Fake Bookish Neurosis: Schizobibliosis

So Many Books (by ~Minnea~)

Lately, you may have noticed, I've mostly disappeared. Where did I go? You see, I got stuck. I'm buried under ALL THE BOOKS. (And other stuff. Like work, and dogs, and cats, and running, and spouses (well, just the one), and chores, and errands, and family, and, you know, stuff.)

How did this happen? Well, I accepted too many books to review, for one, so, that needs to change, or slow down, or something. The pressure to read the small pile on the review shelf is tying some seriously painful knots under my shoulder blades. I also started a book club in which we have a set day and time to meet every month, and, gasp, actually read and discuss the book,* and we had our first meeting, and it was grand. But since I started the thing, I actually have to be prepared! What? Add to this the fact that there are just so many interesting-sounding books out there. Lying in wait. To be read. By me. At some point. Maybe. Optimistically. Tragically?

All of which has resulted in me being in the middle of about 5 books at once. That's 2-3 too many, for me, really, which leads me to suffer from the dreaded, dreadful schizobibliosis. Too much jumping back and forth between plots and characters and comedy and tragedy and add to that that one of these is Infinite Jest, which is about 170 plot lines rolled up into one complicated, verbose novel that is often awesome and sometimes boring (sorry die-hards), and sometimes both at the same time. I mean, I couldn't pass up this whole Summer of Jest thing, even though I did miss the first call in, and am already behind the proposed schedule. But that's okay. I'm not terribly worried about that. It's The Spouse's favorite book ever, so, I guess it's time. (Although, I've said that before. Ha.)

See? I can't even stay on topic. What's the topic? Oh. Wait, what?

Luckily, schizobibliosis, unlike it's phrenetic (he he, see what I did there?) cousin, has a cure: I just need to finish some of these books before I start the rest of them. That's totally doable, yes? Don't you think? Yes. I think so. Probably. Most likely. We'll see. Or will we...

*The other book club that I'm casually, occasionally still attending can't seem to meet regularly or set a reasonable time to meet, every meeting scheduling shenanigan beginning with an email thread to check schedules and trailing off until a time is suddenly decided upon often less than a week ahead of time, 2 if we're lucky. This leads to the book often not being read (even by me, with such little notice), and discussions that tend to go off subject. Add to that, the off-subject subjects of discussion more often than not are topics that disallow my participation almost completely as a childless, non-Catholic non-teacher, since said discussions tend to revolve around (you guessed it) teaching, teaching politics, birthing, parenting, child behavior generally, and the goings on in a parish of which I am not a part and of which I have no desire to be a part, not being Catholic and all. The members are all smart, lovely ladies, but sometimes the prevalence of cliquey estrogeny teachiness can be a little overwhelming. So I call that my Wine-Drinking Catholic Teaching Moms That Occasionally Read and Might Discuss a Book, a Little, Sometimes Club, of which I am only an honorary member, my only qualifications for membership being that I can read and drink wine.  

Appointment In Samarra by John O'Hara: Read This If

In a break from form, I'm going to introduce this novel (one that I can't believe I'd never heard of let alone read) with the description on the inside cover:

In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, PA, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction. Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O'Hara's iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream--and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence of a major American writer.

Appointment in Samarra is a more frank, less stylized novel touching on the same themes as Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby - not that The Great Gatsby isn't fantastic - it is - this novel just presents its characters with more raw humanity than a novel as tight and stylized as TGG could possibly allow. The title, too, is quite clever - as a member of my book club pointed out, it's not only a metaphor for Julian's own fast demise, but, as the novel is set in 1930, a year after the crash of '29 that set off the Great Depression, it's also a metaphor for the rapid disintegration of a particular way of life. (Luckily O'Hara changed it from it's original - The Infernal Grove.)

You should definitely read this if:

• You enjoyed The Great Gatsby and are looking for something set in a similar time period following a similar crowd.
• You love realistic dialogue. (O'Hara was apparently accused of writing his dialogue TOO realistically.)
• You want to know what the inside of an alcoholic's mind looks like. (I'm told it's quite realistic, so, beware.)
• You wondered what the Jane Austen style of marrying off upper class men and women might look like in 1930s small town America.
• You're looking for a short, fast read.
• You have always wondered what might happen if you acted on some of your lesser impulses. (Answer: Nothing good.)

You might want to steer clear of this novel if:

• Straight forward writing about sex and sexuality offends you.
• You require happy endings. (If you know the story of the appointment in Samarra as retold by W. Somerset Maugham, which serves as an epigraph to this novel, I'm not giving anything away here.)
• The crazed haze of alcoholism hits too close to home for you at this particular moment.
• You are easily depressed.
• You can't stand novels in which you're often silently pleading with the main character to make better choices.

