HAD WE BUT WORLD ENOUGH, AND TIME: It took me about a week's worth of train rides to read John Green's The Fault In Our Stars, and now I really want to recommend it. It's the story of Hazel, a sixteen-year-old girl with terminal cancer who falls in love with a cancer survivor who she meets at a support group. Green does a clever thing with the story. His narrator (Hazel) acknowledges that in the "cancer-kid genre," the struggle against cancer often becomes the cancer kid's only character trait. This never happens with Hazel, a keen observer with a sardonic wit who struggles not only with her own cancer but also with the suffering it imposes upon others. And the other kids from her support group, Augustus and Isaac, two cancer survivors who came away from the disease with varying degrees of loss (physical and emotional), are equally well realized. Green's trick, though, is reducing most of the remaining characters to single-trait tropes -- the supportive parent; the supportive friend; the supportive stranger -- and then measuring Hazel, Augustus, and Isaac's delight or shock or hurt when people break character for moments of insight, pique, or selfishness.
Green's other trick isn't really a trick; it's just excellent writing. He manages to build leading characters who are loveable without being flawless, to mock teenage pretension gently while at the same time giving it the dignity of understanding its importance, and to let his characters find humor and happiness while never, not even for an instant, forgetting about impending mortality. This is, at times, a very funny book, and a happy one as well, but it also is an agonizingly sad book from beginning to end. Green shows, and his characters struggle to articulate, that you can have both at exactly the same moment, melody and counter-melody.
But did I mention that the main character has terminal cancer? If you don't like sad books, skip it. And if you cry when books are sad, this is not one to read in a public place. You have been warned.
Now I'm out of books until Hilary Mantel's next Thomas Cromwell comes out. Anything to recommend?
I'm tearing through Peter Beinart's new book, "The Crisis of Zionism," which is fascinating and provocative. I think a lot of people here would enjoy the last novel I read, "The Vices," by Amherst College professor Lawrence Douglas. It has wit, mystery, humor, insight, and a protagonist who teaches at a fictional liberal-arts college in central Massachusetts with a Dean of Students by the name of Lieber and other traits that may seem familiar to some folks here. (It even references the 1991 self-immolation on the town square.)
ReplyDelete(I've had the Green book on my Kindle for months, but haven't worked up the courage to read it yet.)
ReplyDeleteThe Trinity Six by Charles Cumming
ReplyDeleteThe Informationist by Taylor Stevens
Beach reading, maybe, and fantasy, but I heartily recommend N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy.
ReplyDeleteI've recommended it here before, but Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series deserves a big push. I'm sorry today isn't yesterday as each book in the trilogy was available for $0.99 on Kindle, but it's worth whatever they're charging for it today. Premise is that on another world, where humanity has settled, some virus has killed all the women and made it so that all surviving creatures, including dogs, humans, whatever, can hear each other's thoughts.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to get away from sad YA--and the first Chaos Walking book, The Knife of Never Letting Go has led to lots of crying among my cohort--you might try Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy. The first book is Sea of Poppies. The trilogy is not yet completed, for those of you who hate that kind of thing.
I never read cancer books. As Hazel in TFIOS says, "Cancer books suck." This is not a cancer book in that sense. I loved it deeply, and I don't like sad books -- for me, I say, if you don't like sad books, this may well be an exception.
ReplyDeleteI read The Fault in our Stars for book club last month and absolutely loved it -- and I can't handle sad books, especially when cancer plays a role. When reading it, I would go from laughing pretty loudly to crying within the span of a minute. It was definitely a book that I had a hard time reading in public, but I didn't want to put down even while crying.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little late on this one, but I'm almost done with "A Visit from the Goon Squad," and I'm really enjoying it. Not really a page-turner, but always interesting and every chapter is surprising.
ReplyDeleteI also really enjoyed "The Submission" by Amy Waldman.
Two books I read recently that I did NOT enjoy: "The Marriage Plot" and "The Secret History."
Up top on The Marriage Plot. Man.
ReplyDeleteTwo, one older and one fairly new:
ReplyDeletePavane, by Keith Roberts, is an alternate history novel form the 60's about a world where Elizabeth I was assassinated around 1600 and the world that resulted. Fascinating and emotional, I can't recommend it enough.
