Book 17: A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

 

I haven't ever really had much interest in hiking though lately I've become slightly more interested in the idea of it - mostly in relation to day hikes in places like Hawaii, preferably planned by someone other than me.  However, I've liked more of Bryson's work than I've disliked, and this is one of his more famous works.  As can be expected from Bryson, it was filled with random information, some of it actually related to the topic, some of it a bit less so.  There were also plenty of parts where he was making fun of himself, or others.

 

The premise of the book is that Bryson decides to walk the Appalachian Trail, and sells the idea to his editor.  After inviting just about everyone on his mailing list to join, the only person to respond was Katz, previously mentioned in Neither Here Nor There (the one Bryson book I didn't like).  Bryson considered himself a hiker based on his experiences in England, but quickly discovers that the Appalachian Trail is an entirely different endeavor.  The adventure begins with his trip to camping store, where he gets his first real visual of the endeavor he is about to embark on.  It seems Bryson's definition of hiking, based on the English country side, was rather similar to my idea - day trips with a possibly a nice dinner, and most definitely a room with a bed at the end.  The Appalachian trail, on the other hand, involves camping, carrying your supplies with you, and four straight months of hiking, give or take.  My idea of fun will never include sleeping in the woods (I had to do it as a cadet - although it probably is a bit less irritating when there aren't any guard duty shifts involved), and as a result, I really can't understand the people that go on hiking trips for months at a time.  Nor do I quite understand what type of reality they live in where they can simply take off from their lives for four months or so at a time - are they rich?  Are they hippies?  Do they all have book deals?  I thought I was lucky being able to take off 30 days in a row, and that's generally only because it's right after deployment or part of my PCS.  Bryson also manages to scare himself with several books about bear attacks (are they still America's #1 enemy on The Colbert Report, it's been a long time since I've watched it regularly), and other crazy hiking incidents.

 

Bryson goes into the history of the trail, talks about many of the people he and Katz meets along the trail, and also just the excruciating beginning when he and Katz start their journey, both middle aged, one somewhat out of shape and the other incredibly out of shape.  According to Bryson, the trail is an odd thing - it bypasses some of the best scenic views in the areas it is near.  He also spends some time talking about certain park services efforts, some of which are amusingly ineffective while others are almost disastrous.  Although Bryson planned to walk the entire trail, he soon realizes he may have overestimated himself as his mileage doesn't quite add up to his original plans.  Eventually, Katz and Bryson decide to stop, and make plans to meet back at the end of the summer to hike the last part of the trail in Maine, which apparently is some of the more difficult terrain.  I know some people are a bit critical of the book as a result, but I think if someone reads this book because they like Bill Bryson's other works and not because they are necessarily interested in hiking, they'll enjoy this.  If they are looking for a guide to hiking the trail, they would probably learn some interesting facts, but should definitely read some other books as well.  Since this was written in the mid 90s, I would be curious if anything has changed in the last 15 years.  Obviously, hiking isn't an activity that has changed much over time with the exception of improved gear, but Bryson had mentioned that it had been becoming more popular with increasing numbers of through walkers finishing over the recent years.  He also made a few complaints about technology on the trail, and given the current technology, I would be curious how many people use it as a chance to get away from it all, and how many try to document every single thing.

Book 16: Dies the Fire

Dies the Fire (A Novel of the Change) by S.M. Stirling

 

When I read some comments on Pajiba stating that NBC's Revolution had basically ripped off the premise of S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire, I figured it was a book I would be interested in reading after I finally downsized some of the rest of my to-read pile.  Well, then a friend of mine and I were discussing something, which somehow reminded him of the character Juniper Mackenzie, leading to further discussion and recommendation of the trilogy.  Since I had a Pajiba recommendation and one from a good friend, I ended up picking it up during a recent Barnes and Noble visit (which was actually my first in almost two months - I've been trying to behave).

