Into Thin Air
Jon Krakauer
1997
333 pages
Published by Anchor Books

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FTC, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal: Do you really have any doubt as to how and where I acquired this one? It’s too old for an ARC, so you guessed it…I bought it.

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Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics, and others with a shaky hold on reality. -p. 92

In 1996, journalist Jon Krakauer agreed to climb Mt. Everest on assignment for Outside Magazine, to write about the companies that guide climbers up the mountain. Outside shelled out $65,000 to secure a place for Krakauer with one such company, Adventure Consultants.

Krakauer originally wrote a lengthy article for Outside, but he was haunted by his experience with Mt. Everest, so he sought some sort of relief by expanding the article into this book. In Into Thin Air, Krakauer describes the long, arduous journey up the mountain, and the resulting tragic descent. It took something like a month to reach the summit (at 29,028 feet, the highest point in the world), as the team stayed at various camps on the way up the mountain to acclimatize to the increasing lack of oxygen. And while not all members of the team made it to the summit, Krakauer did. Unfortunately, after he reached the summit, a storm rolled in and many of the climbers who were behind him that day were trapped on their descent. Bad weather, bad decisions, oxygen deprivation and other factors all combined to result in tragedy…eight people from different expeditions died. Into Thin Air is Krakauer’s attempt to reconstruct what happened and make some sort of peace with the decisions that he made on that fateful day.

Krakauer includes this quote from Walt Unsworth’s book, Everest, which really sums up how I feel about mountain climbing after reading this book:

The American public has no inherent sympathy for mountain climbing, unlike the mountain countries of Europe, or the British, who had invented the sport. In those countries there was something akin to understanding, and though the man in the street might on the whole consider it a reckless risk of life, he acknowledged that it was something that had to be done. There was no such acceptance in America. -p. 139

I agree. There’s no acceptance here, either. This was a fascinating book, because it really solidified my dislike of a sport that seems so reckless, both in terms of people’s attitudes towards their bodies and their lives, and their disregard for the mountain itself. As much as I want to be open-minded and let people do as they please, my brain was screaming WHY throughout this book. I just don’t get why people feel the need to climb a mountain:

1. That records temps of 100 degrees BELOW 0. (Holy mother, that’s cold.)
2. Where you can’t breathe (which has resulted in tons (literally) of discarded oxygen canisters lying around).
3. Where many, many people lose their life, and are left where they die. This means should you choose to climb the mountain you will be walking by many of these dead bodies (that do not decompose). That gives me a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. And if you don’t lose your life, chances are good that you will at least lose a toe or finger (or maybe even a nose or an arm) to frostbite. Or maybe you’ll be a victim of HAPE or HACE, in which the lack of oxygen does bad things to your lungs or your brain.
4. That costs tens of thousands of dollars to climb. The permit alone, for one person, in 1996, was $10,000.
5. That results in an every person for themselves mentality. As one climber stated, “Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality.” -p. 253

In the end, this book left me feeling appalled. It’s astounding to think of everything that is sacrificed (life, limbs, money, peace of mind for some of the survivors, the beauty and sanctity of the mountain) just so people can say they’ve conquered the tallest mountain in the world. Why do people feel the need to push themselves in the name of conquering nature?

And it’s not really the book or the author that is appalling…it’s the story. Because in the end, I was left feeling like Krakauer had come to similar conclusions. He’s received a lot of flak for telling this story, and I can totally sympathize with the family members who were outraged by the book. On the other hand, I think it’s a story with a very dramatic moral, one that’s worth reading.

Day for Night
Frederick Reiken
April 2010
336 pages
Published by Reagan Arthur Books

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Yo, FTC lackeys: Dawn very kindly shared her ARC with me. I suspect she wanted me to share in the mind-f^ck that is this book. And that’s my word, not hers, so don’t go sending the censors after her.

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I seem to be on a streak of reading books that leave me confuzzled.

This is a tale made up of interconnected stories…and they get even more interconnected as the tale progresses. It’s very skillfully done, too…at no time did I think “you have got to be kidding me” whenever a character reappeared later in the book in a time and place I never would’ve expected them.

However, I’ll be damned if I know how to explain it. It has allusions to cults, some of the characters are Holocaust survivors and others play in a rock band, it’s set in Utah and Florida and New Jersey and Israel and Poland and Lithuania, there are manatees, there’s a pet hyena, one character has a stroke, another is in a coma, and another has leukemia, and there is one character that goes by 50 bajillion names.

