The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udell

It always amazes when a book is populated with characters that I find annoying or distasteful, yet I'm satisfied with my reading experience by the time I finish. I like a book with colorful characters with a few flaws, but I usually would like to root for at least one of them. In The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udell, I found myself wanting to to line up every character, every single character, and just do a running slap until I ran out of faces. Still, I don't regret a minute of the reading experience.

The novel details the life of Golden, an almost reluctant polygamist, his four wives, and 28 children. He's too meek to really be the patriarch of such a clan, so the children run wild while his wives brood over his continuous, seemingly willful absence. As the story progresses, the reader learns the secret history of the family and each member's struggle for control over their own lives in a world where little individuality is accepted.

As much as I wanted to punch literally everyone in it, the book offers an interesting view into the dynamics of a plural marriage. Imagine Big Love in novel form and you pretty much have it. Polygamy is such an exotic phenomenon, yet it exists in our own backyards. If I met a polygamist family, I would have so many questions that would probably be too rude to say out loud: What keeps it all together? How do the children get the individual attention that they need and deserve? How does the arrangement stay vital? So many questions, but no polygamists to ask.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

There have been nights when I have stayed up late wondering, pondering, trying to fathom a world where wizards are in fact among us, Hogwarts is in upstate New York, and Harry Potter is an emo alcoholic from Brooklyn who spends way too much time reading Narnia-knock offs. Oh, the sleepless nights; oh, the endless days! But, lo, author Lev Grossman has taken up the torch and set pen to paper with this very idea, making my life that much easier.

The Magicians doesn't claim to stray from the beaten path (forged by seven Harry Potter books, lest we forget), but it has discovered a new way of walking it. Like Rowling's world, this novel gives us a loner main character, a school of magic, and plucky students who stretch their skills in the name of knowledge. They go on wonderous adventures, eventually facing the evil baddy at the end. But J. K. kept her characters on a strict diet of butterbeer and wacky hijinks, whereas Grossman's characters sloshed, hammered and pissed about 90% of the time. When they aren't off their face, they are desperately trying to make a name for themselves in a school full of backstabbing geniuses.

Perhaps the most startling difference between the two works is how disaffected the kids are after they graduate. Rowling tied up all of her loose ends in a sickeningly neat package; Grossman sets his kids in an overwhelming freedom after a very rigid boarding school experience. In a mish-mash of drinking, sex, and unemployment, these kids start tearing themselves, and each other, apart. Judging by the reactions to freedom that I saw in college, I have to believe that all of this behavior is very realistic. It's satisfying to see that even with all the magic in the world, we all are capable of the same self-distructive actions.

I truly do recommend this book, both if you've read the Harry Potter series and if it never piqued your interest. It is a mature, honest portrayal of not always likeable people in extraodinary circumstances.

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

(Ed. Note: #38)

If you’re reading this and you haven’t read A Game of Thrones, stop. Just stop. Before I started reading these books, I had a few things spoiled for me and I’m sad that I didn’t get the full effect of the story. Once I realized that I had to stay away from everything, I had the most amazing reading experience. I urge you to take my advice and read no further.

Are they gone? Good.

Anyway, A Clash of Kings is the second book in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. After the Eddard’s execution and the scattering of the Stark family, Westeros is now in the grips of civil war, a literal clash of kings. The land and smallfolk are besieged by the marauding armies of five kings—Robb Stark, Balon Greyjoy, and Robert Baratheon’s brothers and son—Stannis, Renly, and Joffrey. During all of this, a sixth claimant of the crown, Daenerys Targaryen, wanders the East with her band of followers, caring for her three newborn dragons.

If you’re thinking that sounds like a tough storyline with too many names, you don’t know that half of it. There are so many side stories and characters that typing it up would do more harm than good. Like the previous book, A Clash of Kings demands to be reread several times before you can see the tapestry instead of the individual threads. Everything is connected; it just takes some concentration to figure it out.

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

(Ed. note: #37)

I don’t really know how I got peer-pressured into reading A Game of Thrones, the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin. I’m not usually into fantasy novels, the exception being the Kushiel books and anything Tamora Pierce has ever written. I enjoy the historical fiction element that is present in many of these novels, but I could do without the dwarves, elves, and whatever fantastical creatures that usually populate these world. I read Lord of the Rings—no need to travel roads that are imperfect in comparison. Still, I Kindled A Game of Thrones and fell in love.

