David Lynch and Kristine McKenna, Room to Dream ***

Room to Dream is a "hybrid of biography and memoir" of David Lynch. I love the idea of alternating chapters of traditional biography with chapters of the subject telling stories relating to that period of his or her life. Unfortunately, though, that's not what Room to Dream really is. The biographical chapters are not researched or written to provide insight into Lynch's character; they are fawning collections of admiring quotes. We learn the basic facts about Lynch's life and get anecdotes from various collaborators, but nothing resembling a character portrait.

I would have really liked to know more about how Lynch dealt with a huge studio production (The Elephant Man) after spending years on a passion project with his friends. How was he able to make the adjustment? How did he appear to the professionals used to more experienced directors? I'd also like to know more about the course of his relationships with his wives.

Especially in his later years, when he has an entourage catering to his needs, there are numerous clues to suggest that Lynch can be a difficult and capricious man to deal with, especially for women. (Some of the behind-the-scenes footage on the DVD for Twin Peaks: The Return includes moderately creepy behavior.) I wish the book went beyond Lynch's public persona of a nice Midwestern artist with the restless creativity to create a more nuanced view. You know, like a biography.

Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro *** 1/2

Dom Casmurro is a (barely) nineteenth century novel (published in 1899) that feels like a twentieth century novel: an unreliable narrator, an ironic tone, and an ambiguous outcome. Our narrator Bentinho starts as a feckless fifteen-year-old boy in love with the girl next store, Capitu. At his birth, his mother promised God that he would become a priest, but Bento wants out of it. He eventually manages to leave the seminary, marry Capitu, and settle down in a home next door to his best friend. At the climax of the story, Bento becomes convinced that he is not his son's father, that Capitu betrayed him with his friend.

Machado de Assis is often called Brazil's greatest writer, and Dom Casmurro is his best known book. Arguments continue to rage about whether Capitu cuckolded Bento. My personal feeling is that she did not. From the very beginning of the book, Bento describes characters who clearly have ulterior motives that he fails to recognize, and just before he begins suspecting Capitu he himself experiences an attraction to his friend's wife. In other words, he's clearly a poor judge of character who only understands (or misunderstands) people's intentions in terms of his own.

Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker *** 1/2

The Power Broker is an exhaustingive biography of Robert Moses, the "master builder" whose parks, bridges, and highways shaped modern New York. Moses was a visionary, a supremely effective public servant, and a man who Got It Done. He was also a self-centered arrogant strongman who became addicted to power for its own sake, ruthlessly punished anyone who questioned him, and led New York into an unsustainable automobile-centered future. (Moses was so averse to public transportation that he refused all transit lines and built low bridges over his parkways to prevent buses from ever using them.)

The book is renowned for its depiction of day-to-day politics performed by a virtuoso (the "best bill drafter in Albany") and for its savage portrait of a man who was still alive and kicking when it was published. It also offers insights into the challenges of urban planning and the real-world implications of policy decisions. The Power Broker appears on the Modern Library list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th century.

Despite Caro's clearly critical tone, he gives Moses full credit for his vision and unparalleled accomplishments. For decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, Moses got huge infrastructure projects built, most notably parks, highways, and bridges. He even created a new branch of quasi-government through his use of public authorities. His ultimate downfall came in an area where his talent for building conflicted with his talent for corruption: public housing, where the money comes from not building.

The Power Broker is an impressive work of history, but often a slog to read. It is 1200 pages long, which is daunting enough, but what I found tiring was a combination of Caro's dense prose style and his habit of repeating himself. A typical sentence has numerous dependent and independent clauses, sometimes with a parenthetical added for good measure. A typical section starts with a thematic summary and ends with a slightly reworded version of that summary. A typical chapter details several instances where Moses starts work on an unapproved underfunded project, rejects all attempts to modify his plans, overreacts to mild criticism, and takes retribution on the antagonists; only the names and dollar amounts change.

For quite a while, I have considered tackling Caro's multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, which is even more acclaimed than The Power Broker. I'm not considering it anymore, unless I decide to enter politics.

Andre Alexis, Fifteen Dogs ** 1/2

Fifteen Dogs begins with a bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo about whether animals granted human intelligence would be as miserable as humans are. They grant intelligence to 15 dogs in a veterinary clinic is modern Toronto. The story follows the group and their disparate responses to increased intelligence.

Interesting idea, and the initial setup is concise and entertaining. However, I didn't feel like any of the dogs' stories shed light on what it means to be human or canine. The best parts were when the dogs' native character came through, such as when they interpret human behavior in terms of dominance or can't resist an alluring smell -- in other words, the things they would think even if they didn't have human intelligence.

Like the similarly canine-themed Lives of the Monster Dogs, Fifteen Dogs "sets itself up as an allegory but doesn't have anything new to say."

Mark Greif, Against Everything *** 1/2

Against Everything is not what I was expecting / hoping for. The title and packaging lead me to expect a collection of contrarian essays on subjects of near-universal approbation; pieces along the lines of Philip Lopate's "Against Joie de Vivre" or Stanley Fish's There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech (and it’s a good thing too). But only the first essay meets this description ("Against Exercise"), and only those in Part 1 encourage the reader to reconsider their attitudes toward commonly accepted practices.

However.

Greif covers a wide range of cultural subjects—food, music, policing, sex—from a mildly Continental point of view (the names Marcuse, Derrida, and Foucault come up). He shows how our ideas and practices reflect larger developments in the culture, noting for example the conservatism that underlay food science. Even the weakest essays (such as the one about YouTube) offer insights.

In the essay "Learning to Rap," Greif describes how he "came of age at the same time as hip-hop" (in New York City no less), but failed to appreciate it until years later. He ponders the reasons why he favored the contemporaneous post-punk over the "new world-historical form." This essay is a great companion piece to Carl Wilson's book Let's Talk about Love in exploring how our tastes interact with our personal identities.

Olga Tokarczuk, Flights **** 1/2

We took the ferry from St Ignace to Mackinac Island. After touring the island by horse-drawn carriage, we walked along Main Street perusing the homes and shops. We found the bookstore in the courtyard outside the Lilac Hotel, and of course we went in. We always go to local bookstores. In the general fiction section I came across a book by an author I'd never heard of, advertised as "incomparably original" and "restlessly mercurial." I bought it, and while it sat on my shelf waiting its turn, its author won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Flights is a very impressive book, but I find it hard to describe. The author refers to it as a "constellation novel," meaning that it consists of short fragments that reflect upon each other. The fragments mostly relate to travel and to the preservation of the human body after death. It explores abstract philosophical ideas using concrete language and stories. Like all the best books, it made me feel like I was on the edge of a major revelation, that I was having profound insights that I couldn't quite articulate. Definitely a book to return to.

