And many more

Good thing I decided on that book-a-week resolution last year. This year has been so much busier. I never could have managed it. I'm still going to stick to my fewer-but-bigger plan (War and Peace, really!) but I just haven't had the chance yet. Here's where I am so far, after those first two...

3. Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast

Wonderful, wonderful graphic memoir by the brilliant comic artist about her elderly parents ends. Sounds sad, and it is in parts, but it's also hilariously funny, especially if you know from old Jews in denial. I am exactly Chast''s age, and her parents had the same difficult attitude (and the same hoarding tendencies) as mine, and boy, did I relate. Love it, loved it!

4. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Brilliant writer and physician Gawande on the American approach to death, which is, as we all know, seriously screwed up. Should be read by everyone over a certain age.

5. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Had to get over my reluctance to read anything from the Eat, Pray, Love machine, but this was a wonderful, thick, juicy novel about an eighteenth-nineteenth century female botanist from Philadelphia. A really terrific read.

6. Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano

Read for book group. By the Nobel Prize-winning French author. A slender, strange novel of a man's search for a girl he never knew. A Holocaust novel, a book about memory, about lives touching lives...interesting and unusual.

7. A bunch of plays, read for acting class: Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, 'Night Mother by Marsha Norman, The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman, Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, August: Osage County by Tracy Letts. All of them very moving. Have seen them all (Children's Hour only as a movie) except "Night Mother, which was the most devastating, a story of a woman who has decided that life is no longer worth living. The entire play is her last couple of hours, as she explains her decision to her mother, and they argue about the value of her life. 

8. Home by Marilynne Robinson. Home takes place at the same time as Gilead, which I had read a couple of years ago, but in a different household. It tells the story of a wayward son's return home. I love Robinson's simple, poetic language. Her books are almost hypnotic. And beautiful.

9. Lila by Marilynne Robinson. The third of the Gilead (the name of the town) novels, this one is about the woman married to the main character in Gilead, a strange woman who in the prior book we learn little about. Also beautiful.

More to come...still playing catch-up...

Really good, really easy pan pizza

This one is for D & E, since I know they like to make pizza at home. It's ridiculously easy. No need to knead. No stretching and pulling. No special equipment, other than a cast iron skillet (which everyone should own anyway). The recipe makes two pan pizzas. You can put the dough in the fridge for a couple of days to wait until you're ready for it, and even freeze the dough and the sauce. Both are delicious and very adaptable to both your schedule and desire for creativity. And it's delicious, promise.

Foolproof Pan Pizza
Adapted from Serious Eats
Makes 2 10-inch pies, each of which serves 4-6

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups flour, plus more for sprinkling
2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more for sprinkling
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons lukewarm water (see note)
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for greasing pans
1 1/2 cups pizza sauce (recipe below)
12 ounces grated full-fat mozzarella cheese (not fancy fresh mooz, just the regular old Polly-o kind
Toppings you like
Fresh basil leaves (optional)
2 ounces grated parmesan or Romano (optional, but good)

Directions

1. Combine flour, salt, yeast, water, and oil in a large bowl. Mix with hands or a wooden spoon (hands are easier) until no dry flour remains. 
2. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, then let rest on the countertop for at least 8 hours and up to 24. The dough should rise dramatically, to 3-4 or more times its original size.
3. Sprinkle the top of the dough lightly with flour and transfer to a well-floured work surface. Divide the dough into two pieces and form each into a ball by holding it with well-floured hands and tucking the dough underneath itself, rotating it until it forms a tight, smooth ball.
4. Pour 1-2 tablespoons of oil in the bottom of two 10-inch cast iron skillets or round cake pans (or just one, and save one dough ball for later--it will keep 3 days in the fridge, wrapped well in plastic wrap, or for a few months in the freezer). Place 1 ball of dough in each pan and turn to coat evenly with oil. Use your palm to press the dough around the pan, flattening it slightly and spreading the oil to the edges. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 2 hours. After the first hour, adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 550 degrees.
5. After two hours, the dough should mostly fill the pan to the edges. Use your fingertips to press it around until it fills in every corner, popping any large bubbles. Lift up edges to let air bubbles underneath escape. 
6. Top each crust with 3/4 cup sauce, spreading with the back of a spoon. Top with mozzarella cheese, season with salt, add any other toppings you like, drizzle with a little olive oil and scatter with basic if using.
7. Transfer to oven and bake until the top is golden brown and bubbly and the bottle in golden and crisp when you peek. If the bottom is not as crisp as you'd like, place the pan on a burner and cook on medium heat, moving the pan around to cook evenly until crisp, 1-3 minutes. Remove the pizzas and transfer to a cutting board. Slice and serve.

