Something Missing
by Matthew Dicks
3 stars
This is a charming book and a very quick read. It was picked for my Relief Society's book club for October, and I read it in just the past few days.
The main character is a neurotic thief named Martin. He is a career criminal, but not what he likes to call a 'smash and grabber.' Instead, Martin's OCD tendencies and savant-like genius help him bring an incredible sense of order to his life's work: stealing items from his "clients" that they will never notice have gone missing.
Martin's client list has been the same for years, though it does grow on occasion. He vets his clients thoroughly, only selecting married couples who either have no children or are empty-nesters. Not too wealthy, certainly not poor. He scopes out potential clients until he knows enough about them and their schedule to make an educated decision about whether they should become part of his list. Once a client has been accepted, Martin visits regularly, inventorying their pantries and cupboards, their medicine cabinets and jewelry boxes-- after gaining entry to their homes via spare keys that he has made, of course.
Following a strict and detailed set of rules, Martin spends no more than 15 minutes in a client's home. He never speaks inside a house, just in case a recording device is on (either accidentally or purposefully). He is meticulous about wearing latex gloves, a hairnet, and plastic moccasins over his shoes, and he never carries any identifying information that could accidentally be left in a house. He never visits the same client twice in one day.
Once he knows a client well enough to determine which item will never be missed, he begins his pilfering. Martin takes anything from cans of tomato paste, to half a bottle of laundry detergent, to a book of stamps, to crystal vases and diamond earrings. His system is so well thought out that he has never been caught, and probably never even suspected. He makes sure to only take items that will either go unnoticed or the absence of which will be attributed to absentmindedness or a spouse. He is brilliant at what he does.
Until the day he breaks some of his rules. Martin has been visiting these clients for so long that he feels he knows them. He has grown a strange sort of affection for most of them. And when a situation arises in which he thinks he can help one of them, he knows he must do so. This sets off a chain of events that Martin certainly never predicted and is not prepared for. As the back cover says, "Something Missing is a hilarious, gripping, and often profound novel about a man used to planning every second of his life who is suddenly forced to confront chaos and spontaneity."
I really liked this book. It was engaging, and I wanted to know what would happen next. Some of the detail in the writing was a little tedious, but I think the author meant to give the reader a look into Martin's OCD, and just how meticulous and repetitive a lifestyle like that can be. I grew to like Martin, even though at first he kind of grated on me. If you need a quick and enjoyable read, pick this one up.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
33: A Separate Peace
A Separate Peace
John Knowles
2 stars
I finally finished this book. It took me 2 months. I just couldn't get all the way into it... and at the end, it fell sort of flat for me. I like what I think the author was trying to say, but I just don't think he made a slam dunk with this one. Which may be against the grain, because apparently this is a pretty popular book for high school English classes, though I never read it-- never even heard of it, actually, until this past summer.
This book is set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of WWII. Two boys, best friends (kind of?), have a tumultuous summer punctuated with a terrible accident (or was it?), and then an even more tragic autumn. They have it rough, these boys. Everyone knows they are basically being groomed to enter the military as soon as they are of age. There is this Great War hanging over their heads, but it doesn't seem real to them. They keep hearing about it, but they don't really get it. And of course they don't. They are children. War is incomprehensible to all but the few who have seen it and lived to tell. This is the aspect of the plot I could get behind. I could feel the pressure hanging over them, and the bewilderment of not really knowing what war is, what would be expected of them, even what they were being sent off to fight and possibly die for.
Gene and Phineas are presented as best friends and polar opposites. Finny is the BMOC, the jock, the uber talented, handsome daredevil. Gene is the introverted intellectual. He does what Finny says, most of the time grudgingly. Finny thinks they genuinely like each other, but the reader is (or at least I was) left wondering what was really going on. Their friendship is never very convincing to me. It feels forced-- the author says it's so, so it is, but I wish I could have believed it. The story is told from Gene's point of view and it's clear from his inner monologue that he has some serious ill feelings towards Finny that are never fully resolved. In fact, the main conflict in the book is actually an "accident" that befalls Finny that Gene causes. When it happens, it happens because Gene, always quietly simmering in anger at Finny, suffers a momentary lapse of reason. He acts without giving a thought to what the consequences could be. A really stupid whim, in other words. This action sets off a chain of events that affect everyone.
