Friday, February 27, 2004
I finally got to My Dark Places by James Ellroy. It's divided into four parts: the initial investigation, an autobiography of James' life up till he started writing, a short biography of the investigator with whom he hooks up to investigate his mother's murder, and their subsequent unsuccessful investigation. It's not quite a who-done-it and it's not just autobiography. It's got Ellroy's short, choppy sentences and he throws in some repetition that adds to the movement, but his style does get a little monotonous by the end because there is little dialogue to break it up. There is no closure, no grand finale, no definitive answers here so it becomes less of an investigation into Jean Ellroy's murder and more of a excavation of her life as the book progresses. Ellroy draws a clear line from his mother's death to his criminal activities and homelessness and to his writing. It's pretty interesting stuff, but I found myself getting impatient toward the end.
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Monday, February 23, 2004
Next was Seduced By Moonlight by Laurell K. Hamilton. I'm not proud to admit it, but there you go. Hamilton is a long-standing guilty pleasure of mine. I started reading her Anita Blake books in college and haven't been able to stop myself. By this point she's pretty much given up on plot and her books are now largely sex scenes with a page or two of politics (faerie in this case) to break up the unending series of couplings. So, why do I keep reading? I actually don't know. This one is no different - we've gone from Merry trying to solve a series of supernatural murders to two entire books about her trying to get pregnant. I just... don't know. They're very readable and I can usually polish off one in an afternoon. Maybe it's just habit. Or hoping that she'll manage some more plot this time around. Whatever it is, I'm still hooked. My only consolation is that Robin McKinley is also an Anita Blake fan, so at least I'm in good company.
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This weekend I also read Feed by M. T. Anderson, which is the best YA book I've read in a long time. It's ambitious, daring, funny, sad, and satirical in the grand tradition of Orwell. M. T. Anderson wrote Burger Wuss, one of my favorite YA books, and I've been wanting to read this one ever since it came out. It describes a world where marketing and consumerism has finally whittled down the American people into a nation of materialistic people focus-grouped into idiocy, incapable of using any words longer than 2 syllables. And even that's pushing it. It's a world where teen-speak (complete with rampant swearing) has become the norm and nearly everyone has a computer implanted in his or her head, the better to facilitate shopping. Kids go to School (TM) not to learn pesky facts, but to learn how to use the feed to shop and to get decorating tips. There are fascinating glimpses of the rest of the world, which is not so pleased with America, but only glimpses because we as readers only get as much as the characters get. It's a scary and all too believable, funny as hell version of the future. I loved it.
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Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who ushered in the McCarty Era by Lauren Kessler was excellent. Elizabeth Bentley was a New England woman who became a communist and eventually a high ranking spy for the Russians before turning herself in to the FBI and naming names. We sometimes forget that amidst all the McCarthy psychotic accusations that occurred, there were actually a large number of spies that had unparalleled access to state secrets. This biography is about those people - the spies - not the over-heated mob of allegations of being a communist sympathizer. Elizabeth herself is fascinating. She was a highly educated woman who spent time abroad, a loner, an alcoholic, a manipulator, at times both dependent and fiercely independent. She defies easy labels. She turned to the FBI for many reasons: fear of getting caught, fear of the Russians who saw her as expendable, grief over her lover's death... hardly the true patriot they hailed her as. She had an exciting, insane life that has been largely obscured by history's focus on McCarthy and his ilk. I know I don't remember her name from any of my history classes.
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Thursday, February 19, 2004
Clubland: The Fabulous rise and murderous fall of club culture by Frank Owen was not as good as I'd hoped. Last year I read Disco Bloodbath by James St. James (a friend of Alig's) and saw Party Monster, so I was interested in getting a view of the larger picture. Clubland purports to be about club culture of the early '90s, but it's more the story of one club owner, Peter Gatien, and his organization. Owen barely mentions other club owners and their clubs, except as they relate to Gatien, but oddly has chapters about South Beach and Chris Paciello, who began his career with Gatien. Because the book is so heavily directed toward Gatien, the South Beach stuff just feels like an annoying tangent from the real plot that never joins back with the main story and so ends up being filler. And it is a compelling storyline: drugs, sex, murder, etc. There is so much there I think he could've expanded on and made the book into a true biography of Gatien instead of one that clearly has aspirations of being a real expose of club culture. I imagine this book started life as a series of articles for the Village Voice - about the popular club drugs (Ecstasy, Special K), Michael Alig (who murdered Angel Melendez), and Peter Gatien that Owen hoped to make a general narrative, but it doesn't quite succeed in transcending those roots to become a larger statement about society.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004
After Angels, I read about half of a Tony Hillerman mystery, but it wasn't what I was in the mood for and didn't grab me. It wasn't bad or anything, but I just wasn't feeling it. I think I needed something lighter and frivolous. Enter Marian Keyes. Under the Duvet is a collection of columns and essays that's been out for years in the UK, but just recently got a US release. I love Keyes' books and this rather short collection was entertaining. It even had a few sadder, more reflective pieces to give some weight to the rest of the book, which was fairly insubstantial but fun. It was the perfect come-down from the rather heavy Angels.