Make better choices, all. Read this novel.

*I received this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. (I'm so glad I did - I wouldn't have known to read this otherwise.)

The Burning Air by Erin Kelly: Read This If

Hello, dear readers, it's been some weeks since my last post. I finished The Burning Air by Erin Kelly some weeks ago, and just haven't been able to disseminate my thoughts on the novel adequately. The novel certainly builds suspense with a slow, steadily growing heat. It grows on the reader in the same way - what seems like a reluctant, meandering plot jumps into focus after a change in perspective. The characters are all normal, average English people who happen to cross paths with a boy who anything but normal or average, and who refuses to accept his shortcomings.

This is not a formulaic story arch. The MacBrides, the central family in the story, are actually the flattest characters of the bunch - it's the villains of the story that have a fair amount of life to them, to the point that you might find yourself rooting both for and against the main scoundrel at the same time - though in the end, you will definitely pick a side. His revenge plotting is so all-consuming that he cannot see anything beyond its realization. That alone lends the novel its most disturbing quality.

The Burning Air was a different sort of thriller for me - its pacing was much slower than the Tana French novels I managed to fly through in the earlier part of this year. It's a gradual build, but its psychological mind games and its haunting, creepy atmosphere is sure to stick with you long after you fini

You should pick up The Burning Air if:

• You like seeing your story from the perspective of the villain. 
• You crave psychological suspense in your novels. 
• Your life has just seemed too sunny and happy lately, and you need some creepiness to shake it up. 
• You can't get the song Private Eyes out of your head. (Ha! NOW you can't! You're welcome.)

You should skip this if: 

• You just had a child and might be suffering from post partum depression. You're probably not reading much at all if that's the case, so I'm not too worried.
• You are prone to anxiety and paranoia and already find most people creepy. This will just feed al
• You are in the market for a light read akin to Bridget Jones Diary (I'd suggest Wife 22 or Domestic Violets to satisfy such a mood). 
• You're looking for a more traditional fast-paced mystery.

*I received this book from the Penguin Viking in exchange for my honest review.

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight: Read this if

Well, that was something of an unputdownable. Reconstructing Amelia's premise may be one you'd want to keep at arm's length (busy, successful attorney mom whose teenage daughter takes a deadly fall off the roof of her fancy private school under mysterious circumstances), but once you start reading Kimberly McCreight's debut novel (but not her first!), you might not be able to do much else until you finish.

Kate Baron is your typical (but not stereotypical) high-powered, workaholic single mom, trying to juggle job responsibilities with parenting Amelia, an athletic, nerdy teenager not so popular with the cool kids. Because of her mom's job, Amelia is left to fend for herself much of the time, and Kate, like most parents, feels incredibly guilty about the time she doesn't have for her daughter and has very little idea of the crazy turn Amelia's life takes at the beginning of her sophomore year. Both Amelia and Kate come across as very real, both fully fleshed out and completely believable - people you'd probably want to know in real life. Well, if you're me, anyway.

Also, just because Amelia dies at the beginning does not mean we don't get to know her - the narrative mostly jumps between Amelia's first-person experience in the immediate past and Kate's third-person impressions of the present, all set in motion by an anonymous text to Kate: she didn't jump. The bullying Amelia suffers is absolutely heart-wrenching, making me beyond glad that texting and facebook and the internet weren't around when I was in high school - with so many tools at their disposal, kids have too many more means to a vicious end - it's just horrifying, and this book really brings that new avenue for teenage humiliation to life. The novel manages to cover all the confusion that goes along with being a teenager and discovering who you are and who you want to be as well as all the inner conflicts of trying to be everything as a parent and knowing you're just setting yourself up to fail, complete with Gossip Girl like setting. But it's not without hope, or redemption.

You should definitely read this if:

• You're looking for a fast, gripping, unputdownable novel.
• You can follow novels that jump around on a timeline.
• You're a recovering bully.
• You've been wondering what would happen on a darker version of The Gilmore Girls.
• You want to see how a novel could seamlessly combine a mystery with the intricacies of female relationships with one another, with a little law firm & private school politics thrown in. 

Don't read this if: 

• You're a very recent bullying victim.
• Anything that discusses sex or sexuality makes you queasy.
• You find minor mistakes in timelines hopelessly distracting (--> I read an uncorrected proof, and am hoping that has been resolved in the final edition or that I just read something wrong). 
• You prefer to remain blissfully ignorant of what your teenager is doing. 
• You don't like starting at the end and working your way backwards (sort of). 

*I received this book through of TLC Book Tours in exchange for my honest review. I'm not the last word - see what others had to say.