If you read this book in high school, I'd be interested to hear what you thought of it then. If you've read it since then, I'd be even more interested to hear if you liked it. For me, I could take it or leave it. 2 stars.
John Knowles
2 stars
I finally finished this book. It took me 2 months. I just couldn't get all the way into it... and at the end, it fell sort of flat for me. I like what I think the author was trying to say, but I just don't think he made a slam dunk with this one. Which may be against the grain, because apparently this is a pretty popular book for high school English classes, though I never read it-- never even heard of it, actually, until this past summer.
This book is set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of WWII. Two boys, best friends (kind of?), have a tumultuous summer punctuated with a terrible accident (or was it?), and then an even more tragic autumn. They have it rough, these boys. Everyone knows they are basically being groomed to enter the military as soon as they are of age. There is this Great War hanging over their heads, but it doesn't seem real to them. They keep hearing about it, but they don't really get it. And of course they don't. They are children. War is incomprehensible to all but the few who have seen it and lived to tell. This is the aspect of the plot I could get behind. I could feel the pressure hanging over them, and the bewilderment of not really knowing what war is, what would be expected of them, even what they were being sent off to fight and possibly die for.
Gene and Phineas are presented as best friends and polar opposites. Finny is the BMOC, the jock, the uber talented, handsome daredevil. Gene is the introverted intellectual. He does what Finny says, most of the time grudgingly. Finny thinks they genuinely like each other, but the reader is (or at least I was) left wondering what was really going on. Their friendship is never very convincing to me. It feels forced-- the author says it's so, so it is, but I wish I could have believed it. The story is told from Gene's point of view and it's clear from his inner monologue that he has some serious ill feelings towards Finny that are never fully resolved. In fact, the main conflict in the book is actually an "accident" that befalls Finny that Gene causes. When it happens, it happens because Gene, always quietly simmering in anger at Finny, suffers a momentary lapse of reason. He acts without giving a thought to what the consequences could be. A really stupid whim, in other words. This action sets off a chain of events that affect everyone.
If you read this book in high school, I'd be interested to hear what you thought of it then. If you've read it since then, I'd be even more interested to hear if you liked it. For me, I could take it or leave it. 2 stars.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
The Book of Mormon Girl
Hi. It's me again. I'm way behind on this book blog. I've read several over the last months. But today I finished The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks. So I am here. And if you read it, you will understand why.
Joanna describes growing up in a very loving, orthodox Mormon home in California during the cold war era with affection and humor and clarity. Her gorgeous prose and uniquely Mormon use of metaphor made me feel and see and understand in a way that I think would have been accessible to non-Mormons and Mormons alike. But because I'm Mormon, and because I'm now unorthodox, she made me remember what it felt like to belong to this community "everything understood between us."
The first chapter:
Like Joanna, I remembered thrilling when I was in the company of huge groups of Mormons and the safety I felt against "the world" when I was home and all was happy. The times at girls camp when I was finally free to ask real, female questions. The food. The hymns. The idea of a God who hears and answers prayers. So Mormon, the book made me realize how I took it much for granted.
And other times I'd react with shared pain at her stories that were close to my own. Early sexuality, fear over eternal polygamy, Prop 8, and discovering I'm an enemy of the church (an intellectual feminist), crying "out of fear an danger and loneliness. . .that the Church had punished women like me. . .leaving us exiled among our own."
"Dead to our own dead."
