27: The Circular Staircase

Who the heck is Mary Roberts Rhinehart? Apparently a mystery novelist of some repute!

For no other reason than a vague familiarity with her name, I picked up a copy of several collected novels by Mary Roberts Rhinehart. I started reading the first one in the book, The Circular Staircase — and was delighted to find that I was reading a mystery novel in the same vein as Agatha Christie. (Which is good, as I’m almost out of Agatha Christie novels that I haven’t read).

It turns out that Mary Roberts Rhinehart was a mystery novelist at the same time as Agatha Christie, and is referred to as “The American Agatha Christie” — she just didn’t write for as long or as voluminously as Ms. Christie. She’s a female author who blazed trails in the mystery field.

Initially, I was like, “Why haven’t I heard of this lady before? THIS BOOK IS GREAT!” — but as I got further into it, I felt like I began to get a handle on why, perhaps, Mary Roberts Rhinehart isn’t currently as popular as Agatha Christie. As far as the writing goes — oh, it was fine, and downright enjoyable at times, but the mystery itself was a tad unfocused, the story here and there was overly-convenient — I mean, she introduced new characters out of the blue to solve plot problems. That’s lazy.

(There was also a “casual racism” issue that might turn a lot of people off. Personally, I’m no fan of racism, but I don’t think racism is a good enough reason to straight-up avoid all historical literature. As a mature, educated adult, you should be able to see a racist comment in a historical book — especially when it’s just a singular racist remark and not the overall theme of the piece — and go, “That’s racist, what a pity,” and move on with your life and finish the rest of the book. At least, those are my feelings on the matter.)

I didn’t see any of the great twists and turns that make Agatha Christie stand the test of time. Not to mention that at times the style got a bit too cute and pat — there was just a hair too much, “I would never have believed the terrible thing that happened next!” (If that had happened just once, I would have let it slide — but when you get up to four or five times, it’s pushing it. Apparently, this was a thing of hers.)

It was an okay book. A three-stars-out-of-five experience. It didn’t completely put me off the notion of reading the rest of the books in this collected volume… but I also didn’t feel like I was in any particular huge hurry to start another one.

26: Snow

I hope you don’t think talking about a picture book in this blog is cheating. Because I’m totally going to.

I stumbled across this book in the summertime on sale (because, apparently, you can’t read about snow when it’s out of season). I thought it looked nice, and I do like snow, so I grabbed a copy of it.

Turns out, this is a perfectly charming, simple little book about a little boy who believes it’s going to snow while the whole world keeps saying it’s not — because the little boy is observing and imagining, while the world is not. It is a well-written picture book (gets a lot across in few words, and keeps a good rhythm for reading out loud). I would compare it to another winter-themed book, Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day as far as an excellent, child-attention-keeping story goes.

You got picture-book-aged kids? Ours has requested this one twice in the past week. Definitely pick up a copy. And if you’re a grown-up who likes beautiful pictures or snow, you might just pick up a copy for you, too.

25: A Common Life

Although officially the 6th book in the Mitford series, when re-reading I always read this one out of order because it’s chronologically the third story.

…Because, for some unclear reason, between books two and three, Jan Karon decided to skip over a vitally important story element — and then later decided to retroactively add it back in as this very slim little volume. (I’m sure she must have had lots of fans writing in going, “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE THING?! WHY DIDN’T YOU WRITE ABOUT THE THING?!” I would be more specific, but I don’t want to ruin anything for you).

So, even if you were reading the Mitford series for the first time, I would recommend doing what I do because, otherwise, you’re going to be as perturbed as every other reader upon finding that particular plot element got skipped over.

Ultimately, then, this doesn’t really feel like a book — it feels like a small collection of vignettes. It has almost every significant character in the books reflecting on marriage — so, while it doesn’t really feel like there was enough plot to flesh out a full book, it’s kind of nice to visit. It’s the clear soup in between a bunch of nice vegetables and meat (the other books). So, not a full meal in itself, but necessary for a homogenous soup.

24: A Light in the Window

I love the Mitford series. I do! And it’s one of those things where I mostly don’t know why I love it so much, as most of my preferences in reading have always leaned towards the fanciful or fantastical. The world in Mitford is stunningly mundane. But that makes it all the simpler to slip yourself into it, like a comfy old worn coat, and walk around inside it.

That said — the second book, A Light in the Window, although I’ve read it multiple times, and there are many parts I love — features one of my least favorite plot elements; the conniving widow woman. This bad widow woman is after Fr. Tim (Episcopal Priest, remember, so it’s okay for him to get married) — and it results in lots of misunderstandings with his steady girlfriend, Cynthia.