It's my understanding that each of Olga Tokarczuk's books in very different from the others, so I can't draw any conclusions about her style. I'll have to read another one soon.

George Johnson, Fire in the Mind ****

Fire in the Mind is a popular science book that attempts to explain the basics of physics, cosmology, and biology. It differs from the many other examples of this genre in that Johnson contrasts the latest scientific speculation with the worldviews of various groups in northern New Mexico. The fundamental theme of the book is that humans are pattern-seekers and that it is difficult to discern how much of the pattern is immanent in the world and how much is imposed upon it by our means of understanding.

The first section, which covers particle physics, does the best job of balancing the scientific summary and the philosophical concerns. Our theories are built on abstractions building upon abstractions, what Werner Heisenberg called, "this peculiar mixture of incomprehensible mumbo jumbo and empirical success." I've always felt like the mysteries of quantum mechanics must mean we've missed a critical conceptual piece, and Johnson openly acknowledges this possibility. Johnson also provides lovely descriptions of New Mexico, including footnotes with actual hiking directions ("Lake Peak can be reached in half a day by driving up Hyde Park road to the ski basin...").

The later sections of the book are less distinctive than the first, although they retain Johnson's clear exposition.

Kate Atkinson, Transcription *** 1/2

Transcription is a spy novel written by a literary novelist. It's similar to an Alan Furst novel in that the main character is not a professional but a regular person whose mundane job happens to involve espionage. 

London, 1940. Juliet is an eighteen-year-old who gets recruited into MI5 to transcribe conversations between an agent posing as a Nazi spy and the "fifth column" informants who pass him information. Her bosses also take advantage of her naive character to have her infiltrate a group of women sympathetic to the Germans. At the same time, she harbors romantic feelings about her (older) boss, who sends mixed signals about whether the feelings are reciprocated.

I appreciated how the espionage happened almost in the background of Juliet's personal development, leaving the reader to assume more than Juliet seemed to understand. When the story jumps forward to 1950, the pace of events picks up making the story a bit scattered. It starts to be more like a traditional spy novel in that we're asked to guess about everyone's motivations. And of course, many of the characters turn out to have had ulterior motives back in the war.

H.V. Nelles, A Little History of Canada ****

During not one but two vacations in eastern Canada this year, I picked up random tidbits of Canadian history, such as the Halifax Explosion, the expulsion of the Acadians, and the exploration of Lake Superior. I bought this nicely packaged book to help me put these events in context. It was exactly what I was looking for.

I appreciated how the author approached history thematically, not trying to be comprehensive. I found lots of fascinating tidbits throughout the story, even though one of the themes is that Canada came together through sober reflection rather than passion. Inevitably some periods are less interesting than others, but I got a good sense of the sweep.

Helen Phillips, The Need *** 1/2

The Need starts like a thriller: a mother crouches in the bedroom closet with her baby and her four-year-old daughter, because she heard footsteps in the living room. The next chapter introduces some science fiction: the mother works as a paleobiologist at a site where they've discovered plants that don't fit into the accepted fossil record. The chapters in Part 1 alternate between these two scenes, until the mother discovers the identity of the intruder.

A perfect novel maintains a precarious balance between actions that make sense narratively and actions that make sense thematically. The author's main purpose in The Need appears to be to capture the psychological strain of being a parent, and she came up with a creative way to present it. The main character's actions make more sense in pursuit of this theme than they do as realism. For example, her decision to not tell her husband what was happening felt unrealistic to me, but it makes sense when seen through the lens of the theme of motherhood.

Jerry Dennis, The Living Great Lakes *****

The Living Great Lakes is part of a burgeoning genre of books that relate the history and geography of a region by tying it to journeys of the author. My favorite example of the genre is Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau, about the Inside Passage of British Columbia and Alaska. The Living Great Lakes is another excellent one.

I bought the book at a bookshop/cafe in Munising, MI, on the shores of Lake Superior. We had just watched a 1000-ft ship travel through the locks at Sault St Marie and were about to sail along the Pictured Rocks National Seashore and to visit Mackinac Island. In other words, I was reading about the region we were traveling in.

Dennis describes three trips he has taken through the Great Lakes: as a participant in the Chicago to Mackinac sailing race, in a voyageur canoe on Lake Superior, and as part of the crew delivering a schooner from Traverse Bay to Bar Harbor Maine. He is able to combine historical narrative, natural history, and personal observation in a seamless way that enhances the feeling of what the area feels like today rather than as a history lesson.

Nate Chinen, Playing Changes ****

Playing Changes is a collection of essays providing an overview of 21st century jazz. The story starts in the 1980s, when the prevailing opinion was that jazz was nearly dead until Wynton Marsalis, Ken Burns, and newly interested cultural institutions saved it by recognizing it as "America's classical music." This view polarized the jazz community, especially since the conservatives seemed to control access to the new sources of funding from Lincoln Center, the MacArthur Foundation, and so on. The avant garde and the hybridizers just continued what they were doing.

I was happy that I knew most of the musicians Chinen discussed; he provided context for my understanding of their styles. I was surprised by the fact that nearly all of them had some degree of formal education in jazz -- the restricted access to institutional resources obviously didn't last.

Playing Changes covers a wide range of styles and subcultures, and offers numerous listening suggestions. 

Ted Chiang, Exhalation ****

Ted Chiang writes science fiction stories that address fundamental issues about the human condition, such as free will, our responsibilities to others, and the meaning of truth. His stories are noticeably thoughtful and surprisingly, refreshingly, optimistic. His writing has an analytical tone, even when describing emotional topics; the narrative details often feel like a thin veneer over the philosophical questions. The title story, for instance, is about the implications of living in a universe that began with ridiculously low entropy. Pretty abstract, no?

William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea *** 1/2

I'm giving The Outlaw Sea the same rating as I did the first time I read it, but the impressions I took from it were different. The first time I felt that Langewiesche effectively laid out the complexities of  international shipping; this time I found the discussion superficial. This time I was struck by how the chapter about shipbreaking in India lays out a case that environmental regulation is a form of cultural imperialism. ("The question I want to ask the environmentalists is if you should want to die first of starvation or pollution.") Reading it, I was reminded of Strangers in Their Own Land, where Louisianans are against environmental regulation intended to help them.

One thing that didn't change between readings: Langewiesche does an excellent job of pulling together all of the complex details to create a dramatic narrative. Each chapter has a shipwreck at its center, and they are all exciting.

