of quick treats during my time in Provo. My first night in town, an open schedule coupled with a late 9 pm sunset gave me the opportunity to explore the small, adorable downtown area. Filled with small restaurants and shops, I came across Pioneer Book, and never able to resist a bookstore (and a used one at that!), I went in to explore. I came to find that it was a newer establish, but I am not exaggerating when I say it was one of the most organized bookstores I've seen. I lost track of time browsing the fiction shelves, and before I knew it, the music volume turned up as a gentle reminder that the store was closing. I checked out with the exceptionally kind staff member who agreed to pay my loyalty card forward to the next local shopper,  and I left quite happy with my decision to get Elie Wiesel's Dawn (it is my name after all!) and Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. 

When I settled in for the night in my spacious yet noisy Marriott Hotel room, unmotivated to continue with my current read, Continental Divide by Russell Banks, which I've been forcing myself to read because I'm not a quitter, I picked up The Lovely Bones. I picked it up and carried it right up a mountain with me.

Y Mountain is one peak in the Wasatch Mountain Range. Because of it's proximity to the Brigham Young University campus, the mountain became involved in some junior versus senior class prank over a hundred years ago. In the years since, it became tradition to maintain a Y on the mountain. This must have been no easy feat. Now at least there is a trail, but one that consists of 11 painful switchbacks, not to mention the elevation change. I felt like a champion when I reached the top of the Y, only to discover a trail that goes further, but after I realized that proper hiking boots rather than sneakers might fit the bill better, I turned around, followed the trail to the bottom of the Y, and parked myself there reading until the sun rose over the mountain.

Over the next few days, I read the book in every spare moment, and due to several hours of frustrating travel delays out of Salt Lake City, I finished The Lovely Bones before the plane even left the runway. The book is moving and suspenseful. About the tragic murder of a young girl in a small community, the book details the struggle of the victim looking down from heaven as her family mourns and wonders if her murderer will ever be discovered. I was left with the thought that we would all hope to be fortunate to have a family that passionately remembers and seeks justice for their lost loved one, but simultaneously melancholy at the family's reality that the death grew into an obsessive life of its own.

Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2007.

Paul Auster's Oracle Night

Paul Auster's Oracle Night is writing (n.) about writing (v.). Our main character Sidney Orr is a New York author who, when we meet him, is convalescing after an accident that had him on the brink of death. As we get to know Sidney, we learn he is madly attracted to his wife Grace, who works in book design, and that his best friend is another author, John. Our stable of characters is entrenched in a literary world, and as such there is a great deal of material devoted to authorly things, like the frustrations of crafting a story and deep appreciation of stationary and notebooks.

At the core of the story, though, are characters who are struggling with nostalgia, mortality, and fulfillment.The theme of fulfillment is pervasive.(At this point, I'll caution that there are a number of spoilers in the following sentences. Skip to the last paragraph if you don't care to know major plot points.The novel is a veritable Russian nesting doll of stories; however, we find Sidney unable to bring any of his writerly pursuits to fruition. He takes one story to the point where the main character is locked into a room; instead of letting him die or writing him an escape route, Sidney abandons the story. Sidney wanders on daily walks, searching for fulfillment in meaningless encounters, but a stationary store that amuses him closes; the notebooks he finds the most inspiring are no longer in production; and Sidney's pinacle of sexual fulfillment is a result of infidelity, resulting in guilt and ultimate lack of fulfillment. One of the greatest sources of happiness for Sidney is Grace's pregnancy, yet she miscarries; an event which epitomizes how aligned the issues of mortality and fulfillment are in this text.

What we have here is a book with some really exceptional writing, but the fulfillment that lies out of reach for the characters in the novel in a Tantulus-like manner also creeps into the readers sense of fulfillment as the book transpires. Of course, this is an impact skillfully created by the author, but I still yearn for resolution for some of the subplots in the book. The point though, of course, is that fulfillment is not always obtainable, and the ways in which we seek fulfillment may not always result in it.

Auster, Paul. Oracle Night. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003.

Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son

I'll get straight to the point: I loved this book. This is the first book I finished in 2015, and if every book I read this year is even half as good, I will be one happy reader. The Orphan Master's Son follows the story of one man. The story isn't about one man, though; it is about survival, identity, memory, and love. It is about interconnectedness and truth (or assessing what truth is). It is about the son of an orphan master, who unlike the orphans at the orphanage knows his parents and lives with his father, but who like the orphans ends up spending a life wondering where his parents are and of being identified by others as an orphan.

The book is divided into two parts, clearly identified as Part I and Part II, and also signaled by a significant narrative shift. I have no doubts as to why this book has been so acclaimed. The story is intriguing, the writing is excellent, and the plot is so impressive--everything happens for a reason, either because it is important to the plot as it unfolds or because it is lousy with meaning later in the book. Sometimes a plot point functions as both and makes for the most pleasurable reading. 

When we first meet our protagonist, we see him caring for the orphans who come through the Long Tomorrow's orphan house in rural North Korea. He even names the orphans, and he symbolically names them after the 100 Korean martyrs; it is significant that he knows the names and stories of each of the martyrs, significant that he has the power of naming the orphans, and significant that he names the orphans based on characteristics that remind him of the martyrs. These opening scenes lay the groundwork for the themes of identity, heroism, and sacrifice as well as give us a glimpse into the communist political climate and the squashing of individuality (the names of the orphans are not even their own; they are someone else's). From here, we move forward into a story that is very much set in the present, and yet the pages are filled with vignettes of humanity that are familiar and timeless. With descriptive prose, inventive narrative turns, and clever conceptions of plot and storytelling, Adam Johnson achieved a book that is moving and entertaining, is melancholy while inviting, and tells a story while also making a reader think about larger implications for politics and propaganda. By now, I am sure it is clear that I recommend this exceptional book, and along with it Johnson's 2003 work Parasites Like Us, which I read years ago and explores some of the same themes of existence and memory.

Johnson, Adam. The Orphan Master's Son. New York: Random House, 2012.

Punctuated Post: Sun Mi-Hwang's The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

This weekend something rare happened--we're talking mythical unicorn rare. I woke up on Saturday without anything to do for the first weekend I can remember in recent history, and I stayed in bed and read a book. When I say read a book, I mean the good ole fashioned way: straight through, in one sitting, cover to cover (or whatever that is in e-reader speak). True, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly isn't especially long or especially challenging, but it is a dear gem. I think I read it at the perfect time: deep in the year, right around the time everything is overwhelming, and the days are the shortest, and the weather is unforgiving, and it is hard to get motivated to do anything. What better story than one that features a plucky hen who faces the impossible and surpasses all of her obstacles with determination and love? When the winter is getting you down, nothing will shame you out of your pity party like a hen who has to fight for survival against unsympathetic farmers, pretentious farm animals, an aging guard dog trying to maintain his ego, and a dangerous predator, all while protecting her beloved baby. But I suppose that is the point of the story--that anything can be overcome, and we all have to hold onto our dreams and embrace our individuality, whether it is a hen who dreams she can fly or a person trying to navigate this crazy world in which we live. I loved this story for all the ways it reminded me of other well-loved fables, and I think the message will stand the test of time and remind us to stay true to ourselves as we navigate the obstacles around us, where the allegorical forces of the story are pervasively treacherous forces like close-mindedness, political agendas that stifle individual rights, prejudice, the prison industrial complex, systemic violence, and a thousand other issues and hardships big and small.

Hwang, Sun-Mi. The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly. Trans. by Chi-Young Kim. Illust. by
     Namoco. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.
 

Introducing Punctuated Posts

Happy birthday to me! As I get older, I like to think I'm getting wiser, and one of the things I've been getting wiser about is how I spend my time. Sometimes I just have a smidgeon to say about something, and sometimes those thoughts aren't specifically about the books I'm reading (though sometimes they are), and I'm going to start sharing those thoughts in brief, intermittent musings I am calling Punctuated Posts. I hope you enjoy this new aspect of the blog!

