The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit. I love non-traditional memoirs like this one with big themes and a narrative that wanders between stories, reflections, and big ideas. This book is about how we use stories to make meaning in our lives--very cool idea. However, sadly, I thought that Solnit's academic, super-elevated style did not work well in relating her emotional, personal experience. The style and content seem to cancel each other out and make the final product hard to appreciate. In Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked (a memoir I read last year and loved), James Lasdun uses academic language to analyze his experiences but a more relatable, informal style for the majority of the narrative. The two styles merge together quite naturally. I wish Solnit had also varied her style for more balance.Conclusive Feelings: Some great ideas, but ultimately unsatisfying.
Our Great Big American God: A Short History of our Ever-Growing Diety by
Matthew Paul Turner. I'm not the right reader for this book. I love Mormon history, and when I found this reader's copy I thought a book about mainstream American Christianity might push me out of my comfort zone in a good way. About halfway through, though, I realized I just really wasn't interested. I muscled my way to the end because I have a problem and can't leave any book partly read.
Conclusive Feelings: I just wasn't in to the subject matter.
Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War by Michael C.C. Adams. This book skips the political and gets right to the dirty details (aka the disturbing details, aka the good stuff.) Through first-hand accounts like journals and letters, Adams follows young Union and Rebel soldiers through the unbearable hunger, heat, mutiny, violence, madness and decay on the battlefields of the Civil War. I found the writing super accessible and and the subject matter super interesting.
Conclusive Feelings: Appealing to my morbid sense of curiosity.Someone's Daughter by Silvia Pettem. This is a true crime book about a girl that was murdered and dumped by Boulder Creek in the 1950s. While I love love loved the details about 1950s era Boulder, there truly was TOO much detail in this book, most of it tangential and just not that interesting. I also found out after I finished that Pettem's conclusion about the identity of this girl was wrong! A few months after the book was published they finally matched the girl's DNA, and it was a girl Pettem never mentioned in the book. Rather disappointing. Also, this picture of the casket on the cover weirded me out.
Conclusive Feelings: Too much detail, disappointing ending.
The Lover by Marguerite Duras. A short novella about a French girl in 1920's era Vietnam who has an affair with a rich Chinese man. Of course this colonial tale such as this hits on many familiar themes - sexual coming of age, money, class, privilege, culture class, maturity, despair. And all the in the tad over-the-top, slightly old fashioned French writing style that has its own appeal. The mood and setting couldn't help by remind me of Indochine, one of my favorite movies and featuring the ever-sexy French actor Vincent Perez. The novel is based on Duras' childhood and was originally published in French in 1984. I guess it won the prix Goncourt, too, but I'm not sure how much I feel about this award anymore. 
Conclusive Feelings: Short, fun, great sense of place and a strong mood.The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless. This memoir is so good that I truly think it rivals Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer's famous book about Carine's brother Chris McCandless, even though I didn't even really like that book. Chris' story and personally really captured me, though, as it has millions of other people. Carine describes what life was like for her and Chris growing up in abusive family, why she thought Chris left, and what happened after his death. Carine is clearly just as intelligent and sensitive as Chris was, but I think her point of view also balances the over-the-top bravado of Krakauer's portrayal, and wasn't NEARLY as cheesy and forced. (I'm clearly not a Krakauer fan.) I admit I was one of those people who thought that Chris McCandless was reckless and immature, but Carine's potrayal rounds him out a bit and makes his decisions easier to sympathize with. It was fun to read about her involvement with the movie adaptation too, which I've seen many times.
Conclusive Feelings: Better than I expected.Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons From the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty. Doughty has a very strange and delightful sense of humor that makes this book absolutely worth reading, even if you don't think you're interested in the subject matter (--dead bodies and death. Obviously, I'm there.) By the end, Doughty will convince you to care the American way of death, death rituals and grieving in a way that is surprisingly uplifting. I loved this book so much I wrote a whole post about it, but I'm going to try to post it closer to the publication date!
Conclusive Feelings: Extremely fun and interesting, by far the best read of the month!
The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn. Sometime earlier this month I heard St. Aubyn talking to Terry Gross on NPR about his new book, and I couldn't get over his ultra-snooty, upper-class English accent. Something about the interview convinced me to look into his autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels, which were recently published together in one volume. A strange mix of American Psycho and Downtown Abbey, these novels/novellas are disturbing and funny. I liked how each novel covered a different stage of Patrick Melrose's life and they all felt quite different. St. Aubyn's dry, dinstinctly British humor contrasts with the violence, despair, and trauma Patrick experiences beginning when he is raped by his father and continues as he copes by using drugs and drinking excessive amounts of alcohol throughout his life. By the end, the novels left me with a surprising sympathy for the ultra-privileged English upper class.
Conclusive Feelings: Funny, entertaining, loved it.
See you next month!
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