Book Review: Three by Neil Gaiman

Sometimes, especially when I can't get to the library, I will dedicate myself to a reading run, reading multiple books by the same author. This time, I read three by Neil Gaiman: Neverwhere, Anansi Boys, and American Gods. American Gods is probably Gaiman's most widely-recognized book, but I think I like the others a bit better. American Gods can get pretty disgusting and graphic, and the others have less of that.
First, though, American Gods. In this book, Shadow, the main character is nearing the end of a prison term for assault and robbery. He can't wait to get home to his wife, who is equally eager to have him back home. His cellmate, Low Key Lyesmith (say it out loud; you should recognize his name), turned Shadow on to the writing of Herodotus, and he quotes the Roman now and then in the novel, especially this one: "Count no man happy until he is dead." Hmm.
A few days before his release date, Shadow receives awful news: His wife is dead, car accident, and they release him early to attend the funeral. Shocked, grieving, lost, he agrees to become bodyguard and driver to a mysterious man named Wednesday (do you know the origin of this day's name?), even though he has some reservations about him.
Events unfold. It turns out the old gods (those like Wednesday, Mr Nancy, Kali, and others) were brought to America in the minds and hearts of their worshipers centuries or millennia ago are now preparing for a war against the new American gods (you know, media, technology, credit cards, freeways, etc.).
Of course, there are plots and counter plots and unexpected twists and changes. Shadow meets all sorts of people who are and are not who they claim to be. He is accused of being slow by almost every god you meet, but he's the one who stays true and figures everything out by the end. Unfortunately, this is not a book for the faint of heart. (Honestly, I'm not even sure why I like it so much. It has a LOT of bad language, violence, and other just disgusting stuff. Some of the goddesses do some pretty disgusting things.) But it has a lot to say about loyalty and courage and why America is like it is. And it's just a great story.

Anansi Boys tells the story of Fat Charlie Nancy, who has tried to get as far as possible from his embarrassing father, even moving to England to distance himself. His father, although Fat Charlie doesn't realize it for awhile, is actually Anansi, the trickster god. Fat Charlie receives word that his father has died, and when he goes back for the funeral, he learns that he actually has a brother, Spider.
Spider seems like Fat Charlie's opposite: cool, composed, careless, a heart breaker and a rule breaker. Spider messes up Fat Charlie's life. But then, the brothers learn some things about themselves and their family.
This book has lots of interesting details about the pantheon of animal gods, some good plain evil acts by the bad guys, humor, witchcraft, ghosts, lots of fun.

Neverwhere starts with a pretty boring young man who bumbles along after his high-powered girlfriend on their way to dinner with her important boss when a dirty girl stumbles through a wall (or a door, he isn't sure which) that wasn't there before and collapses at their feet. Richard stops to help her but Jessica urges him to keep walking, saying someone else will help. Richard ignores her, scooping up the unconscious girl, and takes her home to tend her wounds. Well, it turns out the girl is from London Below, a world of magic, of darkness, of strange stories, and some very vile men are after her. Her name is Door, and she can find and open any door. That's her power. Richard ends up helping her, getting stuck in London Below, where his life is in danger almost all the time.
I would say this book is the most fun of the three, as it is interesting to consider the ways London Below layers upon and overlaps "the real world." The bad guys, though, are really, really disgusting.

Book Review: The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed

The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant (Note: I'm in the throes of distance learning and lesson planning, so please forgive the poorly staged photo.)

