The Story Sisters

Thanks to my local library I was able to get my hands on Alice Hoffman's The Story Sisters almost a week before its June 2nd release on Amazon. In its current pre-order status on Amazon, The Story Sisters is #764 in Books. Kindle sales rank is not yet available, but the book will be sold in Kindle format.

I have read very little Alice Hoffman- just a few short stories from Blackbird House. I was impressed by Hoffman's skillful use of magical realism, her blend of fairytale and real-life family saga. She did an excellent job of returning again and again to key themes (heirloom tomatoes, the color of the light in Paris) and key story events, so that the tale felt pleasantly timeworn. Throughout, I had the comfortable feeling that the story had not been written, but passed down through many generations. Each fateful turn of events seemed preordained, unavoidable, and it was hard to imagine the story unfolding in any other way.

Hoffman wrote fantastic and complex female characters, and the story grew organically from their strengths and flaws. But her male characters were pale by comparison. In most cases the males were nothing more than plot catalysts. Some were antagonists, pushing the women into darker places, others seemed to exist only for the purpose of satisfying the needs and desires of the women who, after all they had been through, seemed to deserve the kind of quiet hero who shovels the snow, buries friends, and comes to the rescue whenever the women need him the most. The most interesting of the men, Lorry, combined aspects of the antagonist and hero, but even he was just an agglomeration of two stock characters, and was hardly a person in his own right.

These overly convenient male characters are harbingers of the only other flaw in the book. The Story Sisters is just a little too sentimental, its moral compass too conventional. A writer with Hoffman's skill could do more than just reaffirm the values of family bonds and love. That said, she pulled off this reaffirmation with great skill and beauty.

The Good Book

I just finished reading The Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. I listened to the audiobook version, read by author, David Plotz.

What I found very interesting about this book was that it hinged on a lack of expertise. Plotz states that, although his Jewish religion has always been an important part of his life, he more or less had no idea what was written in the Old Testament. Plotz doesn't take any classes, consult Biblical scholars, or learn Biblical Hebrew. And on the rare occasion he admits to having consulted a reference to better understand a passage of the Bible, he apologizes for it- he calls his use of the reference "cheating."

The point of Plotz's book is not Biblical scholarship, nor are his insights backed up by Biblical scholarship. The point of the book is David Plotz- the author, how he reacted to this experience, and how it changed him.

I actually had a lot of fun listening to The Good Book. Where else will you hear the prophet Habakkuk called a gloomy Gus? Or hear the opinion that God favors the bald? The book also served as a good reminder to me that readers are just as interested in following the experience of an everyman as they are in becoming more informed about a topic of interest. For many readers ideas are interesting, but people are fascinating.

The Good Book ranks #3,843 in Books on Amazon and is #2,006 in the Kindle Store.

Pattern Recognition

Pattern Recognition is a techno-espionage novel written by the father of cyberpunk, William Gibson. The book was well-written, amazingly hip, and a really fun read- except for the ending, which completely failed to meet my expectations.

There were a lot of reasons for me not to like Pattern Recognition. The narrative was in the present tense (I have an allergy to present tense narrative similar to, but less severe than, the allergy protagonist, Cayce, has to trademarks). The book wasn't science fiction, but a present-day international espionage novel. Not my favorite genre. Yet days after returning Pattern Recognition to the library, it's still on my mind.

One reason I liked the novel was that Gibson made the present tense work, even for me. His goal in using the present was to create a sense of urgency and forward motion. Unlike most authors, who think they can achieve this goal simply by switching "was" to "is," Gibson backed up his choice with other narrative tricks, such as frequent use of sentence fragments instead of complete, grammatically whole sentences. To balance this style, he then layered his narrative with precise word choice and detailed description, all appropriate to the tone of the book and the personality of his character. To top it all off, he found several key metaphors such as the "mirror world" (used to describe the subtle differences between the UK and the US) and jet lag (as a condition in which the soul has not caught up with the body), that provided an instant window into his protagonist's state of mind, then continued to feed the tenor of the book throughout the narrative. Just as I was breaking out in a cold, prickly rash from the present tense, Gibson sold me on his writing style with: "awash in limbic tides, brain stem stirring fitfully, flashing inappropriate demands for sex, food, sedation." And I still frequently think of his succinct description of a platonic friendship: "their boy-girl Lego doesn't click."

Gibson also made the espionage story work for me, because it was centered around viral videos, Internet message boards, and social networking. Pattern Recognition made excellent use of the technology available in 2003 when it was published- so much so, that the gadgets and online culture Gibson described still hold up today. But no doubt the best part of the novel was the quirk Gibson gave his protagonist. Her greatest strength, and her greatest weakness: an affinity for cool, an instinct for style, and a visceral revulsion to the lame, the over-marketed, the passé. This offbeat personality trait made for a character unlike any other I've ever read, and it made for an incredibly hip novel.

