Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Far be it from me to pit accomplished women against each other, but Jane Austen is no Edith Wharton.
Number 18: Jane Austen-inspired
Tag: book review
Number 40: A Book With Photographs Inside
Mermaids in Paradise
Lydia Millet
While browsing the shelves of the Fiction “M” section for something to include in this challenge, I came upon this cover. Since it combined pin-ups, pop art, and mermaids, I had to take a look. I was not disappointed.
Mermaids in Paradise was a lovely, absurd, sarcastic book about what would happen if mermaids were real. And what would happen is… not great. The book, however, is delightful!
Except for the last few pages which were… perplexing. But I think I liked it?
Regardless, I have read a lot of mermaid fiction over the years (even wrote some!), and what I love about it is how malleable the genre is. It is a strange idea that can unfold in many directions depending on the neuroses of the author. This particular book went with hard-edged cynicism, and the oeuvre is better for it.
It kind of reminded me of lesser-known Margaret Atwood classics like the Edible Woman, which is great, and everyone should read.
Number 8: Involving the Art World
The Castle of Los Angeles
Lisa Morton
No one has ever sounded more like a native Los Angeleno in the year 2010 than the writer of this book, set in Los Angeles and published in 2010. I think it was the narration about the freeways that cinched it. And putting “the” in front of the freeway’s number. The vocal fry pretty much adds itself.
The setting felt realistic, is what I’m trying to say. Which is good, because The Castle of Los Angeles is a ghost story, so you want the world to be grounded in reality. And it was a good one, fun and unexpected, but not so long that you have to spend a bunch of nights with the lights on, jumping at every noise, until you finally finish it.
The Castle of Lost Angeles did get me thinking, if every place has a genre that resonates with it. LA would be horror. New York is rom-com (of course), Boston is heartwarming biopic, and all of the South stakes its claim to gothic romance, but California is the place for horror.
Los Angeles is creepy, it’s hard to pinpoint, but the movie The Craft does it well. This is a different creepy from the creepiness of the sunset district in San Francisco where Patty Hearst held up a bank, or the bone-like tentacle creepiness of the trees outside of Lake Tahoe where the Donner family met their fate. The whole of California has a haunted quality, distinct by region, but connected, part of a greater disturbing whole.
Sorry to get sentimental, I must be feeling homesick.
Number 1: A Second-Person Narrative
Bright Lights, Big City
Jay McInerney
I admit, I was skeptical that a novel written in second person would be anything but a gimmick, but I was wrong. It is actually quite engaging. It is also well-suited to a navel-gazey unreliable narrator (the best kind!).
But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name.
To all the reviewers on Goodreads who wrote their reviews in second person, I salute you. It is a temperamental style, and you are braver than I.
Number 24: Addresses a Specific Topic
Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy
Tom Wicker
I did not know much about this era of American history when I began this book, but now that I’ve finished, I still don’t.
It is not the fault of the author, it is just that the subject is so banal, like evil. I fall asleep even thinking about it.
That’s why he was so successful.
Wait, was he successful?
It seems to me idle to argue that he was not a demagogue. If he enjoyed his success, he was not entirely sanguine about its cost in ruined lives and damaged careers.
That sounds successful to me.
Joseph R. McCarthy was a demagogue, certainly, but… he was also intelligent, energetic, audacious, personally generous… too avidly craving the affirmation of others, too recklessly seeking it in the battle he exalted, McCarthy too carelessly believed that the approval he won justified the means of its achievement… who fought desperately and with uncommon success to achieve the wrong dream.
Indeed.
Number 36: Recommended by a Favorite Author
The Heads of Cerberus: The First Alternative Worlds Novel
Francis Stevens
I admit I was not a fan of the last dystopian novel I read. So I went back in time a little to see what I could find. And lo and behold, the pioneer of the time travel genre herself, Francis Stevens!
I love science fiction for its timelessness. Despite, or because, it deals with the future, its tone has not changed much since it began. Sure, we aren’t still debating the morality of the microscope (like Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World), but the tension between skepticism of new technology and embracing it for the creative potential it unlocks is a consistent theme.
Heads of Cerberus was written in 1919, but it still feels current. I think part of the reason for this is because she does not try to imagine the technology that might exist in Philadelphia in 2118, which might read as silly today. Technology is stalled at 1918 levels, and society is the thing that is drastically restructured.
Stylistically, it works. Pulp entertainment at its finest!
Also, I took some liberties with the category. Rather than being recommended by a favorite author, The Heads of Cerberus was actually recommended by the Monster, She Wrote audiobook I was listening to. It has introduced me to some of my new favorites.
Number 45: A Book With Illustrated People on the Cover
Electric Arches
Eve L. Ewing
It must be said, I love poetry. It’s such a visceral experience. It’s much more exciting than reading a novel. Poetry absorbs you, it take you under. It’s the only writing style that gives enough credit to the form of the words themselves, and we should appreciate poetry more. Turning the pages feels like an adventure.
I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.
I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.
I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.
I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.
