It’s 1952. Janie is a regular 14-year-old American girl, living in Los Angeles… until she discovers that her parents are Communists, about to be arrested for un-American activities. The family flees to London.
Once there, Janie starts flirting with a boy in her class named Benjamin, and they embark on a mission to spy on a man that Benjamin thinks is a Russian agent. Only, the man he meets is Benjamin’s own father, the apothecary of the title.
From there, Benjamin and Janie begin a fairly typical young-adult-novel adventure: they follow clues, use newfound powers, and become embroiled in a massive conflict with no less than the world at stake.
It’s a familiar arc, and while Meloy writes it well, it’s a relatively forgettable novel. Except, that is, for one aspect, a facet of the mythos of The Apothecary that’s fairly original, but also quite uncomfortable. (Minor spoilers ahead. If you want to go in fresh, skip the rest of this. If you like Harry Potter and the Lemony Snicket books, you’ll probably like this one, as well.) … Continue reading »
[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]
[sic], by Joshua Cody, reviewed by Dwight Garner (New York Times)
[sic] has been building buzz for a couple of months now, since its release in October, but its cloying title has always kept me from taking a closer look. I was missing “such filthy and ecstatic sex writing that the author makes you feel you’ve been, your entire life, doing it feebly and wrong.” So that’s too bad. But it’s also just the start. In addition to an unabashed sex fiend and drug aficionado, Cody is a composer and a professor of music, and he includes a handful of insights about music and culture, ranging from the technical to the poetic. Then there’s the fact that, as if all this wasn’t enough, [sic] is actually about Cody’s fight against an aggressive cancer that came quite close to killing him. These threads braid together in mesmerizing ways, like the twisted scene in which Cody has sex with a fellow cancer patient. Take a look.
Another book that I haven’t paid enough attention to is this one, a nonfiction volume by the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things. As fiction fans might not know, Roy has spent the 14 years since her one and only novel becoming an outspoken political leader in India. Walking With the Comrades explains and recounts the conflict between the Indian powers that be, and ragtag (though numerous) marginalized indigenous left-wing gangs known as Maoists. It’s a first-hand account of these Maoists’ operations, including their violent, distinctly un-Gandhian methods, which have gotten better results than a series of nonviolent campaigns.
Why We Broke Up, by Daniel Handler, reviewed by Susan Carpenter (L.A. Times)
Daniel Handler writes the Lemony Snicket children’s books, and also an assortment of novels for various ages under his own name. His latest, meant for readers age 15 and older, is an illustrated account of a high-school breakup. Carpenter finds few surprises in its construction (from its cliched opposites-attract conceit to its predictable ending), but is still notably charmed by Handler’s style, which is quite understandable (Adverbs is my favorite novel of his).
Savage Messiah, by Laura Oldfield Ford, reviewed by Iain Sinclair (Guardian)
I’m not entirely sure what to make of this book. It seems to be a collection of “post-authorial” guerilla pamphlets, whatever those are. If you figure it out let me know.
In brief: The first paragraph of this review of the new Pauline Kael biography is funny in an oddball way. … Publishers square off against libraries; generally, anytime you find yourself on the other side of a fight with a library, you are wrong. … The best literary moments of the year, in cartoon. … Let’s not forget that Lenore Hart is a plagiarist and that her publisher still refuses to admit it. The latest news is that Hart has been asked to take a leave of absence from her fellowship at the Norman Mailer Center.
This is a book that will in no way exercise your mind, or place any demands upon you as a reader. When I first started it, I read the first few pages, gave a book-snobby, mocking laugh, and put it right back down on my counter. I scooped it up on the way out the door to work a few days later, since I was running late and couldn’t remember where I had left 1Q84.
I crushed through the first third or so of the book on my commute that day, and found myself engaged and ready to read on the next day. A thriller about team of detectives hunting down a serial killer, The Darker Side takes a lot of cues from The Silence of the Lambs, and, since the murders center around a theme of Catholic contrition, even more from Seven. … Continue reading »
[Updates: An alert reader pointed out that Kobo does do ebook previews---I think I just missed it. However, there's still no search and the page-turning/page number situation is still simply awful. On balance, I still think you shouldn't bother with Kobo.
On a happier note (for iBooks fans), iBooks has adopted the Nook's hold-and-swipe highlighting feature, which was my favorite thing about the Nook app. Really, the only thing I liked. Definitely no reason to even try the Nook app now. Three years and counting until Barnes & Noble is bankrupt.