It’s the character of 50 bajillion names that (sort of) connects everything together. She may or may not be a fugitive (in a more serious way than the Foster Farm chickens were fugitives), and she often pops up in inexplicable ways. Kind of like Mighty Mouse…you know, here she comes to save the day. And I bet you weren’t expecting a post that mentions both Mighty Mouse and the Foster Farm chickens. And the Holocaust.

Okay, pop culture super-heroes aside, this is a great book, although I still have no idea what the author was getting at, beyond some weird interconnectedness shit (as in we’re all interconnected, not just the stories that make up this book). The stories were compelling (seriously, I couldn’t stop reading and I finished this in one day), the characters interesting, and the end baffling. I’m still wondering if the woman of 50 bajillion names was meant to be some sort of mystical equivalent of Mighty Mouse, and if Jonah (another character who seemed to keep popping up) was her predecessor.

And while I was googling for cover images, I stumbled across the meaning of the title. Day for night is a cinematographic technique in which night-time is created by the use of special lights. In other words, you’re creating the illusion of night-time. Hmmmmm.

And here are some other reviews, if you’d like to read more coherent posts:

• Beth Fish Reads
• Devourer of Books
• She Is Too Fond of Books
• The Book Lady’s Blog

The Scent of Rain and Lightning
Nancy Pickard
May 2010
336 pages
Published by Random House

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FTC blah, blah, blah: I purchased this on my nook.

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Synopsis (blatantly filched from the B&N website)

One beautiful summer afternoon, from her bedroom window on the second floor, Jody Linder is unnerved to see her three uncles parking their pickups in front of her parents’ house—or what she calls her parents’ house, even though Jay and Laurie Jo Linder have been gone almost all of Jody’s life. “What is this fearsome thing I see?” the young high school English teacher whispers, mimicking Shakespeare. Polished boots, pressed jeans, fresh white shirts, Stetsons—her uncles’ suspiciously clean visiting clothes are a disturbing sign.

The three bring shocking news: The man convicted of murdering Jody’s father is being released from prison and returning to the small town of Rose, Kansas. It has been twenty-six years since that stormy night when, as baby Jody lay asleep in her crib, her father was shot and killed and her mother disappeared, presumed dead. Neither the protective embrace of Jody’s uncles nor the safe haven of her grandparents’ ranch could erase the pain caused by Billy Crosby on that catastrophic night.

Now Billy Crosby has been granted a new trial, thanks in large part to the efforts of his son, Collin, a lawyer who has spent most of his life trying to prove his father’s innocence. As Jody lives only a few doors down from the Crosbys, she knows that sooner or later she’ll come face-to-face with the man who she believes destroyed her family.

What she doesn’t expect are the heated exchanges with Collin. Having grown up practically side by side in this very small town, Jody and Collin have had a long history of carefully avoiding each other’s eyes. Now Jody discovers that underneath their antagonism is a shared sense of loss that no one else could possibly understand. As she revisits old wounds, startling revelations compel her to uncover the dangerous truth about her family’s tragic past.

This had some surprising twists at the end, too. I, for one, wasn’t expecting who the killer turned out to be. I think I suspected practically everyone else, which was kind of fun. My thoughts went something like this: “No way is it that guy, that’s too obvious.” “Hmm….nahhhh, couldn’t be.” “Wait, maybe it’s…no, that’s too obvious, too. I think.” “Whoa. Didn’t see that coming.” “Whoa. Or that.”

You get the picture. Despite the bloody ending, this was a fun read, and it’s actually a well written book, to boot. I’m not a big mystery fan, and this doesn’t feel like a typical mystery story.

The False Friend
Myla Goldberg
October 2010
253 pages
Published by Doubleday

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Hey FTC: This is an ARC that I received as part of my Indiespensable order. How do you classify that?

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Lately I’ve been reading books that I just don’t get. I need a book club, because some of them would actually make for a damn good discussion.

Case in point: this book.

From the back of the ARC:

Leaders of a mercurial clique, Celia and Djuna subjected each other and their three followers to an endless cycle of reward and punishment that peaked one afternoon when all five girls walked home along a forbidden road. Djuna disappeared that day; Celia blocked out what happened. It was assumed that Djuna was abducted, though neither she nor her abductor was ever found.

