the perfect iphone case for book lovers

I apologize for the blur, but the photo is from my old iphone.  The photo quality sucks, which is one reason I got the new iphone, but of course, my old case did not fit.  So when I went looking for a new one, I wanted something that screamed "me" all over it -- and found this one.  It's two stacks of books laying on their sides with spines out.

Maybe something to keep in mind for your book reader friends or relatives at holiday time?

* The Year of the Ladybird, by Graham Joyce

9780575115316
Gollancz/Orion, 2013
265 pp

hardcover (UK)

The Year of the Ladybird surprisingly has much the same feel as Stephen King's recent Joyland, both set in kitschy kind of amusement places that used to be everywhere but which now are found largely in memories.    They're also both coming-of-age-stories, both have a slight infusion of the supernatural, and both capture a snapshot of  a certain place at a certain time.  Both main heroes start out young and naive; by the end of the story they've learned something not only about themselves, but about the way the world really works.  Ghosts and fortunetellers play a role in both; King's excursion into the ethereal has much more to do with the plot of the story, while Joyce's foray into the phantasmal is much more limited to the psyche of the main character. To be really honest, while I enjoyed Mr. Joyce's writing here, the ghost story neither grabbed nor thrilled me; nor did it give me even the slightest outbreak of goosebumps.  I'm also not a huge fan of coming-of-age stories either, but what's really well done here is the time-capsule element.  He describes this small piece of yesteryear so nicely that it's almost like being there, and the wide variety of people around the main character really enliven what could have otherwise been a been there, read-that-dozens-of-times kind of book.

 It's 1976.  England is sweltering, the political right is in turmoil as fears of immigrant job takeovers loom large and people are starting to not only notice but to get angry.  A heat wave has enveloped large parts of the country, water usage has been restricted, and and large clouds of lady bugs (ladybirds) are everywhere. In that milieu, David, a young college student, has decided that rather than take up his stepdad's offer of employment in his construction business, he'll be working at a holiday camp in the seaside town of Skegness.  The story is told from his own first-person perspective, and as he notes, in 1976, the "heyday of the British holiday camps had slipped," because cheaper flights were allowing more people to take their vacations in exotic locations.  David had  gone there largely out of curiosity: earlier in his childhood,  he'd found a photo showing his real father and himself at age three with the word "Skegness" written on the back.  He doesn't remember it, of course, and his mom and stepdad are unhappy with his choice to work there, but he takes the job anyway.  He works as a "Greencoat," someone who does pretty much anything, helping with the entertainments for all ages -- calling bingo, supervising sand-castle building among the younger kids, doing show lighting etc., etc.  While he's there, he meets all manner of people who also work in the holiday camp, falls for the wrong woman before finding the right one,  is introduced to an ultra right-wing group called  "The Way Forward," and learns how things really work in the world. David is bothered throughout the story with a sense of dread as if something terrible's about to happen, and he also encounters two strange figures along the seaside whom no one else but he can see.  

Butlin's Skegness Holiday Camp, from bygonebutlins.com

If you've read Water for Elephants, you're familiar with how well the author described day-to-day life and the behind-the-scenes rivalries and relationships in the the depression-era circus; Mr. Joyce does the same here for the holiday camp. There's a great variety of characters that he brings to life so nicely: the tough-guy abusive husband who pays David to look after his wife and report back to him, the magician, the Italian singer, the fortuneteller, David's constantly intoxicated roommate, the dancer, as well as the people in charge and who work behind the scenes.  The tourists, of course, are a large part of the story, as well as the daily activities -- sandcastle building, dance contests, donkey rides for the overweight women, beauty contests, bingo -- all of which are rewarded with gala ceremonies and rock candy.  I'm not sure if there's an equivalent here in America since in summer it's mainly kids who go to camp, but it doesn't matter -- the camp is described so well that a clear picture will form in your mind as you read.  And all through the novel runs the metaphor of the ladybirds in flight. 