Martin is a beautiful world builder. The fictional Westeros and the surrounding lands are so grounded in reality that I can imagine them as medieval British counties, complete with a working feudal system. The geo-political and family squabbles feel drawn out of history books. And not an elf to be seen. Sure, there is a dwarf, but he’s an actual little person, not a mythical axe-bearing hairy guy.

This book’s plot is based on setting up the following books, but it is not short on action. Through different viewpoints separated by chapter, we follow the House Stark, headed by honorable Lord Eddard Stark, and its relations with the throne and House Lannister, the queen’s family. Historically speaking, the plot reminded me of King Edward VI of England and the Woodvilles. We see a once valiant and fair king run to fat and indolence while his wife’s family worms and grasps its way into higher echelons of power. Still, that’s only part of the story—and it would be cruel to ruin it by telling you more.

Martin is an interesting author in that he loves his characters, yet is utterly brutal to them. Granted, it is necessary to the plot, but he seems to enjoy lulling his readers into a sense of security with a certain character, then ripping the rug out from under the reader’s feet. It’s jarring, but it gives the book a kind of paper-turning mystery, the kind that makes you finish a gigantic novel in two days. I look forward to seeing HBO’s treatment of this book in the upcoming series, though I hardly think that it will be able to capture the heart-pounding joy of reading a well-plotted novel. Doubters, pick up this book—you won’t regret it.

Your Next Door Neighbor is a Dragon by Zack Parsons

(Ed. note: #36)

You know, I’m not going to be ashamed to say that I spent quite a bit of time on the internet. The internet is interesting. There’s a whole world of knowledge and videos and interaction that could not have existed before the advent on the web. Miss a TV show? No worries, it’s on the internet! Need to do some heavy-duty research for a paper? Holy crap, here’s JSTOR! Need to look some up some quick information to settle a bet? Bam, Wikipedia! It’s a glorious thing and I’m thankful that I spent my childhood without it so that I could properly appreciate it now.

But, as every sun casts a shadow, so does the internet. Guys, the internet is weird. Thanks to the most casual of web surfing, I know what degloving is. I’ve been goatse’d more times than I can count. I’ve seen a lady break wind into a cake. I’ve been disturbed and sickened by these series of tubes, and yet, I can’t stay away. It’s an illness.

Still, I know that there are many sunshiney people out there, unjaded by repeated surprise viewings of the inner workings of a man’s colon, who are going to cheerfully jump on the internet and be summarily crushed. That’s where Zack Parsons’s Your Next Door Neighbor is a Dragon comes in. Parsons ventures where none of us truly wish to go, seeking out those who allow their freak flags to fly in the anonymity of the web. He interviews furries, voraphiles, fanfiction writers, Ron Paul fans, and so many more, creating a short encyclopedia of common internet denizens. His interviews are held together with what I hope is a fictional road trip narrative, replete with cult kidnappings and obnoxious literary agents.

Parsons isn’t a journalist, nor does he claim to be. A brief exploration of his normal writing gig, Something Awful, shows a site that usually displays a decidedly negative view of the people interviewed in this book. Parsons, however, does cast a sympathetic eye on many of his subjects, who are even more absurd in the bright light of day than they are as ones and zeros in a world-wide community. It reminded me of Jon Ronson’s Them (which I’ve plugged more than once) in that it showed the real person behind the mask.

This isn’t a book that you use to write a research paper on the sociology of the internet, but it gives the reader a good idea of what lurks beneath the web’s glossy surface. Parsons subjects himself to it so you don’t have to. Be grateful.

Bliss by O.Z. Livaneli

(Ed.-- That number thing on the left side is broken. This is book #35.)

Not that long ago, I purchased a box full of $1.99 books from the internet, several of which I’ve already written entries about. All told, that shipment was lackluster, filled with books that were worth little more than a shrug and a Frisbee toss back into the box. I wasn’t expecting a trove of Penguin Classics or anything, so I’m not offended by a little light reading. I did get lucky, however, to receive the novel Bliss, by Turkish novelist O.Z. Livaneli. A scant 276 pages, Bliss captures the struggles of a country and populace trying to decide their roles in the world.

