Justin Cronin’s novel The Passage was a hit in 2010 in the category of non-sparkly vampires, and Bookdwarf loved it. I only caught up with it this year, when she got a preview copy of the sequel, The Twelve, which is coming out soon, and which we both devoured almost immediately (and no, you can’t borrow our copy, half the bookstore wants to read it next). It’s been a long time since I’ve been this engrossed in a novel. Sure, the government bioweapons lab accidentally unleashing a killer virus isn’t the most subtle of concepts. But Cronin executes it beautifully, portraying the collapse of civilization and the struggle 100 years later to remake it with lucid characterizations and careful adaptations of the ancient myths. Absolutely thrilling, and laced with just enough social commentary (video-blogging the apocalypse, check) and humor (the weapons program operative having to brief the military and not knowing how to say “oops, we accidentally made vampires”) to make it a really comprehensive world. I’m already looking forward to the final installment.

Someone needs to invent a time machine, one that simply freezes time.  If I could do that, then I could sit for hours and read a whole damn book at once without all the usual daily interruptions.

I don’t think like that all the time, but I do when I’m halfway through something like The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann, and I have to do things like go to work or get ready for final exams or walk the dog.

The plot is not complicated, but it’s endlessly nuanced, full of meaningful glances and things left unsaid. It’s set in 18th-century Stockholm, with revolution brewing and ladies fluttering fans in ballrooms to keep themselves cool and signal their interest to suitors. The story centers around a complicated card reading and a man named Emil Larsson, a bachelor who needs a wife so he can keep his job at the Office of Excise and Custom. If I had enough time, I’d repeat the whole story for you, but I don’t, and I wouldn’t do it justice anyway. If you’ve got a time machine, or a few hours of uninterrupted reading, I’ve got a book to recommend you.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain is getting a lot of coverage, and the preview copy has been on my to-read list for months. I guess I was reluctant to read it because I figured it would be emotionally difficult, but when I finally picked it up, I had a hard time putting it down. Let me tell you: It deserves the hype. This novel very well be to the current wars what The Things They Carried and In Country are to the Vietnam war.

• Say Nice Things About Detroit by Scott Lasser: This made for pleasant reading over the rainy weekend. David Halpert returns to Detroit, having left after high school twenty five years ago. After he hears about the double shooting of his high school girlfriend Natalie and her half-brother Dirk, he contacts her sister and becomes involved with her. The various strands of the story come together nicely in the end. This is also one of the only books I’ve read that doesn’t make Detroit sound like a wasteland!
• Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson: Wilson adeptly marries the old and the new in this novel, combining computer hacking with The Thousand and One Days. Sound weird? I thought so too, but it works.  A young hacker with the alias of Alif in a nameless Middle Eastern country tries to stay out of trouble. When the increasingly oppressive state security finally breaches his computer, he’s forced underground where he discovers that the world of The Thousand and One Days is real and the book itself might reveal a new era of knowledge.
• People who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry: This is a really dark fucked up non fiction book about what at the beginning is simply the disappearance and murder of a young English woman working in a Japanese hostess bar. The author, struck by the story, investigates and helps uncovers  a string of murders all done by one deranged man. It’s a crazy story that I can’ t begin to explain but one that Parry tells with exceptional reporting skills. Comparisons to In Cold Blood  are not out of order here! It’s another paperback original in the FSG Originals line.
• The Orphan Master by Jean Zimmerman: This is not the novel set in North Korea. This story is set in the 17th century Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (aka Manhattan). Orphans are going missing and Blandine van Couvering, herself an orphan, begins to worry. Suspects seem myriad and an English spy named Edward Drummond becomes involved. What sets this story apart from the average mystery are the unique details about early colonies. Zimmerman brings the time period alive with details.

What were to happen to daily life if the rotation of the earth began to slow? What effect would this have on the days and nights? Could birds continue flying? Karen Thompson Walker explores all of these and more in her beautifully written debut The Age of Miracles.

The center of this novel however isn’t the scientific questions. Walker explores the effects of the “slowing” as they call it on Julia, a twelve year old only child living in California. Ordinary life is hard enough on her as the shy quiet girl in her grade. Her best friend Hanna moves away to Nevada once the slowing begins, leaving her alone amongst the pre-teen turmoil. Her mother grows increasingly scared and stockpiles supplies while her father remains remote. Julia learns early on in her observation that not everyone reacts the same way.

In less skilled hands, the concept could have overwhelmed the novel, but Walker’s focus on Julia keeps the book centered. The entire novel crackles with how real this could be.

I’ve read a lot of books so far in 2012, but two of them, published this past month, stand out: Wild by Cheryl Strayed and City of Bohane by Kevin Barry.

Wild is Strayed’s memoir of hiking the Pacific Crest Trai in 1995l. Before you roll your eyes about another look-at-me-doing-something-unusual-and-getting-a-book-deal-out-of-it-memoir, this one is different. It’s raw and beautiful and if the horse scene doesn’t make you cry then I don’t know what will. I was at the car wash when I read this part. Imagine crying at the car wash. Sometimes she makes really dumb decisions, ones that make you cringe, but it’s her honesty and voice that make this book worth reading.

