Kylie's Book Log

Book: 10
Title: The Condition
Author: Jennifer Haigh
Genre: Fiction
Summary: This is another book that resists easy summary. It's about the Drew family, a family that various reviews have described as "dysfunctional", but that I think is as functional as a lot of "normal" families, and honestly I think that's sort of the point. Paulette, an anxious, uptight WASP, Frank, a brilliant biologist with a bit of an unruly sexual id, find their marriage in jeopardy when they learn that their second child and only daughter, Gwen, is afflicted with Turner's Syndrome -- a condition which prevents girls from going through puberty. Paulette's and Frank's difficulties coping with this, combined with Paulette's mistrust of Frank and his impatience with her, lead to a divorce. In the decades following the split, all the members of the family -- Paulette, Frank, Gwen, and Gwen's two siblings, Billy and Scott -- struggle to define themselves within the context of their family. That is the stupidest, most boring summary ever, but like I said, it's not easy to summarize. Basically, it's a book about these people, and their family, and what it means to be part of a family. I really can't say much beyond that.
Why did you get this book? I'd heard Jennifer Haigh was good, and it was $3 off the bargain cart at Harvard Bookstore.
Did you enjoy the book? I really did, actually. I think by now it's clear that characterization is the all-important element in fiction as far as I'm concerned. Haigh's characters feel very human and natural, and so I liked the book a great deal. And she does a great job with the issue of the unreliable narrator -- filtering the same stories through different characters' perspectives, which throws both the objective incidents they're relating and the characters themselves into new light. There was the not-so-minor problem of the fact that one entire subplot (Frank's) is lifted directly -- and I do mean directly -- from Allegra Goodman's Intuition. I don't really know exactly how to think about that; I mean, *seriously*, Jennifer Haigh, WTF. And the ending wrapped certain plotlines up in a much too fairy-taleish fashion. However, I liked the characters enough that I wanted to see them get a happy ending, so I minded the fairy-tale aspect less. So, yeah. Good book. But if Allegra Goodman sues I won't be surprised.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? I hadn't read her before, but now I've taken Mrs. Kimble, her first novel, out of the library.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? If you read this you should also read Allegra Goodman's Intuition. It's a very good book and Goodman got there first, FFS.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8

Book: 8
Title: Gifts
Author: Ursula LeGuin
Genre: YA fiction, fantasy
Summary: Orrec, the protagonist, has been born and raised in the Uplands, where members of the ruling class have hereditary psychic abilities; specific abilities are passed down through specific families, and while these powers can each be used for good or for evil, they have long been used to gain the upper hand in the ongoing clashes between rival clans. As Orrec reaches puberty and the gift of his lineage -- that of "unmaking", or destroying, things and creatures with a glance -- he and his family, believing his gift to be uncontrollable, blindfold him to protect those around him. And then a bunch of other spoilery stuff happens and he has to decide what it means to be an adult.
Why did you get this book? I'd never read LeGuin, which was kind of a glaring oversight. It looked good. It was in a bargain bin.
Did you enjoy the book? I did, and yet I was reminded why I hadn't really gotten into LeGuin before (I tried the Earthsea books once or twice when I was young). It was slow to start, and then it really picked up the pace and became very compelling in the middle. And then the ending sort of fell flat for me. I felt like there was a lot of cool rising action, and then instead of climax and denouement, it sort of veered off and got moody and pensive and stayed that way to the end. Not that there's anything wrong with moody and pensive, and the themes explored in the end of the book are interesting and worth thinking about; but the structure seemed off to me.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? I'll probably try her again. Her prose is *really* solid -- I loved the writing.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? There's a knack to making up names in a fantasy universe, and judging by this book, Ursula LeGuin does names better than anybody. I friggin' love the names in this book. (Orrec and Gry, the two main characters, actually have the worst names in the book as far as I'm concerned.)
Scale of 1 to 10: 7 or 8. Why is everything 7 or 8?

