The Silent Wife

I got married last weekend. Yes - I looked fabulous. Oh, you were going to ask me what I chose to read during this days leading up to this momentous occasion? Obviously I chose A.S.A. Harrison's novel about a marriage torn apart by a lack of passion, the slow march of time, and deep emotional problems. MAZEL!

Thankfully, the book wasn't gripping enough for me to slowly lower it while saying to myself "I've made a huge mistake." I'm having a hard time seeing how this is billed as this season's Gone Girl. While the latter had more twists and turns than an episode of Passions (Timmy!), most of Harrison's novel is coldly realistic. Instead of a bananas thrill-ride with crazy people doing batshit things, it's just sad people doing depressing and predictable things. Ain't nobody got time for that.

When the denouement happens, it's not really a twist or a shock. You know when you sit on a slide, but your skirt rides up, so you awkwardly start to squeeeeak down the thing slowly and everyone looks at you and you get a wicked leg burn?* It's like that. A slow, un-pretty descent into the inevitable.

2 frosty WASP-approved gin & tonics served with a side of regret out of 5.

*Yes, it happened to me recently. Why do you ask?

Wave

I have gone on record as a lover of sad documentaries and non-fiction. I have actually said the words "sometimes a good cry is important," when referring to experiencing things like Dear Zachary, A Day No Pigs Would Die, The Invisible War, Columbine, and One Nation Under Dog.

So, after reading Sonali Deraniyagala's memoir about losing her entire family in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, I understandably wanted to punch myself in the face. Hard. Books like this, describing devastating experiences like hers, are stark reminders of what a privilege it is to decide to feel like crying.

5 out of 5.

The Lies of Locke Lamora

You know those tumblrs that are mash-ups of Game of Thrones with lines from other TV shows? Arrested Westeros is obviously the best. Others are somehow less than the sum of their parts. This book is like if someone made an amazing Game of Thrones x Ocean's 11 tumblr (A Song of Heist & Fire? That's a freebie; go for it), but, surprise! the tumblr is actually a great fantasy novel with a terrible cover. As you can see.

But inside! You got your lovable band of con-men tricksters, your mysterious villains, your sexy shark-fighting ladies, your sky-high towers made of alien glass, and capers oh so many capers and cons and heists. It's so fun. It should be made into a movie, or, better yet, an HBO miniseries (so hot right now) so we can all spend more time with Locke Lamora and his lovable cabal of mischievous orphan tricksters, The Gentlemen Bastards. That last part sounds pretty cheesy but I promise you, no one breaks into song, and Scott Lynch throws in plenty of swear words and blood & guts.

The world-building is fantastic, just enough detail without overwhelming. I almost wished I knew more about the setting, a Venice-like city called Camorr full of alchemical gardens & floating markets. They have cinnamon lemons there - how good would cinnamon lemonade be? Hey, if there's a nerd out there reading this, please throw a Gentlemen Bastards party with themed food and invite me (I'm nerdy enough to attend, but not host, such gatherings).

Lynch also borrows from the George R.R. Martin school of fuckery and "things that cause readers to yell at your book" at a few points. A great book giveth, and a great book taketh away.

5 cool, refreshing glasses of nerd-brewed cinnamon lemonade out of 5.

Congo

Emboldened by my enjoyable revisit to Jurassic Park & the Lost World, I thought I’d pick up another Crichton novel I barely remembered but knew I’d read in my early teens. Foolish, foolish, Jane. This. Book. Is. Bananas.*The plot DID give me some great ideas for band names though:

• Corporate Jungle Heist
• Parachuting Gorilla
• Killer Police Apes
• Gorilla Ticklers
• Stone Skull Crushers
• Amy & The Blue Diamonds
• The Japanese Consortium

Sure, there is some action when the aforementioned killer police apes start busting out the aforementioned stone skull crushers, but mostly the book is concerned with how one company is going to beat another company to a source of rocks that will make computers faster. There are a lot of sentences that begin “Karen had to upload the data to the satellite uplink to get the new probability for the desired outcome.” Nerds, do NOT tell me if I got that wrong.

So unless you like reading a lot about old technology, just see the movie. Or, don’t – because apparently it’s also pretty bad (Amy the Talking Gorilla was nominated for worst supporting actress and LOST TO MADONNA. BRB going to be laughing about Madge being worse to watch than this for awhile).  

1 out of 5 playtime sessions with All Ball & Koko.

*Um, YEAH pun intended. Are you new here?

Shadow and Bone & Siege and Storm: A Sexy Kick-Ass YA Twofer

A friend* sent me both these books, the first in Bardugo's Grisha Trilogy. I was more than a little over the whole "YA heroine in a dystopian world finds her inner strength and also there's a love trilogy and also Jennifer Lawrence could totally play her in the movie" - you know, that old chestnut. But I'm a sucker for a book with a map in the beginning, and a killer session with Rasputin by Boney M in Just Dance 2 had just gotten me a new high score, so I was open to a story set in an alternate reality best described as Tsarist Russia + witches. And lo -  I was rewarded. 

