Book 110: The Given Day

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

I've always enjoyed historical fiction (might be one of the reason I started out as a history major - of course, that wasn't necessarily a good call considering that I prefer historical fiction to nonfiction). I've also read just about every novel of Lehane's I could get my hands on this past year so obviously, I was going to read The Given Day.

It was very good - my only problem is that I didn't finish it before I left for Athens so that was one more giant book I had to take on the plane with me. Seriously though, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The only plot line I thought was perhaps unnecessary was Danny's interaction with his neighbors/bombers. I'm not saying they made the story weaker or anything but I think it would have been just as strong without that extra level of drama (on the other hand, they did make it easier for Danny's enemies to attack his judgment, so I can see the reason for their existence).

The novel takes place in Boston after World War I. The main character, Danny, is from an Irish-American family, and like his father, he is a cop. Of course, I already knew some vague history from that time. Americans were very afraid of the immigrants and their radical views (Emma Goldman, an anarchist for example, ended up being deported). Danny first ends up trying to infiltrate some different communist groups to find subversives and extremists. However, at the same time that he is attempting to infiltrate groups that preach socialism and worker's rights, he is becoming involved in the Boston Social Club, the policemen's union. There is a certain amount of concern among the higher levels of government but they are mostly attempting to create paranoia in the masses so that the workers will stay in their place. For example, after a factory accident, terrorist extremists are blamed and even after it is proven that the factory was using shoddy techniques and old equipment, the paranoia remains while big business can just keep doing what it was doing. I once read that historical fiction tends to reflect the period during which it was written more than the period it is describing so I can definitely see why this period would appeal to Lehane while also allowing him to make a statement about present day politics.

The other main character is Luther, a black man from Ohio, who ends up in Boston via Tulsa, and gets a job working as the house servant for Danny's father, Thomas. Many of the Irish that have now joined the ranks of the middle class have black servants as a way to put on airs even though as Luther notes, he doesn't have anything to do. One of Thomas's old friends, Eddie, also emigrated from Ireland but his interactions with Luther shows his extreme prejudices. Despite the fact that he wasn't even born in the States and Luther was, Eddie sees it as his country, and doesn't acknowledge Luther's citizenship. Due to Luther's past, Eddie tries to exploit him and use him to lump the NAACP in with several other terrorist groups.

Since this is historical fiction, it shouldn't exactly be a spoiler that the Boston Police end up striking (obviously, it's probably not a well remembered piece of history). While it seems that their actions didn't go down well in history, Lehane shows them very sympathetically, and illustrates how the men were manipulated and how some politicians used this incident to further their careers. Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't imagine a city rioting simply because the police force was on strike - maybe I'm just too law-abiding or believe too much in discipline, but in this case the results are rather disastrous. Of course, at this period in time there was also a large amount of discontent. I assume the government would also handle things quite differently and thus prevent the opportunity for rioting from even occurring but I might be giving too much credit there.

Since this is Boston, Lehane also has several chapters interspersed through the novel from Babe Ruth's perspective. The novel begins and ends with Ruth traveling through other cities in the States. I thought it was a nice way to talk about other cultural phenonmenons of the time, but also show that some of the same issues were prevalent throughout different areas in society - even the baseball players went on strike early on. While obviously a baseball player can't compare himself to a factory worker, the workers have few rights or powers at this time in history, no matter what the work. I'm not sure if that's ever changed much but at least certain rules were set into place for workers after this period.

Book 109: My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

This is the first Picoult novel I've read, and I admit I was pleasantly surprised. After all the Asimov and Lehane I'd been reading lately, I wanted something "girly" and not part of a series. Given that this film has been turned into a Cameron Diaz film, I figured it would be simple, maybe a little preachy but a nice break from murder mysteries. But I actually liked Picoult's style. Did a few things seem a bit contrived - yes (the lawyer with a secret disability who meets his ex because of the case? Really?). Stereotypical? Yes (the delinquent, ignored son). But, overall, I liked the people. As much as some things seemed like stereotypes. they still seemed real.

Given that the movie has recently come out, there's really no reason to get into the plot too much: I think it's safe to say basically everyone has an idea what this is about. Anna decides to sue her parents for medical emancipation after they need a kidney from her to save her older sister with leukemia. Anna has been used in various medical treatments to help her sister, and was in fact conceived to have the same genetic make up in order to help cure Kate. This has made their lives and relationships complicated, and as much as Anna loves Kate, she also wants her own life. There is more to it, and Campbell, her lawyer, keeps digging at Anna to get to her motivations because she often appears to change her mind or like she's not being honest. It finally all comes out in the end.

