Mr. Bookdwarf has been kind enough to write some thoughts on Stieg Larsson’s forthcoming The Girl who Played with Fire, the second in the trilogy featuring Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomquist:

Diary of an Exercise Addict by Peach Friedman
It’s impossible for me to guess why some events will tip people over into despair and self-destruction and not faze others at all. Peach Friedman, a woman I’ve known since childhood, never struck me as the sort to fall apart. She was tough and smart and beautiful and then, well, it all went south.

She was graduating from college, breaking up with a boyfriend, and watching her parents’ marriage nearly fall apart, and that series of unfortunate events triggered something. Eating less. Working out more. Eating far, far, far less. Today, she’s lucky to be alive. Lucky that her disorder started when she was old enough to understand what was going on, lucky that her parents were able to assemble a team of doctors to help her, lucky that they were able to support her financially when she was too sick and too sad to work. And we’re lucky that she’s a good enough writer to tell us what happened and how it felt, and how she came back from it.

It was definitely a little weird reading a memoir of someone I know. I kept expecting to show up in it somewhere, and possibly in an unflattering light. I’m not mentioned, although when she changed the names of the people in the book, she used my name for one of them. Which is fine, because there’s plenty of unflattering to go around without me there. She does a great job describing her parents’ rocky marriage, her brother’s sleazy girlfriends, and her own sleazy boyfriends: The guy who got my name tried to pick her up in the gym by commenting that she worked out so often she probably didn’t even menstruate any more. But mostly, it’s an unflinching look at herself, at how she tried to avoid emotional risk and gain a sense of control through obsessive calorie control and compulsive exercise. If anyone is portrayed harshly in this book, it’s the author herself.

Besides, I love that kind of stuff. I love cringe-inducing, can’t-look-away detail. I love TMI. Why else would you read a memoir if not to find out the dirt? “Diary” definitely provides on that count, chronicling relapses and overuse injuries, bad sex and embarrassing fantasies, lanugo, and of course the terrible constipation she suffered as her body learned to deal with eating again.

I’m not really the target market for this book, but it illustrates in such vivid detail the process of physical and emotional deterioration and recovery that I think it makes a compelling read for anyone.

–Aaron Weber

Traveling gives me a chance for some uninterrupted reading. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately and managed to finish a few books:

• Alive in Necropolis by Doug Dorst: I’m not sure why they gave this outstanding debut novel such a weird cover (the galley looked completely different). The cartoonish cover belies the fresh, imaginative writing inside. Rookie police officer Michael Mercer tries to navigate adulthood, fitting in with his fellow police officer, working on his relationship with an older nurse, befriending the widow of another policeman, maintaining stagnating relationships with high school friends. It doesn’t help matters when he starts seeing ghosts.
• The Tsar’s Dwarf by Peter Fogtdal: Funny and sad, this book chronicles the life of Sorine, a female Danish dwarf, who is given by the king of Denmark to the Russian Tsar Peter the Great. She’s smart and witty but hardened by such a tough life. Sorine’s life is mesmerizing.
• The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss: I’ve long liked Liss’s historical mysteries–he provides such wonderful details. This book about the Whiskey Rebellion is no different. He’s provided a great cast of characters and an exciting plot about Hamilton’s First Bank of the United States. Lots of forgotten history for me, but it was an exciting time post the Revolutionary War when the foundations of the United States were being set.
• Exit Music by Ian Rankin: The final chapter in the long series follows John Rebus on his last 10 days before retirement. There’s a complicated plot, but Rankin does a good job keeping it clear with his excellent writing.
• A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn: A debut mystery set in 1950s apartheid South Africe, featuring Detective Emmanuel Cooper, a man haunted by his past in World War II. A murder of a police captain in a rural town throws everyone off balance, especially since the new apartheid laws have recently gone into effect. Nunn does a good job portraying how the country functioned on such seemingly bizarre rules.

Paul Theroux has mellowed a bit, but certainly not lost any of his perspicacity over the years. I loved Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. Theroux meets and makes friends with all sorts of people, from rickshaw drivers to fellow train riders to Orhan Pamuk. Some of the best parts of the book are his meetings with various authors. My favorite is the chapter where he spends a day with Haruki Murakami. I’ve read interviews with Murakami and not learned as much as I did here. Theroux has the advantage in that this book isn’t about Murakami so Murakami isn’t on guard. Theroux’s portrait is the most revealing one I’ve read. Throughout the book are lyrical descriptions of landscapes I hope to one day see and portraits of people I hope to one day meet.

Wanting something a little different, I followed Ghost Train with The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife’s Memoir by Patrica Harman. Harman works as a nurse-midwife in a private practice with her ob-gyn husband Tom in Torrington, West Virginia. In this economically depressed area and with the rising costs of malpractice insurance, the couple is forced to provide only gynecological exams and first trimester care. The sections in the book are broken up into the stories of the women Harman treats. They run the gamut; a well to do mother who’s daughter is bulimic; a women being stalked by an ex-husband; young college women needing birth control advice; a professor who wants to make the transition from female to male. It’s an interesting book. Harman is more spiritual than I am (I’m not at all frankly) and isn’t afraid to write about it which might appeal to other people. Her heartfelt portraits of the women she tries to help definitely kept me reading the book.

