Book Review: Attachments

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't read novels written for adult-type personages and never would have picked this up if not for the fact that Rainbow Rowell worked in a Nebraska newsroom eons ago with my husband;  I have been a fan of her writing, if not a regular consumer, for over 15 years.


And if that wasn't enough, the book is actually about that previously mentioned newsroom, with characters based on the people therein, including my husband.


And then add to that the fact that two of my closest friends and I have email relationships (and now chat relationships, because, you know the times ... they are a'changin') much like the two lead characters in this book.


So, on the surface, what's not to like?


(Now I've led you into what you think will ultimately be a bad review, right?   Well, except for those five glaring stars above, which kind of give it away)


I loved this book.   Maybe I loved it because Rainbow is a friend.  Maybe I loved it because the fictionalized version of my dear husband reminded me of what he was like when he had hair (though Rainbow does not mention his hair, so perhaps it is only me who recalls it fondly).  Maybe I loved it because it I knew that newsroom and I lived through the ridiculousness of the beginning of the internet age.


But mostly I think I loved it because I loved the characters Rainbow created.  I loved the conceit of only getting to see two characters through their correspondence with each other.  I loved the amount of good-natured funny in the dialog and description.


And there's a lot of good-natured funny; I usually dog-ear things that make me laugh or think while I'm reading a book.  I didn't dog-ear because, well, Rainbow signed it, and then defaced it, replacing the name of the printed character based on my husband with my husband's name, so I figure that our son will be able to take it to the Antiques Roadshow someday.  Also, and this is probably the more-so reason, I would have had to dog-ear almost every page.


I'm just going to open up the book at random and give a sampling;


"I'm starting to think you have a problem.  With school."

"I've never had a problem with school," he said, knowing how lame that sounded, knowing that refusing to take part in the conversation wasn't the same as avoiding it.

"You know what I mean," she said.  She wagged a dirty spoon at him.  "A problem.  Like those women who get addicted to plastic surgery.  They keep going back and going back, trying to look better until there is no more better.  Like they can't look better because they don't even look like themselves anymore.  And then it's just about looking different, I think.  I saw this woman in a magazine who looked like a cat.  Like a cat of prey, a big cat.  Have you ever seen her?  She has a lot of money.  I think she might be from Austria."

"No," he said.

"Well, she looks very unhappy."


I can pretty much guarantee that whatever page you turn to, you can find something worthy of quoting out of context for a laugh.


Of course, funny quotes out of context does not a book make. And, honestly, that was my concern when I started reading;  that this book would simply be a collection of clever-and-funny, with a story that was only constructed incidentally and slap-dashedly to shore up the clever-and-funny;  clever-and-funny for the sake of clever-and-funny.


Imagine my gratification when I found myself caring about the characters.  When I found myself rooting for them.  When my heart would beat faster because I knew their hearts were beating faster.   When, though I knew how it must end, I was still unable to put the book down until it did end.


So what's not to like?  Even if you don't know Rainbow or the newsroom in Nebraska, you will love this book, the world she created, the words her characters say and type and the relationships they build.  You'll wish it were you.  Then you'll email your best friend and tell her you love her.


View all my reviews

Book Review: Thames

The Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Ugh.  Less a history than a listing.  No footnotes.  No bibliography.  No depth.  If I knew the details of the history of England as it relates to the Thames, maybe I would have loved this book for putting it all in one place.  As it stands, I read it because I wanted to know more about the history and got merely a listing of interesting facts that that I found less than interesting because most of the time I did not have the requisite backstory to put these facts in the correct context.


View all my reviews

Book Review: The African Queen

The African Queen by C.S. Forester
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I worried for the first 20 or so pages that I would not be able to get Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart out of my head;  but then it was easy to get them out of my head because Forester's characters are very different from Huston's characters.


This was my first foray into Forester but I enjoyed it;  his characterization of Rose doesn't take any of the expected spinster turns, and for that, I was grateful.


It is easy to lose the thread of the larger plot here;  Germans occupying Africa, a portion of the world to which Britain felt entitled.  The historical context of World War One is not terribly clear, either (though about halfway through, the date 1914 is mentioned ... if it was mentioned earlier, I missed it).  Forester allows some Germans to be upstanding, which was refreshing.


A nice read.  A beach read, perhaps.  The ending of the book seemed slap-dash and uncharacteristically rushed, like Forester was on deadline or something.  This is one of the few times in the history of the universe that the movie is better than the book;   though the movie's ending is far-fetched, it is much more satisfying than the ending of the book.


View all my reviews

Book Review: The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book uses its prose as carefully as an out-of-work showgirl uses her last good pair of stockings, though sometimes it seems that armies of sluggish minutes drag by while you're reading.  And, sometimes, the plot fell apart like a bride's pie crust.  I found the characters more unbelievable than a four-ace poker hand and as seedy as a spring garden. Though I read this on a crisp morning, with just enough snap in the air to make life seem simple and sweet, at times my soul felt as empty as a scarecrow's pockets.   The plot is heavier than a dead man, which is heavier than a broken heart.  But the writing was worth it; a metaphoric plethora.




