What I’ve Been Reading Recently

My own paper books! Really! Not exclusively; I still find Kindle books easiest to read during lunches and on the cross trainer. Still, I’m pleased with the progress I’ve made towards my summer resolution of reading my own books. In August I’ll have to get to grips with some of those doorstoppers I’ve been meaning to pick up. Below I give brief write-ups of what I’ve gotten through lately and recall how these books came into my collection to start with.

June by Gerbrand Bakker: It seemed to make sense to read this during the month of June. I loved Bakker’s The Twin, but struggled to connect with this one. The first chapter and the last three (starting with “June”) are the best – I felt that the core 1969 material about the Queen’s visit and the family’s tragedy would make for a great short story or novella, but the bulk of the novel is languid contemporary moping about the ongoing effects on the Kaans. It took me forever to figure out who all the characters were and keep them straight (brothers Jan and Johan, for instance), and the way the perspective drifts from one to another doesn’t help with that. Matriarch Anna, with her habit of going up and lying in the hayloft when life gets to be too much for her, was my favorite character.

[Bought in a local charity shop for 20 pence.] 

 

Uncommon Ground by Dominick Tyler: This is like a photographic companion to Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks. Journeying around Britain, Tyler illustrates different geographical features, many of them known by archaic or folksy names. Some are just record shots, while others are true works of art. I especially liked the more whimsical terms: “Monkey’s birthday” for simultaneous rain and sunshine, and “Witches’ knickers” for plastic scraps waving from a tree or fence.

[I won a copy in a Guardian giveaway.] 

 

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala: The author was vacationing with her family at a national park on the southeast coast of her native Sri Lanka in December 2004 when the Boxing Day tsunami hit, killing her parents, husband, and two sons. Job-like, Deraniyagala gives shape to her grief and lovingly remembers a family life now gone forever as she tours her childhood home in Colombo and her London house. It’s not until over six years later that she feels “I can rest … with the impossible truth of my loss, which I have to compress often and misshape, just so I can bear it—so I can cook or teach or floss my teeth.” This is a wonderful tribute to everyone she lost. Her husband and sons, especially, come through clearly as individuals you feel that you know. Although it’s not a focus of the memoir, Sri Lanka’s natural beauty and food culture struck me – this would be an appealing place to visit.

[Borrowed from a friend in America.] 

 

Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer: This is a book about D.H. Lawrence in the same way that Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation is a film of The Orchid Thief. In other words, it’s not particularly about Lawrence at all; it’s just as much, if not more, about Geoff Dyer – his laziness, his procrastination, his curmudgeonly attitude, his futile search for the perfect places to read Lawrence’s works and write about Lawrence, his failure to feel the proper reverence at Lawrence sites, and so on. While I can certainly sympathize with Dyer’s wry comments about his work habits (“I hate doing anything in life that requires an effort”; “better reading than writing”; “all things in which I am interested … [are] a source of stress and anxiety”), I liked best the parts of the book where he actually writes about Lawrence. (Expanded review on Goodreads.)

[Bought – I think in the Hay Cinema Bookshop – for £2.99.] 

 

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg: I was surprised how much I loved this. On the face of it it’s a fairly conventional dysfunctional family novel à la Jonathan Franzen, set among a Jewish family in Chicago. The main drama is provided by the mother, Edie, who seems to be slowly eating herself to death: she gorges herself on snacks and fast food several times a day even though she’s facing a third major surgery for diabetes. Her husband, Richard, ditched her in her time of need, leaving their adult children to pick up the slack. Every character is fully rounded (pun intended?) and the family interactions feel perfectly true to life. This isn’t really an ‘issues’ book, yet it deals with obesity in a much more subtle and compassionate way than Lionel Shriver’s Big Brother. (Expanded review on Goodreads.)

[In last year’s Christmas stocking, from the Waynesboro, Pennsylvania Dollar Tree.] 

 

The Republic of Love by Carol Shields: Not one of my favorites from Shields, but still enjoyable and reminiscent of Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist. Her chapters alternate between the perspectives of radio disc jockey Tom Avery and folklorist Fay McLeod, two Winnipeg lonely hearts who each have their share of broken relationships behind them. It’s clear they’re going to meet and fall in love, but Shields is careful to interrogate myths of love at first sight and happily ever after. I especially liked the surprising interconnectedness of everyone in Winnipeg, the subplot about Fay’s parents’ marriage, and the habit of recording minor characters’ monologues. My major points of criticism would be that Tom sometimes feels like a caricature and I wasn’t entirely sure what the mermaid material was meant to achieve. (Expanded review on Goodreads.)

[In poor condition, so free from the Oxfam bookshop where I volunteered in Romsey in 2007–8.] 

 

Not That Kind of Girl: A Memoir by Carlene Bauer: Lena Dunham forever rendered this memoir obscure by stealing the title. I read it because I adored Bauer’s debut novel, Frances and Bernard. This could accurately be described as a spiritual memoir, and I think will probably appeal most to readers who grew up in a restrictive religious setting. A bookish, introspective adolescent, Bauer was troubled by how her church and Christian school denied the validity of secular art, including the indie rock she loved and the literature she lost herself in. All the same, Christian notions of purity and purpose stuck with her throughout her college days in Baltimore and then when she was trying to make it in publishing in New York City. This book resonated with my experience in many ways. What Bauer does best is to capture a fleeting mindset and its evolution into a broader way of thinking. (Expanded review on Goodreads.)

[Bought cheap on Amazon USA to qualify for super saver shipping.]

 

A statue of Alexander von Humboldt, in the grand stairwell of the Natural History Museum in Vienna.

Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann: “Whenever things were frightening, it was a good idea to measure them.” This is a delightful historical picaresque about two late-eighteenth-century German scientists: Alexander von Humboldt, who valiantly explored South America and the Russian steppes, and Carl Friedrich Gauss, a misanthropic mathematician whose true genius wasn’t fully realized in his surveying and astronomical work. Both difficult in their own way, the men represent different models for how to do science: an adventurous one who goes on journeys of discovery, and one who stays at home looking at what’s right under his nose. I especially loved Gauss’s hot-air balloon ride and Humboldt’s attempt to summit a mountain. The lack of speech marks somehow adds to the dry wit.

[Purchased via a donation to the Book-Cycle of Exeter.]

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What have you been reading recently?