As I noted, the ghost story isn't frightening, and I think it's just here to illustrate a point and aid in David's arrival at self awareness.  Considering that I read this book hoping for even a mild frisson of fright, I was a bit disappointed; considering the entire book is about the progression of the main character as he comes into his own awareness of the world around him, the ghost story definitely plays second fiddle here.  What kept me reading were the holiday camp scenes, the descriptions of  growing political unrest and turmoil of the time, and the people in this book.  The ending may seem a little ambiguous, but as I always say, if authors always wrap things up nice and tidy without leaving any questions behind, what's to think about? 

If you're looking for an eerie, unearthly sort of read, this isn't the one.  If you're into the bildungsroman genre, then this one may interest you as well.  Even better, if  the appeal lies in picking up a book with a wide range of characters, or getting sucked into novel where the author paints a portrait of a particular place at a particular time, then definitely add this one to your tbr pile.   

*This House is Haunted, by John Boyne

9781590516799
Other Press, 2013
304 pp

paperback
arc, thank you, Other Press!

[reposted at my oddly weird fiction page of this blog]

"... any story which concerns itself with the afterlife and with forces that the human mind cannot truly understand risks disquiet for the reader."

In the spirit of great timing, being released in the US this month is This House is Haunted,  a perfect Halloween read, especially for people who appreciate and enjoy a good ghostly yarn or for those who find happiness in spending a few hours immersed in the supernatural.  It incorporates a number of my favorite components, including a Victorian setting, a governess, an English country home, and of course, a ghost that has the run of the house and goes around scaring people half to death or worse.  As in many well-written ghostly tales, there's also a mystery underlying the source of the haunting.   Done before --  yes, for sure, but definitely not like John Boyne does it here, where he's put together an entertaining  ghost story by incorporating elements of various writers of the Victorian era, paying tribute to their works in his own.  And it all starts with Dickens.

In fact, Eliza Caine, 21,  the illustrious heroine of this novel, actually blames Charles Dickens for her father's death, and following that logic, he's probably also responsible for everything that happens afterward.   It's 1867, London, and Eliza has accompanied her sickly father, "an impassioned reader" to a reading by the author against her better judgment. They had an enjoyable time, but within a day or so her father is dead.  Eliza works as a teacher, but when her father's death leaves her unable the pay the rent on their house, she decides to apply to an advertisement for a governess she's seen in the paper. She is accepted right away and leaves London for the first time in her life, taking the train to Norfolk and Gaudlin Hall, her new home, only to find that there are no parents around, only two young children, Isabella and Eustace Westerley.  It isn't long until she realizes that there is something wrong there, and that she is the victim of a vengeful spirit who frequents the place and makes Eliza's life a living hell. When she appeals for information from the locals, she's met with a wall of silence, but her curiosity on one score leads to information that all of her predecessors have been frightened away or have met terrible ends.  Eliza knows she absolutely must get to the heart of the mystery before she becomes the spirit's next victim and the children are left alone once more.

Deborah Kerr, The Innocents

My guess is that the author had a great time while writing this book. It's a really good one -- a  tale probably best enjoyed on a stormy evening under a blanket with a hot cup of tea.   There are a number of  nods to Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and Henry James in this novel as well as  a hint of the gothic.  While some parts come across as a bit tongue-in-cheek, making me think "parody",  the literary elements are very recognizable in terms of tropes, names, and style. Where this book shines  is in its characters, especially that of  Eliza, who is well beyond her timeframe in her thinking.  While she tends to be naive in the face of the supernatural at first, she is no hands-fluttering  standard Gothic or Victorian heroine who needs rescuing. She is extremely rational, independent, and courageous, but at the same time genuinely nurturing and caring toward her young charges. Taking no for an answer or being brushed off by the male characters (one Mr. Raisin comes to mind, oh! How Dickensian can you get!) who attempt to sweep her under the rug just isn't in her nature, although she is prone to the odd romantic reverie here and there in terms of the men she admires.