In the winter of 1997, logger and wilderness lover Grant Hadwin cut down a one-of-a-kind golden Sitka Spruce on one of the Queen Charlotte islands off the coast of British Columbia. The tree was hundreds of years old, beloved to residents, a draw for tourists, and sacred to the Haida, natives of the islands.
Just before his trial, Hadwin set off alone in a kayak and was never seen again. In this book, the author sets out to explore why Hadwin cut down the tree and what might have happened to him, while also delving into the natural history of the islands and the Pacific Northwest, the history of logging and the devastating environmental impact of wide-scale industrial logging of old growth forests, the sheer courage (and probable borderline insanity, in my thinking) it must have required to be a logger (especially when their only tools were saws and axes), the history of the Haida and other native peoples, dendrology, and so many other fascinating discursions. I learned a lot and was reminded of other factoids I had previously read about in other books.
One good point Vaillant makes is how easy it is for us to romanticize forests from the comfort of our armchairs, thinking of the peace and beauty in their green depths, while actually a forest can be a brutal place where almost every single organism is engaged in a life-or-death struggle every single day, clawing (or branching) its way toward sunlight or rest or the next meal.
My only complaint about this book is that sometimes Vaillant's discursions--while informative--distracted from the overall point of the book: Grant Hadwin's act of shocking destruction and his flight. Also, I was sometimes overwhelmed by the vast cast of characters discussed, ranging from tribal leaders to loggers to scientists to explorers. The list grew so long that I lost my way among the branching stories at times, as one person or another was explained and then brought back into the narrative many pages later by name only without a reminder of his or her place in the broader shape of the book.
Still, those are minor complaints. The book was interesting and compelling, and now, especially after reading Emily St John Mandel's novels, my desire to travel to British Columbia is only strengthened.

Book Review: The Glass Hotel

The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel

Like Station Eleven, this book drifts and settles on characters and across years (and places), building and rebuilding a narrative.
At its heart, I think it dwells on this question: How readily will a person cross the line of morality to save himself? Is that line the same for each of us, or does it shift? What burden do we bear for others in making those choices, and how likely then is it that the ghosts of our poor choices will haunt us?
At the center of the characters are a brother and sister, Paul and Vincent, who share a father but have different mothers. They are five years apart and emotionally distant, practically strangers. Paul has grown up with his mother, visiting his father only once a year or so where he lives with Vincent and her mother on a remote island in British Columbia.
As the (primary setting of) the story begins, Vincent's mother has disappeared from her canoe, presumably drowned. This uncertain disappearance casts an early spell. Much of the rest of the book is misted in a similar uncertainty, as both Vincent and Paul make desperate choices to survive--each finding a type of security and even success--but at cost.
Vincent enters a relationship with the ridiculously wealthy Jonathan Alkaitis, who is old enough to be her father. His wealth buys her serenity--of sorts--and she blinds herself to her whispering doubts about the source of his success until it is revealed that he has swindled all of his investors in a decades-long Ponzi scheme. This scheme, when it is uncovered, causes repercussions that stretch long filaments out to touch most of the other characters.
Like Station Eleven, the book caught and held my attention immediately and consistently. The writing is tense and spare, lovely and evocative. The characters are multi-faceted and unpredictable in the best of ways. The movement of the narrative arc between times and places and characters is a little disorienting at first, though. (Confession: I had to sketch out a timeline about forty pages in to keep things straight, but then I found my bearings.)
I guess my only complaint is that much of the narrative centers on Alkaitis, who seems pretty despicable to me. (Actually, now that I think of it, in Station Eleven, much of the narrative focuses on Arthur Leander, whom I also rather dislike.) (Hmm. Why, Emily?) I wanted to read more about Vincent, who was my favorite character. But still, a finely plotted book with lovely characters and themes I will ponder for many days to come. Also: British Columbia (where Vincent grew up and where the Glass Hotel is). I think I need to go there.

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

First, before I get into the review, I think it's fair to admit that I have been intrigued by dinosaurs for a long, long time. I remember opening our well-thumbed family atlas to pore over the two-page spread depicting dinosaurs going about their prehistoric business. We watched our VHS tape of The Land Before Time so many times the audio was a little scratchy. 

When I had children of my own, I bought them books about dinosaurs and we read them together. Their obsession surpassed mine, so much so that one of the boys (hopefully respectfully) corrected his kindergarten teacher on her pronunciation of Diplodocus. So, it's not surprising that I would eagerly read this book about dinosaurs.  