Why don’t I like this? I’ve discovered two things about myself in the last couple decades, and it’s this: a) I don’t like plots where the hero loses money (because it makes me unduly anxious); and b) I don’t like plots where the hero is unjustly accused and thought badly of by his friends.

Now, the former problem I have I understand — I grew up in a low-income household (both my parents were writers) and so the idea of losing money or being out of money sets off all kinds of stressors in my brain. IT MAKES SENSE. But the latter, being unjustly accused? I have no idea at all why this bothers me so much, but I tend to hate that plot element wherever I find it. And it’s in this book.

That said — it’s not a major plot element. Which is why I’ve read this book multiple times. But it still gets on my nerves. I’m sure it doesn’t bother other people as much as it bothers me…. (Right?)

23: Dante’s Inferno

SPEAKING of “author surrogates”… Most modern authors aren’t quite bold enough to straight up Gonzo themselves into their own novel, much less a novel about a person being led on a sight-seeing tour through hell by one of the world’s greatest poets — but Dante Alighieri sure was.

This is another on the list of “books I always meant to read” which, for some reason, I’ve been reading this year.

This edition has a summary before each section of the poem that kind of explains what’s going on, then the section of the poem itself, then a lengthy second of footnotes to explain many of the topical, timely references that he puts into the poem.

I’m not going to say it’s a totally easy read. Some sections are, some sections are not. The summary before each section was pretty helpful to kind of get your thoughts focused — but sometimes the “timely” references were so plentiful that you had to skip ahead and read the footnotes to figure out what the heck he was talking about.

I’ll give it to you — he was good at coming up with ironic punishments for sin.

 

It does seem a little bold to write a book about sight-seeing through hell and then to include a lot of people you had a personal beef with as the inhabitants of said netherworld — but, it’s still a thoughtful, richly layered work. It’s also uncomfortable to read, as a visit to hell should be.

It’s also worth noting that it’s really crude and gross in spots, which for some reason I never anticipate in works of antiquity. But he goes into great detail describing the disgusting punishments inflicted on some people — for instance, a certain famously heretical religious leader who is depicted as being split in half “from his chin to the mouth with which man farts,” — crude enough in itself, but we are also treated to a graphic description of his gruesome innards hanging out and dragging on the ground… (He SPLIT the CHURCH, you see. So he’s grossly split in half for all eternity. Makes sense!)

Did I enjoy reading this book? NOT REALLY. But, as a journey through hell, I doubt it’s meant to be enjoyed. It’s essentially a book of existential horror which is meant to live you discomfited and appalled. And I’m glad that I did read it, because (obviously) it’s good, as an educated person, to have read classic works of literature that are plentifully referenced in the rest of literature.

There are even subtle references on The Simpsons.

One thing I discovered upon reading it (guess I was a bit ignorant of the situation) is that The Inferno is just part one — there are two more parts, which I don’t own. In those parts, Dante journeys up through Purgatory and into Heaven (parts II and III). So I guess those have to go on my list as well! (Hopefully Purgatory and Heaven are a little more pleasant to visit.)

 

22: At Home in Mitford

I always feel like reading a book that I’ve already read somehow doesn’t count.

But the thing of it is — there are several books that I own that I’ve read multiple times. Invariably, the books I read in a year are going to include at least one of those books — either one of the books in this series, the Mitford books by Jan Karon, or one of the Mapp and Lucia books by E.F. Benson. But you know what…? I’m going to go ahead and count At Home in Mitford. (Especially since reading a longer book like this one has already dramatically slowed down my count of books for the year, and made it less likely that I’m going to reach my goal of 40…)

The Mitford books are a light-hearted, comfortable (and overtly religious) series of books starring the pastor of a small, Episcopalian parish in a little town in South Carolina — Mitford. In this, the first of the books, Fr. Tim has just reached age 60 and suddenly experiences a number of dramatic life-changes that knock him out of the comfortable rut he’s been in — 1. He discovers he’s diabetic. 2. A huge, overly-friendly dog claims him.  3. He becomes the guardian of a child. 4. A pretty lady moves in next door.

My least-favorite part of the story has always been the “pretty lady moves in next door” part. Firstly, as a Catholic, it’s just multi-layered weird for me when a Priest has romantic feelings for somebody. (He’s an Episcopalian Priest, so it’s okay — they’re allowed to get married, but even while I’m telling myself that in my brain while I’m reading it — I still find it slightly unsettling.) Second, while I’m reading the book, I find myself preferring the parts that the pretty lady isn’t in — I like Fr. Tim rattling around in his house by himself, with his dog, with his boy — those parts are more fun to me. Maybe because when he’s alone, you, the reader, find yourself wanting to be there, wanting to spend time with him. Or maybe it’s just because it makes it easier (as a lady) to put yourself in his character’s shoes if he’s not waxing poetical about some lady (since waxing ladies in any sense is not my bag).

