I hate it when I read something that everyone else is raving about and I don’t like it. For a variety of reasons, this book Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones has not grabbed me, certainly in the same way that it’s grabbed other people. Several other booksellers at BEA raved about it and then today I read this piece on the Globe’s Off the Shelf column. I think it’s a problem with me than with the book. The writing is fine, lovely even. We’re just not meant to be. It seemed too sentimental for my taste. I find it more difficult often in describing why I didn’t enjoy a book than when I do, especially when there’s nothing overtly wrong with it. It’s me, not you, Mister Pip. We’re just not going to work out I’m afraid. Let’s end it now before we hurt each other even more.

I chose two not so great books to bring with me to Boliva, along with one pretty good and one really great book. Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee had seemed so interesting—a Korean woman, abandoned by her mother at the market in Seoul, writes on never quite fitting into her life. Her adoptive American parents never quite understand her. She flees to Europe as soon as she can, where she flits from relationship to relationship, falling in love with the man who founded L’Occitane. This was supposed to be a biography about finding oneself and yet at the end I found it a flat portrait of a very unhappy woman, with some lovely descriptions of food.

I didn’t expect much from the next book either, Bar Flower by Lea Jacobson, her story of being a nightclub hostess in Tokyo. I didn’t learn more than I already knew about the hostess scene in Tokyo and the stories of Jacobson’s alcoholic mishaps grew tiresome.

I had brought Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam based on some good word of mouth buzz, and I was not disappointed by this debut story collection. The comparisons to the television show Grey’s Anatomy will be rampant, but that’s merely because all of the stories deal with medical personnel and their lives. Don’t let that dissuade you from reading this powerful collection.

The book I couldn’t put down, even while roaming around La Paz, turned out to be Stephen Carter’s mammoth novel New England White. Carter writes about the country’s most influential African-Americans and opens the novel with a murder. Lemaster Carlyle, the new president of a prestigious New England university, and his wife Julia, who serves as the dean of the divinity school, happen upon the corpse of the notorious economics profession Zellen Kant (who also happens to be Julia’s ex-lover) on a drive home one evening. This sets in motion a slew of events for the large cast of characters. This is more than a literary whodunit. This is a deft portrait of upper crust African-Americans, a sect of the US that goes largely unnoticed, and also an exploration of the complexities of human nature. Carter doesn’t let the plot get too out of control and ably fleshes out all of the characters, big and small, so well that I found myself digging this 550 page book out of my bag at every opportunity.

I complained recently about being in a reading slump. I’m glad to say that I finally dragged myself out of it. Or rather that several books got me through it. I’m hoping people will pick up this first book because of the awesomeness of the title—Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander. Perhaps they’ll read the back and the flap copy before flipping through the first few pages. Those lucky enough to get this far will find themselves in for a delectable treat. Auslander’s funny, bleak prose reminded me that there are still some fine writers out there. Go to Nextbook, do a search for Auslander, and you’ll get a great intro to his style. The New Yorker is also printing excerpts from this book. I’m hoping that he’ll come read at my store this Fall. I haven’t even mentioned what the book is about yet. It’s his memoir, of sorts. As he learns that his wife is pregnant, he reflects on his own childhood, growing up in an Orthodox community. His love/hate relationship with God begins at an early age. It sort of made me feel like my own dabblings with religion were just that, dabblings.

The second book that helped drag me back to the rich, literary landscape is Junot Diaz’s forthcoming novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Mao. I loved the stories in his impressive collection Drown and cheered whenever I saw a story of his in the New Yorker. Finally, we get a novel—a good, hefty one at that. Even though the title of the book says it’s about Oscar, a first generation Dominican-American, we also get the stories of his sister, mother, and grandfather, moving around in time and place. The narrator, a friend of the family, addresses the reader directly throughout the book, giving you the feeling that this story is being told to you over a long afternoon on a hot summer day (give me a break, I read it over several hot days). Diaz mixes in lots of Spanish phrases as well as sci-fi and literary references with no explanation. He does include a lot of footnotes, some tongue in cheek, about the reign of Trujillo over the Dominican Republic. If I can quote Matthew Sharpe, the author of one of my favorite books this year Jamestown, who said “this fierce, funny, tragic book is just what a reader would have hoped for in a novel by Junot Diaz.”