I've been a bit behind on reviews lately so I can't really remember much else of my reactions. Actually, even after reading it, I don't think I had too much to say: enjoyable, definitely will check another book out by Picoult, and time for the next novel. I'm not super emotional usually so it didn't make me sit around and think too much but as I said, I can be kind of cold and heartless.

Book 108: Prelude to Foundation

Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov

I've gathered from various places online that Asimov's sequels to the original Foundation trilogy were received less than favorably. I didn't really notice any mention concerning the reaction to the prequels. I definitely understand why people might have gripes about the sequels, but honestly, Prelude irritated me a lot more.

The idea in itself isn't bad - a novel about Hari Seldon, the man that developed psychohistory and the decline of the empire that inspired his theories. However, Seldon was always such as distant figure that it wasn't necessary to have a backstory - he had kind of grown into a benevolent god-figure with the passage of time even if he was once a very gifted scientist that got the ball rolling. After reading this, the great man has become much smaller, and in my opinion, rather irritating and somewhat unlikeable. At one point, one of the other characters tells Hari that he is a good man. Based on what? Only minutes before that statement he had been acting like an asshole.

I get it, he has a big task in front of him but he gets so easily annoyed with people and things when they don't take him seriously enough. At one point, Dors and Seldon are on a part of Trantor that is slightly archaic compared to the rest of the world and while I definitely wouldn't be a big fan of their culture, either, he shows no respect for them at all, even though he is their guest. He doesn't agree with the way women are treated in that society but then bullies one woman around to get his way - as much as you might disagree with a culture, you still can't suddenly expect people to overcome their upbringing within a matter of minutes. Also, this is something that happened with Seldon in the novel but is of course an issue in the larger world as well: Seldon can easily judge the obvious sexism of that society but then ignores his own sexist actions because they are more subtle (he doesn't want to let Dors go into a dangerous situation with him because of her gender - just because he isn't as obviously sexist as the men that won't even let their women speak in public doesn't mean he isn't sexist). And maybe Asimov is focusing on the mathematician background and his sheltered life in the lab but Seldon is very quick to judge other cultures (actually, I think I had a similar complaint about some of Asimov's characters in the sequels).

Also, while Asimov might be able to write sci-fi well, romance isn't one of his strengths. The whole Hari - Dors story line just didn't feel very real. The other complaint I had about this novel I can't get into very much without giving major plot points away - unfortunately, because I think that was also one of the more interesting points to discuss because I feel like it took away from the whole series.

So I've discussed the issues I had with this novel, but let me just throw in a quick synopsis: Seldon delivers a lecture on the possibility of psychohistory or predicting the future. However, he also believes that as a science it would be rather impractical and he doesn't have the proper knowledge to make it happen. Still, his speech awakens the interest of a few important figures, the emperor included, and Seldon quickly becomes convinced by a humanitarian to try and develop his theory to its conclusion for the good of humanity. He tries to do this away from the clutches of the emperor and first tries this at a university, but has to change locations a few times because he keeps finding himself in danger (and he is rather good at finding it). Dors, a history professor, comes along with him to help and as they go from location to location, Seldon is confronted with the variety of cultures and life styles on Trantor alone, not to say the universe, making his task seem even greater.

I saw at Pajiba today that there are plans to make a film out of the Foundation trilogy which I just don't really see working due to the changing cast of characters just within the novels. These later books I believe would be a lot easier to adapt into films because they focus on a single cast of characters (each novel does at least), and also have action sequences. In comparison, in the first novel, Terminus had to determine a way to find solutions without resorting to violence due to their limited power in that respective and involved lots of political maneuvering.

Athens - Day One

My flight to Athens was more or less uneventful except for the two obnoxious children seated next to me on the flight. I can understand babies crying on a plane, really, but if the kid is five, is it too much to expect them to be somewhat well behaved, and not turning the plane into a jungle gym, especially if they are seated next to a stranger? Also, a plane isn't a roller coaster so there is no reason to scream during lift off. Just saying.

I had a layover in Zurich and was rather tempted to buy a lot of chocolate - I guess we'll see about that one on my return flight. While I was in Switzerland for two hours, though, I realized that I have never had any interest in visiting the country. I'm not opposed to it, I just don't have strong opinions on it, either way - I guess I'm neutral. I mean I've been to Berlin, I've been to Vienna but have no interest in the other German speaking country in Europe? It might be that when I think of Switzerland I think of mountains mostly, and then banks. Vienna, on the other hand, I really wanted to see but Austria seems to come up a lot more often in history books than Switzerland (plus you've got all the cultural figures - various musicians, Freud, Sissi).