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I breezed through Angels In America Parts I and II by Tony Kushner this weekend. I recently saw the HBO adaptation and was blown away and was excited to read the plays. It's a little scary how little progress we've made on this front. Sure, AIDS isn't an automatic death sentence anymore, but we don't seem to be any closer to a cure and much of the world is devastated by this epidemic. I was most interested in the LDS aspect to the play. I suppose Kushner picked that religion because of the tradition of angels and the belief in continuing revelation and communication with Heaven, but he got a few things wrong. They aren't horrible, but enough to give any member of the Church pause, namely we don't believe angels have wings (like Hannah says in her comment about Joseph Smith - how his prayer made an angel with wings or something like that), and there is no way Joe would've still been wearing his garments after sleeping with Louis, especially after a month with him. I know it makes for a better dramatic confrontation on the beach if he does, but I don't believe that he would've still had them on. Not with as devout as he'd been portrayed up till then. I can excuse those though, because they are obviously mistakes made by someone without an intimate knowledge of our doctrine. These are tremendous plays, beautiful, funny, engaging, and affecting.
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Friday, February 13, 2004
I came to You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett by way of Bookslut and a jibe at JT Leroy. I ran downstairs and grabbed our copy but haven't gotten to it until now. All I have to say is... wow. These are amazing short stories. He writes about such heavy things: death, suicide, mental illness, homosexuality, grief, more death, more mental illness, with such grace and sympathy and beauty that I was moved to tears by nearly every single story. His protagonists are teenage boys, British men, American men, pre-teen boys, gay, straight, sane, unstable, with no false notes to any of them. This is truly a fantastic collection and I will be heading to the bookstore this weekend to add it to my shelves.
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Tuesday, February 10, 2004
I finished The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem last night. I took my time with this one - partly because the language demanded attention, and partly because I loved the feeling of location and childhood the long first section created. I was surprised at how starkly the race relations stuff was presented. It seemed, in its very absence of anger or indignation, to be accepting of the view that true integration is an unlikely dream. I'm not sure how I feel about that... I'd like to believe it's possible, but I don't see it happening all that much. We, as a society, are still so aware of racial differences. I didn't have a problem with the Aeroman and the more SF elements in the book. I thought it added a cool bit of excitement and collusion between Dylan and Mingus. Of course, I loved the music bits and the scene where Dylan plays an album for his father, wanting him to really hear the same song - to feel how the song makes him feel. I know that feeling; the wanting to share something that has touched you so profoundly, only to find that it doesn't have the same effect on someone else. That's such a lonely feeling. I think that scene is played out in other versions throughout the book, thus evoking the solitude of the title. Anyway. I really liked this book and will be reading Letham's other books.
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Monday, February 02, 2004
Sunday I read The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters Elisabeth Robinson's epistolary novel about two sisters, one of whom is a struggling movie producer, and the other who has just been diagnosed with leukemia. The book follows about a year and a half in the life of Olivia as she tries to spend time with her sister and produce a movie based on Don Quixote. I liked the format a lot and while the prose isn't anything special, the story moves quickly and is genuinely moving in parts. There are some nice parallels that come through with the sisters and Don Quixote that add some depth to what could have easily been just another weepy chick book.
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Friday night I read The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by JT Leroy. This was harder going than Sarah, despite being just as quick a read. It was a lot bleaker, with the more fantastic elements from that book removed, which made the similar subject matter that much worse. It was still very compelling and I raced through it. Each interlinking story left the reader with a greater picture of this supremely dysfunctional family and the horrors they visited upon the child, who is the constant presence in each story. Heavy stuff and probably not best read all in one sitting.
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