Author and Bookslut correspondent Jeff Vandermeer interviewed Elizabeth Hand, author of Generation Loss for the latest issue of Bookslut. I found it fascinating, especially this part:

I had a hard time creating Cass — she’s me if my brake lines had been cut when I was in my early 20s. I hated being in her mind, because it was like channeling the worst possible version of myself. A lot of her early experiences were mine — at 21, I was not a good role model.

Still, there was something deeply cathartic about just giving that character her head and letting her run with it. I have friends who are still a lot more like Cass than I am, and, I have to confess, I have some admiration for a certain kind of recklessness and hunger for experience that I’m far too cautious to indulge in now, except through my writing.

I loved and hated Cass. She’s that person you know who has what you think is a good heart, but a fucked up personality. Every now and then though you question their heart after they do something really questionable. I think a lot of people feel this way about themselves too, wishing they could take more chances, but not having the balls. That’s one of things I loved about this book, was loving and hating Cass.

On a side note, Elizabeth Hand will be reading at my store on May 23rd.

Spring fever. I’ve got it, yes. I finished a lovely book at lunch today written by Aiobheann Sweeney called Among Other Things I’ve Taken Up Smoking. It’s quiet but she sort of pulls you into the story. Miranda has always lived on a small island off the coast of Maine with her scholar father. Her parents moved there from New York City when she was only three and soon after they arrived, her mother disappeared into the fog. Miranda lives a lonely existence on the island taking care of her quiet and withdrawn father, yet she doesn’t yearn for a different life necessarily. Her father arranges for her to go to New York for a few weeks and help some friends from his old life. In New York, Miranda learns more about her father and about herself. It’s a really nice coming of age tale with lovely moments about loneliness and figuring out how to be a real person.

I finished To the Lighthouse last week in time for class. It was delightful! I’m feeling sort of obsessed now. I’m going to read Mrs. Dalloway next and possibly tackle Hermione Lee’s biography of Woolf. She seems like such a fascinating woman.

As for George Eliot’s Middlemarch, I had stated that I think it’s one of the best books I have ever read and someone in the comments asked me to explain. I’ll have to think about that. It definitely took me the first 100 pages to get into the book, but I think Eliot does such a wonderful job fleshing out her characters. They all seem so human. Virginia Woolf described this book as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people”. It was a marked change from the writings of Jane Austen.

On a side note, you can read the entire book online here. And a note in Wikipedia said that Sam Mendes, who directed American Beauty, will be directing a version of Middlemarch. Also he’s directing a film adaptation of Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Interesting, not sure what to think about that.

Have you ever read a book that while not the greatest book in the world filled the need for the moment? I suppose in essence I’m talking about escapist reading. Usually about this time of year, I begin longing to run away and travel somewhere. Sometimes I’ll read travel writing to sate this need. Or I’ll turn to some historical fiction. That’s why I read Kate Turnivall’s upcoming book The Russian Concubine—sounds torrid doesn’t? It’s set in China, 1928 in the International Settlement. 16 year old Lydia Ivanova, daughter of White Russian Valentina Ivanova, supports herself and her mother picking pockets while also attending school. She meets Chang An Lo, a handsome Communist (also skilled in Kung Fu of course) who is constantly on the run from Chiang Kai Shek’s troops. There are a few more story lines involving Lydia’s teacher and mistress, whose father happens to head the Triad gang the Black Cobras; Lydia’s mother and a newspaper man, whose pockets Lydia pick; Mr. Mason, whose daughter Polly also is Lydia’s best friend. All the stories intertwine, some of the well, some of them forced.