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte

I first heard about this book when we were in Marquette, MI, and the boys kindly let me browse to my heart's content (okay, even allowing me two visits in one day) at a lovely bookstore called Snowbound Books. There I saw this book in a window display in hardcover, and the bookseller told me she couldn't keep enough copies in stock. They sold like crazy because the book was so interesting, so highly readable. A few weeks ago, before everything shut down so resoundingly in the wake of the coronavirus, I found it again (in paperback this time) at one of my favorite bookstores in Ann Arbor, Nicola's Books.This one had a staff pick shelf tag that read something like: This book makes dinosaurs sound so, so cool. As if they weren't cool enough already.
How could I walk past it without picking up a copy? I was not disappointed. Here is my review, but first a warning: Do not put this book into the hands of a young (or impressionable) dinosaur lover unless you are prepared for him (or her) to abandon a more staid career path (like finance or law or teaching) to become an archaeologist. This book is very, very likely to have such a transformative effect.
Archaeologist and professor Steve Brusatte freely admits that he was very obsessed in his youth. He collected fossils, contacted eminent archaeologists, collected articles about their finds, attended conferences in the hope of meeting them. And he did meet them. And now he's one of them.
He writes in a very exuberant, easy to read style about the various prehistoric eras (the Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous) and what lived and thrived in each.
He brings these long-dead times to vivid life, describing creatures such as an enormous carnivorous salamander whose massive jaws snapped shut on its prey "like the lid of a toilet seat," or the towering waves of lava like a "tsunami from hell" that marked the end of the Triassic.
He describes fossil hunters past and present, the excitement of discovery, methods of mapping dinosaur family trees and dating fossils. He even explains the purpose of a T.Rex's tiny arms: They were "accessories to murder," enabling it to hold down its still-moving prey while it got busy chewing on it.
The book is just simply delightful and exciting, making the career of paleontologist even more interesting than I had already thought it to be. You will probably want to buy and read this one. Trust me.

Book Review: Last Night in Montreal

Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

When she is seven, Lillia's father abducts her--her arms heavily bandaged--from her mother's home. They spend the next nine years traveling across states, changing names sometimes daily.

At 22, Lillia doesn't know how to live in one places, and she leaves a string of abandoned loves behind her in cities across the United States. When she leaves Eli in Brooklyn, he determines to find her. Eventually, he travels to winter-bound Montreal, where he meets Michaela. She claims to know where Lillia is but will only tell Eli if he tells her about a car accident that happened when Lillia was sixteen. He refuses--daily--for weeks.

Eli and Michaela continue to meet, sharing every other thought and story but the one the other so desperately wants to hear.

The book flashes from moment to moment, from character to character: Lillia on the road with her father and then on her own, leaving clues in hotel Bibles; Eli tracing her path and searching, increasingly frustrated; Michaela, abandoned by her absent mother and father--the private investigator trailing and then haunted by Lillia, who was badly injured in a car accident when Lillia was sixteen.
It ends tragically, and although the character may not get entirely what they want by the last page, they do find a measure of peace.
Compared to Station Eleven, this book has a much darker, less hopeful tone. Where Station Eleven speaks of hope and the triumph of humanity, this one speaks more of loss and learning to live with that loss. There is still hope here, still great love and compassion and sacrifice, but because of the echoing emptiness from both the setting and some of the characters, I would recommend Station Eleven over Last Night in Montreal. That is not to say it's not a beautiful book or a well written one. It is both. It's just that I can set down Station Eleven with a sigh of peace and small smile of contentment, but I set down Last Night in Montreal with an ache in my throat and a fierce need to hug each of my loved ones for a very long time.

