The Book Lady's Blog

The Bare Necessities–Amy Reading [THE MARK INSIDE]

2012-05-29T22:43:33Z

The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.

Amy Reading is the author of The Mark Inside, a narrative history of con artistry that also tells the story of one of the largest swindles in American history. It’s one of my favorite reads of 2012 so far, and I couldn’t be happier to have Amy here today sharing her favorite works of creative nonfiction.

I’ve had occasion lately to wonder at the similarity between creative nonfiction and confidence artistry. Creative nonfiction can be broadly defined as a true story told with literary craft, but a good 90% of the books that I’ve read in this category can be even more specifically characterized as stories told in the first person, in which the author is a character in his or her own work.

Like the con artist, the author stands before us spieling her story, reeling us in with suspense and doling out the narrative rewards with time-release gratification. Unlike the novelist who comes before us marked as a fabricator, the creative nonfiction author shares with the con artist a partial relationship to truth. The world she depicts has been framed, set apart from reality, heightened. And how easily we give our confidence to the author as we enter such a book! Luckily, most authors use their powers for good rather than evil.

Nowhere is this better seen than in books which treat deception as their very subject. In Lawrence Weschler’s Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders and Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen Papers (a follow-up to his fantastic play, Copenhagen), the story envelopes the reader until suddenly she realizes that all is not as she had thought, and the story begins to shift. I cannot say more without spoiling the pleasures of these excellent books.

One of the signature moves of the con artist is to invite the mark into the backstage of a deal. The mark believes she is getting privileged insider information, and that causes her to act differently. The creative nonfiction equivalent is for the author to bring the discovery of the story into the frame, showing how the reporting was done. One of my favorite examples is Jonathan Raban’s Bad Land. To research the historical swindle that was homesteading on the Great Plains in the wake of the railroads’ conquest, he takes the reader along as he travels to Montana and walks through abandoned homes, scooping up the books that remain and reading them to discover the ambitions of their long-ago owners. His book is part travelogue, part history, and it works gorgeously because he is such a good tour guide.

Also in this category, I am a sucker for stories of scientists in the field, living their research and showing you how it’s done, and you can’t top Robert Sapolsky’s The Primate’s Memoir, Daniel L. Everett’s Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes, and Katy Payne’s Silent Thunder. You needn’t be interested in baboons, aboriginal people of the Amazon, or African elephants in order to fall deeply under the spell of these three books, which are alike in the way they combine intelligence, sensitivity to their subject, and great humor.

By now, we’re far from the territory of the con artist, who is disinterested in his tale and weaves it only long enough to seduce his mark. The closer the creative nonfiction writer gets to her own material, the harder it hits the reader. Timothy Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name is at once a muscular argument about the unacknowledged role of violence in the civil rights movement and a highly emotional coming-to-terms with the author’s own childhood as the son of a white minister in a southern town scarred by a racialized killing. Tyson went to college and then graduate school in order to be able to fully understand what he had experienced growing up. His life drives his scholarship.
You don’t need me to sing the praises of Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, but it bears mentioning as the obverse to Tyson’s book. What began for Skloot as a investigation into the life of the black woman whose cells became the backbone of twentieth-century biological study soon turned into something far more personal when she befriended Henrietta Lacks’ descendents. Bringing them into the frame of the book was a political act, an attempt to reverse generations of structural oppression and miseducation of blacks, but it also meant that she herself would become a character in her own book, and that the way Lacks’ family affected her would become part of the story. Her scholarship drives her life.

If these kind of books are your thing, then please allow me to point you to a forthcoming book by my friend Aaron Sachs called Arcadian America. Aaron is a professor of American history at Cornell University, and the book started off as a traditional, if beautifully written examination of a lost school of environmental thought in the nineteenth century which involved a deep appreciation of death, in contrast to our contemporary attitude of denial. But well into the writing process, Aaron was forced to respond to the call of his own manuscript, forced to stop denying how the losses he has experienced in his own life have shaped his scholarship. The result is the bravest interweaving of memoir and scholarship that I’ve read. And that’s no con.