Note: How to tell if the water is the right temperature? Too hot and it kills the yeast. Too cold and it rises too slowly (although that's not much of a problem with this recipe, since it has such a long rise). The perfect temp is between 95 and 110, in other words, roughly the temperature of the human body -- 98.6. The easiest way to make sure your water is that temperature is to let it flow over the inside of your wrist, the most sensitive part of your body (that's why moms in the old movies shake the milk bottle over their wrist to check if it's too hot). If it feels cool as it flows, it's probably too cold. If it feels hot, it's most likely too hot. But if it feels pretty much like nothing because it's the same temperature as you are, then, Goldilocks, it's just right. Remember that cold measuring cups and bowls will chill the water slightly, so err on the warmer side if you err at all. That's a tip I learned in Home Economics in 7th grade, which was perhaps the most useful class I ever took in 13 years of public education. Geometry? Still don't understand it. But I can sew on a button and measure flour accurately, skills I use all the time. 

New York Style Pizza Sauce

Makes enough for 2-4 12-inch pies

Ingredients

1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

2 medium cloves garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon dried oregano (I use a bit more--I like the oregano-y flavor)

Pinch red pepper flakes

Kosher salt

2 6-inch sprigs fresh basil with leaves attached (I haven't done this yet but will once summer and my herb garden arrive)

1 medium yellow onion, peeled and halved

1 teaspoon sugar

Directions

1. Process tomatoes and their juice in food processor until pureed. Doesn't need to be completely smooth, but not too chunky.
2. Combine butter and oil in medium saucepan and heat over medium-low heat until butter is melted. Add garlic, oregano, pepper flakes, and a large pinch of salt and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant but not browned, about 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, basil, onion, and sugar. Simmer very slowly (bubbles barely breaking the surface), stirring occasionally, until reduced by half, about one hour. Season with salt, allow to cool, and store in covered container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, or freeze.

Book #2: Euphoria

I started off the year with a bang (The Paying Guests) and now here's a whimper.

Euphoria, by Lily King, was on a lot of 2014 best-of lists. But I'm not sure why.

Loosely based on the early life of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the book takes place in New Guinea in the 1930s. The woman at the center of the story, Nell, has already made a name for herself in, and outside of, her field. Her husband Fen is jealous and competitive. And Andrew, the fellow anthropologist they meet up with, is so lonely, lost, and depressed that he is, when the story begins, suicidal. He is rejuvenated by his connection with Nell and Fen, and Nell responds to him as he reinforces her passion for her work.

The jungle setting is not one that every interests me. Although there are near constant references to the bugs and heat, King didn't really convey the setting, and although there were certain interesting details, I didn't feel myself there, in the place, with these people. The people themselves were nearly as thinly portrayed. Nell herself, the woman at the center of the story, is not terribly well-drawn, Andrew slightly better, and Fen is little more than a stock character -- the angry, jealous husband. He is so Snidely Whiplash-despicable that it's hard to give Nell the credit she deserves, since she chose this buffoon as her mate.