View all my reviews

Book Review: The Yiddish Policemen's Union

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I know I've read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay I don't really remember reading it.  I remember the feel of the book in my hand and the act of reading it. It still sits on my bookshelf, an accomplishment when one regards the fact that said bookshelf has been through several major purges.  And when I look through the shelf for things to read, I see its spine and I smile.  But I don't remember anything about it except that I liked it; nothing of its style or its prose or even its plot.

So when I was wandering the library shelves in the Mystery section looking at random spines of Agatha Christie books, searching for one I'd not yet read, the name "Michael Chabon" hopped out at me like a kid playing peek-a-boo.  "Ooh!" I thought.  "I like him!"   Though if anyone asked my why I liked him, I would be at a loss.  "Um.  That comic book novel.  That was really good ..."   Brilliant.  Anyway, the cover and title of this book intrigued me, as well as the fact that it was shelved in the Mystery section of the library.  So I picked it up, along with Christie's A Carribbean Mystery.

I read Christie first.  A regular old Miss Marple tale, filled with the regular characters in a rather irregular setting (for Christie).  Entertaining, not thought-provoking.  Standard cozy mystery fare.  Then I started Chabon.

I hated it for the first, oh, thirteen chapters.  It took me a long time to find footholds in this crazy world of Chabon's imagination, based on a trivial what-if in history;  Jews without Jerusalem but with a non-permanent foothold in the wilds of Alaska.  A current world stuck in the 1940s world of noir, hats and cigarettes.  Yiddish thrown in without explanation or definition.  I was buffaloed.

But then the story took me in.  An outrageous story but fitting with its outrageous premise and its outrageous characters.

And, yes, Chabon overwrites.  Sometimes in a major way.  But I love that.  It makes me think and stop to consider.  Describing two propane tanks as a "scrotal pair" brings so much more color and texture to the idea.  And also more grit.   Lines like "The lady has been in and out of the hospital lately, dying in chapters, a cliffhanger at the end of every one" makes those little moments that make up life so much bigger.  He could have just written,  "She was dying."   But he didn't.

At an abandoned big box store;  "Its doors are chained and along its windowless flank where Yiddish and Roman characters once spelled out the name of the store, there is only a cryptic series of holes, domino pips, a braille of failure."  A whole new level and texture to something we see everyday in urban settings.  Something I'll think of from now on, I'm sure.

Then there were lines like "In a gray, wet place, Mendele gave off light and warmth.  You wanted to stand close to him.  To warm your hands, to melt the ice on your beard.  To banish the darkness for a minute or two.  But then when you left Mendele, you stayed warm, and it seemed like there was a little more light, maybe one candle's worth, in the world.  And that was when you realized the fire was inside of you all the time.  And that was the miracle.  Just that."   I had to stop reading and think.

"An awful place, this sea, this gulf between the Intention and the Act, that people call 'the world.'"  Hmmmm.  Yes.

And that is what makes a book worth reading to me.  One that makes you think.  And this book also pleasantly diverted me with not-quite believable or lovable, but still somehow believable and lovable characters, as well as an an entertaining, if over-active, plot.  Bonus.


View all my reviews

Book Review: Seeds of America (Chains and Forge)

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Laurie Halse Anderson came to our local children's bookstore and I went to hear her speak.  She was an unassuming personage, more like a gal you'd run into at the Target than a highly-acclaimed author.  But her passion for this era of our history was palpable; her inner brilliance showed in her eyes and her voice as she talked about how her whole life changed when she discovered that Benjamin Franklin owned slaves. And she wanted to write about it.  For kids.  Because kids need to know about our spotted history; to learn the story that they don't learn in school.  And, also, she hates Johnny Tremain.


The result is the Seeds of America series, a complex but age-appropriate set of young adult books that looks at the Revolutionary War through the eyes of a Loyalist’s slave (Chains), as well as a male slave conscripted into the army on his owner's behalf (Forge).


As Anderson says in her Author’s Note at the end of Chains, “you really can’t look at this through good guy/bad guy glasses" and, truly, there are no characters that are pure; all the good guys have bad instincts sometimes and some of the bad guys have good instincts.  Sometimes.


Anderson writes with aplomb and, though the books suffer a bit from plots that force characters to be in the shadow of documented history, the story is so compelling, the writing so masterful, that this reader didn't really care.


One of the blurbs on the back of Chains says it "knocks on the conscience of a nation."   Indeed.


View all my reviews

Responsible Consumerism

This type of winter weather brings out the worst in climate change skeptics.  I firmly believe in the impact of man's habits on climate change but even I love to go out in 1 degree temperatures and yell, "Global Warming, my ass!"

I will not pretend to understand the science of the earth's warming causing blizzards.  Nor will I spend this blog post convincing you that climate change is a real and dangerous threat.

I will spend this post convincing you to make changes in the way you run your life.  But not to help the environment.  I want you to change because the way we are encouraged to purchase and consume is just plain dumb.   We are idiots.  All of us.