But this book is not about the flaws of the church any more than it is about its wonderful people of sparkling difference. It's about how one woman's reaction "when we discover at the core of faith a knot of contradictions." I share Joanna's belief that there is no way forward but to tell the whole story: the one that presents Mormons as "A people of sparkling differences and human failings. . .A people who are not afraid to tell an unorthodox story full of angels, sacred groves, ancestor pioneers, sacrifice, and longing, because an unorthodox story is what history has given us to tell."
Mormon or not, orthodox or unorthodox, male, female, whoever you are--if you love honesty, complexity, and gorgeous prose, you'll love this book. You'll love Mormons as they really are. You'll want to sing kumbaya, and hug your neighbor, and be kinder to everyone you meet. And if you're like me and have felt totally alone in this religion, you'll want to send Joanna a thank you letter.
Joanna describes growing up in a very loving, orthodox Mormon home in California during the cold war era with affection and humor and clarity. Her gorgeous prose and uniquely Mormon use of metaphor made me feel and see and understand in a way that I think would have been accessible to non-Mormons and Mormons alike. But because I'm Mormon, and because I'm now unorthodox, she made me remember what it felt like to belong to this community "everything understood between us."
The first chapter:
"This is how I came into this world, this world of believing: an ancient spirit striving to remember the shape of eternity at the kitchen table, in a house where ancestors knew our names and stepped through the walls, my dreams filled with light, my head consecrated with oil, every Sunday morning white bread and tap water for sacrament, every Sunday evening the taste of a ripe glazed strawberry saying "grateful" on my tongue."But she continues:
"I grew up in a world where all the stories I heard arrived at the same conclusions: the wayfarer restored, the sick healed, the lost keys found, a singular truth confirmed. And an orthodox story is the only kind of story I ever wanted to be able to tell. But these are not the kinds of stories life has given me. . .In the world I grew up in, it was not okay to tell unorthodox stories. We did not hear them in church. We did not read them in scripture. But sooner or later they break through to the surface in every Mormon life, in every human life, in every life of faith. I am not afraid of them. Because this is the story life has given me to tell."I was so charmed by this book, I swear I read half of it out loud to anyone who happened to be around me this weekend. I would laugh and say "I've felt that way too!" when she talked about how Mormons love to see other Mormons, to see family vans, to speak the language of our people.
Like Joanna, I remembered thrilling when I was in the company of huge groups of Mormons and the safety I felt against "the world" when I was home and all was happy. The times at girls camp when I was finally free to ask real, female questions. The food. The hymns. The idea of a God who hears and answers prayers. So Mormon, the book made me realize how I took it much for granted.
And other times I'd react with shared pain at her stories that were close to my own. Early sexuality, fear over eternal polygamy, Prop 8, and discovering I'm an enemy of the church (an intellectual feminist), crying "out of fear an danger and loneliness. . .that the Church had punished women like me. . .leaving us exiled among our own."
"Dead to our own dead."
But this book is not about the flaws of the church any more than it is about its wonderful people of sparkling difference. It's about how one woman's reaction "when we discover at the core of faith a knot of contradictions." I share Joanna's belief that there is no way forward but to tell the whole story: the one that presents Mormons as "A people of sparkling differences and human failings. . .A people who are not afraid to tell an unorthodox story full of angels, sacred groves, ancestor pioneers, sacrifice, and longing, because an unorthodox story is what history has given us to tell."
Mormon or not, orthodox or unorthodox, male, female, whoever you are--if you love honesty, complexity, and gorgeous prose, you'll love this book. You'll love Mormons as they really are. You'll want to sing kumbaya, and hug your neighbor, and be kinder to everyone you meet. And if you're like me and have felt totally alone in this religion, you'll want to send Joanna a thank you letter.
Monday, September 17, 2012
32: Young Men and Fire
Young Men and Fire
Norman Maclean
3 stars
If you aren't familiar with Norman Maclean, he is the author of A River Runs Through It, which you are more likely to be familiar with-- at least the movie version. I've read some of Maclean's other work, and this non-fiction book has been on my to-read list for years. I'm glad I finally checked it out, though it wasn't quite what I was expecting.