I'll try to keep this space updated with new features, but probably won't.]
Merry Christmas! Several thousand people at least will be unwrapping an iOS device today. Here’s a list of the major ereader apps, and their pros and cons. We’ll see you again on Tuesday, when we go back to regular programming.
iBooks: Perfect for iOS readers
Pros: Buying books through the app store. Great highlighting, syncing, dictionary, and a ton of layout options. Two-page layout on the iPad, and fewer glitches than any other app.
Cons: Doesn’t work on any non-iOS device. Not your Kindle, not your Nook, not any E-Ink ereader. If you want to use one of those devices, you’ll want to use a different app. There isn’t even a desktop version of iBooks, you can only use it on an iPhone or an iPad. There’s also no real iBooks website, and navigating through the Books section of iTunes is a proper pain, so you’ll need to come to the app with a title in mind.
The gist: iBooks is also the only app that will let you buy books through the app store and your iTunes account—that ability is turned off for all other ebook apps. But that ease-of-buying-books is not what makes iBooks the best ereader app; instead, it’s the fact that all the others have significant downsides. iBooks has all the core functions—note-taking, highlighting, search, dictionary, and layout options—and they all work. If your iPhone and/or iPad is your main ereader, look no further for your new favorite app.
These stories started life as Lou Beach’s Facebook updates (Facebook limits updates to 420 characters, thus the name). I was initially skeptical of this project since social media rarely lends itself to art creation. But 420 Characters has festooned itself in blurbs from many great writers, including George Saunders, and secured the talents of Jeff Bridges and Ian McShane to read some of the stories—so the scales tipped back the other way and I bought the book.
The second thing you see, when starting this book (the first being the odd, wolf-bird half-dust jacket pictured) is an author’s note. It reads:
The stories you are about to encounter were written as status updates on a large social networking site. These updates were limited to 420 characters, including letters, spaces, and punctuation. The author hopes you enjoy them.
This note teems with bad omens. There’s the disinclination to name Facebook as the “large social networking site” in question. There’s the irrelevant definition of a character. There’s the author’s bald, plaintive hope that you enjoy his work, a plea I’ve never read in any book I’ve actually enjoyed.
But most troublingly, there’s the implication that these stories were not edited or polished or changed in any way. They did not simply “start out” on Facebook, as I had initially assumed, they “were written” there, and there’s no indication that they’ve been touched since. Frankly, it shows. Beach has talent (more as an illustrator than a writer), but these stories are too often (at least half the time) exactly what you fear they will be—i.e., tossed off college-level writing exercises, without drama or meaning.
[As each year comes to a close, we ask our contributors to give us their picks of the best books that came out in the previous 12 months--and we let a few older ones slip in as honorable mentions. You can follow the entries through the rest of the year here, and check out the picks from 2009 and 2010 while you're at it.]
Best Nonfiction of 2011
Townie, by Andre Dubus III
Because, holy shit, I wasn’t expecting this book to be what it was. Yeah, I knew it was going to be about a street-tough kid knocking heads around an old mill town, but I didn’t expect the introspection, the redemption. Townie is a disciplined, well-crafted memoir. And at it’s core, under many gut-wrenching, heavy layers, Townie is a heart-warming tale about a father and his son.
This is an unconventional biography about a Jewish woman from New York who decides to convert to Islam and move to Pakistan. Weirdly, I didn’t like it as much right after I read it as I do now, months later. This book got under my skin. The book’s central figure, Maryam Jameelah, is increasingly enigmatic. Her public life and writings have become a rallying point for radical Muslims, yet Maryam herself is a complex and troubled individual who shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. This book also highlights and questions the role of a biographer. Readers will be left with plenty to ponder.
This book’s subtitle—Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice—more than aptly describes its contents. The narratives are puzzling. How did these acts go unnoticed? How is it that we accept them? How does a first responder, a Muslim-American EMT who died in one of the collapsing towers, get labeled a terrorist? Why must his mother suffer through those heinous allegations. Why must we detain a 16-year-old because of her religious head scarf? Now that Congress has decided it’s legal to indefinitely detain US Citizens, Patriot Acts is increasingly important. We were forced to make a choice between our freedom and our security. We chose security, and Patriot Acts shows us what we have ahead of us.
