Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld

Liz and I met for lunch a couple of weeks ago just after finishing our 100 continuous days of posting. We knew we had to give the readers exactly what they didn’t want, frequent and consistent with posting. We stuffed ourselves silly, got really sleepy and then forgot all about the blog. Fast forward two weeks later and Liz reminded me that we have a blog. In short (too late), we’re lazy but Liz just had a baby and things are really crazy right now. [Huh. The things I learn while proofreading this blog.]

Oh joy, Curtis Sittenfeld has a new book! Super joy, it’s about twins!! Holy shit joy, it’s about twins with ESP!!! That my friends is the trifecta. You know Liz is a twin. [Dang. The bullets are flying at me today.] Explains several things, right? Anyway, turns out that what Sisterland is about really is family. Half the book is in Sittenfeld’s sweet spot, adolescence. Fans of Prep won’t be disappointed, and the readers of American Wife will love the storyline and really strong writer.

Set in St. Louis, Missouri (why doesn’t that happen more?) twins Vi and Daisy are the very best of friends growing up. [That's how you know it's fiction.] It becomes apparent at an early age that the girls have “senses."  As the girls enter high school, the personality differences in the sisters become sharp. Vi is the fearless one and Daisy yearns to be popular. As the girls turn into women, Daisy attempts to bury her abilities, while Vi becomes a medium for hire.

Things heat up when Vi publicly predicts that an earthquake will hit St. Louis in the weeks to come. The prediction turns their lives upside down. Is that a pun of some sort? I can’t decide.

If you haven’t read Curtis Sittenfeld yet (what is wrong with you?) and if you  like Chris Bohjalian, Meg Wolitzer, or Jonathan Tropper, you can’t go wrong with any of Sittenfeld’s work. Bring Sisterland  on vacation, it's the perfect book to travel with!

Book Nerd on Vacation: Los Angeles

I'm spending the weekend in Los Angeles, visiting book nerd friends. What do book nerds do on vacation? Sure it's LA, but I've taken four trips over the years to visit this particular friend, and we've never once ventured near Hollywood. Instead we've spent quality time at art museums and, of course, book stores. Today we drove downtown to check out The Last Bookstore, a mostly used store that's been in its current building for a couple of years. If you've read Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind and fell in love with the idea of the Cemetery of Lost Books, you will absolutely love this store.

The ground floor of the building features a nice assortment of used books--lots of literary fiction and space given to film, photography, art, design, etc--as well as a coffee shop and CD section. What makes the store special, though, are the details. In the nooks there are book sculptures and cool industrial touches; the light fixtures are bulbs hanging on bicycle rims, for example.

Looking down at the main floor. It's a mix of industrial touches, book art, and books.

Flying books decorating a window, and quirky found objects scattered around.

And then there's the space upstairs. Some of the upstairs features working artist studios, and there are interesting art pieces scattered around.

Book sculpture leading into the Labyrinth.
I think the artist is David Lovejoy.

And then there's the Labyrinth Above the Last Bookstore. All of the books upstairs sell for $1, and there isn't a whole lot of traditional organization beyond some general thematic groupings. The science fiction novels are hiding in an antique vault, for example. And there are book sculptures, and books shelved by color, and crazy crannies everywhere.

Book tunnel? Hell yes.

You get the feeling that there are treasures lurking for the adventurer with time to search.

The blue and green books on in the Labyrinth.

Color coding can be fun.

Really, though, for those of us who dream of living in an actual Book Land, The Last Bookstore comes pretty close to making it a reality. You don't go to The Last Bookstore with a specific title in mind and only five minutes to dart in and out. You go there to explore, play Indiana Jones among the stacks, and delight in the written word. That's a glorious feeling.

When you walk in and see the check-out desk, you know you're in for a treat.

An Author a Day for 30 Days: Day 30

Well this is it. This is our last post for our “An Author a Day for Thirty Days” idea. Hindsight? Well, this wouldn’t have been so taxing had it not followed directly on the heals of “Thirty Days of Good and Cheap Books,” which followed “Thirty Days of What You’re Not Reading.” That’s sixty ninety continuous days of posting, which means we overextended ourselves by about eighty-eight days.  Admit it, those first two days were pretty great.

So this is it. My last chance to really stick it to Liz, to make her green with envy that I chose an author, a great author, that she failed to recognize. No problem.

Last week I ripped through Claire Messud’s new novel (right now Liz is saying “shiiiiiiiitttt!"). The Woman Upstairs is a little piece of perfection; it’s a showstopper. [Dammit! I was going to write about this book next week! It's amazing.] In short, the novel is about a lonely woman who 'falls in love' with a family. Her relationship to them is all encompassing and awakens her sexually and artistically. The book’s editor promised that this would read ‘like a house on fire,’ and I have to agree, this was really difficult to put down, even more difficult to stop thinking about. It’s a rare book that makes it nearly impossible to start reading a different book, to move on.  This is one of those books.

The Emperor’s Children was my introduction to Clair Messud, a novel about a group of friends struggling with their lives (searching for something better) in the months leading up to the terrorist attacks on September 11^th.

I think of Claire Messud in the same way I think about Philip Roth, Jennifer Egan, Martin Amis, Marilynne Robinson, or Mary Gaitskill. These are a handful of serious writers, really smart, serious writers capturing exactly what is relevant in the world at that exact moment. These are the books and these are the writers you really want to be discussing while guzzling that bottle of wine at book group. Writers like Messud pack layer on layer of what the kids in the 70’s called, ‘some deep shit, man.’