Patrick O'Brian, 21 ***

O'Brian was writing this book, The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey, when he died in 2000.  He reached the middle of Chapter 3 in what would inevitably have been ten chapters. The book consists of a corrected typescript and handwritten pages on facing sides, with the last five or six pages handwritten only.

The prose of the first two chapters doesn't flow as well as it does in O'Brian's finished works. I've often said it would be interesting to study how O'Brian manages his distinctive style, and this draft would be a fine contribution to that study.

And so I come to the end of the Aubrey - Maturin series :-(.

Robert Coover, Going for a Beer ** 1/2

A career retrospective should highlight the traits you like best about the author in question. Going for a Beer actually had the opposite effect on me: reading it made me realize how much I have overrated Coover in my memory. Looking back at my reviews of his books (such as here, here, and here), I see that I've always recognized his weaknesses. When I thought of him, though, I always remembered his energetic, entertaining, and humorous prose style.

It probably demonstrates the strength of first impressions. The first thing I ever read of Coover's was "The Babysitter," whose "destabilizing brilliance" is particularly eye-opening when you come across it in an anthology of more traditional stories. It is also a distillation of everything Coover does best: combine multiple perspectives, blur reality and fantasy, and show the impact of popular culture.

Nearly all of Coover's stories are extensions of fairy tales or famous films: Snow White after the death of the evil queen, the Invisible Man falling in love with an Invisible Woman, the missing sex scene from Casablanca, the forest where the animals from Aesop's fables all live together. He makes explicit the implicit themes of sex and death in these stories. Coover's ideas are often clever, but he beats them into the ground rather than building on them. His humor is often sophomoric, with lots of sex and farting.

"The Babysitter" still holds up, and a handful of other stories also showed what Coover is capable of. I particularly enjoyed "The Return of the Dark Children," about Hamelin after the Pied Piper leads all the children away, although it lacks a satisfactory conclusion. Most of the stories, though, I found too long and too self-satisfied.

Patrick O'Brian, Blue at the Mizzen ***

The Surprise, lying well out in the channel with Gibraltar half a mile away on her starboard quarter, lying at a single anchor with her head to the freshening northwest breeze, piped all hands at four bells in the afternoon watch...

It's nearly the last time I'll read a book that eases me into the story like so. Blue at the Mizzen is the twentieth and last complete book in the Aubrey-Maturin series. It is also the first to take place after the end of the Napoleonic Wars that provided the raison d'etre for the story and its characters.

Given this momentous change and the fact that O'Brian planned for Blue at the Mizzen to be the last book, you might expect an elegiac tone and some wrapping up. The first few chapters do indeed address the consequences of the peace -- out of work sailors, few chances from promotion or prizes, an economic recession in England -- but Aubrey and Maturin are off on a new adventure soon enough. They sail for Chile to support the independence movement, pausing along the way for Maturin to propose to the widow of an African governor.

There are times in the later chapters when O'Brian's distinctive prose style seems to falter, where the time jumps feel confused. Other sections are typically lovely and skillful. The action has no sense of finality about it, although (spoiler alert) it does end with Aubrey becoming an admiral. Will we learn the outcome of Stephen's proposal in the final unfinished book?

Murray Bail, Eucalyptus *** 1/2

I was made aware of Eucalyptus when Jane Alison referred to it in Meander Spiral Explode. She held it up as an example of a book that eschewed the traditional dramatic arc in favor of a different organizing principle, in this case, a catalog of Eucalyptus species. ("In the world of trees, only the acacia has more species that the eucalyptus––but look at the acacia, a series of pathetic little bushes.")

In fact, though, Eucalyptus has the most traditional of narrative arcs: it's a fairy tale. "Once upon a time there was a man...who couldn't come to a decision about his daughter. He then made an unexpected decision." The daughter is shut up in a tower, and suitors come to contest for her hand.

It's true that the chapters are named after eucalyptus species and that the test for potential husbands is to name all of the species on the father's property. Eucalypts serve as a flexible metaphor for Australia, art, and the multiplicity of life, much like whales do in Moby Dick.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book, with its subtle connections between the species names in the titles and the action of the chapters and wonderful offbeat descriptions. The latter stages, which introduce numerous stories within the story, felt rushed, especially the final chapters. I plan to track down more of Murray Bail's books.

John Corbett, A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation *** 1/2

A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation offers suggestions for appreciating improvisational music. The author focuses on free improvisation, by which he means music with no preplanned elements, but his suggested techniques can enrich less rigorously free music as well. In fact, I doubt that totally free improvisation actually exists: musicians surely agree about something before they start playing.

By virtue of his definition of free improvisation, Corbett has to point to musical elements without reference to the conventions of particular genres. He is more successful at providing concrete suggestions than Ben Ratliff was in Every Song Ever. Corbett's prose style is very accessible and enjoyable, which is impressive given how intimidating this genre of music can be.

You can read A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation in one sitting -- I know because I did -- but of course you'll want to have it at hand while you listen to the recommended recordings -- I know because I do.

Steven Millhauser, Little Kingdoms ****

Little Kingdoms is a collection of three novellas. 

The first, "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne," is quintessential Millhauser. It tells the story of an artist (a cartoonist) in a early 20th century who constructs ever more elaborate and fantastical art, using a wealth of period detail and a traditional prose style littered with passages that clearly describe Millhauser's methods as much as they do Payne's. It feels very much like a rehearsal for Martin Dressler.

"The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne" ultimately reveals itself to be a fairy tale told with realist trappings. The second story, "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon," takes the opposite approach. As its title suggests, it is explicitly a fairy tale but is really about the concerns of the townspeople and not the residents of the castle.

"Catalogue of the Exhibition" is a biography of an artist told through the interpretive labels on his paintings. I found it less compelling than the other two, although the story does build to a nicely grand and violent climax.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions are Made ***

The goal of this book is to argue for the theory of constructed emotion and against the classical essentialist theory of emotion. Our experience and interpretation of emotional states is not universal or innate but rather conceptual.

I was very impressed in the early chapters by Barrett's clear presentation of how constructionism works, how it differs from relativism, and how it doesn't deny the reality of the constructed experiences. Her examples are well chosen, such as how different cultures actually see different stripes within a rainbow. I am a strong constructionist, so I delighted in the friendly exposition and in the idea that Barrett had neurological evidence to back it up.

Things got a little wonky when Barrett delved deeper into the brain science. Her explanatory aptitude dried up: the explanations were neither informative nor illuminating. Then things went off the rails in the second half of the book. She wants to explore how the theory of constructed emotion affects -- or should affect -- our views on human nature, healthcare, and the law, but her observations are trite (try yoga! be aware of your biases!) and often don't follow from the theory (rational thought and emotional reactions are not independent, which could be equally true with an essentialist theory of emotion).