Turkey is an odd country, geography-wise. While most of it is considered Asia, bits can theoretically be classified as Europe. Stuck between the secular West and religious East, Turkey is still striving to create a solid identity. The nonreligious government dreams of membership within the European Union, which is hindered by the increasing Islamist factions within the country. It’s a strange world where cultures clash in great waves. Livaneli demonstrates these divisions with his characters: Meryem, a teenage villager who is raped by her uncle; Cemal, her cousin sent to take her to Istanbul for a ritual killing; and Irfan, a professor in a mid-life crisis. The three lives collide on a boat in the middle of the Aegean.

Turkey is at a crossroads in its development. Will it continue to throw itself against the wall of Europe, trying to achieve acceptance in its fairly anti-Muslim clique? Or will it roll over to the continuous tide of Islamist factions and institute a religious-based government, an Asia Minor Iran? Turkey has been in the news lately, but the world should keep an eye on this region. Their choices in the near future may affect us all.

The Case Book of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd

Have you ever read a book and have just been entirely unsure as to why the author decided to take the time to write it? That’s pretty much how I feel about The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd. A slightly adjusted retelling of the Frankenstein story by Mary Shelley, the novel does little to improve or grow upon the original story. Essentially, Victor Frankenstein, a young scholar from Switzerland, enrolls in Oxford, where he meets the revolutionary poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Consumed with a drive to test the boundaries of life and the Divine, Frankenstein obtains a series of bodies through London’s resurrection men and creates the famous monster that we all know and love.

While Ackroyd makes use of the different setting to introduce Frankenstein to the likes of the Shelleys and Lord Byron, I still can’t see the point of this book. The original works in so many ways—why even bother to create what is essentially a remake? Granted, it takes a historian like Ackroyd to make London come alive as it does in this novel. The city has so many sides, so many mysteries, that it is a perfect character for any and all period novels. Still, it is a pale imitation of something that has already been perfect for years. I don’t like to say that any work of art is a waste of time, but do yourself a favor and pick up the original Frankenstein. You’ll never get those hours back if you waste them on this one.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Robert Goolrick’s novel, A Reliable Wife, introduced to me a Wisconsin I never knew existed. Up to this point, my only insight into the great state was that it was cold, residents hate the Minnesota Vikings, and there is always a brisk sale of cheesehead hats. Goolrick portrayal bitch-slaps my theory, showing me a 1900’s Wisconsin that was so desolate and hopeless that it drove people mad.

Not exactly a Midwestern paradise.

A Reliable Wife isn’t really about Wisconsin. Instead, we follow a mail-order bride, who doubles as a con-artist, who struggles with her past and her intention to murder her new husband for his money. The actual story itself is okay, though it is held together by a string of plot holes that makes it difficult to take it seriously. However, whatever Goolrick lacks in storytelling, he makes up for with phrases that I find beautiful and haunting. Every phrase crafts a bleak, blindingly white world, a world more Fargo than jolly Cheesehead. A place where “every day there was some new tragedy, some new and inexplicable failure of the ordinary.” It’s stunning. If you do pick up this book, savor the beauty of the words, even if you have to suffer through a lackluster story to do it.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

When I used to travel more often, I would bring my own books to the airport. While I made it seem that the thought was to save money on reading material, it was mostly the paranoia that I would finish every book before the end of my trip, stranding me in a foreign airport with nothing to do. Yet, even while I was humping around a small library through the terminal, I would be inescapably drawn to the bookstores. It’s a disease.

Anyway, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by the late author Steig Larsson, would be exactly the kind of book that I would find in an airport bookseller. The bestsellers in such a shop are the kinds that you don’t have to put much thought into, yet exciting enough to get you through a flight with screaming children. This novel is a lot like that. Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist is invited to a lonely island to solve the disappearance of an industry tycoon’s niece and encounters much more than he had originally bargained for. Assisting him is the hard-as-nails hacker Salander, a girl with a black and white view of right and wrong.