Into the Forbidden Zone, by William T. Vollman
I don’t know much about William T. Vollman, but I know that he has many dedicated (cultish?) fans. After reading this, I think I could perhaps become one of them. Forbidden Zone falls somewhere between a long magazine article and a short book. For lack of a better term, it’s a nonfiction novella published by the good folks over at Byliner. The book is Vollman’s account of his trip to Japan shortly after the Earthquake. It opens with a search for a Geiger counter, a scene which is at first humorous, but throughout the course of the book it becomes eye opening, and then extremely important.
Late add from 2010
Hellhound on His Trail, by Hampton Sides
Hellhound on His Trail is an in-depth account of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the manhunt for the assassin, James Earl Ray. In the afterword, the book’s author, Hampton Sides, balks at those who have described his book as a thriller. Given the weight and historical significance of the crime detailed in the book’s pages, I can understand his hesitancy. But this book reads like a thriller; it’s a fast paced, well constructed mystery. More importantly, it is a round portrait of King during his final days, and an only slightly less round portrait of King’s assassin (Ray’s motives remain still somewhat fuzzy, but hey, so do Hitler’s—some things will always remain a mystery.) If Sides isn’t ok with “thriller,” perhaps he’s more comfortable with what I feel is a more apt description: Masterpiece.
[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]
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The Unconquered, by Scott Wallace. Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle (Washington Post).
I really like stories about explorers or the Naturalist expeditions of the olden days. The cover/title combination of this book evokes for me a modern adventure in that vein and is what drew me in on this one, and Drabelle really nails it:
It sounds like the beginning of a pulp adventure novel. A journalist gets a phone call from a magazine editor offering a tantalizing assignment: Go to the Amazon and catch up with an expedition bent on making contact with a tribe so remote and self-contained that it knows virtually nothing of modern civilization.
The review is pretty short and unhelpful, and I didn’t find much on this book elsewhere, but if you see it on a shelf give it a peek.
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Holidays in Heck, by P.J. O’Rourke. Reviewed by Chris Erskine (Chicago Tribune).
A collection of travel essays from a prolific humorist, focusing on vacation stories mostly. That’s probably enough to tell you if you’d like this book or not (and if you would, then you likely know who O’Rourke is already). But if you want to know more, Erskine takes the time to get fairly in-depth in the review. This is the kind of book I like to pick through when I’m sitting in an airport, so if you’re flying somewhere this week, you may want to combine this collection with those Bloody Marys from the airport Chili’s to take the edge off.
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The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick DeWitt. Reviewed by Katherine A. Powers (Barnes and Noble Review).
Yeah, I know, Sisters Brothers again. Not one, but two of our guys so far has picked it for Best Books 2011. It makes the top of Ms. Powers’s list too. Her review is well-constructed, so if you want to read more about the book (after reading Nico’s review, of course), check it out. I’m mostly putting this up here to reinforce my promise to myself to finally read this guy while away for the holidays. You should probably do the same.
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Quickly: NYT round-up of cool pop-up books. And here’s the Tribune‘s round-up of recent YA books worth a look. Three books on public disgrace rounded up by WaPo.
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Bonus Book Trailer: Ugh, the whole PowerPoint approach to making book trailers continues to be ghastly. Check this out for the awful music, it sounds like what I imagine you’d hear if you called the information desk at a children’s museum jungle exhibit in the very early 90s and they put you on hold (really kicks into gear around the 0:44 mark).
[At the end of each month, Aaron surveys the comics he read, celebrates the best, considers the rest, and takes stock of what it means to be a contemporary comic fan. Follow "The State of My Pull List" here. Find part one of this month's Pull List here.]
Spotlight
Wonder Woman #3
It’s relatively easy to point curious new readers to quintessential Batman and Superman stories, but far less so with Wonder Woman. I’ve always found this odd, considering the character’s rather high cultural profile—she’s appeared in her own television show, Saturday morning cartoons, the requisite lunch boxes and Halloween costumes. Wonder Woman is everywhere, her popularity easily equal to that of Superman or Batman. So why the dearth of quality Wonder Woman stories?
There are several competing theories. Some argue that the underpinning of light fetishism and sexuality was crucial to the success of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston’s original stories, and even the conception of the character. Some say that attempts to “clean up” Wonder Woman in the 50s and 60s altered the storytelling engine for the worse. Others claim that Wonder Woman is too remote, or too perfect, and trying to tell human stories about a goddess doesn’t work. And we can’t ignore the reality of gender bias—the men who write and draw the majority of mainstream superhero comics are probably more likely to have a must-tell story about Batman or Superman than Wonder Woman, and DC is more likely to let them tell those stories because the predominantly male readership tends to ignore titles with a female lead (I’m not arguing that female characters can only be written by women, and male characters by men, but I’d wager there are other female creators eager for the chance to tell interesting Wonder Woman stories besides Gail Simone, who recently ended a compelling three-year run on the character. More Wonder Woman stories means a greater likelihood that at least one will be to that character what Batman: Year One and All-Star Superman are to Batman and Superman.)