Sprouts: My New Favorite Bookmarks, Naturally

If you had asked me last year what my favorite bookmark was, the answer would have been easy: my Phoenix Suns bookmark circa 1994 from the Charles Barkley era of the Suns. I mean, the bookmark had Dan Majerle AND the Phoenix Suns gorilla, so how could it have not been my favorite? Used to mark my page in many a book, I had to retire the beloved place holder many years ago as it started to deteriorate, but without a doubt it remained my favorite because of sentimentally attached.

If you ask me now what my favorite bookmark is, I would have no choice but to tell you my favorite bookmark has changed, thanks to a gift I got from a dear friend. These bookmarks are adorable. They are little green silicone rubber sprouts that shoot out of the top of the book. Here is a shot of the bookmark in action.

How cute is that? The sprout bookmarks are from Fred & Friends. They come in a pack of six, so no worries if you read multiple books at a time and need a marker for each. Another bonus is that they are synthetic, and so I'll never have to worry about the wear and tear of a paper bookmark. They also give a little touch of nature to your book, which just makes me happy. 

In sum, if you are looking for a gift for a bookworm friend, or if you are in the market for some sturdy bookmarks to replace the random things you're using to mark your place now (I am guilty of using hair ties, receipts, even a Kleenex from time to time), then I would recommend these, my new favorite bookmarks, naturally.

It Seemed Like a Perfectly Good Weekend to Read Ender's Game

With the threat of 8 inches of snow coming to Champaign, Illinois, it seemed like a perfectly good weekend to read Ender's Game. Luckily, there was much less snow than anticipated, but that didn't stop me from hunkering down and getting cozy in some blankets to get through the first in the quartet of books by Orson Scott Card about Ender Wiggin. Admittedly, I don't read much science fiction, but this book has been on my shelf since about 2009 when a friend in grad school considered doing her master's thesis on Card's work. Instead, she took a medieval studies route, but still her consideration of doing such in-depth work on the author had me intrigued. Of course, with the release of the movie (which I did not see), I was reminded that this book sat gathering dust on my shelf, and it has been sitting at the top of a stack these last few months, just waiting for a weekend of crappy weather to present me with the opportunity to dive into the story.

Mildly familiar with the plot, it was easy to get absorbed quickly and finish the book in two sittings. On top of that, I find it easy to get drawn into stories about exceptional people--after all, don't we all wonder what it would be like to be exceptional? Yet another draw was the dystopian aspects of the book. I have always been keenly interested in dystopian fiction, and while this book was an interesting departure from other more typical dystopian plot lines, perhaps the differences helped to accentuate the politcal games that are given a different presentation in other dystopian books. So often, the political wag the dog is what characters in dystopian novels are trying to overcome; however, Ender's game is indeed him being instrumental in the wag the dog, though often unaware of the real effects of his actions. While Ender is endlessly called upon to simulate and strategize war games, that is only one, overt game within the book. The other  more covert (in more than one sense) game is how the official higher ups manipulate his social settings in order to create a person they believe will be the ultimate commander for what they consider a humanity-saving mission.

For as serious as I can take this book to be, it did get me pondering a more lighthearted notion involving another exceptional youth in literature. I found myself entertaining the thought of what it would be like to match the serious and often dark but well-meaning Ender with the equally powerful and well-intending but sometimes vengeful Matilda. After all, both effortlessly manipulate the realities around them with their minds. Matilda literally moves objects through space with the power of her telekinesis, which is so very similar to the way Ender masters reorientation within gravity-absent situations and can seemingly move himself through zero gravity with the power of his mind through logic and strategy. For both of these characters, their special abilities create problems for them, but in a way also create solutions and eventually afford them agency over their own futures. Mostly, though, I think it would be super cute for them to be boyfriend and girlfriend and hold hands on the playground; alas, for children who have been treated and have acted like adults for most of their lives, they would perhaps scold me for my childish wish for them.

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. New York: Tor, 1994.