Unfortunately all the great things Gibson built up in Pattern Recognition came crashing down at the end. Although protagonist, Cayce, was steadily delving closer to solving mysteries with intensely personal meaning to her- at the climax of the novel the rug was pulled from beneath her feet (and the reader's). At the climax Cayce lost consciousness, only to wake to a denouement in which other characters had unraveled her personal enigmas and solved her remaining mysteries. While Cayce was getting filled in on all the pieces of the puzzle she hadn't yet solved, the expository passage read very much like a plot outline, an info dump explaining what had really been going on since the beginning of Cayce's story. I finished the book in a state of shock that an author so skilled would his resolve his intrigues by making the protagonist black out, then regain consciousness and listen politely as the end of her quest ws conveniently explained to her.

On Amazon Pattern Recognition is #27,507 in Books and is #7,746 in the Kindle Store.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Revisited

The first time my husband and I read the Half-Blood Prince, we were suffering from some pretty severe jet lag and a crazy kind of reverse culture shock in which our native land seemed oddly foreign in comparison to the life we had adjusted to overseas. The arrival of the Half-Blood Prince in theaters this summer is kind of a landmark for us, as if the time needed for the book to move from release to feature film was the time we needed to settle back into American rhythms. While reading the Deathly Hallows in 2007, we came to the startling realization that neither one of us really remembered anything about the Half-Blood Prince. As evidence of our amnesia, the word "horcrux" sent us running back to the Half-Blood Prince for reference to this vaguely chilling, but unknown term.

Coming back to the Half-Blood Prince did more than just refresh our memory of the plot and get us emotionally prepared to see the movie, it gave us a real appreciation for Hogwarts. Little did we know, in those early, bleary-eyed reading sessions, that Book 6 would be the last year we'd get to spend with Harry at the school- and it's a really great year. Harry is the captain of the Quidditch team, takes private lessons with Dumbledore, and aces potions class with the aid of the Half-Blood Prince.

We were also extremely impressed with the writing in Book 6. Rowling performs her own brand of magic, managing to review the vast and complex tangle of Harry's story so far without weighing down her readers with exposition. In fact the opening chapters, in which she has a lot of expository ground to cover, are action-packed, exciting, and intriguing. Her flashbacks to Voldemort's history are well-crafted insights into the series' villain and, at the same time, give us great insight into our hero. A book heavy enough to press flowers and leaves has space for wasted words and extraneous scenes, but every word and every event in the story feels critical to the coming crisis in Book 7.

Our only small disappointment with the book was the revelation of the identity of the Half-Blood Prince. Throughout the entire book, neither one of us could remember who the Prince would turn out to be. We cannot entirely blame jet lag for that lapse in our memory- Rowling touches on the revelation so lightly, relying entirely on the chemistry of the characters' personal relationships to bring weight to the resolution of the mystery for which the book was titled.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is currently #593 in Amazon's bestselling books. It is not available on the Kindle.

The Song Is You: Enjoy the ride, it's all gonna be okay

There's nothing wrong with Arthur Phillip's The Song is You. It was #11 on Amazon's Best Books of the Month for April 2009, and it received high praise from The New York Times. The book ranks #936 in Amazon's bestselling books, and is #612 in the Kindle store. Obviously people read the book and like it. I read the book, and didn't dislike it. Phillip writes well, the novel's setting celebrates technology as part of our daily experience, and the story centers around music- one of my life-long passions. But I felt no passion for The Song Is You. My first indication that my interest in the story was only lukewarm, was the unusually long time it took me to read the book. I needed about two weeks to get through 272 pages of The Song Is You, while I read all 608 pages of New Moon in three days.

Certainly some of the speed difference can be accounted for by the different processing speed needed to appreciate Phillip's beautiful prose. But the real reason it took me so long to read The Song Is You was that, about a quarter of the way through the story, I already knew how the book would end. How did I know? Well, it all comes down to Phillip's protagonist.

Arthur Phillips knows how to write very interesting and engaging characters. The protagonist's brother made me laugh every time he entered a scene. His would-be girlfriend was quirky, obsessive, and extremely interesting. The protagonist's alter-ego (the ex-musician/artist) always stirred up the story. But the protagonist, whose life history the reader learned in touching, intimate detail, was a very, very boring guy. Not only that, the protagonist was unsure of what he wanted, and as a result his attempts to make things happen in the story were half-hearted and lukewarm, much like my attachment to the book.