I appreciated the way King wove the many strands and voices -- Andrew's first-person account, Nell's diary, an omniscient third-person narrator. And the exploration of the science of anthropology itself was interesting -- King makes the case that the work reveals more about the anthropologist than the people studied. But it's hard to recommend a book when the most positive thing you can say about it is that it's relatively short and reads quickly. But there it is -- it's relatively short and goes by in a breeze. Enough?

Starting off the new year with a bang (and a resolution)

I resolved in 2014 to read a book a week, 52 books in total for the year. And I did it, with one book to spare: 53 books in all. Some were quick reads (any of Liane Moriarty's) and some took a while (any of Trollope's, particularly The Way We Live Now). But given my pace, I was a bit hesitant to go in for the really deep dives. So this year my resolution is somewhat different: instead of going wide, I'm going long.

I resolve to read those big, heavy, hard-to-hold-in-your-lap books that I've put off reading (or in one case, re-reading). In 2015 I will read War and Peace (doesn't everyone say that? but I mean it!) and The Power Broker and several more big Victorians (there are many of Dickens and Trollope that I've never cracked) and George Elliot's Daniel Deronda. And I will re-read A Suitable Boy, because it's been a long time and I loved it so much.

Onward! And read-ward!

Herewith the first book of 2015. And it was a good one:

#1 The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
Absolutely brilliant. I completely agree with all the critics who put it on the Best Books of 2014 lists. Set in London in 1922, it's total immersion in post-WWI England. 26-year-old Frances Wray and her widowed mother have lost nearly everything in the war -- Frances's father, her two brothers, and almost all their money. All they have is their home, into which they are forced to welcome lodgers -- the paying guests of the title -- a young, lower-class married couple. Dozens and dozens of pages go by with very little happening, but it doesn't matter in the least. Frances scrubs the floors, makes lunch, her mother reads the parish newsletter, they go to the cinema to see the latest American crime thriller. The detail is anything but dull -- you are completely absorbed into this world. And unlike so many writers of period novels, Waters isn't showing off how much research she did -- she's pulling you so far in that you start to feel like you've time traveled to another era.

But just when you're wondering where it's all going, it goes places with a bang. A forbidden love story, lust, sex, murder, an investigation, an accusation...so much happens and it's all absolutely gripping. Alfred Hitchcock would have loved to make this book into a movie -- it reminded me very much of the quiet tension and particularly British Rebecca or Dial M For Murder. 
darkness of

Nearly 600 pages in three days -- that's an un-put-downable book. What a great way to start the year.

All the books I read in 2014

Here's the list, in chronological order, starting back in January:

1. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
2. Someone by Alice McDermott *
3. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel *
4. The Boy Who Went Away by Eli Gottlieb
5. The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth Silver
6. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Store
7. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles *
8. Little Failure by Gary Schteyngart *
9. Straight Man by Richard Russo
10. The Reef by Edith Wharton
11. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger *
12. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson *
13. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger *
14. Citizens of London by Lynne OIson
15. Dr. Wortle’s School by Anthony Trollope
16. Zoli by Column McCann
17. The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud *
18. Longbourn by Jo Baker *
19. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote *
20. Time and Again by Jack Finney
21. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
22. The Book of Salt by Monica Truong
23. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby
24. Whose Body? By Dorothy Sayers *
25. Lady Susan by Jane Austen
26. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner *
27. Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
28. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier *
29. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
30. Roman Fever and Other Stories by Edith Wharton (also Omicidio alla Moda)
31. A Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell
32. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
33. ½ of The Luminaries by Elinor Catton
34. The Emperor’s Children by Clair Messud
35. The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer
36. Bartleby the Scrivener * and Benito Cerino by Herman Melville
37. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson
38. What Maisie Knew by Henry James
39. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
40. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
41. Colorless Tsukuru Tasaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruka Murakami *
42. The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty
43. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
44. We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas *
45. The Steppe and The Duel* by Anton Chekhov
46. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel *
47. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters * and Seymour an Introduction by J.D. Salinger
48. My Brilliant Friend by Elana Ferrante
49. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
50. The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty
51. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
52. Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty
53. Offcomer by Jo Baker

The ones with asterisks are those I particularly liked. My favorites? We Are Not Ourselves, Station Eleven, In Cold Blood, and Crossing to Safety. Two old, two new. How tidy. All quite different -- a post-apocolypic adventure, a rich family saga, a non-fiction crime novel, and a powerful story of friendship and marriage. But all have compelling characters, fascinating narratives, and beautiful, moving language. It was a good year. Onward!