Or maybe it’s just that I find his attractive neighbor kind of uninteresting. (Niceness is good… but she’s TOO NICE. I find her characterization in this first book to be the best because the author does her best to give her faults — she’s klutzy and forgetful and burns the roast and leaves curlers in her hair by mistake — but she’s just angelically nice all the time. Not that I’d like her to be a mean, but… especially later in the series… she’s just so perfect and lovely all the time that she’s rather dull.)

Also, it must be said — she’s a thinly-disguised author surrogate. When I look a the picture of Jan Karon on the back of the book, I cannot not picture her as this character.

So, does the uber-nice, lovely neighbor/author surrogate ruin the book for me? OBVIOUSLY NOT, as this is something like the fourth or fifth time that I’ve read this book, and I’ve been through (the majority) of the series at least twice. (The exceptions to that rule are the two spin-off solo “Fr. Tim” novels — which I really didn’t care for — and the last three books, two of which I didn’t realize existed until significantly after their publishing, and the final book, To Be Where You Are, which just came out last year. That was very exciting as that was the first of her books that I’ve been able to anticipate. I actually got to pre-order that one. And then I cancelled that order when I discovered a different establishment allowed you to pre-order an autographed copy. What a delight!)

21: The Secret Garden

I did, in fact, read this book when I was a child — but I couldn’t really remember what happened in it, so I figured this should be the year that I re-read it. It’s been long enough, it almost counts as a first-time read.

 

And then I couldn’t find a copy of it.

I just wanted an inexpensive used copy of it, and used bookstores didn’t have it. I went to the annual library sale, and they didn’t have a copy of it. Finally, I was at Books-A-Million and they had a nice, cheap copy of it in young adult books.

So, I brought it home and re-read it, and went back to my shelf to finally put it away — and found the copy that I’ve apparently owned for years and had completely forgotten about.

---

But anyway, having just read this book — it still holds up. Of course, it’s different reading about bratty kids when you’re a kid vs. when you’re an adult (i.e. you spend a good amount of the book wanting to spank the protagonists)…  But it was still a beautiful little story which is both extremely simple and rich with symbolism.

The one thing that I found a bit of a let-down about the book is that it ends rather abruptly. A bunch of rather satisfactory things occur, and then – BAM! – it’s just over. I thought I remembered some things that happen after the main story, and the little girl being grown-up and showing who she married and so on — and then, I realized that I was remembering a TV movie based on the book. OH WELL. (This is one case where the ending in the movie was probably a bit of an improvement on the original. You like to get some sense of where things ultimately go for your heroes after the end of the book — not just “And now the story’s over byeeeeee…!”)

20: The 37th Parallel – The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway

I spent a longer-than-normal amount of time staring at this book in the bookstore, trying to decide if I wanted to buy it. It was on sale, just a few dollars — yet, I was perplexed.

Namely, because it was unclear (from the inside, vs. the outside of the book) whether or not I was looking at a purposeful work of fiction. The outside makes it very clear that the book is non-fiction — and then you flip it open, and it’s written like a novel, around a seemingly fictional main character. In the bookstore, I finally decided that it was meant as non-fiction and purchased it, because I was intrigued by the title (and the fact that the proclaimed “UFO Highway” runs straight across the part of the world that I live in).

I got the book home, started reading it… and was further confused. Was this a novel? It didn’t read like a piece of non-fiction. Scenes were too “set up”, too stagey, for a piece of non-fiction. It was a very odd way for a non-fiction piece to be written, because it was like it was asking not to be believed. Finally, I got on Amazon and tried to ascertain what the heck I was looking at — just looking for something that would either say “based on actual incidents” or “totally fake story”. Finally, I came across a review by the man who is the subject of the book, which led me to believe that this was at least marginally intended as a work of non-fiction.

Further confusing matters was the title — The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway. This is a Very Misleading title; namely, because the book isn’t about that — it’s about the struggles of a man, Chuck Zukowski, who slowly becomes obsessed with finding the truth behind UFO-related phenomena. It’s about his sacrifices and personal cost as he researches things like cattle mutilations — coming up, time and time again, with nothing to show for his passion except a bunch of inexplicable points of contention — plus overdrawn credit cards and a rapidly fraying marriage.