Perhaps the ghost story is not as frightening as others I've read, although the ending is downright chilling, but for me what makes a tale of the supernatural work best  is the aura of atmosphere that an author can produce and sustain throughout  his/her story. That's definitely part and parcel of this novel, as the author sets the level of "disquiet" on high with the villagers' silence,  the servants who appear and disappear quietly, the house and the untended children, creepy happenings and the procession of governesses to name only a few things. To his credit, he doesn't let the backstory out all at once either, allowing his readers to pick up a little bit at a time until the whole mystery behind the haunting is revealed. This House is Haunted is perfect for people who enjoy a good ghost story once in a while.  If you're thinking that you're going to get gore and splatter here, move along.  It's not that kind of book.  My advice -- go grab a copy, curl up in a blanket and prepare to have fun.  If there happens to be a thunderstorm brewing while you're reading it, even better!!

fiction from Ireland

It's October, bring on the ghosties and other creepy things!

photo from viola.bz

October brings with it Halloween, and as far as reading goes, Halloween means a huge stack of creepy, dread-inducing, and scary tomes. I hope the ones I've chosen for this month are going to be good.  I love reading a good ghost story, supernatural tale, weird fiction, or horror novel but I prefer not to go down the roads of splatter, torture, or anything gross.  Nor do I care at all for zombies.  I'm probably the only person on the planet that isn't crazy about zombies -- I just don't see their point. Okay, so they're dead, they come back, they eat people and it gets all gross so I won't read about them anyway.  And zombie romance? Vampire romance? Ewww. Forget that. I like my horror cerebral -- I like imagining it all in my head, although sometimes that can backfire on me, and in one instance, caused me not to sleep for a couple of days. The story that kept me up with lights on is a story called  "Beach Head," by Daniel Le Moal. I originally read it in Volume One of Ellen Datlow's series The Best Horror of the Year ; when I wrote about it I noted that there is a line at which horror becomes no  longer fun for me -- and this story crossed it.  In the strictest sense of the word, I was indeed horrified, but this one went well beyond my comfort zone.   I give much credit to the writer: the images his writing conjured were extremely vivid, but downright depressing and I hope to god I never see another story like this one again.  I won't deny that the story was very well written, but there are just some things I don't want to see in my head.  On the other hand, I love reading supernatural stories because they are, imho, a lot like crime fiction.  Well-written ghost stories set up a situation that leads to a number of questions that you want answered; a good writer keeps the tension going just long enough until you have a solution of some sort.  The best horror stories are the ones where the author slowly builds and intensifies a certain feeling of dread before things get resolved one way or another.  

So, on the horror/supernatural stack this month so far (but this can change at any time):

John Boyne, This House is Haunted (which I've already read but I'll give it a reread and I'll be discussing it shortly)

Graham Joyce, The Year of the Ladybird: A Ghost Story

Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

Dan Simmons, The Abominable

There are also a couple of literary novels I want to get through this month -- The House of Journalists, by Tim Finch and The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri -- as well as new crime: Arnaldur Indridason's latest (which I'm reading now) called Strange Shores,  and two nonfiction books, The Brothers, by Stephen Kinzer and Stanley Crouch's Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker.   That's the plan anyway. We'll see what actually happens!

September Reading Roundup

If I've learned one thing this month, it's that it is truly impossible to stay current with every book that comes into the house. I might have had a good shot at it but I got a little slowed down with Dissident Gardens, which I spent well over a week and a half reading.  Keeping up with new arrivals just isn't a reality so my little mini-challenge just fizzled. Oh well!

Here's what I did manage:

literature/fiction:

Dissident Gardens, by Jonathan Lethem

Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent

American Rust, by Philipp Meyer (discussion soon)

Lost Luggage, by Jordi Punti (discussion soon)

odd/weird fiction 

 The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, by Laird Barron

The Best Horror of the Year,  Vol. 5, ed. Ellen Datlow

crime fiction/mystery

Ruin Value, by J. Sydney Jones

Treasure Hunt, by Andrea Camilleri 

A Crack in the Wall, by Claudia Piňeiro 

Sandrine's Case, by Thomas H. Cook 

nonfiction

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr. 

still reading

The Kills, by Richard House 

The Yellow Sign and Other Stories: The Complete Weird Tales of Robert W. Chambers, ed. S.T. Joshi

 

just stuck my nose into

The Abominable, by Dan Simmons (thanks, Em!)

