Room

I got sucked in by a book this weekend – Room by Emma Donoghue.

I fell victim to the NPR story last week on building buzz on books as a way to sell them.  The story used this book as an example. I was absolutely intrigued by the synopsis – not sure what that says about me…

Amazon abstract:

In many ways, Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way--he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son.

I don’t want to give anything away so I won’t say too much about the story but I really enjoyed reading this book and couldn’t stop.  I started it on Friday morning and finished on Saturday afternoon.

The story is written in the voice of Jack (the 5-year-old) throughout the entire book, which is very intriguing and opened up a part of my brain that experiences new things – meaning it was easy to feel like a kid and go through his ordeals from that perspective.  It me a bit of a character in Mark Haddon’s  book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which I loved and which is also written from the perspective of a child (a 15-year-old with Asperger’s Syndrome).

I can tell you that the abstract leads you to believe that this might be a sensational story of triumph over cruel circumstances and tells you the nasty details of the imprisonment, but it’s not that way.  The story is surprising in where it goes and how it gets there.

This book was short-listed for the Man-Booker Prize this year and is “set to be one of the big literary hits of the year.”

The Night of the Gun

I’ve just finished reading The Night of the Gun by David Carr.  A carefully documented autobiography of Mr. Carr’s journey to hell and back through serious chemical dependency – and I don’t mean endorphins. 

Carr is a journalist through and through but takes very seriously the fact that memory is filtered and never exact.  Thus, he travels back in time by capturing on film and tape the memories of others – his lovers, friends, family, and children.  He compares them against his own recollection and against police records and other documented materials.

For at least a decade he was an addict and somewhat psychotic near the end.  He was a addicted to everything in graduating intensity.  Never heroin but crack and injecting cocaine.  He fights addiction right up until the end of the story but it’s generally a happy ending.

While I enjoyed the book and appreciated the efforts to get the facts straight, I found the story to a bit too detached.  That’s not to say that the pain, regret, craziness, violence, and joy don’t come across. It’s just his journalist side couldn’t quite step down long enough to get to the pulsing heart of the story.

That said I read that last two-thirds of the book in basically 24 hours – so I definitely enjoyed it.

* for Dummies

I’m intrigued by the whole “for Dummies” book series, which is billed as a “reference for the rest of us.”  I have to admit, I’ve read Google Apps for Dummies and Knitting for Dummies and am currently going through Photo Shop Elements 8 for Dummies and have been educated by these volumes.  I’m not offended by the “for dummies” part because I was (admittedly) a dummy when it came to Google Apps (and other topics) when I read the book.  There are, however, some “for Dummies” editions that make me laugh.  Some of these include:

• Weight Loss Surgery For Dummies and Weight Loss Surgery Cookbook For Dummies amaze me because there must be a market for this topic in order to put the effort and resources into creating these books.  I also find it a bit sad that so many people feel like they need to turn to this option.  But this post is not about my opinion on weight loss options.

 

• Happiness For Dummies and Success for Dummies are must-have books, which I clearly have not read. If I had only know it was so easy all these years – just get the book!  I can’t wait to read it myself, the blah life has been only somewhat satisfying lately.

 

• Existentialism For Dummies is definitely a companion to Happiness For Dummies.  It covers such topics as “Living a meaningful life in a meaningless world” and “Moods are the flavor of life.”  Indeed.

 

• Robot Building for Dummies is a title that doesn’t really sound like it’s meant for dummies.  Similarly, Nanotechnology For Dummies doesn’t strike me as one of those books just any person would pick up off the shelf and run with.

 

• Raising Goats for Dummies:  There are lots of animal-based volumes in the for Dummies series – Labradors for Dummies, Beagles for Dummies, Cat Care for Dummies, etc.  But raising goats seems so specific and not pet-oriented.  I’m certainly not saying that there is no value in the book but I was surprised that there is a tome specific to goat raising.

That is all.

Book recommendations

I was getting so good about keeping up with my blog and then I just got busy.  Anyway, I'll try to get back with it.

A few months ago I emailed some folks on facebook and asked them for their two favorite books.  Out of 14 people, half responded - not too bad, a 50% response rate!  All of the responses were from women which is not surprising since I only emailed one man. Here is the final list:

• Hit by a Farm by Catherine Friend
• The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
• The Eight by Katherine Neville
• The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis
• Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos
• Leadville: The Struggle to Revive an American Town by Gillian Klucas
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• The house at sugar beach by Helene Cooper
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Too much happiness

In addition to watching movies and melting my brain with cute stuff on the intewebs, I also read!  I do read at a slow pace though.  This partially explains why there aren't as many book reviews as there are movie reviews.

Last week I finished reading Alice Munro's latest book of short stories: "Too Much Happiness" (I'll refer to the book as "TMH" from here on).  If you've ever read Munro, you'll know that the title is not really indicative of the actual contents of the book.  I've only read one other Munro book ("Runaway"), so I am by no means an expert.  However, compared to that other book, TMH is a little more...dramatic in the events that unfold.  There's more death in it anyway.  Some reviewers have linked the presence of death to Munro's growing feeling of mortality (she's 75).

Although I liked "Runaway" more, TMH is a good read.  Munro uniquely captures the lives of women of all ages and circumstances.  Even in the space of a short story you get a feel of being in the skin of the main character.  A passage from an LA Times review reflects my thoughts more eloquently than I can do myself:

Munro's stories...remind us that the non-essential things -- the things that didn't have to happen, that could have been avoided if people were a bit more rational, or a bit more careful, or if the world just made a bit more sense -- so often determine the shape of a life. In doing so, they remind us that comfort and security are by their very nature essentially fragile and ephemeral, if not largely illusory.

If the title isn't warning enough, I have to be perfectly clear that these stories are not happy, heartwarming stories.  They make you think and they make you wonder and feel, which, in my opinion may sometimes better than happy and heartwarming.

There's a good Slate Double X podcast book club on this book.

That is all on the book.  I will leave you now with a bizarre image.  What you see below is an actual cake!  The photo is complements of the awesome Cake Wrecks website.