Everyday I Write the Book

"Company" by Max Barry

I just started a new job this week, at a relatively large company. As I navigate new processes and procedures, a confusing office map, a bunch of people who seem to all have the same first name, and typical office bureaucracy, I thought I'd feature a book here that came out in 2007 which I haven't read yet. I was reminded of Company, by Max Barry, in my 2009 Page-A-Day Book Lover's Calendar last month. Here's the blurb:

Australian Max Barry's third novel is a biting and hilarious satire of modern corporate culture: outsourcing, stolen doughnuts, downsizing, "human resources", office politics, and all the rest. It has a nice twisty plot that revels in the absurd and the sinister. If your days are spend in the confines of an office cubicle, Company may be just the thing to maximize the potential of your water-cooler chat effectiveness.

This Week at the Library Blog reviewed Company and "found the book to be very entertaining, at times reminding me of "The Office" and of a particular John Cleese clip. Not only is it an entertaining novel by itself, but it functions also as a criticism of corporate culture."

Used Books Blog didn't like Company nearly as much: "My copy of Company has the image of a glazed donut on the cover, which I find an apt metaphor: sweet sugary exterior with nothing but airy dough on the inside. Oh, and there’s a hole in the middle and it’s not at all nutritious."

The last book I read skewering the American workplace was Then We Came To The End, by Joshua Ferris, which I didn't really like. (Review here). I am kind of leery of this one, but I am willing to give it a chance, given how ripe for satire so many workplaces are. (Not mine, though - I am very happy to be here!)

Can anyone weigh in on Company and let me know how you liked it?

Holiday Shopping Tips for Book Lovers

A quick holiday shopping tip - if you're looking for books to give as gifts, Chronicle Books is having a promotion - 35% off plus free shipping through 12/4. I got some cute books for my kids, but they have a very wide range of books on a lot of topics - cooking, pets, home, travel, photography, architecture- plus a whole fiction section too. Use the code FRIENDS at checkout.

Also, another site that has some great book-related gift ideas is Well Dressed Reader. Cute necklaces,  earrings, and more for the book lovers on your list.

Guest Post: "A Change in Altitude" by Anita Shreve

Thank you to guest-poster Nancy West for this review of A Change of Altitude by Anita Shreve.

On one level, A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve is a travelogue, depicting what it’s like to live as an American in Kenya in the late 1970’s. As seen through the eyes of young newlywed Margaret, Kenya is magnificent and yet terrifying, irresistible but also abominable, with its gorgeous scenery and mesmerizing wildlife but also corruption, poverty and crime. On another level, A Change in Altitude can be interpreted as an allegory for the first year of marriage, which is just what Margaret and her physician husband, Patrick, are undertaking simultaneous with their year in Kenya. Welcome to a strange new life, in which romance and excitement contrast with miscommunications, disappointments, domestic stress and in their case tragedy. Does that describe Kenya? Marriage? Or both?

I spent two weeks as a tourist in Kenya more than a decade ago, and I was fascinated, wondering what it would be like to live there. Through Margaret’s eyes, we find out: mostly it’s often really difficult. Robbery and other forms of crime are a constant threat, and like a lot of Americans and Europeans, Margaret suffers from guilt regarding Colonialism. Their servants work hard and loyally for them, only to be separated from their families for months on end or to go home to deplorably poor conditions, as Margaret discovers when she escorts a friend’s nanny to her home in the slums of Nairobi after the nanny survives a violent attack.

Patrick and Margaret’s real problems begin with a tragic event. They join another couple for a challenging hike up Mt. Kenya, and one of the friends meets with a disastrous end that Margaret may or may not be indirectly to blame for. From there, things only seem to get worse for the couple: they return home to suffer the guilt of the accident along with the ongoing stress of living in such a complicated place. Adultery tempts both husband and wife; even their professional lives encounter obstacles specific to Kenya.

With its ongoing themes of culpability, resilience, and how we decide whom to forgive and when and for what, we see in Margaret and Patrick’s story how both life in Kenya and marriage are obstacle-strewn landscapes not easily – and perhaps not happily – survived.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to EDIWTB readers! I hope that you have a good holiday, one that includes some quiet time tor reading whatever you're enjoying right now. This year, like every year, I am thankful for great books, wonderfully talented authors, and most of all for the community of fiction lovers that has grown up around this blog and the other book blogs I love to read.