11/22/63, the most recent Stephen King, is blowing me away. I love alternate history novels, and this is a prime example of trying to change a time stream and the resultant difficulties as well as a kind of road novel of 1960's USA through the eyes of a future traveller. Very, very well done and I think his best novel in quite a while.
Also, and this is a bit more fun, Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate novels are a blast.
Sue - you just named 2 of the last 5 books I've read! I loved The Submission, which I thought did a good job of hitting a bunch of perspectives. And Goon Squad was exceedingly well done, if the linked short-story-like structure really wasn't my thing.
ReplyDeleteThe latest Stephen King, about a time traveller trying to stop the Kennedy assassination, is a late-career home run from King. A gripping, page turning read that grips you in ways you wouldn't expect going in.
ReplyDeleteI echo the praise for Fault in our Stars. I was really moved by it. John Green's praise for The Emperor of All Maladies, in his acknowledgements, also spurred me to read that book, which I found riveting.
ReplyDeleteI am currently reading Tales of the City, by Armistad Maupin, which is okay. I know it's beloved by many, so I'm sticking with it. And unlike Sue and bristlesage, I really did enjoy the Marriage Plot -- I found it remarkably perceptive. But all in all, I'm having a hard time finding fiction right now, so please bring on more suggestions!
I really enjoyed the Carriger novels -- really fun.
ReplyDeleteVery strongly recommend, if likely already read by many here:
ReplyDeleteROOM - Emma Donoghue - First-person tale of a boy who has lived his whle life with his mother in a garden shed. An amazing story that sounds horrible t read but really, really isn't.
The Known World - Edward P. Jones - Historical fiction about black slave owners. I tell people all the time, this is the best novel I have ever read.
The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale - (Fictional) biography of a talking chimpanzee. A fascinating look at language and what it means to communicate told with remarkable wit and feeling.
These are old, but if you're looking for fiction, David Mitchell is excellent- "Cloud Atlas" and "Ghostwritten" are my favorites, but I loved "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet."
ReplyDeleteI literally just returned from Kramerbooks DC, where I picked up The Submission in paperback.
ReplyDeleteI must say: I spent much of my lunch hour reading the Robert Caro excerpt Adam mentioned today, and it made me more inclined than ever to read that series.
ReplyDeleteRecently finished listening to Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I also read This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper, which made me laugh out loud on several occasions and was pretty entertaining.
ReplyDeleteI'm getting ready to start the next two Kate Atkinson books - When Will There Be Good News and Started Early, Took My Dog, but it looks like I should be adding The Fault In Our Stars. I always love getting recommendations here.
The man tells a good story, and it's with a particular theme: where does power come from, how does one accumulate it, how does one use it, and what does it reveal?
ReplyDeleteI just finished two books - Drown by Junot Diaz (amazing!) and the first Agatha Christie (fun distraction). I'm reading The Things They Carried- which I started 20 years ago when Tim O'Brien came to my American Studies class. I figured it was time to finish it. It's really great. I also finally read Remains of the Day (shout-out to Russ), which was excellent.
ReplyDeleteI did not like The Goon Squad. Tried, tried, tried but no.
I also read Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (it was good, not great) and Other People We Married by Emma Straub (short stories, well-written).
Tortoiseshelly -- I second your love of getting book recommendations here!
ReplyDeleteYou know where else I enjoy getting book recs? A certain online dating site that shall remain nameless. I always look to see whatever book my potential future husband (ha!) is reading/just read, look it up, and then jot down the title if it sounds interesting. Then I usually delete the guy. In other words, I'm terrible at online dating but GREAT at building a to-read list.
I recently started Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. I was really enjoying it but approiximately 50 pages in I decided I haven't read enough Hemingawy to fully appreciate it yet. So...now I'm reading The Old Man in the Sea. Next up is In Our Time. Then I think I'll go back to A Moveable Feast.
Also picked up All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren after it was recommended at least a few times around these parts. I plan on reading it once I'm over my little Hemingway kick.
But really, I'm supposed to be reading The Hunger Games for my book club. Oops.
Oh, I love Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten. I have not read Thousand Autumns -- maybe I'll read that one next!