Twenty years later, Celia and her boyfriend Huck are professionally successful, yet their relationship is in stasis. When Celia’s memory of that terrible day returns, she confronts her own responsibility for her best friend’s disappearance and returns to her hometown to confess. Her aging parents – their love handicapped by a lifetime of reserve – insist that she is innocent. Huck wants to be supportive, but he can’t ignore all that contradicts Celia’s version of the past.

Deeply resonant and emotionally charged, The False Friend explores the adults that children become – leading us to question the truths that we accept or reject, and the lies to which we succumb.

My questions:

• Was Celia’s memory really false? (The end certainly seems to support that.)
• And if it was false, why did she suddenly remember? Was it out of guilt?
• What was up with Djuna’s creepy mom?? Not to mention Celia’s mom, who certainly had moments of creepiness herself. For a counselor, she sure did spend a lot of time with her head in the sand.
• And what, if any, resolution did Celia get?

Also, I wasn’t too crazy about the characters. Now I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of books with characters I didn’t like, but in this case it was more a feeling of frustration with the characters and their actions…no one really interacted. It was more like they were all in their own little worlds, not listening to each other. Which, come to think of it, may have been one of the points of the book.

Still confused, though.

Today you get two reviews for the low, low price of one post! This is something I rarely do, because I think each book deserves its own post (however short or bad that post may be). But, I’m a wee bit behind and am starting to forget things, so I’m struggling with what to say about some of the books. Therefore, today I’m going to talk (vaguely) about two books that went in directions I totally wasn’t expecting (not that I had any preconceived notions about where they were going, but you know what I mean. I hope).

First up, we have The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (which I received via the fun and awesome Indiespensable program at Powells, which means I bought it), a book that has gotten all sorts of attention around ye olde blogosphere. And I’m here to add the opinion that it wasn’t quite what I expected, and while good, I’m not sure that I can say it knocked my socks off. First, because my socks were already off, and second, because it ended up being less about lemon cake and more about chair legs. And while the lemon cake totally worked for me (maybe because I love Sarah Addison Allen), the chair legs were a bit (okay, a lot) of a stretch. What I’m trying to say, without giving away the story, is that I expected more magical realism, and what I felt like I got instead was quantum physics (and not really quantum physics, but science just ain’t my thing and that’s the closest I can come to describing something I didn’t understand). Also, know that the lemon cake and the chair legs represent two different characters, so while we start out focused on one, we end largely focused on another.

Next, we have Mr. Toppit, a book I just finished this morning (although that was a while ago now, seeing as how this post has been pre-scheduled). It has been said that this book is a dark comedy, and it was getting all sorts of hype at BEA (where I received a review copy, thank you very much Other Books). And it was good, but I wanted more Mr. Toppit, damnit. In other words, more darkness. Maybe I have a skewed sense of black humor, but this seemed more like a warning of what can happen with fame and wealth than any sort of dark comedy. And in the end, all of the unconnected secrets just felt like too many gratuitous secrets tossed into the story. And I might have said a few bad words at the end, because the end didn’t quite match up to the rest of the book. Maybe because by the end of the book it had picked up all sorts of peripheral characters that were too loosely connected to give me any sort of satisfactory resolution.

Book details:

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Aimee Bender
June 2010
304 pages
Published by Doubleday

Mr. Toppit
Charles Elton
September 2010
387 pages
Published by Other Press

Stranger Here Below
Joyce Hinnefeld
October 2010
265 pages
Published by Unbridled Books

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FTC disclosure and Unbridled apology: Thank you, Unbridled, for the review copy you gave me at BEA. I’m sorry this post is so crappy and I can’t explain why I loved this book so very, very much.

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I read In Hovering Flight earlier this year and enjoyed it. But Hinnefeld’s latest book…oh, this one is made of awesome. It’s completely different than In Hovering Flight, both in subject matter and setting. Although both books focus on women and identity.

Stranger Here Below tells the stories of multiple generations of women. But it’s not a sweeping saga. Rather, we get glimpses into the lives of Sister Georgia, contemporaries Vista and Sarah who lead radically different lives, and their daughters, Maze and Mary Elizabeth, who are college roommates in the early 1960s.