When you read City of Bohane, don’t expect to know what’s going on for the first twenty pages. Don’t give up! Imagine a sort of Gangs of New York in Ireland in the future. In a version of magical realism, the Irish city of Bohane sometime in the future, is run by a gang called the Fancy. Imagine descriptions of clothing that bring to mind Alexander McQueen except they’re worn by the gangsters of the Fancy. There’s a love story in there and some major violence and Barry’s lyrical language makes it all seem so alive.

Go and read both of these books! I’ll be back to mention some other things I’ve read and liked and some things I’ve cooked later this week.

At its very best, nonfiction is both stylistically beautiful and informative, and can make even the most mundane subjects fascinating. And, frankly, even when it’s imperfectly written it can still be really good. I’ve been thinking about fact that for awhile now, ever since the Times reviewed Tom Mueller’s Extra Virginity and said that that it was a “reminder of why subpar nonfiction is so much better than subpar fiction. With nonfiction at least you can learn something.”

Now, I loved Extra Virginity but I’ll concede that it may not have been a stylistic jewel. It didn’t really need to be: It had a coherent story and a good topic, and I definitely learned a great deal about olives, olive oil, industrial malfeasance, marketing, EU trade policy, the Mediterranean diet, antioxidants, and the history of fat consumption in Northern and Southern Europe. Plus, you know, I got a few looks from people on the train reading a book titled Extra Virginity which was good for a laugh.

There are, unfortunately, plenty of nonfiction books that manage to be merely subpar. The style overwhelms the content, or the content is so poorly organized, or the facts the author is trying to convey are so jumbled, that no matter how fascinating the subject might be at the start. I’m not sure what the problem is with Opium Nation but I’m about ready to give up on it. Even though Afghan heroin, terrorism, and child brides should be fundamentally more thrilling than counterfeit olive oil, Opium Nation manages to make it boring. The author is obviously deeply engaged in the subject, framing it with a narrative of returning to her native land after years of exile in the US. But the book winds up as a mishmash of personal details, a rushed political history, and the disappointment of a grown woman returning to her childhood home to find it rendered unrecognizable by a mixture of actual changes and a change in perspective.

More informative, in fact, are a pair of novels I’ve read recently, both of them (as far as I can tell) impeccably researched and beautifully styled. While the individuals in them are of course not historically accurate, they both illuminate moments in history in a way that is difficult to match in strictly factual writing. The first, River of Smoke, Amitav Ghosh’s sequel to Sea of Poppies is what inspired me to pick up the nonfiction book on opium. Megan has already reviewed it here, but I was impressed by how Ghosh studded the novel with an array of places and languages and cultures. That setting bewilders and enchants the characters in the novel, and it draws the reader along with them. If you want to know about the abuse of drugs and the abuse of imperial power, you could do worse than reading this novel, and better than reading a more dry history of, say, US backing of mujaheddin insurgencies in Afghanistan during the 1970s.

Similarly, The Orphan Master’s Son, despite being fiction, opens a window into North Korea’s totalitarian regime, and into questions of identity, love, redemption, survival, and power. Even if North Korea were not at a critical moment right now, I would recommend this book. Given Great Successor Kim Jong-Un’s still-tenuous grasp on the reins of power there, it’s practically mandatory. It’s definitely left me hungry for more. The next items on my list are likely to come from the Times’ North Korea reading list, which includes fiction (The Orphan Master’s Son and some detective novels set in Pyongyang), researched nonfiction (Nothing to Envy) and memoirs of defectors (This Is Paradise!).

—Mr. Bookdwarf

I’m not a big “jump on the bandwagon” kind of person generally, but this is one I’m leaping onto wholeheartedly. That’s the bandwagon forming for Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, coming on January 10, 2012.

The novel is set in North Korea and is like a hybrid dystopian-realist work of art. Part of why it works so well is the setting. North Korea  is obviously a real country, but the place Johnson describes sounds completely made up. He apparently spent a lot of time researching North Korea and made several trips there in an effort to get the details right, and it shows. The story of the country itself is reflected in the characters.

Pak Jun Do, the protagonist, is the son of a lost mother; his mournful father runs a work camp for orphans. Jun Do comes to the attention of his superiors after he’s trained in the arts of zero light combat, then as a professional kidnapper. Constantly forced to think on his feet, his story zigs and zags all over the place as he tries to stay alive. The story shifts after a daring prison break forces him into a new role,  as the rival to Kim Jong II.

Meanwhile, other regular North Koreans try to keep their heads down and avoid attracting attention; it’s in the interactions Jun Do has with his countrymen that shows the tenderness and beauty still alive and well in the hearts of people . Johnson’s elegant writing highlights the seemingly arbitrary rules and unfamiliar detail of an isolated nation, and makes North Korea come alive. This book is a one-two-three punch to the gut that leaves you reeling.