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Book of the Week: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I really love to read when I'm on trips. This is one reason why I love the Kindle so much, because when I am away, I tend to read a lot. It definitely cuts down on the pain and strain to have all of my books parked on my Kindle. And books feel heightened to me when I'm on a trip. I have had that experience of being midway through a book and so excited about it only to return home and feel like someone had somehow filtered half the spices off my plate.

Anyway, I was away last weekend with friends who were insistent that I read the The Hunger Games. Tihs is not a new conversation. When the topic has come up before, I have already had my books all lined up. I have been skeptical that I would like it. I am not immediately drawn to futuristic novels. But this weekend, I didn't have anything in mind to read, and, extra bonus, it was available for free in the Kindle Lending Library. So I decided to give it a try.

I was immediately hooked. I think the reason why I enjoyed reading this story so much was because it did feel cinematically driven. It was so easy to imagine it being a movie. I am a big fan of the Harry Potter films, and it was fun to think that there will another series to see on the screen, one that I imagined would be beautifully produced, a glorious popcorn experience. This was one of those reads where I did wonder what would happen next when I was off doing other things. It was a page turner. It was really fun to read.

The Kindle Lending Library only allows one book to be borrowed each month.  So in April, while I'm at home, I plan to borrow the second book in the series. I have already been warned that it is not as good as the first. I am curious to see where Collins is going to go from here with this story. Will I like these books as much when I'm not in vacation mode? I am curious to find out.

Book of the Week: Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman

This has been one of those weeks that has been bookended by two events: Tax Preparation and Road Trip. Then throw in the mix clients appearing seemingly from nowhere with legitimate, real deadlines, a bout of insomnia, laundry, and packing. It's one of those times that's not that conducive to sitting in a chair and reflecting on books.

So I considered skipping this week. The only week I've skipped when I started this grand experiment last year was the week when our power was out for five days. That week it seemed more legitimate to just let it go.

But in the end, it didn't feel right not to post anything. So here's a brief tribute to an author I love, Elinor Lipman, someone I turn to when I'm looking for a pleasure read. She writes smart, old-fashioned books, or you might call them modern Austens. I think they're really fun.

I had thought I had read this book before, but then i realized that I had watched some of the movie adaptation on Netflix streaming long ago. At the time, I didn't finish the film. Helen Hunt starred in it, and she looked disturbingly gaunt. Bette Midler was Bette Midler. The other day, after I read the book, I looked to see if the film was still available on streaming. It is not. I thought it was funny that Colin Firth, forever linked to me with Mr. Darcy, plays the love interest in the film. But it seemed from the film synopsis that he plays a parent and not a librarian, a departure from the book.

My favorite part of the book was the romance. It was one of the sweetest romances that I can recall. There was something genuinely charming about this teacher and the librarian. It made the book for me. I think perhaps one of the reasons why I happened to avoid this book for so long was because I wasn't that interested in the main premise of the story. It is about a daughter's reunion with her mother who had put her up for adoption as a baby. Reading the book, I felt that Bette Midler was properly cast. The mother was loud and abrasive. She wasn't tremendously likeable or sympathetic. I still would have kept reading out of loyalty for Lipman, but I was thrilled when the love story quickly kicked in. It made the book much more enjoyable to read.

Book of the Week: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

This is a book that is told from many points of view. It is centered around music. Although there is a wide array of characters, the story is anchored around Bennie, a music executive, and his assistant, Sasha. Things are not going well The industry is changing, and Bennie does not know if he can adapt. In her daily life, Sasha cannot stop stealing from people. She never spends the money from the wallets she has taken. The items she has lifted remain unopened and unused.

In this book, time jumps. Sections begin at different parts of the story. In a section, information is often given of what will happen to the characters decades further from that point in time. Then there is a section where the structure breaks down even more, and each page is composed of thoughts laid out like a PowerPoint presentation. Each page is a slide. Much to my surprise, this was my favorite section in the book. I was sad when we left this particular moment in time and returned to conventional prose.

The tone varies. There are moments that reminded me of Carl Hiaasen novels, where anything could happen and the grotesque is evident and imaginable. Then there are quiet moments, a boy who recognizes the importance of a pause in a song or an uncle who goes to rescue his runaway niece and tries to explain to her that he is there truly to help. It was a real page turner. Despite its seemingly disparate elements, it all seemed to work for me.