The Song Is You is a story meant to say: "enjoy the ride, it's all gonna be okay." I used to avoid reading mainstream literature, thinking this was always the message. However, I've come to enjoy many mainstream and literary authors (T.C. Boyle, David Wroblewski, Garrison Keillor, William Trevor, John Updike) who know how to write protagonists with unreasonable desires that they will fulfill at any cost. I've decided that "enjoy the ride, it's all gonna be okay" is just one genre out of many under the umbrella of mainstream and literary fiction. I'll bet "enjoy the ride, it's all gonna be okay" is a genre that's nice to read slowly, before bed, with the nightstand lamp lit. There's nothing wrong with the genre, it's just not my cup of tea.

New Moon - Twilight, Book 2

Today New Moon, the second in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, is the 5th bestselling Kindle book. Book 4 of the same series is the 2nd bestselling book, and Book 3 of the same series is the 4th bestselling book. In Amazon's paper bestsellers, New Moon ranks #11, behind books of the same series at #4, #7, and #8.

In other words, New Moon and the Twilight series are insanely popular.

As I read the first three-quarters of New Moon, I was on my way to becoming one more of Meyer's legion of fans. New Moon keeps all that was good about Book 1, and improves it. As I had been hoping, protagonist Bella begins to grow up and become an even stronger character.

Bella wants to become a vampire so she can be with her boyfriend, forever. Meyer thwarts Bella's desire in the most exciting way possible- by having the boyfriend dump Bella. This teenage tragedy may not have the literary substance of Ulysses- but Bella is a quintessential protagonist. Sincere and relentless in her drive to get what she wants, Bella is a protagonist who makes things happen- an ideal engine for the story. She forces fights between monsters, drives her boyfriend from the country, goes on wild motorcycle rides, jumps off cliffs, goes flying half-way around the world on a moment's notice. She is a person who does dangerous things to satisfy her desires, and her dramatic actions result in an equally dramatic story.

In Book 2 Bella is not only a stronger protagonist, but she is stronger physically and emotionally, too. She's a lot tougher in the first three-quarters of Book 2- no more fainting spells every other page. The experience of being dumped by her boyfriend, and living through it, makes her emotionally tougher, as well. This was exactly the sort of character growth I was looking for after Book 1 to justify the series as a good, if guilty-pleasure, read. I was even impressed by Meyer's technique of letting blank chapters scroll past as the time passes during which Bella is in shock after her romantic tragedy.

Unfortunately my praise of the book ends at the point in the story where the action drives toward the climax (at exactly the same point I lost interest in Book 1). Several things happen, all of which indicate a decline of quality in the narrative: 1. Bella leaves New Forks (the created world where she coexists with vampires and werewolves). 2. Action drama overtakes relationship drama (Meyer writes relationship drama better than action sequences). 3. Bella begins to faint, droop, swoon, or topple about so often that she is rarely on her own feet. 4. Tension comes from an outside danger instead of coming from the existing situation established in the first three-quarters of the book. 5. Meyer has to do an awful lot of explaining about why certain acts would be awful or terrible for one or more of the characters to live through- her readers should already know that in their guts if the threat is going to hit them where it hurts.

Toward the end of the story New Moon did reclaim a little of my interest by delving deeper into Twilight mythology. We learned more about the enmity between vampires and werewolves (Meyer did achieve the kind of set-up necessary to make the reader feel a visceral sorrow for the fact that Bella has dear friends of both species who are sworn enemies to each other). Meyer also does a little more explaining about what makes Bella so special in her mythological scheme, and adds further interest and complication to the subject of whether or not Bella will achieve her dream of becoming a vampire.

Kindle DX Announced

Amazon has just announced yet another new Kindle device, now available for pre-order. The Kindle DX is meant to make PDF documents, textbooks, reference books, and other graphic-intense materials easier to read. The Kindle DX has a screen two and a half times the size of the regular Kindle. Not only is the screen bigger, it has a wide screen mode, which allows you to tip the device 90 degrees to produce a larger, landscape view (like the iPhone). There is also a 5-way controller on the device which, so it seemed in the promotional video, should make it fast and easy to increase and decrease text size as needed when reading a cookbook, textbook, or professional document. Amother big advantage of the Kindle DX over the Kindle 2 is that the DX can natively download PDF files, no computer conversion needed.

I actually found out about the Kindle DX when I logged onto Amazon to buy a paper book. The book was a home reference, filled with pictures, diagrams, and useful sidebars. It wasn't available in Kindle format- but I avoid buying diagram-heavy reference books in Kindle even when they are available. The Kindle DX, with its large screen, sharp graphics, and ability to zoom in and out of diagrams and sidebars, should make books that include more than just straight narrative text feasible and useful in Kindle format. But my home reference still has one advantage over its future Kindle DX version: the hard copy has color (the Kindle DX graphics are sharp, but still grey scale).

There is little doubt, based on the promotional video presentation, that Amazon hopes to win a share of the college textbook market for the Kindle through the DX model. The promo also heavily targeted professionals.