"Normal People Don't Live Like This" by Dylan Landis

Sorry for a long lapse in posting. I started a new job and my daughter has been sick since I last posted, and I just didn't have the time to update the blog. But I am back!

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on my Twilight post last week. Really interesting comments. I can't say I am that much more disposed to read the books, though I have it on good authority that there may be a copy of Twilight headed my way next week. So I will have to see what I think once I pick it up. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who weighed in, as well as the range of comments.

On to today's book. [I am still reading A Friend of the Family and really enjoying it. I am so impressed with Lauren Grodstein. Must learn more about her.] So... today's book is one that I read about in More magazine last month. It's called Normal People Don't Live Like This, by Dylan Landis. More said: "This debut collection of linked stories is a clear-eyed account of what it's like to be a teenage girl. Leah Levinson is gripped by the sexual escapades of her classmates and enamored of mean girls (her 'heart sprouted like a seed' when one phoned her.) The tales in this bravura work, set in the 1970s, are timeless: They could easily belong to our daughters' generation instead of our own."

The L.A. Times reviewed reviewed Normal People Don't Live Like This and gave it high marks, saying "As for Landis, watch her very carefully. Once you can create characters like Leah, there's no stopping you." The Katrina Denza Blog said "This is an incredible collection. Landis has delivered with precision, honesty and art, the adolescent female mind. Her sentences, vivid and daring, are honed to the clarity of a mountain stream. The details in her prose will surprise as will her characters even as their actions seem inevitable. I enjoyed the science threaded through the stories as well."

More on Dylan Landis - apparently she is local (lives in here in D.C.), and here is a blog post about what she's reading these days. I am very bummed to learn that she was at Politics & Prose last month and I missed it.

Finally, how great is the title of the book??

To "Twilight" or Not to "Twilight"?

The Washington Post has an article today about women who consider themselves readers of quality literary fiction who avoided the Twilight series, dismissing them as stupid and poorly written, and then finally read them, and then were hooked.

I have to say, I have had no interest in reading them. I like very literal books, and I think the vampire/werewolf part would really turn me off. And they're for teenagers, no?

So, those of you who have read the Twilight books - fill me in. What is so good about them? Am I really missing out? I have to say that the Post article has made me reconsider... a little bit.

"A Friend of the Family" by Lauren Grodstein

I am never surprised to see Jill from Breaking the Spine writing about something that I am interested in, but it was funny tonight to see her post about the same book I was planning to write about: A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein. (Of course, she has read it already, and I haven't). I picked up a copy of A Friend of the Family at BEA last June, and I think I will move it to the top of the TBR list. From Amazon:

In A Friend of the Family, Lauren Grodstein goes to [great] literary heights with a contemporary suburban drama brewing with an undercurrent of violence that, with each turn of the page, takes on the weight of an American tragedy. As the book opens, Peter Dizinoff, a successful New Jersey doctor, is struggling to adjust to the aftermath of his actions as the foundation of his personal and professional life crack beneath his feet. At the center of his troubles is his beloved son Alec, who deflates his father's high expectations when he drops out of college after just three semesters and moves into the apartment above their garage. And when his son begins seeing Laura, the troubled daughter of Peter's best friend who is ten years older than Alec and lives in the tainted shadow of being acquitted for an unspeakable crime when she was 17, Alec's ambivalence to his father's hopes in living a good life turn into a simmering rage. Dizinoff, a man with a clear definition of right and wrong, flips back and forth in time as he narrates the history of events that build their way to a layered, emotionally wrenching climax.

Just from the plot description, this book reminds me somewhat of one that I read a few years ago, Trespass, by Valerie Martin. Similar story about parents watching their dreams for a their child fade away when he becomes involved with someone with a complicated past and a different agenda. (See review here). Beth Fish Reads enjoyed this book: " A Friend of the Family is not a happy novel with easy answers and a clean ending. The characters are multidimensional, and the reader's sympathies change as the book progresses. Grodstein pushes you to question the limits of the trust and faith you have put in your family, your friends, and even your doctors. It's a novel that will make you think."

I am excited to read this!

Shelf Discovery Challenge #1: "Forever" by Judy Blume

I am participating in Booking Mama's Shelf Discovery Challenge (discussed here). The challenge requires participants to read six books from Lizzie Skurnick's Shelf Discovery, a book about the classic young adult books we all read growing up.