This book is subtle. There’s a lot going on in these women’s lives, but the author leaves a lot to the reader’s imagination. Events are alluded to, and we see the repurcussions, but there are many things that are not fully explained…mirroring the lives of the women in the book. For example, Sarah is a troubled woman, and we know about a childhood trauma, but she is also physically frail, and this was never fully explained. And her daughter Mary Elizabeth knows nothing of her mother’s childhood. There are other family secrets that Mary Elizabeth is not privy to, although these secrets have a profound impact on her life.

There are a number of themes running through the women’s stories…freedom, race, sexuality, independence, living your own life, happiness. Like I said, there’s a lot going. But at 265 pages, much of it is hinted at.

And I don’t want to tell you too much about the characters, particularly Sister Georgia, because I think it makes for a more touching read if you experience their lives through the pages of the book. The stories of these five women are both ordinary and extraordinary. This could be considered Southern fiction, but it has its own unique bent and will go down as one of my favorites for the year.

This won’t be published until October, but I’m willing to share me ARC with one lucky duck. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll pick a winner later this week.

April and Oliver
Tess Callahan
2009
326 pages
Published by Grand Central Publishing (Hachette Book Group)

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FTC disclosure: Yet another purchase by me. I fell prey to those buy one, get another one for 50% off tables. Damn bookstores (and I say that in the nicest way possible).

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I give you two blurbs, because I think the first one describes the story, and the second one offers some criticism.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this memorable debut, Callahan offers a uniquely funereal love story that focuses on a stagnant friendship-turned-untenable romance between unlikely life-long friends. To deal with the death of her immediate family, as well as the scars of childhood abuse, April assumes the role of the jaded wild child; Oliver, her once-inseparable childhood companion, has become her polar opposite, an engaged law student poised for success. Estranged during Oliver’s college years, the two reconnect with troubling results. Callahan’s descriptions are vivid, and often paired with charming flashbacks to more innocent times, providing stark contrast to the tumultuous course of April and Oliver’s young-adult lives. Callahan’s narrative takes some supporting-character detours from the principles’ love-hate relationship, including an abusive boyfriend; a manipulative and dangerous family friend, and April’s strong-but-slipping Nana. Callahan’s poetic style and grasp of emotion gives proper weight to April’s loss and Oliver’s secrets, and is sure to engage, sadden, and enthrall readers, especially in a bittersweet, somewhat surprising finale.

From The Washington Post:

Tess Callahan’s first novel, “April & Oliver,” offers up young lovers who are all bad timing and botched encounters and smoldering passion. Childhood friends, the two are separated by time and an unhappy shared history, but they come together again when April’s beloved younger brother dies in a car accident. By then, unfortunately, there is another woman in the picture; decent Oliver, who is in law school, is engaged to Bernadette, who teaches disabled children with saintly joy, but it is troubled and troubling April whom Oliver can’t forget. With her unstudied sexiness, vulnerability and intelligence, April exerts an irresistible attraction: She’s a girl in need of protection from her own grief and bad choices, and Oliver wants desperately to help her. In trying to persuade us of the caliber of this couple’s response to each other, Callahan’s prose is occasionally overwrought. There’s a little too much electricity rippling across skin, a little too much warmth radiating from thighs. Oliver’s jaw is chiseled, and April smells sometimes like the sea, sometimes like “grass after heavy rain.” At one point, Oliver’s eyes are described as “luminous as glacial ice, those radiant cobalt crevices lit from within.” This kind of description focuses our attention on the least complicated (and, in the end, least interesting) aspect of love: its superficial thrill. When Oliver’s brother says impatiently, “Just get it out of your systems already. It’s only sex, you know,” we’re inclined to agree with him. But Callahan wants the couple’s attraction to be about more than sex. April and Oliver are also soul mates, and many readers will find their bumpy road compelling, a sensitive and emotional account of two people grappling with the complicated force of mutual attraction when it strikes the right people at the wrong time.

I happened to love this book. I loved the flawed characters, and the contrast between April and Oliver (especially how you think Oliver is the golden child and then he turns out to be a total wanker in a few scenes), and the slightly seedy settings (to go with some of the slightly seedy characters), and the ending. And honestly, I just didn’t notice the overwrought prose, but then if the story is compelling I tend to tune out the prose.

Backseat Saints
Joshilyn Jackson
June 2010
324 pages
Published by Grand Central Publishing (Hachette Book Group)

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Purchased by moi.