I might not sound like I enjoyed reading this book, but I really did. It’s like a chocolate craving, you need it that moment and only chocolate will fufill that need. I needed something that I could easily read in a day or two but also immerse myself into a different world. I use sci-fi for this too. While this book fulfilled that need, I’ve have more satisfying books in the past. For one thing, everything wrapped up a little too neatly for my taste. And some of the more serendipitous conclusions were unbelievable. Overall, I enjoyed losing myself in this book for two days even if I have reservations about it. But that’s the point of this type of reading for me, losing myself for a few days in a book.

I might have spent the better part of last weekend watching the Red Sox sweep the Yankees, but I also did some reading. I read Elizabeth Hand’s amazing new mystery Generation Loss and immediately wrote a staff recommendation for the store. Here’s what I wrote:

Do you want to read a smart, dark, literary thriller that will keep you reading late into the night? Do you want to read about a self-destructive photographer who hasn’t done anything since the 70’s, who has spent the years since drinking, doing drugs, and alienating everyone around her, who goes to Maine to interview legendary photographer Aphrodite, but then gets caught up in a case of a missing girl and also discovers a photographic genius who might also be crazy? Do you want to read about how dark a person can go before get to that invisible line and what might tempt you to cross it? Well, here’s your book: Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand.

War doesn’t just happen in the here and now. The effects ripple through time, causing untold havoc. Or if we’re lucky, some people tell their stories hopefully as some sort of catharsis. I’ve read some memoirs already from veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These stories seemed almost too fresh, as if they needed to age, look back, and reconsider it all over again. We don’t know what the impact will be on today’s veterans in 20 or 30 years. Comparisons have been made to Vietnam and if these wars are at all alike, we’re in for a lot of trouble. Last week, I read Danielle Trussoni’s memoir Falling Throught the Earth and wondered if I would be reading a similar story in 30 years. In her book she weaves together three stories: first, her early years as part of a dysfunctional family and then living with her hard-drinking father; second, her father’s experiences in Vietnam; and finally, her solo trip to Vietnam at age 24 to to try and understand her father’s experience.
Trussoni’s father arrived in Vietnam in 1968, during the Tet offensive. He immediately volunteered for a suicide mission that brings him hazardous duty pay—he becomes a tunnel rat. Returning from the war, forever changed, the trauma he endured takes its toll on him and his family. As the eldest of three kids, Danielle feels an special affinity with her father. She even creates a Dad code: “I told them that Dad’s annoyance meant he loved us more than words could express; his drinking meant he suffered more acutely than other people; his coldness was cover for intense feeling. I apologized for Dad and forgave him in advance. I interpreted Dad and spoke for Dad. I convinced myself that I was capable of this. And sometimes I was.” When her parents divorce, she goes to live with her father, while her two younger siblings go with her mother. Now she gives him an honest accounting. He comes across as a gruff, hard-nosed man, itching to fight, but occasionally you get a glimpse of the wounded man behind the tough exterior. He clearly was not ready to take care of a young daughter. She found herself spending lots of time on a bar stool at Roscoe’s, the local watering hole, listening to her father tell stories about Vietnam while getting drunk. A procession of women, many from the bar, move through the house, most for just one night. As a teenager, she has a revelation. “The similarities between Dad and me were striking. Dad’s personality had grown into me the way a strip of barbed wire grows into the bark of a tree…For the first time I realized I needed to untangle myself from him.” Soon, she moves back in with her mother.

By visiting Vietnam at 24, Danielle hopes to exorcise some of the demons left from her childhood, and perhaps some of her father’s as well. It’s as if she believes she can take on her father’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder so her father doesn’t have to. It took 30 years for the official diagnosis and only happened when her father needed to qualify for medical benefits. Reading this article in today’s NYT about the rage and grief the soldiers experience, I wondered again, will it take 30 years for some of these soldiers PSTD to be diagnosed and treated? Or have learned any lessons from Vietnam. Danielle and her family suffered their own version of Post Traumatic Stress. Again, the effects of war rippling outward. Perhaps with this spare, intense memoir, she can finally leave behind some of her father’s memories.