Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Posted on November 14, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I enjoyed this book, but I finished it still unsure of what actually happened in the story.

This was my first experience with the acclaimed Louise Erdrich, and she writes beautifully. I easily got lost in each chapter’s character and events; she creates a world, a culture, seemingly without effort and so completely. It was a lovely experience. This book is a series of vignettes, or character studies. Each chapter is told in first person by a different character, or even several different characters within a chapter, which to some extent added to my confusion; but they had pretty distinct voices. All the characters are related by blood, marriage, and/or life events, so there is a cohesion to the book as a whole; it’s not a collection or anything. But I’ll be honest. I sometimes lost track of how the characters were connected & who was who, exactly. Sometimes I flipped around trying to resolve things but mostly (especially as I moved further into the book) I just let myself float around a little bit confused. It worked for me this way. If you do a better job than I did of keeping things straight, I’m sure you’ll find a very enjoyable sum of all parts; but even if you take it in as I did, I think you’ll find a string of remarkable evocative stories.

The characters come from several families of Native Americans (American Indians? I’m not sure what’s correct) in North Dakota. The families overlap and merge, through marriage, the production of children both in and out of (and across) marriages; and in local politics and interactions. Their culture – as Native Americans on “the rez” as well as in each distinct, and indistinct, family unit – is one of the framing elements of the book, and I found the cultural examination very interesting. Their relationship with the “outside world” of white Americans was an important feature, too. Mostly, though, the stories feature relationships between our characters: mothers & children, spouses, lovers, aunts & uncles and neighbors. Love is a theme, and sex, and the question of parentage comes up rather frequently. There is lots of heavy drinking and battling with alcohol.

There is sadness in most of the stories, and death, but there is hope and such a great deal of humor, too. Erdrich succeeds in placing me in a place and a culture and making me feel what her characters are feeling. Her writing is beautiful, musical. And so often funny! I pulled a few passages for you that describe one of our matriarchs:

She agreed, taking alert nips of her perfectly covered slice. She had sprinkled a teaspoon of sugar over it, carefully distributing the grains. That was how she was. Even with eights boys her house was neat as a pin. The candy bowl on the table sat precisely on its doily. All her furniture was brushed and straightened. Her coffee table held a neat stack of Fate and True Adventure magazines. On her walls she’d hung matching framed portraits of poodles, kittens, and an elaborate embroidered portrait of Chief Joseph. Her windowsills were decorated with pincushions in the shapes of plump little hats and shoes.

“I make these.” She cupped a tiny blue sequined pump in her hand. “You have a girlfriend? I’ll give it to you. Here.”

…several pages later, still talking about the same woman:

Lulu was bustling about the kitchen in a calm, automatic frenzy. She seemed to fill pots with food by pointing at them and take things from the oven that she’d never put in. The table jumped to set itself. The pop foamed into glasses, and the milk sighed to the lip. The youngest boy, crushed in a high chair, watched eagerly while things placed themselves around him. Everyone sat down. Then the boys began to stuff themselves with a savage and astonishing efficient. Before Bev had cleaned his plate once, they’d had thirds, and by the time he looked up from dessert, they had melted through the walls. The youngest had levitated from his high chair and was sleeping out of sight.

See, isn’t that funny and evocative?

I found Love Medicine a unique and enjoyable read, if unorthodox in its structure. I recommend it.

For those who have read this book: did I space out somewhere, or did anyone else have trouble holding the family trees together? Does it matter?

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movie: The Rum Diary (2011)

Posted on November 13, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I went with my friend Justin to see The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp and based on the novel of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson. My experience with Thompson is woefully limited; I’ve seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and that’s all. I feel like I should have read him by now, and maybe someday I will.