 

The idea behind the novel is that in March 1998, all power/energy inexplicably stops working after a painful white flash.  Additionally, guns and gun powder don't work, and other certain chemical reactions don't work quite right anymore.  Stirling chooses two particular witnesses and groups to follow as they deal with the aftermath of this event.  Mike Havel, a pilot, was flying the five members of the Larsson family and their cat from Idaho to Montana when this occured, leading to a crash landing in a stream in Idaho.  While at first the six of them believe that this was bad luck, they soon realize that being caught in the middle of nowhere in the wilderness was actually a stroke of good luck as it allows them to avoid the mass panics that take over the cities which are soon facing a shortage of food.  After facing some initial hardships, Mike and the Larssons become the leaders of a group of survivors, aiming to settle in the Willamette Valley in Oregon where Ken Larsson has a family farm. 

 

Juniper Mackenzie, a Wiccan and folk singer, is in Corvallis, Oregon when the event occurs, and her first reaction is to act as if this is a permanent change once she gets her bearings, heading for her country house with her deaf daughter Eilir and pub owner Dennis Martin.  Some of her friends and fellow Wiccans have a similar, pragmatic reaction, and also head for the hills, bringing along tools from a museum exhibit on farm life in early Oregon which are of course crucial in the first few months.  Juney, too, becomes a leader as she and her friends take in refugees, leading to a growing community.  Her group has the added advantage that some members participated in rennaissance fairs, and as a result, actually know how to use bows, axes and swords, which become crucial when guns don't work, and the country is overrun with bandits, refugees and groups of people that revert to cannibalism as the food supply dwindles.

 

Meanwhile, there is a third man that quickly gains power, though in Norman Arminger's case, it is completely by force and plan, rather than due to having skills and knowledge that people flock to, as in the case of Mike and Juniper.  A medieval history professor who also participated in Rennaissance fairs himself, he quickly takes over certain important resources, and starts building his fiefdom based on medieval principles, basically trying to go back to a system of serfdom.  As the novel progresses, Arminger already tries to extend his power, and this novel sets up the alliances that will develop later in the trilogy.

 

One thing I really liked about this novel is that no one really spends too much time trying to explain what happened or how or why.  Basically, most of the survivors are people that quickly recognized what happened, and decided to act as if it was permanent, and all around the world, and go from there.  The focus is on survival and rebuilding, not reversing the event.  I would definitely recommend the novel, though I haven't completed the trilogy so hopefully I don't change my mind later.  Stirling appears to have done quite a lot of research on economics, agriculture and history to predict how this loss of technology would affect humans in both the short and the long term.  There is also quite a bit of action, and while I may have only glanced through the song lyrics that Juniper sings throughout the novel (I always get bored with that kind of stuff in fantasy novels, and was just glad there wasn't as much as in The Wheel of Time), it was good overall.  The main characters seem incredibly lucky to an extent  but Stirling mostly explains rather well why certain characters survive and why they would even have certain, formerly useless skills that would be crucial for survival, including the Wiccans, the medieval reenactors or the Lord of the Rings fanatic that took an interest in bow shooting as a result.

Book 15: 11/22/63

11/22/63 by Stephen King

 

I've been reading Stephen King since I was about 12, although there are still a few pieces of his I haven't read (mostly the novellas/collections; I've just never been much of a short story person).  For some reason, I was mixed about whether I wanted to read this, and I think it has a lot to do with my place in history.  The idea behind the story is that Jake's friend Al has discovered a gateway back to 1958, and the past resets itself with every trip (meaning, if you accidentally do something you shouldn't like start telling people you're from the future, if you go back to the past after returning to the present, it's like it never happened because the gateway always leads back the exact same moment).  Al's plan was to go back to 1958, wait until 1963, prevent the JFK assassination and with it, any bad things that had happened afterwards such as increased troop presence in Vietnam, Bobby Kennedy's and Martin Luther King Jr's assassinations etc.  When Al's health fails him, he convinces Jake, a 35 year old English teacher living in Maine, to take up his mission.  Obviously the premise sounds intriguing, but I think the reason I wasn't more interested in the novel when it came out to begin with is that I was born in 1984.  The JFK assassination is of interest to me as a history major, but I have never been sold on the idea that Kennedy was this totally amazing president, if only because he died very early before he could really leave more of his legacy (additionally, aren't we generally more forgiving of the dead, especially the assassinated?).  In fact, given the chance to change history I don't think I would even go back to stop Hitler, if only because being a bit of a pessimist, I can't help but wonder that if the Holocaust and World War II hadn't happened then, maybe something much worse would have happened later without that tragedy to make people more closely evaluate situations and consequences (not that we've really learned that much).  Also, not to sound harsh, but sometimes a martyr is necessary - would certain people have been able to pass certain laws if they had lived, or were the laws only passed due to their death, and in memory of them?