Book: 7
Title: The Gift of Therapy
Author: Irvin Yalom
Genre: Psychology, nonfiction
One-sentence summary: Irvin Yalom is getting into his seventies and is depressed that he is going to die and will not be able to be a therapist anymore, so he wrote a book telling young therapists how to be like him so he will live on in them. Or something. I suppose the less flippant summary would be that he's worried about the future of therapy because he thinks managed care is ruining it (and I wouldn't altogether disagree, btw) so he wrote a book of advice on how to be a good therapist.
Why did you get this book? I like Irvin Yalom. I'm poking a little bit of fun at him up there, sure, but it's kind of a loving, "oh, Irv, you never change, do you?" sort of thing. I've read a lot of his stuff and it tends to repeat a lot of the same themes (for the record, there's little in this book that I didn't already know his opinion on from his novel Lying on the Couch). But I do like his approach to therapy: he's very interested in the interpersonal aspect of it, what he calls the "here-and-now relationship" (man does he like that phrase an awful lot), and in therapist transparency -- the idea that if a therapist and a patient relate to one another as human beings, as opposed to the old-school model where a therapist attempts to be a blank screen onto which patients can project transference, that relationship will serve as a microcosm to illuminate the patient's way of relating to other people. So I like him for that, and I like him for the fact that he's an excellent and very accessible writer.
Do you like the cover? I liked it a lot, actually. I have started taking this question out of my standard list because it bores me, but this was a photograph by Baudrillard that I really liked. Of course when I Googled it I found out that at least one experienced photographer thinks it's "to Baudrillard's credit that he had the wisdom not to quit his day job." Oh boo.
Did you enjoy the book? I did. As noted, there wasn't much that was new to me in it, having read a lot of Yalom before. But there were a few new anecdotes among the old ones, and a few new dreams among the ones he'd recycled from other books, too -- he never makes up dreams for analysis in his books, because he says something about the quality of dreamworld eludes him, so you tend to come across the same dreams multiple times in reading his books because he has to get permission from the patients to use them. But the dreams he writes about, in particular, are really fascinating and compelling. And in general, you know. I like him.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? Honestly I don't know how much else there is to read. He has something out called Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death, which I may pick up at some point. Among other things he has a strong existential orientation in his therapy, so sometimes reading his books can feel like "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE YOU'RE GOING TO DIE WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE YOU MUST COME TO TERMS WITH YOUR DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH OMG DEATH!!!!" I sort of have to be in the mood for that. But I guess I'll probably read it at some point.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? This would be a good introduction to Yalom's work, I think, for someone wanting to become acquainted quickly with the way he works and the basics of the therapeutic process. (If you're interested in his more creative writing, try Love's Executioner or maybe Lying on the Couch, although I've a few caveats on the latter.)
Scale of 1 to 10: 7? 8? I'd give it easily an 8 if I weren't so familiar with all of the material in it.

Witches of Worm, Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Book: 2
Title: Witches of Worm
Author: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Genre: YA/"independent reader"
One-sentence summary: The protagonist whose name I have also forgotten is a smart, prickly, very lonely girl who finds herself starting to act out in rather nasty ways. Unable to understand the bitter impulses she has to disrupt other people's lives, she blames a stray cat that she adopted ("Worm"), calling him a witch's cat.
Why did you get this book? I needed something that would definitely be good in order to clear my palate after Forged by Fire, and Zilpha Keatley Snyder has never let me down yet.
Do you like the cover? I don’t remember it very well, so I guess it was probably okay.
Did you enjoy the book? Yeah, ZKS definitely knows what she's doing. It's funny, her characterization is... you know, it's not like you carry away from her books this sense of a living human being with all sorts of quirks and foibles and a distinct way of speaking, or whatever. I'm not quite sure how to explain it -- I often feel a little distanced from her characters, like I'm observing them rather than living alongside them. But she has this skill that I find very infrequently in YA lit -- or at least, she has it to a degree that I find very infrequently in YA lit -- and it's a talent for getting inside the way kids really think. She's particularly good at protags like this one -- smart, manipulative, not-particularly-nice-but-you-can-empathize-with-them female adolescents. Her prose is also firm and deft, and her plotting is tight and well-crafted. I've never had the sense that she has the name recognition of a Katherine Paterson, say, and it's kind of a shame, because I think they're equally good (and it's a compliment to both of them.)
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? No. Yes.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? In the edition I got, the preface to the book, written by Snyder herself, spoils not only the ending but the entire point of the book. Like, she goes, "Here's what this book is about including the whole ending, and here is what I was trying to do with this book, and why!" So if you get the most recent edition (I don't know the exact specs but I can tell you the publisher's imprint is a bucking horse, and their design is superimposed over the back cover blurb), skip the preface until after you've read the book if you're spoiler-averse.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9

