Knopf 100--Day 15

It seems I'm in a dark book mood today.


53. Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace, originally published in 2007. David Peace is a great mystery writer and this mystery is unlike anything else I've read. It's set the year after World War II ended, in a broken Japan. The country is bankrupt which means that the Tokyo police force is bankrupt. When a killer unleashes horrors on the city, a detective is hot on his trail. What's special, though, is Peace's stream of consciousness writing that captures the underworld terror of the city and its war worn residents. Things like the nagging itch of lice become focal points for the characters and reader.

54. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, originally published in 2005. I'm admittedly obsessed with atomic culture and the historic impact of the bomb on the 20th Century. That culture all begins with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the subject of Bird and Sherwin's award winning biography American Prometheus. Here is Oppenheimer's story, from Communist sympathizer to father of the atomic bomb to moral conscience of the nuclear era. Oppenheimer is fascinating because of his scientific genius and ability to lead the Manhattan Project, but he's also intriguing for his affairs, political beliefs, and how the people who revered him after the war ultimately destroyed him several years later. Yes Gianna, I do have a crush on Oppenheimer. I'm not ashamed.

55. In the Cut by Susanna Moore, originally published in 1995. Ooh, creepy, gothic, erotic, serial killer novel! I have to include this book on the list, and I need to grab it before Gianna snatches it away from me. When a woman is murdered in her neighborhood, Franny, an academic with a love of precise language, becomes obsessed with the crime and her darker desires. She begins an affair with the detective on the case, and this book becomes a twist of language, sex, risky behaviors, and distrust.

56. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, originally published in 1992. All the Pretty Horses was my first experience reading Cormac McCarthy, when I "borrowed" a copy off my boyfriend's shelf. I don't know what I was expecting that night, but I doubt I expected to be so sucked into a book that I ignored everything else for the rest of the evening. The story follows John Grady Cole, a 16 year-old kid who, spurred by the death of his grandfather, sets off on horseback. Accompanied by a couple of friends, the boys venture into Mexico and encounter love, bandits, and the desert. This novel deserved the National Book Award that it won.

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 11

Okay, I know I'm super late in posting my pick for the day. In my defense, I'm in Arizona right now, and they don't recognize daylight savings time, so I'm two hours behind the whiny, nagging Gianna. Here's what I have to say to that: GRAND CANYON. It's grand. It's a canyon. It's a lovely way to spend a day after traveling all week for work.

Here are two more words: JACUZZI SUITE. There appears to be a jacuzzi in the middle of my hotel room. I think there's the strong possibility that I will be finishing this pick with some soothing bubbles.

My pick today is Susanna Moore. Technically we've briefly mentioned one of her books before (in a piece about books about prison, which further proves that the quality of this blog leaves much to be desired), but we've never given her the proper amount of attention. Another reason I want to highlight Susanna Moore is that I know Gianna's a fan and I'm tired of her stealing my picks. I'm therefore stealing one of hers. (Did I mention I have a jacuzzi in the middle of my hotel room? How about that the manager of the hotel made a point of saying it could seat two? Or that his name is--and I'm not making this up--Japhet Leviticus?)

Susanna Moore. Focus. Okay. Let's say you like serious, thought-provoking fiction. Let's say that you don't want to read the same book rehashed by an author over and over. Let's say that women's lives, and often the darker elements of their lives, interest you. You will like Susanna Moore.

The first book of hers I read was In the Cut, which is arguably her most well-known work since it was made into a movie starring Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo and directed by Jane Campion. This book is dark, twisted, erotic, extremely disturbing, and intelligent. Franny, the main character, is obsessed with language and with risk-taking without emotional engagement. She's a woman on the edge, but when she realizes that the woman she saw engaged in a sordid act with a man is the same woman who ended up murdered, Franny becomes a witness in the hunt for a serial killer. Her foil is Detective Mallory, emotional mystery. Good times.

Next was The Big Girls. It's a novel set in a women's prison. Yes, please.