Book Review: Station Eleven

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The novel begins in a theater in Toronto where aging actor Arthur Leander is playing the role of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary is watching from a front-row seat as Arthur flubs a line, stumbles, acts confused, and collapses. A medic-in-training, he recognizes the signs of cardiac arrest and leaps onto the stage and begins CPR. Arthur dies there, amid falling plastic snow, the curtain mercifully drawn, the other actors--including young Kirsten Raymonde--standing in shock and dismay.
That night, as Jeevan wanders home through the snow, his friend calls him from a hospital, telling him that the Georgian Flu that had lately been mentioned in the news is fast on its way to becoming a pandemic. The friend warns Jeevan to get out of town immediately. Instead, Jeevan goes to his wheelchair-bound brother's apartment after stopping at the grocery store for carts full of supplies.
The novel then leaps in time two decades, and we learn that the pandemic was indeed devastating, with a 99.9% worldwide mortality rate. Society fractured and decayed, and most of the survivors live in very small communities, each day a struggle.
Kirsten Raymonde, the young child actor, is now a young woman, and she is part of the Traveling Symphony which migrates back and forth along the shores of Michigan performing orchestral works and Shakespeare's plays. Their motto is lifted from an episode of Star Trek: Voyager: "Because survival is insufficient."
And really, that is one of the keys to this book. In this post-pandemic world, the things that help people grow and survive are the bonds they forge with each other and the beauty they create together. The book is told unfolds in both past and present, weaving the stories of Arthur; his first wife, Miranda; his second wife, Elizabeth; his friend Clark; Jeevan; and Kirsten. We learn who they were and who they are, we mourn what they have lost, and we look with hope at what they create.
Post-apocalyptic stories are often dark, full of violent struggles to survive. Instead, this book is a symphony of praise for the beautiful world we have, the world we take for granted, where we can flip a switch and have light, turn a dial and have heat or cold, touch some buttons and call a friend. We forget to be thankful for that, and in this time of global pandemic, it is good, in my opinion, to dwell on what we have, not what we don't have.

Books Read in 2019

The following is the list of the books I read last year, with highly ranked books in bold font:

1. California by Edan Lapucki (8/10)
2. Food Rules by Michael Pollan (7/10)
3. Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee (7/10)
4. The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (8/10)
5. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (6/10)
6. The Valley at the Centre of the World by Mallachy Tallack (7/10)
7. Neverhome by Laird Hunt (8/10)
8. Little by Edward Carey (8/10)
9. The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (7/10)
10. Transcription by Kate Atkinson (6/10)
11. The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton (8/10)
12. The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti (9/10)
13. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen (7/10)
14. The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean (6/10)
15. Golden Urchin by Madeleine Brent (8/10)
16. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (10/10)
17. I Am an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire (6/10)
18. Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates (7/10)
19. How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball (9/10)
20. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty (9/10)
21. The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley (9/10)
22. The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty (8/10)
23. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley (9/10)
24. A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball (5/10)
25. Cooked by Michael Pollan (8/10)
26. Wool by Hugh Howey (8/10)
27. The World to Come by Dara Horn (9/10)
28. The Angel of Losses by Stephanie Feldman (6/10)
29. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (7/10)
30. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (9/10)
31. The Heaven of Animals by David James Poissant (7/10)
32. The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman (7/10)
33. Tales from the Inner City by Shaun Tan (9/10)
34. On the Come Up by Angie Thomas (8/10)
35. The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan (7/10)
36. The Wind Is Not a River by Brian Payton (8/10)
37. Day of Tears by Julius Lester (8/10)
38. A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn (8/10)
39. The River by Peter Heller (9/10)
40. If, Then by Kate Hope Day (7/10)
41. The Secret Wisdom of Nature by Peter Wohlleben (8/10)
42. A Pocketful of Crows by Joanne Harris (7/10)
43. The Bird King by G Willow Wilson (9/10)
44. The Humans by Matt Haig (9/10)
45. How to Stop Time by Matt Haig (6/10)
46. Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano (7/10)
47. The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker (7/10)
48. Minnow by James E. MeTeer (5/10)
49. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (10/10)
50. Marvel and a Wonder by Joe Meno (7/10)
51. The Staff by Ron Samul (7/10)
52. The Lost for Words Bookshop by Stephanie Butland (8/10)
53. Living Well, Spending Less by Ruth Soukup (7/10)
54. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (10/10)
55. The Fish Can Sing by Halldor Laxness (5/10)
56. Zero Bomb by M.T. Hill (8/10)
57. Last Tango in Cyberspace by Steven Kotler (9/10)
58. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (9/10)
59. Slade House by David Mitchell (8/10)
60. Ghostwritten by David Mitchell (10/10)
61. Tears of the Truffle-Pig by Fernando A Flores (5/10)
62. The Accidental Further Adventures of the 100-Year-Old Man by Jonas Jonasson (6/10)
63. Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell (9/10)
64. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (10/10)
65. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (10/10)
66. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (10/10)
67. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (10/10)
68. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel (10/10)
69. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (7/10)
70. Shift by Hugh Howey (7/10)
71. A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman (10/10)
72. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson (10/10)
73. Dust by Hugh Howey (7/10)
74. Nest by Kenneth Oppel (9/10)
75. The Body Lies by Jo Baker (10/10)
76. The Porpoise by Mark Haddon (9/10)
77. Walking on the Ceiling by Aysegul Savas (5/10)
78. What We Eat Now by Bee Wilson (9/10)
79. The Feed by Nick Clark Windo (7/10)
80. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson (9/10)
81. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (10/10)
82. The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman (8/10)
83. The Emerald Storm by William Dietrich (7/10)
84. Birdology by Sy Montgomery (10/10)
85. The Motion of Puppets by Keith Donohue (8/10)
86. Another Turn of the Crank by Wendell Berry (8/10)
87. The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by HG Parry (8/10)
88. Educated by Tara Westover (8/10)
89. The Good Good Pig by Sy Montgomery (8/10)
90. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (8/10)
91. Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl (10/10)
92. The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higa Shida (9/10)
93. Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott (7/10)
94. The City of Brass by SA Chakraborty (9/10)
95. The Kingdom of Copper by SA Chakraborty (8/10)
96. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky (7/10)
97. The Philsopher's War by Tom Miller (9/10)
98. Buzz Sting Bite: Why We Need Insects by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson (9/10)
99. Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World by Jeff Gordon (8/10)
100. Strange Harvests: The Hidden Histories of Seven Natural Objects by Edward Posnett (9/10)
101. Family of Origin by CJ Hauser (8/10)
102. The Way through the Woods by Long Litt Woon (7/10)
103. The Border Keeper by Kerstin Hall (8/10)
104. We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer (8/10)
105. Things That Fall from the Sky by Selja Ahava (7/10)
106. Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl (10/10)
107. How to Be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis (6/10)
108. Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy by Anne Boyd Rioux (7/10)
109. Kopp Sisters on the March by Amy Stewart (6/10)
110. Have You Eaten Grandma? by Gyles Brandreth (8/10)
111. Movies (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano (9/10)
112. Out of Darkness Shining Light by Petina Gappah (6/10)
113. Stronghold: One Man's Quest to Save the World's Wild Salmon by Tucker Malarkey (10/10)
114. Ghostwritten by David Mitchell (10/10)
115. The Unicorn in the Barn by Jacqueline K Ogburn (9/10)
116. Disaster's Children by Emma Sloley (4/10)
117. What We Talk about When We Talk about Books by Leah Price (7/10)
118. When Less Becomes More by Emily Ley (7/10)
119. Fibershed by Rebecca Burgess (9/10)
120. The Art of Frugal Hedonism by Annie Raser Rowland with Adam Grubb (9/10)
121. The Novel Habits of Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith (5/10)