Book of the Week: The Michigan Murders by Edward Keyes

Sometimes personal history can intersect wtih true crime. When I was a child in Ann Arbor, Michigan, there was a serial killer in the area. He murdered seven young women. I remember reading about it in the newspapers. I remember seeing police cars in the area. I remember my parents discussing it. I remember being at a Greek coffee shop and my mother whispering to me that the man at the counter eating the egg lemon was a famous psychic who had come to help with the case.

It was interesting to read this account of that time as an adult. These murders happened in the late sixties. When I read the book, I thought about how much more advanced our forensics methods are today. These killings went on for two years. The police in the book are depicted as hardworking, dedicated, frustrated professionals. A footprint would be washed away by the rain. They would swap a body with a mannequin dummy and stake out the area, waiting for the killer to return, only to lose him in the woods. The newspapers called the police The Keystone Kops. They just did not have the right tools then for this type of investigation.

It was different in the sixties. People did accept rides from strangers. They wandered at night. In one of the cases, the victim had just mailed her family information about the killings, a map where the bodies had been found. She wrote on the map her assurances that she was being careful. But then right after she mailed it, she met John Norman Collins, who asked her if she wanted a ride on his motorcyle, and she said yes. Collins was eventually apprehended and is now serving a life sentence for these murders.

I thought the book was very well written. These were dramatic, lurid crimes, and it would have been easy to have written something sensationalistic about what happened. Keyes writes about the community. He gives a heartfelt, honest account of how it was in that time and place. You wouldn't think it would be fun to read this book, but I found it surprisingly heartfelt and well researched.  I thought it was fascinating to go back and fill in the details with an adult brain.

Book of the Week: Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong Self-Defeating Thinking Habits by Wayne Dyer

I really liked this book. I found it charming, which I knew I would, the minute I saw that there was an exclamation point and the word "begone" in the title. It's a book of spiritual precepts. It's about identifying more with the big picture of things rather than with perceived limitations. I liked it that it was a book where you could think and make decisions, but it didn't feel like a workbook to me. I was afraid that this was going to be one of those books where you have to take a moment and write about your favorite place, and I understand the value of that, but when I pick up a book to read, I generally like to just read, and with this book, I could do that.

I wanted more stories. Wayne Dyer is a very engaging storyteller, and I really enjoyed the moments when he applied his principles to his own experiences. I found the book to be comforting and inspiring. It does invite you to look at things in a different way. When I was reading the book, I found that I would wake up in the morning with ideas that I needed for a creative project. New clients and clients that I had worked with long ago contacted me. I also heard from a high school friend and a friend from fifteen years ago. It was all interesting to note.

It's a book that's written in a very straightforward fashion, but I think that if you do apply the principles, it is a very meaningful read. I'm hoping that I can continue applying the lessons it taught me.

Book of the Week: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

This is a book that I read endlessly while I was young. It was one of those books that comforted me. It was a book where I felt I knew the characters, and they were people that mattered to me. It was a book where I was so happy that it was long and that it had illustrations. I think one reason why I loved the book so much is that, despite their idiosyncracies, these were characters who loved each other and who sincerely tried to help each other through challenging times. I also liked it in the book that people's destinies often seemed to fit their nature. There wasn't a cookie-cutter checklist to their lives. The  decisions they made often reflected their spirit.

Jo was my favorite. She was the writer. She was the one who loved to read. She longed to be true to herself, and she was devoted to her family. Katherine Hepburn played Jo in one of the film adaptations, and she seemed to me to capture the spirit of this character. I'm trying to erase from my memory banks that June Allyson was also cast as this character in a later version of this book.

I don't know how many times I have read this book. Much of it feels burned in the brain. Some of it is silly: Amy and the limes, the burned dress and the single glove, the clothespin on the nose. Much is precious: a beloved piano, a sacrifical hair cut, the wonder of a man named Professor Baer. I think it is a book that I will soon have to read again.