Max Brand, Gunman's Reckoning and The Untamed ***

Max Brand is the final author in the Classic Westerns collection Evelyn game me for my birthday. Gunman's Reckoning (1915) and The Untamed (1919) share several features which are perhaps Brand trademarks. His descriptions make prominent use of sound, such as the sound of a train or the whistling of Whistlin' Dan; the stories take place over a short time period in only a few locations; the heroes are reluctant gunfighters who prefer to use their wiles rather than their side-irons; the young rancher's daughter inspires self-sacrificing love from the hero, who must court danger to help another man into her arms. All of the characters are strongly concerned about their reputations and come up with overly elaborate ruses to save face. None of the men understand women or fail to fall victim to their charms.

Suketu Mehta, This Land is Our Land *** 1/2

These days, a great many people in the rich countries complain loudly about migration from the poor ones. But as the migrants see it, the game was rigged: First, the rich countries colonized us and stole our treasure and prevented us from building our industries. After plundering us for centuries, they left, having drawn up maps in ways that ensured permanent strife between our communities... They stole our minerals and corrupted our governments so that their corporations could continue stealing our resources; they fouled the air above us and the waters around us, making our farms barren, our oceans lifeless; and they were aghast when the poorest among us arrived at their borders, not to steal but to work, to clean their shit, and to fuck their men.

This Land is Our Land bills itself as "An Immigrant's Manifesto," but it is as much a jeremiad as any anti-immigration screed. Mehta cherry-picks anecdotes and studies to make a vivid and angry pro-immigration argument. I happen to agree with most of what he says, but he doesn't make any serious attempt to convince opponents.

Mehta's boldest and most interesting idea appears on the very first page: that immigrants are "creditors" to whom rich countries owe a debt. "You took all our wealth, our diamonds. Now we have come to collect." I find this perspective illuminating, albeit overstated. It shows how the ethical issue of immigration is similar to the question of reparations for African Americans: society has benefited at their expense and morally owes them compensation in return. And as with reparations, the proper remedy (even the very possibility of remedy) is unclear.

In support of his view, Mehta offers a comprehensive and depressing vision of the ways that the Western powers have undermined -- and continue to undermine -- the developing world. He also makes more familiar pro-immigration arguments about the effect on the economy and culture of the host country (lower crime rates and higher economic activity among immigrants).

To the people who voted for the populists: Do not fear the newcomers. Many are young and will pay the pensions for the elderly, who are living longer than ever before. They will bring energy with them, for no one has more enterprise than someone who has left their distant home to make the difficult journey here... They will create jobs. They will cook and dance and write and play sports in new and exciting ways. They will make their new countries richer, in all senses of the word. The immigrant armada is actually a rescue fleet.

John DeMont, The Long Way Home ***

The Long Way Home is exactly the kind of book I want to buy and read on vacation: "A Personal History of Nova Scotia" that covers the history of the place I'm visiting and shows how that history is reflected in the present. Surprisingly, I came across the book in Montreal rather than Halifax.

In addition to learning the highlights of (European) Nova Scotian history -- the competition between the French and English, the Acadian Expulsion, the influx of Loyalists, the impact of the two World Wars, fishing, shipbuilding, and coal mining -- I saw how the psyche of residents has been shaped by the short-lived nature of most of its booms. Its location gives it key advantages that led to it being "from the European view of things, the oldest part of Canada," but people and industries tend to move on after just a few years. The town of Shelburne, for example, grew to nearly 17,000 residents around the time of the American Revolution, but most of the people were gone by the 1790s. Nova Scotia's "defining myths and stories are mostly about loss and sheer determination."

I got what I wanted from the book, even though DeMont's prose and the organization are merely serviceable.

David Huebert, Peninsula Sinking **** 1/2

I picked up Peninsula Sinking from the "Atlantic Canada Authors" shelf at a store along the Halifax waterfront. It's advertised as a collection of stories about "Maritimers caught between the places they love and the siren call of elsewhere." In other words, it seemed like a perfect book to read while touring Nova Scotia.

All eight stories take place in Nova Scotia, but the plots or characters don't feel specific to the Maritimes. They have a classic structure, appealing everyday characters, and a compassionate tone. The main characters often have interesting jobs (woman's prison guard, submarine officer, Canadian Equine Federation clerk), and animals play an important role in nearly every story. The stories are engaging, enjoyable, and the right length to read in a single sitting. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this low-key book.

Ling Ma, Severance ****

Reviews of Severance tend to emphasize the apocalyptic part of the plot: an epidemic of Shen Fever, which causes people to mindlessly repeat routines from their lives, such as setting the table, trying on clothes, or watching TV. Readers drawn to Severance based on the zombie-like premise will be severely disappointed, because that premise forms a surprisingly small part of the story. The book uses it as a device to explore life as a millennial, the immigrant experience, and the commodification of America. 

The metaphor was particularly clear to me near the beginning, when our heroine Candace's boyfriend imagines a future where New York City is taken over by chain stores and restaurants that offer a simulacrum of its vibrant culture, and Candace finds herself taking photos that perpetuate the same cliches. Humans continue to desire the same experiences even when the original meaning and impetus for them is lost.

The book also tells the story of Candace's parents emigrating from China, and her job as production coordinator for a publisher. I enjoyed all of the component pieces, and felt like they all contributed to the core theme in more or less obvious ways. Narratively, though, the different elements felt disjoint.

Sean Carroll, From Eternity to Here ****

While browsing the Philosophy section during our recent visit to Powell's Books, I found myself intrigued by An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time. I suddenly realized that I wanted to know more about the nature of time. (This is exactly the kind of experience I want and expect from Powell's: the abrupt upwelling of a desire I didn't know I had to explore a subject or author.) That specific book was new and expensive with few mixed reviews, so I wandered over to the Physics section and considered the numerous options with "Time" in their title. I ended up with From Eternity to Here, which admittedly doesn't have "Time" in its title.

I am very happy with my choice. From Eternity to Here is exactly what I hope for in a science book: an engaging style, a new perspective, and just the right percentage of material that goes over my head.

The fundamental mystery is why time travels in just one direction when all other dimensions of spacetime allow travel in any direction and the laws of physics are inherently reversible. The answer – or the evidence that points toward an answer – has to do with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that entropy is always increasing. Why and how did the universe start in a state of such low entropy? In other words, pondering the nature of time reduces to pondering cosmology, information theory, and the laws of physics, the mysteries of relativity, quantum mechanics, gravity. Carroll does a nice job of showing how the various mysteries fit together. He is also honest about the limitations of our knowledge: while the goal of science is "to understand the behavior of the natural world," our comprehension of the fundamental mechanisms falls short of that goal.