What I love about this series is that it's dark as shiiiiit. So much YA fiction doesn't have teeth (It took Harry Potter four books before a kid died - where's the fun in that?). Bardugo's Ravka is a messed up land ruled by a milquetoast King and a sexy and mysterious Grisha (basically a wizaaaaaard but sexier? Like, Manganiello stubble instead of a long grey beard? You got it) called the Darkling.  There's a literal rift across the country, in the form of the Unsea, an area of permanent darkness and man-eating monsters; and a metaphorical one, between the powerful Grisha army and the rest of the population, who both need & fear the Grishas' power. Enter the heroine, Alina Starkov. And yes, she's great and written with depth - but The Darkling is the star here, people. So much so that my only criticism is that the books lose some oomph when the story strays too far from the powerful commander-in-chief and his murky motives. 

I read both books in a weekend. I want more. Also CAPES, can capes come back in style? There are mad capes in these books.

In conclusion: Hunger Games? More like HUNGER LAMES. Books 1 & 2 of the Grisha trilogy: 4 dramatic cape swishes out of 5. 

*the friend works for MacMillan, who published these books. Thanks Claire! I need to disclose that? To the 20 people who read this blog? MOM I MADE IT I GOT A FREE BOOK! 

The Walking

I have a love/hate relationship with horror novels.  When a book is so unsettling that you change your movements in the physical world, that’s love:  when you have to jerk your foot up onto the bed so nothing grabs it, when you have to look over your shoulder, when you have to put the book in the freezer.  I feel like novelists who can produce those moments are some of our greatest talents – as opposed to the movies, when a jump scare is enough to get the blood pumping, readers need to be crept up on and slowly worked into unsettling paranoia. Sadly, a lot of horror novelists lean more toward the cheap thrills of B-list horror cinema than the sublime creepiness of a well-crafted spooky story. I hate feeling like I just waded through a schlocky soup of blood & guts – pages of gory, cartoonish description might put my off my lunch slightly, but they aren’t really scary.  

Bentley Little, according to this story of mysterious deaths ( and even more mysterious posthumous behavior), falls in the middle of the spectrum. There were some unsettling passages and creative visuals, but the cheesy gore seemed to drive the plot, instead of punctuate it. And, speaking of plot, it’s never a good sign when, in an effort to illuminate the twists & turns of the story, one of the characters has to say “sometimes there just isn’t an explanation.” NO. TRY AGAIN. That’s not even a Deus Ex Machina, that’s…a Deus Ex Quicquid. Stephen King, don't you ever betray me with a cover quote like that again. Throwing some side-eye at you too, ghost of Bram Stoker.

In sum: I did not put this book in the freezer. I kept it on my nightstand and slept soundly and restfully with my limbs splayed over the edge of the bed & the window wide open. Horror fail. 

2 overly-gratuitous Saw sequels out of 5 (I heard the first one is pretty good but I can’t see it – too scary!) 

Just Kids

If this book had a smell, it would be beer, piss, sweat, charcoal dust, and that musty thrift-store clothing odor. I’m sure certain people would also add “pretension” to that list, but I never got that vibe from Patti Smith’s memoir of her time spent in late 60s/70s NYC with Robert Mapplethorpe.  Sure, if Paris Hilton wrote “The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm,” I’d be rolling my eyes with the best of them and looking forward to the inevitable reading by James Lipton on Conan. But pretension can’t exist if you have the chops to back it up, and I’d make the argument that Patti Smith, the Godmother of Punk, has got some fierce chops.

Besides, the memoir is really a love letter to Mapplethorpe and to the gritty New York City I can barely imagine. Hustling on 42^nd street, rooming with junkies at the Hotel Allerton, shoplifting raw steaks...it all has a seedy glamour* when seen through the lens of Smith & Mapplethorpe’s complicated relationship. Sometimes lovers, always friends, and often muses for each other, they navigated the city and its art scene together. The intimacy, warmth, and affection that comes through in Smith’s writing is powerful enough – take away Warhol, Hendrix, Max’s Kansas City, Joni Mitchell, CBGB’s; even the protagonists' eventual fame & fortune, and it’s still a worthwhile read. Actually, it would have been more interesting if both of them had grown up, moved to suburbia, become tax attorneys, and gotten together occasionally to reminisce about their wild youth over a glass of Pinot. Oh well - sometimes people grow up to be rock stars.

4 androgynous haircuts out of 5.

*A seedy glamour I am happy to appreciate from afar: I hate having dirty feet & I’m terrified of bedbugs, so I’m fairly content with the sanitized version of NYC that exists today.