I got into Athens this afternoon so I've only gone to the National Archealogical Museum so far (which was very cool). On my way there, I realized that I had my British Museum bag (okay, not much of a realization, I always have that bag with me). Considering that one of the reasons the British Museum's collection is as impressive as it is has a lot to do with them taking artifacts from other countries, including Greece (they have about half the Parthenon on display), I'm not sure if that was the wisest choice to be flashing around here. Oops. Honestly though, with all the collections of Greek art in all the museums around Europe, I'm surprised there's any still left in Greece - Vienna had the Ephesus (spelling?) which was a collection of artifacts from a city they decided to dig up at some point, and basically every city I go to, I end up looking at Greek and Roman sculpture in a museum (I think that's what half my pictures were of when I went to Paris - don't think I'd ever put any in my house but I love seeing the collections).

Another cool thing about the museum: they had one room devoted to Athena sculptures. Anyone who's read this blog for a while and knows about my tattoo obviously knows of my fondness for that particular Greek goddess. Of course, being in Athens, I'd hope they'd focus on her.

Also, I've noticed some street vendors selling oregano flavored Lays. I'm definitely going to have to try a bag of those before I leave - I love oregano (actually another reason I'm so excited about this weekend - the food and the spices!) - sounds a lot better than ketchup flavored chips.

Anyway, off to figure out the game plan for the rest of the weekend!

Dollhouse + Emmys = We Need More Whedon!

So I've kind of been neglecting my blog these last few weeks. I've been reading some, but I've also been easily distracted by DVDs (doesn't help that I kept getting irritated with a character in one novel, and then another book was good but really needs to start moving along).

I finally got Dollhouse recently and the last half of the season was amazing. The first half focused more on the story of the week kind of stuff while the last half really started building the overall story arch and the conspiracy theories that Whedon is so good at (I still think that given a chance to continue with Firefly, the Guild would have turned out to be much darker and more sinister than at first glance - just look at how the Watchers' Council on Buffy went from being a distant presence to incredibly controlling and patronizing to the descendants of men who had forced these powers upon a young girl). I also really enjoyed the final episode that didn't air on FOX which takes places ten years after the events of the first season. So cool. Plus, I really like Amy Acker. (SPOILER: I loved the fact that her character ended up being a doll and how during the flashbacks towards the end of the season, they showed her in a few different roles rather than the strict, reserved doctor she played most of the season, or the sweet nerd from Angel).

This is a little bit old, but apparently this played during the Emmy's and because there is no such thing as too much Joss Whedon, I'm going to post it:

Book 107: Prayers for Rain

Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane

In a way, Lehane's Kenzie/Gennaro series reminds me of Star Trek: the evens are good, the odds not so much. Of course in Lehane's case, all the novels are still good but there's a distinct difference in how good. Darkness, Take My Hand and Gone, Baby, Gone (the second and fourth) are definitely the best while A Drink Before the War and Sacred (the first and third) are the weakest. Prayers for Rain falls somewhere in the middle: good novel but not the same level as the evens.

Patrick is working solo now with the occasional help from Bubba, and Angie has left the neighborhood and gone corporate, seeing very little of Patrick and Bubba. After Patrick hears of a suicide on the news, he realizes that the woman had been a client of his six months earlier, and he becomes curious as to why she would have killed herself. He also feels guilty because she'd called him six weeks after he'd taken care of the issue she'd hired him for and he had missed her call and then forgotten about it. He starts looking into Karen's life and approaches Angie for help. They soon realize that somebody had psychologically messed with Karen, destroying her life slowly to see what would make her crack, and their interest in the case soon makes them the focus of the perpetrator.

It may be that I read the last three to close together so certain themes kind of repeated themselves (or maybe those were supposed to be character flaws) - as I mentioned about the last two, Kenzie and Gennaro don't always see the big picture and as a result, occasionally let themselves be played or used. As a reader, it just also means that you are expecting there to be someone in the background pulling all the strings or something more to it than at first visible. This also reminded me a little bit of Veronica Mars - I don't think it was much of an issue in the first and second season, but in the third season it definitely seemed like Veronica was on the wrong track the first half of the episode, then had some great epiphany/ somebody showed her how judgmental she was being, and then she finally figured out the real thing. I don't think the earlier Veronica jumped to conclusions as easily, and there were also episodes where she was on the right track all along; it was just a matter of getting the necessary proof. Basically, by the third season, it just seemed like there was a certain formula to all the episodes that wasn't quite as apparent in the previous seasons. Similarly, these novels are starting to develop a certain type of formula.

On the other hand, Prayers was a tighter and more focused novel. Of course, that's maybe not the right way to say it. All of Lehane's novels are very focused, and the plot points all tie into each other; he doesn't leave loose ends. I guess maybe it's just a more intimate setting or case. For example, in Sacred, there were billionaires, cults and a trip to Florida. Gone, Baby, Gone featured a child's disappearance, cops breaking the rules, crime lords and drugs deals. In comparison, Darkness, Take My Hand, which I liked the best, was focused on one specific investigation that for the most part didn't take any large turns. It started out because a man was possibly being threatened, and turned into a search for a serial killer, of whom the man ended up being a victim. Similarly, Prayers stays focused on the search for Karen's tormentor and possible motivation with very little turns into other directions. Everything else that happens has to do with this even when the tormentor focuses his attention on Patrick.