Physicists are completely confident in how they use quantum mechanics – they can build theories, make predictions, and test against experiments, and there is never any ambiguity along the way. Nevertheless, we're not completely sure what quantum mechanics really is.

Whenever I read a book like this one, I always wonder what conceptual breakthrough will finally allow us to understand what's going on. 

Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream ****

Schweblin has a new collection of stories out, and reviews of it always mention her "unsettling" novel Fever Dream. So I picked up a used copy at Powell's.

The author is indeed a master at building mood. The plot is almost beside the point, serving primarily as a delivery medium for creeping dread. It involves two mothers with young children, natural poisons, dying animals, and a terrible vacation town. You can read the entire book in one sitting, proven by the fact that I did so.

As an aside, I am not a fan of the title Fever Dream, because the term has become an overused cliché for anything that has an undercurrent of anxiety. I have to direct my complaint to the publisher of the translation, because Schweblin called the book Distancia de rescate ("rescue distance"), which actually relates to a theme in the story.

Jane Alison, Meander Spiral Explode ***

For centuries there's been one path through fiction we're most likely to travel -- one we're actually told to follow -- and that's the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides. ... If you ask Google how to structure a story, your face will be hammered with pictures of arcs. ... But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?

Alison correctly notes that there are other ways to organize a satisfying novel, and she attempts to categorize the alternatives in terms of naturally occurring patterns such as spirals, radials, and fractals. I was intrigued by her close reading and analysis of unconventional novels (W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants in particular), but was unconvinced that her taxonomy provided any insight.

The first few chapters cover stylistic elements that provide a story's texture: word length, sentence length, speed of reading vs speed of action, repeated images. I really liked the examples she provided, especially her rewrite of a Raymond Carver passage that removes the patterning of the sentences. These textural elements don't really fit in with the larger organizational elements she covers in subsequent chapters.

In the end, Meander Spiral Explode encouraged me to read closely and notice how the author achieves various effects -- for example, I have always been intrigued by the way Patrick O'Brian varies the speed with which time passes, and how Sebald writes allusive novels without using figurative language -- but also frustrated me with the way Alison tried to stuff her examples into abstract patterns,

Zane Grey, The Lone Star Ranger / The Mysterious Rider *** 1/2

You can't have a collection of Classic Westerns without some Zane Grey. The collection I'm reading has two Zane Grey books that feel like three.

The Lone Star Ranger is an early book (from 1915!) that spends a great deal of time exploring the mental state of its main character, Buck Duane. Duane inherited from his father a "fighting instinct, a driving intensity to kill" that is in constant conflict with his better nature. Duane kills a man at the beginning of Part 1, in self defense but after passing on numerous opportunities to avoid trouble, and goes on the lam in the outlaw country of West Texas. He spends a lot of time alone with his struggles ("As he walked he fell into the lately acquired habit of brooding over his misfortune"), but falls in with a gang of outlaws whose consciences do not trouble them. He determines to save a young girl held captive by the gang. In Part 2, Duane is recruited as an undercover agent for the Texas Rangers, using his outlaw reputation to infiltrate a massive cattle rustling organization.

Part 1 of The Lone Star Ranger is the first book in the collection that really feels like a Classic Western, with its gunslingers, outlaws, and Texan locale. The story is well plotted and well written; I especially liked the scene where a posse traps Duane in the thicket. Part 2 is quite different in style, reading almost like a Hammett detective novel with lots of overheard dialogue and an organized criminal syndicate. It's almost as if the two parts where written separately.

The Mysterious Rider (from 1921) is a domestic drama, a love triangle that never leaves its Colorado ranch. Columbine promises her adoptive father that she'll marry his no-good son in an attempt to tame and improve him, but she loves one of the cowboys. As Buck Duane struggled between his violent nature and his moral compass, Columbine struggles between duty and desire. The title character is an old hunter who serves as a Greek chorus and hand of fate, not to mention being Columbine's biological father.

The Mysterious Rider has narrative problems -- Columbine barely registers the announcement that she was a foundling, the rancher's blindness to his son's faults is unbelievable, the later chapters are repetitive as the heroes give the villain many chances to reform -- but its descriptions are lovely. For example, I absolutely love the quiet scene where Wade (the mysterious rider) beds down in the valley of the White River: fine scenery, fading light, contemplative attention to Wade's routine, the sound of the wind and animals (p 614 - 618).

Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity ****

This collection of Isaiah Berlin's writings* focuses on his views regarding pluralism, which he repeatedly distinguishes from relativism, and nationalism, which he differentiates from national consciousness.

'I prefer coffee, you prefer champagne. We have different tastes. There is no more to be said.' That is relativism. ... Pluralism [is] the conception that there are many different ends that men may seek and still be fully rational, fully men, capable of understanding each other and deriving light from each other, as we derive it from reading Plato or the novels of medieval Japan - worlds, outlooks, very different from our own. ... We are free to criticise the values of other cultures, to condemn them, but we cannot pretend not to understand them at all, or to regard them simply as subjective...

National consciousness I regard as a normal human feeling, which is not at all to be condemned, which creates solidarity, loyalty, patriotism and other feelings which unite human beings. ... Nationalism [is] the condition where members of the nation regard themselves as superior to others, and entitled to dominate them as being selected by God or by Providence to play a special role in the development of mankind... 

Berlin's key point, repeated in several pieces, is that up to the time of the Enlightenment, people believed in an immutable human nature and a single set of universal values; in principle we could discover them and design a way to live that conformed to them. The past two centuries have shown that the universal set includes contradictory values, making it impossible to avoid moral conflict.

I was especially intrigued by Berlin's point about how our values change over time. For example, we admire a person who remains true to his or her principles, even if we think those principles are wrong. People in the Middle Ages or earlier would find this admiration almost inconceivable: dedication to the truth is the only virtue. Valuing fidelity to one's own ideas only makes sense in the context of a Romantic worldview, where personal expression is a key value.

The central essay, the longest in the book, is about a thinker I never knew previously: the arch-conservative Catholic Joseph de Maistre, from the early 19th century.  Maistre believed that all of the most important things in life are the irrational parts shrouded in darkness, and that therefore men needed to avoid applying reason and just submit to their betters, who received direction from the Church and God. Berlin cites Bertrand Russell as saying that "truly to understand the central doctrines of an original thinker, it is necessary...to grasp the particular vision of the universe which lies at the heart of his thought." Berlin does an excellent job of that for Maistre, so that I can apply pluralism and understand (while condemning) his values and worldview.