Book of the Week: My Year of Flops by Nathan Rabin

My Year of Flops began as a column for the AV Club. Rabin creates case files with funny titles and then talks about a film that has failed both critically and at the box office. He often gives a historical perspective to the film. He gives a very specific accounting of how he views each work. Although many of these columns were originally published on the AV Club website, there are new pieces for the book. Rabin has also added additional interviews of key people involved in these projects that accompany some of these reviews. In each case, Rabin hands down a judgment: Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success. There's a great deal of humor involved in this work. There is also a lot of empathy. Rabin seems to sincerely want to figure out what went wrong, if anything. Sometimes he just concludes that it was a film ahead of its time and strongly encourages us to watch them now. Sometimes it's just an all out disaster. This is definitely a book that I would call a labor of love. It was really fun to read. It made me laugh out loud sometimes. I will definitely want to read more of his work.

Book of the Week: Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

I thought that this was a very interesting memoir in its approach. This is a book about a particular aspect of a person's life. In this case, Martin tells us from the outset, that he performed stand-up comedy for eighteen years, was incredibly successful for the last four, and then walked away. Right away, he has my interest. He has laid out his story, and now I want to know the details.

It was interesting to me to see how Martin handled his personal life in telling his story. He talks of his relationship with his family and how he resolved his issues with them over the years. He speaks of anxiety attacks. He mentions marriages. But the fulcrum of this book is always the work, how he started as a comic who literally started out doing his act wtih no one in the room (the theory was that passerbys would hear his voice and venture in) to the real problem of figuring out how to do vital comedy with thousands of people in attendance.

Martin's prose felt effortlessly gorgeous, and it was illuminating in the end to read Martin's gracious acknowledgements to his many friends who read the book and gave him feedback while it was in process. It made me wish he would enlist their support again and write more volumes. I want to read more about his career in film. I want to hear about his interest in art. I want to hear about his work as a musician. I would really like to read more about Steve Martin's life and work.

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

 

Book of the Week: Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest

There are some books that come highly recommended and that you begin with great hope and, for some reason, it is not the book for you. This was my situation with Your Voice in My Head.

The book is a memoir about loss. In the book, Emma Forrest writes about two important people to her: her doctor, a man who helped her through bulimia, cutting, and suicide attempts, and her lover, a man she calls GH or Gypsy Husband. Both men left unexpectedly. Dr. R. did not tell his patients that he had cancer. He truly believed that he could recover. GH spoke of having a baby together and creating a family together and then one day flipped the switch and was no longer interested. Emma is left to her own resources.

I ultimately found both depictions of the relationships problematic. In the case of Dr. R, the meat of this story takes place after he has died. He cannot help her with the loss of GH.  Forrest does write about their previous work together, but it feels less immediate, because the book is essentially about how she gets out of this current sadness.  Forrest would often end chapters with testimonials from other patients about how Dr. R.  saved their life. but  these were one paragraph moments. They were big picture generalities. I liked the abstract notion of paying homage to this doctor who evidently was a great help to many people, but it didn't affect me deeply, because i felt like I was always skating on the periphery.

I also wanted deeper reflection on the relationship with GH.  To me, after the relationship ended, there were too many instances of the narrator meeting someone and asking them if GH was sincere when he was with her. Their answer is always the same, "Yes, he really loved you. Then he changed his mind."

 I wanted there to be a progression in the book, where Forrest would think more about the intersection between romance and reality. The highly charged nature of this romance to me seemed destined for a short fuse, unless there was some sort of a transition. She does not seem aware of the fact that they would have needed to have made a shift. She seems to mourn the loss of that phase without realizing that it naturally has a time stamp to it.

Many people love this book. It is being made into a movie.This is the type of book where the reader needs to descend into dark depths and then work the way out until she reaches that light at the end of the tunnel. In this one, I didn't buy the ticket. I watched from outside and chattered to myself.

NOTE: In rereading this piece, I thought that I have to mention that GH is widely assumed to be Colin Farrell. I didn't want to mention it, but it feels strange not to say anything about it as well.

Book of the Week: Still Life by Louise Penny

This is the first book of a mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Gamache, a Canadian investigator. The book is set in Three Pines, a small community where everyone believes they know everyone's stories. The story starts with a murder, a retired school teacher, Jane Neal, is found dead in the woods. Chief Inspector Gamache is brought in to solve the case.

Penny gives us a world of eccentric, small town people. There are plenty of motivations swirling around on who could have killed Jane Neal. Gamache is established as an investigator who takes pride in his work, who expects excellence from his staff, who wants to be a mentor, who, as a city person brought in for this case, wants to understand these people. It was a geniuinely fun read, and I am officially committed to this series. I want to continue to follow Gamache.

Still Life by Louise Penny