An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 24

I don't really know a whole lot about Meg Howrey. A Google search revealed that she's a classically trained dancer and been involved with theater, and that makes sense. Mostly I know Meg Howrey only from the two books I've read, but based on the books I think she must be a pretty interesting person.

I am not above poking fun at adults who read YA books, but the truth is that more and more, books are crossing age distinctions. I'm an adult books rep (not adult as in porny, but adult as in not children), but I always make a point of highlighting titles that could cross over into the huge young adult book market. What's the difference between a young adult book and a book featuring teens and 20's characters? I guarantee that there's more sex and violence in YA literature than 99% of the adult books I sell. Meg Howrey squarely falls into that cross over category, as an adult book writer who could just as easily be read by smart young adults.

Blind Sight stars a smart kid, Luke, who has been raised by his New Age mother and shared a house with his two sisters. He's never really known his father, but for the summer that Luke is supposed to be writing his college admissions essays, he's finally getting to know his dad. Dad, though, is not just some random guy; he's a television star living in Hollywood. Luke finds himself attending premiers and sitting in at location shoots, going to parties and living the public life. Luke's dad isn't the same person in public and in private, though, and just as Luke is trying to piece together his own identity for his essay, so too is he trying to work out who his father really is.

In The Cranes Dance, two sisters try to survive in the hyper-competitive world of professional ballet. Kate Crane is trying to hang on to her role in Swan Lake, but she's troubled by her sister Gwen's breakdown. Gwen is younger, and both sisters were dancing prodigies as children, but Gwen became the star. Now Gwen has returned home and Kate is alone for the first time and feeling guilty about what role she may have played in her sister's demise. The Cranes Dance offers a closer look at the ballet world that the movie Black Swan introduced to millions. Meg Howrey was a dancer, though, and somehow I believe she offers a more realistic, dark, humorous, vivid portrayal than Natalie Portman growing feathers out of her back. If you liked Black Swan, you'll like The Cranes Dance, but I don't want to pigeon hole this novel as a rip-off or just a dance book. It's a story about sisters first, and that's a relationship that many non-dancers know intimately.

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 23

I roll my eyes at Susan Orlean all the time. She doesn’t know it of course, but I do. It started years ago when I was working at a bookstore in Florida and we were to host an event for her book The Orchid Thief. Orchids? Really, lady? Talk about a snooze of a topic, orchids? The only thing more boring than actual orchids would have to be the people who would want to read about them and then gather to talk about them.

Uhh..wrong. Thank you book gods for putting me on the schedule the night Susan Orlean came to talk about The Orchid Thief to a group more diverse than any I had ever seen. It was not only my introduction to the absolute cray cray world of orchid people (wait, is that a sci fi movie?), but the nutters who walk in the alligator infested everglades to illegally search for the illusive ghost orchid. And, I may be making this up, but I know that Orlean had a ghost orchid on her person that night. I peeped it with my own eyes.

Most recently Orlean wrote a book called Rin Tin Tin. Huh. Well sure it has a gorgeous cover, and yeah, I like dogs as much as (probably a little less) than the next lesbian, but do I really want to read a book about Rin Tin Tin? I roll my eyes at crazy Susan Orlean and open the book. About five pages in, I make my way to the front counter, pay for the book and then go sit in my car and read for almost an hour. I finished the book the next night. It made both mine and Liz’s year-end best of list.

Somewhere along the way I also read The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People. Profile books are tricky to write, really difficult to make interesting. It was after tearing through this paperback that I realized that this book exemplifies why Susan Orlean can probably write about anything she wants. She has authentic affection for the people she writes about, and while some might be living on the outskirts of normal society, she treats each of her subjects with dignity and respect.

So yea, I am an absolute true believer in Susan Orlean. I am even smart enough to follow her on Twitter, turns out; she’s pretty hilarious too.  

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 22

I definitely think it's time that I point out that this whole "We'll post something every day!" thing was Gianna's idea. Gianna is in New York right now (first reason to hate her), and she talked to Whoopi Goldberg today (second reason). And it's not her night to post something; I forgot it's my night (reason #3, at least for me). Sigh. Here's the text conversation that just occurred:

I just walked through my book room and happened to spot a Tom Perrotta book on the shelf. A quick Google search revealed that we've never mentioned Tommy P on our blog. This should be further evidence of how sad this blog is. Don't you have something better to do? Laundry?SVU marathon? Anything? It's pretty obvious that we aren't good bloggers or real book lovers. I'm pretty sure that Gianna's not even Italian. I think she may be Scotch. I bet she sleeps in a kilt.

