The “good book” (as I affectionately call my trusty compact OED) tells me that flaky means “consisting of flakes,” or “to come away or off in flakes.” It further reports that “flake” can refer to snow, fluff, ignited matter from a fire, or a small piece of material that has exfoliated, fractured, peeled, or otherwise loosened itself. Flake can also refer to a layer, as in an oyster shell, or a loose sheet of ice from a floe.
There’s a kind of carnation called a flake (it’s striped) and the word is part of brand names for several kinds of flaky products (like the Cadbury chocolate bar called Flake, which is quite crumbly). Finally, OED points out that as a verb, flake can mean to fall in flakes (as it is now doing outside my window), to break off, or to fragment.
When I think back over January 2011, it’s flaky. We went from practically no snow at Christmas to so much snow we are running out of places to throw it (the banks on either side of the driveway are several feet high). Our local newspaper reported that we had 38 inches in January (the most for Jan. in 20 years) and February is already off to a roaring start with another 16+ inches in the first two days.
And my reading was fractured, layered, loose. I picked up what I could when I could, in between shoveling, getting the bookconscious household back into a routine post-holidays, and traveling to my first ever American Booksellers Association Winter Institute. I read some books I wanted to read, some I have booked for events at Gibson’s, some forthcoming titles, and others that are bookconscious life learning choices.
The perfect reading for someone who is starting and stopping frequently is a collection of short stories ( a poetry collection works well, too). I read two wonderful collections this month. The Teens and the Computer Scientist gave me Oxfam’s Ox Tales for Christmas. In January I read Earth. I absolutely loved this collection, and I really look forward to the others in the series.
The stories in Ox Tales Earth are all loosely related to the theme of land rights and farming. “The Jester of Astrapovo,” by Rose Tremain, opens the book, and I found it especially intriguing because I enjoyed the film The Last Station, which was about the final part of Tolstoy’s life and his dramatic death at a remote train station. Tremain writes from the station master’s perspective, and the story is far less sympathetic to Tolstoy’s wife, Countess Sofya, than the film was. Tremain’s story is a well cut gem; in just 31 pages, she provides fascinating characters, an intriguing plot, a clearly drawn setting that comes alive in her hands, a transformation, and enough left unsaid to allow the readers’ imaginations to play.
Marti Leimbach, author of “Boys In Cars,” paints a poignant sketch of a mother and her autistic son, creating tension in their relationships with his father and in the boy’s attempt to deal with a birthday party invitation. I teared up, and admired the fictional mother very much. “Lucky We Live Now,” by Kate Atkinson is a fantastic dystopian story with magical-realism elements that made me laugh out loud. And I also found “The Importance of Having Warm Feet,” by Marina Lewycka very compelling; it takes place mostly in the narrator’s memory as she sits at her mother’s death bed, and it’s another beautiful, tightly written, emotionally weighty piece. I could go on, but the point is, I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.
I received Siohban Fallon‘s new book, You Know When the Men Are Gone, from her publicist, and I’m grateful. This debut is a collection of loosely linked short stories set mostly at Fort Hood (although one of my favorites takes place in Iraq), featuring a combat unit and the family members they leave behind. It’s a terrific read, and one I hope many people will try; it’s a very good portrait of military life.
While it’s been twenty years since the Gulf War, and seventeen since the Computer Scientist’s last long deployment with the Marine Corps (seven months in Japan & Thailand while I was back in Hawaii, expecting Teen the Elder), I found this book weirdly familiar. Deployments have changed (for one thing, much to the Teens’ amusement, we couldn’t email our deployed loved ones back then; we wrote — gasp — letters!); the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan are also very different than the Gulf War. But Fallon’s book brought back the spouse support dynamics, both official and unofficial. Her stories recalled the frustration, stress, camaraderie, and gossip families deal with, and I found myself thinking about situations and people I haven’t thought of in years.
Fallon writes with authority born of experience — she is a military spouse herself, and lived at Fort Hood. As I looked back over the book to tell you about my favorite stories, I found there’s something compelling about each of them. Fallon’s writing isn’t fancy or cutting edge. Her style is simple, clear, but full of vitality. As I read I felt like recognized her characters, not because I’d read about similar ones in another book, but because I felt as if I’d met them.