In 1949, a crew of 15 Forest Service smokejumpers descended on what they thought would be a routine fire-fighting operation in Mann Gulch, a remote location in the Montana wilderness. Two hours later, all but three of these men were dead. The real story of what happened in that gulch is what Maclean sought out to discover and record for posterity. On the surface, this book delves deeply into fire theories and wind speed and all sorts of things I would never have learned about had I not read this book-- but on a deeper level, this book is about life, and dying, and youth, and old age, and humanity. That may sound like a cliche, but it's true. Maclean wove quite a bit into his telling of this tale.
From a Goodreads summary:
I noted in my Goodreads review of this book that I have come to the conclusion that Maclean's writing is an acquired taste. Some of it I don't connect with-- he uses a lot of imagery that doesn't resound with me. But he also, every now and then, busts out a gem that leaves me thinking. And so I keep coming back for more. This book, I'll admit, was kind of slow at times. There is one pretty technical section that I nearly didn't get through, just because I'm not that into the science side of fires. I was fascinated with the human side of the story, though, and that kept me going. I'm glad I finished it. It gets a solid three stars from me.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite parts, found at the end.
"I, an old man, have written this fire report. Among other things, it was important to me, as an exercise for old age, to enlarge my knowledge and spirit so I could accompany young men whose lives I might have lived on their way to death. I have climbed where they climbed, and in my time I have fought fire and inquired into its nature. In addition, I have lived to get a better understanding of myself and those close to me, many of them now dead. Perhaps it is not odd, at the end of this tragedy where nothing much was left of the elite who came from the sky but courage struggling for oxygen, that I have often found myself thinking of my wife on her brave and lonely way to death."
Norman Maclean
3 stars
If you aren't familiar with Norman Maclean, he is the author of A River Runs Through It, which you are more likely to be familiar with-- at least the movie version. I've read some of Maclean's other work, and this non-fiction book has been on my to-read list for years. I'm glad I finally checked it out, though it wasn't quite what I was expecting.
In 1949, a crew of 15 Forest Service smokejumpers descended on what they thought would be a routine fire-fighting operation in Mann Gulch, a remote location in the Montana wilderness. Two hours later, all but three of these men were dead. The real story of what happened in that gulch is what Maclean sought out to discover and record for posterity. On the surface, this book delves deeply into fire theories and wind speed and all sorts of things I would never have learned about had I not read this book-- but on a deeper level, this book is about life, and dying, and youth, and old age, and humanity. That may sound like a cliche, but it's true. Maclean wove quite a bit into his telling of this tale.
From a Goodreads summary:
These first deaths among the Forest Service's elite firefighters prompted widespread examination of federal fire policy, of the field of fire science, and of the frailty of young men. For Maclean, who witnessed the fire from the ground in August of 1949, and even then he knew he would one day become a part of its story, it is a story of Montana, of the ways of wildfires, firefighters, and fire scientists, and especially of a crew, young and proud, who "hadn't learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy." This tale is also Maclean's own, the story of a writer obsessed by a strange and human horror, unable to let the truth die with these young men, searching for the last - and lasting - word. A canvas on which to tell many stories, including the story of his research into the story itself. And finally Nature's violence colliding with human fallibility. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean returned to the scene with two of the survivors and pursues the mysteries that Mann Gulch has kept hidden since 1949. From the words of witnesses, the evidence of history, and the research of fire scientists, Maclean at last assembles the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy; in his last work that consumed 14 years of his life, and earned a 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award. The excruciating detail of this book makes for a sobering reading experience. Maclean -- a former University of Chicago English professor and avid fisherman -- also wrote A River Runs Through It and Other Stories , which is set along the Missouri River, one gulch downstream from Mann Gulch.One of the most fascinating parts of the Mann Gulch story is a controversial decision made by the crew foreman when it became clear to him that he and most of his crew would not be able to make it to the top of the ridge ahead of the quickly spreading fire. He decided to light what is now known as an escape fire ahead of the fire coming up behind them, and lie down in the hot ashes to let the other fire pass over. He tried to get his crew to enter his escape fire, but in the chaos and fear, not a single one of them listened to him. As a result, all the rest of the crew (save two who had made it to the top of the ridge ahead of everyone) perished. While escape fires are now recognized as a legitimate means to escape death in such situations, at the time of the Mann Gulch fire they were not. The foreman acted on instinct alone. How differently things could have turned out if his crew had followed his orders.