ReplyDeleteMe, too, on the Carriger books. Love 'em! If you like urban fantasy, Jaye Wells' Sabina Kane series and Chloe Neill's Chicagoland Vamps series are both well done.
ReplyDeleteThe Magician King was great up until the end, when SPOILER SPOILER
ReplyDeletesomething happens that is so far beyond the intensity of the rest of the book that I was floored. And really disturbed. The tonal shift was so abrupt that it colored my feelings about the whole book.
That's what I was thinking of when I mentioned Grossman's book on twitter. That interview sounds very interesting, though I've never read anything by either author, and as I take a firm stand against sad, will clearly never read TFIOS. I should track down other books by Green, though!
ReplyDeleteI'm just happy that I can finally say that I've finished "Reckless Endangerment" (about the financial crisis), which it what I was reading the past few times this thread has come up. I'm in the middle of "I Want My MTV", which is fun, but kind of slight and just makes me want to read the SNL oral history.
ReplyDeleteI have "The Sense of an Ending" and "The Emperor of All Maladies" waiting for me on my kindle. And think I'm going to try to give Wolf Hall another go - I stalled out the first time because I had a lot of difficulty figuring out who was speaking when - but had heard rave reviews from a friend who also liked Mantel's book about the French Revolution.
Summer project may be to tackle the LBJ series and throw in The Power Broker for good measure.
Oh, man, I loved Fault in Our Stars with the fire of a thousand suns. What a great book - heartbreaking and hilarious and just so spot-on. Loved. And so excited that Neustadter & Weber (the guys who wrote 500 Days of Summer) just got hired to write the movie adaptation - they really get the book's tricky tone and I think are going to hit it out of the park.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of "hit it out of the park," the book I cannot stop recommending is The Art of Fielding, which is the best book I have read in forever and ever and ever. Please immediately go read it. Right now.
Gretchen - I totally hear you re: Magician King, though I just think the entire Julia storyline is so so so much darker than anything else in the book that it actually made sense for me. But I am an unabashed Magicians fan-girl so other people's mileage will clearly vary...
ReplyDeleteBecca, I actually have found Green's other books VERY twee and the only reason I picked up Fault is b/c friends who agreed w the twee-ness of previous books were raving about it. I would never have read it otherwise...but truly think it's his best. I really think you'd like it despite the sad parts...
ReplyDeleteSeconding the comment on 11/22/63. I've never read a King book before (other than his sad attempt to cash in on the Red Sox 2004 championship), but this was very good. It's like Quantum Leap meets JFK, but in the end it's also the story of a small town in Texas in the 1960s, which becomes the most compelling part of the book.
ReplyDeleteBut, on the topic of sci-fi books with dates in the title, I cannot emphasize enough how much I disliked 1Q84. The best thing about it is that it spawed the first book review that I have ever felt was 100% on target - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/books/1q84-by-haruki-murakami-review.html
Agreed on Room. Nothing I would normally read if I just saw a description of it. Somehow I ended up picking it up and could not put it down.
ReplyDeleteI'd just like to thank everyone for giving me a handful of new book suggestions in these comments!
ReplyDeleteI liked it, but I had fundamental disagreements with the baseball in it. So much talk about errors. What about range? And come on. Luis Aparicio never played for the Cardinals.
ReplyDeleteI love A Moveable Feast. One of my faves.
ReplyDeleteGuest was me.
ReplyDeleteErrors may not be a defining statistic for determining the best defender, but there is something to be said for not making errors. In fact, the whole book could be summed up by a quote from Avon Barksdale, "The thing is, you only got to fuck up once. Be a little slow, be a little late, just once. And how you ain't never gonna be slow, never be late? You can't plan for no shit like this, man. It's life."
ReplyDeleteI am completely with you on The Art of Fielding, whcih was one of the more anxiety-producing things I've ever read.
ReplyDeleteI just finished Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog, which I really, really liked. It's the second book of hers I've read, and I am pretty much now all in on her (coming late to the party, I know).
I'll second the recommendations for Fault in Our Stars and The Art of Fielding, though I preferred Fault in our Stars. Room also was very, very good. I read this one several months ago, but Faith by Jennifer Haigh also is worth a look. It's a novel about the family of a Boston priest facing accusations. I'm currently about halfway through Defending Jacob by William Landay, but I'm not sure yet whether I want to recommend it.