Case and point;  we adopted a dog a couple of months ago.  He is big and beautiful and has the kind of fur with which polar fleece loves to cuddle.  As previously mentioned, we're having a very cold winter and my daily outfit of choice is always topped off with a polar fleece jacket, which I wear inside, too, but I digress.   This warm and comfy black polar fleece jacket often looks beige because of the dog fur that is attached to it via the joy and magic of static electricity.  Again, I won't try to understand the science, but suffice it to say if my dog scratches his ear, the fur he detaches from his head immediately ends up on my jacket. Even if I'm 20 feet away.  Or in a different room.

So off I went in search of a lint brush.  I remember the lint brush we had when I was a kid;  a wooden-handled thing with some sort of red fabric on both sides.  We used it the whole time I was growing up and I would hazard a guess that my folks still use it.    You cleaned it by wiping it with your wet hand, transferring the lint from brush to hand.  Then you washed your hands.  Simple.

But it's not easy to find a lint brush these days.  The stores only stock those sticky roller things;  you roll it over your clothes, peel off a layer of sticky to reveal a new layer of sticky and then throw the old layer of sticky away.  When you are done with the roll of sticky, you throw the whole thing away;  a big plastic handle and a plastic roll.  In removing lint, you've created a pile of trash.

And you could have just used a freaking lint brush and then wiped it off with your wet hand.

I went all over town looking for a lint brush.  (Yes, one can lampoon the fact that I used fossil fuels to wander all over the metro, venturing into the vast parking lots and the glut of product that demarcate the big box store.  But let's not go there.)  In my big box spelunking I found ideas based on the old-fashioned lint brush but even these required one to change the fabric attached every month; refill packages were helpfully stocked nearby.  I found sticky rollers galore.  I found one lint brush.  One.  It was made of plastic but had the red fabric I remembered.  I picked it up to test it on my polar fleece.  The handle broke.  I grimaced and took it to customer service.  They shrugged and told me these things often broke and they weren't going to stock them anymore.  They refused my offer of pay and tossed the broken lint brush in the trash.

This lint brush was made by a company that also made the sticky rollers;  I went back to the lint roller aisle and compared the two handles;  the sticky roller, designed to be disposable, had a substantially sturdier handle.  Try as I might, I couldn't break it (I did succeed in catching the attention of the store security guard, but that is another blog post entirely).   The lint brush, ostensibly designed to be fairly permanent, was made as cheaply as possible; designed to break so we would either buy another one or throw up our hands at the uselessness of the old-fashioned lint brush and move our alliance to the disposable sticky roller.

There are so many products like the sticky roller;  the Swiffer instead of a mop.  Lunchables.  Individually packaged small yogurts.  Those tiny bottles of water.  Disinfecting wipes.  Disposable razors.  Products that create convenience.   But these convenience products also create trash.  Lots and lots of trash (yes, I know I said I wasn't going to talk about the environment, but indulge me).

Have you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?  It's a huge pile of trash, roughly the size of Texas, in the central North Pacific Ocean.  Estimates put the amount at 3.5 million tons of trash. Shoes, toys, bags, pacifiers, wrappers, and bottles too numerous to count are only part of what can be found in this accidental dump floating midway between Hawaii and San Francisco.

How many sticky-roller handles are in this pile?  How many water bottles?  How many disposable razors?

But if this picture doesn't make you gag and swear off disposable products entirely, let's talk about your money.  Disposable products ensure that you spend much more money than you would otherwise.  We used one sticky roller in two months.  That's $27 a year.  If you buy a Swiffer, you have to keep buying refills and  then you eventually have to buy a whole new Swiffer because the plastic broke and the sheets  won't stay on anymore.  You just made a mint for the Swiffer people.  And you'll keep making that mint for them as long as you buy into their product line.   Like their dusters.  You could buy an old-fashioned feather duster but wouldn't it be better to buy a package of disposable ones?  Then you can wipe the dust off of your furniture and throw it away immediately!  A clean slate every time you dust!  How wonderful!

Can you hear the "cha-ching" from the company boardroom?

See?  We're sooooo dumb.

I finally found a permanent lint brush product, by the way.  Something called a Furbegone;  a brush with soft rubber bristles that grab pet hair and lint like a magnet and then rinse clean.   It was on an aisle at a pet store, surrounded by sticky rollers.  I've used it quite a bit and it works very well.  Perhaps a little more labor-intensive than the sticky roller but more effective in the end.  It can also be used directly on your pet, as well as on carpets and upholstery.

A 100 sheet sticky roller costs $4.59.  A Furbegone costs $6.99.  The dumb consumer in us buys the sticky roller because it's less expensive.  But the rubber brush we only have to buy once.  We spend more at the outset but save over time.

So how come the rubber brush is so hard to find?

Because we're dumb.  Duh.  It's easier to find the sticky roller so we buy it.  We don't think.  We just buy.  Dumb.

I could go on and on and on and on.  But I won't because I doubt you made it this far.  I really should include entertaining illustrations in these blog posts.  

So let me close with this;  you may hate environmentalists.   You may want to shoot tree-huggers with a BB gun.  You may have Al Gore's face on your basement dart board.

But putting the brakes on disposable consumerism makes financial sense.  For you and your family.   And if the Great Pacific Garbage patch disappears too?  All the better.