Share your own favorite works of creative/narrative nonfiction in the comments by 11:59pm Eastern, Friday June 8th to enter to win a copy of The Mark Inside

Part 2 of My FIFTY SHADES Review

2012-05-28T00:59:57Z

I know the wheels have been slow here at ye olde Book Lady’s Blog of late. And I promise, I have some original, not-previously-published-anywhere posts in the pipeline. For now, though, I give you part 2 of my Fifty Shades of Grey adventure with friend and fellow Book Riot blogger Greg Zimmerman. If you’ve read the books, I’d love to hear your take, too.

So, I Read FIFTY SHADES OF GREY

So, I Read FIFTY SHADES OF GREY

2012-05-16T03:02:48Z

Yep. I did it. You can chalk this one right up there with Nicholas Sparks’ The Last Song and Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol on the list of Books I Read So You Don’t Have To.

I firmly believe that you have to earn your right to have an opinion about a book–kinda like how you don’t get to bitch about the state of things if you don’t vote–and frankly, my curiosity was getting the better of me. Figuring that anything that’s fun to do alone is more fun with a partner, I asked my pal Greg Zimmerman (who also writes for Book Riot and is the brains behind The New Dork Review of Books) to come along for the ride. And he said yes!

After a series of silly emails and Twitter DMs, we got down to business. Check out the first installment (of two, or maybe three, depending on how chatty we get) of our Fifty Shades of Grey reading diary now. And if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think!

It’s Toni Morrison Day!

2012-05-08T14:33:08Z

I’ve been writing and tweeting and anticipating for months, and at last, Toni Morrison’s Home is out!

We’ve made a holiday out of it over at Book Riot, and I hope you’ll check out the full and awesome line-up, including posts, giveaways, reading guides, and quizzes.

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Bookrageous 36: Bookish Origin Stories

2012-05-01T20:51:55Z

After a rollicking conversation about Swamplandia!, we took a break from our regular programming to discuss our bookish origin stories–where we started and how we ended up in the bookish jobs we have now. Hope you’ll listen, enjoy, subscribe, and let us know what you’d like to hear about in the future.

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Podcast Powered By PodbeanShow notes with links to all books discussed after the jump

Bookrageous Episode 36; Bookish Origin Stories

Intro Music; Turn on the Sunshine — The Suckers

What We’re Reading

Jenn

[1:20] The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

[2:20] Unterzakhn, Leela Corman

[3:30] In the Woods, Tana French

[4:30] Railsea, China Mieville, May 15 2012

[6:00] The Dark Unwinding, Sharon Cameron, September 1 2012

Rebecca

[7:20] Tar Baby, Toni Morrison

[8:35] Drop Dead Healthy, AJ Jacobs

[10:10] Talulla Rising, Glen Duncan, June 26 2012

[12:18] The Lovers Dictionary, David Levithan

Josh

[12:55] Talulla Rising, Glen Duncan, June 26 2012

[14:15] The Ghost Soldiers, James Tate (shout-out to Porter Square Books)

[14:50] American Vampire, Scott Snyder

[15:50] CHEW, John Layman and Rob Guillory

[17:54] Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon, September 11 2012

[18:44] Monkey Mind, Daniel Smith, July 3 2012

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Intermission; Baby You Were There — TV Girl

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Bookish Origin Stories

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Outro; Turn on the Sunshine — The Suckers

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Find Us!

Bookrageous on Tumblr, Podbean, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, Zazzle (for the Bookrageous 2011-2012 calendar), and leave us voicemail at 347-855-7323

Find Us Online: Josh, Rebecca, Jenn

Bookrageous Book Club Pick: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, Shehan Karunatilaka (out May 8 2012), 10% off from WORD for listeners! Just write BOOKRAGEOUS in the comments field.

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Note: Our show book links direct you to WORD, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn. If you click through and buy the book, we will get a small affiliate payment. We won’t be making any money off any book sales — any payments go into hosting fees for the Bookrageous podcast, or Bookrageous projects like our calendar. We promise.