I imagine that even people who haven’t experienced military life will have the experience I had, because Fallon has an uncanny ability to evoke a haunting familiarity in her stories. Even if you haven’t been through deployment, you know someone who’s been diagnosed with cancer, or whose teenager is suddenly acting like someone else, or you’ve listened to someone whose marriage is falling apart or who suspects it is. You’ve been, or known, a person who suddenly, inexplicably, experiences something that causes a subtle shift in perspective, or maybe rocks your world.
None of this is new emotional territory, but what makes the book so striking is that on every page you’re reminded that the people in these stories are just like the real people who have gone to Iraq & Afghanistan or stayed home while the people they loved went. So even though the universal nature of Fallon’s themes make the book accessible to anyone, You Know When the Men Are Gone is at its core a stark reminder of what a portion of America is living with all the time as long as we are at war.
In addition to this great short fiction, I read a few novels in January. The best was Luka and the Fire of Life, Salman Rushdie’s follow up to Haroun and the Sea of Stories. It’s brilliant. Rushdie creates a heroic adventure for Luka, who is the younger son of Rashid Khalifa, the storyteller from Haroun. Funny, smart, imaginative, utterly original — there aren’t adequate adjectives for this book. Rushdie spins his usual complex, rich, fabulous prose, he’s very funny, and he keeps you turning the pages.
Luka is set in a magical world that works like a video game, so I can’t wait for the Teens to read it, because I think they’ll be amused that Luka has to advance through increasingly challenging levels, like a game. The way Rushdie manages these contemporary, fresh images alongside references to classical mythology and his own imaginary flourishes is very entertaining. And it’s a classic adventure tale, with a young hero having to prove himself through a series of tests so that he can vanquish evil forces and rescue his father. Very good reading, in every sense.
I read The Year of the Hare, by Arto Paasilinna, after seeing Pico Iyer’s review in the Wall Street Journal. Iyer wrote the forward, too. I expected to love this book. Bookconscious readers know I’m a fan of works in translation. And I like quirky premises such as a man deciding to completely change his life — leaving his wife, his job, his home, everything — because he rescues a hare that’s been hit by a car.
I did love about 3/4 of The Year of the Hare. The original conceit was convincing, the story compelling, the people and situations interesting. The way the main character, Vatanen, seems to happen upon opportunities, meet people, and influence the outcome of situations reminded me of Forrest Gump. But the last part of the book was too erratic and unbelievable for me, even for a tale that had taken great leaps earlier.
Another book I admired but didn’t love is Finny, by Justin Kramon. Justin came to Gibson’s at the invitation of a local book club. He’s a talented young writer, whose future work I look forward to. The characters in Finny are unforgettably original — I think Poplan and Menalcus are about as fantastic as two supporting characters can be. I loved that Justin wrote from the point of view of a woman so empathetically and so well. And I liked the happy-ish ending; satisfying without being treacly.
But I felt that overall, Finny suffered from too much information. For example, too many scenes in which the characters acted thoughtlessly towards each other. This was at least effective in evoking the social squeamishness that existed as the young characters grew up, crossed paths, and fell in and out of favor with each other. A surfeit of these situations was distracting but seemed characteristic of long term friendships formed in youth, even when they seemed improbable.
But sometimes there was just too much detail that dragged the story down or were unwieldy. Eventually the scenes where characters hurt each other once again were beyond believability — it struck me that real people wouldn’t keep returning to relationships that were so dysfunctional. And yet, the book has stayed with me, and one of the book club members told me that they discussed it at great length, both indications that Justin is a compelling writer. Stay tuned.
One final note on fiction before I move on to drama and nonfiction: I’m almost finished with the latest Flavia de Luce book, A Red Herring Without Mustard, which comes out next week. As I’ve said before, I am a huge Flavia fan — she’s one of my favorite characters, ever. I’m not a regular mystery reader, but I also love the way Flavia’s creator, Alan Bradley, keeps me guessing; I’ve never seen how his mysteries will be solved until the end.
Red Herring is every bit as fresh, funny, and fascinating as the earlier books in the series. Who knew chemistry could be so interesting (it’s Flavia’s passion). Great reading, and as my grandmother always said, nothing is better for unsettling moments than a good mystery. Rising gas prices? Instability in the Middle East? Another blizzard? Curl up with Flavia and you’ll feel better.