Saying that it’s an airport novel does not mean that I think it’s trash. As soon as Larsson introduced the possibility of a serial killer that uses Bible verses, I was hooked and flipped through my Kindle version with blinding speed. Unfortunately, I really can’t get too excited over corporate naughtiness, which was pretty much the last fourth of the book. It’s just not my thing. I also found the Apple fanboyness distracting—I frankly don’t care that all of the good guys are apparently dedicated to Macs. Just get to the story.

Despite my qualms, the story was definitely good enough for me to snag Larsson’s sequels to this one, if only to find out how it all ends.

The Book of Loss by Julith Jedamus

The Book of Loss is one of those rare novels in which you can absolutely hate the protagonist and everything she stands for, but still like the story. That’s usually a pretty difficult thing—after all, if you’re too busy wanting to slap the shit out of some whiney character, then the tale itself usually falls by the wayside. Yet, author Julith Jedamus has formed a world where every character has some pretty glaring flaws; it’s just a matter of shades of gray.

Jedamus’s novel takes place in Heian Japan, in the muffled halls of the Imperial Court. While the world outside steadily goes to hell by way of plague and mismanagement, the interior of the female quarter is going through a war of its own. The unnamed narrator leaves us a diary that chronicles her rage as her exiled lover, Tachibana no Kanesuke, transfers his affections to her younger, prettier rival, Izumi no Jiju. Our narrator’s jealousy and paranoia grows until it shakes the very heart of the Empire.

Like I mentioned before, the narrator is pitiful and rather unlikeable, not only through her actions, but through her very unreliability as a narrator. We only see within her warped little world and rarely catch a glimpse of the reactions of others in a society where emotions of the sort are taboo. Granted, she was thoroughly wronged by Kanesuke and Izumi, but we never get a firm feeling as to whether they truly deserves the amount of rage the narrator invests in them. Jedamus has used Imperial Japan’s veiled society to create a situation where the reader feels eternally off balanced and, as a result, always on her toes.

Beauty by Sherri S. Tepper

I’ve always liked deconstructed fairy tales, whether it’s through the works of Gregory Maguire or Robin McKinley. Fairy tales are always so distant—you’re not reading a story, you’re reading a lesson. When Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty gets a face and a voice, the tale is personalized. You’re invested. So, Beauty, a novel by Sherri S. Tepper didn’t have to work that hard to snag me. Unfortunately, things then turned weird.

Beauty, the daughter of a duke and a mysterious missing woman, is a loquacious, vain teenager in the 15th century. When she discovers that a curse is to be laid on her when she turns 16, Beauty escapes into the world, leaving her half-sister behind to take the brunt of a sleeping curse that spans a century. Fine, this I can handle. Suddenly, she stumbles upon a film crew from the deep end of twenty-first century sent to film a documentary about the end of magic. Stolen away with the film makers, she explores the terrors of the 21st century, the calm before the storm of the 20th century, and then a world created and abandoned by an ancient writer.

Say what now? This is where I’ll stop because you have to read it for yourself.

Tepper, though an incredibly imaginative author, suffers from something that I think all writers battle: too many ideas. Beauty has so many swirling ideas that it’s difficult to pin them down and analyze. There’s environmentalism, a criticism of organized religion, a rant against those who create ugly works (mostly horror writers, for some reason), and the exploration of the worlds that writers create. Even just picking one of these themes would make for a thoughtful book, one that would allow readers to meditate on the message. Instead, Tepper’s novel doesn’t allow the reader to stop and think before throwing them into a swirling stew of ideas and opinions. If you love books that take you places that you have never been before, then this book is for you; if you want something straight forward, better leave this one in the bowels of Amazon.com.

Kept by D.J. Taylor

Back in high school creative writing class, I had an assignment to write a soap opera script, which would then be read in front of the class. It’s not often that you get assigned to write something so ridiculous, so I went all out. In the span of 10 pages, there was amnesia caused by a tragic ladder accident, rival doctors, scheming exes, secret twins, buried treasure, familial revelations, covert relationships, and dramatic comas. It was a masterpiece. Of course, soap opera conventions are in and of themselves simple; it’s how the writers combine them that makes the whole thing complex. When you take something with already complex conventions and try to shove them into one document, things get a little hairy.