Based on that one other Thompson experience, I’ll say that the movie was absolutely recognizable as coming from the same mind; the mood is a rambling, drunken, drugged, yet often profound rush through life with relatively little concern for peripheral consequences. Paul Kemp arrives in San Juan, Puerto Rico to start work at a newspaper there. He’s trying to be a novelist but failing so far; he hasn’t found his voice. Kemp finds it easy to drink & drug with his new friends there. His new boss is not interested in the human-interest, social-justice, exposé-style stories he tries to write. And a new acquaintance wants to hire him to write promotional materials for real estates ventures that will result in the defiling of yet another island of virgin Caribbean paradise. Kemp is not interested in this work; but he’s very interested in the man’s girlfriend.

Kemp and friends get themselves into scrapes; they get arrested, party at Carnival (a Caribbean version), battle the establishment. It’s a story of redemption as well as of drug-addled hilarity. This is a very funny movie. (Look out for the scene involving the operation of a car missing its front seat.) It also offers some serious moments, and seriously cynical ones. My movie date Justin knows Thompson much better than I do, and he feels that this autobiographical work of fiction was a sort of mission statement for the writer. Kemp eventually finds his voice, and I think we can probably agree that Thompson did, too. I thought it was a very good movie; very funny and also very serious and thought-provoking and sad. Also, Johnny Depp was absolutely the perfect choice for the role of Paul Kemp. His wildly expressive, comical face was just right for the character and the movie, and all it had to say.

Hunter S. Thompson: this photo is on the cover of the book

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The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (audio)

Posted on November 12, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Margaret Atwood is a master of world-building. This was a great experience: disturbing, thought-provoking, funny, frightening, and completely real.

In The Year of the Flood, we check in with Toby and with Ren, both weathering out the aftermath of the “waterless flood” that seems to have almost entirely wiped out humankind. We’re also treated to a series of flashbacks to their lives before the flood. In that dystopic world, the CorpSeCorps rule a sinister corporate/business/police state, and the Gardeners preach the gospel of the flood to come and their own brand of “green,” vegetarian, wacky Christianity. Toby was an Eve in the Gardeners, and Ren, a former Gardener, was a sex worker in a high-end club. I don’t want to say much more about plot; the constant discovering of new surprises was very special and I want to preserve that for you.

One of the unique aspects of this audiobook was the songs that accompanied the sermons preached by Adam One, the Gardeners’ leader. For one thing, various narrators are employed, which is always interesting; Adam One has his own narrator, so we hear his sermons in his own voice. I found them creepy, but the hymns were creepier still. Music on an audiobook is a great use of the format, and one I’m mostly unfamiliar with. In this case, they helped set a tone that I found overwhelmingly… disturbing. I’m a little alarmed by organized religion to begin with, and pretty sympathetic to vegetarian-hippie-feel-good systems of thought; but this combination of the two was definitely a little bit cultish and perverse. There is an eerie other-worldly feeling to the pre-flood dystopia. And then of course, our flashbacks to that world are interspliced with tidbits of the lonely experiences of Toby and Ren in the frightening new world, where liobams (lion-lambs) and rackunks (raccoon-skunks) run wild.

And speaking of creepiness, can I mention this? One character is a refugee from Texas, which was made unliveable by a hurricane, which of course wins prizes for believability but the flip side of that coin is it’s a little close to home, Ms. Atwood! She does paint an alarming picture of the-world-as-we-know-it, but different.

There are several qualities that make this book special and remarkable. Toby, Ren, Zeb, and Amanda are all such real and fully-developed characters; they live and breathe. The pre-flood world of the CorpSeCorps and the Gardeners is both fantastic and wild and foreign and also startlingly close to home; this may very well be what we’re headed towards, you’ll think as you read/listen. It, too, is well-developed, fully-realized, frighteningly realistic and possible. The pacing of the story builds the tension perfectly; new tidbits are discovered at just the right moments; the tension grows. At the start of the story, we meet both Toby and Ren, each in her respective hiding place and suspecting she’s the last living human on earth; as the flashbacks unfurl, we learn how each ended up where she is. The jumpy chronology adds to the disjointed feeling the book inspires. It’s really just masterfully done. And the audio was extremely well done, too.

