What I'm Reading, Pt. 2

I recently finished my 20th book of the year. As 20 is a nice round number, I decided I would share the books I've read thus far. I always love to know what people are reading (when someone is reading on the metro, I make a thinly-disguised effort to identify what book they're reading), and I figure other people feel the same way. So why not return the favor. 

(Note: I present the book descriptions in italics -- I did not write these; the descriptions were usually taken off the back of the book.)

(Note: Books are listed in the order I read them.)

6. Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson. (Non-Fiction)

In the early seventies, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe -- in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. He was accompanied by an unforgettable sidekick named Stephen Katz (who will be gloriously familiar to readers of Bryson's A Walk in the Woods). Twenty years later, he decided to retrace his journey. The result is affectionate and riotously funny. 

I did enjoy the book -- I found it interesting, informative (he covers a lot of European countries), and funny. But, ultimately, the book should really be called How a Crabby Guy Experiences Europe. There is a decent amount of bellyaching and snippiness. I've read other travelogues of his, and yes, this snippiness is nothing new, but there just seemed to be more in this book. Another possible title could be How a Crabby Guy Experiences Europe and Kind of Enjoys It, It Depends on the City. 

7. The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard. (Fiction)

Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing. And the neighborhood boys she's left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence. As the days and years pile up, the mystery of her disappearance grows kaleidoscopically. A collection of rumors, divergent suspicions, and tantalizing what-ifs, Nora Lindell's story is a shadowy projection of teenage lust, friendship, reverence, and regret, captured magically in the disembodied plural voice of the boys who still long for her. The book tracks the emotional progress of the sister Nora left behind, the other families in the leafy suburban enclave, and the individual fates of the boys in her thrall. Far more eager to imagine Nora's fate than to scrutinize their own, the boys sleepwalk into an adulthood of jobs, marriages, families, homes, and daughters of their own, all the while pining for a girl -- and a life -- that no longer exists, except in the imagination.

This book reminded me a little bit of Myla Goldberg's The False Friend. Somewhat similar premises. But they are also very different. I could not put this book down -- the mystery of it all and what happened to Nora kept me wanting more. I think I ended up reading it in a day simply because the suspense was killing me. But, be forewarned, this book will break your heart. It's quite depressing, the lives these people live. It seems like so many books about teenagers in suburbia in the 1970s are depressing. 

8. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. (Fiction)

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey. 

Oskar is such a great character. He is now one of my all-time favorite literary characters.

9. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. (Fiction)

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul -- the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter -- environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man -- she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz -- outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival -- still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes? 

Just as good as the hype, if you ask me. Franzen puts so much into these characters -- revealing their history, their deepest feelings, their intentions -- that I felt like I really knew these people. I can imagine myself saying a couple of years from now, "Oh, whatever happened to The Berglunds? I wonder what they're up to now...Oh yeah, those were fictional characters."

10. The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. (Non-Fiction)

From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of marriage -- and a life, in good times and bad -- that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

This book is about the year in which Joan's husband dies and her daughter is in and out of the hospital with a serious illness. She is very open and honest about her feelings of loss and what this year was like for her. She introduces the reader to all kinds of personal stories about her and her husband's relationship and their life together throughout the years. The book probably reads a lot like how she experienced that year -- there were some parts of the book where I was overcome with emotion and sadness, while other parts seemed kind of boring and slow. One thing I kind of got sick of is that she references her and her husband's past works a decent amount throughout the book (her husband was a writer, as well). Like she kept quoting passages from past books of theirs. I don't know why, but it kind of annoyed me. She can write whatever she wants, obviously, this is her memoir. And she can describe this very personal experience in whatever way she sees fit. But it's just a little hang-up I had. To me it just came off kind of...I don't want to say conceited, because that word is too harsh, but I just found it odd. Like certain parts almost came off like, 'Someone once said something brilliant that reminds me of what I'm experiencing right now...oh yeah, it was a passage from my 1994 book Blah Blah Blah...'

I haven't yet read Joyce Carol Oates's A Widow's Story, so I can't compare the two. But I did read an excerpt of A Widow's Story in The New Yorker, and I was blown over by this piece. I was crying uncontrollably, and I instantly went to Eagan, exclaiming through tears, "Don't you ever die!!!!" While I haven't read her whole book yet, I feel that Joyce Carol Oates described her husband's death in more of the way that I probably would describe an experience like that, compared to how Joan described it. Joan seemed very factual and didn't seem to delve in the emotions as much (and sometimes emotions were presented in a factual way, instead of an emotional way, if that makes sense) -- which is understandable, I imagine that is an incredibly hard thing to do. Joan also seems to have more of a "stiff upper lip" personality. Plus, Joan's story is different because right before and then also after her husband's death, her daughter was having serious medical issues herself (the husband died while the daughter was in a coma at the hospital). I don't think Joan had as much time to wallow in her sadness because she instantly had her daughter and her daughter's health to focus on. So while I did like The Year of Magical Thinking, it wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be. 

If I'm being honest, one way I could tell it wasn't what I expected is that I didn't cry as much as I thought I would. I cried more reading Joyce Carol Oate's excerpt than I did throughout Joan's whole book. Is it sick that I wanted more tears? More emotion? Probably.