While I Was Gone - Sue Miller

It looks like I may be on a bit of a self-deception themed reading binge, (see my review of I'm Not Stiller, here) but not on purpose. For this week, While I Was Gone (WIWG) was my running/gym audiobook. Sue Miller came highly recommended by my sister who's read just about everything Miller has ever written.

WIWG begins with Joey Becker, a veterinarian who lives in New England with her husband. Their three grown daughters are gone from home, the youngest being in college. Turns out Ms. Becker had a bit of an adventurous past when, at 22 years old, she left her new husband and lived in a group house in Boston with five other 20-somethings. One of the roommates in the flat gets murdered and that puts an end to Joey's stint as her alter-ego.

She goes home, but not to the husband, and finally figures out who she wants to be in her life. Fast forward to her cozy monogamous life with her preacher husband, when one of the old flatmates shows up in town and needs his dog taken care of. The arrival of this person from her past completely unseats Joey from her life. She starts to spin an elaborate fantasy around the old flatmate. Her old feelings of restlessness are awoken.

I won't say more about the plot because I don't want to give the rest away. But the themes here, about how much we are taken back to the people we used to be when we hang out with the people who surrounded us in previous times is very fascinating. We may try to move on, but the reminders of who we were can sometimes influence who we are. I started to think more about people who move away after high school and people who stay in their same home town, hanging out with the same people.

I'm not going to debate if one or the other of these things is better. But it certainly would have the capacity to seriously guide how you live life into adulthood. When you move away, you get to greater freedom to completely reinvent yourself and try to be the person you want to be. You have no one there that remembers the things you did or the person you were. Can we ever truly escape from our past?

When confronted with our past selves, do we choose to continue to be the new person we have become?

Miller's writing is really well done and the dialogue, although pretty plentiful in the story, sounds the way actual people speak. I'll be reading more of her work in the future.

4/5 Stars.

I'm Not Stiller - Max Frisch

This book took a long time for me to finish. And I want to start by saying I thought it was going to be part mystery. I'm not Stiller? So who are you? And where is the real Stiller. Going into the book with this mindset really hurt my early reading of the novel. 

Later, I realized the book was a detailed and thoroughly thought-provoking dissection of self-deception and self-acceptance. And this made the entire book come into focus. So reader, I'm giving you a heads up, and it's not a spoiler, it will help you frame your reading.... This guy... who insists he is NOT Stiller? He is Stiller.

So with that, read the book carefully through that lens. What Frisch does is to really tackle the idea of who we are, and how we know ourselves. Stiller is a character who has allowed others' opinions of him shape his self-perception his entire life. He is a sculpture artist whose work does not sell well because the artist who creates, but does not know himself is really unable to create anything that speaks to others. He marries a beautiful ballerina named Julika. He believes she is all goodness and that she is too good for him. This becomes in itself a self-fulfilling prophecy as he allows this perception to inform his actions and decisions. 

Julika becomes ill with tuberculosis and goes to a seaside retreat to recover. Everyone blames her worsening condition on the fact that she continued to dance professionally as Stiller had no money to provide for them both so she had to continue working. Stiller does his best then to aggravate her condition further. He's so obsessed with other people's views of himself that he becomes completely narcissistic in reflection. 

Once he realizes how hideously he's behaved, and how he doesn't even know who he really is, he disappears for six years. The book actually begins with him being spotted on a train by a random stranger who points him out, at which point Stiller is arrested and placed in jail on suspicion of involvement in a criminal conspiracy. Although, this is Swiss jail where they apparently let you have visitors and trips out for dinner. 

Once he is back he tries to convince everyone that he is indeed not Stiller, but his old friends, and Julika herself do not believe it. He believes now that he is not Stiller he is more able to really love Julika. And it becomes apparent that he wants to throw off his past as if he were never responsible for the person he was before, because how can he be someone new now if he were still Stiller? 

That to me was the best part. Because it struck me as something I've never really thought about before. About how our past can also define us and who we are. And there are many people who would say, "don't let your past define you" meaning you can change, or rise up out of your circumstances. But to some extent you are still that same person and you have to live with those actions and consequences, even when you aim to start your life anew. So  Stiller attempts to have the changed life without the baggage and guilt that comes from previous decisions and actions. 

Once he is forced to admit that he is, was and always will be, Stiller, he is released from prison and retires to the countryside with Julika where he begins making pots. But the irony is that he doesn't seem any happier than he was before. He continues to live with Julika and continues to feel shame and guilt over her condition and the life he led before. It's an interesting concept of how when we are with those from our pasts we can never truly escape who we have been. A sort of forced nostalgia which influences how we behave. 

That said, translations of material are always a bit out of sync sometimes with narrative voice. The story was overall well done and the themes were excellent. At the end though the book could probably have been about 30-40 pages shorter and everyone would have been just as happy. 

4/5 Stars

Modern Romance - Aziz Ansari

Whoops. This is an example of where going to a bookstore and flipping the book over to read a description is effective. Instead, since I love Aziz Ansari as a comic and I saw that the book was highly rated, and recommended to me by Goodreads after I finished and loved, Bossy Pants by Tina Fey (read my review here), I used my Audible credit to purchase this book.

I thought it was going to be about Aziz Ansari. I thought it was going to be funny. That's all I thought it was going to be. Whoops.

Modern Romance is co-authored by Ansari and a sociologist. And true to its title, it chronicles and examines romance in the modern age. How does technology (social media, smart phones, dating apps) effect dating today? And how does that manifest in the US and other parts of the world?