Along with Teen the Elder, I read Shakespeare’s Henry V in January. Having read a fictional book about war families and a nonfiction book full of the atrocities humans perpetrate against each other (more on that in a moment), I found myself impatient with King Henry’s patriotic speeches and the youthful excitement of both the French and English as they prepared to kill each other. But Shakespeare is eternally entertaining, and who can resist his hilarious English lesson for the French princess? Or the way the formerly rebellious Prince Hal has grown into a leader, unflinching and decisive? Good stuff, and interesting to discuss with the boy. He admired the speeches.
The book I read that reveals the atrocities of war in mind-boggling breadth is Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees. Caroline Moorehead, a British human rights journalist, lays out the history of refugees and resettlement in the 20th and 21st centuries. I volunteer with refugee resettlement in our town, so I have a good working knowledge of contemporary refugee issues, but Moorehead’s clear writing gave me a better overall understanding of the politics, past and present. She also explores the sociological motivations of governments who promote resettlement but simultaneously make life as difficult as possible for asylum seekers and migrants.
While Moorehead is clearly a humanitarian and doesn’t hide her feelings about the people she meets, the injustices she exposes, or the dysfunction of the international system meant to help displaced people, I found the book to be fair. I am firmly on her side, however — I think the treatment of refugees in most of the world is morally reprehensible, I find the justification most governments give for rejecting economic migrants hypocritical, and I think even the best intended governments are often culturally clueless and politically hamstrung when it comes to resettlement.
Examples: refugee “camps” (sounds nice, right, rustic, but safe?) are nearly universally unsafe, understaffed, and inadequate for preparing displaced people to lead healthy, productive lives outside the camps. The argument that illegal immigrant labor harms consumers and workers often comes from the very powerful people who make it legal and economically desirable for corporations to either use migrant workers anyway or outsource their factories in order to keep their products cheap for consumers. And as Moorehead so poignantly describes in her chapter profiling some African refugees now living near the Arctic circle in Finland, resettled refugees are sometimes stuck in climates and cultures that are almost impossibly unfamiliar, with restrictions on or barriers to employment, education, and movement. This makes adjusting, even in a country that welcomes them, overwhelming.
But, I still found Human Cargo uplifting, despite the horrific stories Moorehead shares, and the disheartening systemic failures she exposes. Why? Because first of all, Ms. Moorehead, like Nicholas Kristof in the Unites States, carries on a fine journalistic tradition of shining light on the darkest of human conditions. And like Kristof, she meets and shares the stories of ordinary people who are quietly defying official indifference and insensitivity, who are heroically performing simple acts of welcome and friendship, who are making a difference in the most profound way possible, one person at a time.
The best example of what I mean are Moorehead’s chapters on the Australian government’s recent actions against asylum seekers, and her profiles of some British asylum seekers. In both cases, the refugee stories, and the government policy and actions, made me feel physically ill and kept me awake wondering if there any worse invention in human history than bureaucracy (I think it’s a three-way tie with warfare and torture). But in those same chapters, Moorehead introduces people who are reaching out to those who are suffering in their midst, people who with very few resources and extraordinary reserves of patience, compassion, and goodness are offering whatever aid and solace they can. Many of these people are just ordinary folks trying to be neighborly.
Another highly compelling read this month was Stephanie Saldana‘s The Bread of Angels. I picked this up at the library after reading The Calligrapher’s Secret in December and wanting to know more about Syria. Saldana was a Fulbright scholar learning Arabic in Damascus, and this book is about that year. I’d read an excerpt in the Modern Love column of the New York Times.
Bookconcious regulars know that last month I read Andrew Krivak’s memoir, The Long Retreat. Krivak and Saldana are kindred spirits (and kindred seekers — Saldana underwent the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius at the desert monastery Deir Mar Musa, just as Krivak did on retreat as a Jesuit). Both books are about seeking, about love (divine and human), and about finding one’s way by examining life through the cultural lenses of faith, history and family. Saldana’s book also describes being an American abroad in a time of war, and living in the heart of a place your government has declared evil.
I found myself wishing I could discuss this book with my grandmother, who would have liked hearing about it. Saldana studies with a female imam, which Grandmother would have found interesting, and she lives in the Christian quarter of Damascus in a multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, crumbling old apartment building. She’s taken under the wing of a grandfatherly Armenian Christian she calls The Baron who loves Italian shoes and lived for a long time in Lebanon.