Reese, I forgive you
the tacky arrest video
because of this role.

Right. Tom Perrotta. Perrotta's books have been made into some great movies--Election was Reese Witherspoon's best work and Little Children contains something Gianna looks for in a movie (Kate Winslet)--but the books are terrific on their own. I think of Perrotta as the confessor of suburbia, revealing the sins of the seemingly happy. He's a social satirist of the first order. In Election, the All-American teenagers are revealed to be manipulative, desperate, and fragile. Their teachers are just as conflicted and sometimes dangerous, but no one here is either pure victim or pure menace. And Tom Perrotta knows how to write chaos with a comedic edge.

The Leftovers is Tom Perrotta's twist on the dystopia craze in literature. In this case, people have disappeared suddenly, from all over the world, on the same day. Is it the Rapture? The characters aren't sure. How would those leftover people know? And how would they continue their lives? How does a kid pick up and go to college and focus on studying when the world may (or may not) be ending? The Leftovers asks some interesting questions about religion, philosophy, and the meaning of life. I've heard rumors that the book's being adapted for a TV series (HBO?), and if so, I will absolutely be watching.

Little Children. I think of this book in the same way that I think about the movie American Beauty. Both make me uncomfortable, and I resist them because I think they are probably too right on the money. Two parents meet while taking their children to a neighborhood park. Sarah, the mother of the little girl, worries that she's a bad mother compared to the supermoms also in the park. But she's also a lapsed feminist who feels trapped as a traditional homemaker, wife, and mother. Todd is "the Prom King," the stay at home dad of a son, who doesn't understand his child's obsessions and tries to relive his glorious football past rather than study for and pass the bar exam. In their misery they find company, and over the course of a hot summer they bond as friends (and lovers). On top of that, a man convicted of molesting a child moves in with his mother, and he struggles to find his way in a world where he's labeled, and hounded by a community watch group. No one in this novel is happy, but it's still an incredible read.

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 21

I don’t know how I came across Grace Paley; maybe she was included in a short story anthology, or maybe I came across one of her essays in a Women’s Studies class (I will give you a minute to get over your shock that I took a women’s studies class…take your time).  However I came to know her work, I consider myself truly lucky.

Where can we can this hat?

Occasionally you come across lists of books that women or young women should read.  I don’t ever recall seeing Grace Paley on those lists, which is a travesty. Not only should she be on the list, she should be in the top five. The best way I can describe her, especially her essays (although some of her stories are semi autobiographical), is that she teaches you how to be a better, or maybe the word is, complete, a more complete person.

Paley is compassionate, thoughtful, and wise.  She was a feminist, an anti war activist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. I met her once at the Miami Book Festival; I don’t know for sure but she must have been in her 70’s at the time. She was a very tiny woman but sort of fierce looking, like she knew things. Anyway, she signed my books and I told her what her work meant to me, she stood up and hugged me.

Basically this entire blog is so I can brag and say I once hugged Grace Paley and it was a highlight of my life.

I will recommend two books that will be a good introduction to Paley. First, The Collected Stories. For me this collection is a bible of sorts, it combines her three volumes of stories into one book.  Not that you’re the type to be impressed by these things, but this collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer and National Book Award.

The second book you should have will you give you a sense of who Grace Paley was as a person, as a humanist. Just as I Thought collects her essays, articles, and some talks she gave over the years (she was one of the most inspiring speakers I’ve ever seen).

Grace Paley in Miami

One last note: I thought of Grace Paley today after reading about the devastating tornado damage in Oklahoma. When things like this happen, the danger is that it can paralyze you, make you feel useless or powerless. You resort to just shaking your head. For me, Paley is a writer who I go to for solace, for direction, and for inspiration. She was an activist in every sense of the word.  Every day was a call to action for her; just knowing that inspires me to be a better person, to be an activist.  

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 20

J-Leth

I confess that I'm cheating a bit today since the book that inspired this post won't come out for another few months. Still, I just checked, and somehow we've never really spent any time talking about Jonathan Lethem. I think maybe Gianna accidentally boycotted Lethem when she wrote off Jonathan Franzen. That's okay. I'm here to clean up her messes.