There is not much else to say except I loved it (which I suppose is a weird thing to say about something that covers so many heavy topics, but it made me feel, and that matters with art). Electric Arches is a great book, and I finished it all in one sitting. Also the cover is especially cool.
Number 41: Involves a Second Chance
The Program
Suzanne Young
In this book’s defense, it was going to feel dated.
After all, The Program is a dystopian young adult novel set in Oregon with an exciting premise that, predictably, fails to deliver.
To start with the good, the writing is clear, several of the characters are engaging, and the author is particularly good at depicting action. The plot moves along quickly, and I could be curious to see where the series goes.
Okay good parts over, complaining parts ahead.
To begin, wow. Just, wow, were we ever pick-mes back then. This book is that mentality in 405 easy-to-read pages. It is peak Mary Sue, peak not-like-other-girls. It’s hard to be reminded of that cultural moment. And in book form, no less! I was certain one of my complaints was going to be this book’s abject failure to pass the Bechdel test, but the first page proved me wrong.
The air in the room tastes sterile. The lingering scent of bleach is mixing with the fresh white paint on the walls, and I wish my teacher would open the window to let in a breeze. But we’re on the third floor so the pane is sealed shut- just in case anyone gets the urge to jump.
I’m still staring at the paper on my desk when Kendra Phillips turns around in her seat, looking me over with her purple contacts. “You’re not done yet?”
Like most heroines of the era, Sloane is beloved by men, inexplicably liked by women (who are underdeveloped compared to the male characters), and totally incapable of relating to anyone who is not in love with her. It is possible this was relatable to teenagers in the Obama years, but teens today are more sophisticated than that.
Like many premises of the era, The Program is underdeveloped, and insensitive by today’s standards. To state the obvious: depression as a plot device is icky. Mental healthcare in America is a travesty. Conflating suicidal ideation, depression, and self-harm as being one and the same (which this book does frequently) is lazy writing. This may have been okay in 2012, but we can do better now.
Aside from being insensitive, it is underdeveloped. We don’t really understand why suicide has become contagious, why it is an epidemic, or why it seems localized to teenagers. Although this vagueness can work for stories that are more about the character’s journey than the setting itself, this book is very much about the Program as a character, and one girl’s journey not to be changed by it. In a very real sense, the Program functions as the villain, and it is a poorly understood one.
Which is all a bummer. I like dystopian novels. It’s a pity this one was not done well.
I glance past her to make sure Mrs. Portman is distracted at the front of the room, and then I smile. “It’s far too early in the morning to properly pyschoanalyze myself,” I whisper. “I’d almost rather learn about science.”
“Maybe a coffee spiked with QuikDeath would help you focus on the pain.”
Number 44: An Anthology
Women Talk Money: Breaking the Taboo
Rebecca Walker
This is one of those books that you know from the beginning is going to get you. Anytime you have a group of diverse individuals sharing their honest feelings on one of society’s biggest taboos, at least one of them is going to hit a little too close to home and give you too many feelings. And that certainly happened with Women Talk Money. There were parts that were emotional, parts that were maddening, and a few sections that made me uncomfortably aware of aspects of my privilege I never even considered.
It was motivating, and reminded me that radical honesty about finances is necessary. The only way forward is to lift the veil of shame and secrecy until we understand how to do better.
I will definitely be looking into these writers in the future.
We tell ourselves so many stories about money; that it is the reward for our hard work, that is signals what is valuable, that it cannot buy things that will give our lives meaning, that we will never have equality until women assess their worth in the same ways men do. But none of these stories feel completely true to me.
P.S. I would be remiss not to mention that Rebecca Walker is the daughter of Alice Walker, whose essay is featured as the foreword of this book. While Alice Walker has done admirable work, her anti-Semitic views are, to say the least, problematic, and I cannot blame anyone for passing on anthology for that reason.
This world and these rooms might not have been designed for you, but you have to walk into the room and take the knowledge you need. Walk out with it. Don’t take anything else home.
Number 3: Title starting with the letter “E”
Eve’s Hollywood
Eve Babitz
Words cannot express how much I love this collection. I read it every year and I always find something new to appreciate about it. Eve Babitz is commonly compared to Joan Didion, but I never understood it. In my opinion she is much more in line with Edith Wharton and Candace Bushnell, women who wrote savagely and frivolously, like pink stilettos, which is my favorite kind of writing. The difference being that they wrote about New York, and she wrote about L.A.
In the Depression, when most of them came here, people with brains went to New York and people with faces came West.
Of all her books, Slow Days Fast Company is probably her best, the most polished and to the point, but I like the messiness of Eve’s Hollywood. It feels like being 22 and sitting by the pool with your best friend over mojitos. Although I am originally from LA county, I did not appreciate the beauty of it while I was growing up, but I did after I read this book. It makes me homesick in the best possible way.
Culturally, L.A. has always been a humid jungle alive with seething L.A. projects that I guess people from other places just can’t see. It takes a certain kind of innocence to like L.A., anyway. It requires a certain plain happiness inside to be happy in L.A., to choose it and be happy here. When people are not happy, they fight against L.A. and say it’s a ‘wasteland’ and other helpful descriptions.
Kate's 52 Book Challenge 