Basically, it was a good novel though it's about in the middle compared to the rest of the books in the series. I'd definitely recommend the series, though. I can't wait till my copy of The Given Day finally arrives - I ordered it over a week ago.

Book 106: Shelf Discovery

Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick

I read about this over at Pandagon, and thought it would be an interesting read. I enjoy books about books, such as Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, and I also like reading book analysis, even if I haven't necessarily read the novels (I had read some but not all the novels discussed in The Madwoman in the Attic). Also, since I grew up in Germany, I was kind of curious to see how many of the plots would remind me of the books I read between 8 and 13. There were quite a few books I read in Germany that I know were translated from English but I don't know what their original titles were so I was hoping this would be a slight memory jog. Unfortunately, I still don't know what some of the books I'm thinking of were (I read one series which I'd always thought might be A Wrinkle in Time when I heard people talk about it but it definitely wasn't - also turns out, I've never read A Wrinkle in Time). I remember reading a lot of Joan Aiken at one point so I was happy to see one of her novels brought up but that wasn't even my favorite one - granted, this book was very much focused on girls and female protagonists and my favorite one was about a young boy.

I expected not to have read many of the novels but I didn't expect to have only read about four or five of them (Laura Ingalls Wilder's two, Joan Aiken, The Clan of the Cave Bear, Go Ask Alice) - I've never even read Judy Blume. However, this wouldn't have been that big of a problem if Skurnick had engaged in more overall analysis. For some of the novels, she definitely raised some very valid points. Many of them, I felt like I was simply reading a synopsis. And based on the summaries, I could definitely see why these stories would appeal to young girls and how they could help them learn to be comfortable with themselves and develop into strong women but I could have used a little bit more of "and this matters because." If I had read the novels, I may have been happy reminiscing about old reads; since I haven't, I needed a deeper reading than she provided.

It did, however, make me start reflecting on what my reading habits were as a child. Some of the books she discusses she obviously read around 8 or so even though they were teen fiction, others she read or reread as a teenager. She mentioned that many of the novels she read had a supernatural angle. I could definitely relate to that from my reading. I remember I had lots of mysteries such as the Alfred Hitchcock series, several collections of ghost and horror stories for young adults and books on mythology. I also had a large collection of books and novels directed at teenagers about the Holocaust (I grew up in Germany after all, knowing about our past was important). I don't feel like I spent much time in the young adult section after ten or eleven, though. As far as mysteries, I moved on to Agatha Christie and I started reading Stephen King, Anne Rice and Ken Follett to name just a few.

Skurnick devoted one chapter to "dirty" books, or the books that young girls read to learn about sex, and honestly, I couldn't really relate. I know some girls read Blume to learn about menstruation. Maybe it was the environment I grew up in but I never felt like sex or menstruation were much of a mystery. As I said, I grew up in Germany. Most of the third and fourth graders I knew read the teen magazine Bravo. We, well I at least, tended to read it for the music and pop culture news as well as some of the other stories. However, there were also several pages each week devoted to sex and love. With pictures and lots of advice in addition to a weekly column entitled "My First Time." So I had access to the answers even if I skipped those pages. For the most part, I was still at that age of "ewww, gross," but obviously I knew the mechanics. And have you ever read Ken Follett? One of the few novels I read that was discussed in this book was The Clan of the Cave Bear (after we'd moved back to the States), and while that one wasn't bad, the other three in the series annoyed me (and yet I read them all because I often feel the need to complete a series if I start it; I like having complete sets) - oh my god, could we have some plot in between all the sex? At least Follett could successfully have both. Maybe I was still in my "ewww gross" stage about sex at that point . . . At the very least, The Children of Earth series and sex scenes made me feel slightly uncomfortable and awkward.

When I found out we were moving to the States, I decided I needed to start reading in English, and the only novels I found in the teen section at the PX were R.L. Stine and The Babysitters Club so I read quite a few of those when I was twelve, thirteen because that's what was available and I didn't want to jump straight into anything too difficult as I started reading in English instead of German. That phase stopped soon after getting to the States, though, and I became too snobby to read young adult novels, kind of like I refused to watch cartoons and animation for a very long time after being around 10 or 11 because I felt like I was too old and mature for that kind of stuff.

Basically, I guess part of me was hoping to be enlightened about American teenage girlhood but it didn't quite work. Some of the novels definitely sounded interesting but not enough for me try to find them or read them. Oh well.