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Just Read It: ANGELMAKER by Nick Harkaway

2012-04-28T15:27:00Z

Published March 2012 by Knopf

The son of a notorious Tommy gun-toting London gangster, Joshua Joseph Spork resolved as a young man to “have a life, not a legend” and turned down his father’s invitation into a world where “money was something you could always steal more of” in favor of following his grandfather into the decidedly less glamorous clockwork repair business. When Joe’s shady pal Billy Friend presents him with a remarkable “doodah” to fiddle with and two very intimidating men (named Titwhistle and Cummerbund, because Nick Harkaway is awesome at naming characters) show up looking for it, then Billy turns up murdered, Our Man Spork gets the distinct impression that he’s wrapped up in something bigger than he understands. And HOO BOY is he right.

Turns out, the doodah is part of a much larger contraption–one with the potential to wreak global havoc–that was designed by the brilliant Frankie Fossoyeur at the behest of evil madman Shem Shem Tsien (again with the superfantastic character names). The Apprehension Engine involves mechanical bees (yes, bees) that, when let loose, enable people to “recognise lies and deception” when they hear them. Fossoyeur’s goal when she built it was to bring about the “death of falsehood,” but Shem Shem Tsien was after godhood and world domination [insert evil laugh here]. When Joe Spork repairs the doodah, he unknowingly activates the Apprehension Engine and sets into motion the gears of mass destruction. But octogenarian former spy and Woman of Consequence (god bless Nick Harkaway for this phrase) Edie Banister smells trouble and comes out of retirement to help Joe save the world.

“It’s so odd to be a supervillain, and at her age, too.”

Harkaway’s narrative bounces between the present and past, giving readers glimpses into Mathew “Tommy Gun” Spork’s illustrious history, Edie’s days as a renowned crime fighter, and Shem Shem Tsien’s ascent into near-immortality. The story sounds crazy–I mean, mechanical bees that can end the world?–but it all makes perfect sense within the logic of the world Harkaway has created. If that’s not the mark of excellent fiction, I don’t know what is. (And for the record, at least one character questions it: “Who makes mechanical bees, for God’s sake? Who creates a superweapon or a superwhatever-it-is and makes it so bloody whimsical?”)

Angelmaker tips its hat to classic gangster noir and is filled with sly winks to the genre. As Joe Spork–accompanied by his lawyer, his supersexy girlfriend Polly, and the indomitable Ms. Banister–sheds his quiet clockmaker identity to pick up the baton (or Tommy gun, as it were) left to him by his father (in a violin case, natch) and orchestrate a “night of misrule” in which all of London’s criminals come together for a job bigger than any job they’ve heard of, Harkaway’s writing becomes unmistakably cinematic. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun to read. If I were the kind of girl who calls books “pageturners,” this is the part where I would tell you about how madly I tore through this one. And I chuckled all the way through it, too. It would be hard not to, with characters saying things like:

“And is this your henchman? Do you know, I’ve always wondered what that means. How exactly does one hench? Is there a degree in henching, or is it more of an apprenticeship?”

Joe Spork’s rise to gangsterdom will make you want to don your trenchcoat, set your fedora at a cocky angle, and go fight some baddies. Harkaway calls it “good, wholesome, old-fashioned British crime,” and Angelmaker is about that. But for my money, it’s more about “brass and swagger”–that which Joe dredges up from within himself and, more important, that which Harkaway puts on full display in this endlessly clever (but never smug) frolic through the almost-end of the world.

Quickies: It’s Business Time

2012-04-19T17:11:55Z

Maybe it’s the crazyinsane work schedule or the daunting (but incredibly satisfying) Toni Morrison re-read project, but I’ve been finding lately that I can’t focus on fiction. In the zero-sum game of allotting imagination energy, work and Toni get pretty much everything (okay, “Smash” is getting a tiny and embarrassing bit, too) and leave me incapable of building worlds and stepping into others’ lives in my mind. So I’ve been binging on nonfiction (like the superawesome The Power of Habit), and much to my surprise, I’ve found myself reading several business-y books.