I don’t feel I’ve done this book justice. I don’t want to say too much; but maybe too I’m just not up to the task. I recommend Atwood and, as Valerie pointed out, you should read Oryx and Crake before this one as it is a sequel of sorts; although I think it is very satisfying on its own, too. (I did read the former but have mostly forgotten it…) I also want to direct you to Kerry’s review, also of the audiobook, as she did a great job. (Maybe I’m just having trouble following her!)

This is a creepy-crawly, perfectly executed story about the dystopian future we might be headed towards, and the audio is A+.

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book beginnings on Friday: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Posted on November 11, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

This is a dystopian story, or perhaps even post-dystopian. I’m enjoying it very much and finding it thought-provoking, which is certainly what I expect from Margaret Atwood. It begins:

In the early morning Toby climbs up to the rooftop to watch the sunrise. She uses a mop handle for balance: the elevator stopped working some time ago and the back stairs are slick with damp, so if she slips and topples there won’t be anyone to pick her up.

There is no one there to pick her up because Toby is virtually the last person left alive in this odd world, as far as we know at this point. It’s a very spooky concept.

What are you reading this weekend?

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The Broker by John Grisham (audio)

Posted on November 10, 2011 by pagesofjulia

It’s been a few years since I read any Grisham. (As a kid I remember repeatedly rereading The Client and loving it.) He may not be a genius of proper “high” literature but he can be relied upon for a solid legal thriller every once in a while. In fact this one was rather short on the legal part, more of a proper thriller with elements of international intrigue. It made for a great road trip “read” for Husband and I.

Joel Backman was known as “The Broker” in his former life as high-powered Washington, D.C. attorney, lobbyist and power broker. He had connections, he had the big firm, he had the BIG money, and he was known to be rather unscrupulous in the pursuit of the mighty dollar and his clients’ victory. But when the story opens, he’s six years into a prison sentence, serving in isolation. The outgoing president is convinced by the CIA in the final moments of his presidency to pardon Backman – but not for his own good. The CIA is still trying to answer all the questions relating to the Backman case, and they hope that upon his release, they’ll get to sit back and watch who assassinates him, thus resolving a question of national security.

I’ll leave the international espionage parts vague for now – I could spend all day trying to detail this fairly complicated case. If you go check out this book yourself it will all be explained. For now you should know this: Backman is shipped overseas by the CIA and set up with a new identity as Marco Lazare, an Italian raised in Canada and thus just now furiously studying the Italian language. He eventually ends up going on the run, escaping his CIA handlers, dodging possible assassins of a variety of nationalities, and fleeing back to the US to blow the cover off the security concern involving spy satellites and jamming software.

The techies among us will, I daresay, be dissatisfied with the tech details of the case; I think it’s fairly simplistic and a little dated by now. But if you can put this aside (it’s not sci fi, after all), it’s a fun story of intrigue. We have to wonder along with Backman/Marco where the threat is coming from, who he can trust, and what he should do with the information he carries. What he once hoped to make a fortune off of now endangers his life, and The Broker for the first time is concerned with Doing The Right Thing rather than Making The Buck. The greatest sort of plot development is in Backman/Marco’s growth from The Broker into a decent human being.

Husband was disappointed that there wasn’t more blow-em-up gore and bad-ass action (in other words, Backman is no Jack Reacher). But this is just a slightly different kind of book, that’s all. I found it engrossing and entertaining; it did its job. It’s light reading but as such, I thought it was successful.

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Stationary Bike by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on November 9, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I’m going to call this one a short story, at only an hour and a half, unabridged. It made for a nice short entertaining story during our drive up for a bike race a few weeks ago.

Richard Siftkitz is a freelance commercial artist, making his living by drawing and painting commissioned works for advertisements, pamphlets, movies posters, record covers, and the like. He’s 38 years old when the story opens, and his doctor is concerned about his cholesterol level (Richard likes to eat a lot of fast food). The doctor explains the issue with a metaphor: he tells Richard that there is a little team of workmen, of the hardhat-and-work-boots variety, living inside his body, working hard to keep his arteries clear of the junk Richard is putting into them. If they are made to work too hard for too many years, they’ll get tired, start doing sloppy work, and eventually quit or be overcome.