Book: 38
Title: The Abortionist's Daughter
Author: Elisabeth Hyde
Genre: Fiction, women's fiction, mystery
One-sentence summary: When the outspoken doctor at an abortion clinic is murdered, the investigation into her death is complicated by the complex dynamics within her family and by her controversial position within the community.
Why did you get this book? The title grabbed my interest, and I picked it up and was utterly hooked by the first sentence: "The problem was, Megan had just taken the second half of the ecstasy when her father called with the news." First sentence: A+
Do you like the cover? It's fine - a sweater crumpled by the edge of a pool - but I'm irked because there was a lovely little bit of a description at the beginning of the book where they talked about the sweater crumpled by the pool and how the character's purple flipflops were lying near it, their heels darkened with sweat. I am very annoyed that they didn't put the flipflops on the cover.
Did you enjoy the book? I did. At first I was *really* enjoying it: her writing was fresh and sparkling and her characterization was great and her plot was gripping and I was thrilled because I thought I'd discovered another mystery novelist to love - I like really good mystery-genre fiction, but thus far Dennis Lehane is the only novelist who consistently grabs me, with Sarah Dunant coming in second and Ruth Rendell dragging behind in the rear. There's no one else I've read that I find to be worth bothering with at all, so I was excited about Elisabeth Hyde. But then the book kind of fell apart as it went on - her writing went from sparkling to flat, her characterization became inconsistent, and she threw in a truly heinous plot twist that ruined a lot of the last half of the book for me. I wound up enjoying it, but not loving it.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? Yeah, she was new to me. I may or may not read something else by her; I did like this, and yet it's hard to like a book so much at the beginning and find yourself so disappointed by the end.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Another library book. I might pick this up if I see it being sold used and for cheap somewhere.
Anything else? Not really.
Number of pages: 304
Total pages for the year: 11321
Scale of 1 to 10: 7/8

Book: 37
Title: Purple Hibiscus
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Genre: Fiction
One-sentence summary: In the frightening political chaos of modern-day Nigeria, fifteen-year-old Kambili finds herself torn between the need to please her abusive and religiously fanatical father and her growing desire to find her own voice, encouraged by her independent-minded aunt and a magnetic young parish priest.
Why did you get this book? I'd read a short story by Adichie in This Is Not Chick Lit and decided I had to read more by her.
Do you like the cover? Yeah, it draws the eye.
Did you enjoy the book? I did, although it picked up steam as it went on. At first I thought the portrayal of the dynamics of an abusive home seemed a little facile, but it stopped seeming so as I went on. I do think that "facile" is a good word for a few things she did in the book - at the beginning of the book Kambili was so utterly controlled by her father, but she started to be able to abandon those thought patterns in something like a week spent with her aunt, which I found to be unrealistic given how abusive her father was. That would have been easily fixed by expanding the time frame a bit, though, and the characterization and the family dynamics were well handled. It also got me interested in learning more about the current political situation in Nigeria, and anything that gets me interested in learning something new is a good thing in my book.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? The only thing I'd read before was the short story. Half of a Yellow Sun looks really good and I will almost certainly get it from the library soon.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Another library book, and another one I may get my own copy of.
Anything else? Not really, except that I bet I'll recommend this book to a lot of people.
Number of pages: 320
Total pages for the year: 11017
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9

I'm back! I'm going to pick up my book count where I left off because, although I did read some new books between March 10th and now, of course, I was doing a lot of rereading, because I was feeling yucky, mood-wise, and when I am feeling yucky I default to a lot of rereading. I don't remember what-all I read, so I'm just going to start at 35.

Book: 35
Title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (obv.)
Author: J.K. Rowling
Genre: Juvie fiction, fantasy
One-sentence summary: Harry Potter has to defeat Lord Voldemort while struggling to deal with the fact that as a character and even as a protagonist, Snape is way cooler than Harry is.
Why did you get this book? It's the end of the Harry Potter series. I find myself rolling my eyes at the template here.
Do you like the cover? Yeah. I sort of wonder whether Mary Grand-Pre drew it entirely alone; the covers on the first three or so weren't that impressive, and then as the furor over the series began to heat up the covers started getting better, and this final one is much more skillfully done than the first one. Maybe they paid her more to have her give more of a shit, I dunno.
Did you enjoy the book? It's a complicated question, given that it's the last book in this series, especially as the expectations were so high. I read it all and kept turning the pages, and there were parts that were really great (the scene in the Ministry springs to mind). And then there were parts that were really not great at all (the scene in Gringotts springs to mind). Her characterization is on-again-off-again, and in terms of plot, I had some major objections to certain parts of it and was quite happy with the way she resolved other parts. It wasn't perfect, but it was fun, and I liked it fine. (For the purposes of this review, by the way, we are ignoring the existence of the epilogue. I think the world will be an immeasurably better place if we just pretend that epilogue never existed.) Long, disjointed, and spoilery review here.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? I will get that encyclopedia thing she says she will be writing, whenever she chooses to write it.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? Not that can't be seen in the long spoilery review.
Number of pages: 760
Total pages for the year: 10404
Scale of 1 to 10: 7/8