 

Once Jake returns to the past, he has five years to decide what he will do - Al was only 95% certain that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman, so Jake and Al were both afraid to move too fast.  Eliminating Oswald may have simply led to another gunman being hired rather than preventing the assassination.  After preventing a crime in Derry (a town King readers of course recognize - Jake actually meets two of the characters from It) that has a more personal meaning to him, Jake gets ready for the long wait.  He ends up settling in a small town in Texas, near Dallas, after making a stop in Florida.  While in Jodi, he ends up working as an English teacher, and directs the student plays.  Simultaneously, he returns to Dalls and Fort Worth at times to shadow Oswald's movements, and confirm his guilt as the gunman.

 

Jake naturally develops personal relationships with several people in Jodi, including a romantic entanglement with Sadie, the school's librarian who has some baggage of her own.  And while that was sweet and all, Sadie kind of irritated me.  It probably started with the fact that Jake described her as this perfect, tall, gorgeous blonde that is endearingly klutzy.  Really?  How often has this trope showed up in romantic comedies now?  How many articles have I read about this very thing where the only flaw women are allowed to have is being a bit of a klutz?  And that's who ends up being the love interest?  A klutz that occasionally speaks of herself in the third person (which may have annoyed me more than the klutz thing).  Additionally, I had read complaints that King may have glorified either the past or small town life a bit much.  There are definitely parts that seem just a bit idyllic but I think King may have been afraid of this happening himself so occasionally Jake comments about the lack of racial integration, or people's attitudes towards women and sex.  So it's a mixed bag, but Jake definitely seems to prefer the so-called simplicity of the early '60s.

 

The beginning of the novel kept me interested as King was explaining how it all worked but once Jake was in the past, I was kind of ready for the five years to pass a bit more quickly.  The thing is I'm not sure what it was - obviously, King couldn't just jump forward five years, and the details did make for a nice narrative but at some point, Jake's character became a bit grating.  His spying on Oswald wasn't really that interesting which seems odd that I wanted less on Oswald and the assassination in a novel that was technically about preventing JFK's assassination.  Of course, there was a bit much of Jodi as well - overall King probably could have cut at least a hundred pages, instead of showing example after example of how the past harmonizes and/or protects itself.  The other thing that is interesting is that Jake really doesn't think about what it is he plans to do that much - Al laid out the plan for him, Jake hesitated and then went with it.  He doesn't seem to wonder at any point in the five years if preventing the assassination would really be that good of a thing to do - yes, this is somewhat addressed with the idea that history resets itself so as Al points out in the beginning, if things turn out badly, Jake can take it all back, but at no point does he really think about how the world might be different - he simply takes Al's assessment that things would have been better without the assassination at face value.  He spends a fair amount of brooding on the Oswalds and his actual plan but not much analysis on the why of it (of course, I've already explained my views on changing the past in the above paragraph).

 

While the novel could have been condensed somewhere, it was still an enjoyable, if long-winded, read (I feel like I had more fun reading Under the Dome).  One thing about this novel that was very good is that King actually knew how to end it instead of facing his usual problem of just kind of tacking on an ending that made little sense.  This ending definitely made sense, and was rather fitting for the novel (while I of course didn't guess the specifics of the ending, I had an idea of the overall ending from very early in the novel), so it was nice to see King actually close out a book in a way that left more questions and didn't go along with the book at all.