Did it!

I said that I would do it and indeed I did. 

Says Henry Higgens and me.

Of course, he created a lady. I just read 52 books. Plus one extra for good measure. And there are still two days left. Who knows what I can do if I hurry (and do nothing else for 48 hours).

#52 Three Wishes, by Liane Moriarty

Another accomplishment this year -- I've read the complete oeuvre of Liane Moriarty, Australia's hot chick lit author. It's good chick lit (she protests), well written, often insightful, with interesting characters and compelling narratives that keep you turning pages. Her more recent books are much better than her earlier ones; you can actually see her learning from book to book. This is one of the earlier books, so it feels thinner than the later ones like Big Little Lies and The Husband's Secret (still my favorite). It's the story of three sisters, triplets in fact, who are celebrating their 33rd birthday against a rather tumultuous background. They fight, they suffer, they make up, they meet men, they lose men... the usual stuff. It's good entertainment, but not nearly as good as her later novels.


#53 Offcomer, by Jo Baker
I picked this up because I liked her latest, Longbourn, so much. This book was published here because of Longbourn's success, and it doesn't do Baker's reputation any good.
   
Offcomer is Baker's first novel, and it is also the Lancashire dialect's word for "newcomer." It's a slim story of a young woman who is lost in the world, caught in a sad, empty relationship with a pompous academic, nearly friendless, living in a strange city, working a dead-end job. To say that Claire suffers from low self-esteem would be putting it mildly. She cuts herself, bites her lips, pulls at her cuticles until they bleed, describes herself as ugly...she is so unkind to herself you want to call the cops to come take her away for cruelty.
 
The back-cover blurb says that it's set against the "backdrop of The Troubles in Northern Ireland." But there is literally not one mention of those Troubles. It also says she is "stunned by the recent emergence of secrets from her mother's past." The secrets are fairly lame, and in fact I had a hard time seeing why they were of any importance at all. It also says the book is "an honest and affecting work of real and quiet power." No way. It's rather dull and very depressing. There's a sense of repetition that becomes drone-like: "Claire knew she was a freak. She'd been born and grown up and lived her life so far without a skin. There didn't seem to be a line where she stopped and everything else began. Her surface was smudged and pulpy, too permeable." We get it. We get it.
 
Or check this out for unvarying sentence structure: "She heaved herself up off the bed, bent down again, slid her hand under a heap of clothes and crushed them up against her chest. She walked stiffly over to the chest of drawers. She opened each drawer in turn, then closed each of them again. Every one of them was full. Slowly, she turned to the wardrobe...She looked back across the room at the dark open mouth of her rucksack...She pushed the rucksack back into the corner. She picked up her mug..." I think I missed something because I was lulled to sleep.
 
Repetition can sometimes be powerful, it can build, it can ratchet up tension and emotion. In this case it's more like endless reportage. She did this, she did that, she did that again. Someone wake me up, please.
 
The book, like Claire, starts to seem trite. It feels like the same growing up all of us do, the same insecurities we conquer, the same low self worth we battle. Nothing pulls it out of the ordinary or makes it worth reading. Thank goodness Baker's talents grew.