Book: 32
Title: On Michael Jackson
Author: Margo Jefferson
Genre: Social science, cultural studies, biography
One-sentence summary: This is at once a biography of Michael Jackson, though not at all a comprehensive or chronological one, and an analysis of his impact on society, society's perception of him, and the social and personal roots of both his talents and his pathologies.
Why did you get this book? I find Michael Jackson to be a fascinating cultural phenomenon, honestly: both who/what he is, and what society wants him to be/has made him into.
Do you like the cover? Silver text on a white background? Sure, whatever. I guess it's a nice little link between Jackson's shiny larger-than-life persona and the this-is-a-serious-cultural-analysis-not-some-pop-biography tone the book is going for.
Did you enjoy the book? I did. Jefferson's a great writer and her observations are astute. I wish she would have delved more deeply into them, though - the book is short and I felt like though everything she said was true and insightful, there was a lot more to be said, a lot deeper she could have gone. But it was quite good.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? Yes, and yes, if she wrote something else I was interested in.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping it. No idea where to shelve it though. Cultural studies? Biography? I have no idea.
Anything else? I actually do feel like I understand Michael Jackson a little better, having read this book. And I consider that no small feat. Nice job, Margo Jefferson.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9
Number of pages: 146
Total pages for the year: 9207

Book: 29
Title: The Year Without Michael
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Genre: YA fiction
One-sentence summary: Sixteen-year-old Jody's younger brother disappears on his way to a baseball game one summer afternoon. The book follows his family's disintegration, and hopes of renewal, in the year following his disappearance.
Why did you get this book? I had read it when I was a kid and loved it, but I lost my copy ages and ages ago. This is another PBS find.
Do you like the cover? Nah, not much - it's a rather poorly done portrait of the family, sans Michael.
Did you enjoy the book? I did, almost as much as I did when I originally read it when I was ten. The main character is something of an Everygirl, but her family members are interesting and not terribly typical. Some of the plot developments are predictable, but most aren't, and the book rings very true. This is another book that refuses to cop out and tie everything up in a neat bow at the end.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? I've read Twice Taken, which is another take on a child who goes missing, that one from the kid's perspective (a custody snatch). That I'd rank as a little better than this, mostly because the narrator's voice has a bit of a hard edge to it that I like, and the family in it isn't so perfectly middle-class and "typical". Which is the point of the family in this book, really, but... well, anyway. Both books work, for what they are.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? Not really, just that this is really a very good YA book.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9
Number of pages: 164
Total pages for the year: 8539

Book: 28
Title: Love in the Asylum
Author: Lisa Carey
Genre: General fiction
One-sentence summary: The story of a junkie and a manic-depressive who fall in love in a mental hospital is intertwined with the story of a schizophrenic (?) Indian shaman (?) who was committed to the same hospital 70 years before.
Why did you get this book? It was on the bargain table at Brookline Booksmith, and I'm always game for a book about crazy people.
Do you like the cover? Yeah, it's kind of clever, really: a pink pill and a blue pill cozying up in a little paper cup.
Did you enjoy the book? You know, I did. Quite a bit. It was a pretty light, pretty quick read - not light in the sense that the subject matter is light, which it definitely is not, but light in the sense that it's basically meant to be a pageturning story. It's a good one, though. The "love in the psych ward" bit was handled surprisingly well - usually that plotline is terribly unrealistic, but it made sense to me both logistically and in terms of character development - and the story of the maybe-schizophrenic maybe-shaman was well done too, and kept the contemporary love story from getting bogged down or turning dull. I liked the ambiguity as to what her deal was, and the questions this book tosses around about what "mental illness" means. And I liked that it didn't answer those questions, and that the characters' various issues weren't tied up in a neat bow at the end. On the whole, it was very nicely done.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? Yeah - last I knew she'd only written one book, something about singing mermaids, and I looked at it a few times because it had a pretty aquamarine cover and then decided against getting it because the cover looked like the best thing about it. But who knows, maybe I'll read something more by her now. I don't feel compelled to, but I could be interested. It will probably hinge on what turns up on PaperbackSwap.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? I'd recommend this book to anyone who's interested in the summary, but with a caveat: there are a number of graphic scenes of sexual violence, and anyone who's likely to be triggered by them should not read this book.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8
Number of pages: 290
Total pages for the year: 8375