First up is The 20% Doctrine by Ryan Tate. If you’ve read much about Google in the last few years, you’ve probably heard about their “20% Time” policy, which allows all employees to spend 20% of their working hours on projects for their personal enjoyment, the assumption being that workers are happier, healthier, more innovative, and more productive in the long-term when they’re allowed to experiment, explore, and flex their creative muscles. In The 20% Doctrine, Tate investigates how other companies–both within the tech industry and well beyond it–have implemented and benefited from encouraging employees to goof off while on the clock.

And it’s really interesting! At least, it was to me, particularly in the context of my work at a start-up that exists primarily in a creative industry but is also tech-based. I have a lot of control over my days and flexibility in how they’re structured, and I’ve been playing with applying something like the 20% doctrine to my work life. (Honestly, it’s more like tacking an extra hour or two of creative time onto my workday than it is using existing work time for creative projects, but it is making me happier and more productive, regardless.) The book also fed my current obsession with workflow (ask me sometime how not checking my email first thing in the morning has changed my life!) and reminded me how valuable learning about other businesses’ best practices can be. Because I’m now the kind of person who uses phrases like “best practices.” Oy! Moving on.

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In Ethical Chic: The Inside Story of the Companies We Think We Love, Fran Hawthorne looks at six BIG companies that are perceived by the public as being highly ethical to find out, well, if they really are. Hawthorne hits Tom’s of Maine, Apple, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Timberland (Who knew they had this reputation? Not I.), and American Apparel, discussing her research about how they source materials, treat their workers, and interact with their communities. She does a nice job of pointing out the way that consumers equate “cool” with ethical–maybe it’s wishful thinking?–and the feedback loop that’s created when a company decides to make their practices more ethical in hopes of becoming hipper. There are no earth-shattering revelations here, and the writing is dry at times, but there are some fascinating bits, I appreciate that Hawthorne set out to question assumptions and look at evidence instead of accepting spin.

And now I have a question for you–because it’s a question/quibble I had during the reading–do you consider how a company prices its products to be a factor in determining how ethical it is? Maybe my capitalist spirit is showing, but I’ve never thought that high price, in and of itself, is unethical or immoral. Hawthorne, though, seems to disagree me, docking proverbial points for things like five-dollar lattes, which not everyone can afford. It’s not something I’d thought of before, and I was surprised to see it included as a criterion. What do you think?

What Are Your Dirty Little Reading Secrets?

2012-04-15T23:48:36Z

Spring has me in the mood to clean out closets of both the storage and psychic varieties. Here are seven of the dirty little reading secrets I’ve been carrying around for a while. What are yours?

I can’t keep Tom Wolfe and Tom Robbins straight. One of them wore a white suit, but I don’t remember which. Also, when I think of Tom Robbins, I picture Tim Robbins circa The Shawshank Redemption.

I’ve never read BRAVE NEW WORLD…and I don’t really plan to. I should feel bad about this, right? Here’s the deal: my high school had a policy that seniors who had A’s going into finals didn’t have to take exams. My AP English final was focused on Brave New World. I was caught in the powerful grip of Senioritis, and I opted out. Through some twisted logic, I decided over time that if it wasn’t important enough to merit a test we were all required to take, I didn’t need to read it. I know–it doesn’t make sense to me, either.

I dread the novella-length stories in short story collections. For SO MANY REASONS. And when the novella is the first piece in the collection? Put a fork in me.

I wouldn’t have read the Harry Potter books if not for the movies. I was one of the O.G. haters who scoffed at a kids’ book about wizards. Then a friend talked me into going to see the first movie, and much to my chagrin, I loved it. So I picked up the second book and started there. Part 2 of this secret: I’ve never gone back to read the first book.

I really didn’t like Jane Eyre. Appreciating a work’s significance is not the same as liking it. Simple as that.

I still love The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I feel like admitting this as an almost-30-year-old woman is akin to being an almost-30-year-old man whose favorite book is still The Catcher in the Rye. But I don’t care. Perks resonated with my teenage self in a way that my adult self likes to remember. And who among us can, having read this book, take a long drive on a cool night with the windows down and the music up and not think for just a second about feeling infinite?

Sometimes I lie about what I’ve read. I learned the hard way (that is, through super-awkward interactions) not to pretend I’ve read books I haven’t read, but I’m not above saying I haven’t read something I really have read if it will keep me from getting stuck in a conversation I’m not in the mood for.