She meets an Israeli Jew studying Arabic and trying to remain anonymous, an Iraqi refugee artist, a Damascan carpet seller. She undergoes a crisis as she tries to discern whether she’s called to a religious vocation. And, as I read in the Times excerpt, she falls in love with a monk.
Saldana’s honest portrayal of the psychological impact of her family history helps readers understand why she’s seeking not only fluency in Arabic but also spiritual and emotional education. I found the book very moving and like The Long Retreat, sometimes draining to read. Saldana and Krivak both reveal the deepest human longings at work in their lives, and neither flinches from sharing low points. Ultimately I found The Bread of Angels redemptive, lovely reading. Saldana is also a poet, and her writing is lyrical and deeply suffused with emotion.
The ABA’s Winter Institute 6 (WI6), in Washington, DC, was a jam packed two days of learning, networking with other indie booksellers, and finding out about new books. Since my return, I’ve read three books by authors I went to dinner with, and I brought back a stack of forthcoming books tall enough that our cat has to stretch to rub her chin on it.
On my first evening at dinner, I met Sophie Blackall, illustrator of the delightful Ivy & Bean series and many other wonderful children’s books (take the link, her website is amazing). Sophie was at WI6 to promote her gorgeously illustrated edition of Alduous Huxley‘s The Crows of Pearblossom. Yes, that Alduous Huxley.
We chatted about our daughters, and Sophie kindly signed her book for Teen the Younger, whose own art astonishes me. I’d mentioned her penchant for dystopian fiction, and Sophie’s inscription points out that Huxley’s tale is “ever so slightly dark.” Her vivid paintings, drenched in color, detail, and expression, are a perfect compliment to this classic tale.
Also that evening I met Tom Angleberger, author of the wildly popular The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, whose new book is Horton Halfpott, Or, The Fiendish Mystery of Smugwick Manor; or, The Loosening of M’Lady Luggertuck’s Corset. I loved, loved, loved this book. I read it in a couple of nights and tapped into that lovely feeling I had as a kid, of finding a wonderful book at the library and wanting to devour it. Tom manages two things every writer of books for children should, perfectly.
First, he grants his readers dignity by writing intelligent fiction, thereby promising them that he understands they are smart and will respect that by not talking down to them. Second, he achieves the balance of humor and humanity that I remember wanting as a voracious young reader. I didn’t like books that seemed to be funny on the surface but really just exhibited the author’s belief that kids are silly. And I liked books that appealed to my inner sense of justice and fairness — kids feel that so strongly, I think especially in the “middle grade” years Tom writes for.
Horton Halfpott is a fine hero, a “lowly kitchen boy” who is hard working, humble, honest, caring, a good friend and son, and a kid who loves books and learning. But Tom also gives readers a strong heroine, Celia, a girl who is sensible, smart, capable, considerate, and kind to Horton even though she’s an heiress and he’s a servant.
I don’t want to say anything about the plot that might spoil things, but the story opens with the “loosening” referred to in the title, which sets off a general loosening around Smugwick Manor. There are mysterious thefts, plans for a ball, a celebrity detective, bumbling reporters, pirates, and Horton’s friends the stable boys, Bump, Blight, and Blemish. And Tom drew a terrific map and caricature style sketches of the characters.
On my second evening at WI6, I met Jennifer Sattler, whose new book, The Pig Kahuna, is coming out in May. This is an absolutely adorable picture book; I dare you to find more expressive pigs in contemporary children’s literature. They’re hilarious. The story is sweet with just a dash of adventure, perfect for little ones. And quite funny for the adults reading it over and over.
You’ll hear more about books I picked up and authors I met at WI6 over the next few months!
Next week, Stephen Amidon, a novelist, and his brother, Dr. Thomas Amidon, a cardiologist, are coming to Gibson’s to read from and discuss their amazing new book, The Sublime Engine; A Biography of the Human Heart. I finished reading it last weekend, and it’s one of the most unique works of nonfiction I’ve read. The brothers apply their combined expertise to tell the history of the human heart from both a scientific and a cultural perspective.
Starting with ancient times and ending a short time in the future, they trace our understanding of the physiology of the heart, our metaphysical or religious view of its importance, and the heart’s role in human culture, especially literature. A book that combines scientific and cultural history is exactly the kind of thing that appeals to me: if there is any book that is an example of The Bookconscious Theory of Interconnectedness, this is it! I have been telling the Teens for years that educational “subjects” are artificially divided and packaged for schools’ convenience, but that the real story of human knowledge is interdisciplinary. Everything is connected to something else and no discipline sprung up in isolation from the others.