 

Book 14: The Beekeeper's Apprentice

The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King

 

I've never actually read a Conan Doyle novel or Sherlock Holmes with the exception of a simplified version of the Baskerville Hound (you know how they take classics, and then reduce them to their plot points so young children can feel like they're reading classics?  That was my experience with Holmes, except it was in 6th grade and we read it in my English class at my German school so it was for second year English students).  It's actually weird because I loved mysteries when I was younger but I focused more on Agatha Christie and her characters, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.  Still, it's impossile not to be aware of the figure of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.  I also tend to enjoy reimaginings of old novels when done well (I hated and didn't finish Ahab's Wife, but love Atwood's short story "Gertrude," a riff on Hamlet).  Additionally, in the past few years, I've noticed that while I still enjoy the occasional mystery/thriller, I tend to gravitate towards ones set in the past when forensics weren't quite so developed, such as Stephanie Pintoff's or Ariana Franklin's novels.  This may be because after years of mysteries and CSI-type shows, it is hard to be surprised anymore so it's nice if the novels have something else to offer besides a mystery, such as a glimpse into the past.  While I at first hesitated to pick this up until I read some actual real Sherlock Holmes novels, all the other factors convinced me to get this.

 

Overall, I enjoyed the novel, but it is obvious that this novel was written as the first of a series, and not just because Mary Russell keeps referring to events in the future.  King devotes a great deal of time to introducing the characters, setting the scene and showing the reader how Russell's relationship with Holmes developed.  As a result, there are actually a few small mysteries in the beginning that illustrate their burgeoning relationship and the novel is somewhere between a third to halfway through before the novel actually delves into the main mystery.  By the way, this is one case where the back of the book gave too much away - while certain connections may have been obvious to readers anyway, the cover already gave them away, thus leaving the reader waiting for Holmes and Russell to catch up.

 

When Mary Russell and Holmes first meet, Holmes is in his fifties (he explains that Watson aged him in his stories since readers might have had doubts if Watson had told of a younger detective) while she is fifteen, and he is pleasantly surprised by her intelligence and wit.  Their relationship remains platonic throughout the novel though there are hints of possibilites, so I'm not a huge fan of the age difference, but I understand the author's choice - by having Russell be 15, it would explain why Holmes would take an interest in developing her mind, and he could still think of her in an asexual way.  If she had been older, it would have been a bit more difficult to train her in the arts of being a detective.  While I have not read actual Sherlock Holmes novels, I understand that Watson has a certain sense of awe for the character and his amazing skills of deduction.  Russell, on the other hand, is more his equal when it comes to these abilities, so she portrays him in a different light, though still with great respect and admiration.

 

The first big case that Holmes and Russell work together involves a kidnapping in Wales, but life quickly goes back to normal until Holmes finds himself and those he cares about threatened by an unknown entity.  I don't think the mystery itself was really that strong or interesting, and to be honest, I don't feel like it was really one of those where the reader can play along too much.  However, I liked the character development, and as I said, this novel felt more like an introduction, so I am not using this one to determine whether the mysteries are well thought out and developed.  I'll definitely be picking up the next one in the series before I make any final judgements or determinations.

Book 13: The Wedding Dress

The Wedding Dress by Rachel Hauck

 

I originally saw this novel at a Barnes and Noble on one of their tables, possibly "summer reading" or something along those lines.  I read the description, and felt like I was in the market for some light chick lit with an emphasis on clothes.  I also decided it would be the perfect kind of disposable book to get on my Kindle and read on a long flight.  Unfortunately, I didn't actually take advantage of my ability to read the first chapter or even look more closely at the novel before buying it because it was definitely not what I was going for or expected at all.  I guess it is partially my fault, but since I was clearly not part of this novel's intended audience I ended up strongly disliking the book and its characters.  Oh, the characters.