I noted in my Goodreads review of this book that I have come to the conclusion that Maclean's writing is an acquired taste. Some of it I don't connect with-- he uses a lot of imagery that doesn't resound with me. But he also, every now and then, busts out a gem that leaves me thinking. And so I keep coming back for more. This book, I'll admit, was kind of slow at times. There is one pretty technical section that I nearly didn't get through, just because I'm not that into the science side of fires. I was fascinated with the human side of the story, though, and that kept me going. I'm glad I finished it. It gets a solid three stars from me.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite parts, found at the end.
"I, an old man, have written this fire report. Among other things, it was important to me, as an exercise for old age, to enlarge my knowledge and spirit so I could accompany young men whose lives I might have lived on their way to death. I have climbed where they climbed, and in my time I have fought fire and inquired into its nature. In addition, I have lived to get a better understanding of myself and those close to me, many of them now dead. Perhaps it is not odd, at the end of this tragedy where nothing much was left of the elite who came from the sky but courage struggling for oxygen, that I have often found myself thinking of my wife on her brave and lonely way to death."
Friday, September 14, 2012
More re-reads and a few nearly-dones.
This is going to be a quick catch-up post. Life has been a whirlwind-- I feel like it's still the beginning of August in my mind, and yet here we are on September 14.
I re-read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 30) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 31) in the past few weeks. It has been yearrrrrs since I read HPs 1-3. I decided it was time to dive back in and re-read the whole series, and I am so glad I did. I just love it so much. It was so neat to go back to the very beginning, which I haven't thought about in a long time. I wish I could somehow erase the rest of the story from my memory and read them for the first time again. One thing I am especially enjoying is how funny Fred and George are. I kind of forgot all the funny dialog from them that is woven throughout the books. They are so awesome. Both get 5 stars from me.
As for other reads, I am nearly done with A Separate Peace and Young Men and Fire, both of which will be reviewed soon. I am also re-reading The Poisonwood Bible for book club, but I imagine one of the other writers of this blog will finish it and review it before I do, so I may not do a full review of that one.
I should be almost done with my 36th book right now, but I'm only almost to 34. I do have two new library books waiting for me to dive in, though, and I might just be able to get caught up at some point. (Probably not.) If only there were more hours in the day... or Vivian would let me read as long as I want. haha.
What are you ladies reading these days? Anyone?
I re-read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 30) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 31) in the past few weeks. It has been yearrrrrs since I read HPs 1-3. I decided it was time to dive back in and re-read the whole series, and I am so glad I did. I just love it so much. It was so neat to go back to the very beginning, which I haven't thought about in a long time. I wish I could somehow erase the rest of the story from my memory and read them for the first time again. One thing I am especially enjoying is how funny Fred and George are. I kind of forgot all the funny dialog from them that is woven throughout the books. They are so awesome. Both get 5 stars from me.
As for other reads, I am nearly done with A Separate Peace and Young Men and Fire, both of which will be reviewed soon. I am also re-reading The Poisonwood Bible for book club, but I imagine one of the other writers of this blog will finish it and review it before I do, so I may not do a full review of that one.
I should be almost done with my 36th book right now, but I'm only almost to 34. I do have two new library books waiting for me to dive in, though, and I might just be able to get caught up at some point. (Probably not.) If only there were more hours in the day... or Vivian would let me read as long as I want. haha.
What are you ladies reading these days? Anyone?
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