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December 04, 2006
Books I Read in November
New Total: 106
The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls
Publishers Weekly: Freelance writer Walls doesn't pull her punches. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents—just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book—were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. Apartment walls so thin they heard all their neighbors? What a bonus—they'd "pick up a little Spanish without even studying." Why feed their pets? They'd be helping them "by not allowing them to become dependent." While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents—walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star—was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. Buck-toothed Jeannette even tried making her own braces when she heard what orthodontia cost. One by one, each child escaped to New York City. Still, it wasn't long before their parents appeared on their doorsteps. "Why not?" Mom said. "Being homeless is an adventure."
My Review: I loved this book, which was our Novemb.er book club selection. It was heartbreaking and funny, and above-all thought-provoking. I'm still wondering at the question, "were their parents abusive"? A quick read that wasn't "easy".
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My Horizontal Life
by Chelsea Handler
Publishers Weekly: Opening with a cute story from when she was seven and photographed her parents having sex, stand-up comedian Handler goes on to discuss the virtues of the one-night stand, which amount to having sex early enough so you're not months into a relationship before you discover he's into "anal beads and duct tape." She discusses her quest for sex with a "black man," which doesn't work out because the date she finds on ChocolateSingles.com has a penis so large, she "would have had to be the size of the Lincoln Tunnel to accommodate that thing." After him, there's a "little midget," but she sobers up before sleeping with him. Next come a number of would-be partners with penises too small to consider. Finally, there's a guy Handler does sleep with, only an embarrassing incident involving a "giant skid mark" prevents her from seeing him again. By the end, Handler considers settling down with one man, which might actually net her more sex than these mostly unconsummated one-night stands. Anyone who laughs at the mere mention of vaginas and penises may find Handler's book almost as much fun as getting drunk and waking up in some stranger's bed.
My Review: This was a fun break after reading about Jews hiding from the Nazis in Berlin during WWII (see below). I was surprised to get through the book and discover that she doesn't *actually* have sex with half of the guys in the book, making me think that *I* could write a similar book with equal success. Certainly there's room in publishing for a detailed account of my Shanghai breast massage?
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The Nazi Officer's Wife
by by Edith H. Beer
Publishers Weekly: Born to a middle-class, nonobservant Jewish family, Beer was a popular teenager and successful law student when the Nazis moved into Austria. In a well-written narrative that reads like a novel, she relates the escalating fear and humiliating indignities she and others endured, as well as the anti-Semitism of friends and neighbors. Using all their resources, her family bribed officials for exit visas for her two sisters, but Edith and her mother remained, due to lack of money and Edith's desire to be near her half-Jewish boyfriend, Pepi. Eventually, Edith was deported to work in a labor camp in Germany. Anxious about her mother, she obtained permission to return to Vienna, only to learn that her mother was gone. In despair, Edith tore off her yellow star and went underground. Pepi, himself a fugitive, distanced himself from her. A Christian friend gave Edith her own identity papers, and Edith fled to Munich, where she met and--despite her confession to him that she was Jewish--married Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member. Submerging her Jewish identity at home and at work, Edith lived in constant fear, even refusing anesthetic in labor to avoid inadvertently revealing the truth about her past. She successfully maintained the facade of a loyal German hausfrau until the war ended. Her story is important both as a personal testament and as an inspiring example of perseverance in the face of terrible adversity.
My Review: This was an important book from a historical perspective, but it lacked the narrative tension that would have made it exciting to listen to on audiobook. Even though the Nazis were breathing down her neck, there is little hold-your-breath suspense. Also of note: the audiobook was read by the same woman who does my much-beloved Amelia Peabody mysteries, which was a bit jarring when occasionally I would think that we were supposed to be in 1910s Egypt on a dig.
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The Art of the Novel
by Milan Kundera
Book Description: Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the post-psychological novel.
My Review: Blah...made me realize that--despite reading 100+books in the last two years--that I'm really not well read at all. Clearly I need to go back and spend some serious time with the classics.
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The Denial of Death
by Ernest Becker
Book Description: Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing.
My Review: So grand, so sweeping, my head hurts. (And to be completely honest, I'm only half-way through, since I can only take it a couple of pages at a time...)