My first choice was Forever, by Judy Blume, a book I only read, shall we say, selections of when I was growing up. I remember the book being passed around at camp, where we all read the more colorful parts (such as p. 73 - a page number I've always remembered). I used to think that the world was separated into two different group of girls - those who had read Forever, and those who hadn't. When I went to the library last week, I swear I was embarrassed to check it out. I didn't make eye contact with the checkout person, and I felt like I was using a fake ID to buy wine coolers.

Forever is the story of the romance between Katherine and Michael, two high school seniors in New Jersey. It's Katherine's first sexual relationship, and the book is a good introduction to sex for teenagers. Katherine is responsible (though the book takes place pre-AIDS) and approaches her physical relationship maturely, but realistically. This being a Judy Blume book, other topics are tackled too - depression, death of a grandparent, teenage pregnancy.

I guess we all liked Forever in the early 80s because it wasn't gross (like The Joy of Sex), and it wasn't creepy, and it wasn't preachy. It was informative and told in a relatable tone. Reading it now, though, I found it somewhat unfulfilling. Katherine fell "out of love" with Michael pretty easily after a few weeks around a handsome fellow tennis instructor at summer camp, which made their relationship seem a bit dubious. I realize that they were 18 years old, but I never got much of a sense of why they thought they loved each other. Reading it as an adult, I was definitely struck by how young - and relatively self-absorbed - the characters were.

I am curious to see if I will have the same reaction to the other five books I am going to read for the challenge. I am definitely glad to have finally read Forever cover to cover, if for no other reason than my daughters probably will in due course, and I want to know what they're being exposed to. And, maybe, because I feel like one of the cool kids now.

Thursday Links

Here are some recent book- and writing-related links of interest...

From The Wall Street Journal, an article in which 11 popular authors (including Junot Diaz, Margaret Atwood, Kate Christensen, and Colum McCann (discussed yesterday on EDWITB)) talk about the process of writing and all of the challenges that go along with it. Lots of good tidbits in here.

From The New York Times, an entertaining essay from Colson Whitehead (author of Sag Harbor, discussed here on EDIWTB) about how authors decide which genre to write next.

I heard most of this NPR interview with Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth, on my way home from work yesterday. She was being interviewed about the writing process, and why she hasn't written fiction in a while. One of the most interesting things I heard: "She spends 80 percent of her efforts on the first 50 or 60 pages of a book — and the rest comes 'pretty quickly.' She says she does that to get the tone — the perspective — the way she wants it."

Finally, I liked this New Yorker review of a new book called Cassette From My Ex, by Jason Bitner, a collection of "more than sixty remembrances from a generation of mix-tape masters, anyone born, roughly, between 1968 and 1985 who created a statement of love and taste with a vinyl-to-tape recording apparatus or dual-cassette boom box". The book is actually an outgrowth from the Cassette From My Ex website, where you can write in with your own story of mixtape heartbreak.

"Let The Great World Spin" by Colum McCann

I am finishing up at one job and about to start another, so my life has been a little hectic lately as I try to wind down, clean out, and get organized. I apologize for not posting as frequently this week. And I am sad to report that I haven't been able to get much reading done either.

But here is a quick post about a book I learned about from Gwen at the Literary License blog: Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. Gwen says:

At its core, Let the Great World Spin is a novel about a particular city—New York City—at a particular point in time—the summer of 1974. McCann illuminates his subject through a series of stories that overlap in interesting and sometimes unexpected ways. Tying the whole thing together is Philippe Petit's daring tightrope walk between the newly constructed towers of the World Trade Center, representing the idea that the “core reason for it all [is] beauty.”

I have gotten really interested in the Philippe Petit tightrope walk lately - spurred by this documentary (which I haven't seen yet) and this children's book - and I love the idea that this book is loosely organized around that daring and mind-boggling act.

Reading Matters loved McCann's writing, but felt that the stories didn't always tie together that well. Page 247 agreed:

McCann is a magician with language and I enjoyed the novel just for that,  but  it felt too jumbled up. I don’t know, maybe this chaos was completely intentional and I missed something. I found some characters more true than others, some parts fit, others felt like bits of a jigsaw puzzle crammed where they didn’t belong. It made me sad. I wanted to love all of it and I just didn’t.

Anyone read this yet? Worth it?