In other words, the bulk of the book has nothing to do with the title. It’s kind of annoying and frustrating. In fact, when I reached a point about 3/4 of the way through, I was beginning to wonder if the title was ever going to come into play at all, and only continued reading because I was convinced that it wasn’t going to come into play and wanted to see if the book would fool me and turn things around again.

I also have to complain about the writing style. The 3rd-person, novelistic style did not suit the content. It detracted from the reality of the story, constantly making you think that you were reading something fake. It also read like something the the author had obvious cinematic plans for — which isn’t much of a stretch considering the author apparently also wrote the book that the movie The Social Network was based on, and that in the jacket bio the author refers to himself as “one of the most influential writers in the film industry.”

Finally, during the final fourth of the book, things get a little more interesting — the black helicopters and SUVs hinted at and implied in previous chapters finally come into play, and FINALLY, in the last few pages, we get the significance of the title explained to us.

In other words, the title of the book ruins the end of the book. The end of the book reads like it’s some big reveal — but we’ve known about this UFO highway thing ever since we picked the darn book up off the shelf. I know the publishers probably gave the book this title because people wouldn’t read a book called “Chuck Zukowski: The Little UFO Researcher Who Could” — I only bought this book because I was intrigued by the title — but it seems like a bait-and-switch. I didn’t want to read about some guy who’s having trouble with his wife because he’s investing too much time and money in his hobby. I wanted to read about that darn UFO highway!

Also, in a super annoying, super-stagey turn of events, words on the final page of the story were redacted: you know, the way they do in official government documents where things are too top-secret to show the general public:

This kind of thing.

I know what he was going for. The last quarter of the book got more into the “black helicopter” area – the government conspiracy stuff, SO IT’S LIKE THE GOVERNMENT GOT TO THE PUBLISHERS OF THE BOOK AND FORCED THEM TO REDACT STUFF. GET IT?!

I’m sorry, but the effect wasn’t cool, or sinister, or mysterious, or whatever it was that the author was going for. It was simply annoying, and reinforced the stagey, fakey quality of the book, further undermining that anybody seriously interested in the content is actually going to take this book seriously.

In the end, the book was just too cinematic to be believable, and too little composed of the things that I was hoping to read about based on the title. While I found out a few intriguing facts from it, those bits and pieces were far too few and far in between.

Not worth it. If you want to read about ostensibly “true life” alien stuff, read Communion.

19: On the Banks of Plum Creek

How terribly (and unfortunately) timely that I happen to be reading Laura Ingalls Wilder for the first time right now.

One of those cute covers that made me not want to read Laura Ingalls Wilder for the longest time. Sorry, Garth.

After reading Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie — I can say that On the Banks of Plum Creek is more of the same. If you liked the other two, you would like this — although I must say, from this book I got more and more of a sense that in pioneer days, you were literally, constantly just about one bad decision away from death. The first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was full of cute, charming little stories of olden days. In this book, there are cute, charming stories of olden days… AND HORRIFIC STORIES OF THINGS GOING VIOLENTLY WRONG AND TERRIBLE MISFORTUNE. Plagues of locusts unexpectedly devouring all your crops (which you needed to harvest in order to pay for your house and — oh yeah — so you can EAT), almost being swept away and drowned in a flood, sudden onset blizzards that your Dad gets lost in and might not come home… It’s not cute. It’s downright DIRE. This book was a good read, but it stressed me out.

There was one part of the book that I simply didn’t like, and that was Laura’s first experiences at school — because that part of the story was just like any other “school bully” story. But, happily, that wasn’t very much of the book. (And the bully gets their just deserts, which was satisfactory.)

Now, I have to get into the slightly more controversial discussion of Laura Ingalls Wilder in general, due to the recent controversy over Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name being removed from the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award due to some people finding her books racist. I don’t want to be controversial in this blog, since I’m only writing it to keep myself on the ball regarding my yearly reading, but the present situation makes it rather unavoidable… So, here are my thoughts in a nutshell:

In my humble opinion, it would be a pity if these books were stricken from the reading lists because Laura Ingalls Wilder, in her autobiographical novels, accurately reported on people’s racial attitudes in those days. (Not even in every book, I might add: so far, just mainly in Little House on the Prairie, where the family is living practically on top of a Native American settlement). She didn’t say the attitudes in those days were right, she didn’t say they were wrong — she just reported on time-period accurate attitudes. Might some people be offended by those attitudes? SURE! Of course! I was a little uncomfortable myself at times with the way things were phrased and described. But that is very much not a reason to strike these books from history.

