Book Review: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Four things about Marisha Pessl’s debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics:

1. I enjoyed the audio version more than the book itself (though I alternated between the two for the six weeks it took me to finish the book.) The reader makes the precocious narrator, Blue Van Meer, sound adorable instead of irritating – overblown metaphors and all.

2. Despite a message to the readers (disguised as a diatribe from one of the main characters) about how lazy it is to expect resolution and a known outcome at the end of a book or movie, I still don’t think it’s okay to write a 600 page novel where you don’t resolve all the subplots, throw out red herrings but never explain why they were there, and generally leave certain characters unresolved.

Grandma Gatewood’s Walk

I’m a backpacker. I’ve hiked several small sections of the Appalachian Trail — in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine — and definitely had heard of Grandma Gatewood, the first woman to through-hike the AT. So, unsurprisingly, I loved learning more about her in this newly released biography. But of all the AT thru-hiker accounts I’ve read, this one was probably the most relatable by non-hikers. 

Library Loot: Back to the Library

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by The Captive Reader and Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries

 

 

I’m back!!!

After taking a bit of a break from the personal library to read through my owned backlog, I picked up two wonderful books from the library this week.

The first was Starbreak, a new release by Phoebe North. It follows her debut SF novel, Starglass, about a generation ship whose secular culture is based on Judaism.

The second book was one of the oldest ones on my hold list, and I’ve already finished it: a biography titled Grandma Gatewood’s Walk. This one gets its own review, later!

What did you pick up this week?

Library Loot: New Releases

 

 

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by The Captive Reader and Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries

 

Ooh, I got lots of new releases this week. So happy! 

 

I’ve already read The Invention of Wings, and really enjoyed it. Unlike The Secret Life of Bees, it’s historical fiction. Be sure to read the author’s note at the end when you’re done – it was kind of a fun surprise, and I won’t spoil that for you.

 

Ruin and Rising, on the other hand, concludes one of my favorite in-progress YA fantasy trilogies.

 

Ruin and Rising, combined with this blog post where Deborah Harkness urges her readers to re-read the previous two books in her series before The Book of Life is released, leads me to ask a question:

 

Do you re-read books in a series or trilogy before a new installment is released? Or do you rely on your memory and cues from the writer to pick up where you left off?

Library Loot: Again With the Author Bios

 

 

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by The Captive Reader and Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries

 

I’m still on an author bio binge. This week, I picked up My Salinger Year, a new release memoir, and Pearl S. Buck’s autobiography, My Several Worlds. Inspired by last week’s autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, I also checked out Eudora Welty’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Optimist’s Daughter.

 

I immediately read My Salinger Year, followed by the Welty novel. Both were wonderful. Since I’m done already, I’ll give mini-reviews here.

 

My Salinger Year successfully opens a window into another life & another world: in this case, mid-90’s  literary New York. Although I sometimes found the author’s opinions to be snobbish or unrelatable, as a reader I was able to accept that as her truth at that time and place in her life.

 

The Optimist’s Daughter had the feel of a long short story to me; it was just one of those books that slowly reveals things about the characters. I was also reminded (oddly) of the book of Job, based on structure if not content. Unfortunately, there are a lot of biographical pieces from Welty’s life wedged in the book, and the echo back to her autobiography were disruptive for me as a reader. I would not recommend reading One Writer’s Beginnings and The Optimist’s Daughter back to back.

 

 

What did you pick up this week?

What Works… and how to make it work

Career advice books aim to change you. It’s no secret. The only way they can produce results is to influence the reader, so they’re going to tell you how you’re doing it wrong (whatever ‘it’ is). On the one hand, you have Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office. On the other, Winning Nice: How to Succeed in Business and Life Without Waging War.

 
On the other end of the spectrum you have the studies in sociology that tell you why women can be at a disadvantage in their careers. Books like Through the Labyrinth: The Truth about How Women Become Leaders describe the world as it exists today, and give you little advice about how to actually navigate it. In my opinion (and despite the titular advice), Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg falls mostly in this camp, too.