 

According to the blurb on the back, the recently engaged Charlotte, who also happens to own a bridal shop, buys a mysterious trunk at an auction and discovers a gorgeous wedding gown.  Charlotte becomes fascinated with discovering the story behind this dress, which turns out to be a century old and have had three previous owners all while trying to determine her true feelings for her fiance - as I said, light chick lit with some clothes porn.  Unfortunately, I misinterpreted the following description: "the power of courage and faith, and the timeless beauty of finding true love."  I interpreted faith in a secular way, since many chick lit stories throw around the word faith but in that case it seems to be about faith in oneself, in love, or something else.  In this case, it was all about God.  The main character talked about praying on something at least five times in the first chapter.  Instead of a fun, fluffy read with a passionate love story, I got a wooden couple with no chemistry that tip toe around each other and talk about being friends, and who have been together for four months, engaged for two but haven't had sex.  Of course that is a personal preference but it's definitely not what I was looking for in what was supposed to be a trashy read.  I'm not sure if I should be unhappy with the publisher for not clearly stating faith in God, or with Barnes and Noble for putting it on a general interest table when perhaps normally it would have been shelved under Christian fiction, in which case I never would have seen this novel.

 

Additionally, I thought the writing was weak.  Granted, I wasn't exactly looking for strong writing, but since I wasn't being entertained in the fashion I expected, I started getting critical of certain narrative devices while reading it.  Emily, the first woman to wear the dress lives in early 20th century Alabama.  We, the reader, are supposed to believe she is a good person because she talks to black people and hires a black dressmaker, and, oh my gosh, doesn't understand why people are so upset about it.  Maybe it's just me, but taking a white Southern belle during Jim Crow and saying she's nice to black people seems like a lazy and easy way to say the character is good instead of actually developing the character and showing us that she is a good person.  Let's not focus on the fact that she hired the black dressmaker because she didn't like what the white dressmaker wanted to make (ie she was being a spoiled white girl that gets what she wants) rather than due to any desire to make a social statement.  If the author was really trying to make a statement about race or equality, maybe one of the four brides to wear the dress would have been black - or maybe there would have been a black character other than the dressmaker.  Instead, Hauck just uses a black character as window dressing to define her white heroine and give her some fake depth.

 

The present day heroine tracks down the history of the dress and all its previous owners, while also figuring out what she wants in the process, but the focus is mostly on Emily and Charlotte's stories.  I don't know, this book might be worth it to someone who is into Christian fiction, but honestly, while the novel isn't my cup of tea, the characters were also incredibly one dimensional, and boring, so I think it's just generally a weak book.

Book 12: Paris Without End

Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife by Gioia Diliberto

Historical fiction has been one of my favorite genres for a long time but in the past year, I have been becoming rather frustrated with it. I don't know if I keep getting the wrong novels, but a few novels in particular have all felt like they were narrated by the same slightly passive female with the occasional modern idea about equality. I understand it can be tough to appease a reader - if you make your character too passive, modern readers will have a hard time relating or symphatizing (see Katherine by Anya Seton) but make the character too modern, and she won't make sense in her historical context. I think the problem might be that I've been picking up historical fiction written from the perspective of real women rather than historical fiction about fake people that happen to hang out with important historical figures (and yet, one of my favorite novels is The Memoirs of Cleopatra which is a first person narrative as told by Cleopatra so it can be done well). All of this is basically to explain that last summer I read The Paris Wife which is a historical fiction novel about Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley Richardson, and while I thought the last half was intriguing, other parts left me rather cold. When I saw a non-fiction account of her story, I decided I wanted to get the reality.

I went through a Hemingway phase in high school. We read a few his short stories that I really enjoyed, and I read a few of his novels. To be honest, I'm not even sure at this point anymore if I liked them or if I was trying to better myself by reading the classics and just kept pushing myself through. However, I think I was a bit bored with For Whom the Bells Tolls, liked A Farewell to Arms more (but I think I was ready for it to end) and actually really, really liked The Sun Also Rises. I didn't see the point of To Have and Have Not at all, didn't know what he was trying to say, and other than a chapter of A Moveable Feast which I couldn't get into, I haven't read anything else by Hemingway since. Basically, I'm not sure why I would be interested in reading about Hemingway or his wives because he isn't one of my favorite authors except that his name does hold such prominence in literature even now.

