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.