 
What Works for Women at Work bridges this gap. Through an NSF grant, Joan C. Williams and Rachel Dempsey identified four key patterns of gender bias that women face in the workplace. Then – and this is the wonderful part – they advise you on how to deal with them, without making the bias your fault.

 

The four key areas they address are:

• Prove It Again bias: women are judged on their performance, while men are judged on their potential
• The Tightrope: women are either too nice or too mean.
• The Maternal Wall: how motherhood, or the potential for it, affects women’s career paths
• Tug of War: how women fight each other

The authors also do a wonderful job of broadening their audience, and along with it, their message. They emphasize that this book is not just written for women, but also for men to recognize these unconscious patterns that play out over and over again.

 

At the same time, there is recognition that in many cases (as in my example of “too nice” and “winning nice”, above) that opposing strategies can both be effective. It’s all about recognizing the situation and understanding your response to it. For example, they warn against taking on office housework, but also offer ways to turn those types of tasks to your advantage. My shortened version of their list:

 

1. Take something else off your plate.
2. Negotiate for a higher-status team member to help you out, so that you build valuable connections with someone at your company.
3. Ask for a direct report to a higher-up.
4. Secure a budget (money is power).
5. Establish a sunset and succession plan.

 

And finally – realistically – the end of the book focuses on how to know when you need to leave.

 
Overall, this book both opens your eyes and puts tools in your hands. It’s enthusiastically recommended for both men and women professionals.

 

Recommended Audiobooks

In my last post, I discussed the benefits and challenges of listening to audiobooks, and ways to make them work for you.

Although I suggested that children’s literature is most successful in audio, I’ve had success in multiple genres. Here are a few recommendations for audiobooks. Not only did the audio versions of these books really hold my attention, but in most cases, I felt that the audio really brought something special to the book.

 

Adult Fiction (Light): The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I thought The Help was soap-opera-y, and in book form, that would probably have been irritating. In audio, though, the combination of humor and drama along with its episodic format held my attention as I listened on my daily commute over three weeks.

Adult Fiction (Serious): The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. This is a great example of how a more thoughtful, character-driven book can still make for great listening. I finished this book with tears streaming down my face somewhere on the eastern leg of I-64.

Mystery: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall. I think anyone who is interested in this series should listen to at least one of its books on audio. The lyrical narration of Mma Ramotswe, performed by a South African native, adds to the overall picture of Botswana. Plus, the books are just plain fun.

YA Fantasy: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson. This is an example of a book that should have been handicapped by audio, because it was about magical drawings. However, the audio descriptions were effective and other elements of the book, like its amazing world-building, helped too. I actually enjoyed coming up with my own mental image of the rithmatists’ drawings, similar to how print books allow you to develop your own voice and image for the characters.

 

Readers: What audio books have you enjoyed?

Dear Book: It’s Not You. It’s Me.

 I just started — and set aside — two pieces of historical fiction that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. Both for the same reason: The use of commas and semicolons was distracting to the point of irritation.

I should practice forgiveness, or at least forebearance. The first novel, The Time In Between, is an international bestseller originally published in Spanish. The second, a Mary Renault novel, was first published in the 1950s. In both cases, we’re not talking recent U.S. bestsellers.

In other words: I wanted different, and different is what I got.

But oh, the sentences:

When the Roaring Twenties came to an end, however, the waistline of dresses returned to their natural place, skirts got longer, and modesty once again imposed itself on sleeves, necklines, and desires.

You’re thinking it’s not so bad? Every sentence was a similar length and rhythm. It was like water torture, with the commas dripping on line after line, page after page.

So I set that book aside and went on to the next: The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault. This one was recommended by Jo Walton, one of my favorite authors, and set in Greece at the end of the Peloponnesian War.  And here is what I got:

 

On any other day, each would have stood forth among his pupils like a flower among bees; now, seated on the benches or pacing the colonnade, they were questioning like the rest anyone who professed to know something; some with more seemliness than those around them, some not.

Here’s the thing: I love semicolons. They’re probably my favorite punctuation, even if I’ve self-consciously avoided them for this post. So it has to be me, right? I’m in a bad reader-mood, and rejecting books right and left because they’re not up-to-the-minute in terms of style and punctuation?