Overall, I would say The Paris Wife got the story right. Diliberto had access to tape recorded interviews with Hadley and the many letters she wrote to Hemingway. Diliberto argues that Hemingway wrote his best creative works while with Hadley, and that she influenced him to develop the simple style he became so famous for. She uses many of Hadley's letters and remarks to support this idea, and refers to ideas/concepts that Hadley wrote that later echo in Hemingway's novels (of course I was feeling contradictory, so I couldn't help but wonder if maybe Hadley was quoting Hemingway to himself in those letters since we don't know what conversations they had and Diliberto even said that Hadley burned many of Hemingway's letters to her after their divorce). While I think it is an interesting and valid argument, I didn't really find myself that interested in Hemingway or Hadley. Some of the backstory is definitely of interest, but Hemingway was also narcissistic and egotistical. In fact, I was more interested in Hadley's life prior to her relationship with Ernest Hemingway.  Her mother was a leading feminist in St. Louis but Hadley had very different views from her.  Oddly enough, while her mother was a feminist, she also treated Hadley like an invalid so there are definitely some conflicting ideas regarding gender going on in that household.  However, once the book started focusing on Hadley and Ernest as a couple, it became less interesting.  Their love letters to each other are too mushy for my tastes. Diliberto mentions that many of Hemingways' lovers in his stories and novels express a desire to be the same person, two sides of the same coin, sometimes cutting or growing their hair out to be more similar. Personally, if I met a couple like that, I would be incredibly annoyed. So while perhaps this was supposed to show how close they were, instead it made me dislike the two - also, way too many nicknames. That may have been a '20s thing though.

It is only after Hemingway has his affair, and Diliberto shows the messiness of the affair and the divorce that the book became more interesting to me (which is actually the same time frame during which The Paris Wife picked up for me). As far as Diliberto's argument regarding Hemingway as an author, I am not familiar enough with Hemingway's body of work to say whether it was valid or not though The Sun Also Rises and his short stories are the pieces that impressed me the most so that falls right in line with her idea. Given that Hemingway's last work was A Moveable Feast, I also think it is a valid argument that Hemingway ended up idealizing his memory of Hadley and their relationship. Overall, this probably would be a good book for someone that is a Hemingway fan, but I don't fit in that category and didn't really enjoy reading about their various fishing and hiking trips.  I was also amazed by many times Hadley and Ernest would appear to just leave their son for a month or two and go on vacation - and they were considered the family oriented and stable ones among the expatriates in Paris.

Book 11: A Curtain Falls

A Curtain Falls by Stefanie Pintoff

In her sequel to In the Shadow of Gotham, Pintoff once again follows the detective Simon Ziele as he faces another intricate case. Ziele still lives in the sleepy town of Dobson, but finds himself called back to New York City when his old partner Declan Mulvaney calls him in for assistance on a case involving minor actresses in New York's theater district. What at first appears to be a suicide is actually an elaborately staged murder that is the second of its kind and threatens to be the beginning of a spree.

Despite some initial reservations, Ziele involves Alistair Sinclair, a criminologist. While criminology is still a developing science, Ziele's previous interactions with Sinclair have made him more open to its use than some of the more traditional-minded police men such as his partner Mulvaney. While today's readers raised on CSI and crime novels looks at Mulvaney's suspicions as simplistic (one note left at the scene makes reference to Pygmalion, a character an actors had happened to play earlier in the season so that actor becomes a suspect), Pintoff does a good job of setting her novel in a historical context and explaining how people viewed criminals in those times. Additionally, Mulvaney has quite a bit of political pressure on him to find a suspect. Besides, Ziele is also rather single-minded in his focus, and while it eventually leads him in the right direction, he was definitely approaching it from the wrong angle.

Due to the time period and the fact that Pintoff deals with the development of criminology, the covers of her novels keep comparing her to Caleb Carr and The Alienist. While I can see the comparison, I actually prefer Pintoff's novels - since they are a series, she keeps her novels shorter, and keeps the story moving a bit faster. The Alienist may have more literary merit, but I'd rather read more about Ziele and his relationship with Sinclair and Sinclair's widowed daughter in law.