Richard takes this concern to heart, and goes out and buys… that’s right, a stationary bike. He sets it up in the basement of his apartment building and paints a mural on the wall, of a road through a forest. This road represents both the road he pretends he’s riding down, and one of the roads that his little tiny interior metaphorical workmen are keeping cleared for him. He pins up maps on the wall and considers himself to be riding down real roads in upstate New York, eventually achieving the Canadian border and riding onward deep into the Canadian forests. Richard’s very active imagination simultaneously creates full lives for the team of four men he envisions working inside his body. He gives them names and backgrounds and families.

Without ruining too much for you, I will say that Richard’s imagined workmen take on lives of their own, and his imaginary ride through the Canadian woods takes on proportions larger than he meant for it to have. He finds himself in danger.

I found this short audiobook entertaining and spooky. The tension built nicely. There were little clips of music that played in between chapters; it started off sort of Musak-ish, but as the story got creepier, the music got creepier, growing with the mood. It was well done. Luckily (since I’m not real good with horror!) it wasn’t unbearably scary but it did give us some creeps. I liked it.

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Challenge Update: “uncle!”

Posted on November 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia

As we’ve reviewed earlier this year, I did *complete* both the Classics Challenge and the What’s in a Name? Challenge, both with relative and unexpected ease. The Where Are You Reading? Challenge has been most interesting, and I’ve enjoyed keeping track of where all the books I read are set. Click on my map below to see my notes.


A month or so ago I realized I was going to have to start making special efforts to read books that cover certain locations. I’ve done some of that. Some of those books have been good, too; but some of them I’ve been only half-heartedly interested in, and haven’t impressed me.

So, I’m giving up. My review of Love Medicine is still to come, filling out North Dakota (and that was a very enjoyable book!). But aside from that, I’m done chasing states. I have to prioritize. Mostly I like to read what I like to read – whatever I feel like at the moment; or whatever I’ve been looking forward to or planning on or been interested in lately. And then there are the books I’m sent for review, which are in theory skewed to my interests – and in practice, too, my editor at Shelf Awareness does an awesome job of sending me good stuff! And sometimes I undertake to read books I might not like, in the interests of expanding my knowledge of what my patrons at the library are reading. On top of all this, to read books based on location for this challenge has turned out to be more burden than fun. This blog is for fun and enrichment and is not intended to be a source of burdens! So, I’m done with the challenge.

But I have no regrets. It’s been not only fun but and interesting and informative to see where I read. And I didn’t do too poorly! So far, I’ve read in 35 of the 50 states, and 24 foreign locations. You never know, I might even find myself reading something set in Rhode Island by the end of the year. But I doubt that it will be on purpose. 🙂 Then again, 59 unique locations (35 + 24) isn’t so hot considering I’ve read well over 100 books this year so far. It was interesting to see how many of the books I read are set in a few big US cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, NYC), Texas, and London (or England generally).

2011 has been my first full year of blogging. (I started in October 2010.) This was my first year joining challenges. It was fun; it made the blogging experience more interactive, for one thing, and made reading kind of playful and purposeful. I like challenges, and I’ll sign up for more again. I just want to be careful not to find any extra stress where I don’t need it! Also, let me mention the readalongs – those have been so great, too! First I did the Mad for Maisie Readalong, of the entire Maisie Dobbs series. (Recommended!) Next was the Great Gone With the Wind Readalong, which was educational and fun. And because that one went so well, I’ve just signed up for the Their Eyes Were Watching God Readalong, hosted by The Heroine’s Bookshelf as was the Gone With the Wind one.

So, today’s challenge update in a nutshell: great fun, challenges! But, uncle!

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Teaser Tuesdays: Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Posted on November 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

I’ve been really enjoying this story involving several generations of Native Americans in North Dakota. For your teaser today I’ve selected a passage I found amusing (if sad), that illustrates one family’s struggle with overpopulation!