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I read The Girl Who Stopped Swimming at the end of last year and was less than impressed. I had loved Gods in Alabama, but The Girl Who Stopped Swimming just didn’t have the same feel to it (not that I like books to always have the same feel, but Jackson’s books tend to be a little quirky and Swimming had a weird vibe to it). So I was anxious to read Backseat Saints in the hopes that I could recapture the good quirky vibes that Gods in Alabama had.

And yes, I realize just how weird I sound in that paragraph. Although I’m guessing that if you’ve read Jackson that made some sort of sense, because it’s hard to describe her writing. In Gods in Alabama, bad things happen, but for a good reason. Jackson’s books deal with serious shit, but they’re funny at the same time. And the characters are oddballs. Swimming just didn’t quite work that way for me.

However, Backseat Saints does. Yay! It also takes a minor character from Gods in Alabama, Rose Mae Lolley, and turns her into a main character, now known as Ro Grandee. Ro is in an abusive relationship, and a gypsy fortuneteller she ran into at the airport (seriously) has told her it’s gonna be him or her. In other words, Ro needs to off her husband before he offs her.

This book chronicles Ro’s attempt to reclaim herself, to find the Rose Mae Lolley she used to be, and to somehow reconcile Rose and Ro and even Ivy (that comes later in the story, and I promise we’re not dealing with multiple personalities) to become her own person.

Are you wondering what the hell I’m talking about? Well then, you’ll just have to read the book.

I Am Hutterite
Mary-Ann Kirkby
2010
232 pages
Published by Thomas Nelson

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Bought by me. (And to answer Melanie‘s question, I found this at Barnes and Noble…they were displaying it at the front of the store in their new authors area.)

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This book is marketed as “the fascinating true story of a young woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage.” Actually, it’s not so much Mary-Ann’s story as it is the story of her family…her grandparents and parents and her extended family at New Rosedale and Fairholme colonies, two of the nearly 40,000 Hutterite colonies in the US and Canada.

According to hutterite.org:

The Hutterian Brethren or Hutterites are a religious group originating from the Reformation of the 16th century. They are a communal people, living on scattered bruderhöfe or colonies throughout the prairies in North America.

The Hutterites and Mennonites (and thus the Amish) share common roots. Both of these sects are Anabaptists and both of these movements trace their beginnings to the same period of time, to the same occurrences, during the Reformation.

Their roots are found in Switzerland where a group of Bible students came to the conclusions that:

• baptizing babies is not biblical
• the Bible requires the separation of church and state
• a Christian should not wield the sword (pacifist)
• the Lord’s Supper is symbolic of the suffering of Jesus, and should be done in remembrance of him

These 4 points became the basis for this movement. The followers of this movement are known as the Anabaptists or re-baptizers. They are called rebaptizers because they were baptized a second time, in adulthood.

The religion of the Hutterites is unique in their belief in the community of goods in which all material things are held in common. This idea is gleaned from the teachings of Jesus, where he explained to the rich young ruler what he needed to do to receive eternal life (Matthew 19); from the fact that Jesus and his disciples shared everything (John 12); from the early church where the apostles and their followers held all things in common (Acts 2: 44-47). Hutterites believe community of goods is the highest command of love.

All members of the colony are provided for equally and nothing is kept for personal gain. Hutterites do not have personal bank account; rather all earnings are held communally and funding and necessities are distributed according to one’s needs.

I found the family history and the glimpse into life in a Hutterite colony fascinating. Once the family left the colony to live on their own in Canadian society, I was less interested. While Kirkby talked about the difficulties the family faced in assimilating into mainstream culture, the story felt rushed and she moved swiftly through her teenage years, only offering quick anecdotes.

In contrast, the earlier part of the book was deeper and richer. I felt like Kirkby truly cared about her family and all of the members of the colony. She brought the colony and its members to life, describing personalities and meals and chores and the daily rhythm of the colony.

I disagree with the statement that this is “the fascinating true story of a young woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage.” We do not actively see Kirkby renouncing her heritage; she is part of a family that leaves the Hutterite community. If she hid her heritage, it is not discussed in any depth in the book. I think the book is more a documentation of her family history, in which she gained a better understanding of her roots. It’s still interesting, but it’s less about her than a way of life.