Now it’s your turn…

Originally published at Book Riot

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Reading Notes: SONG OF SOLOMON

2012-04-11T17:47:43Z

My adventure back through Toni Morrison’s backlist in preparation for the first Riot Reading Day on May 8 rolls on. See previous installments here.

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I had grand plans to try the close-reading technique with this opening, but the foreword contains Morrison’s own close-reading of the first sentence.* And it’s not like I want to compete with that. So on we go!

10: “Solid, rumbling, likely to erupt without prior notice, Macon kept each member of his family awkward with fear. His hatred of his wife glittered and sparked in every word he spoke to her.” Morrison is three for three with male characters who direct their anger at their families and relish their contempt for women. Macon is like Cholly and BoyBoy, who came before him.

11: Ruth uses a large watermark on the table as a touchstone. Did Kathryn Stockett steal this detail, too? Wait, that was an L-shaped scratch. But still.

19: This book is the moment when Morrison goes from kinda sorta weird to full-blown crazy. And I mean that in the best possible way. Crazy looks good on her. The first reference to Pilate stringing the box containing her name through her ear is the first indication that this one is going to be full of awesome WTF.

27: We find out that Pilate’s mother died before Pilate was born and that Pilate doesn’t have a navel. Establishes her as not physically connected to anyone and possibly supernatural. On p. 39, Morrison says she “looked like a tall black tree,” the first of many references to Pilate as a tree. The phrase “ancestor figure” appears in my marginalia from my college reading of this. I think that’s a good way to think about her.

41: “What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?” LOVE.

45: Guitar is named Guitar (yes, there’s a character named Guitar) “not cause I do play. Because I wanted to.” The idea that people are defined by their desires and/or by what is denied to them is going to prove central.

64: Milkman sees his mother Ruth “as a frail woman content to do tiny things,” while his sister Magdalene called Lena (HOO BOY, I better start looking up the biblical names now) recognizes “how her mother had learned to bring her husband to a point, not of power…but of helplessness.” Important that they have such disparate reactions to witnessing the same events.

69: Macon has taught Milkman all about “the business of life, which was learning to own things.” The question of whether possessions give a man power or drag him down is also primary to this book.

75: Whereas The Bluest Eye and Sula are largely about exploring (lordy, I almost wrote “limning”) womanhood, this novel is about men, about what it means to be a man in the world, particularly a black man in a white man’s world. After Milkman hits his father to protect his mother: “Isn’t that what men did? Protected the frail and confronted the King of the Mountain?”

91: Tied up in this obsession with masculinity is the idea that real men use women for what they want and leave the rest. Milkman’s private thoughts about Hagar after years of sexual entanglement:

“She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it’s there, because it can’t hurt, and because what difference does it make?”

Morrison nails this. It’s an incredible description, and I can’t decide if I want to celebrate it, or if I’m just really sad that this phenomenon exists to be described at all.

104: “Serious is just another word for miserable.” ‘Nuff said

107: “He wondered what they would do if they didn’t have black and white problems to talk about. Who would they be if they couldn’t describe the insults, violence, and oppression that their lives (and the television news) were made of? … They excused themselves for everything.”

Is this explanation? Indictment? It’s about more than the fact of their identities being formed by and in opposition to oppression. I want to know more.

114: Guitar says, “Goddam, Milk. I do believe my whole life’s geography.” Hello, geography-as-destiny and the “I’ll fly away” yearning.

155: Guitar’s explaining the Seven Days to Milkman is one of the great OMG of Morrison’s oeuvre. I continue to wonder about the significance of Guitar having Sundays.

162: “But the people living in the Great Lakes region are confused by their place on the country’s edge–an edge that is border but not coast.” I just love that sentence. “An edge that is border but not coast.” Perfect.

179: On the long list of Toni Morrison quotes that get pulled out of context and self help-ified, this is tops: “Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” Note to self: future post on the self help-ification of Toni Morrison. I feel like this use of her work trivializes its power.