All of those arguments have merit, and the recently relaunched Wonder Woman title, written by Brian Azzarello and drawn by Cliff Chiang, addresses them head-on, with November’s issue three serving as a line in the sand for readers (and, implicitly, other creators.) Revising Wonder Woman’s origin, Azzarello reveals that Diana was not a clay figure molded by her mother, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and given life by the gods, but rather the biological child of Hippolyta and Zeus. Azzarello solves the relatability problem right away by introducing notes of confusion, anger, and sadness to Wonder Woman’s story – she’s no longer just a goddess sent from a utopian society to perfect our world, but rather a person who has been lied to, and who acts out as a result.
That Wonder Woman’s familiar drama is Olympian in nature could be distracting, or worse, boring, if the gods and goddesses were depicted in the ossified, visually inert “toga and beard” style. The reliance on those tropes brought always brought Simone’s stories to a screeching halt, and keeps me from enjoying George Perez’s celebrated post-Crisis run—no matter how poorly or outrageously the gods are behaving, scenes of them standing among marbles columns and arguing read like dull boardroom conversation. Instead Chiang, one of the most inventive and exciting artists working in comics, has redesigned the Greek gods through a Pop Art lens. Hermes, for instance, is tall and thin, with the thick black eyes of a bird and chicken-like legs, while Strife is a glamour girl with lavender skin and a Sinead O’Connor buzz, wearing a shredded black party dress. In their new guises the gods feel volatile and relevant, and Wonder Woman’s place among them and is thus more interesting by extension. In fact, in three issues we’ve seen and heard more from the gods than the title character, who stays mostly quiet and absorbs her surroundings, waiting for the right moment to act.
That moment, as it turns out, is the final pages of issue three when Wonder Woman, having learned of her true parentage, storms through the jungle of Paradise Island and interrupts the beginning of an insurrection led by an Amazon who blames Diana for their heavy battle losses. In a nearly silent sequence Diana slugs the leader and asserts her independence from the island and her heritage. Chiang’s storytelling instincts sell the significance of the moment, particularly the scene spread when she address the crowd—it’s a complex layout, with close-up panels set over a double-page shot of the entire beach scene. It’s grand and moving, and lends a note of finality to the story. If this were the end of a mini-series it’d feel fully developed and satisfying; thankfully, there’s more to look forward to next month.
It’s impossible to say whether this will become the Wonder Woman story, the one that’s collected and continuously reprinted, that shows up on “best of” lists and so on. But Azzarello, a writer I never would’ve pegged for this title, clearly isn’t afraid to restructure the characters foundations, which is a good first step towards crafting an iconic book. It’s that approach that makes Wonder Woman one of the most satisfying reads of DC’s New 52.
[As each year comes to a close, we ask our contributors to give us their picks of the best books that came out in the previous 12 months--and we let a few older ones slip in as honorable mentions. You can follow the entries through the rest of the year here, and check out the picks from 2009 and 2010 while you're at it.]
Pym, by Mat Johnson
Pym is flat-out the funniest book I read this year. Mat Johnson turns Poe’s weirdest novel (actually, Poe’s only novel; but it’s weird as hell) on its head and mocks it to hilarious effect, all the while showing an unabashed love for the book and its writer.
Poe, as we all know, was a big-time racist honky, and nowhere does he prove that more than in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Want me to boil that novel down to four words? Okay. White good, black bad.
It’s hard to reduce Pym to as brief a snippet, but here’s the shortest manageable version: a black literature professor discovers that Poe’s novel might in fact be nonfiction, so he joins an expedition to Antarctica to find Poe’s “Tsalalians,” a black-skinned, black-toothed tribe living in monoracial isolation. Instead, the crew is kidnapped and forced into slavery by 7’-tall albino snow creatures. Meanwhile, civilization on the other six continents is crumbling due to some sort of unidentified Armageddon. And so on.
Pym is captivating, exciting, very, very funny, and almost as bizarre as the novel it plays off of. You can see my full review here. … Continue reading »