I wouldn't characterize myself as the ultimate Jonathan Lethem fan because he's written a bunch of books that I haven't yet read. I have now read three of his books, though, and I liked all three. If you're new to J-Leth, as the cool kids call him (or I just made it up), start with Motherless Brooklyn. It's a great book group book, and it's quintessential Lethem in setting. The guy loves New York City. Also, Lethem loves to play with form, and this is his detective novel. And his protagonist, Lionel Essrog, is a Tourettic limo service driver who barks and cusses and (in Lethem's skilled hands) reworks the English language in wonderful ways. Lionel's boss Frank, a minor mobster, is killed, and Lionel's world is thrown into turmoil as other drivers and lowlife thugs jockey for position.

In Chronic City, Lethem takes Manhattan. Chase Insteadman is a former child star, minor celebrity, and hipster type, living off royalties and appearances on the Upper East Side dinner party circuit. People only ever ask Chase about A) his child star fame, and B) his fiancee, who is an astronaut stranded on the space station orbiting the earth. He meets a charismatic, drug-dealing, cool guy named Perkus Tooth, and together they partake of herbal treatments (the book is called Chronic City, after all) and search for authenticity in a world that is completely fake. It reminded me a bit of The Truman Show, and this book also has the most intense eBay auction ever captured in fiction. It also may be the only eBay auction ever captured in fiction.

That leads me to Dissident Gardens. This is Jonathan Lethem's new novel, which goes on sale in September. This is a big novel, and one that will show up on the year-end lists as one of the best books of the year. It reads like a major achievement. This is a family story centered around Rose Zimmer, a righteous busy body living in Sunnyside Gardens, a Queens neighborhood. Rose is a big ol' Commie. She's the Red Queen of Sunnyside, and she spends large amounts of time sharing her political views, worshiping Abraham Lincoln, and fighting with her daughter Miriam. Miriam comes of age in the radical sixties, marries an Irish folk singer, and has a son, Sergius, who's raised by Quakers. There are great comic moments in Dissident Gardens--one favorite passage involves Rose's nephew Lenin "Lenny" Angrush pitching a name for the new baseball team that will ultimately become the Mets, but his idea is the Proletariats--but this is also a serious book about family, broken ideals, and the dangers of philosophy interfering with emotional bonds.

I normally read a novel in a few days. With Dissident Gardens, I've been living in Jonathan Lethem's world for almost a month. As I've worked my through this book, I've come to love the characters and their passions. Their flaws. Lethem apparently based some of the book on his own Communist grandmother, and the personal connection shows in his writing. Add this book to your list of titles to look forward to in the fall.

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 19

Thomas Mullen’s debut novel, The Last Town on Earth, was one of my favorite books of 2006.  The novel is based on a town in the Pacific Northwest that quarantined itself during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed about 375,000 Americans. The novel completely blew me away beginning on page one. The novel is stark, of course but written flawlessly. This is a book I should put on my re-read list.

Here is what is really cool about Thomas Mullen though. After his debut novel, which was widely praised and nominated for several awards, Mullen takes off in a different direction with a book that is far-fetched, funny, mystical, and that asks big questions about what makes a person good. The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers begins as two outlaw brothers wake up after being shot to death (or thought they were shot to death) after a bank heist goes wrong. 

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 18

If Rocky IV taught me anything--and let's admit it, most of my moral code comes from this epic film--it's that no matter who you are, we can all change. Change doesn't just happen with the Italian Stallion or the Politburo, which brings me to today's author, Ronald De Feo.

The first Ronald De Feo book I read was Calling Mr. King. The main character is a hit man, so of course I would read it based solely on that information. After years of successfully killing people in Europe, though, our affable but amoral killer is questioning his calling. Specifically, the guy really likes Georgian architecture and the art world. Sometimes everyone slacks off on the job (see: March Madness), and that's no different for the mid-life crises of hit men either. Instead of getting on with it, this hit man prefers self-guided tours of historic buildings. What results is a comic journey novel with a quirky character at its center.

More recently, De Feo wrote Solo Pass. We here in Book Land have never hesitated to read books about mental illness, and so when I heard the words "mental hospital" I moved this book to the top of my pile. The narrator is Ott, a man who has spent two months in a New York hospital after a breakdown. Inside the ward, Ott learns to play the system and offers some compelling descriptions of how to play the system, how to hide in plain sight, how to take advantage of the freedoms that come with being deemed crazy. Ott works his way up to a solo pass, a few hours out of the hospital, unsupervised, before returning to the hospital for the night. Ott is a guy in limbo between the constrictive, sane world, and the other space of the ward. Again, Ronald De Feo is asking about change and self-identity through the lens of a comic novel.

(I think it might be worth noting that the guy who killed his family that led to The Amityville Horror story was also named Ronald De Feo. I have no idea if this author is related to that guy.)