When Warner Brothers released large collections of their vintage Bugs Bunny cartoons, in front of their straight-up racist, WWII-era cartoons they put this notice in front of them:

That last line is the important part:”…Because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”

Is that what we really want to do? How does that benefit society as a whole? I can’t find any good in it — in fact, quite the opposite. 

And that’s all I have to say about that. Back to complete non-controversy in next week’s post.

18: The Long Way Home

I suppose I’m legally required to say that I received a free copy of this book to review it. (I’m wondering if I really have to admit that, though, considering that it was about ten years ago? … Like I’ve mentioned, I’m rather behind on my reading.)

This book has an excellent premise. A teenage boy went to sleep one night after fighting with his best friend — and when he wakes up, it’s a year later, his friend has been murdered, and he has been sentenced to jail for the crime. A mysterious person helps him escape from the police, and now he’s on the run, trying to regain his memory and figure out what the truth of the matter is (did he kills his friend? Did he not? What is the truth?)

Like I said, it’s an excellent adventure premise that makes you want to know more. It would be even better if this story took place in the 1980’s, as it has a very 80’s-teen-adventure vibe. And it has some very interesting philosophical stuff about the difference between absolute moral truth and relativism (which is an unexpected theme in a teen adventure story). And it’s a pretty quick read.

That said… the book is a bit clunky in spots. It turns out that this book is actually the second in a trilogy of books — so the first part of the book (the part that killed my reading this book about ten years ago) is just a rather stiff, first-person retelling of the adventure up until now. I know that it’s a tricky thing, to recap the story for people who haven’t read the other books and yet not lose the people who have — but it just came across as flat, which is a feat considering how exciting the content was. But the part that straight-up stopped me reading last time around was the way the author described the main character, as it was so clunkily and amateurishly written:

“I looked at myself in the mirror. The guy looking back at me was six feet tall. Thin but with broad shoulders, good muscles, still in good shape. I had a lean, kind of solemn face with a mop of brown hair flopping over the forehead. Brown eyes — serious eyes — probably too serious for a guy who was only eighteen — but honest and straightforward.”

First thing — our protagonist looking at themselves in the mirror is such a LAZY WAY to fit in a description of the protagonist. Second, does any part of this sound like the way a normal human man would describe himself, much less a teenage boy? Granted he’s a somewhat introspective boy, but this is just a bit much. No teenage boy (who isn’t wholly pretentious and in love with himself) is going to refer to himself as having “broad shoulders, good muscles, still in good shape…” or “eyes too serious for a guy who was only eighteen”. Maybe, if it went something like this…

“I looked at myself in the mirror — and a virtual stranger stared back at me. It was spooky and unsettling. I looked tired, unshaven, and like I had aged five years overnight — not just one.”

But, you say, that doesn’t give us any details about what he looks like. Nope! It sure doesn’t. And that’s the thing — ultimately, especially in a quick read like this, we don’t really need to know what the hero looks like. We can ascertain, from his actions (that he’s good at karate, that he can outrun police on foot and so on) that he’s in pretty good physical condition — and figure out that he’s serious and solemn from his other actions.

I understand what the writer is trying to do here — he’s trying to paint us a picture of this guy so that we, the readers, will understand what he looks like. Great. That’s what a description is for. However, ultimately, the thing of it is that we, the readers, don’t need to know anything about his description that doesn’t actually serve the story. Does it change the story for us if we don’t know that he’s six feet tall and has brown eyes? No, it doesn’t.

Now, here’s a good character description (from a wholly different book, Miss Mapp by E.F. Benson)…

“Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was of high vivid colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of mind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescence with which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charming little town which she had inhabited so long. Anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.”

The thing that makes this description great is that a) it shares things we need to know about the character, and b) it paints a vivid picture of the character without giving specific details, like her hair being blond or her eyes being beady. Granted, it’s probably harder to make this sort of description in a first-person story (it wouldn’t have worked if Miss Mapp herself were trying to make this description — especially since Miss Mapp isn’t self-aware enough to point out her own flaws) but that’s why you keep the descriptions to a minimum in first person, unless they’re absolutely necessary.

But the awkward description of the hero in The Long Road Home is more of a symptom than its main problem. Most of the sections where the hero is by himself aren’t great. When the hero finally has people to talk to, the dialogue moves along pretty well and feels quite natural.

I’m going to say that this book is ultimately a bit of a mixed bag. Some parts are clunky and dull. Some parts are well-written and fun and do what they’re supposed to do.

I doubt everyone would like this book. Nor would everyone hate it. Ultimately, I guess, I should give it to a kid and see if they enjoy reading it, since that’s the intended audience.