Reading The Crooked Timber of Humanity reminded me of reading Hilary Putnam's Mind, Language, and Reality, which was similarly a collection of papers that overlap to a great extent, providing multiple opportunities to hear his arguments and see how they apply in different contexts. Berlin's approach and prose reminded me of William James': they both have a warm conversational style that lacks the rigor of most professional philosophers, and they both offer optimistic views about the possibility of people living together in harmony.


* Apparently, Berlin didn't really "write" most of his work. Instead, he dictated it or had it transcribed from his lectures. This fact goes a long way toward explaining his conversational tone and lack of footnotes, and makes his complex sentence structure more impressive.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black *** 1/2

If George Saunders wrote stories addressing the black experience in America, they would sound a lot like the stories in Friday Black. They have mildly science-fictional premises, absurd humor, social commentary, and naturally flowing prose. They're angrier and more violent than Saunders' stories, but the intensity doesn't seem out of place given Adjei-Brenyah's subjects.

Farley Mowat, The Boat Who Wouldn't Float ***

I would characterize Mowat's writing style in The Boat Who Wouldn't Float as a cross between Jean Shepherd (of A Christmas Story fame) and James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small). His old-fashioned comic sensibilities are similar to Shepherd's, and his characters are lovable rural eccentrics like Herriot's. All three men purport to be telling autobiographical stories. When I read this introduction to a comic set piece, I can only hear it in Shepherd's Christmas Story voiceover:

I have never been able to decide whether I am glad I was not present when Jack arrived at Muddy Hole... I missed witnessing a scene which has since become part of Southern Shore folklore.

Evelyn ordered this book for me because it takes place in Newfoundland (and has a titular sailboat). Despite the fact that Mowat lived in Newfoundland for many years and is presumably fond of it, in this book he emphasizes the negative stereotypes about it: desolate interior, impossible to get around in, constant fog, drunken residents, treacherous coastlines. The only place that comes off well is Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the French islands off the southern coast.

I had a hard time with a lot of the nautical humor, because his schooner was so dangerously unseaworthy. I didn't believe that Mowat would head to the open ocean knowing the boat's shortcomings. (I know, it's a comedy.)

I was happy to learn about an old smuggler's trick: tying bags of salt to the illicit as "insurance" against coast guard cutters.

If one o' they cutters comes onto we, we heaves bags and boxes over side. The salt, bein' heavy, takes the boxes straight down below, and there they stays 'till the salt melts into the water. How long that'll take depends on how much salt you uses and what kind o' bag. ... You can time it pretty close ... When 'tis time for the crates to come afloat why there'll be a couple o' dories nearby, jiggin' for cod as innocent as you please.

The Nonpareil Books edition has a nice photo on the cover, although I don't think it's actually Happy Adventure. 

Diane Williams, The Collected Stories of Diane Williams ** 1/2

It is a testament to the influence of the Romantics that calling a writer "poetic" implies lyrical descriptions of nature. Diane Williams is poetic in ways that better reflect contemporary poetry: compression, disrupted syntax, oblique allusions, shifting point of view, alienation, best taken in small doses.

As with poetry, I wonder whether I read these very short stories too quickly or with insufficient attention.

I like Williams' titles, both for her books (Some Sexual Success Stories Plus Other Stories in Which God Might Choose to Appear) and stories ("The Widow and the Hamburger"; "The Fullness of Life is From Something"). Her off-kilter sentence construction is often funny, and certain thematic concerns come through, but most of the stories fly over my head. Here's a paragraph selected from a random page (398, in the story "There are so many smart people walking around"):

When she started to eat me, I asked her if she was tired. She said yes. I told her to sleep. Then she cried. I brought her back to my beard to eat me. She started to cry. I told her to sleep. She started to cry. I asked her if she was tired. She said yes. I told her to sleep, except that I ate her until she started to cry again and she yelled.

Unusually for an experimental artist, the stories from her most recent collection, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine,  come closer to sense,  with fewer time and location jumps.

When introducing yourself to an avant-garde writer you are unfamiliar with, choose a work that has fewer than 764 pages.

Ben Ratliff, Every Song Ever ** 1/2

In Every Song Ever, veteran New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff reimagines the very idea of music appreciation in this day and age ... [when] we can listen to nearly anything, at any time, from Detroit techno to jam bands to baroque opera.

I picked up this book expecting it to provide me with new ways to appreciate music by noting "unexpected connections" and surprising juxtapositions between disparate musical sources. The cover features recommendations from authors who have enhanced my listening experiences (Alex Ross, Simon Reynolds).

The basic premise of Ratliff's book is that the awesome breadth of music we encounter requires us to understand it without reference to the conventions of particular genres or to "the vocabulary and grammar of the composer." He wants to describe the elements "in a language that is not specifically musical." He uses concepts such as repetition, density, stubbornness, and sadness.

I found these concepts, and his use of them, too abstract to be useful to me. "Punk is busking and journalism and dogma and accountability and unity and the humanities. Metal is virtuosity and philosophy and disposition and rumor and misanthropy and science." Ratliff's best insights come when he is not being metaphysical but relying on specific knowledge of particular genres. The exception is the chapter on "Discrepancy," which drew my attention to places where there are "slight discrepancies in timing and attack between" bandmates. "They are all chattering around the beat; they can do this because they know where the beat lives. (It lives in Bill Wyman's bass line.)"

The book did lead me to one new artist (Okkyung Lee) and to another book that I may check out if I can accept its academic style (Music Grooves, by Charles Keil and Steven Feld).

Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days ***

I might hope for the Aubrey-Maturin series to pick up the pace as it nears its conclusion, not to mention the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, but The Hundred Days is merely a typical entry. The most noticeable difference from earlier books is that characters find numerous opportunities to re-explain the current situation; recaps have typically been less overt.

Napoleon is back from exile, so the British Navy needs to recall all of its furloughed captains and refit its ships. In the meantime, Aubrey and his convoy set out to disrupt French shipbuilding in the Adriatic and block a shipment of African gold that promises to bankroll it. This setup provides for an interlude in North Africa, with Dr Maturin traveling across the Algerian desert and hunting lions. It builds to a happy ending, with the treasure captured, Napoleon defeated, and Jack Aubrey dining with two of his oldest lady friends.

Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey ** 1/2

Daniel Mendelsohn is a Classics professor at Bard College. An Odyssey tells the story of when his 81-year-old father sits in on his seminar about Homer's Odyssey and travels with him on an Odyssey-themed cruise. The experience allows Daniel to bond with his austere father while also giving him a new perspective on the Odyssey.