Hey, just realized that Clair Messud has written a couple of novellas. Maybe we should do “Thirty Days of Novellas!” Liz?

[...Shut up Gianna.]

An Author a Day for 30 Days: Day 29

I just drove seven hours after selling to two stores, and that included the Oklahoma tornado disaster areas. I'm exhausted, and I have a cold, and I feel pretty rotten, and (expletive) Gianna is on vacation, and this whole topic was her idea anyway. Fine. I'm turning today's blog over to Zorro.

The quality of this blog is greatly improved tonight because
I took over.

Purrrrrrrrrr. Excuse me while I stroll across the keyboard.  a;dfjqoiuewrlkjnmvcx k. 

I prefer books that are wide enough for sitting upon, and preferably in a place I can knock onto the floor. If that's not enough to go on, though, I like a book about a cat. Or a book in which people die. Or just a whole lot of bad things. Purr fuckers! Let's face it, The Cat in the Hat is stupid without the cat, and The Master and Margarita is a snooze without the giant devil kitty, and I Could Pee on This is just another excrement poetry book without the cat.  

The greatest poet of the 20th Century's most auspicious work is all about cats. It's the greatest work of literature in the English language. It spawned the standard for all Broadway shows. "I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats?" Pfft. Nothing's better than cats. Or nothing is better than T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Greatest work of literature of all time. 


[Zorro, that's a bit of a stretch.]

Keep yapping, human victim. You were too tired to write your blog, so this is my show. Ooh! Rubber band! I can chew on that!

Proof that humans wish they
were like us. Also, that they
are freaky scary.

My cat pals include Old Deuteronomy (which, coincidentally, is the only Biblical book I know), and Mr. Mistoffelees, and the Rum Tum Tugger, and my hero Macavity, who is a criminal mastermind. We felines are a proud bunch, and we are set on world domination. Also, Mr. Eliot offers some great suggestions for cat names, in case you just received a kitten and are thinking that "Fluffinella" is a good cat name.

[Hey! Your predecessor was named Fluffinella, and she was a great cat.]

Silence, human victim! Think how great that cat would have been if she'd been named Macavity. "Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity."

[I really want a nice cat.]

I really think there's a strong chance that you're going to cure your case of the vapors with a bloodletting tonight.

[Help? ....Anyone??]

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 28

[Yeah, today is my day, but I feel lousy and Gianna had already written this post since she was going on vacation. I'm ashamed to say I'm slacking. --Liz]

So this author a day thing is winding down so the pressure is on to find writers that we have somehow missed. I am heading to the beach for a few days, no phone, no television, no internet, no people. I will be in total isolation for nearly a week, so I needed to find a really good book to keep me occupied. Okay, that was an exaggeration. I will have access to a phone. The condo also comes with a flat screen television and complementary wifi. My point is, I want to bring a good book or two. The plan is to bring a new book and to re-read something because I rarely do that and thought this was a great excuse.

Scouring the shelves of my home yesterday I spied my small collection of Harry Crews books and knew immediately that I would choose one to re-read on vacation. It’s been years since I’ve read him and my memory at this stage is foggy at best, so it will be like reading him for the first time. I thought I would recommend a few books for you if you haven’t had the dark creepy pleasure of a Crews novel.

It's no secret that I love a novella so my suggestion for an introduction to Crews is The Car, about a man who dreams of doing something important, something huge, and settles on eating a car. This is probably the most accessible and certainly the least violent Crews novel. It’s also as funny as it is original. This is the book I am going to bring on vacation to re-read.

My favorite Crews book is his slim memoir, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. Crews is often accused of going overboard in his novels, the violence and insanity of it all, but you can’t really appreciate his novels without reading about his life growing up in poverty living on tenant farms in Georgia. This is a must read for anyone who loves southern literature.

You say you just want to be a part of the Crews cult following already and want one book where you can get a real flavor of the man? Sure, jump in and read Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader. This collection includes the aforementioned novella, The Car and the novel, The Gypsy Curse. This book also included his memoir and several essays.

Crews is a mix of Flannery O’Connor and Hunter S. Thompson but, if you like Daniel Woodrell, Barry Hannah, or even Larry Brown, you should read Crews.  

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 27

I will freely admit that I was late to the Don DeLillo party. The problem with being late to the DeLillo party is that it’s a daunting task to begin. He’s quite prolific, so knowing where to begin is key. Now, having said that, I have no idea what book is best to start with; I will just tell you how I jumped in. Let’s take a deep breath because brothers and sisters…we are diving in.

White Noise was the first novel I read by DeLillo because when I came out to a co-worker as not having read any of his books, this was the one that was recommended. I wish I read this in a book group because there are dozens of great topics for discussion, such as conspiracy theories, violence, twenty-four hour media cycles, and our obsession with consuming goods.

Now, what I did next was panic because I had been living on this planet for nearly forty years and had only read one DeLillo book, and now realized it was a huge mistake and  needed to get a move on. I chose Libra because it was the next novel he wrote and at that time I thought, oh hell, I’ll just finish this guy’s library. Libra imagines the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and what may have led up to the assassination of JFK. If you like a little conspiracy CIA plot in your books, this is excellent.

Next I chose Mao II which is about a reclusive writer (think Salinger) who spends his life writing a novel he refuses to finish (once published it will cease to be art).  Themes of violence and commercialism abound; this is my favorite DeLillo book.

Writing this, I realize that all of these books are really great for book groups--tons of stuff to discuss, all incredibly relevant. So in my opinion these are all good jumping off places for DeLillo and it’s a safe bet you will read more than one of his books.