The Amidon brothers prove my point — medical history has often been informed not only by science but by the predominant religious and philosophical views of the times, and literature was often influenced by breakthroughs in science. Each part worked with the others, sometimes in harmony, sometimes at odds. This book is a fascinating, informative, and a delightful read.
Did you know that Hippocrates diagnosed coronary artery disease as a “blockage” and recommended a healthy diet and more rest to those suffering from it? Or that some medieval theologians believed God’s word might be literally written into someone’s heart? Or that we owe the ubiquitous heart symbol found on valentines and “I heart NY” t-shirts to an extinct root from ancient North Africa that was considered an aphrodisiac? Or that Mary Shelley kept her dead husband’s heart in her desk drawer? I didn’t. Nor did I know that the history of cardiology is filled with colorful and even heroic characters.
The Sublime Engine isn’t just a collection of obscure facts, though, nor is it a dry medical history. It’s a well written narrative, one that made me think about taking better care of my heart (I gave it a good work out this week, shoveling). I can’t wait to meet Stephen and Tom next week.
I’m recommending The Sublime Engine to the rest of the Bookconscious household. In January, both the Computer Scientist and Teen the Elder read books I’d recommended ages ago, which proves that raving about a book and leaving it out where it can entice can be effective. I’m telling myself that the piles of books around the house aren’t a mess, they’re an incubator for potential life learning.
Teen the Elder is reading Paul Johnson’s terrifically compact, insightful biography, Churchill, which I reviewed in bookconscious last winter. He’s working on an essay about English patriotism in Henry V, and Churchill was quite taken with the play. He also read some issues of FourFourTwo, a British magazine devoted to his main passion, soccer.
He’s also developing a newer passion for music. He’s teaching himself musical notation and theory using all sorts of online resources along with Edley’s Musical Theory for Practical People by Ed Roseman and Music Theory Made Easy by David Harp. He’s been fiddling with a demo version of FL Studio, and this week we got him “fruity” edition, for composing and arranging digital music. He works with Garage Band on his sister’s Mac when he can, as well. I’m psyched to see him pursuing this passion.
Speaking of passion, Teen the Younger continues to spend a great deal of time drawing both on her Mac with a tablet her grandpa got her for her birthday and in sketchbooks. She still devours Manga, and this month started a few new series as well as re-reading some old favorites.
She started Suzanne Collins’ series The Hunger Games last month, and is on the second book, Catching Fire. She reports that the “angst” she previously expressed a distaste for is a complicated part of the plot, and that she is enjoying Catching Fire even more than the first book.
Another book she’s been dipping into (and I’ve looked at too) is Theodore Gray‘s The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom In the Universe. It’s an amazing book — scientific eye candy, on the one hand, but packed with interesting information, too. And since Teen the Elder is a photographer, I figured they’d both like it. It’s on an end table in the living room, handy for browsing for a few moments. Teen the Younger is planning to read it straight through, eventually.
The Computer Scientist finished Lynne Olson’s excellent Citizens of London and says, “The tragic tale of Gil Winant, a largely unknown player in most historical examinations of WW II, is told with wonderful depth. I recommend this book for anyone interested in the political and physical pre-cursors to committing a nation to military operations as well as the challenges the US government faces into its continuing political discourse with our allies in Western Europe, even today.” I loved this book as well, and hope to re-read it someday.
He also read Full Dark No Stars, which he’s had since November. This is highly unusual — he generally devours a new Stephen King book within a day or two of receiving it. But he said he’d reward himself with this book when he finished something on his nightstand, which is full of books he’d started or planned to start, so he waited until he’d read Citizens of London. His take? “Some real SK home runs in this collection of four short stories. All four novellas are outstanding and refresh my enjoyment of SK’s storytelling.” He says his favorite of the four (longish) short stories is “Fair Extension.”
So what’s ahead? I have Handing One Another Along, by Robert Coles, out from the library, and I suspect it will cause me to hit the shelves at home and at the library to read or re-read some of the literature Coles writes about. There are any number of events books awaiting me, as well as the terrific stack of galleys from WI6. I’m still enjoying my slow re-reading and study of Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life. Sure as the snow will fall, the bookconscious household will find fascinating reads in the coming weeks. Happy reading!
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