D.J. Taylor’s Kept is a web of Victorian literature tropes that can be mind-boggling to decipher. Here’s a short list of the conventions I was able to identify: deranged woman in the attic, heiress kept against her will, gothic setting, people reaching too far about their station and failing miserably, paid-by-the-letter subscription wordiness and servant/master relations. I am not faulting Taylor for these conventions; indeed, he does well by them. There were some points that I thought I was reading Dickens. However, the combination of all of the little details, instead of creating a Victorian supernovel, just becomes confusing. The connections between a murder in the beginning of the novel, a naturalist, a daring train robber, and the woman in the attic are all drawn by the end, but tenuously. I’ve had a night to marinate the story in my mind and I’m still not entirely sure what happened.

Though the plot is convoluted and the novel itself suffered from Too Many Characters Syndrome (if I’m bored someday, I’m going to count them all), it is in no way a bad book. I think that we have Kept credit for striving for authenticity. I honestly believe that if you had plopped this book in front of me after finished my college Victorian Literature course, I might have mistaken it for some Dickens protégé. If you read this book, you’ll appreciate the level of detail, but, for your own sake, take notes. Then share them with me.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Ugh, I hate this review. After gaining some perspective on some similar books, I'll be back.
____

There’s something about Oryx and Crake, one of Margaret Atwood’s many dystopian novels, which has kept me from writing a review even though I finished the book a little while ago. It’s not that I didn’t like the book—it’s actually right up my alley. Dystopian novels give me a thrill down in my black little heart.

Atwood’s world is one in the near future, where cities are ghettos and the elite live in corporate enclaves with adults working in the owner-company’s complexes while the children go to company schools. The smartest students move forward to work in the growing genetically modified animal business while the less gifted are pushed towards the liberal arts (English major says ouch). Everything is provided for you. It’s a faux-utopia within a greater, stricter dystopian system. When the one-man scientific revolution in the form of the character Crake destroys most of mankind, a utopia appears to be built out of the ashes of the old. Or is it?

Utopias are a curious thing. I seem to remember that, back in high school health class, we studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a pyramid with basic survival needs at its base and self-actualization at its peak. Without the base, the pyramid crumbles and a human being cannot become a well-rounded human being because he is too worried about his own survival to care about things that don’t contribute to his warmth and caloric intake. Yet, it’s when that self-actualization is reached that humans begin branching off into areas of exploration that might be better left unexplored. It also may lead them to lose that sharpness that was so important to survival, making them easily cattle prodded into place. It seems to me that a utopia is a mere breath away from a dystopia.

What I would really love to do is to come back to this when I read Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. I feel that understanding the original definition of the word might coalesce my thoughts about Oryx and Crake into something more than a disjointed, crap-psychology ramble. This is a thought-provoking book and causes the reader to take stock of the shock entertainment that now seems so commonplace, of the scientific discoveries that daily either drive us to our salvation or our ruin.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I’m a little judgmental—I tend to stay away from books that I see being picked up by middle-aged ladies.

I’m not proud of it, but this habit has rarely steered me wrong. I’ve avoided hauling around books with that Oprah’s Book Club sticker on the front cover for years now and that’s enough for me. So I was pretty sure that I was never going to read The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Too many baby boomers have nabbed it because they have been told to by the television and People magazine. Yet, it somehow ended up on my Kindle and, before I knew it, finished. Now I feel a little ashamed about being so hardheaded—it was an amazing book.

Set in early-1960s Jackson, Mississippi, The Help is narrated in turn by three women: Aibileen, an African-American maid who watched 17 of her white charges grow up and enter a society that she can never enter; Minny, another maid whose personality is ill-suited for the demeaning position; and Skeeter, the white woman who does not fit in with the Southern debutante society. With the help of Aibileen and Minny, Skeeter embarks on a path to give a voice to the pain of Jackson’s black help.

What makes The Help an exceptional book is that there are few clear edges. Yes, there are heroes that the reader is clearly supposed to support, but Stockett does not portray the white homeowner/black maid dichotomy as evil vs. good. The sentiments become mixed as maids raise white children from babyhood and these kids remember their help with more fondness than their distant parents. In her afterword, Stockett reveals that she too was raised by a hired black woman, which triggered her interest in this particularly Southern relationship.