194: We learn that Corinthians (again with the biblical names) “hated [Henry Porter] a lot for the shame she felt.” It’s interesting, after so many male characters who hate the women in their lives, to see a female character’s contempt for her partner. Morrison just put the thing down, flipped it, and reversed it. Yeah. I went there.

204: I read the scene in which Guitar and Milkman are stopped by the police for no reason–a clear example of racial profiling–on the same morning I consume dozens of articles about Trayvon Martin. A 35-year-old scene that could have been written last week, it’s so relevant. So prophetic, and so sad.

221: Milkman tells Guitar, “I just want to live my own life,” and I hear echoes of Sula’s, “I want to make myself.”

240-249: Milkman’s encounter with Circe in the falling-down house feels like a fever dream or something out of Garcia Marquez. It’s just so odd. But “so odd” is also code for “so Morrison” at this stage in the game.

250: I’m now convinced that pretty much everyone plagiarizes from Toni Morrison. Just tell me Marcy Playground didn’t write their one big hit based on “…he smelled money, although it was not a smell at all. It was like candy and sex and soft twinkling lights.”

266-270: Back onto the masculinity theme with the men in Shalimar jumping Milkman in the store after they feel he calls their manhood into question. Then they take him hunting. For coon. Oh, Toni! “Oh, man! We gonna get some coon tonight!” has multiple meanings. You know it does. Is this a little heavy-handed? I think maybe.

283: I made it nearly 300 pages into this book–a book that spends a not insignificant amount of time on the meaning of flight–without thinking about how it’s important that Pilate sounds like “pilot.” Oof.

330: Morrison does a roll call of sorts, listing “names that bear witness” to history. It’s sobering in effect and also entertaining in that dark, “look at how many crazy names she can come up with” way. Also, I still haven’t figured out why Empire State is called Empire State. Did I miss a teeny reference?

336: “If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more.” Nobody, and I mean nobody, does dying words like ToMo does dying words.

Post-read gut check: SO MANY FEELINGS. It was nice to read a relatively linear narrative after the bounce-around-in-time-ness of the first two, and really interesting to move into a book focused on male characters and the male experience. I really adore this book. But I finished it and realized that I’m only one-third of the way through this re-read. And now I’m starting to think this project is a little crazy. But it’ll be good, right?

*Page numbers refer to the 2004 Vintage edition.

Just Read It: THE POWER OF HABIT by Charles Duhigg

2012-04-04T19:31:50Z

Published February 2012 by Random House

If you’ve taken Psych 101, you’re familiar with the basic concept: ABC–antecedent, behavior, consequence. Or, something happens, so you do something, and then you feel or experience something because of what you did. Let’s say that every day around 4pm, you start to feel sleepy (antecedent), so you go get a coffee (behavior), and then you feel more awake (consequence). Simple, elegant, and accurate, right?

Charles Duhigg calls these processes habit loops, and in The Power of Habit, he uses slightly different terms (cue, routine, reward) to analyze the way our unthinking and automatic behaviors impact our daily lives and our businesses. While the concept is simple, Duhigg’s examples–ranging from weight loss to addiction treatment to advertising–are fascinating, and each one adds something important to the mix. Which is to say, Duhigg avoids what I think of as The Malcolm Gladwell Problem, where all the good stuff is in the first 50 pages and the rest is just a piling on of illustrations to hammer it home.

This book managed to ring a bunch of my bells all at once. It’s a researched-based look at psychological principles, a bit of a social history, and just the right amount of self help. If “inspirational” sends you running for the hills, fear not. The Power of Habit is all about empiricism! And evidence! And testing your hypotheses! It left me feeling like I could kick any or all of my bad habits if I could just pay close enough attention to them, and you know what? It works. I’m currently trying to break the mid-afternoon caffeine cycle (hence the example in the first paragraph), and while I’m not sure I’ve nailed the behavior that will best replace the coffee run, I’m already seeing improvement. (And by improvement, I mean that I’m no longer lying awake at 3am cursing the cappuccino I had at 3pm.)

If you like your nonfiction with a side of “does this have practical applications?” you don’t want to miss The Power of Habit.