I enjoyed reading Seven Days in the Art World. The author approaches the art world from a sociological point of view. It’s not a tell all about artists and curators behaving badly by any means. I’m not too familiar with the art world, which is why this slim book seemed like a perfect introduction. The art world reminds me so much of the book world. It’s a business after all. As much as a gallery owner or curator loves the art, they’re there to make money. Even the artists can be financially motivated.

Each of the seven chapters is a profile of a a different aspect of the art world. The chapter on a Christie’s auction gives the reader a sense of the tightly paced and high energy of the event. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the art crit, which explores life in a legendary seminar at the California Institute of Art run by Michael Asher.  The students spend over 12 hours discussing three people’s work. Each chapter was eye opening for me. Thornton spent 5 years researching and writing this book and though it might seem slim to the casual eye, it’s erudite and well-written.

I’ve been on a reading tear lately, reading so many books that I don’t have time to mention or discuss on the blog. Here’s some of what I’ve been reading:

• I read both Augustus and Stoner by John E. Williams. They are very different books but both brilliant. Augustus is a masterful novel that brings Rome to life through a portrait of a legendary but lonely leader. Stoner portrays the quiet, sad life of a professor in the Midwest.
• I loved The Glimmer Palace by Beatrice Colin. I mentioned it before, but it’s worth mentioning again. As the twentieth century began, so the life of Lily Aphrodite begins. We follow her through WWI up through the Weimar to the beginnings of WWII.
• I read The Heretic’s Daughter both because of the local setting (Salem, MA) and because this is one of Little Brown’s lead novels this Fall. Also I’m having lunch with the author Kathleen Kent tomorrow. The novel follows a young woman whose entire family gets swept up in the Salem witch hunt. Creepy stuff.
• Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner was a little fun reading for me. The war between humans and fairies brought about some sort of apocalypse. The main character Liza must find her way in a world where even trees can be bad. It’s good stuff.
• Francine Prose’s Goldengrove broke my heart a little. It’s a coming of age novel about a young girl trying to recover after her older sister drowns. It’s about identity and finding your way through a very confusing time. Curious to see how this book does when it comes out in September.
• I read The White Mary by Kira Salak over the weekend. It’s a gripping novel about a Czech journalist Marika Vecera who has spent her career on dangerous assignments in places like the Congo and Sierra Leone. Back in Boston after a harrowing experience, she learns that her hero, war correspondent Robert Lewis has disappeared. She runs off to Papua New Guinea in search of him. I still can’t pinpoint why I enjoyed this book so much. Salak wrote a book about traversing Papua New Guinea, so her coverage of trekking in the jungles seems true to life. She also wrote about Marika’s inner struggles with a sharp eye.
• Right now I’m in the middle of Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. The title says it all. Each chapter covers an area of the art world–judging the Turner Prize, a Christie’s auction, the Basel Art Fair, the editorial offices of Artforum, an art school crit, an artist’s studio, and the Venice Bienale. There’s so much I don’t know about the art world. I’m finding myself enjoying this book more than I expected with all the behind the scenes stuff.

Fourth of July was spent slow cooking a brisket and consuming mojitos with friends. Good times but no reading. I finished reading Telex from Cuba on Saturday afternoon. It happened to receive the NYTBR cover this past weekend. I think I tend to agree with the reviewer on this one. It’s not a perfect book, but a good one. The history of the Americans in Cuba fascinated me, how they refused to believe what was going on before their eyes. Levels of classism and racism abound as do large amounts of repression. The novel has several narrators, but only one told from the first person, that of K.C. Stites. He’s looking back on what happened, but oddly with a lot of sympathy for those who look the worst. The part that worked least for me was the story of Rachel K. the cabaret dancer who sleeps with Prio, Batista, and the Castros supposedly. That story line didn’t nestle as well amongst the others. Telex succeeds as a good first novel.

I’ve since started reading Augustus by John Williams. Wait, didn’t I just say that I was going to read Stoner by the same author? Yes, but I saw this book first and when I realized it was about the Roman Emperor, I grabbed it. It’s written in epistolary form! Wow! I’m amazed by it right now.

I have to travel to Philadelphia on Thursday for a funeral but am going to spend an extra day in the area. So it might be light posting this week again. We’ll see. My laptop broke and I’ve been too busy to stand in line at the Apple Genius Bar. I know you can make appointments ahead of time, but it still requires waiting around. Regardless, I hope to have Augustus finished before I leave so I can bring something else with me.  I’ll report back.

Since I manage to be offending people left and right with my potty mouth and insults to Worcester (I really have no bad feelings toward the town), I’ll stick to books here. I finished a novel by Amitav Ghosh last night called Sea of Poppies, due out this Fall. I’ve never read him before, but now I want to visit his older works. Has anyone read him and recommend a particular book? I thought Sea of Poppies quite brilliant. It’s a historical novel set right before the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century. During a time of colonial upheaval, a cast of characters varying from opium farmers to a French orphan to a bankrupt raja find themselves aboard the ship called The Ibis. It’s full of collolquialisms that I’m not even sure I understand now but gives a particular flavor to the book. Great read.

For something far different, I turned to The Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar. I’m not sure I love the jacket on the book (you can see it on the right), but it’s pretty entertaining so far. It kept me patient while waiting at the doctor’s office anyway. After this, I might read Stoner by John Williams, based on Matthew Cheney’s post. Like Matthew, I’ve been hearing about that book here and there for some time now, sort of like The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis, another NYRB Classics book. I keep meaning to read them. Now I’m determined to get my hands on copies.