The next-to-the-last-one four

I think I might actually make it. 52 books in 52 weeks. I’m on the last one now, and it’s a quickie (you’ll see why shortly). I might even get a head start on 2015, although I don’t think I’ll be trying for a book a week again (more about that later). In the meantime, before the grand finale, here’s a quick rundown of the latest:

#48 My Brilliant Friend, by Elana Ferrante

There’s been a lot of fuss about this book, the first in Ferrante’s Neopolitan trilogy. Critics love the books, which all came out in the US in the last couple of years. Part of the fascination is Ferrante’s anonymity. She uses a pen name, doesn’t give interviews, doesn’t promote her books. There is even some speculation that she’s not a she. The press just eats that up. But the book itself, for me, was not especially gripping. I found the stories of growing up in Naples in the 1950s – still  desperate postwar years in southern Italy – very interesting. But her writing style feels monochromatic, rhythmically bland, and the cast of characters is vast, too vast for me to connect with. She doesn’t give as much flavor or texture to her characters as she does to their living situations, and since I primarily read for interesting character, I found myself not caring a great deal about what happened. I don’t think I will read the second two books in the trilogy, but we’ll see. It’s hard to let go of the story of these two women’s lives when it’s ended so early. I might need to see how things turn out.

#49 The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald

Speaking of fuss, Penelope Fitzgerald, an author I never heard of until the last month, has been everywhere lately, even though she died in 2000. In fact, if you type the letters “p-e-n” into Google, she’s the first thing to come up – she's even ahead of Penelope Cruz! That’s some level of fame. It’s mostly due to the new autobiography by Hermione Lee that came out a couple of months ago and received all sorts of plaudits. But there also seems to be a resurgence of respect for an author who didn’t publish her first book until she was nearly 60 and then wrote one acclaimed book after another until she died at the age of 83. The Blue Flower is the fictionalized story of the poet Novalis, set in eighteenth-century Germany, and his love for Sophie, a twelve-year-old girl. He not only adores a child, she's a particularly dull, unattractive little girl. I didn’t find the delight in the story that so many readers and critics have; for me, it was as dull and unappealing as Sophie herself. I don’t think I’ll be visiting more of Ms. Fitzgerald’s work.

#50 The Last Anniversary, by Liane Moriarty

I guess that in addition to vowing to read a book a week, I should have also vowed to read the entire oeuvre of Australia’s Moriarty. Her books are perfect palate-cleansers after something more twisty and dense. This one centers on a long-ago mystery (a particularly easy one to unravel -- if I can solve it, you know it's easy) on a small island off of Sydney, and the family living there. It’s not as much fun as some of her others, but perfectly pleasant, like a nice light salad in between more elaborate feasts. 

#51 The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

Apparently another vow I made this year, unbeknownst to myself, was to re-read the complete works of J.D. Salinger. It was a bit of a rollercoaster ride. Loved some (Franny and Zooey!), liked a few, not crazy about some, bored to tears by one (Seymour, an Introduction). Catcher in the Rye generated a middling response. I can certainly see why it was a groundbreaking novel. And I can also see why I loved it so when I first read it in high school. I remember feeling that Holden spoke for me – all that angst, all that anger, all that disaffection. But reading it again fortysomething years later generates a different reaction. Salinger brilliantly captures the tortured mind of an intelligent adolescent. But it’s so damn hard to hang out in the mind of that adolescent, who is, in addition to being intelligent, insufferable. Holden is me at 16. And maybe I just found out that, at 16, I was a prick. 

Too busy to write, but not to read

Birthdays, Thanksgiving, celebrations…all of it getting in the way of reading, not to say writing about reading. It’s going to be a real nail-biter to see if I can fulfill my vow of reading a book a week for 2014. Remind me not to do this again. It’s made me look at books completely differently. I weigh them first. Check out the font size. Look at the number of pages. Can I spare the time for a Trollope? Shouldn’t I do another Liane Moriarty? For the most part I’ve read what I wanted to read without regard for length and girth. But I have avoided a biography of Caravaggio that I picked up a while back because it’s 600 densely written pages. Same for another Dickens I’ve had sitting on the bedside table. Next year: War and Peace. And Dickens. And Trollope. Always more Trollope.