The book is really pretty good, even though I've been married for almost a decade and none of the subject matter even applies to me anymore. But Ansari is hilarious and a perfect foil for all the technical scientific and and study-related data. I found the section on modern romance in Tokyo especially entertaining.

I'm giving the book four stars because it was well written, researched, and presented. I just wasn't that interested in the subject matter at this point in my life. But that's my own fault for just assuming the book was something it wasn't. 

4/5 Stars.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail - Cheryl Strayed

I wanted, really wanted, to like this book. I like stories of personal growth. I like stories of the outdoors. I had never heard of the Pacific Crest Trail and the idea intrigued me. But, Strayed, or I should say, an emotionally damaged and young Strayed, is a harsh travel buddy. She does get more likeable as the book goes on, but I just got annoyed with her all the time. She admits to so much of the things that really bothered me about her, but somehow it didn't entirely help in this case. The honesty was fine, but it didn't make me want to hang out with her more.

I know this has been made into a movie and I've heard from people that the movie was disappointing after reading the book. I may check it out just to see how it's done, but I'd have to be pretty bored to do so.

The story starts out with Cheryl on the trail and then weaves back to the points in her life that led her to try backpacking more than 1,000 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail. The narrative weaving worked well. The portions detailing Cheryl's life growing up fit well where they were put into the narrative. I actually am curious about what she did after she exited the PCT. I admire her determination to do something radical to completely change her life. 

In the end, I'm glad I read this book. But it just wasn't as fun or as interesting as I'd hoped.

3/5 Stars.

P is for Peril - Sue Grafton

Kinsey Millhone. After 16 books with her, she still sometimes makes me shake my head when she does dumb things. In this book, she takes on another missing person case. Promising to find Dowan Purcell a doctor with an ex-wife who hires Kinsey, and a new wife who is busy not caring much about how much he's missing. 

On the side, Kinsey is trying to find office space to rent because.... well that's not really clear. The attorney she rents from, and who gives her some business, is moving offices so Kinsey is.... well she's just Kinsey. She doesn't like to get tied to anything for too long. At this point, I'm kind of thinking she needs to get over herself a little bit. Anyway, so she finds a place that is up for rent from two brothers, Richard and Tommy Hevener. Turns out these boys have a bit of a past, but she doesn't find that out until after the check is written. How does this tie in to the missing doctor? It doesn't. It absolutely has nothing to do with it, but I kind of think maybe Grafton's central mystery wasn't taking up enough room so her editors had her pitch in a second minor plot line.

Because after all that, the case of the missing doctor ends kind of with a fizzle of Kinsey figuring it out but none of the normal explainers at the end to figure out what happened to the involved characters. So it was a bit unsatisfactory of an ending. I've made catching up to this series one of my goals for 2016 so here goes.

3/5 Stars.

2015 Review

In 2015 I read 39 books, or 11,683 pages. Some of the reviews on this blog from this year are from books I read last year. By about August, I ran out of those and going forward all reviews will be contemporary to when I read them.

Longest Book: A Crown for Cold Silver by Alex Marshall. Apparently this is a pen name for a well known fantasy writer looking to start fresh with a new world and cast of characters. Despite a difficult first 100 pages, I eventually really grew to like this book and it ended up earning a four star rating. I haven't looked recently to see if the actual author name has leaked yet (Current popular theory is that the author is Mark Barrowcliffe, click here for the full theory). But in any case I'll be reading the eventual sequels to this one. You can read my full review here.












Shortest Book: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. This was a pleasant surprise since I wasn't sure what I'd missed having never read this in high school, but I really enjoyed this short novel and gave it a five star rating as well. You can read my full review here.

Best Book: The Martian by Andy Weir. This was my first book on audible after I discovered that Jock Jams was just not going to get me through two hour 1/2 Marathon training runs. So I strated listening to book on audible and absolutely loved the rendition as read by the narrator. Also saw the movie this year but the book was better. You can read my full review here.

Best Character: Mark Watney in The Martian. He's funny, he's smart, he's a great guy to be stuck on a planet with or get a beer with. I thoroughly enjoyed him being the only character in a book for a long portion of the novel. That's rare in real life let alone in a book. Loved him.

Worst Book: No book earned only a single star rating this year but looking back on the books, Senate Proof by Logan Snyder should have. It had bad writing, a bad plot and terrible characters. Triple bogey. Read more about that here.
















Biggest Disappointment: Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. This had potential and I heard so many good things but ultimately it was SOOOOO boring. You can read my full review here.

Worst Character: Julia from The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. I'm not saying 11 year olds can't be good narrators, but this time it didn't work out. Julia was boring and merely an observer in her world. The book would have been better told form someone else's perspective. Someone called it "haunting" but I just couldn't get over the melodrama wrapped in soccer cleats aspect of the book.

Goals for 2016: I've set my goal of 50 books for this year. I feel like this is a little daunting, but now that I spend more time listening to audio books than music, I think it is doable. I'll be training for another half marathon soon so I'll have the time to listen. 50 books roughs out to one a week with two weeks of vacation thrown in for good measure.

I'm confident I'll be reading Justin Cronin's City of Mirrors this year, despite this being a prediction for the two previous years (check out that May 24, 2016 expected date!). Will George RR Martin get around to publishing Winds of Winter (probably not - check out this update), I'm not counting on it or I would have set the goal at 45. But if it ruins my reading goal for the year, I'd be okay with that.