The plot itself is very predictable, which gives it such a mass market appeal. Stockett’s writing, however, imbues all three of the narrators with rich, unique voices that make this book a joy to read. This is definitely a book that I would read again in a year or two, just to listen to the melodious Southern accents in my head one more time. I guess what I’m saying is that I was really, really wrong this time around in avoiding this book. I am suitably ashamed.

Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett

While I was on the treadmill this afternoon, I watched as Gordon Brown, his wife, and his two children took their leave of 10 Downing Street. Brown stood in front of the hoards of photographers, smiled, then climbed into a car, streaking through London toward Buckingham Palace to give his resignation to the Queen. I’m not British, nor have I paid much attention to British politics since I spent the spring of 2007 in Scotland, but I got a lump in my throat watching his car make his way down the city streets. It’s amazing to me that some of us are lucky enough to live in countries where the our leaders step down after public elections when history has shown us that it’s just as easy to hold your position through battle and murder. Say what you want about politics and politicians, but there are times when the system is beautiful.

I just finished another one of my historical fiction novels, one that shows us what happens when the established system just breaks down. Vanora Bennett’s Figures in Silk— yet another novel based in the Ricardian period—centers around Isabel, a wealthy girl turned silkwoman after the death of her young husband during one of the many skirmishes of the War of the Roses. As she labors to break the Italian stranglehold on the silk market and establish a manufacturing center in London, she enters into a relationship with a secretive man, Dickon. To say any more would be a spoiler, so I’ll let things go here.

What I find so interesting about this period of Plantagenet decline is how people lived with what was essentially the same war through several generations. Yorkists and Lancastrians faced each other on the battlefield time and time again, two sides of a single family warring for the throne at the cost of their country and their people. In this novel, we experience the deaths of three kings (four, depending on whether you’re counting kings that made it to their coronation or not), each time throwing England into a tizzy of changing dynasties and loyalties. Such instability stifles intellectual and industrial growth; I don’t think that I can be faulted in thinking that England’s renaissance happened mainly due to the relative calm of the Tudor period. When our governments are stable, so are we. A good percentage of our politicians know this and graciously remove themselves from a seat of power when called to by the people. Figures in Silk is not a novel that will go will be touted in literature classes ten years from now, but it bears a read if only to appreciate what we have now.

Dune by Frank Herbert

I’m just going to out myself here and say that, for me, Dune is definitely a multi-read book. I knew going in that a science fiction classic wasn’t going something with a half-dressed space lady on the cover, but I didn’t realize that it would have several appendices. That’s Tolkien-level intense.

Dune, the much-beloved masterpiece by Frank Herbert, is not something that you can slam down in a day. It’s not just about the son and concubine of a fallen duke going native on a desert planet and leading a rebellion. Instead, it explores themes of ecology, religion, politics, and force of will. Herbert has created a deep and teeming universe, one that requires post-scripts about history, the ecology of the planet Arrakis, and the establishment of religion by committee. It has to be a monumental task to create a universe so intense that it requires its own dictionary (which can also be found in the back of the book).

Herbert’s novel has left me so off balance that I’m not sure how to review it. It will take me a while—and perhaps a brief look at the Cliff Notes—to pick it back up again, much less move on to the sequels. I’ve directed my little brother, he of the engineering degree, to pick this one up so that we can have a discussion about it. Granted, I’ll have to sit through a lecture about stillsuits, but it will be worth it to hear a different take on a book that requires you to sit down and think.

The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow

Exactly what makes a good book a good book? How is it defined? Do we base it on an inspiring writing style? Or something that leaves you with a message sunk deep into your bones? Or is a good book something that has stood up to the passing years, surviving fads and unpopularity? I suspect that critics and lay people have been debating this since the advent of the printing press, but I only bring it up because I am unsure of how to judge this particular work.