So, in the interest of squeezing more reading into the little time I have left, here are my two-sentence reviews of the last six books to date:

#42 The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty. Yes, another Liane Moriarty. Fun read, not as compelling as the others. She hadn’t quite gotten her groove on with this one.

#43 Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson. Excellent read, similar to Life After Life in its playing with time, but more complex, many more characters, and therefore not as absorbing as her later book, and occasionally even confusing. She may just have bitten off a bit more than she could chew.

#44 We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas. A really old-fashioned, wonderful first novel. The story of one woman’s life, nothing remarkable or exceptional other than the amazing eye for detail and humanity. And many scenes in New York City and Bronxville, right next door to where I grew up made it fun. 

#45 Two novellas by Anton Chekhov: The Steppe and The Duel. Loved The Duel, particularly the debate between natural selection (promoted by the Germanic Von Koren) and the futility of life (embodied by Laevsky, a lazy, self-indulgent government employee). Didn’t much like The Steppe, a picaresque tale of a young boy traveling across, you guessed it, the Russian steppe.

#46 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Wow! A literary post-apocalyptic novel, about what happens after a virus kills 99% of the world’s population, which I was reading the week Ebola came to New York City in the person of Dr. Craig Spencer. Talk about timely. And what an excellent read, a real look at how people survive, how the world goes on, and what it means to be human. I hope someone is making this into a movie.

#47 Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction by J.D. Salinger. Two more stories in the Glass family saga. Carpenters is Buddy writing about Seymour’s wedding, and it’s wonderful, like so many of his stories are wonderful. I want to say I loved Seymour just as much, because it’s a much more “difficult” story (and in fact, really isn’t a “story” at all) but I found it rough going.

Post-vacation catch-up #36-41

Been away on a wonderful visit to the old country (at least the old country I wish I had). Much catching up to do, so have to be brief:

#36 Time to count Herman Melville's duo. I finished Bartleby the Scrivener a few books back, but finally read Benito Cerino so can count the book as an entry. Loved Bartleby and want to read it again already. Such a spell it casts! But stories of the sea generally leave me cold, and Benito was not an exception. Half a great book -- does that mean 5 stars for half or half of five stars?

#37 When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson. Another of her Jackson Brodie mysteries, although Brodie at times seem almost an incidental character. Lots of story lines, lots of different voices, all of them well defined. But maybe too many different characters to really grab my interest? Not sure, but I wasn't gripped, although I wanted to be.

#38 What Maisie Knew by Henry James. To be honest, I bought the book because it was a charming little secondhand paperback with a cover illustration by Edward Gorey. And it looked like a relatively short, relatively digestible James, more along the lines of Washington Square (love) than The Golden Bowl (huh?). It turned out to be longer than it looked, and required slow, careful reading to pull apart the thickets of James's many-claused sentences. It tells a fairly small story -- a period (of unclear length) in the life of a young girl (of unclear age) whose divorced parents use and abuse her as a weapon in their battle. She observes their intrigues and involvements with each other and subsequent stepparents and lovers with a keen eye that is above moral judgements, because she has not learned morality, at least conventional morality. A challenging book to get through, but satisfying.

#39 What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty. Put this and the prior book together and maybe what Maisie knew is what Alice forgot. Or vice versa. Another fun read from the bestselling author of The Husband's Secret. Read it on the plane going to Paris and if a book can keep you turning pages on a crowded, uncomfortable plane, it must be good. Moriarty is chick lit at its highest form, or maybe calling it chick lit is an insult. She's a skilled writer who creates fascinating, believable characters, and compelling, unusual situations. These are the kind of books that keep you up late turning pages and -- bonus -- you don't feel dirty afterwards. In this one, a 39-year-old woman hits her head falling off her bike in spin class and wakes up without any memory of the last ten years -- years in which she had three children, her marriage ended, and she went from being a gentle childlike naif to a uber-competent soccer mom. Now wouldn't you want to see how that story evolves?