Reviews of the book promised a combination of family memoir and "brilliant literary criticism." It was indeed a combination of these two genres, but both halves of the equation felt superficial. We read plenty of stories about Jay Mendelsohn (the father), but they don't provide any shading to his character beyond his cautious sternness. Far from being "brilliant," the analysis of the Odyssey is pretty basic: it didn't offer me any new perspectives on the work or encourage me to go back to read it again. Few of the insights that Daniel gains about his father relate to the epic; they come from interviewing Jay's friends and family.

Daniel has a pleasantly conversational prose style, not at all academic. He shifts back and forth in time and between subjects in a manner that he surely intends to be Homeric but which I found tiresome.

Willa Cather, O, Pioneers! *** 1/2

O Pioneers! is the second book in the leather-bound collection of Classic Westerns that Evelyn gave me for my birthday, following The Virginian. It's the best known and most acclaimed novel in the set, but it doesn't really fit. It arguably takes place in the West (Nebraska), but it has none of the genre trappings of a Western: no cowboys, no gunslingers, no saloons, no canyons.

O Pioneers! tells the story of the Bergson family as they establish themselves in the frontier. The main character is the land, which Cather frequently describes as having needs of its own. Alexandra Bergson is the rare strong female character for a book written in 1913, even rarer for being the smartest person around not merely the most steadfast. The atmosphere is quite convincing.

J.D. Daniels, The Correspondence ****

Questions that occurred to me as I read this brilliant, baffling book: What the hell is this? Who the hell is this? Is this poetry? How can a sentence be this good?

This laudatory quote from the cover of The Correspondence sums up my reaction. I found it in the Essays section of the store, but it reads like fiction. It's called The Correspondence and each chapter is titled "Letter from [Placename]," but it's not structured in epistolatory form. The cover design looks like a faux notebook, but it's not confessional.

I don't know how to describe it. It's short -- 126 pages -- so read it and explain its appeal to me.

Owen Wister, The Virginian *** 1/2

The Virginian, published in 1902, was one of the first Western novels. It is very finely written, in a style that splits the difference between flowery 19th century eloquence and gritty 20th century "plain" style. The title character is a taciturn, honorable cowboy who is a bit of a dandy. He falls in love with the schoolmarm out from Vermont, who has a refreshingly complex inner life for a young woman in a Western.

There's a lot to like in this novel. The love story is well told, the sense of place (Wyoming) is strong, and the characters are appealing. It's too long, though. It has many stories in it, and it wouldn't suffer by losing half of them. I appreciated the tragic story of Shorty and his horse Pedro, but could have done without the comic story of Emily the chicken. I was left cold by nearly everything having to do with the Virginian's nemesis, Trampas, although maybe some of it was necessary to set up the tense scene of bringing the cattle rustlers to justice.

The Virginian is the first novel in a leather-bound collection of Classic Westerns that Evelyn gave me for my birthday.

Matthew Desmond, Evicted ****

Evicted follows the housing travails of several people in Milwaukee in 2009, including both evictors and evictees. It addresses the social systems of housing by telling specific individual stories, similar in style to Random Family.  Like Random Family, the story teaches me about whole economies that are invisible to me; for example, moving companies whose entire business is handling evictions and storage units for the now-homeless people. Many people end up living (at least temporarily) with complete strangers who find themselves in similar circumstances.

Evicted includes interesting little details, such as how it can be advantageous for poor folks to buy extravagant items on layaway because if that money were in the bank they'd lose their benefits.  This headline from the review in the Guardian captures the overarching theme: "What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?"

Tom Sweterlitsch, The Gone World *****

The Gone World is an excellent crime / science fiction hybrid. In 1997, a West Virginia family is brutally murdered, with the father and oldest daughter missing. Because the father is a Naval officer assigned to a top-secret time traveling program, Agent Shannon Moss is assigned to investigate. As she digs in, it starts to seem likely that the case is somehow related to Terminus, the end-of-the-world scenario that time travelers report as an increasingly likely future.

The first part of the book reads like a crime novel with science fiction flourishes; the balance shifts in a decidedly sci-fi direction as it continues. Sweterlitsch manages to keep the story grounded and realistic even while venturing into multiple timelines and apocalyptic prophecies. There's a quote on the hardcover edition from Blake Crouch, the author of Wayward Pines and Dark Matter, but thankfully The Gone World lacks the outlandish quality of Crouch's work. Characters act in a recognizable human manner, and the story combines exciting action sequences with well-embodied ideas about time, fate, and the nature of the self.

Tony Soper, The Northwest Passage ****

I wouldn't normally list a travel guide in this blog, because I wouldn't usually read one cover to cover. But The Northwest Passage is unique in that it's a travel guide for a place I'll (probably) never go -- in fact, a place I would have thought it was nearly impossible to go.

The first part of the book is a summary of European attempts to discover a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the top of North America, culminating in the disastrous Franklin expedition in 1845 and Roald Amundsen's success in 1906. The heart of the book, though, is a tourist's guide to the present-day attractions along the route. Soper hits all the notes from a traditional guidebook: scenic vistas, wildlife refuges, lodging ("There is a very good hotel [at Gjoa Haven], named inevitably after Amundsen"), and tourist facilities ("The Arctic Coast Visitor Center [offers] an excellent selection of maps, informative brochures and exhibits... Businesses in the community include a Northern Store with a Quick-Stop selling KFC and Pizza Hut"). There are numerous sidebars about the unique animals along the route, not to mention nice photography.

I expected the Northwest Passage to be nothing but desolate ice and tundra, with its only attraction being its historical significance and mere existence. The Northwest Passage, though, made the trip seem both attractive and doable, albeit not trivial. I found myself mentally flagging the sights I'd want to catch, just as I do when planning an actual vacation. 

Michael Ondaatje, Warlight ***

The narrator of Warlight was a teenaged boy in post-war England when his parents "went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals." It's clear to Nathaniel and his sister that their parents trip to Singapore is somehow related to the work they did during the war, but they don't know what that work was. Their guardians are two men they call the Moth and the Darter, the latter of whom smuggles greyhounds into England for illegal racing. The first part of the book describes Nathaniel's adolescence; the second part describes his efforts a dozen years later to discover what his mother was up to during that time.

The fundamental theme of Warlight is that our lives are driven by forces we only obliquely understand. The actions of Part 1 all find their true meaning in the the war and its immediate aftermath. Ondaatje's style, here as in The English Patient, creates vivid set pieces with clearly metaphorical intent. 

We continued through the dark, quiet waters of the river, feeling we owned it... We passed industrial buildings, their lights muted, faint as stars, as if we were in a time capsule of the war years when blackouts and curfews had been in effect, when there was just warlight and only blind barges were allowed to move along this stretch of river.