[The babies] were all over in the house once they started. In the bottoms of cupboards, in the dresser, in trundles. Lift a blanket and a bundle would howl beneath it. I lost track of which were ours and which Marie had taken in. It had helped her to take them in after our two others were gone. This went on. The youngest slept between us, in the bed of our bliss, so I was crawling over them to make more of them. It seemed like there was no end.

I thought this was a good example of Erdrich’s ability to be funny even while telling a serious story.

What are you reading today?

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another readlong! Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Posted on November 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

It’s that time again! I so enjoyed the Great Gone With the Wind Readalong that I couldn’t resist the next event at The Heroine’s Bookshelf. This time we’ll be reading Their Eyes Were Watching God together. I read it when I was a kid, but I don’t think I really grasped it; I didn’t get much out of it and don’t much remember it now. When I read The Heroine’s Bookshelf (the book) I knew I needed to reread, and I got a copy, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. So this sounds like a great opportunity! I enjoyed the way Erin wrote up some backstory, links etc. in the earlier readalong. So now’s the time! If you want to join us, you can sign up here. The schedule is…

November 28: Chapters 1-6
December 5: Chapters 7-13
December 12: Chapters 14-20

See you then. 🙂

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Black Sun by Edward Abbey

Posted on November 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I love Edward Abbey for Desert Solitaire, and for his reputation (compounded of course by my love of Fire Season too). My Pops has gotten into him this year, and has brought me quite a few of his books, and I’ve been excited to pick them up. I confess I chose this one for its setting as I’m now working on completing the Where Are You Reading? Challenge, and it covers Arizona for me. But oh! this book has value all on its own. Those 3-4 other Abbey books that are sitting on my shelf right now just moved up the list a little bit. He wrote more nonfiction than fiction, and his best-known novel is The Monkey Wrench Gang; this lesser-known novel involves a fire lookout, which was my attraction (see again Fire Season).

The story is this. Will Gatlin has abandoned his life as college professor and husband to become a reclusive fire lookout in the Grand Canyon National Park. He is mostly alone up there, but does get a few visits and letters from his friend Art Ballantine, who still teaches college but expends more energy on chasing women. To say he is obsessed with sex, breasts, the female anatomy (he uses the c-word), young girls in every application, would be putting it mildly; his letters are raving and silly and self-deprecatingly intellectual. And very funny. In between Ballantine missives Will does his fire-lookout work, observes nature – these parts are poetic, loving and appreciative – and carries on a love affair with a girl named Sandy. I’m not sure we ever learn Will’s age, but he is probably old enough to be nineteen-year-old Sandy’s father. She is a virgin when they meet, and engaged to another man, but none of this stops them from cavorting the wilds (desert, river, canyon and forest) in the nude, wittily teasing one another and having wonderful sex. Here Abbey falls into that lamentable and oh-so-distinctive habit that older male writers sometimes fall into (Papa included!) of creating nubile young beauties who want nothing more than to have endless sex with old men. It’s unfortunate in that it seems to give away the author’s own dirty-old-man fantasies (I don’t know this about Abbey in particular but it is my reaction to the cliché). But if we can move past this issue, Will and Sandy have a great time running around the wilderness, la dee da. That is, until Sandy disappears and her fiancé shows up to accuse Will of disappearing her and punches him in the face.

Abbey writes beautifully, lyrically about nature and about love or at least attraction. The letters from Ballantine (and others) are amusing. The story is tragic, but it requires a certain overlooking of the older man’s fantasy before we could really sympathize with Will’s sense of loss. If you can move past this, it’s a beautiful little story with flora and fauna of the Grand Canyon painting the background. I was only partly successful in that requisite overlooking, but enjoyed it all the same. I have great hope for the other Abbey books waiting on my shelves.

I thought I could clearly see connections in Abbey’s writing style and subject matter to Keruoac, as well as Philip Connors, who in Fire Season acknowledges the debt. I recommend Black Sun, unless of course you’ve had too much euphoric losing of teenage virginities to much older men, in which case perhaps start with Desert Solitaire and I’ll let you know how the rest of them go, too!

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