Susanna Moore's latest novel is The Life of Objects. In 1938, Beatrice, an Irish lace maker, takes a job as a lace curator/restorer for a wealthy German couple. This is Germany on the eve of World War II, though, and when Hitler begins invading countries, the family--including Beatrice--retreat to their country home. She is faced with the choice: return to Ireland or take her chances in Germany and the growing horrors around her. Reading groups, you should check this one out.

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 19

Time to sharpen that toothbrush into a shank, it's

Day 19: Favorite Prison Books

Somehow you knew this day would come, right?  How could we resist? 

Gianna:

I likes my prison books, that’s no lie. I also enjoy prison TV (I was no stranger to Cell Block H), so I am pretty excited about this question.

I have read two or three really great books about prison.

The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley is the most recent prison book that I have read. Hot House was recommended to me by Tracey K. with the promise that I wouldn’t be able to put it down and she was absolutely right. This is the oldest of my choices, published in the early 1990’s; it is based mostly on interviews with inmates and guards, although you do get the history of Leavenworth. Although the writing is not of the same caliber as my next two choices, I definitely put this on the must read list for anyone who likes true crime.  

You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish by Jimmy Lerner is a fantastic chronicle of his first year in prison on a manslaughter charge. Before his crime Lerner is a model citizen, middle class with a good white-collar job. He describes prison in great detail: the violence, the corruption, the living conditions, the racism and the boredom. [The soap-dropping?] Lerner’s longtime cellmate is Kansas, a white supremacist who takes a strong liking to him and serves as protector. The beginning of this book sets the tone when Lerner describes what happens to a teenager when he is put in with the general population.  [Birthday party with balloon animals?]

My favorite prison book is Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award). The author’s original desire was to follow a new guard for several months and write this book from that vantage point. His request was denied. Not one to give up, Conover actually ends up applying for and eventually getting a position as a guard at Sing Sing, the notorious maximum security prison. Conover exposes rampant drug use, gang violence (outright gang wars really), rapes, and the very real dangers that face prison guards every hour of every day. Conover comes to the conclusion that while the idea of prison guards is to care for and control prisoners – what is really happening is that they are simply warehousing people without even a hint of real rehabilitation.

Liz:

While Gianna went for nonfiction, I'll take on the prison fiction.

Sarah Waters is better known for her books Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, but it's the book she wrote in between, Affinity, that I prefer.  Affinity is a dark story set in a 19th Century prison, the story of a Selina, a woman sent to the slammer because she's a medium and her last seance didn't go according to plan, and Margaret, one of those Victorian prim-and-proper types who comes to the prison to counsel the criminals.  Selina may or may not be a con artist, but the women's relationship develops nonetheless.  Waters offers a masterfully ambiguous narrative, and who can resist a 19th Century jailhouse and spiritualists?

Austin author Amanda Eyre Ward's first novel, Sleep Toward Heaven, takes on the women's maximum security prison in Texas.  One character is loosely based on Aileen Wuornos (remember the Charlize Theron character in Monster, and that super-gross hair?), a woman with a troubled past who ultimately becomes a killer.  One character is the mentally fragile doctor at the prison.  And one character is the widow of one of the victims.  Every book group in the country should read this book, and then read all of Ward's other books for good measure.

Sticking to the women-in-jail theme, Susanna Moore's The Big Girls has everything I love in a prison book.  First, it's set in a prison.  Second, the main characters are a psychiatrist at the prison and her mentally ill patient, fulfilling my unending fascination with shrink books.  Third, the prisoner is there for drowning her kids, echoing the Andrea Yates case.  This book is dark, but beautifully written.  It also may be evidence of the many psychological problems that warp my mind, that I liked it so much.

I'm trying to decide what roles Gianna and I would take if we were cellmates, and what crimes would land us in the joint.  On the one hand, I am significantly larger than G and have 35 years of swallowed down rage looking for an outlet.  On the other, Gianna is feisty and can be a bully.  Regardless, though, I call dibs on the top bunk.