Wool

Much like its namesake fabric, I overall think Wool is pretty great. It's got a kick-ass/take names female protagonist. She is not a sexy teen, romantic angst is not her raison d'etre, and she is good with a wrench. Stoic Power Dream Girl? Howey's dystopia is richly imagined and gets more disturbing and claustrophobic with every detail. ALSO, there are a lot of stairs in the world of Wool, and I swear that just reading so much about people walking up & down them actually made my glutes *slightly* tighter (I want to believe!). There are tons of original ideas in the novel, and I felt like I was reading a new writer with a brain chock full o' fresh - Hallelujah.

But you know how it is - you get a cozy wool sweater, you bundle up in it, and halfway through the day the itching begins. This book definitely had a few itchy spots. Unfortunately, this is a book that's all about the plot and action and twists - and most of my issues were with said twists. So, through the MAGIC of contrasting colors, I present to you some secret text. If you've read the book, highlight below for my spoilery complaints:

[The kids in the second silo?! First of all, they were willing to murder Solo but then came along quietly when Juliette spoke sternly to them? Nope.

Why make Bernard into this grand evil character/super villain, and then deny us the pleasure of seeing him get his come-uppance? I know the twist at the end wouldn't work with the readers knowing it was Bernard and not Lukas, but that didn't play for me either - why would Bernard try to leave the blanket anyway? Was he committing suicide? It doesn't make sense that he would murder anyone who tried to interfere without a thought, but then just lose the will to live when caught & challenged.

Also, the romance. It felt pretty shoe-horned in. I'd have rather had Lukas be Juliette's estranged brother, or maybe a female friend she makes...the book didn't need a star-crossed lovers motif. I'm always incredulous when people fall in love, to the point of risking their lives for each other, via a couple deep conversations and lingering glances. My heart is made of stone and I like it that way - and yes, I think The Notebook is a bad movie. DEAL WITH IT.]

If you've haven't read the book, should you? I'm leaning toward yes - I'll be picking up the next in the series and hoping that Howey keeps getting better & better. I think the world he created is fascinating, and I'd love to see some novels set in it that focus more on the day-to-day of the inhabitants, and maybe the mysteries of their past, vs. political conspiracies & military action. The stage is set, he just needs the right play.

3 stairmasters set to EXTREME out of 5.

Tenth of December and Store of the Worlds: A Surreal Stories Twofer

 

I feel like the question authors dread the most is “where do you get your ideas?” because a) there’s not, like, a box somewhere and b) it always has this weird subtext of “tell us the secretsss please precious secretsss we wants to work from home too pleeeease.” Also, for tons of authors, it’s pretty obvious where they get their ideas: from the news, or from their lives, or from scanning the best-seller list. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – some of the most amazing books have their magic in the way the story is told, not necessarily the premise or plot twists.

But sometimes you just got to go to another place – you don’t want to read about sad suburbia or ripped-from-the-headlines mystery & crime or another goddamned paranormal romance. You want something ORIGINAL, baby! Something that will actually make you shake the book and say “where did you get these ideas you weird little fuckers?!”

For those moments, try George Saunders or the late, great Robert Sheckley. In Saunders’ 10^th of December, there are so many visions of an absurdist yet completely possible future America that I vacillated between being amused (“ha! Can you imagine?”) to terrified (“Oh god I can imagine…is this real life???”). I predictably loved the most ‘out-there’ stories, like “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” about a father trying to ‘keep up with the Jones’ and their living lawn ornaments.  The other tales, like the title story, were more realistic, but no less engrossing. Disappointment and failed potential and middle-class longing seemed to be big themes. Yet somehow I emerged un-depressed - Saunders has a way with words that can make you laugh through the tears.

Sheckley’s work has a similar sense of humor – he used his super-powered imagination to ask "what if?" and followed the trail wherever it took him. This was my first introduction to his work, and I’ll definitely be checking out more. He turns all of the stale conventions of science-fiction & fantasy on their heads in smart, witty stories about government sanctioned cat & mouse games and "land races," alien worlds with killer winds, well-intentioned but bumbling "first contact" teams, spaceships made of self-aware specialized components, resurrected soldiers...etc, etc, etc. The potential Twilight Zone scenarios go on & on. Sci-fi & speculative fiction can sometimes fall back on predictable tropes, but Sheckley feels sharp and fresh. For stories written in the 1950s, that's no small feat.

Saunders & Sheckley in 2016. Step into something new...with BOOKS! Doo doo doo DOO.

Tenth of December: 3.5 ml of Vivistif out of 5.

Store of the Worlds: 4 minutes in an alternate non-nuclear winter earth out of 5. 

The Dog Stars

I am a very, very fidgety & restless person. I burn NikeFuel like you wouldn't believe - a fact that, sadly, hasn't helped me keep a trim figure (sometimes I am fidgeting while eating ice cream), but does make it very annoying to try and sit quietly on the couch with me for any length of time.

So it was a nice change when I read this book and found it had a calming effect on me.