 

And now, the  other book-related stuff:

1) Books I'm giving away this month -- for US readers only.    -- Unlike many other things in life, for you, this deal is absolutely 100% totally free;  I'll even pay postage to get it to its new home.  All you need to do is to be the first to leave a comment here, and then email me at oakesn@gmail.com with contact info INCLUDING A HOME ADDRESS, PLEASE!! 1st come, first served. No address email, no book:

books are posted on the side, but if you can't see them, here they are:

--fiction--
1. MaddAdam, by Margaret Atwood (bought 2 by mistake, so one's up for grabs)

(Night Film has been taken!)

 2) Added to the  wishlist this month (subtitled: huh? never heard of those!):

 crime fiction:

The Good Suicides, by Antonio Hill
Murder in the Dark, by Dan Turell

 general fiction:

Black Flies, by Shannon Burke

The Dog Fighter: A Novel, by Marc Bojanowski 

Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon

the weird, the strange, supernatural etc:
At Fear's Altar, by Richard Gavin
Omens, by Richard Gavin
Lovecraft's Monsters, by Neil Gaiman
American Supernatural Tales, ed. S.T. Joshi

nonfiction

From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation, by Umberto Eco

Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II, by Farah Jasmine Griffin 
Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, by Carla Kaplan
The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives, by Sasha Abramsky
 

 3) Books bought this month (subtitled: I read strange books)

• Disappeared, by Anthony Quinn (crime fiction) 
• The Breath of Night, by Michael Arditti (fiction/literature)
• Helium, by Jaspreet Singh  (fiction/literature)
• Dissident Gardens, by Jonathan Lethem (fiction/literature)
•  Supernatural Noir, ed. Ellen Datlow (weird/supernatural fiction)
• He Arrived at Dusk, by R.C. Ashby (weird/supernatural fiction)
• Ghosts by Gaslight: Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense, ed. Jack Dann (weird/supernatural fiction)
• Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King (horror)
• Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, by Stanley Crouch (nonfiction)

4) The book group read  American Rust by Philipp Meyer, and while we had a superb discussion, most of the group felt that the novel was too bleak. I didn't.   I loved this book absolutely and can't wait to dig into Meyer's newest novel.  

That's it for September.  Happy reading!

*Dissident Gardens, by Jonathan Lethem

9780385534932
Doubleday, 2013
384 pp

hardcover
 
"To be, unlike Rose, married to her last instant to the first and only man who'd had her.  Yet at the same time to discover, as did Rose, but to bear the knowledge more capably, that every cell is infiltrated in the end." 

Dissident Gardens has definitely earned a place on this year's list of my favorite books.  Not that I got every single subtlety or nuance in this novel -- I'm sure I missed a lot -- but I do love irony, and this book is filled with it.  I spent a long time on this novel, reading incredibly slowly to get the most out of it that my casual reader self is capable of,  and I was hooked from page one.  I'll say this up front:  it's not a novel complete with traditional plot or a story that moves cleanly through linear time/space, so if the lack of the normal doesn't do it for you, you'll probably want to pass. For me, it's all about the characters, the ideas, and the writing.  And I absolutely loved it.

Just very briefly, because this book is so difficult to summarize and because it's a book a person should really read for themselves, the novel examines three generations of the family and the legacy of Rose Angrush Zimmer,  Jewish, single mom, community-minded activist and ardent Communist, the consummate “Party-made New Woman, unforgiving in her nature and intoxicating in her demands, her abrupt swerves and violent exclusions.” It spans several decades, moving through the history of various radical movements and changing faces of ideologies, all the while building on each generation, their worldviews and their reactions to what's happening in their world. It's also a novel examining relationships, especially, but definitely not limited to,  the one  between Rose and her daughter Miriam.   There are three generations at the heart of this book, but it is also peopled with a variety of other colorful characters.

Rose Zimmer, who at the beginning of the novel is being tossed out of the Communist Party for having slept with a black detective who lives in her neighborhood of Sunnyside Gardens,  is the mother of Miriam, who quits college and Rose after discovering the Greenwich Village scene at seventeen.  She's also an activist in her own right, tries hard "not-to-be-Rose," but

 "mothered in disappointment, in embittered moderation, in the stifling of unreasonable expectations, in second-generation cynicism towards collapsed gleaming visions of the future, the morose detachment of the suburbs, Miriam was in fact a Bolshevik of the five senses.  Her whole body demanded revolution and gleaming cities in which revolution could be played out, her whole character screamed to see high towers raised up and destroyed." 