ReplyDeleteSee, I liked the Julia storyline because it was dark and dealt with the real ramifications of the idea of "what if magic existed and those who could do it tried to keep it secret?" If that really happened, there absolutely would be those "hedge" people, and while it goes to a dark place, it goes there for a reason.
ReplyDeleteI liked, but didn't love, Faith. It's a good read, but I felt it really crapped out in the end.
ReplyDeleteI just read The Condition, also by Jennifer Haigh, and it was terrific.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on The Goon Squad. Usually, if a book is recommended here and it sounds interesting to me, I am all-but guaranteed to love it. The Goon Squad is one of the rare exceptions.
ReplyDeleteI am so behind - I am reading The Swerve and American Gods - I am sure everyone else already has - but I am enjoying both if them. In my junior Social Studoes class, I am reading The Lemon Tree with my students. They are finding it tough, but eye opening. Based off of a story originally told to NPR's Fresh Air, it tells the story of the creation of Israel from both sides. Compelling reading.
ReplyDeleteAnd then I am also halfway through season two of The Wire.....
Oh, I absolutely love "The Things They Carried." I read the title story in college (in a short story collection very aptly titled "You've Got to Read This") and then sought out the whole book. Heartbreaking and so beautifully written.
ReplyDeletebrislesage - for more Connie Willis, I recommend Fire Watch (which is short stories), and The Doomsday Book, which has a very different tone than TSNOTD (it puts the time traveler characters in the time of the plague - needless to say, it's not a happy book), but is just as good.
ReplyDeleteArt of Fielding was my favorite book I read in the last few months, definitely.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite book of the last few months besides The Art of Fielding was The Flight of Gemma Hardy, by Margot Livesey (a completely different type of book). It's a riff on Jane Eyre in a modern-er setting (late '50s through '60s) but is more inspired by the original than slavishly copying it. Really terrific. Now I have to go read Livesey's earlier books.
ReplyDelete<span>I very much liked Joshilyn Jackson's latest, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. She's so sharp and irreverent that I read all her books as soon as they come out. Dark, comedic Southern family story with a good mystery element. </span>
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<span>Shannon Hale's Midnight in Austenland just plain made me happy - much more so than her first Austenland book, auctually. This one was taking off on Northanger Abbey, therefore a gothic tone and mysteries and the main character doubting whether she was really seeing what she thought she was seeing. Light (but not fluff) and thoroughly enjoyable.</span>
I loved An Abundance of Katherines the most of his earlier work. While I think he's a fabulous writer, Paper Towns and Looking For Alaska were so not much to my taste, though I think Alaska is a very strong book, just not my cup of tea.
ReplyDeleteReally liked Will Grayson, Will Grayson, his collaboration with David Levithan.
nonfiction. currently reading "Vanished Kingdoms, the rise and fall of states and nations," by Norman Davies. Excellent.
ReplyDeletefiction. favorite book from last year: "Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer," by Wesley Stace (aka John Wesley Harding)
bristlesage, make sure to read Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, which TSNOTD riffs off of. One of the funniest novels I've ever read.
ReplyDeleteSue, The Doomsday Book was actually the first one I read, and yep, same world, different book for sure.
ReplyDeleteFire Watch is on the list.
The Jizzbomb Chronicles by NN Jenkins. Is genius. COmpletely original.
ReplyDeleteAll the King's Men is my favorite of all time, hands-down. Nothing even comes close.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of cancer books, but nonfiction, I recently finished The Emperor of All Maladies, which got a little dense with the science toward the end, but up to that point was a riveting read about the history of cancer treatment (this is not as much of an oxymoron as it sounds). It's also not particularly sad, although there is one short section about the early days of pediatric cancer treatment that left me weeping in the airport bookstore.
ReplyDeleteIsaac, I would have thought you'd be all over Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker.
ReplyDeleteOops -- that was me.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't like Secret History. Hmmmm.
ReplyDeleteAll the King's Men is definitely part of my Desert Island Collection. I could read that book over and over and over again.