I’m referring to The Girls from Ames, a book that follows 11 girls from Iowa during a journey of growth and friendship. Jeffrey Zaslow, the author, has created an odd work. He’s a columnist and it shows in the book, which really can’t be defined as a novel or a collection of stories. It is really just a column that runs 320 pages. This is where my difficulty with the book comes in. Zaslow, though an entertaining and gracious person (he wrote a really nice message in my book, so I’m required to say that), seems out of place writing as a stand-in for a group of women. Unlike his book co-authored by Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture, Zaslow doesn’t disappear into the stories. In fact, it’s incredibly awkward to the reader when he repeatedly uses the word “cute” to describe the women as children or their corresponding actions. Cute is a word that the women may have used in their interviews, but it sounds awkward in prose, especially prose that comes from a man’s pen.

If I just based my judgment of this book on the writing, I would probably end my review here with some curt punctuation. Yet, I have trouble doing that. Zaslow’s book made me think back on my old childhood friendships, ones that formed in day care, high school, camp, and college. I never had a bevy of friends, but I always had one or two from each group that I would consider real “friend.” The rest were just acquaintances. Now, at 24, I find myself in NYC for almost a year and feel terribly alone. It’s my own fault—I neglect my friends terribly. Out of sight, out of mind. If I don’t see them everyday, I forget to make contact, find myself too lazy to return calls, and generally fall off the face of the planet. The Girls from Ames made me feel that loneliness and guilt more than ever. The internet has made friendships easier than ever, yet still I’m lost in a vacuum.

That’s why I can’t decide whether this is a good book or not. Do I keep my opinion totally style-based? Well, then it’s a piece of garbage. Or do I judge it based on its affect on me? That would make it a perfectly reasonable read and a good use of my time. Regardless of my final judgment, I’m going to use this as an impetus to get off my ass and start being a friend again.

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

If, by some quirk in the time-space continuum, I was able to time travel, probably one of the last places I would want to end up would be ancient Rome. It’s not the food, the constant wars, or the public toilets that bother me (derail: sat on one of those at a Roman archeological dig in Israel—I prefer to do my business when I don’t have a neighbor’s butt about five inches from mine). Nope, it’s about the murdering—the constant, constant murdering.

When I set down Robert Graves’s I, Claudius for the final time, I tried to figure out how many of the main and secondary characters had been taken out by poisoning, bludgeoning, or neglect. It’s a pretty staggering number. We have mothers killing daughters by walling them up in a room and listening to them starve to death, grandmothers gradually poisoning grandsons, and emperors getting their jaws hacked off by assassins. Neither rank nor blood can protect you from an inevitable and unnatural death.

Unless, of course, you’re an idiot. Or, at least, you’re perceived as an idiot, like the titular Claudius. Born twisted, small, and with a dreadful stammer, Claudius is immediately discounted by his family, a powerful combination of Claudians and Caesars. When he’s not being the punching bag for his mother, grandmother, sister, or a whole host of other family members, he spends his time learning and observing. It’s this quiet behavior that allows him to watch the goings-on unharmed. Claudius watches as Rome goes through three emperors: Augustus (who you might recognize as Octavian from Rome), Tiberius, and Caligula, the “little boot” who nearly ran Rome into the ground.

Throughout, I had trouble deciding whether Claudius was in fact an idiot or not. True, much of his perceived idiocy comes from his self-imposed dumb show, but the situations that he puts himself in are kind of ludicrous. Maybe it’s the comparison between him and his brother Germanicus that makes Claudius come out looking out of it, cowardly, and unmanly in the Roman sense. Then again, Claudius outlived his brother, so that shows how much I know. I’m sure that I might find the answers to my questions in the sequel, Claudius the God, where Claudius comes up against the challenge of his life as emperor. And I'll also end up hiring someone to taste-test my food as my poison paranoia grows.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

I had mentioned in my post about The White Queen that I occasionally like to avoid more taxing reading material by diving into a world of harmless, mediocre historical fiction. I try not to make it too much of a habit, but I’m not going to beat myself over the head when my job does such a fine job of doing that for me. However, I am often surprised at the number of quality historical fiction authors there are out there. They clearly immerse themselves in research and not only entertain, but elucidate. You can close the novel, pick up a history book, and immediately identify with the time, making history just that much more understandable to the modern mind—all without relying on bodice-ripper tactics and other-worldly influences. Hilary Mantel is one of those authors.