#40 Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty. I liked Alice so much, I picked up Moriarty's current bestseller. If she were writing less grabby storylines, she would be considered literary fiction, or at least close. Her characters are believable, and her understanding of the motivations and urges of ordinary woman is precise and complex. In this one, three different women's stories are intertwined, and each is shadowed by lies from the past. I can't imagine another writer juggling story lines of abuse and rape without being cheesy, but she manages. She also deeply understands the less charming sides of women -- competitiveness, envy, jealousy -- without being cynical or bitchy. Couldn't put this one down either, and look forward to the next.

#41 Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. I'd never read any Murakami before -- been put off by talk of magical realism and meta-fictional narrative. But this book was fascinating. The entire story -- of a 36-year-old man whose life was changed by the rejection of his closest friends when he was in college -- felt like a spell, like a dream. In fact, there were many times when I thought the entire book was going to be a dream, and Colorless Tsukuru would turn out to be a spirit. There are many mysteries in the story -- why his friends rejected him, what happened to them, why another friend also vanished from his life, and what's in the little bag that the pianist holds. But only some of the questions are answered, yet the book did not leave me unsatisfied. There's a lot to it, despite its simple, direct language. It's a book I already plan to read again.

Bits and pieces

 My reading has been odd lately. I read half of a novel, which was strange for me. It's pretty rare that I don't finish a book I start. But in this case, I read about two hundred pages of Eleanor Cattan's Booker Prize-winning The Luminaries and I was only a quarter of the way through the 850-page novel. Every page (and they were crowded pages, with small type and minimal margins, design decisions I'm sure were made in order not to have to print a 1,000-page book) was like slogging through mud. I didn't care about the story (set in the 1860's New Zealand gold rush), or the characters, or her writing style. Finally, after realizing that after 200-something pages, I still wasn't sure what the book was about, I put it down. Sorry Ms. Catton. This is not a book for me.

But, since I did read at least 200 pages, I'm counting it as #33. Because it took so much time, and because I really did try again and again. And because I'm not going to count the two Italian easy reader murder mysteries that I read to keep my Italian going while class is not in session: Omicidio alla Moda (Murder in Style) and its sequel, Omicidio alla Passarella (Murder on the Runway). Despite being fairly simplistic (written for i stranieri--foreigners--at an advanced beginner or early intermediate level), they were both far more entertaining than those unilluminating Luminaries. 

#34 was a better choice, Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children. I had enjoyed her book, The Woman Upstairs, a while back. This one has a similar appeal. There's something deceptive about Messud's writing, I've decided on the basis of these two books. Her style is simple, direct and detailed. Her characters, although often unlikable, are relatable (maybe that says something about me). The story moves along and holds your interest and then, bam! something comes out of left field and knocks you over the head. I like that element of surprise, and I like both books. This one was particularly appealing to me, being set in New York. It's the story of three young people of a certain amount of privilege, intelligence, and ability. They are friends, and their lives intertwine. And then there's a fourth, who lacks the gifts the other three often take for granted. He also weaves into and out of their worlds. The ending left me screaming (internally) but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

For #35 I again revisited a writer I'd read recently. I had loved Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings a while back, and wanted to read more by her. And the concept of The Uncoupling interested me--a modern take on Aristophenes' classic play, Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens go on a sex strike until their men end the war against Sparta that has been going on for more than 20 years. But in Wolitzer's book, the strike isn't caused by a protest or an uprising. It's because of a magical spell. Magic is not one of my favorite themes--it always seems like a cheap way for an author to get characters to do something out of character, or to make an interesting story out of an uninteresting one. And this was no exception. The happily married people become less happy. The unhappy ones become even more unhappy. Stuff happens, none of it all that compelling. And then the spell ends. There are some wonderful observations and interesting moments, but overall The Uncoupling feels like Wolitzer learning her way around novel-writing. Stick with The Interestings if you want a walk down Wolitzer way. 

I also read Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, but it was only one-half of a book of two long short stories (short novellas?) by Melville, so I'm not going to count it until I read the other half. And I will. Promise.