ReplyDeleteI love To Say Nothing of the Dog. If you want more Connie Willis that's like it, I'd recommend her WWII double feature: Blackout and All Clear. I read Blackout in paperback and as soon as All Clear came out, I had no patience and bought the hardback, at a bookstore no less, so I could see how the story ended. I never buy hardbacks.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a while since I read anything really recommendable, other than The Art of Fielding. I've been reading a lot of YA books that I should have read at that age - Roald Dahl stuff, Half-Magic, Newbery winners - but not much else has thrilled me.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm really enjoying watching all my ALOTT5MA friends on GoodReads add all the books listed here to their to-read shelves! ;-)
Just picked up Song of Achilles, actually. Kind of excite.
ReplyDeleteOMG, the PowerPoint chapter. I still get chills just thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteMINE TOO. I reread it every other year. I even read a selection for the Banned Books Week online readout last year.
ReplyDeleteI am working full-time and going to graduate school full-time, which was maybe not the best decision, so my leisure reading is often, well, ALOTT5MA and Gawker. The only two books I've read for fun this year are a Daredevil compilation...and The Fault In Our Stars. I am hoping to finish The Emperor of All Maladies (started, stupidly, during a hospital stay and I think I"m finally ready to revisit it) over spring break. On my nightstand, I have In Search of the Rose Notes, a novel by Emily Arsenault, whose first novel (The Broken Teaglass) I quite enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteI recently read In Search of the Rose Notes, liked it quite a bit. I hope you do, too!
ReplyDeleteI've gotten Lucy hooked on Quantum Leap, though I'm selective about which episodes I'll let her see (esp. in terms of violent crimes being solved/thwarted.) I forgot how much I liked that show; she's full of questions as to how it "works" and I've told her to try to ignore them. This may require a separate post.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see that separate post! I was thinking about showing J Quantum Leap.
ReplyDeleteI had "You've Got to Read This!" Hmm, didn't see it when I packed books recently (though friends packed some of them - hope it's there).
ReplyDeleteYep. I don't think I've ever been as panicked on behalf of a character, and in such dire need to read what happens, as during a certain scene in that book. So, so good.
ReplyDeleteI'm not on GoodReads, but I've been adding lots of these books to my library/Amazon to-read lists! (list it all on Amazon, then if I get to another bookstore, buy it there)
ReplyDeleteMarsha - why hmm? Are you a fan?
ReplyDeleteI don't want to suggest any particular books but I would like to suggest two great resources for book recommendations.
ReplyDeleteThe first is the podcast called "Books on the Nightstand" . I think it's a great source of good book suggestions. It's done by two Random House sales reps and they also have a newsletter that previews books that will be coming out in a few months. I have similar reading tastes to the two hosts so I have had very few bum steers from this duo. I'm actually going to a weekend "Booktopia" retreat with them up in Vermont where they're having eight authors come and give small group talks. Can't wait!
I also get the newsletter Shelf Awareness that comes out several times a week. It has good new book suggestions and also some stories about books that may be timely (like Irish themed stuff during St. Patrick's week) and also addresses some of the major news of the publishing world.
I LOVED Blackout and All Clear. Only issue was that I read them on a Kindle, and it got a little annoying because I kept wanting to look back and remind myself about who/when everyone was, and that's much harder to do without physical pages. But loved the stories.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading Ready Player One and quite liked it. I think it might be popular with this crowd - lots of 80s pop culture references, although more focused on video games than music.
ReplyDeleteIs there something that makes you think I'd be interested in those questions?
ReplyDeleteAlso movies -- particularly those starring Matthew Broderick.
ReplyDeleteMe too. I was so glad to read that book.
ReplyDeleteDid not know there were new Kate Atkinson. Great news!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy Kate Atkinson. Did you watch Case Histories on PBS? I have the DVD from Netflix waiting at home.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure when they were published, though I believe they are the latest in the Jackson Brodie series. My "to read" list has gotten rather lengthy at this point, so I'm not always getting to books as soon as I can.
Yes, I quite enjoyed Ready Player One, and if they can realize the movie, it'll be uber-cool, but I think the clearances are going to be just too much of a problem for it to work.
ReplyDelete