While Miriam tries to do her own thing, she's still deep down very much Rose's daughter; she also loves her. It's an odd relationship -- she hates Rose, yet she loves her, for example, in

  “the ceaseless arrangement of mother and daughter coiled in fury at each other yet still bulwarked together inside this apartment against the prospect of anything and anyone else outside.”

Miriam marries Tommy Gogan, a staunch pacifist and Irish folk singer who with his brothers plays the club scene; she changes his life when she convinces him that he needs to go solo and write more political songs, starting with catching the life stories of the downtrodden in his music.  Together they live in a commune housed in a brownstone, participate all the sit-ins, boycotts and protests of their era, and have a son, Sergius, who they send to a Quaker school in Pennsylvania where he lives a more quiet life and learns the guitar.  His birthright, as the author notes, is "full hippie and half secular Jew." When Sergius is older, he looks to Cicero Lookins, a protégé of Rose, a "child-prisoner of her stewardship,"  who is trying to exorcise her from his mind as well, a college professor and son of the black policeman Rose had slept with in the 1950s. Sergius wants to connect with his now-dead mother, whom he last saw as a little boy,  by trying to find out about her from people who knew her.  Woven in and out of their stories are the stories of others in their respective orbits, as well as a look at a New York City over the decades.

Dissident Gardens is a story of  ideologies, revolutionaries and radicals and the disappointments they often bring, held fast by some while often collapsing in the bigger scheme into dreaded anachronism as the world moves on,  and it's a story about a family matriarch and how a piece of herself and her legacy, even if unwanted,  continues through each succeeding generation and in the lives of others she's touched.  I absolutely loved this book, and from a casual reader's perspective, the only negative thing I really have to say about it is that while I enjoyed how the author just lets loose sometimes and allows his characters their respective spaces to muse and ponder, sometimes these parts get boggy and detract from the topic at hand.  Otherwise, this is truly one of the best novels I've read this year.  I loved the characters, the ideological backdrop, the mother-daughter struggles, but most especially I loved watching the movement of history and change.  There's so much in this book that as I noted, it's difficult to summarize or to even provide a feel for what you might expect here - so it's a book best experienced rather than read about.  It's also a novel that is getting mixed reviews -- but a review, no matter who writes it, is a matter of opinion, and mine is that it is most incredible. Highly recommended.

*Treasure Hunt, by Andrea Camilleri

9780143122623
Penguin, 2013
originally published as La caccia al tesoro,  2010
translated by (who else!) Stephen Sartarelli

278 pp
softcover

"... it wasn't a fiction, but a reality, though a reality so absurd as to be very nearly a fiction."

My first love in reading is crime fiction, something I've loved since I was really young.  Not just the run of the mill stuff -- I have an ongoing love affair with international crime which honestly, with the exception of real domestic noir (a la Cornell Woolrich or Jim Thompson), is head and shoulders above any other.   For me mystery series come and they go; sometimes I might try one or two before I beg off and move on looking for something better than the last -- but Camilleri's Montalbano novels are among my favorite books in my gigantic crime fiction library.  It's not so much because of their "whodunit" quality or for the crimes contained between their covers, but because of the people who populate  these books.  I've been with Montalbano and his crew since the beginning, so by now, in my head,  they've become sort of like old friends.  Treasure Hunt marks the 16th installment of this fantastic series, and while it's not my favorite of the bunch, it's still quite good, filled with all of the familiar components that make these novels consistently unique and a pleasure to read. 

When I opened this book yesterday afternoon, I knew that everything else on the planet would just have to wait because it was going to be my best friend for the next few hours. I even got up at 4:30 this morning to finish it because I wanted absolutely no noise, no interruptions, no nothing to come between me and the latest exploits of Inspector Salvo Montalbano.  You can read about them here, on the crime page -- but by no means let this be your intro to the series.