Ondaatje's prose has a peculiar distancing effect, so that it always feels like we're viewing the narrative at a remove. Nearly everyone in the story goes by a nickname or pseudonym. Most of the story consists of memories that have a romantic gloss to them.

M. Wylie Blanchet, The Curve of Time ****

I have a soft spot for journal-like memoirs that take place along the Inside Passage from Vancouver to Alaska. Joe Upton's Alaska Blues, Edith Iglauer's Fishing with John, Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau: these are some favorite books of mine. The Curve of Time is a family-oriented contribution to the genre. The author is a single mother of five who, in the late 1920s, spends summers cruising the British Columbia coast with her family in a 25-foot boat. 

The Curve of Time is a disconnected collection of anecdotes, and the author never establishes the children's characters -- in fact, I'd be hard-pressed to name them all. But I can't be objective about the subject matter, the period photographs, the nautical charts on the endpages, or the watercolor on the cover of this 50th anniversary edition.

Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief *** 1/2

I'm not typically a fan of multi-generational family stories, but I enjoyed MacLeod's short stories and No Great Mischief was named the greatest Atlantic Canadian book of all time. Plus I really like the look and feel of the paperback edition.

The narrator, one of three characters named Alexander MacDonald, is part of clann Calum Ruadh, the descendants of "red" Calum MacDonald who emigrated from Scotland to Cape Breton. Although family stories reach back to Calum and to formative Highland events like the Battle of Cullodun, No Great Mischief mostly sticks to the narrator's life.

No Great Mischief tells its story in a gentle empathetic tone that reminded me of A River Runs Through It. The plot is more a series of episodes than an integrated narrative, but many of the episodes are memorable: traveling across the ice to the lighthouse where they lived, the horse that helped the brothers pull their boat from the water, crossing to Cape Breton Island in a storm.

They went one day to cut timber for a skidway they were making for their boat. They went into a tightly packed grove of spruce down by the shore. In the middle of the grove, they saw what they thought was the perfect tree. It was tall and straight and over thirty feet tall. They notched it as they had been taught and then they sawed it with a bucksaw. When they had sawed it completely through, nothing happened. The tree's upper branches were so densely intertwined with those of the trees around it that it just remained standing. ... When the wind blew, the whole grove would move and sigh. ... You would never realize that in its midst there was a tall straight tree that was severed at its stump.

Mary Pilon, The Kevin Show **1/2

The Kevin Show is a biography of Kevin Hall, an Olympic sailor who suffers from mental illness, specifically a form of bipolar disorder known as The Truman Show syndrome. During manic episodes, Kevin imagines that he is the star of a worldwide reality show that is helping to solve global poverty.

Kevin was a successful junior sailor, and he eventually made the US Olympic team sailing Finns and served on the America's Cup crew for Team Artemis. He started having manic episodes during college, and also had testicular cancer (twice) around the same time.

The Kevin Show gives a well rounded picture of the difficulties of living with mental illness, both for the sufferer and his family and friends. It discusses societal and philosophical questions about what it means to treat mental issues as an illness while still holding individuals responsible for their own behavior. However, the prose is pedestrian and I often had trouble keeping track of Kevin's many moves. It felt to me like Pilon had arranged her copious notes into their proper order but hadn't gone back through to provide shading, drama, and smooth transitions. 

Alice Feeney, Sometimes I Lie **

Amber wakes up in the hospital on Boxing Day in a coma. She can't quite remember what happened to her, but she knows it isn't good. She mentally reviews the activities of the past week -- an ultimatum at work, her husband spending time with her sister, a chance encounter with an old flame, maybe a pregnancy -- and thinks back to her childhood diaries. It's immediately apparent that there's something odd about Amber, and the twists start coming about halfway through.

I'm all for unreliable narrators and psychological thrillers, but none of the characters in Sometimes I Lie exhibit recognizable human behavior, not just the THREE who turn out to be psychopaths. And that's before you toss in the imaginary friend, the identity switches, the clueless husbands, and the plethora of murders successfully disguised as accidents.

Mark Adams, Tip of the Iceberg ** 1/2

My standards for books about Alaska and the Inside Passage are high after reading Alaska Blues, Passage to Juneau, Coming into the Country, Going to Extremes, and various similar books. (I even have one more -- The Curve of Time -- sitting on my "to read" shelf.) Tip of the Iceberg falls short of those standards.

Adams introduces his "3000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska" as following in the footsteps of the 1899 Harriman Expedition, similar to how Tony Horwitz followed Captain Cook in Blue Latitudes. Harriman was a railroad tycoon who brought a large team of scientists and naturalists on an all-expenses-paid steamship trip from Seattle to Siberia. The team published a popular multiple volume report when they returned. Adams spends a couple of chapters introducing members of the team, but then rarely mentions them again. He refers far more frequently to John Muir's previous visits to the area.

That's the organizational problem. The other problem is that Adams chooses hackneyed details to illustrate his points. He talks about Alaskans being conservative by mentioning their guns and how they refer to "the Soviet state of Seattle." His natural descriptions all start to sound the same.

Frederick Barthelme, There Must Be Some Mistake ***

Frederick Barthelme usually gets compared to other Southern writers or other so-called minimalists, but I'm going to make a more offbeat comparison. Reading Frederick Barthelme books is like watching Yasujirō Ozu films.

All of his works take place in the same locale and milieu, with essentially the same characters, with stories that highlight mundane everyday activities and feature strong women. In the good ones, the particularities resonate in a way that produces tenderness, humor, and universality; in the less good ones, it feels like nothing actually happened.

Barthelme stories take place in condos along the Gulf Coast, with indolent men and the interesting women who love them. In There Must Be Some Mistake, Wallace lives outside of Galveston in a condo complex that is experiencing a rash of deaths. It has more plot than many Barthelme books do -- as the New York Times Book Review said, it "often reads like an amusing existential satire of the detective novel" -- although I found it less funny. 

Laurie Gwen Shapiro, The Stowaway ***

The Stowaway is the true story of a seventeen-year-old boy who gained a spot on the crew for Richard Byrd's 1928 Antarctic expedition after twice being removed from its ships as a stowaway.  Billy Gawronski received lots of local (NYC) press coverage at the time for his perseverance, but his story, like the enthusiasm for the American explorer Byrd, has largely been forgotten.

Shapiro tells Billy's story in a workmanlike fashion, smoothly fitting the story into its context with lots of asides about other events happening at the same time. The tone is not too different from the boy's adventure stories that inspired Billy to stow away in the first place. Shapiro sticks closely to the facts rather than emphasizing the adventure narrative.