Mantel’s Wolf Hall, the 2009 Man Booker Prize winner, takes a markedly different approach to the turbulent Tudor era than most. Instead of taking place in the cushioned boudoirs of England’s ruling women, the reader spends most of the time in Thomas Cromwell’s odd little world, where a common blacksmith’s son is raised up to the highest political positions in the land. Cromwell is a walking, talking contradiction. A solid man covered in the scars of his many former trades, he blends in with the lily-white delicates of the English court. He is a former soldier and brawler, yet he conducts business with far more subtlety than nobles who have been bred to the position (most notably the bombastic Duke of Norfolk). He understands the machinations of Anne Boleyn, but seems completely mystified by the women in his own home.

Cromwell’s foil is Sir Thomas More (note: the sheer amount of Thomases in this book is ridiculous—so ridiculous that Cromwell wryly comments about it to himself), the world-renowned intellectual with a violent streak. Cromwell has the flexibility of mind to transfer his services from the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey to the king. More, unfortunately for him, sticks firmly to his worldview, one where everyone from the king down follows the True Church. Their wry interactions and respect-bordering-on-contempt for each other are almost touching, considering the two ultimately suffer the same fate.

The book isn’t without its flaws. Mantel’s cast of hundreds makes it difficult to follow without a background in this history or a very thorough viewing of The Tudors. She also uses the convention of referring to Cromwell as “he” constantly, never really mentioning his name unless another character utters it. I can understand her reasoning behind this style, as the reader can be totally immersed in the character, but it is terribly annoying. When Cromwell interacts with other male characters, which is most of the time, it’s crazy complicated keeping everyone straight. Yet, the book is a valiant work of seriously absorbing literature. I hear through the grapevine that Mantel will be coming out with a sequel, so my Kindle and I will wait with bated breath.

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

I have a confession to make: I’ve been known to read trashy books. Now, this isn’t something that I like to shout from the rooftops, but if you spent your days reading Chaucer, you would unwind with something less cerebral too. I’ve done the romance novel thing, but the formula becomes grating after a while. So, my most turned to brainless literature is mediocre historical fiction.

I don’t think Philippa Gregory started out as a mediocre artist. Her break-out novel, The Other Boleyn Girl, was pretty gripping and presented a side of that worn out Tudor saga that I hadn’t heard before. Unfortunately, her work has started to go down a long, dull hill. She’s now turning her attention to the final years of the Plantagenet reign over English with The White Queen.

The White Queen follows the rise of Elizabeth Woodville, a commoner widow, who captures the eye of the young King Edward IV and rises to be the queen of the penultimate reign of a Plantagenet monarch. This period of time has been much discussed by artists and historians as an era of greed and blood. Many a historian has portrayed Edward IV’s queen as the head of a family of grasping bloodsuckers who wormed their way into the highest positions in the kingdom, much like the Boleyns a few generations later. Shakespeare even dedicated his pen to a play based on the period: Richard III. There’s an incredible amount to tell and so many points of view to take in.

Unfortunately, Gregory decides to take the least believable route. Inspired by the whispers of witchcraft that surrounded the Woodville family (which was supposedly descended from a water goddess), Gregory portrays Elizabeth Woodville, her mother, and daughter Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII) as practitioners of wizardry. What made Edward fall for Elizabeth? A ring tied to a string. What made a boat carrying important dignitaries toss violently over the sea? A storm called up by witches’ breath. What withers Richard III’s sword arm and cripples his health? A curse and a locket. Really, Philippa, really?

I think her choice in plot devices shows an author taking the easy way out. Elizabeth Woodville, whether you liked her or not, was a force to be reckoned with. She defied an ordained king by claiming sanctuary for herself and her children in a basement. She suffered through accusations that her husband had been a bastard, sired by a lowly English bowman. She climbed to the highest position in the land and hung there through some of the greatest storms in English royal history. And Gregory credits it to witchcraft? Ugh.

Seriously, if you find this era interesting, pick up Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour, a hefty novel that relies on history and the strength of the characters. Gregory would indeed need witchcraft to reach her standard of work. Sadly, I’m probably going to end up reading Gregory’s next book, which will be a depiction of the same events, just from the point of view of Margaret Beaufort, mother to Henry Tudor. I will grit my teeth in irritation, then maybe through my Kindle in the trash, but I will read it shamefaced. Why am I so weak?!