"But, Jane, isn't this a book set in a world devastated by a super-flu where the only people left must defend themselves against bandits, blood disease, and crushing loneliness?"

Yes. Yes it is. But there is also a lot of nature! And an old dog. And hiking, and fly fishing. The sun dapples things and there are descriptions of creeks' burbling. The main character has ended up at an airport with a working plane and some not yet expired fuel, so there are passages where he's flying about the country and looking down on the quiet little patchwork landscape (it's hard to see flu-wrought devastation from 10,000 feet in the air). It's a book you sit down with and spend some quality, non-fidgety time with.

I don't mean to say this is a happy novel; it certainly isn't. But it's not bombastic, or frenetic. The overall tone & pace of the novel actually make the "action sequences" much more unsettling and powerful, and I appreciated not having to wade through a ton of noise as I got to know the protagonist. Also, have I mentioned there is a sweet old dog? Good boy.

4 precious, precious post-apocalypse cans of Coca-Cola out of 5.

After the Apocalypse

I have definitely crafted an apocalypse survival plan with a few people ("you get the guns, I'll get the cans - we make our way north and rendezvous at my parent's cottage in Nova Scotia where we can seal off the only road onto the island.") But if zombies *actually* happened I would probably be caught wearing impractical high heels, ignore the warnings, and get taken down within the first 10 minutes while standing in line for an iced coffee.

We all think we're much more heroic and resourceful than we really are, and it's easy to picture ourselves rising from the ashes, the demise of processed food finally helping us sculpt some wicked abs, which we display at all times while wielding a machete and scavenging for supplies like a warrior princess (No? Just my daydreams? Cool). Maureen F. McHugh's nine stories, all set in some sort of post-apocalypse or dystopian future (those pesky zombies, dirty bomb attacks, economic depression, drought), immerse you in stories that feel much more realistic and more raw than those found in most end of the world dramas. There's nothing glossy or cartoonish about a resentful mother dragging her whiny teenager through a starving America, or a Mad Cow-like illness infecting the chicken nugget supply and damning a generation to a slow, paralyzing dementia. It would all be really, really depressing if it wasn't such a breath of fresh air in what can admittedly be a somewhat stagnant genre.

4 death-dealing processed nuggets out of 5! That is probably the way we're all going to go out, actually.

Chrysalids

First of all, I chose to use this cover as illustration because, and I can't stress this enough, this book has nothing to do with human/praying mantis hybrids wearing fur ruffs and samurai armor, and brandishing spears. Not once does this happen. If there is a book about that, send it to me, because it sounds great. But it's not this book.

This book is about less-dramatic mutants (your six-toed individuals, your telepathic individuals...etc. Well, actually, that's pretty much it). Our telepathic friends are living in a post-,post-,post-apocalyptic USA, where deviation from the norm is not tolerated. I first read this book in high school, and with the wisdom I've accumulated since then I now see that they were trying to teach us a *very special* lesson about tolerance, conformity, and nuclear fallout.

But I have ALWAYS loved mutants, because my mom has two earlobes on one ear. So, thanks for wasting my time, high school English class.

To summarize, John Wyndham is great and you knew that since you read Day of the Triffids and realized that plants are plotting against us, and secretly that's the reason you eat salad, not to watch your weight like you tell everyone.

6 toes out of 5! Hmm, no, it's not that good. You could also mutate fewer appendages, couldn't you? 3 super-strong radiation enhanced super-toes out of 5.

Zone One

Oh this book is great. Zombie novel-y enough to keep a buffoon like me entertained, but smart enough to make me feel smug reading it on the subway. In other words, this book is like:

• Donuts accompanied by 18 year old Glenfiddich
• Watching an amusing and, yet, incredibly moving and poignant Pixar movie. So, all of them, except Cars & Cars 2 (the headlights should be the eyes! The headlights!)
• Spending all afternoon reading Star magazines at the nail salon while getting a super classy French manicure
• Taking B.S. college classes like Pop Culture Studies where the homework is watching The Simpsons.

Read this book and fall in love with the Zombie novel again! I bet that quote makes the back cover of the paperback edition, mark my words.

4 out of 5 metaphors showing us that WE ARE THE ZOMBIES omg my liiiiiiiiife!

World Made By Hand

In a lot of post-apocalyptic novels, the world ends in a ridiculous explosion of explosions and vampires and zombies and vampire zombies and then the narrative is about the normal people left over trying to fight off zombie vampire explosions. This quiet book takes a different tack, imagining a world that, ok, ended in a couple of big explosions and then just slowly churned on. Basically everyone is forced to become Amish, except people still fight back when they get ice cream cones shoved in their faces.

I liked this book but I wished for a bit more drama. Also the food descriptions got a little pornographic. I guess when there's no electricity you embrace the simple pleasures but I got a little tired of reading about creamed chicken stew and pullet eggs.

An enjoyable but forgetful 2.5 handmade beeswax candles out of 5.